Lilly laughed. “Don’t, Lawrence! Sally Beth already thinks you are awful. And besides, your girlfriend might not like it if she finds out you’ve been out with a couple of natural blondes.” She flung her hair back with a toss of her head.
Lawrence looked at Lilly as if she was some kind of dessert he couldn’t wait to devour. “She isn’t my girlfriend as of last night, so consider me a free man, up for grabs.” He winked. “In every sense of the word. Come on. Let’s show Sally Beth how to do Vegas right. Hot time in the old town tonight?” He placed two frosty glasses in front of them and dropped cherries on top with a flourish.
“Thanks, but I’ve had enough of hot,” countered Sally Beth as she picked up her drink and sipped. “I’m just ready for a good night’s sleep so we can hit the road tomorrow.” She frowned at the glass. “Is there liquor in this?”
He chuckled. “Not much. Just enough to help you relax. Go ahead. I won’t let you get drunk.”
Doubtfully, she sipped again. It was very good and fruity, and even though she could taste alcohol, it didn’t seem too strong. Not wanting to appear prudish or ungrateful, she took another swallow and felt the cool sweetness slip down her throat, then turn warm when it hit her stomach.
It seemed odd, drinking at a bar with Lilly, but it didn’t feel as unholy as she might have imagined it would be. The place was pretty, with soft lights and classy décor. The thrill of the concert was still buzzing in her blood, and the pianist was playing the most beautiful version of “Moon River” she had ever heard. When she glanced up at Lawrence, he smiled at her. It seemed like a nice smile, and she thought maybe he wasn’t so bad, after all. He was much too pretty and soft-looking, but his teeth were big and white, and she liked the way they lined up so straight, so she smiled back, and then they had a pleasant conversation about how hot it was and what the mountains east of there were like. Before she knew it, her drink had disappeared and Lawrence was placing another one in front of her.
“So you’re leaving tomorrow,” he said.
“Yes, thank the Lord,” said Sally Beth. I don’t think I can take another day of this heat.”
“You’re going back to West Virginia?”
“Yes, but we’re going to see lots of sights along the way. The Grand Canyon, and I’ve heard the high desert is real pretty, and maybe Carlsbad Caverns.”
Lilly spoke up. “And Graceland. We’re going to see Graceland.”
“Uh-huh. Our mama was born on the very same day as Elvis, January 8, 1935, and she always loved him. We’re going to put a flower on his grave for her,” added Sally Beth.
“Oh yeah? I’d like to see Graceland, too.” He paused for a moment, looking thoughtful. “Say, why don’t I come along with you? At least to Memphis. I’m from St. Louis, and I’ve been wanting to get back for a visit. I could just catch a bus from Memphis. I’ll help pay for gas,” he added.
Lilly lit up like a Christmas tree. “You want to?”
Sally Beth thought that might not be a great idea, but somehow it didn’t seem important enough to say anything. She was feeling cozy, as if she was nestled down in a bed of cotton balls, and the room around her was full of shimmering, fuzzy lights, and the music was soft, and it seemed to shimmer, too. Come to think of it, it might be nice to have a man along, if they had a flat in the desert or something. She knew there were long, dry stretches of desert in their near future. Yes, a man could be a big help, and besides, she hated to turn down anybody who wanted to go home. It was the right thing to do, letting him come with them. She nodded, smiled, and listened to the dreamy music, floating along its currents as if she was riding on a cloud.
Lord, I sure wish Mama could have seen Mr. Sinatra tonight. Daddy, too. He was every bit as smooth and glamorous as I thought he would be, and he was so much bigger than he seemed when he was on Ed Sullivan, and much more alive. It was all really good…” Sally Beth was asleep before she could finish the sentence.
Four
August 8, 1978
Oh Lord, I think I need to confess. I got sucked right into this place, and I’ve been drinking and gambling for real, and I was a terrible example to Lilly. Tell Mama and Daddy I’m sorry I let them down, but thank You that we are leaving today. Bless this trip, Lord. Let Lilly and me get along, help me to be nice to Lawrence who is coming along, and help Lilly not to flirt with him too much. Give my love to Mama and Daddy. Tell them I miss them, and I wish they could have seen Mr. Sinatra last night.
