Ashes to Asheville

by Sarah Dooley

  “Gonna be a great trip,” I say, and slump lower in my seat.

  chapter

  5

  We’re doing okay until the coal trucks start cropping up. They come in fives and tens and they careen around us like we’re in a toy car instead of a big, sturdy Subaru. Every time one of them passes us, I clutch Mama Lacy so hard the lid of the urn presses into my chest, leaving a mark. Once they’re past, I hear Zany sigh in relief, but it’s never long before another batch of trucks catches up. Everything’s happening so fast and I’m so scared I can’t stop talking.

  “Be careful, Zany, here comes another truck—”

  And, “Watch out! You need to speed up a little, I think that guy’s going to plow us over, he’s not slowing down!”

  And, “Slow down! What are you doing? Oh my gosh, oh my gosh!”

  Until Zany finally gives me a shut up look and flips on the radio.

  We’re in between groups of trucks when I realize I’ve got another problem.

  “Zany?”

  She can’t hear me over the radio, which has begun blaring traffic reports from somewhere ahead of us on the highway. I hear the time: just past eleven. It doesn’t seem possible we’ve been in the car for barely more than an hour. I feel like I’ve never been anywhere except riding passenger to Zany’s Big Idea. I reach out and flip off the radio.

  “Hey! That might have been important!” She starts to turn it back on, but I block her hand. We scuffle over the controls and I catch the change tub just as we start to knock it over. It used to be a butter tub, but it’s been balanced in the console of the car so long, most of the letters have worn off. We keep spare change in it for things like toll booths and parking meters.

  “Zany, I have to pee.”

  “God, you’re so crude! Can’t you say you have to go to the restroom? Or you have to make a stop? Do you have to come right out with it like that?”

  “It’s true, though.”

  “And why didn’t you go before you left the house?” She’s still trying to get her hand around mine to turn on the radio. By the time she does, the traffic report is over and somebody’s talking about the weather. “Dang it, Fella! You made me miss it!”

  “I didn’t go before we left the house because I didn’t know we were leaving the house until you’d already stole Mama Lacy! You never tell me anything. You expect me to follow you and find out as we go!”

  “Nobody said you had to follow me! I wasn’t planning on you tagging along!”

  I feel a stab in my chest when she says this. I thought she came to get me, too, but I guess she only came for Mama Lacy.

  “She’s my mama, too, I should get to be there when she—” I stop. I still can’t say out loud what’s going to happen to Mama Lacy once we get to Asheville. She’s been gone for six months, but she’s also been on the mantel where I could see her every day. The thought of the last little piece of her being gone forever is bad enough without imagining not being there to say good-bye. I can’t even imagine what I’d say. We didn’t talk, me and Mama Lacy, not like me and Shannon talked. I miss her hands and her hair and her voice, but I can’t think what I would say to her if I had the chance. My fingers clutch the urn so tight it starts slipping around in my sweaty grip.

  We pass through another tunnel and I’m distracted for a moment by the flash of the orange lights above us and the way the radio fuzzes out. But when we emerge on the other side, we pass an exit and I shriek. “Zany! Why didn’t you stop?”

  “You’ll have to hold it,” she says. “We can’t stop every ten minutes or we’ll never make it back!”

  “I can’t hold it four hours!” I protest.

  “I don’t mean four hours, I mean one or two more exits. We have to put some distance between us and home first, otherwise you’re going to want to turn around.”

  “No I won’t!” Even though all I want at this moment is to turn around. I would even accept my cold, lonely bed at Mrs. Madison’s without complaint tonight, that’s how scared I am to be out on the interstate with Zany as the driver.

  It’s warm in the car and I take off Zany’s sweater. When she’s not looking, I toss it into the back for Haberdashery to snooze on. He immediately starts the work of making it comfortable, scratching at it with his sharp little poodle claws. In minutes, he’s fast asleep.

  The bathroom thing is becoming a problem. I’m starting to do what Mama Shannon calls my potty dance, wiggling and tugging at my seat belt.

