by Jim Dodge
I pulled over immediately. At the rate I was going, I’d be lucky to make Texas by Christmas – if I made it at all. I was insane. Out of my mind. Why kid myself? I’d been beating my head on the steering wheel, watching a naked little orange man running around working on jigsaw puzzles. Worse, I’d talked to him. The night before I’d died in a whirl of starlight and danced with a cactus to music I couldn’t remember. The night before that I’d stolen a car and crossed a man who was at that very moment probably rounding up a posse of well-paid goons who would be grossly pleased to turn me into a shopping bag full of charred meat and bone chips. By any objective standard of sanity, I wasn’t. Not even within hailing distance, not if facts were faced and no bullshit allowed. But even granting that I was totally flipped out, maybe this was only a temporary condition, the result of drugs, exhaustion, stress, dislocation, and a weak psychic constitution going in. Maybe I didn’t even know what crazy was, in its deeply twisted forms and dark forces. Maybe I wanted to be crazy so I wouldn’t have to go through the normal rationalizations and self-justifications of unfettered indulgence. And thus my speed-racing mind babbled on until I finally gave up and pulled back onto the road. If it really got bad, I could always pound my head on the wheel and try another vision. That I’d seen the little orange man secretly cheered me; vision belonged to pilgrimage, and despite all my romantic notions, I’m a classicist at heart. I was disappointed, however, in the quality of the vision – neither heavenly nor beatific, more on the order of grotesque slapstick. Maybe I should’ve pounded my brain with something heavier. I wondered what sort of vision a solid whack from a ballpeen hammer might produce, or what undreamable cosmic insight might accompany the blow from a wrecking ball. I wondered how much it cost to rent a crane for thirty seconds. I wondered if the orange man had been a real pilgrim’s vision, or just a leftover from last night’s acid feast, the deluded projection of spiritual hunger. I wondered what spirit was. I wondered what I actually wanted out of all this. I wanted to get there, wherever there was. I wanted to deliver the gift. I wanted to lie naked against Kacy and have her turn sleepily and snuggle as I ran my hand along her fine warm flank. I wondered where she was and what she was thinking, then I wondered why I was delivering Harriet’s gift to the Big Bopper when both were dead, gone, and done with. Was it because I couldn’t deliver my own gift to the living? Babble babble babble on into Arizona. When I looked in the rearview mirror again my eyes didn’t look so crazy, just tired and confused. I needed a break.
I got it on a long stretch of empty highway about five miles out of Quartzsite, Arizona, when I saw a figure walking east on the shoulder of the road, back turned toward me. True, I was tired of listening to myself and felt a sudden desire for company, but there was something in the walk, in the slope of the shoulders, the sense of weight, the trudge, the isolation against the landscape, something indefinite but definitely wrong that made me come off the gas. When I was fifty yards away, down to a roll, I saw it was a woman. She wasn’t hitching. She didn’t even glance up as I passed.
It’s always tricky when it’s a woman alone in a lonely place and you’re a man; no matter how noble your intentions, you have to be considered a threat – there’s just too much ugly proof you are. I pulled off about seventy yards past her and got out. She walked closer and then stopped. She was short, chubby, in her early thirties by my guess, with messed auburn hair cut short, wearing faded jeans and a wrinkled grey blouse clinging where sweat had soaked through. At that distance I couldn’t see her eyes, but her face looked dull and puffy. It wasn’t something wrong that I’d noticed, but that something was missing: no purse. Five miles from the nearest town, no broken-down cars on the shoulder, and no purse. I felt a sickening conviction that she’d been raped or mugged. I couldn’t think of anything to say, so I waved, smiled, and leaned against the Caddy’s left-rear fin, waiting for her to offer some sign, but she stopped and stood still, watching me. I didn’t feel fear from her, no wariness at all; just fatigue.
‘You all right?’ I tried to put into my voice the truth of my concern, but it sounded clumsy even to me.
Her chin lifted half an inch. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. It sounded like the truth.