It was hot, with a dry wind blowing from the west. Sally Beth had a little bit of a headache, but she was feeling a lot better in her heart because she knew they were on their way out of this godforsaken place. She and Lilly loaded the car, careful to make room in the trunk for another suitcase. Just as they nudged Sally Beth’s cosmetic case into a corner, Lawrence and Tiffany strolled into sight. They both carried a suitcase. He also had a smaller bag slung over his shoulder.
“Hey!” said Lawrence. “Look who’s coming with us!”
“Oh!” said Lilly, looking as if she had just eaten a green persimmon. She glared at Tiffany, who was smiling at Lawrence, so Lilly’s dirty look went completely wasted.
“Isn’t it funny?” Tiffany turned her smile toward Sally Beth and Lilly. “We just had a big fight two days ago, and then last night, he came over and asked me to come with him and meet his family!” Sally Beth thought she had never seen a prettier face, or hair, either, for that matter. She wondered if those highlights were natural. It looked like a million lights of copper and gold woven among the dark brown curls. It was just too bad that she dressed so unattractively: cowboy boots and an awful muumuu that covered her up from her collarbone to her calves and made her look like she weighed at least three hundred pounds. Such a pretty girl, otherwise, and an air of kindness, and so in love with this guy who didn’t treat her right.
“Lawrence said it was time I met his parents. And to think I thought he wasn’t serious about me!” Tiffany slipped her arm around Lawrence’s back and leaned toward him, eyes rich with love.
Lilly made a funny noise, then, after a pause, said, “I don’t think there’ll be room for all of us and our luggage, too. And there’s two guitars in the back seat.”
“Oh, don’t worry, I’m good at packing, and all we have is just one suitcase each. If we have to, we’ll just put them under our feet.” Lawrence threw his suitcase into the trunk, and then shoved in Tiffany’s soft-sided bag, massaging and prodding it into a shapeless mass.
While he shoved, Tiffany smiled at Lilly. “Lilly, thank you so much for offering to take us! I’ve been wanting to get out of this place for the longest time. We promise we won’t be a bother.” She laughed, a rich, musical sound, and added, “At least we’ll try.” Sally Beth found herself really liking her new travel companion.
It was obvious by the set of Lilly’s shoulders that she was mad as all get-out. It was going to be a long trip to Memphis with her in this mood, but Sally Beth hoped it was going to be enough of an adventure to get her over her pique. After all, today alone, they were going to see the Hoover Dam and the Grand Canyon. What more could they ask for?
Sally Beth found the desert no less inhospitable as they drove across Nevada. It was very hot, and the air was so dry her mouth went cottony, and she wondered how Lilly had managed to live here for six months—indeed, how anyone could live here at all. But they were headed toward the mountains, and she thought she would feel better when they began to climb. She would find a tree to sit under and get out from under this relentless sun. Restless, she turned on the radio, but no sound came out.
“Radio’s busted,” Lilly said.
“Oh, yeah. Tiffany, will you hand me one of those guitars? We need to have some music.”
“Sure. Here. And I have a harmonica.” Tiffany handed Sally Beth the Gibson, then, before Sally Beth could even get tuned up, she put the harmonica to her lips, launching into a wailing version of “Me and Bobby McGee”. The air seemed to cool with the whine of the harmonica, and Sall
y Beth warmed it up again by picking fast to keep up. Lilly opened her throat to let the music slide out while Lawrence pulled a camera out of the case and began snapping pictures. He took advantage of the wavering light bouncing through the car, taking pictures of Tiffany and sometimes leaning over the back of the seat to focus on Lilly and Sally Beth. Sally Beth got tired of him asking her to turn around and smile, but she was feeling so happy she didn’t care. They were on their way to the Grand Canyon, the place her daddy had always wanted to see, and he would be pleased to know that his baby girls were going to see it for him. It felt as if they were on an important mission.
