Hit the Ground Running

by Alison Hughes

  Dee had practiced a few slow rounds of the school parking lot on weekends and then inched her way around residential streets. Driving in Santacino was easy, as slow as riding a bike. She’d diligently practiced parallel parking, so that when the time came to get her real license, she’d be ready. Perfect preparation for the interstates, she thought now, her hands slick with sweat on the wheel.

  They rolled down all the windows. It was choking hot in the car, the towels she’d laid on the seats to prevent scalding doubling as sweat absorbers. A hot breeze wafted in as they slid down the street. The merciless sun bleached the sky from a clear, cloudless pale blue into white.

  “What time is it, Eddie?”

  “9:36 AM. Thursday, July 24.”

  Before they’d even turned off their street onto the lonely road that skirted the town, Eddie started singing “Down by the Bay.” It was their road-trip song, usually belted out by Dad and Eddie while she read, ignored them and hoped nobody she knew saw them. Things were different now.

  “Did you ever see a whale with a polka-dot tail? Down by the bay, down by the baaaay,” they sang as they crossed the old bridge. The river that had at one time flowed under the bridge and through town was gone, leaving behind a smooth trail of cracked earth, a long, snaking water-print of where it had once moved and danced in the sun. It was locally known as El Fantasma, the ghost. The memory of a river.

  “Did you ever see a bear with a fish in its hair? Down by the bay…”

  Left at the street where you’d go right to get to the grocery store, and up the rise to the T intersection. Almost officially out of town. ’Bye, Theresa. ’Bye, Mr. and Mrs. S. ’Bye, Mrs. Turner, nice English teacher. ’Bye, Jarrett, boy I never really got to know but secretly liked. ’Bye, everyone. ’Bye, Dad.

  “Did you ever see a skunk packing a trunk? Down by the bay…”

  They turned left, gliding slowly out of town, and exited onto the highway. In the rearview mirror she had a last glimpse of Santacino, their home for five long years. The town sprawled on either side of the dry river, getting smaller and smaller before it shimmered into a haze, then disappeared behind a hill, swallowed up by the unforgiving desert.

  The 86 was a small highway that led to the 85, which led to Phoenix, then to the real highway, the big interstate. Two minutes of driving and they were in open desert, as flat and featureless as a calm ocean. They could have been miles from anywhere.

  North. North to Phoenix, and then north and north and north. It’s pretty simple, Dee. Just head north. Through almost the whole of Arizona and into Utah. Or where did the highway come out? Colorado? Wyoming? Her mind was blank. Did Idaho kind of jut in there? Montana was right on the Canadian border. She was pretty sure of Montana.

  “Did you ever see a snake biting a rake? Down by the bay…”

  Map. We seriously need a map. We need to drive as far north as we can, we need to cross into whatever the hell the state is on the north side of the Arizona border, we need to find a spot to sleep tonight, and we need to get a map. Her mind hopped and raced as Eddie came up with the rhymes.

  “Did you ever see a cat with a baseball bat?”

  She joined in on the next verse:

  “Down by the bay, down by the baaay, where the watermelons grow, back to my home, I dare not go…”

  Dee drove through the scorching desert, keeping one eye on the temperature gauge, which climbed steadily to the top of the red end, then fell dead right down to the bottom and never moved again. There wasn’t another car in sight. They were the only thing moving in the red-brown, lunar landscape. It was like they were the last people left on earth.

  It reminded her of their first road trip five years ago, the very first one, this exact trip, only in reverse.

  “C’mon, Dee.” Her father had whispered her awake. “Road trip!”

  She had sat up in bed, rubbing her eyes, and watched her father scoop her clothes into a suitcase. He didn’t even put on the big light, just shoveled things in by the glow of her night-light.

  “Where’re we going, Dad?” she’d asked quietly as he carried Eddie, still sleeping heavily, out to the car and strapped him in. She knew this was not a road trip; she knew they were leaving. She just didn’t know where they were going.

  “Somewhere we can get warm,” he’d said, his face set. He had seemed like a stranger, that serious man who had packed them into the freezing car, their parkas over their pajamas, their bare feet shoved into snow boots. She knew now that he couldn’t face his sister-in-law Pat, not even to say goodbye. He had thought it was better to leave and call from wherever they settled. A clean break he called it.

