“I don’t even know where we are,” she said, squinting down at the map. She traced a squiggly line with her long red fingernail. “Bird’s Creek ain’t even on this map,” she said. “The lady at that school said it was off Highway 15 near Bird’s Creek.”
Kirby wandered to the edge of the woods. Soft green ferns rippled in the breeze. He ran his toe over the carpet of moss beneath the trees. He wouldn’t ever admit it out loud, but he was beginning to think it was kind of nice up here in the mountains.
Cool and moist and green.
Not like the hot, red-dirt yard back home.
“Come on,” his mother called. She climbed into the car and turned the key. The engine whirred and chugged, sending more puffs of black smoke into the air. “Get in, quick,” she hollered, “before this piece of junk dies again.”
As they sputtered up the winding mountain road, Kirby practiced pig Latin in his head.
Upid-stay.
It-nay it-way.
Ut-shay our-yay ap-tray.
All the words that made Ace run crying to Mama.
“Come on, you big piece of junk.” His mother pounded the steering wheel. “Don’t stop now.”
But that big piece of junk didn’t listen to her.
It stopped.
Pow.
Rattle.
Thunk.
Hiss.
Silence.
Before Kirby could say a word, his mother was out of the car and storming off up the side of the road, her hands clenched into tight fists at the ends of her stiff, skinny arms. Her sandals kicked up little pebbles, leaving a cloudy trail of dust behind her.
Kirby got out and hollered to her. “Where you going?”
But she didn’t answer. Didn’t stop. Didn’t even slow down.
“What about all my stuff?” Kirby called.
Finally she stopped. She flopped down in the weeds on the side of the road and put her head on her knees.
“You want your purse?” Kirby said.
Her shoulders shook. She must have been crying, but Kirby couldn’t hear her.
He felt a wave of mad wash over him. Why was she crying? She wasn’t the one everybody treated like dirt. She wasn’t the one being sent away ’cause nobody wanted her around anymore.
He reached into the backseat, grabbed his mother’s purse, and hurled it in her direction. It hit the ground and burst open, sending lipstick and pens and gum skidding out into the middle of the road.
His mother jumped up and said some nasty things as she gathered her stuff up and jammed it back into her purse.
She shot Kirby a glare and then marched off up the side of the road, her sandals slap, slap, slapping.
Her arms pumping.
Her purse swinging.
Kirby opened the car door and took Burla’s box off the floor. He jammed it into his duffel bag and slammed the car door shut—hard—sending an echo down the side of the mountain.
Then he headed up the road after his mother.
Aggie
Aggie pushed her fork through her cold scrambled eggs.
Back and forth.
Around and around.
And back and forth again.
Then she sighed.
A great big shoulder-heaving sigh.
“Here, Ugly,” she said.
She scraped the eggs into Ugly’s bowl and set her plate on top of the other dirty dishes in the sink. “I never did like eggs much, anyway,” she said.
She pulled back the faded yellow curtains and peered through the dusty window screen. The sun was already high over the mountains. A smoky blue haze hovered in the air along the tops of the trees.
“Maybe I should call that man back and tell him I’ve changed my mind,” she said to Ugly. “Maybe I should talk to Arnie Becker over at the bank. He could lend me some money and I could …” Her voice trailed off.
The room grew quiet.
Ugly’s tail twitched back and forth on the floor as he licked the last speck of egg out of his Kitty bowl.
He looked up at Aggie and blinked his eye.
“Yeah, I know,” Aggie said. “That bank idea probably isn’t a good one.”
Aggie watched the birds hop around the small patch of grass out back. Every now and then, one of them fluttered up to the bird feeder, then back down to the grassy patch.
“That feeder’s empty,” Aggie said. “I wonder when that happened.”
She shuffled along the worn carpet path from the kitchenette to the door and peered outside at the gravel parking lot. The weeds had gotten so tall, she could hardly see the swimming pool from her door anymore. Some of the weeds were blooming into colorful wildflowers, which Aggie kind of liked.
“Maybe I’ll just leave it like that,” she said. “What do you think, Ugly?”
Ugly sat in a square of sunlight in the middle of the room, cleaning his patchy black fur.
“I guess I better get a room ready for that man.” Aggie looked at Ugly. “What was his name?”
Ugly jumped onto the back of Harold’s old lounge chair and curled up on the crocheted afghan folded there.
Aggie went to the bedside table and squinted down at the notepad by the phone. She adjusted her glasses. “Dover,” she said. “Clyde Dover.”
At first, she had felt a big weight lifted when Clyde Dover had called to say he wanted to buy the motel. He had been so convincing, telling her how he didn’t even need to see it. How he just knew he was gonna love it. How he was gonna do all kinds of things to attract the tourists who zipped by down there on the interstate. He had made her think she would be doing just the right thing by signing all those papers he was sending in the mail. Those papers that would make the sale of the motel go quicker.
“All we need is an inspection and—bingo. Done,” he’d said.
But now, well, now Aggie wasn’t so sure.
Maybe she shouldn’t have signed those papers, after all.