  “I had hot chocolate before bed,” I say. “Right before you came and got me.” I scan the road signs, hoping for an exit and fuming about Zany not stopping at the last one.

  “I ought to just pee, right here. That’s what I ought to do, since you couldn’t be bothered to stop.”

  Zany shrugs. “Go ahead and pee. You’re the one that has to sit in it.”

  I wrinkle my forehead and hope the poodle pees on her sweater, but I don’t say anything else.

  “Look, see?” Zany says after a while. “That sign says there’s a rest area in three miles. We can stop there for a bathroom.”

  Then we whip around a long curve and see an ocean of taillights in front of us. There are a few other cars like us, but most of the traffic is big eighteen-wheel trucks. Zany slams on the brakes so hard we squeak, and the car behind us swerves to keep from hitting us. Traffic on the interstate is completely stopped. Occasionally the vehicle in front of us inches up a foot or two, and we follow, but I look at the same REST AREA, 3 MILES sign for almost ten minutes without us ever getting past it.

  “Where are all these people coming from?” I ask. “It’s the middle of the night.”

  Zany glances sideways at me. “It’s barely a quarter past eleven. Not everybody goes to bed at dusk like you do.”

  “This is why you should have stopped at the last exit!” I finally explode, slapping Zany’s arm. “I really have to pee!”

  She yanks her arm out of reach and rubs it. “Don’t hit me, brat! This is why you shouldn’t have turned off the radio. I would have known there was traffic up ahead.”

  I squirm and wiggle and I finally take off my seat belt.

  “Put that on!” Zany demands.

  “But it’s squeezing me!”

  “Put it on, Fella! Somebody’s already wrecked up ahead, and here you want to ride without your seat belt!”

  “But it’s going to make me pee on myself!”

  “Ophelia Madison-Culvert, put that seat belt on right now!” Zany tries out her Angry Grown-Up voice and actually does a pretty convincing job of it. Sulking, I tug the belt into place and slide down low in my seat, arms crossed. Except it’s hard to keep them crossed because of my slippery robe, and the fact that any pressure on my stomach makes me feel like I’m going to have an accident. I balance the urn and the camera carefully on my knees, well away from the danger zone.

  A minute later the car starts to smell, and Zany whips her head around to stare at me. We’ve barely passed the REST AREA, 3 MILES sign.

  “Oh my god, you didn’t!”

  I’m startled. I would have been asleep already if it wasn’t for my bathroom situation.

  “I didn’t what?” I ask, groggy.

  “You peed!”

  I sit up straighter. “I did not!”

  “Then what’s that smell?”

  We stare at each other for a moment and then turn to look at Haberdashery. He’s asleep again, comfortable. But he’s moved off Zany’s sweater.

  “Oh my god!” she shrieks. “Is that my sweater? Why did you give it to him?” She reaches back to grab the sweater and screams when her hand touches it. “It’s wet! He peed on it! He peed on my sweater! Why didn’t you give me back my sweater if you were through with it? Why’d you let him pee on it?”

  I can’t help feeling a little smug about Zany’s sweater getting peed on after all. If she�
��d stopped at the last exit, Haberdashery and I both could have gone to the bathroom.

  “Do you have to be so crude?” I can’t resist asking. “Can’t you say he went to the restroom on it?”

  Zany gets quiet then and doesn’t speak for another half a mile, which is almost fifteen minutes, traffic-jam time.

  chapter

  6

  “What’s that?” I ask, poking a finger past Zany’s elbow to stab at a bright red light on the dash.

  “Oh, shoot,” Zany mutters. “That means the car’s too hot.”

  “Dang right it is,” I agree, tugging at the neckline of my robe to let in a little air.

  “I mean under the hood, Light Bulb.”

  “Oh.” I peek toward the instrument panel again.

  “You’re the one that wanted the heat on,” Zany accuses. I reach for the heat control and Zany slaps my hand away. “No, leave it on now. It’ll pull some of the heat from the engine. When you overheat, you’re supposed to keep the heat on and you’re supposed to drive fast.”

  “Then thank goodness we’re sitting in a traffic jam and going half a mile an hour. A hot engine doesn’t sound like a good thing. What could happen if it gets too hot?” I ask Zany.

