Zigzagging Down a Wild Trail

by Bobbie Ann Mason

  “Personally, I think he’s full of himself,” Charger said.

  “Oh, you just wish you could carry a tune.” With her left hand she slapped her leg along with the song.

  The singer sounded like a cranky old crow, Charger thought. It was an odd voice for such a young guy. Charger had no special talents. He had never had any encouragement from anybody in his life other than Tiffany. She wanted him to take a computer course, because everything was computers now. But he knew he couldn’t sit still that long. That was the trouble with high school. He liked his present job at the bomb plant O.K., because he got to joke around with a bunch of people he enjoyed. He called it “the bomb plant” because it produced fertilizer. He felt lucky to have such an attractive girlfriend. But he was aware that his mother, too, had been cute when she was young. Now she was overweight and had a hacking cough. His father had worked at the tire plant for twenty-five years, and his mother was a nurse’s aide at the hospital. She emptied bedpans. They lived in a tacky, cramped house that she took little pride in. They did not go on vacations. His father watched television every evening. He used to watch a regular lineup. But when they got cable and a remote, he couldn’t stick to his old favorites. He cruised the airwaves, lighting here and there. Five afternoons a week Charger’s mother cooked supper for the family, left it on the table, and went off to work. She grew heavy and tired from being on her feet long hours. She was forty-four years old. Her eyelids drooped, but she didn’t even seem to know it. Maybe when Tiffany was that age, she would accept baggy eyes as gracefully as she regarded her injured thumb. He shuddered.

  Driving down the interstate, Charger contemplated his life. He was nineteen years old and still lived with his mother, but already he was thinking ahead to the middle of his life. Since his father disappeared, Charger had been catapulted forward. Something about his mind wouldn’t let him be young, he thought. He saw too far ahead. He wanted to rewire his brain. He wanted to plunge into the darkness and not be afraid. Being in love ought to seem more reckless, he thought. Tiffany was napping, her head nestled in a yellow pillow in the form of a giant Tweety Pie. It did not look like a comfortable position, but she seemed relaxed. Her snake legs were beautiful. They seemed almost to glow in the dark.

  When they reached Nashville, Charger impulsively turned down I-40 toward Memphis. He thought Tiffany wouldn’t mind if they headed west. He felt like driving all night. He thought he could reach the Texas border sometime tomorrow. Then he could get his bearings. Tiffany kept sleeping, tired from school and work. He played the radio low, a background for his thoughts. He finished a Coke he had bought at the gas station. He had to keep his head open for the road. In the dark the road seemed connected to his head, like a tongue.

  Just before two he pulled off the interstate at a cheap-looking motel. Tiffany woke up but didn’t seem to notice where she was. He guided her into the lobby. Clumsily she struggled with her purse and the heavy satchel she had brought with her. Charger pressed a buzzer on the wall to awaken the night clerk. He could hear noises from the back room, like someone swatting flies. Tiffany studied her bandage as they waited at a pine-paneled counter. She squirmed restlessly. “I have to pee so bad,” she said. Charger wondered how she wriggled out of those tight snake pants.

  A thin middle-aged man in sweatpants and an oversized Charlotte Hornets jersey appeared. He wore thick glasses. Silently he took Charger’s credit card and ground it through a little press. The man grunted as he presented the paper slip. The room was thirty-two dollars—less than Charger had feared. Pleased, he signed the slip with a grand flourish, as if he were endorsing an important document. The clerk ripped out the yellow copy, wrapped it around the key, and handed the little package to Charger.

  “I’m going to get muscles in my left arm,” Tiffany said as she hoisted her satchel. She held her bandaged thumb ahead of her, like a flashlight.

  From the truck Charger retrieved the other bag she had brought and his own bag, a weathered Army duffel of his father’s. The room was 234, up an exterior flight of concrete stairs. A light rain had started. Below, a car pulled in, and a woman got out with a screaming child clutching a pink-plush pig. Charger heard a door slam.

