“Thanks a lot,” said the dad as Dee handed back the camera. He had friendly, crinkly eyes. “How’s about I take one of you two with your camera,” he offered.
“Oh, that’s okay, thanks,” Dee said quickly. “We’ve already got lots of pictures.”
Not entirely a lie, she thought, as she joined Eddie on the path leading to the ice-cream store.
The pictures you take in your mind count too.
Dee checked her watch. Almost four o’clock.
The magic of the canyon was gone. She couldn’t lose herself in its wild beauty anymore. Now it was just an impediment, a time-wasting, money-sucking detour, a roadblock. We have to get going, we have to get out of Arizona, she thought in rising panic, her footsteps quickening.
On the trail leading to the parking lot, Eddie forced her to turn for “one last look.” The canyon, framed by pine trees, looked exactly like the two postcards she had bought, one for her, one for Eddie. Nice. Let’s go already.
A bird soared over the canyon from the cliffs off to the right.
“Condor. Definitely a condor,” said Eddie, pointing. Dee hadn’t read the information plaques dotting the trail like Eddie had. All she saw was the breathtaking confidence of the creature, launching out over that endless, cavernous vista. Its calm mastery of height. Its complete lack of fear.
Dee gnawed at her ratty left thumbnail as she watched.
That bird, with a brain probably the size of a peanut, is exactly, precisely everything I’m not. I’m incompetent. I’m afraid. I’m scared to get back in that car, scared of the highway, scared of the coming night…
Eddie turned to her.
“Want a lick, Dee?” he asked, holding out his cone. “What’s the matter?” he said when he saw her face.
“Oh, nothing. Just thinking.” She bent and took a swipe of his cone with her tongue.
“Wishing you got a cone?” he asked sympathetically.
Eddie, if only it were that simple. And by the way, I just saved us $5.50.
“Nah, not hungry,” she said. When did it get dark up here? How far was Utah? The thought of highway driving at night terrified her. She looked back at the canyon, but the bird had gone.
“We better hit the road. Race you to the car.”
It was getting dark by the time their headlights flashed on the sign. Welcome to Utah—The Beehive State.
“Welcome to Utah!” cried Eddie, looking out his window into the gloom. “Wow, Utah,” he said, as though it was a foreign country, as though he’d see all kinds of wonders outside the smudgy glass. “First other state I’ve been in. That I remember, I mean. Wonder what it’s like. The Beehive State. Wonder why it’s called that. Other than there must be lots of beehives, but why are there?”
Dee didn’t care about Utah, anyone who lived there or their puzzling beehives. She had no more energy, even for relief. She couldn’t even bring herself to say, Well, we’ll find out tomorrow. She existed only to stop this car safely, take her clenched claws from the wheel, topple sideways and go to sleep. She hadn’t slept for…since…when? A couple of fitful hours last night in her bed at home, which seemed like years ago and a world away. She’d had Skittles for lunch and beef jerky and Cheetos for dinner.
The Grand Canyon is behind us now. No more detours. Utah. Out of Arizona. Sort-of safety. Next sign of civilization, we are stopping this frigging car.
A sign told her that a town called Kanab was coming up. Dee slowed and took a side road veering off to the right, away from the faint town lights. It was a gravel road, and they bumped and jolted along, peering left and right into the gloom.
“What are we looking for, Dee?” asked Eddie.
“Somewhere to camp for the night. Keep your eyes peeled.”
There was a small clearing off to the left, not too far from the gravel road but sheltered from it by some trees and bushes. Dee pulled up and backed the car slowly into the spot under the trees, swinging a little to the left so that the car was hidden from the road and poised for a quick escape if necessary. A branch scraped down the right side of the car, but she didn’t care.
She turned off the ignition, and they sat in what she thought was pure silence—until it filled up with night sounds. Crickets, a breeze blowing through leaves, the distant, sporadic rumble of trucks on the main highway. Eddie scrambled out.
“Not far, okay, Eddie?” Dee called.
She sat there, her body aching, her mind blank, feeling nothing, empty.
