“None of your goddamned business.”
I said, “Never mind. Let’s stick to the subject. You wanna go with us or not?”
“Jes’ hold it a minute!” His bark belonged on the end of a chain. “What the hell is this about? What do you mean, you wanna go somewhere? And get away from what?”
“Wakenda.”
“Our parents.”
Henry hacked up a guffaw. “Ain’t you two a little old to be runnin’ away from home? First time I did that I was six. You comin’ to ask me how?”
Paul said, “No, we are not running away from home.” This voice could have cut glass. “But we’ve been talking—”
“You ask me, the beer’s been doin’ the talkin’.”
“Forget it.” I stood up and brushed hay off my ass. “We can come back tomorrow, cold sober. Or better yet, we can go ask our second choice. Come on, Paul.”
Paul moved slow enough to wait out the bluff.
“Aw, now wait. Can’t you fellas take a joke?” Henry waggled his empty beer bottle at me.
I shook my head that there wasn’t any more.
He reached over, took Paul’s, and threw back a swig. “You guys bust in here in the middle of the night talkin’ crazy—you could at least explain yourself.”
“There’s not much to explain.” I sat back down. “You wanna die here, Henry? That what you want?”
“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”
Apparently I’d gotten ahead of myself.
Paul took over. “What John means is that he and I have been discussing the limited options available to us here.”
Henry frowned at him like he was talking in Chinese.
“We’re not satisfied,” Paul went on, “but we see no better course available than to get away for a while, see a little bit of the country from a different perspective. We look at it as an opportunity.”
“A opportunity.” Henry looked back and forth between us. He finished Paul’s beer and lobbed the bottle at me. “So why you offerin’ me this opportunity?”
What could we say? Because we know you’re too stupid to be afraid of anything? Because there’s nobody else to ask? “Well, we thought . . .”
Paul picked up the thread. “We could think of no one better. You have no ties to speak of—”
“And we like you.” My heart was thumping over what Paul might repeat from earlier, like my opinion that Henry’s own family—such as he had—wasn’t likely to miss him. That he might as well go. He had nothing here.
“Well.” Henry laid back and contemplated the pitched roof of the barn. Finally he raised up on his elbows. “Okay, then. I guess I wouldn’t mind gettin’ away from this shit hole for a while.”
It was as good as a handshake.
By the time I drove Paul home, it was going on midnight. We said our good nights, and I walked down their long tree-lined lane and turned toward Wakenda.
And there it was, taking up nearly a quarter of the sky between horizons. A big fist of light with a long tail that seemed to be made up of thousands upon thousands of stars. It looked like it had streaked across the sky at great speed and then frozen in place just for me.
The earth had passed through the tail of the comet and come out on the other side. Halley’s Comet was now to the west of us.
It was some time before I realized I was on my knees.
CHAPTER THREE
Time itself raced by and then slowed to a crawl again and again over the next eleven days. Every night that Paul and I were at the county library, we were astonished when Wid Albrecht told us it was closing time—it always seemed like we’d just got there.
Every meal with my parents, on the other hand, lasted fourteen years. They came out full bore against the trip—no surprise there. They imagined everything that could go wrong, from rattlesnake bites to getting lost in the desert with no water.
They weren’t exactly excited about me going with a blind boy and a known troublemaker either. Mom treated me to every detail she knew about Henry’s family, from his mother’s death to his dad’s becoming “a worse drunkard than Claude Hutchison,” from his sister Ellen’s kicking him out of her house to the legendary cat’s-ass-Fourth-of-July. And apparently, I was the only person in the world who didn’t know Henry was living in George Reimer’s barn because none of his other brothers or sisters would have him. Mom was thorough.
Like I wouldn’t have already been questioning the wisdom of including Henry, starting soon as I was sober. Once I’d latched on to the idea of getting away, though, nothing my folks said could change my mind about anything.
That’s not to say they couldn’t plant doubt. I had never been the superstitious type, but now I saw signs everywhere. If I found a penny on the ground, we were going to have a safe trip. If a blackbird flew across my path, I worried the rest of the day.
And every night, I sat on the porch and stared into the sky at the biggest good luck charm of them all. Even though nothing about it changed from moment to moment, to me it was as mesmerizing as a picture show.
Then we had clouds for an evening or two, and when the sky cleared, the comet looked half the size it had been. A few nights later, it was just one star a little bigger than the rest.
Then it was gone, and the sky looked almost empty without it. This once-in-a-lifetime spectacle was over, and the very thought of that made me mournful.
I moped around like somebody had died until I latched onto a notion that the comet was still there, just not where I could see it. I started to think of it as a big altar in the sky that would never really be gone. Hope and belief may not be the same thing, but I think sometimes they’re at least first cousins.
Whenever I was around the house that last week, Catherine stuck to me like a cocklebur. She didn’t ask about my going away or even mention it, but she looked up at me with huge eyes that made me feel like I was deserting her. Without a word, she—more than anyone else—reminded me I’d never been farther than eighty miles from home, and then I’d been with Dad. Anything beyond that was just something I’d read in a book.