  “It’ll start snowing and a layer of ice will form,” Zany gripes. “What do you think will happen if it gets too hot?”

  So I’m picturing fire, but I’m too afraid to ask if that’s what she means. Zany’s like a bear when she realizes something’s wrong, and what isn’t wrong so far on this trip? By the time we make it the three miles to the rest area, both our faces look like red peppers from keeping the heat on full blast. When I creak my door open, the cold air hits and I start shivering. Haberdashery squeaks and hides himself under the backseat.

  Zany’s not only mad about the car. She keeps muttering about how, so far this trip, I’ve gotten her favorite sweater peed on and I’ve talked her ear off about how bad I have to use the toilet. It’s a little weird how many of my failures, in Zany’s eyes, involve bathroom emergencies.

  “I don’t know why I brought you,” she growls, smacking the lock button and swinging the door shut. It’s practically midnight and the rest area is mostly deserted. One old man walks a basset hound across a grassy hillside. The dog squats and I see Zany give him a dirty look. She must still be thinking about her sweater.

  It’s bright and clean inside the bathroom and the light wakes me up a little. I’m not used to being up so late. Mrs. Madison insists on bedtime at eight-thirty, and she overlooks the hour I spend reading under the covers. Tonight’s book was a Nancy Drew mystery. Everything on Mrs. Madison’s bookshelf is at least two decades old, and most of them were Mama Lacy’s when she was little.

  I feel better after I’m finished with the bathroom. I look at myself in the mirror, pink robe over yellow shirt, face starting to fade to a normal color. Zany is just now coming through the door. I know she stopped to smoke first. I can smell it in a cloud around her. She’s rubbing her arms to warm up and I feel a tiny pang of guilt about her sweater. Her short white-blond hair is spikier than usual from being sweaty from the car’s heat. I wonder if her damp hair will freeze out in the cold.

  “Dang, Fella, you about laid rubber running in here at that speed.” She wrinkles her nose in the direction of my feet. “Of course you couldn’t lay rubber wearing nothing on your feet except one sock. Did you wash your hands?”

  “Course,” I lie. I’m not going to do it now that she’s reminded me.

  “Then go walk your dog.” She hands me the car keys.

  “How come? He already peed.”

  “I don’t want him to do anything else in the car, is why.” She slings her sweater into the sink and starts running water on it. I notice goose bumps on her bare arms. “I’m freezing.”

  “We’re going south,” I remind her. “It’s supposed to get warmer.”

  “We’re going southeast,” she corrects. “That’s not the same thing as going south. And it’s still February and the middle of the night, even in Asheville.” Her voice sounds different on the word Asheville. I think maybe she’s missed it more than I have, since she remembers it better. Five years is long enough for me to have forgotten most of the details. I just remember feeling warm all the time there, even in February and the middle of the night.

  I leave the bathroom. Outside it’s darker and colder than I noticed on the way in. The basset hound man is gone and the only car is a canary-yellow Ford Ranger with a dented black passenger-side door and a rusty-looking topper over the bed. It belongs to a grumpy-looking guy with bangs that hang past his eyebrows. I feel a little scared, out here by myself with some guy. He heads toward the restrooms and I tense up as he passes me, but he turns his face away and doesn’t slow down.

  I head for our car and find that it’s yipping. When I unlock the door, Haberdashery spins out like a tiny tornado.

  “What, did you think we left you forever?” I ask the silly dog. He dashes up the hill into the darkness and stops to sniff where the basset hound was. After a long moment reassuring himself that the strange dog is gone, and a few moments spent covering the scent of the basset, I see him hunch up like he’s got more business to do. I hate when Zany’s right.

  A door squeaks and I look toward the restrooms, hoping I’ll see Zany. Instead it’s the guy with the yellow truck, and he keeps glancing at me. I scoot away from him a little and watch him walk back to his truck, hoping he’ll leave right away. But he lights a cigarette and leans against the tailgate. I start to fidget, hoping Zany finishes in the bathroom soon.