“Hey, Dee, you got a flashlight?” Eddie called. She fished around in her backpack, found the flashlight and got out of the car, stretching and yawning. The cool air felt wonderful after the stuffy, Cheetos smell of the car.
“Eddie?”
“Here,” he said, like it was attendance call in class. He appeared at her side, his face a pale circle hovering beside her.
“It’s pretty dark, hey, Dee?” he said, slipping his hand into hers.
“Yeah. Here.” She handed him the flashlight.
Reluctant to get back in the car yet, they wandered a little under the trees. Eddie kept stooping to pick up twigs.
“What are you doing?” Dee asked.
“Firewood,” he replied, shuffling the twigs in his grubby hands. “You know, camping out—a fire.”
“Ummm…”
“Only pretend,” Eddie said. “I’m not stupid. You can’t really make a fire in a car. Well, you can, but it’s probably not a good idea.”
“Yeah, no kidding,” said Dee. She delighted Eddie by contributing a few “marshmallows” for the campfire—white mushrooms hiding under a shrub.
There was a sudden scuffling in the bushes, and something darted past them into the trees. Dee jumped and flailed. She grabbed for Eddie’s hand.
“Back to the car, back to the car!”
“It was just a rabbit, Dee,” Eddie said, laughing. “I saw its ears.”
Something barked in the distance. Dog? Coyote? Wolf?
“Still. We should head back. Got to get that campfire going.”
Eddie swung the flashlight back and forth across their path, leading them to their car. Even the dismal messiness of the old car was a haven from the unfamiliar velvet blackness outside.
Doors locked against wildlife and ax murderers, windows open just a crack, they had their pretend campfire in the backseat. Eddie carefully stacked his twigs and energetically pantomimed rubbing two sticks together. Dee gave Vera a few drops of water and snapped off one of her arms, rubbing the soothing, gluey innards across her burned, aching left arm. Good old Vera, thought Dee, wrapping the old T-shirt more firmly around the plant pot. I’m glad you came.
“Well,” she said, looking at the tiny pile of sticks, “this is definitely the most roaring campfire we ever made.”
“Hey!” said Eddie. “How about a ghost story? Not too spooky maybe.”
“I hate it when you ask me to tell stories. I’m no good at them,” she said, trying to think of something thrilling yet not terrifying. She thought of her dad. Now he was a wonderful storyteller. He seemed to have elaborate stories, fully formed, stored in his head, just waiting to be told. “The Race to the Day Before Yesterday.” “The Nine Gates to Freedom.” “The Blue Dog’s Terrible Fortune.”
Dee searched the tired blankness of her mind and came up with nothing. Nothing she could say out loud. Well, Eddie, once upon a time outside a small border town in Utah, there were two clued-out kids who were lost and on their own. The big kid, the one who had kidnapped and duped the little one, had to be the grown-up, even though she was really scared. The little one was weird, but not in a bad way…
“How about you tell me one?” she said.
“Nah,” Eddie said through a yawn, then sat up. “Hey! How about we switch seats for the night, Dee? How about I sleep up front, and you sleep in the back? Just for a change.”
Always, always trying to get into the front seat. Such a magical place…He’d sit in the front of the parked car at home, asking endless question
s. “What does that button do? How about this one?” He’d point out things he knew with elaborate nonchalance (“Gas. Brake. Lighter. Innicator.”)
“Sure, whatever,” she said. “Happy to cuddle up to your collection of reptile claws.” She could have slept standing up—her scratchy eyes were already having trouble focusing. “Hey, smell that,” she said suddenly. She put her nose to the crack in the window and took a deep breath.
“What?” Eddie asked, stilling and then sniffing the air like a pointer. A sweet evergreen smell wafted in on the night breeze.
“Pine,” she said, the smile coming through her voice in the darkness. “Pine trees. You know, Christmas-type trees? Not the fake ones like we have in Arizona. I love that smell. I haven’t smelled pine trees since, well, for years and years. Not since we came down here.”
“Well, we’re not in the desert anymore,” murmured Eddie.