“Harold would have known what to do,” she said, taking the bucket off the hook on the wall of the kitchenette.
She checked to make sure all the cleaning supplies were inside it. Then she went in the office and got the key to Room 10.
“Come on, Ugly,” she said.
She hadn’t been in that room since the Perrys from Ocala, Florida, had left. When she opened the door, a musty odor drifted out.
She opened the windows and fluffed the pillows and smoothed the bedspread. She dusted the dresser and cleaned the mirror and straightened the painting over the bed. Waterfall in Summer.
Waterfall in Winter was hanging in Room 4, but Aggie liked this one better.
She cleaned the bathroom sink and refolded the towels and made sure there was extra soap. Those tiny little bars of soap with the wrappers that had Sleepy Time Motel printed in shiny gold letters.
Then she went outside and sat in the chair by the door and wished her back didn’t hurt so bad.
She listened to the echoey roar of the trucks down on the interstate behind the motel.
She watched Ugly cleaning himself out by the flagpole.
“I wonder where Harold put that flag,” she said out loud to nobody.
She buttoned Harold’s old brown sweater and let her heavy eyelids close. Before long, her chin dropped against her chest and she slept.
She dreamed about Harold. He was young and strong and handsome, wearing his army uniform and dancing the jitterbug in her parents’ front parlor.
Willow
Willow stared out the back window of the pickup truck, watching her old life get smaller and smaller until it began to disappear.
The little brick house with the screened porch was gone.
The swing set was gone.
The clothesline was gone.
The weed-filled garden was gone.
She turned around and stared out the front window.
“What if I don’t like our new life?” she said.
Her father sighed. That little vein on the side of his forehead twitched. “Willo
w,” he said in that voice Willow hated, “you’ll like it, okay?”
“But what if I don’t?”
Willow looked down at her shoes. The pink plastic sandals that Dorothy had bought. They were getting too small. They were starting to hurt her feet. But Willow didn’t care. She loved wearing them anyway.
Her father turned the radio on. That little vein twitched again.
Willow watched more and more pieces of her old life disappear as she and her father headed out of town.
The Triangle Drugstore.
The Hailey Fire Department.
The Elks Lodge.
She mouthed “Goodbye” as they passed each one.
Before long, there was nothing left of her old life at all.
Every now and then, Willow looked down at her hands. Touched her arms. Felt her hair. Just to make sure she wasn’t disappearing, too.
But she wasn’t. She stayed right there in the front seat of her father’s red pickup truck, speeding along the highway toward the mountains. The back of the truck was piled high with boxes and covered with a bright blue tarp. One of the boxes had Willow written on the side in black marker. Inside the box were Willow’s clothes, her china horses, some books, and the calendar with Dorothy’s writing in the little squares of April.
They stopped for lunch at the Waffle House off Interstate 40. Willow’s father studied a map while Willow ate waffles with butter. No syrup. The same way Dorothy ate waffles. Willow wondered if her father noticed.
Probably not.
“What if we don’t like that motel?” she asked him.
He didn’t look up from the map. “We’ll like it,” he said.
“But what if we don’t?”
Her father traced along the roads on the map with a pen. “Then we’ll look for another motel,” he said.
“Oh.” Willow’s shoulders slumped.
She was going to hate living in a motel. She was sure about that. Who ever heard of a kid living in a motel? How could you say to your best friend, “Come over to my motel to play”?
But then, she probably wouldn’t have a best friend. She probably wouldn’t have any friends. She definitely wouldn’t have a friend like Maggie.
Late that afternoon, they turned off the interstate onto a narrow mountain road that twisted back and forth and around and around the mountain. Every now and then, there was a clearing and Willow could look out at the gray-green treetops below. Once in a while, they passed a store. Brightly colored signs announced the things inside.
BOILED PEANUTS.
INDIAN BLANKETS.
PEACH PRESERVES.
Before long, there were no more stores, no more signs, no more cars. Just a few lonely-looking houses with sleeping dogs in the yards and old men on the porches. A few trailers, nestled in among the trees at the end of dirt driveways.
Willow stared glumly out the window.
She was a long, long way from her little brick house in Hailey.
From the winding driveway where she and Maggie played jump rope.
From the bedroom with her china horse collection lined up on the white shelf over the bed.
From the vine-covered mailbox that never had letters from Dorothy.
Willow’s old life was history.
Loretta
“Smell that air,” Loretta’s mother said, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath. “I just love the Smoky Mountains.”
“Me too,” Loretta said.
She had never been to the Smoky Mountains before. She had known they were there, of course, starting way over on the other side of Tennessee from where she lived and stretching clear on into North Carolina. She had made a model of them one time for school, mixing up a goopy clay out of flour and salt and water and patting it into mounds on cardboard. She had painted the mountains green and brown.
Now here she was in the real Smoky Mountains, sitting in the backseat of their big white van with Murphy’s Heating and Plumbing painted on the side. Her father’s tools slid back and forth across the metal floor of the van as they followed the winding road up the mountain.
