I watch as a man comes out of the auto parts store that Dillon is passing, stops, and takes a very interested look. I can’t say I blame him: there aren’t too many long-haired, ear-pierced stoners with three-legged dogs walking the streets of Erick. My guess is that the Roger Miller Museum doesn’t really draw that sort of clientele.
“Well, Al, thanks for calling. I’m trying to get out of here before six tonight. A few of us are heading over to the baseball game.”
I’m still watching Dillon and Casserole because the man who came out of the store has said something.
“Al?”
“Oh, sorry, Dad. You’re going over to Zebulon to see the Mudcats with James William.”
“Yeah, James and a couple others from the office.”
Ben and Jasper, I suppose, since they’re the only others who work there and follow the farm league. “And you’re okay? Your blood pressure is all right?”
“Well, it’s still too high according to Ned,” he says, mentioning the family doctor in Clayton. “But we’re trying a new drug; so I’m sure it’ll be just fine.”
I have quit listening and am now very distracted by what I can only guess is a confrontation between Dillon and some fine citizen of Erick, Oklahoma. Dillon is shaking his head and glancing around. Casserole is anxiously peering in my direction.
“Al, you there?”
“Yeah, yeah,” I say, now feeling more than a little concern about what is transpiring a few hundred yards from me.
“Call me when you get to Texas,” he says.
“Okay, then, have a good time. I’ll talk to you later.” And I click off the phone without hearing my father’s good-bye.
chapter twenty-nine
“EVERYTHING okay?” I ask as Dillon heads in my direction. He’s back to chewing on what turns out to be a string of red licorice. Casserole walks beside him and then heads to the other side of the car, waiting to be let in so that he can take his familiar place in the backseat. Dillon follows him.
“Yeah, it’s all good. Casserole peed at the corner. He may want some water, though. It’s pretty hot, huh?” Dillon peeks through the window.
I open the door on my side and find the water bowl. I fill it with water from the jug behind the seat, walk around, and place it in front of Casserole, who is indeed thirsty. He drinks almost the entire bowl.
“They had red ropes,” the boy tells me, holding up the candy. “You want a string?”
I shake my head and help my dog get into the car. I walk back around and put the bowl back behind my seat. Then I close the door and glance over at the auto parts store. The man he was talking to just a few minutes earlier has gotten in a truck and appears to be leaving. He’s staring in our direction and even from this distance I can see the scowl on his face.
“I just saw that guy stop you. I thought he might have said something to you.”
“Yeah, he did.” Dillon walks around and joins me. “Blossom still inside?” He nods toward the museum.
“Yes,” I answer.
“Guess she’s buying a CD.” He laughs a bit.
“I guess.”
He holds out the licorice and starts to chew another piece. “Wasn’t he, like, a country singer or something?”
I nod. “Yep.”
“Blossom and her country music.”
“So what did the guy say?” I want to know.
“What guy?” He sucks a piece of licorice in between his teeth.
“The one at the store.”
“He didn’t say nothing, just sold me the red ropes. Two sacks for a dollar.” He opens the plastic bag and shows me the purchase.
I’m a little confused. “No, not the guy at the convenience store, the guy at the auto parts store.”
“I didn’t go to the auto parts store.” He steps away from the car. “Al, did you need me to get you something from the auto parts store?”
Why am I even trying?
“Not inside the store, the one you ran into. It appeared as if he confronted you, like he said something to start a fight.”
Dillon faces the direction where I have been eyeing the man with the scowl and watches as the truck pulls away. “Nah, I don’t think so.” Then he takes the red rope and swings it in a circle over his head. “What do you know? I could be a cowboy.”
“Well, what did he say, Dillon?”
“Who?”
“The guy at the store.” I need to just let this go, I know. But I can’t.
“Oh, he said I looked like a girl.”
“And what did you say?”
“I said, yeah, I know. And then I asked him how far it is to Shamrock.”
“You agreed with him?”
He nods. “Sure.”
“But why?”
“Well, Al, ’cause I kind of do.” He stretches out his ponytail to show me. “Long hair throws people sometimes.”
I shake my head. “But didn’t that offend you?”
“Nah.” He eats the end of the licorice. “That’d be kind of useless, don’t you think?”
“Well, I don’t know if it’s useless or not, but I still think it is offensive. He had no right to say that to you.”
Dillon shrugs. “It’s not a problem,” he says. “He was probably just having a bad day or something. And he was actually kind of cool. He told me Shamrock was less than thirty miles away.”
I shake my head in disbelief. “It doesn’t bother you when people say stuff like that to you?”
He shrugs. “Been looking like this for a long time. Kind of used to it by now.” I watch him as he chews the end of his licorice.
“I didn’t think people ever got used to that kind of thing.”
“What?”
“Crass remarks, stupid observations, unwarranted comments.”
“Unwarranted?”