And reading books to her became a nightly reminder that you can travel anywhere you want without ever leaving home. You can explore the world over, sitting in your safe home in your safe chair by a lamp with a good wick.
More than one night, I dreamed about stepping off into a canyon.
I tried to hide any whiff of fear from Paul, though. He had his own troubles. His mother was back east visiting relatives, and his father wasn’t speaking to him.
“Surely he said somethin’ right when you first told him,” I’d said.
“He laughed. Then he walked out of the room.”
“And he’s said nothin’ since? Not even ‘Pass the salt’?”
Paul shook his head. “I guess it’s supposed to be some sort of punishment. To tell you the truth, I wouldn’t much care . . .”
“Except what?”
“He laughed.”
What a mean bastard. I got Paul out of that house every minute I could.
When we made it to the library, Paul and I sat over maps and newspapers and magazines. Like when we studied the Ford’s manual, I read out loud and Paul asked questions. Those were powerful hours for me, and I wondered if Paul’s head was filling with as many pictures as mine. If we both saw the same way when we weren’t using our eyes.
We read about the Glidden Tours that had been going on since 1902 and about the two cars that drove the Oregon Trail in 1905. We read absolutely everything we could find about the transcontinental race that was run as part of the 1909 World’s Fair. It had passed through the countryside not far from us and carried on west all the way to Seattle. I decided we should follow that route for the most part.
Paul’s the one who suggested we leave June 1 because it was the first anniversary of the start to that race. I guess he wasn’t above looking for good luck charms either.
I made notes on everything we read and took them home to memorize. I made new
lists every day of what we’d need to take and what we’d need to find along the way. I was determined to be sure we were ready for anything.
We didn’t get Henry in on the planning, but I was only halfway sure he’d end up going when it came down to it. I ran into him one day buying a sandwich at Charlie’s and told him the date we’d decided on, and all he said was “Fine.”
I asked Paul one night what he wanted to do if Henry backed out, and he said, “I know it wouldn’t be easy on you as the only driver, but would you be willing to give up now?”
I believe my answer made some reference to the weather in hell. Already, I could barely stand to wake up in my own bed every morning.
Paul thought we ought to drive out to Reimers’ and give Henry a pep talk, but I said no. Henry would think we were begging, and you just don’t lay down and show your belly to the other dog like that. I said, “We’ll drive out the morning of the first, and he’ll either go or he won’t.”
If he did go, I knew I’d have to establish myself at the top of the pecking order right at the get-go, and that was a prospect none too attractive. Henry wasn’t exactly one to debate a topic—I’d seen him in plenty of schoolyard fights. But I figured what had to be done had to be done. Only one person could be in charge, and I was the only one who could be trusted.
As bad as I itched to get going, my determination took a big hit the night before we planned to leave. Mary Albrecht showed up at my folks’ door with a basket of food for the road, and it just about surprised the legs out from under me.
I wanted to grab her and kiss her. I wanted to ask her to wait for me. I wanted to tell her that Bill Wheaton was a kitten strangler and quite possibly a leper.
Instead, I said, “Why, thank you, Mary. That’s right nice of you,” and she giggled and ran back to the wagon waiting out front.
Then I went to my room and wondered why in the holy hell I was leaving the only place I knew.
Early morning on the first, I walked out to the Bricken farm under angry skies, but when I turned up the lane, the sun popped out and spotlighted that Model T like it was smiling at me. Definitely a good sign.
Paul was on the front porch with his bags, like he was waiting for a train running late. I helped tote his things to the car, and he got in. I looked from him to the house and figured there was no use asking if he had any good-byes to take care of.
The next act took place in front of my folks’ house when we went back to pick up my stuff. For a Wednesday, there were a whole lot of neighbors out tending their puny yards.
I was tightening the straps around my bedroll a third or fourth time when Catherine came running out of the house and cried, “John!” She put a dirty little wad in my hand, and it took me a minute to recognize it as the last remnants of her special blanket.
“Aren’t you gonna need that?”
She shook her head.
I picked her up and squeezed her, and she bolted into the house while a knot crowded my throat. What if that’s the last time I see her? I thought. Then, Stop that. Just stop.
I stared at the front door and reckoned there was no use in going inside. I’d fought all the necessary fights. That morning, Mom had made me breakfast, but I ate it in the silence of a prisoner’s last meal. She moved around the kitchen with a wordless droop about her, and Dad stared at a spot in the middle of the table while he drank a pot of coffee one cup at a time.
Neither of them even looked at me when I stood up and said, “I’m going now.”
I got the Model T started again, climbed in, and did not look over my shoulder as we drove off.
On the way out to the Reimer farm, I could not shut my yap for two seconds to save my soul. Nerves, I guess. I was rattling a mile a minute. “God, what a beautiful day! Just look at that sky!”
Paul’s voice came dry as toast. “Yes, I see a cloud shaped like a bunny.”
“Aw, Paul . . . I’m sorry.”
“I know you didn’t mean anything, all right? But if I hadn’t said something, you’d have caught yourself a few seconds later and started kicking yourself. I know about figures of speech. And I know you mean well when you apologize, but it’s insulting.”