Every few minutes, Loretta wiggled her hand, making the silver charm bracelet jingle on her wrist. She had looked at each charm about a million times, imagining the place it had come from.
The cowboy boot from Texas.
The starfish from Florida.
The cactus from Arizona.
She felt a tingle of excitement as she looked out the window at the sights along the roadside. Souvenir shops and country stores. Vegetable stands and flea markets.
When they crossed the state line, they stopped to take pictures, posing beside the WELCOME TO NORTH CAROLINA sign, their arms around each other, smiling and saying “Cheese.”
They ate sandwiches at a picnic table on the side of the road.
“Listen how quiet it is,” Loretta’s mother said. They all three sat still, cocking their heads and looking skyward, taking in the silence that was interrupted only by the bees buzzing around the tops of their soda cans.
Every once in a while, a car went by. Luggage piled on the top. Bicycles hanging on racks off the back.
Loretta’s mother took a folded piece of paper out of her back pocket and opened it up on the picnic table.
“Maybe tonight we can decide where we wanna go first,” she said.
They had made a list of the places they wanted to visit in the Smoky Mountains.
Maggie Valley
Cherokee
Santa’s Land Theme Park
Cades Cove
Tuckaleechee Caverns
Clingmans Dome
Dollywood
Loretta’s father had said they probably couldn’t get to all those places on this trip, but maybe they could come back some other time.
Maybe this time Loretta would have to choose between Santa’s Land and Dollywood, he said.
Loretta wished she knew exactly where her other mother had gone when she was in the Smoky Mountains.
When they packed up their picnic stuff and loaded the cooler back into the van, Loretta’s father took his cap off and stretched. “I’m just about ready to call it a day,” he said.
So they kept their eyes open for a motel.
Loretta wondered where her other mother had stayed when she was in the Smoky Mountains.
As they got higher and higher into the mountains, the sun got lower and lower in the sky. They passed more souvenir shops and vegetable stands, but not a single motel.
“We might have to go back down to the interstate if we don’t find something soon,” Loretta’s father said.
“We’ll find something,” Loretta’s mother said. “Keep your peepers peeped, Lulu.”
So Loretta rolled down the window and leaned out, letting the cool mountain air blow her bangs off her forehead, and kept her peepers peeped.
Kirby
Kirby’s mother rang the bell on the counter again.
“Well, this is just great,” she said. “Nobody’s here.”
The postcard rack squeaked as Kirby spun it around and around.
“Stop it, Kirby,” his mother hollered. “I’ve got a splittin’ headache. My feet are killin’ me. And I need a cigarette.”
She slammed her hand down on the bell again.
Three times.
Ding. Ding. Ding.
“I’m going to go look for somebody,” she said, shoving the screen door open.
Kirby strolled around the office, running his hand along the walls, shuffling through the maps on the counter, turning the pages of the guest book. He studied the postcards in the rack by the door. Pictures of mountains. Indians. Bears. He picked one that said Greetings from the Great Smoky Mountains, folded it in half, and stuffed it into his pocket.
He went behind the counter and studied the calendar with the red X’s through the days. He jiggled the keys hanging on cup hooks on the wall.
He peered into the room behind the curtain. It was jammed with furniture. A bed. A tattered lounge chair. Tables
. Bureaus. In one corner of the room was a little kitchen. The sink was filled with dishes. The countertop was cluttered with milk cartons, paper towels, and cans of cat food. On the floor under a tiny round table was a bowl with Kitty on the side. Flowerpots filled with drooping, pink-flowered plants lined the windowsills.
Kirby went to the front of the office and hopped over his duffel bag. Then back again. Then over again. Then back again.
Hop.
Hop.
Hop.
Hop.
Meow.
Kirby stopped hopping.
A scruffy black cat with one eye sat outside the screen door.
Kirby pushed the door open. The cat strolled inside and rubbed against Kirby’s legs, purring.
Kirby sat on his duffel bag and held his hand out. The cat sniffed it, his nose twitching and his scraggly tail swishing back and forth on the floor.
Then the cat jumped right into Kirby’s lap.
“What happened to your ear, fella?” Kirby said, running his finger along the cat’s torn ear. “And your eye?”
The cat rubbed his face against Kirby’s shoulder and purred again.
“I bet you been in a fight,” Kirby said.
The cat blinked.
“A lot of fights,” Kirby said.
He scratched the cat’s neck.
“I guess nobody likes you,” he said.
The cat looked up at Kirby and let out a tiny little meow.
“Yeah,” Kirby said, “I know how you feel.”
Aggie
“Hello?”
A voice drifted into Aggie’s dream.
“Hello?”
There it was again.
Aggie opened her eyes and sat up. Her neck ached. She blinked, adjusting her eyes to the afternoon sun.
“Hello?” came the voice again. And then a woman appeared, walking from the direction of the office. A wild-haired woman in short shorts and flapping sandals.
Aggie stood up, forgetting about the bucket in her lap. It hit the concrete with a clatter and rolled, sending sponges and brushes and spray bottles scattering into the gravel parking lot.
Greetings from Nowhere Page 3