  The room smelled stale. The bedspread looked heavy and dark with dirt and smoke and spills. Charger set the bags down and clicked on a light. Then the telephone rang. Tiffany gasped, but Charger thought it seemed normal to get a phone call here. He picked up the phone.

  “Your Nellie-babe dropped a scarf on the floor down here,” the night clerk said.

  “You dropped your scarf,” Charger said to Tiffany, who was tugging at her zipper. “I’ll be right down,” he told the clerk. He hung up the phone. Nellie-babe?

  “Wait. I have to pee and I need a little help with these pants,” Tiffany said, reaching for him. “I feel ham-handed.”

  “You can do it. How did you manage at that gas station?”

  “Why I dropped my scarf is, I couldn’t tie it around my neck with this clumsy thumb.”

  “I’ll go get it.” Charger slipped out of the room and bounded down to the desk, leaving Tiffany to work herself out of her snake pants. She whined when she was tired.

  “Some britches your Nellie’s got on,” the night clerk said in a friendly voice.

  “How am I supposed to take that?” Charger demanded. “And what do you mean—Nellie? Is that something I’m supposed to know from television?”

  The skinny guy retreated an inch or two, and his lip quavered. Charger felt gratified. The clerk said, “Hey, man. I didn’t mean nothing. I mean you’re a lucky guy. No offense. I was just commenting on them snakes.” He grinned. He had big teeth, chinked with food. “I mean, I wouldn’t want to get tangled up with a lady wearing snakes. I looked at those, and they threw me for a minute. Man, I hate snakes. Did a snake bite her on the finger?”

  Charger snatched Tiffany’s scarf from the counter. It was a long banner, shimmering blue like a lava lamp. He went to the door and stood gazing at the parking lot. The winking motel sign had a faulty bulb. DUNN’S MOTEL. DUNN’S MOTE. DUNN’S MOTEL. DUNN’S MOTE. The interstate traffic was sparse, just lights moving like liquid. Charger saw the faint glow of Memphis in the west. He saw a gray car cruise by the motel slowly and then head down the service road. He turned and surveyed the lobby. The TV was blank. The coffeepot was clean and ready for morning. The clerk opened a hot-rodding magazine.

  “Can’t face them snakes, can you, buddy?” The guy smirked.

  “That’s none of your business,” Charger said, coming back to the counter.

  “What’s private anymore?” the clerk said, with a burst of bitterness like chewing gum cracking. He set down his magazine and smoothed the cover with his palm, as if he were ironing. “Nothing’s a secret. All them numbers we’ve got nowadays? Why, I could take your credit-card number and use it if I was of a mind to. It’s all in the computers anyway. The government knows everything about everybody. It’s not enough to take your taxes. They want to keep up with the news on you too. And we pay for their meddling. They can peep into them computers and find out anything they want to.”

  Charger decided to humor the guy. Somehow, he didn’t want to go back upstairs just yet. “If they’re that good, they could find my daddy,” he said.

  “Is he on the FBI list?” The clerk seemed impressed.

  Charger shrugged. “No, he took a wrong turn and he just kept going.”

  “If they want to find him, they’ll get him. They’ve got their ways. They come in here on stakeouts all the time. Them black helicopters that come over? They have computers right on board that plug into a global network.”

  “Bullshit,” Charger said. “Irk, irk,” he muttered to himself.

  The clerk looked angry, ready to pounce at him. He had a belligerent gleam in his eye. Then he seemed to steady himself. “Matter of fact, right before you came in, I checked in an escaped convict,” he said in a superior tone. “He’s in the room right next to you.”


  Charger felt his stomach flip. But he was on to the guy, he thought. He was a fruitcake. More bullshit, Charger decided. He stared the guy in the eye—magnified by the bottle-bottom glasses—until the clerk looked away. “If he’s in his room, he won’t hurt nobody,” Charger said. “He’s probably tired. He probably couldn’t get a wink of sleep in jail.”