“It’s insulting?”
He sighed. “When people are so careful and tiptoe around, being nicer to me than they’d be to anybody else . . . well, it’s almost as bad as when people ignore me.”
Oh. I wondered how long he’d been waiting to say something. “Okay,” I said. And then I did shut up. We were both probably glad about that.
This time, I drove up the Reimers’ lane and parked in front of the barn. Margaret was walking across the yard swinging a basket of eggs.
When I yelled, “Hey, Miz Reimer,” Paul nearly jumped out of his seat. I stepped onto the running board and asked low, “You wanna wait here?”
He nodded. Then he said, “No,” and started feeling his way out of the car. There were plenty of nerves to go around, I guess.
I scuffed my shoes in the gravel so he could hear. Surely he couldn’t be insulted by help like that.
I walked inside the barn and squinted in the dark. “Henry?” I called.
“Up here.”
Nothing more came, so I climbed the ladder to the loft.
Henry was dressed but barely awake. He’d slept in his clothes, would be my bet.
“We’re ready to go. You with us, or you stayin’?”
He squinted at me. “What’s a matter with you? I told you I was goin’, didn’t I?” He stood and rolled a feather pillow with no case into the grimy quilt that covered his pallet. Then he pulled a metal box out of the hay nearby and checked inside. I caught a glint of gunmetal, and a jolt went through me.
I had thought about bringing a gun. I liked the idea of having one handy as much as I hated the thought of using it. But Dad had settled that question earlier in the week when he’d seen me eyeing the gun case and reminded me that none of the firearms in his house belonged to me.
I climbed down the ladder and went outside.
Henry followed me out with the metal box and a bedroll I hoped did not contain lice. He dumped both in the rear seat and jumped behind the wheel, pushing at levers and pedals. “How do ya start this thing?”
I yanked him by the shirt. “Cut it out! It ain’t a toy!”
He was out of the Ford and in my face in the time it takes to blink. “You want me to bust you one?”
Here it was. Right now. We stood chest to chest, staring each other down. I tried to look braver than I felt.
Paul stepped in and pushed us apart. “Now, come on. We can find someone for you to fight along the way, if your hearts are set on it, but surely you don’t need to be fighting each other.”
Henry turned his back, and I was glad he didn’t see Paul’s hands shaking.
“Well, I believe I’ll drive since I’m the only one who knows how.”
“At this time,” Paul said and then felt his way into the front seat.
“Oh, and I gotta ride in back?” Henry threw out. “How’m I supposed to learn how to drive from back there?”
“It’s Paul’s car.”
Henry blew. “Oh, and we’re jes’ the help, is that it? He rides like a king, and we do all the work. Is that it?”
Paul stepped out, fished in his front trouser pocket, and came out with a quarter. “Fine, Henry. Heads, I sit up front. Tails, you do.” He flipped the coin into the air, caught it, and slapped it against his right wrist. “Heads,” he pronounced and climbed back into the car.
I fought not to laugh and walked around front. “Ready?” I cranked the car to life, then folded myself behind the wheel and tossed the crank over my shoulder. “We’re leavin’. You goin’?”
It was hard work being so nonchalant. Paul looked like he’d shatter if anyone blew a breath on him.
Henry threw a look toward the house.
“We’ll wait if you need to go say somethin’.”
He shrugged. “Oh, they’ll figure it out one of these
days.” He vaulted into the backseat.
I twisted around. “You haven’t told ’em?”
Henry looked past the cornfield across the road. “They won’t care.”
I took that in before I turned forward and released the brake.
For the next forty-five minutes, Henry leaned over the back of my seat and fired off one question after another.
Several times, I said, “Paul?” since he knew more about the Ford than I did.
But Henry would jump in and ask something else, like Paul wasn’t there. I wondered if it was punishment for putting him in the backseat or if Henry intended to ignore the blind boy all the way to Yellowstone and back.
Then Henry felt like he had enough information to start hounding me for a turn at the wheel.
First I told him I wasn’t tired yet, then later that we should try to make some distance before we stopped.
Finally, Paul offered some help. “You two are supposed to describe the countryside to me. How can you do that if all you talk about is the car?”
Henry said, “Fine, then. I guess I’ll take the first turn at that.”
Enough time went by to make me wonder what he was up to.
Then he shouted, “Tree! Tree! Tree!”
My butt muscles lifted me in the seat.
Paul grabbed the brim of his hat.
Henry was leaned over between us. “Dirt, rock, dirt, tree, fart!”
I sped up to leave the foul cloud behind.
Next thing that was said, we all went, “Humph!” I tried to hold a good thought, but it was hard to ignore a bad limp the Ford had developed. I stopped it and walked back to see that a rock pretending to be a hunk of dirt had punctured the left rear tire and tube.
We had made it all of eight miles.
When the three of us were standing in the road, I said, “Well, I guess I’ll jack her up and put the spare on, then.”
Henry snorted. “Oh, like you know how. Mr. Au-to-mo-bile. What if you get it on wrong and we turn over and git kilt? What if we have another flat before we can get this’n fixed?”
Seeing America Page 4