So I told her the truth, too. ‘Well, I was asking myself the same question about forty miles back down the road, and I didn’t know if I’m all right either. But I am headed for Texas, and I’d be glad to give you a ride anywhere between here and Sabine Pass, with no come-on, no hassle. If you’d prefer, I’d be glad to call you a cab in the next town to pick you up – even pay the fare if you’re short – or call a friend to come pick you up. But if you’d rather just walk on along, say the word and I’m gone. Or if there’s some other way I can help, I’ll see what I can do.’ This had turned out to be a speech, but I was having trouble keeping the truth simple.
She walked five steps toward me. ‘I’d appreciate a ride into town. Thank you.’ She said this with a sad formality, as if manners were all that remained of her dignity.
I went around to the passenger’s side. ‘Do you want to sit up front with the idiots or would you rather sit in the back and be chauffeured like a princess on her way to the casino for an afternoon of baccarat and dashing young men?’
She smiled thinly to show she appreciated my attempt. She had lovely eyes, the dark, lustrous brown of raw chocolate. I wasn’t an expert, but I was sure she’d been crying. ‘The front will be fine,’ she said, ‘with the idiots.’
I ushered her into the front seat and said, ‘I know where you’re going, but where are you coming from?’
‘Same place. Quartzsite. That’s where I live.’
‘Well then,’ I asked, irrepressible, ‘where’ve you been?’
‘Changing my mind,’ she answered, her voice husky.
‘Yes indeed, I know what you mean. When I’m not changing mine, it’s changing me. We’ll have to discuss the importance of change in sustaining equilibrium as well as its relation to timing, knowledge, spirit, and the meaning of life. And what love and music have to do with the purpose of being. When we get those figured out, we can tackle the tough ones.’
She looked at me sharply, a flash of irritation, a hint of contempt. ‘I have two young kids. Boys. Allard’s seven; Danny’s almost six.’
Her name was Donna Walsh. Besides the two boys, she had a husband, Warren, who’d lost his job in the Oklahoma oil fields and finally joined the Air Force in desperation. He was learning aircraft mechanics so he’d have a trade when he got out. He was overseas, Germany, and she and the boys were staying in his uncle’s trailer in Quartzsite.
She’d fallen in love with Warren her last year of high school and slept with him the night after the senior prom because she was tired of making him stop when she didn’t want him to. She got pregnant, and in Oklahoma if you got pregnant, you got married.
Warren had left for Germany six months ago, in April. This was only a year’s assignment, then he’d have another year of service in the States, and after his discharge he’d get a job with one of the big airlines as a jet mechanic. Warren could do just about anything with machines, she claimed, especially engines. She wished he was home to fix the ’55 Ford pick-up, which had leaked so much oil the engine burned out. Repairs would run $200 to fix it, but Johnny Palmer at the Texaco said it wasn’t worth fixing. Not that it mattered, really, since Warren could only send $150 a month, and that had to cover everything. Tech Sergeants didn’t make much, but like Warren said, learning jet mechanics was an investment in the future.
Warren was basically a good person, Donna said, but it was a lot of responsibility and pressure to get married so young, with two babies right away. And when he got laid off in the oil fields, he’d started drinking too much, and he only hit her when he was drunk. Not that he beat on her much – she didn’t want to give that impression. It had only been three or four times tops, and once she’d asked for it by nagging him about finding a job, and he really had been trying.
Another time it w
as just one of those things: she was cooking dinner and little Danny was three and he wouldn’t quit crying and it was hot that evening, over a 100° easy, and Danny just wouldn’t stop and Warren had drunk way too much beer and started screaming at him to shut up, which only made Allard start in crying too; and Warren had slapped Danny so hard it sent him flying against the dinette, and when he did that Donna didn’t even think, just swung on him with what she happened to have in her hand, a frozen package of Bel-Air corn, and it opened Warren’s left eyebrow along its whole length – he still had the scar – but he didn’t make a peep, even with the blood running all over his face, he just stood up real slow, pushed her against the fridge and started hitting her in the body with his fists, hitting her hard in the stomach and ribs and breasts until she passed out.
He didn’t come back for a week after that, a week in which it sometimes hurt her so bad to breathe she’d hold her breath till she got dizzy, a week when it was all she could do to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for the boys. She’d called around to Warren’s family and friends, but nobody had seen him. When he came back he was pale and both his eyes were black-and-blue; he’d needed nine stitches to close the cut. He was sober when he came back, and he was sorry. It was the only time she’d ever seen him cry. She made him promise never to hit the boys like that again.
