“Is this place open?” the woman said.
Aggie straightened her glasses and smoothed her hair. “Yes, ma’am,” she said. “It is.”
“I need a room,” the woman said. Her red hair framed her face in frizzy curls. She smelled like cigarettes.
For one tiny little moment, Aggie thought about saying, “No smoking, okay?”
That’s what Harold would have said.
But she didn’t.
She gathered up the cleaning supplies and said, “Let’s go over to the office and I’ll fix you right up.”
Aggie led the way up the sidewalk to the office. She opened the screen door and jumped, startled. A young boy was sitting on a duffel bag with Ugly in his lap. He had the same red hair, the same freckled white skin as the woman.
“For cryin’ out loud, Kirby!” the woman hollered. “Get outta the way.”
Ugly jumped off the boy’s lap and darted around behind the counter.
“Ugly must like you,” Aggie said to the boy. “He’s usually kinda shy.”
“Really?” the boy said.
Aggie nodded. “Shoot,” she said, “he didn’t sit on my lap till I fed him about a hundred cans of tuna.”
Aggie turned to the woman. “I’m Agnes Duncan,” she said. “But you can call me Aggie.”
“I’m Darlene Tanner,” the woman said. “That’s my son, Kirby,” she added, jerking her head toward the boy.
“Nice to meet you.” Aggie smiled at them, but they didn’t smile back. The woman was rifling through her purse. The boy was glaring at the floor.
“Well, now,” Aggie said. “If you’ll just sign that guest book, I’ll get you the key.”
Which room should she give them? Aggie wondered. Room 7? That one was closer to the ice machine.
But did that ice machine still work? Aggie couldn’t remember.
Maybe Room 1. That was the other corner room.
Yes, that was it. Room 1.
“There’s free coffee in the morning,” she said. “And here’s your complimentary map of the Great Smoky Mountains.”
The woman took the map. “Oh, good,” she said. “I can use this. I need to get to Smoky Mountain Boys’ Academy. Near Bird’s Creek off Highway 15. How far is that?”
“Bird’s Creek is just a few miles up thataways.” Aggie flung her arm toward the road.
“How do you get there?” the woman asked.
Aggie looked up at the ceiling. “Hmmm,” she said. “I couldn’t really tell you. I don’t drive much anymore, and, well, things have changed so much around here over the years …”
Truth was, Aggie didn’t drive at all anymore. She hadn’t renewed her driver’s license when it had expired almost eight years ago. Harold had been so good at driving.
The woman said a cuss word and Aggie thought “My, my” to herself but didn’t say it out loud.
She looked over at the boy and wondered if he had heard the cuss word. He was still glaring at the floor like he could burn a hole right through the linoleum with his eyes. Through the linoleum and clear on down into the red clay earth beneath.
“I hope Kirby won’t mind sleeping on a cot,” Aggie said. “It’s a little lumpy, but it’s right big. It’s in the closet, okay?”
The woman didn’t answer. She told the boy to get his bag and come on.
Aggie was surprised how easily such a scrawny kid picked up that heavy-looking bag.
“Y’all got a car?” Aggie said, glancing around the parking lot as she led them up the walk to Room 1.
“A big piece of junk on the side of the road,” the woman said.
“Oh, well,” Aggie said. “You’ve come to the right place if you got car trouble ’cause Harold …”
Aggie clutched her heart. How long was it going to take for her to realize that Harold was gone?
Forever?
Probably.
Probably forever.
“Um, never mind,” she said, unlocking the door to the room. “How long are y’all planning on staying?”
“Not long,” the woman said. “Just till I can get that wreck of a car fixed so I can get Kirby on up to that school.”
Then the woman and her son went inside Room 1 and closed the door without so much as a thank you.
Aggie went back to the office and looked at the guest book.
Darlene and Kirby Tanner; Fountain Inn, South Carolina.
Wasn’t it nice to see new names there on the line below the Perrys from Ocala, Florida?
Maybe things were going to pick up after all, she thought. Maybe Darlene and Kirby would stay for a while and then she could pay the phone bill and the electric bill. Maybe she should tell that man Clyde Dover the Sleepy Time Motel wasn’t for sale, after all.
Willow
Willow’s father stopped the truck.
“There it is,” he said.
“That?” Willow stared out the window at the motel. It looked deserted, like no one had been there in a long time. The sign out front was faded and peeling. Wildflowers grew in the gravel parking lot. The swimming pool was empty, weeds poking out of the cracked concrete.
Willow’s father pulled the truck into the parking lot. The tires made a crunching noise on the gravel that seemed to echo clear across the mountain. When he turned the engine off, silence fell over them, thick and heavy.
Willow counted the rooms of the motel. Ten. Only ten rooms in the whole motel. Five on one side. Five on the other side.
Right in the middle was a screen door with a crooked, handwritten sign.
OFFICE.
In the window next to the door was another sign.
YES, WE’RE OPEN.
Rickety-looking lawn chairs sat outside the door of each room. A black cat was curled up in one of them.
“Wait here,” Willow’s father said, heading for the office.
“Hello?” her father called through the screen door.