  When I look away from the stranger, I realize the hillside in front of me is empty.

  “Oh, shoot,” I groan. Then I raise my voice. “Haberdashery? Where are you, stupid dog? Come here, you dumb thing!” I race after him, the dewy grass cold on my one bare foot. I hope the person with the basset hound followed the directions on the signs that say dog owners have to clean up after their pets. I would hate to wreck Mama Lacy’s purple sock.

  I’m almost over the hill when I hear Zany’s raised voice behind me. “Fella? Ophelia, where’d you go?”

  “Up here,” I holler, waving an arm. I notice the stranger pointing after me with his cigarette, and I’m surprised, because this guy looks scary, but pointing me out to my sister is kind of a nice thing to do. I shout down to her, now that I’ve got her attention, “Haberdashery ran off! I’ve got to get him!”

  “Why didn’t you put him on a leash?” she shouts, but I ignore her and keep running. It wouldn’t help to point out that she didn’t give me time to find a leash. Behind me I hear Zany shout again, and I run a little faster. I’d like to have the dog caught and be on my way back before she catches up, so she can’t get as mad at me. Also because if I have lost Mrs. Madison’s poodle, I’m pretty sure I won’t survive our homecoming tomorrow morning.

  On the other side of the hill, white picnic tables stand out in the darkness, and the only light is from the moon. I see the poodle down past one of the tables, sniffing for scraps.

  “Come on, stupid!” I jog toward the poodle, but he stays out of reach. I lie on my stomach across the picnic table bench and hold my empty hand out toward Haberdashery, closed up in a fist so he can’t tell I’m not holding anything. “Come here, ugly dog! Come on! Come see what I’ve got for you!”

  He inches toward me, one paw at a time. He’s almost close enough to grab when Zany catches up. She’s panting, rubbing her arms in the cold.

  “Shh, don’t scare him!” I stretch out a little farther and wait for Haberdashery to take the bait. As he sniffs my empty hand, I snatch him into my arms by a handful of curly poodle hair. He squeaks but doesn’t pull away.

  “Thank goodness,” Zany says. “Why did we bring that ugly thing?”

  I gaze at her in amazement. “Because you wouldn’t let me take him back!” The poodle is warm in my arms and I snuggle h
im a little closer. “We’d better get on the road. We’re late, aren’t we?”

  Zany groans and follows me back to the car. I’m in and have my seat belt fastened before I notice my sister has stopped a few steps away.

  “Come on!” I holler through my open door. “Are you coming or what?”

  She turns in a complete circle and stops where she started. “My purse is gone.” Another circle, like maybe the purse will pop out of thin air and shout, “Surprise.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask dumbly.

  “What do you think I mean, Fella? My purse is no longer here! That’s what gone means!”

  “Don’t be stupid!” I hate when she talks to me like that, and I get madder. “Where’d you leave it?”

  “On the hood of the car, Fella. I had to chase you down and I didn’t want to lose you in the dark!” Her voice is high-pitched like after she chugs a Mountain Dew. “I mean, the money’s not in it, but my wallet is. My driver’s license, everything!”

  “I’d have come back.” I sulk. “You didn’t have to leave your stupid purse lying around!”

  “Help me look!” she demands.

  I huff and heave and sigh, but I start her way to help, all the same. Halfway out of the car, I spot the change tub—or where the change tub used to be. I stop so quick my robe whispers and shimmers. My heart starts hammering.

  “We’ve been robbed!”

  She’s still spinning in circles, scanning the grass. “Maybe it fell.”

  “I’m not talking about your purse, dummy!” I jump out of the car. “Zany, we got robbed! The change tub’s gone!” I look at the empty parking spot where the smoker guy was leaning when I left to chase the dog.

  She stops looking for the purse. “But that’s where the gas money was!”

  Then something else catches my eye—or, rather, doesn’t. At once, I feel like I’ve swallowed a cold chunk of ice and it’s freezing its way down through my stomach. I wrap my pink-robed arms around myself and grip my own elbows. Dread washes over me in waves so thick I have to work at not throwing up for a minute. “Oh, oh no. Oh no.”