  Dee had watched him in the rearview mirror in the light of the passing streetlights, his haunted, sad eyes. She saw him take first one hand, then the other, and blow into it. The wheel must have been frozen—they could see their breath in the car. Dee’s face was pale in her pink, hooded parka, her hair dark and rumpled, her eyes still puffy from sleep. She willed the anxious eyes in the rearview mirror to look at her.

  “Road trip, Dee!” he’d murmured, trying to smile. “Somewhere we can get warm. A warm place…” Since it all happened, since her mother’s death, he had told her he’d been so cold, cold to the bone, cold right through. The whole world had dimmed for all of them. “We need to find the sun again, hey?” He had looked at her briefly in the mirror, and she’d nodded and smiled uncertainly.

  Dee had heard Auntie Pat and her dad in the hall days before, Auntie Pat’s voice low and insistent.

  “Jamie, you have to get some help. You have to. For the kids if not for yourself.”

  Help with what? thought Dee.

  “I’m fine. I’m okay, Pat. Just so tired.” She could barely hear her dad’s voice.

  “Then sleep! Take some time. Leave things to me. Just don’t make any big decisions right now.” Good old Auntie Pat. Grieving quietly for her only sister, her baby sister, and shouldering everyone else’s grief as well.

  The midnight trip south was her father’s doomed big decision. The one he shouldn’t have made right then. Dee remembered that night clearly, the quiet darkness sliding by. It was never completely dark when there was snow on the ground. She remembered that was one of the things she loved about snow. You never had to be afraid of the dark because it was never entirely dark. The darkest night became a silvery wonderland of shadows and reflected, pale light.

  The whole world was asleep, people hunkering in their houses like animals hibernating in snowdrifts. They were the only thing moving in the frozen white world.

  Dee had carved designs on the frosty window with her fingernail, feeling the painful cold as the ice gathered and packed under her nail. She always carved the same thing, an elaborate, ornate “frame” with a picture of a Christmas tree inside it. She stopped occasionally to warm her finger in the fist of her other hand.

  When she was done the Christmas picture, she made footprints. She’d press the side of her fist against the window until it was so cold it ached, making a wet imprint like a little baby-Eddie foot. Then the toeprints with her little finger—one big one, four small. It looked almost exactly like Eddie’s foot. She scratched The Foot of Eddie in the frost below the footprint. She blew holes in the frost with her hot breath, little windows through which she could see nothing but endless fields of snow.

  They drove for days. Their world was the inside of the car, relieved only by stops at highway motels, roadside restaurants and gas stations. Dee read and sang to Eddie and rocked his car seat to get him to stop crying and fall asleep. She played peekaboo behind stuffies and blankets, books and hands, fed him arrowroot biscuits and made faces to get him belly-laughing. She drew faces on his fingertips—two dot eyes, dot nose, always a big smile. While he slept, she read and reread the three Little House on the Prairie books that she’d brought with her.

  They drove south and south and south, almost in a straight line. They drove for so long she began to worry about the land running out. She wondered if
her dad would stop even then. This quiet man with the desperate rearview-mirror eyes might just plow on into the ocean. On to the end of the world.

  They did stop, eventually, in a dusty town deep in Arizona.

  The old antique barn appeared just after the crumbling sign announcing the town. Welcome to Santacino, Hidden Gem of the Desert. The sign at Charlie Rivera’s Antique Emporium was yellow, with changeable, imperfect black lettering. Clearly trying to tap into the neighboring Final Rest Funeral Parlor’s guaranteed clientele, Charlie’s sign read Check out our GrEat Antique URNs! Dad had pulled over, stopped the car and laughed until tears rolled down his face. Dee had laughed too, not understanding, not even knowing what urns were. It was a relief to hear her dad laugh again.

  “Well, seeing as we’re at Urns R Us, we better check them out,” he said finally, wiping his eyes and getting stiffly out of the car. The parkas had been stowed in the trunk days ago. They got out of the car, the sun warm on their heads.