Silence.
“Hello?” he called again.
Silence.
He opened the door and disappeared inside. A few minutes later, he came back out.
“It looks like no one’s here,” he said.
Good, Willow thought.
“Mr. Dover?” someone called from the door.
A tiny old woman in bedroom slippers shuffled toward them. Her faded brown sweater hung clear down to her knees.
“Are you Mr. Dover?” she said.
Before Willow’s father could answer, the old woman said, “I’m Agnes Duncan. But you can call me Aggie.”
She tucked a wisp of thin gray hair behind her ear. “I’ve got your room ready.” She nodded toward the far corner of the motel. Her face was lined and leathery, but her eyes were clear and sparkly. She kept pushing the stretched sleeves of her sweater up over her bony elbows.
Willow watched from the front seat of the truck as her father glanced around the weed-filled parking lot. Squinted out at the cracked, empty swimming pool. Frowned over at the faded, peeling sign.
“I know it ain’t much to look at now,” Aggie said. “But you shoulda seen it in its heyday.” She gestured with her skinny arm, making the sweater flop down over her hand. “This whole parking lot was filled to overflowing. Cars and kids and all. Guests in every room every night. Well, almost every night … at least in the summer … And—”
“Mrs. Duncan, I—”
“Aggie,” she said. “Please. Call me Aggie.”
She squinted over at the pickup truck where Willow sat.
Willow slumped down in the seat.
“Is that your girl?” Aggie said.
“Yes,” her father said. “That’s Willow.”
“Willow!” Aggie grinned. “Well, what a fine name!” She waved toward the truck. “Hello, Willow,” she called.
Willow waved back.
A tiny little wave.
“There haven’t been kids around here for the longest time,” Aggie said. “I just love kids,” she added.
Willow slumped down a littler
farther and pretended like she didn’t see her father motioning for her to get out of the truck.
She didn’t want to get out of the truck.
She wanted to go home.
Back to the little brick house with the screened porch.
Her father motioned again and said, “Please come here, Willow,” in that voice Willow hated.
So Willow got out of the truck and stood beside her father, looking down at her pink plastic sandals.
“I figured we should make arrangements for the inspection,” Willow’s father said to Aggie. “And get the rest of the paperwork done and all.”
Aggie’s hand fluttered up to her glasses, smoothed her hair, pushed at the sleeve of her sweater. “Um, well, okay.” The corners of her mouth twitched. “But there’s no hurry, right? I mean, you wanna be sure and all, and I …”
Willow studied Aggie’s face. She couldn’t put a name to what she saw there, but she knew that Aggie didn’t want to sell this motel.
She looked around her at the ramshackle place and wondered why.
Why would anyone want to keep an awful old place like this?
Kirby
Kirby explored every inch of the room while his mother took a nap.
The lamps with little black bears on the shades. The bedspread printed with cowboys and Indians, covered wagons and tepees. The tiny bathroom that smelled like mildew. The Bible on the bedside table.
He opened and closed all the drawers in the dresser. There was a book of matches way in the back of one. Kirby examined it. Mountaintop Steakhouse was printed on the front. Kirby put the matches in his pocket and went outside.
A red pickup truck was parked out front. That old lady, Aggie, was talking to a tall man with buzz-cut hair. Part of a tattoo peeked out from under the sleeve of his shirt. Beside him was a blond-haired girl, shuffling around in the gravel with the toe of her pink sandal.
Kirby went out to the swimming pool and bounced on the diving board. Then he walked around the edge. Heel to toe. Heel to toe. He kicked gravel into the empty pool.
He glanced over at the girl and the man talking to Aggie. The girl was still tracing circles in the dirt with her shoe.
Kirby picked up a piece of gravel and hurled it at the motel sign. It hit dead center with an echoey thwack, then ricocheted clear across the parking lot, landing right at the girl’s feet.
The girl jumped.
The old lady said, “Oh, my!”
The man glared over at him.
Kirby grinned.
He spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around the motel. He looked in the windows of all the rooms. He checked the coin return on the soda machine. He went around back and explored the weed-filled vegetable garden, the toolshed, the woods.
When he finally went back to Room 1, his mother was sitting on the side of the bed yelling into the telephone.
“I need that money, Virgil.”
She slammed the receiver down.
Bam!
“There’s tomatoes and cantaloupes and stuff in a garden out there,” Kirby said, motioning toward the back of the motel.
His mother looked up at him. There were black smudges of mascara under her eyes. Her hair stood out from her head in tangled, frizzy puffs.
She got up and padded to the bathroom in her bare feet and shut the door. Kirby took her purse from the top of the dresser and peered inside. Way at the bottom was a crumpled dollar bill. He put it in his shirt pocket, tossed the purse back on the dresser, and went outside again.
Loretta
“There’s one!” Loretta hollered, pointing out the window of the van.
Her father turned into the gravel parking lot. The tiny motel looked old and run-down, but Loretta liked the name of it.
Sleepy Time.
A black cat slept in a chair by the office door. A red pickup truck was parked in front of one of the rooms.