As they neared Boulder City, the terrain became more unfriendly. Sally Beth searched the landscape for trees, but the only things in view were the same scrabbly soil, big rocks, and little bushes scattered here and there. Past the town, the scant vegetation gave way to towering piles of red, fist-sized rocks heaped on both sides of the road, and then, to her dismay, the landscape was further violated by hundreds of high voltage power lines and towers. To her, it was awful: the worst unnatural industrial scenery imaginable. Gaps in the hills of boulders afforded glimpses of blue water between the power lines, but it did not soothe Sally Beth’s parched soul. It didn’t even look like real, thirst-quenching water, but simply a swathe of blue paper stuck upon the miserable landscape.
Hoover Dam, enormous and impressive, loomed before them. It might have been considered beautiful in a man-made sort of way, but Sally Beth found it bleak, even suffocating. The earth all around the startlingly blue water was not earth at all, but just rock, glaring, hot, and desolate.
“Whoa, look at this!” exclaimed Lawrence, impressed. “Let’s get out and go swimming down at the lake. And we can take a tour of the dam. This is incredible!”
“Huh-uh.” Lilly shook her head. “I don’t even want to get out to look.” Staring straight ahead, she gripped the steering wheel with white fingers as she slowly drove across the slim, silver thread of the dam.
“Hey!” protested Lawrence. “You’re not even going to stop?”
“Nope,” replied Lilly. “It’s time to head for the hills and find some green grass.”
They stopped for lunch shortly after they crossed the dam and into Arizona. Over dry hamburgers and Cokes, Sally Beth tried to keep the conversation light “Are you two taking a vacation? Will you be going back? Or are you staying in St. Louis for good?”
“Oh, I guess we’ll be going back,” laughed Lawrence. “We’ve both got pretty good jobs in Vegas. At least we did. They probably won’t like the fact that I didn’t show up for work today, and that I won’t be back for a few weeks, but everybody needs bartenders, and they’re used to us taking off now and then. I’m not worried.”
“What do you do, Tiffany?”
“I work for a Mercedes dealership.”
“Oh really? Do you sell cars?”
“Sort of,” Lawrence snorted. “I mean she sells cars. She makes rich old farts think she comes with the deal if they buy one.” Tiffany scowled at him.
“Lawrence, you make me sound like a hooker.” She turned to Sally Beth. “I help customers decide on accessories and interiors when they custom order a car. I’m sort of a Mercedes interior designer.” Sally Beth had never heard of such a thing.
“Is that a common thing?” asked Lilly, bewildered.
“Not really. Just in high-end areas, like Vegas or Los Angeles. People get real picky about how their cars are accessorized. You’d be surprised.”
“Yeah. They’re pretending to pick out the color of their leather upholstery, and old Tiffany makes them think she’ll be all over the back seat with them if they choose alligator hide or ostrich. She gets them to spend an extra grand or two.” He winked at Tiffany. “Tell them about your showgirl days.”
“I was not a showgirl. I was in a band.”
“That’s not what I heard,” sniggered Lawrence. “I heard you had a real stunner of an act going until they shut you down.” He grinned at the others. “Seems Tiffany here had herself a little run-in with the law.”
“I did not. I quit as soon as I found out minors aren’t supposed to perform in the clubs.”
“Not what I heard,” countered Lawrence.
“Well, you heard wrong. It’s getting late. If we’re going to get to the Grand Canyon before dark, we’d better move on,” Tiffany said, standing abruptly and tugging at the neck of her muumuu to cover the cleavage that had begun to show.
“We need to get gas,” Lilly said as they left the restaurant.
Sally Beth shook her head. “I checked before we got out. It looks like we have more than half a tank.”
“It always says that,” countered Lilly. “It’s stuck there. You just have to get gas every couple hundred miles so you’ll be sure not to run out.”
After they had stopped for gas, they drove fast until the mountains finally yielded up cooler air, and, Oh, thank You, God! Trees. Although they were not the lush, rolling, uninterrupted green of the stands of the forests at home, Sally Beth was glad to see them. At first, these trees reminded her of someone who had had a bad hair transplant, with each one standing singly, isolated from one another, with bare scalp showing between them. But when she rolled down the window, she breathed in the essence of pine, and her parched soul settled and soothed, and then, to her delight, the scent of rain came billowing upon the wind. As they reached the outskirts of Flagstaff, a deluge began. Gusts of wind and rain rocked and buffeted the car. Lilly turned on the windshield wipers, but because they worked only on the driver’s side, all Sally Beth could see was water streaming down the windshield in front of her.