  “See, Dee?” said Dad, smiling at her, opening his arms wide at the barren desert around them. “Someplace warm.”

  The desert had been a novelty when they’d arrived, the endless barren vistas, the cartoon cacti, the dancing tumbleweeds, the quail, the lizards. It was as uniform a landscape as they’d left, only instead of glaring white, there was rusty brown as far as you could see. Instead of mountains in the distance, there were small blue hills, lurking low on the horizon, hunkering in the heat.

  Why here? she had thought then. She’d wondered that for five years. Because of a stupid sign that made Dad laugh? Because Charlie Rivera had been “a real character,” as her dad put it? A glib talker, a storyteller, a suspender-wearing salesman/philosopher, an expert in southwestern junk. A man who showed all his teeth when he smiled and twisted a pinky ring. He kept a stash of lollipops for the bored children obliged to trail after their antique-hunting parents. He’d given lollipops to Dee and Eddie, and they had sucked them down to the sticks before they’d even wandered half of the huge place. Dad took them up and down aisles of saddles and ranch tack, metalwork, Mexican knick-knacks, furniture and jewelry, everything smelling of must and dust. When her father finally put Eddie down and leaned against the counter to talk with Charlie, Dee made sure Eddie didn’t put anything in his mouth or break anything.

  Dad and Charlie had talked for a long time. When there was nothing more to look at inside, Dee followed Eddie outside. He was a fearless toddler with more enthusiasm than expertise, running, then lurching and crashing. Dee was used to catching him, quickly sliding her arms under his outstretched ones, hauling him back up onto his feet.

  It was while they were wandering in the scrub by the parking lot that the antiques man came running out.

  “Hey, kids, y’all better just keep a watch out for rattlesnakes, okay?”

  It was the beginning of Dee’s fear of the desert. She’d hauled Eddie into the car, and they’d sat there, sweltering in the heat, waiting for their father to rescue them.

  Driving north out of the desert now, Dee fought to keep calm, to relax her clenched shoulders and back. The car was unbelievably hot, relieved only by the wind roaring in her ears. Driving on even this small highway was stressful, as random cars swooped up behind her only to swerve around and roar past. She passed nobody. The thought of slipping, however temporarily, into the lane of oncoming traffic terrified her. Besides, nobody was going slower than they were.

  Dee slowly, carefully, removed one slick hand from the wheel, wiped it on the seat towel, then did the same with the other. Worries bit away at her like insects.

  Dad. She’d worried about him for so long, it felt as natural as loving him. He was so clueless, so completely and totally hopeless. She tried to probe this new worry she felt, feeling her way around it like a tongue on a canker sore. This worry felt different, maybe because he’d seemed depressed the weeks before he left. She went over her facts. He had jumped at the chance to go away for a couple of days. He had gotten into Jim Dunford’s truck and waved, his face relaxed and happy for the first time in ages. They were heading to Tucson to antique-hunt. Dad also wanted to see a man about some wood. Teak. Jim Dunford came back without Dad and days later seemed surprised that she was asking about him.

  “Told me he’d hop a bus home,” Jim said, “seeing as his stuff was small. You know, medals, buttons, old coins.” Jim was big and slow and sold hardware at his ancient father’s store.

  “Yeah, that’s what he told me too,” Dee had lied, seeing worry cloud Jim’s face. “But you know Dad,” she said with a laugh, trying to throw him off. “He’ll have hitched a trailer onto the next bus with all his junk.”

  But Dad wasn’t on the next bus. Or the next. She started avoiding Jim Dunford and the hardware store. It was easier than lying.

  The worry had grown in her until it became a cold, tight knot of dread. Just stop it, she would snap at herself late at night. He’s been away before; he’ll be back. You can stop being such a drama queen…

  She forced herself to concentrate on the pressing, immediate worries of this trip up to Canada.