  The clerk opened a newspaper. “Look at this picture. That’s him.”

  The photograph showed a dark-haired guy with a receding hairline who wore a prison work shirt and had a serial number on his chest. The headline read PRISON ESCAPEE SOUGHT IN THREE STATES.

  “He signed his name ‘Harry Martin’ when he checked in,” the clerk said. “But the guy in the newspaper is named Arthur Shemell. Look.” He punched the newspaper with his finger. “Didn’t fool me!”

  Charger felt his confidence ebb a little. “Well, call the police, then.”

  “Oh, I don’t want to bother them tonight. I’ve had them out here on so many cases—drug busts and kidnappings. Sometimes they don’t appreciate my efforts. I don’t owe them any favors.” The clerk shook the newspaper.

  “I know what you mean,” Charger said. “Been there, done that.”

  “Dittos.”

  “Been there, done that,” repeated Charger, testing the sound.

  The clerk folded the newspaper to display the escapee’s picture. “I don’t believe he’s Harry Martin or Arthur Shemell. He’s the spittin’ image of Clarence Smith, this guy back in high school I used to know. He used to sneak into the girls’ locker room and steal their basketball bloomers. He had one eyebrow that went all the way across. Them’s the guys to watch out for. And their ears stick out too far. His whole family was like that, and they were all bad; one time the big-daddy busted out of the house with a hatchet and swung it at his uncle’s wife’s daddy—for no good reason. He split his head right open like a watermelon. That happened half a mile from my house—in 1938.”

  The clerk rattled the newspaper in Charger’s face so quickly that Charger jumped. The guy’s own ears were airplane wings, he thought.

  “I hear you, buddy,” Charger said, trying to calm him. He wasn’t afraid of any escaped convict, but the nut behind the counter was a different story. Charger drummed his fingers loudly on the counter. I can do this, he thought.

  “Well, if we’ve got an escaped convict here, we better get the cops on him,” Charger said. “Or do you think that would be government interference? Maybe everybody should just go free. Is he a serial killer or what?”

  “Bank robber, gas-station holdup, attacked his brother with a jigsaw, stole a thousand dollars from his sister—her trousseau money. Bad, bad, bad.”

  Charger breathed once and talked fast. He said, “Hey man, I’m busy. I’ve got a girl upstairs about to pee in her pants if I don’t get up there. But it looks like we need to call the law on this old pal of yours, whatever his name is.” Charger grabbed the portable telephone and dialed 911. Tiffany’s scarf fell to the floor.

  “You don’t need to do that,” the clerk said, reaching across the counter.

  “Hey,” Charger said. “No problem.” He trotted a few steps out of reach.

  Nine-one-one answered. Charger said, “This is the night clerk at Dunn’s Motel off of exit forty-eight.” He made his voice low and conspiratorial. “We’ve just checked in that escaped convict that was in the paper. He’s your guy, folks. Come on out to our crummy little motel next to the BP off exit forty-eight. I’ll hold him for you.” He punched the OFF button and returned the phone to the counter with a bang. “It’s all yours, buddy. Now I’m going to go get some sleep. Thanks for the opportunity to serve.” He picked up the scarf.

  The clerk was trembling. “Stay here with me till the cops get here,” he said. “Please.”

  Charger rolled his eyes. “Sorry, buddy. Gotta get back to my Nellie-babe.” At the door he said, “So long. If he’s really a convict, they’ll get him. Be sure to tell about them basketball bloomers.”

  The clerk stared, bug-eyed.

  The blue scarf flying from his fist, Charger ran up the concrete steps like a fugitive. He imagined blue lights flashing in the distance. He heard rain spatters on the asphalt. But he felt a spurt of elation. He plunged into the room and bolted the door.

  “What’s going on?” Tiffany asked. She was standing in the bathroom doorway, holding a towel around her. “I was afraid something had happened to you.”

  “It’s O.K. I got your scarf.”