“Yeah, unnecessary, unprovoked.”
“You do use big words.”
I shake my head and sigh.
“Well, what do you do if somebody says something . . . unwarranted to you?”
His question certainly is a fair one. He takes his place beside me and we both lean against the car.
“I tell them to mind their own business.”
“That’s cool.”
“And I may say something else.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, good for you, Al.”
I step away from the car and face Dillon. “You’re telling me that if someone says something to you that’s mean or hurtful, you don’t say something back? You don’t protect yourself?”
He shrugs. “Why would I need to protect myself from what somebody says?” He slides his hand through his hair and tightens up his ponytail.
“I don’t know. I guess I just always thought you had to stop that kind of behavior, let folks know what you will and will not put up with.”
He scratches his chin, apparently considering what I am suggesting.
I glance over. Blossom is finally leaving the museum. Irene peeks through the window and flips the sign on the door from Open to Closed. I hear her turn the lock.
“There was this boy at school when I was in first grade and he used to beat the crap out of me every day. Billy Jackson was his name. He’d wait until all the teachers were gone and then he’d just pounce on me. I used to pretend I was sick, just so I wouldn’t have to face him.” Dillon shakes his head. “And then one day my stepdad made me tell him why I was afraid to go to first grade.”
“Did you tell him?”
“I did, yeah.”
“And what did he do?”
“He beat the crap out of me, too.”
“What?” The lives people lead, it still amazes me.
Dillon laughs. “Yeah, it’s jacked up; but it’s like I figured out tha
t my stepdad hit a whole lot harder than Billy Jackson so I quit being so scared of him. And then, when I quit being scared of him, he quit picking on me.” He puts his hands behind his head and stretches his neck. There is just a little stubble growing over his lip. He really is so young.
“So, what you’re saying is that when you appear not to be affected by the behavior of others, when you don’t shrink at their offensive remarks or bullying actions, they don’t bother you anymore?”
He stares at me, looking confused. Then he takes out another string of licorice. “Nah, I’m just saying that stuff people say doesn’t hurt nearly as much as getting the crap beat out of you.” He stuffs the candy in his mouth and grins in Blossom’s direction. “Hey, baby.”
I watch her smile. “Hey, Dillon.”
He waits for her to approach, then the two of them open the car doors and take their seats, leaving me outside, looking in.
chapter thirty
BLOSSOM and Dillon are saying good-bye to each other and I’ve snuck away. I have the two of them in my line of sight, but I’m far enough away that I’m not eavesdropping on them and they can’t hear me call Phillip.
We’ve stopped at a hotel, a Best Western, just off the interstate, where Dillon’s uncle is supposed to meet us in about an hour. We got here early, and I am about to make my first telephone call to the boy I have loved since I was twelve. I stick the phone in my back pocket and wipe my sweaty hands on the sides of my legs and then give them a good shake. I roll my head around, loosening up my neck, trying to get up my nerve.
I watch as Casserole glances over in my direction and then drops his head into a clump of clover. He thinks I won’t do it.
The last time this happened I was fourteen. It took me all afternoon to get up my nerve. I must have walked past the phone in our kitchen a hundred times, then upstairs to my room and then back down again. I paced and practiced what I would say. I drank full glasses of water and fixed my hair and brushed my teeth, did a few sit-ups, and made the trek again from my room to the kitchen and then back to my room again. I still remember watching every minute tick past on the clock in the den as I paced by it.
It was early November and Phillip and I were study partners in biology. I still don’t know how that partnership came to be, but at the time I was certain it was divine intervention, and only an hour after the assignments were given I was already planning our wedding. The science project was to dissect a frog in class, and even though I had helped organize a school PETA committee and could have been excused from the biology assignment due to my noted ethical conflict, I would have gone gigging with Dad at the Neuse River and brought in my own toad if it meant I could stay Phillip’s partner.
The classes and the dissection went fine; we made the incisions and we talked and laughed and I acted all grossed out like the other girls, but the truth of the matter is that I have never loved science like I did the week we studied amphibians. I was practically ready to become Mr. Daniel’s assistant. I lived for that class and I rocked the project.
For the final assignment we were supposed to answer questions and fill in a blank illustration of the frog and label its parts. I had done most of the paperwork before the class was even finished, toiling away happily while my partner cleaned up our experiment and stopped to talk to some of the other guys on the football team who had gathered in the back of the room.
However, before class ended and we left for lunch, we had not completed the two essay questions that we were to work on separately, one question for each of us. When the final test was passed out, I had chosen to write the essay on the frog’s morphology and physiology and Phillip was answering the question about the frog’s life history. We could not turn in the project until all the illustration blanks had been completed and all the questions were answered. It was supposed to mean that the study partners would meet sometime after class to finish the project, an idea I was greatly in favor of; but Phillip left class with his teammates without taking his copy of our final assignment and without making a start on his essay question.