  The car. Now there was a huge, immediate worry. It was old. Ancient. The dents and scratches she could live with. More worrying were the unpredictable, thudding, grinding noises. It labored whenever there was even the slightest rise in the road. She kept hearing Mr. S. in her head: “This not goot car to go so far.” You weren’t kidding, Mr. S., she thought as they strained up an unexpected hill. She glanced at the speedometer, which was sunk, exhausted, permanently at zero mph. Flying down the highway, with other cars long-honking at her as they passed, the dial still registered zero. The fuel gauge was overly optimistic, showing a tank three-quarters full until it sheepishly sank to a quarter full a couple of minutes later.

  Dee didn’t even care about the malfunctioning air-conditioning. It hadn’t worked for as long as she could remember, and they were used to baking heat. The car was stifling, but they were managing, and they were, she hoped, pointed in a direction that would take them away from the heat, out of the desert. But if they got to Canada alive, in a few months they’d sure need some heat. She stifled a hysterical giggle. I’m driving a decrepit, crumbling furnace on wheels through a desert where people literally die of the heat, and I’m worrying about having heat in the winter. Can I find anything else to worry about? How about world peace? Disease? Plenty of worries right here and now…

  What if they broke down, here in the baking desert, in this killer landscape? Her mind rolled through a series of scenarios—she and Eddie, dangerously dehydrated, being dive-bombed by impatient vultures, knifed by escaped convicts or deranged child killers. Got to get through the desert. Got to get out of Arizona today.

  Sleeping. Sleeping was a huge worry. To make the money last as long as it could, Dee thought they should camp in the car most nights. But how safe was that? Carjackers jimmied locks way more sophisticated than these. Where should they park to sleep? Farm fields or Walmart parking lots? She tossed the alternatives around in her mind.

  Money. Money was another worry. She had no idea how far $498 would take them. It sounded like a lot. It was a lot. It was her life savings. But things are always more expensive than you think. Nothing but essentials. Gas. Food. Water.

  The Border. Oh, shit, the Border. The Border (always capitalized in her imagination) was the mother of all worries. The longest unprotected border in the world, between friendly countries, trusted neighbors. Sounds lovely until you’re face-to-face with a suspicious border guard with a gun (are they armed now?) who’s late for his coffee break and has a dangerous computer at his disposal.

  We’re Canadian, she reminded herself. We’ve got passports, so we’re totally legally entitled to enter Canada. We’ve done nothing wrong. Nothing wrong. She fumbled for the passports in the backpack beside her. They were still there.

  On the other hand, she thought, we may possibly have been living illegally in the United States for five years. And we’re traveling without a parent. An
d Susan and the child-protection people will for sure have reported us missing by tomorrow. Would there be some sort of dangerous red flag that appeared on the computer? She pictured her cranky border guard straightening up, a serious look on his face, sliding the window shut and reaching for the phone…

  So the Border loomed, a huge, impenetrable red line on the northern horizon, the ultimate worry, the problem that had to be dealt with when they got there. It’s just an imaginary line, she reminded herself, totally imaginary. But she didn’t believe it. That was like some crap her dad would say: “It’s governments that have put up borders. It’s really all one land, one people.”

  Yeah right. Tell that to the border guards, Dad.

  “Hey, Dee?” Eddie called from the backseat, over the roar of the open windows. She met his eyes in the rearview mirror and wondered if hers looked like bleak, worried stranger’s eyes to him. She tried to soften her gaze, raised her eyebrows, smiled a little.

  “Oh, you’re still there, hey?” she called back. “How’s it going?”

  “Dee, I was wondering…” Eddie looked pensive.

  She braced herself, fingers tightening on the steering wheel. Please, Eddie, please don’t go asking a million questions. I can’t do this right now…

  “You know our names?” he said.

  She relaxed. “I think so,” she said. “Wait, what was yours again?”

  He ignored her, tracking this new idea.

  “Well, both of ’em have dee in them! Dee, Eddee. Ever noticed that?” He was craning to look at her triumphantly in the rearview mirror.

  Dee laughed, part relief, part just laugh.

  “Believe it or not, I have never noticed that. Wow, you’re right. Spooky.”

  Eddie nodded, satisfied. “I wonder if Mom and Dad did that on purpose or whether it was an accident.”

  “Mmm. I’m thinking accident.”

  “Yeah, probably,” he said, “but you never know.”