“Perfect,” her mother said. “I like the feel of this place.” She climbed out of the van with a grunt. “I’ll go find out if we can get a room,” she said.
Loretta watched her mother disappear inside the motel office. A redheaded boy walked barefoot from the empty swimming pool. Loretta waved at him, but he kept his head down, his thick hair falling over his eyes. He went into one of the rooms and closed the door behind him. Loretta saw him pull the curtain aside and peek out the window at them.
Loretta’s mother came out of the office and called, “Park over there, Marvin.”
Her father parked the van in front of Room 6 and Loretta jumped out. An old lady unlocked the door and motioned for them to follow her inside. Her thin cotton pants were rolled up at the bottom and held with safety pins.
“I hope y’all like this room,” she said.
“Like it?” Loretta’s mother said. “Why, it’s just adorable. Look at that, Lulu.” She pointed to a clear plastic bird feeder stuck on the outside of one of the windows. A tiny bird scratched around at a few seeds in the bottom.
“I keep forgetting to fill that one,” the lady said. “But then, I reckon I shouldn’t tempt Ugly too much, anyway, you know?” She winked at Loretta.
“Who’s Ugly?” Loretta said.
“My cat.”
“That black one out yonder?”
The lady nodded. “That ugly one.”
“I think he’s cute,” Loretta said.
The lady chuckled. “Well, he’s been around the block a few times, I can tell you that.”
Loretta’s father came in carrying their suitcases.
“My name’s Aggie,” the lady said.
Loretta’s father tipped his hat and said, “Marvin.”
He put his arm around his wife and said, “This is Irene.”
Then he put his big, warm hand on top of Loretta’s head and said, “And this here is Loretta.”
Aggie showed them how to pull the sofa out to make a bed for Loretta. She took some little packs of soap out of her pocket and put them in the bathroom. Then she nodded toward the wall behind the bed.
“The office is right next door,” she said. “Y’all holler if you need anything.” She pointed to one ear with a crooked finger. “And I do mean holler,” she added. “These old ears of mine ain’t what they used to be.”
Loretta loved the little motel room.
She loved the flowered bedspread.
She loved the pine-paneled walls.
She loved the map of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park taped on the closet door.
She even loved the musty smell and the window with the screen falling out and the light fixture that made a little buzzing sound.
She wondered if her other mother had stayed here and if she had loved it, too.
While her mother unpacked their things and her father cleaned out the cooler, Loretta put the box with all her other mother’s earthly possessions on the little table beside the bed.
Then she went outside to look for Ugly.
Willow
Willow hated the little motel room. It smelled bad. The carpet was stained and dirty. The faucet in the bathroom dripped.
Plunk. Plunk. Plunk.
Her father said he would sleep on the lumpy pullout couch, but the bed didn’t look much better.
Willow stared glumly out the window while her father studied all those papers from the bank.
Those papers he needed to buy the motel from Aggie.
“Daddy,” Willow said.
Her father looked up from his paperwork.
“How will Mama know where we are?” Willow said.
“She’ll know.”
“But how?”
“I’ll tell her.”
“When?”
“Soon.”
“Can she come stay here, too?” Willow said.
“Willow …” Her father took his glasses off. “Your mother has chosen to leave us.”
“But where is she?”
“I’ve told you before. She’s with her sister in Savannah.” He put his glasses on and went back
to his paperwork. “If she wants to contact us,” he added, “she knows where your grandmother is.”
Willow felt a blanket of sadness settle over her, weighing her down.
She went outside and sat in a rocking chair made out of tree branches. She buried her face in her knees and squeezed her eyes shut. Tight.
Then she whispered, “Dorothy, Dorothy, Dorothy,” over and over again.
Loretta
That night, Loretta sat in the lawn chair outside the door to Room 6. Lightning bugs were beginning to flicker out across the parking lot.
She had finally coaxed Ugly to sleep on her lap. The redheaded boy came out and ambled around the motel, kicking rocks and glancing over at her every now and then. Down at the other end of the motel, a girl sat in a rocking chair, pushing against the pavement with her bare foot, making the chair rock.
Back and forth.
Back and forth.
Loretta called out “Hey,” but the girl didn’t look up.
“Come see this cat,” Loretta called.
The girl looked up.
“Come see this cat,” Loretta called again.
The girl stopped rocking. She got up and walked toward Loretta, her bare feet making soft, slapping noises on the pavement.
“Isn’t he cute?” Loretta said, stroking Ugly’s patchy fur.
The girl nodded.
“His name is Ugly,” Loretta said.
She wiggled her arm, making the charm bracelet jingle. “My name’s Loretta,” she said. “What’s yours?”
The girl looked down at her feet and said, “Willow.”
Loretta jiggled her bracelet again. “I’m going into fifth grade,” she said. “What grade are you going into?”
“Fourth.”
Loretta scratched Ugly behind his chewed-up ear. “Fourth grade’s easy,” she said.
Ugly jumped off her lap and strolled up the walk toward the office.
Loretta asked Willow a lot of questions. Before long, she knew all about Willow.
She knew that Willow had a collection of china horses.
Greetings from Nowhere Page 4