By that evening I was both desperate to talk to Phillip again and nervous that we wouldn’t have the project completed. We needed to communicate; and since he clearly wasn’t making the call, I knew that initiating a conversation and completing our biology project were entirely up to me.
From four in the afternoon until eight I walked to the phone and tried to dial the numbers, making all kinds of excuses about why I couldn’t call Phillip and why Phillip hadn’t called me. There was football practice and other homework. There was an early dinner and time with his friends. Maybe he was taking a nap. Maybe he was helping his dad.
There were lots of reasons I made up as to why we hadn’t spoken to each other. And for four hours, home alone while Sandra was at some pageant rehearsal and Daddy was finishing up an article on the elections, I tried to make the call. By eight, with both of my family members home, sitting at the table and waiting for dinner, I had written his essay and completed the entire project for us both. He didn’t call and I could not. I turned in our papers the next day and he never even asked what else had been needed. The last exchange we had regarding our assignment was a high-five when we got our final grade, a solid A for us both, two weeks later.
I take in a breath and touch the screen where his contact information is listed from the call he made a couple of nights ago—one touch and the call is made, and yet I found it only slightly easier than having to hit every number. I hear it ring and watch as Dillon and Blossom stand facing each other. There is a slight breeze and Dillon reaches up and slides a piece of hair out of her eyes. She tilts her head and smiles.
“Is this Al?”
I clear my throat, somehow not expecting him to know it was my number. “Yeah, hey.”
“Hey, I’ve been waiting for you.”
My head feels a little swimmy. “We’re in Texas.”
Casserole hears what I have said and looks at me. He shakes his head and walks a little farther away, so he can’t hear any more, I suppose.
“Oh, okay.”
“Yeah, we decided not to stop in Oklahoma City.”
“Huh, Texas, that’s far from Fort Smith, right? You must have driven a lot today.”
“Yeah, maybe five or six hours?”
“Oh, that’s not as bad as I thought.”
“No, not so bad.” A line of trucks passes on the interstate and it suddenly gets noisy. I hold the phone closer to my ear.
“What’s it like there?” I think I hear him say.
I look around, wanting to answer his question as truthfully as possible. “Flat, mostly brown. We’re just over the state line, about an hour and a half from Amarillo, in a little town called Shamrock.”
“That sounds pretty.”
“It does, doesn’t it?” This makes me smile because I realize that I have liked the name of this place since Dillon told us where he needed to go.
I peer over at my young traveling companions and they’re still facing each other, still talking. Dillon has his hands in his pockets and Blossom has dropped hers at her sides. She is a beautiful girl, long brown hair, all that jewelry; she is forthright, confident.
“That’s where you’re going next?”
“What? Oh, yeah. That’s as far as my passenger, Blossom, is going. I’m dropping her off at her dad’s and then I’m going on to Albuquerque.”
“You staying in Amarillo?”
“I don’t know, I haven’t really thought that far ahead.”
“Hillary went to a conference in Wichita Falls once. Is that close by?”
I have no idea. “Yeah, maybe.” Okay, I lied.
“I’ve never spent much time in Texas. I’ve been to Dallas and Houston, but that’s really it. I hear Austin is nice.”
“Uh-huh, great barbecue.”
“Well, not as good as the White Swan.”
<
br /> This makes me laugh and I’m about to say something about the diner in Clayton that has been around longer than I’ve been alive, but there is a noise on my phone and I have another call. I look down at the screen. Blossom. I walk back around the corner so that she can see me; but she and Dillon are gone.
“Uh, Phillip, I have another call coming in. Can we talk later?”
“Sure, Al. You got my number.”
And I hang up. “Yes, I most certainly do,” I say to Casserole, who has made his way back to my side.
chapter thirty-one
“HEY.” I have clicked to the other call and I’m still walking in the direction where I last saw Blossom and Dillon. They had been waiting just outside the motel office, standing in the parking lot. Now the whole area appears empty.
“You talking to somebody?” Blossom says over the phone.
I still don’t see them anywhere.
“I was walking Cass.” I glance over at my dog and shrug innocently. He knows I’m using him as a cover, but what is he going to do, tell somebody?
“Uh-huh.”
And suddenly I have the strangest feeling that I am being busted by a seventeen-year-old.
“Where are you?” I ask, trying to find the two of them.
“Dillon’s uncle is here.”
And that’s when I see them. An old truck is parked on the other side of the office and Blossom is waving in my direction.
“Hey.”
“Hey,” I reply. I click off the call and head over.
The man we are meeting is leaning against the truck and the first thing I notice is how much space he seems to take. It’s not that he’s big—he really only carries a medium build and isn’t much taller than Dillon—but his stance is wide and he has his hands at his sides, his elbows out, and his fingers looped in his belt. I feel his eyes moving across me and he doesn’t change a thing about how he is standing as I approach.
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