“Yeah, you’re right,” said Dee. “No more desert.”
They made two beds in the car, fumbling around in the glow of the one interior light that worked. They slid a pillow over the gearshift in the front. Eddie considered the bump a very small price to pay for being up front. He snuggled down as Dee clambered over the seat to her nest in the back, kicking stuffies and books into the footwell.
It was cold, but Dee left the back window open a crack. Just a crack. Not enough for a hand to get through. Or an ax. She didn’t want them to suffocate from breathing in each other’s old air all night long.
Eddie took a few swings and finally connected with the button switching off the overhead light. The darkness settled in.
“Wow.” Eddie’s disembodied voice was loud in the stillness. “Fun in here! Sleeping under the stars—if there was no car roof and no clouds, which there are. Anyway, a star is dead by the time its light hits Earth.”
“Night, Eddie,” Dee said, heading off more conversation. She was already half asleep.
“Night, Dee,” said Eddie. “Love ya.”
“Love you too.”
Dee curled over on her side, her knees knocking jars of dead insects and pebbles.
“Dee?” Eddie whispered. A scrabbling sound, and then a black head bobbed above the gray of the seat back.
“Mmm.”
“If you open your eyes in the dark, then squeeze them shut tight, count to twenty or forty even, then open them again, you can sometimes see more than before. Just a leeetle bit more. Did you know that?”
“Eddie, go to sleep.”
“One one thousand, two one thousand—”
“No, no. Please.”
“—three one thousand—”
“Shut up!” She groped around for a stuffie to throw at him.
“Okay, okay.” He laughed. “No more talking. None. I’m taking this key and locking this mouth.”
She heard him bump around, shift and turn. He sighed. There was a little silence, and then she heard a faint hum, which turned into a droning buzz. What was he doing up there?
Oh, God. She put her pillow over her head as she figured it out. He’s being a Utah bee.
UTAH
FRIDAY
Dee woke to two long blasts of a horn. Not their horn, but a horn close by. She flinched and cracked her head on the car door handle.
“Shit.” She rubbed her head hard, sat up and looked out the window.
A rusted blue pickup truck had pulled over beside them. A grim-faced old woman in curlers and a checkered flannel coat sat at the wheel. She saw Dee and gave her the jerky, sideways-thumb sign, the get-the-hell-off-my-property sign. Dee raised her hand in a confused, conciliatory wave.
She probably thinks we’re criminals or perverts. I hope she hasn’t called the police. The old woman blasted the horn again.
Dee scrambled over the seat, pushing Eddie into the passenger seat.
“Hey,” he mumbled, pulling his blanket closer.
Another long honk.
“Okay, okay,” Dee muttered. “Sorry, Eddie. Gotta go. Buckle up,” she said, shaking his shoulder. He groggily reached for the seat belt.
Dee pulled the keys from her shorts pocket and started the car. The windshield wipers started up full steam, and a burst of laughter from a morning radio show hit them full blast.
“God damn it, Eddie,” she muttered, fumbling to switch them both off. She slammed the car into Drive and hit the gas, and they shot out from their sheltered spot, passing the truck. They made a bumping right turn onto the track leading to the road, spitting up loose gravel as they went.
Right again on the gravel road, toward the interstate.
“Keep an eye on what that truck does, Eddie, okay?” said Dee.
Eddie, fully awake now and thrilled to be riding shotgun, stuck his head out the window, craning to see through the dust.
“Nah, it’s not following us,” he said. “But you know where we parked, Dee? It was that lady’s yard! I saw the house back there when we were driving away, now that it’s light!” He started laughing and bouncing on the seat, elated by the ludicrous spectacle of them parking right on somebody’s front lawn.
Dee started to laugh too. What kind of crazy people camp in their car on somebody’s front lawn? Our kind of crazy people, apparently.
They drove down the gravel road for a few minutes and then merged onto the quiet highway.
“What time is it anyway, Eddie?”
“6:11 AM. Friday, July 25,” he said, consulting his big watch. “Bright and early! Oh—guten Morgen.”