“We’re getting close to Flagstaff, Lilly. You’re supposed to turn here someplace, on 64, and I can’t see a thing in this rain. What’s wrong with your windshield wipers?”
“Oh, it’s busted on that side. But that never bothered me because my side works fine. I’ll just drive real slowly, and I’ll keep a lookout. Oh, look—here it is. Hot dog! The Grand Canyon in sixty miles!”
Sally Beth’s heart lifted as she looked at the rain and saw the dark forms of trees gliding by. Las Vegas, the sin, the heat, the dry, dry desert was behind her, and the Grand Canyon was before her. She took a deep breath of the moist, cool air.
And then they were there. Just as they entered the park, the rain rolled back as suddenly as it had come. The sparse, pinyon forest fell away to reveal miles and miles of rain and cloud and sun, spires of rock and empty space, light and shadow of every possible and impossible hue. When Sally Beth jumped out to look into the great chasm and felt the cold wind rushing upward, she nearly fell to her knees, suddenly feeling insignificant, overwhelmed with awe at the glory. It was not brown, as she had come to believe it would be, but all colors, red and purple and golden, and the air was pungent with the scent of juniper and pine. She nearly wept with gratitude when a rainbow appeared, flooding down from above the tallest peak into the abyss. It was everything she could have hoped for, and more. Her eyes roved and worshipped.
The rain did not stand abated for long. After a short glimpse, they were forced back into the car by an icy downpour, so they drove back to the small community outside the park where accommodations would be cheaper. After an awkward moment when it became evident that Lawrence and Tiffany were planning on sharing a room, Sally Beth decided not to be a prude about it. She registered for a double for herself and Lilly, then stepped away from the desk so Lawrence and Tiffany could have some privacy as they arranged for their room. After that, they ate a quick dinner, then put on their jackets and went back to the rim to watch the sunset.
Slowly, dusk rose up from the great rift, spreading enchantment and mystery over the spires within the canyon, until at last it was full dark below while the last glow settled upon the rock facing them. The sky turned from blue to turquoise to indigo, and the stone cathedral around them deepened into purples and mauves.
The stars came out, pricking their way one by one into the deep blue dusk, and t
hen, suddenly, the light from the sun completely disappeared, and the wash of the pale Milky Way stretched across the sky, a glowing iridescence, a mother of pearl milkiness that did not so much spangle the sky, but draped across it like the finest of silk illusion.
Dear Lord, thank You, thank You THANK YOU for letting me see this place! I am just overwhelmed by Your goodness, Your beauty, Your grandeur, Your glory. Sally Beth wondered if her parents could see all this from heaven. Yes, of course. Maybe that’s why we came here. They wanted us to see it, and they arranged it. It’s like a gift from them.
August 9, 1978, The Grand Canyon
The early morning was bright with stars. Sally Beth woke Lilly, whispering through the darkness. “Come on, let’s go back and see the sunrise. Lilly groaned before she threw back the covers and sat up, but she did not need coaxing. They were out the door within five minutes, traveling back to the rim where they sat on a bench to wait.
The sun came up slowly into the frigid morning from behind a promontory to their right, turning the sky from inky dark to a dusky wash of pearly gray, then pink, to sudden daylight above them. Below, the darkness still gaped at them, but slowly lost its battle against the pearlescent light that probed even the darkest corners. Then the sky blazed, and so did the canyon, brilliantly red, gold, pink, green, purple, and mauve. Birds swept across their line of vision, squawking, winging their way westward, chased by the light. And then true daylight began to pierce the depths, pushing the darkness down and spreading color at their feet. When the breeze came up sharp and cold, the beauty seemed to freeze in a brief moment of chilly stillness, and then gave way to awakening woodland sounds and smells. In a way, it reminded Sally Beth of home, although it looked and sounded and smelled very different from the mountains of West Virginia. But it held the same rightness, the same honesty that made her soul settle into a peaceful place that she had not seen for days. She stood at the very edge, her toes bridging out into the vastness, and felt the texture of the cold, searching wind winging its way over her skin.
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