  Tiffany retreated into the bathroom. Charger turned out the lamp by the chair and then the lamp by the bed. He heard water running in the shower. The bathroom door was ajar, and the crack of light was like a beam from a projection booth. He watched out the window from behind the edge of the drapes. Several minutes passed. Then a cruiser floated in quietly, its roof light making blue patterns on the concrete-block wall in front. Only one cop was in the car. The cop got out slowly, adjusting his heavy belt. Charger could see him and the night clerk in the doorway of the lobby. Their arm gestures seemed to suggest that the two were acquaintances. The cop shook his head knowingly, as though listening to a speeder’s excuses. Finally, he waved and returned to his cruiser. The night clerk rolled up the newspaper and beat his leg. Charger kept looking, as if something more were supposed to happen.

  “Is there some kind of trouble down there?” Tiffany said, moving toward him. She was wrapped in towels. By now the cruiser was gone, and the clerk had retreated into his back room.

  “I’ll be ready in a minute,” Charger said, his voice muffled by the drape.

  All he wanted was to get to Texas, Charger thought, to see those skies. He glanced up into the light-shimmering drizzle. If he got an early start on what his father had gone to see, maybe he would not mind what was to come later. It would be a way to fool destiny. “My little donkey and me,” he murmured, turning and reaching for her.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  BOBBIE ANN MASON is the author of Shiloh and Other Stories, which won the PEN/Hemingway Award, Feather Crowns, which won the Southern Book Award and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the bestselling novel In Country. Her memoir, Clear Springs, was one of three finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. Her short fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, DoubleTake, Harper’s, The Paris Review, and elsewhere, and has received two O. Henry Awards and two Pushcart Prizes.

  ALSO BY BOBBIE ANN MASON

  FICTION

  Shiloh and Other Stories

  In Country

  Spence + Lila

  Love Life

  Feather Crowns

  Midnight Magic

  NONFICTION

  The Girl Sleuth

  Nabokov’s Garden

  Clear Springs

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2001 by Bobbie Ann Mason

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Random House, Inc., New York,.

  RANDOM HOUSE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  The following stories have been previously published: “With Jazz” appeared in the February 26, 1990, issue of The New Yorker; “Thunder Snow” appeared in the Spring 1997 issue of DoubleTake; “Rolling into Atlanta” appeared in the Winter 1992 issue of Ploughshares; “The Funeral Side” appeared in the Summer 1999 issue of The Southern Review; “Tobrah” appeared in the Summer 1990 issue of Story; “Proper Gypsies” appeared in The Southern Review, 1995; “Charger” appeared in the January 1998 issue of The Atlantic; “Three-Wheeler” appeared in the June 2001 issue of The Atlantic; and “Window Lights” appeared in the Autumn 1997 issue of Story.

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:
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  HAL LEONARD CORPORATION: Excerpt from “Ole Buttermilk Sky” from the motion picture Canyon Passage, words and music by Hoagy Carmichael and Jack Brooks. Copyright © 1946 by Morley Music Co. Copyright renewed by Morley Music Co. and Frank Music Corp. Excerpt from “England Swings”, words and music by Roger Miller. Copyright © 1963 by Sony/ATV Songs LLC. Copyright renewed. All rights administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing, 8 Music Square West, Nashville, TN, 37203. International copyright secured. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

  JON LANDAU MANAGEMENT: Excerpt from “Hungry Heart” by Bruce Springsteen. Copyright © 1980 by Bruce Springsteen (ASCAP). Reprinted by permission of Jon Landau Management. The author extends special thanks to Bruce Springsteen for the use of his lyric “I took a wrong turn and I just kept going.”

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Mason, Bobbie Ann.

  Zigzagging down a wild trail: stories/Bobbie Ann Mason.

  p. cm.

  1. United States—Social life and customs—20th century—Fiction.

  I. Title.

  PS3563.A7877 Z35 2001

  813’.54—dc21 00-066480

  Random House website address: www.atrandom.com

  eISBN: 978-1-58836-023-6

  v3.0