“Morgen. Not a bad thing to have an early wake-up call,” Dee murmured.
She thought they’d better not stop. They needed to get away from whatever the hell town it was back there (Kellam? Kebab?) just in case that old woman had called the police. Without any other cars around and with the speedometer stuck obstinately at zero, Dee tried to remember and approximate the previous day’s speed.
An hour later they came to the I-15 and headed north to Salt Lake City. One more hour’s driving, peppered with Eddie’s estimates of how long he could last before he really, really had to pee, and Dee felt that they’d truly left the blue pickup and its angry driver behind for good.
She pulled off the interstate at a gas station.
“Lots of soap when you wash your hands after, okay?” she said, glancing down at his dirty fingernails. “And your face. Wash your face too, Eddie. I’m right outside if you need me.”
“I’m not two years old,” Eddie muttered, smacking the washroom door open with both hands.
Breakfast smells wafted down the hallway leading into the station’s attached restaurant. Coffee. Pancakes.
Eddie came out.
“I’ll just be a sec,” Dee said. “Stay right here, okay? Don’t move.”
“I know.”
“Right here.” She hesitated.
“Okay.”
Dee washed her face and hands, scrubbed a wet finger over her teeth and did a quick finger-comb of her long, curly, dusty hair. How did all this grit get in there? she wondered, shaking it out before scraping her hair back into a ponytail again.
“Dee-ee,” Eddie said, looking toward the restaurant as she came out.
“Yeah, I know. It smells wonderful. Let’s go look at the menu.” Let’s look at the prices.
“I’m starving,” Eddie said. “Probably I’ll need the grown-ups’ menu.”
“You’re a kids’-menu kid until you’re twelve, Eddie,” Dee said, scanning the menu posted outside the restaurant. She could just see Eddie ordering the Big Wrangler steak-and-eggs combo for eleven bucks. She tapped the menu. “See here? Says twelve. Anyway, the kids’ menu is way funner. Pancakes, waffles, lots of stuff.” The kids’ selections were $2.99, and they came with milk. Dee’s stomach rumbled. They had to eat.
They went into the restaurant, waiting to be seated like the sign told them to. An uninterested, tired-looking older waitress showed them to a booth with a view of the gas pumps and the highway. She poured Dee coffee, then drifted away. Dee had never had a cup of co
ffee in her life but thought it might keep her alert on the drive. She sipped and winced; straight up, it was putrid. She reached for the sugar and cream.
“Booth!” said Eddie, sliding his hands along the padded vinyl. He lay down, crossing his cowboy boots. “Now this is more comfortable than the car.”
Dee saw the truckers in the next booth look over.
“Eddie, sit up.” She shoved the paper place mat and cup of crayons over at him. “Color like a normal kid, okay?”
“You be normal. You color. I hate coloring—it’s stupid,” he said. “I’m sleeping. I’m a sleepy old rattler, sunning himself on a rock.”
One of the truckers lingering over his coffee caught Dee’s eye and winked.
“Your boy there looks tuckered out, and it’s only eight o’clock!” He chuckled. “Been driving a while?”
“Early-morning start,” said Dee. Then she turned and pretended to rummage in her backpack for something. She kept her face turned to the window as she heard the truckers leave, lame-joking with the waitress before heading over to haul themselves up into their steel monsters.
“Have a nice nap, little buddy!” one of them called. As they stood at the front counter, she heard one of them say to the other, “Jeez, they’re having them young these days, hey?”
Dee was stunned. Seriously? They seriously think I’m Eddie’s mother? Did she really look that old, or were they just phenomenally stupid? Either way…
Dee glared at the trucker’s back. She knew she looked older than her age. She was tall, for one thing. She’d hit five foot eight in sixth grade, leaving most of the girls and every single boy at least six inches shorter than her for a couple of years. It wasn’t just height though. She was reserved, serious, watchful. Very mature for her age, was a standard comment on report cards. She would have preferred Theresa’s A ton of fun to have in class!
Hit the Ground Running Page 7