That was the last time he’d beat on her till just before he’d finally given up job-hunting and enlisted. She was asleep when she heard him stagger against the table, then lurch toward the pull-out sofa bed they shared in the front room. He loomed over her. She was lying on her back looking up at him, but there was enough glare from the porch light shining through the uncurtained window behind him that his face was hidden in shadows. She could smell the whiskey.
‘It’s all your fault,’ he said quietly.
Donna saw the blow coming but couldn’t move. He hit her in the belly, doubling her up. She couldn’t breathe or scream or kick. Paralyzed, terrified, she watched his fist ball up again tighter and tighter till she thought the knuckles were going to pop out of the skin. She thought she was going to die. She heard what a scream sounds like when you don’t have the breath to scream. But he didn’t hit her again. He hit himself square in the stomach, right where he’d hit her, and began to methodically beat on his own face. Gasping, she inched across the bed until she could throw out an arm and reach him. He stopped at her touch. His fist opened and he reached down and touched her hair, lightly, and then down to the base of her neck, gently massaging as she choked for air. Still rubbing her neck, he pulled the sheet back slowly and lay down beside her and took her in his arms. She was naked; he was fully clothed. They held each other tightly, silently, for a long time. Donna said it was the most intimate she’d ever felt with him, and was aroused even as she cried. She pressed her thighs along his legs and wiggled in closer, but he had fallen asleep or passed out.
Warren always sent the money every month with the same short letter. ‘Hi. How are you? I’m working on B-52s. Keeps me busy. You boys mind your momma.’ He’d called on the Fourth of July. Mostly he’d talked to the boys, who were so thrilled they just jabbered away about everything. When she got the phone back, she couldn’t think of anything to say, so she just said they all missed him. She wanted to tell him how much she missed him, and how, but the boys were yammering and tugging at her and he was too far away. She’d written him every week till that phone call. Now it was about every two weeks. It was so hard to say what you felt when you couldn’t look at each other.
She told me all this as we sat beside the road and, after a while, drove the five miles to town. She spoke in a husky monotone, staring down the highway as if she were trying to describe a picture she’d seen as a child. She needed to talk. If you can’t believe she’d open up to a total stranger – a man at that – well, it stunned me, too. Stunned me. I sat there with speed racing in my blood and didn’t say a word; just listened. Sometimes it’s easier to be honest with a stranger, someone you know you’ll never see again. Safer. No obligation but the blind trust opening the moment.
As we pulled into Quartzsite I told her I was starved and offered to buy her a late lunch if she wasn’t in a hurry. She said she had to be at the trailer by 4:30, when the boys got home from school. Usually they were home by 3:00, but today the lower grades were putting up Halloween decorations.
We stopped at Joe’s Burger Palace and ate in the car. We picked at our burgers in silence for a few minutes, a comfortable silence, then made small talk about life in Quartzsite. But small talk seemed to diminish whatever had passed between us, and after a few meaningless exchanges she shifted around on the seat to face me and told me, without introduction, what had happened that morning. As she spoke, her voice gathered force, but it barely escaped the undertow of weariness in her tone.
‘I got up at six like always, then woke up the boys and got them dressed. Danny couldn’t find his blue socks. They’re his favorites. He couldn’t remember where he’d left them. I told him it wasn’t going to hurt him to wear his brown ones for a day, and he started crying. Kids can get so strange about clothes, like they’re little pieces of their lives. So I hunted for his socks and finally found them under his pillow. Under his pillow, can you believe that? They were so filthy I think I found them by smell. It reminded me everything was dirty, and I had to do the laundry.
‘I got Danny’s socks on him and then made their oatmeal and poured their milk. Allard was telling Danny all about skeletons and ghosts and how ghosts can just wooooosshh at you out of nowhere, and when he was woooosshhhing his hand to show what he meant he knocked over his milk. I wiped off the table and was about to get what had dripped on the floor when I smelled something burning: I’d put the oatmeal pan back on the burner but hadn’t turned it off like I thought. The oatmeal was charred to the pan. I filled the pan with water and some baking soda to soak, but the smell of burnt oatmeal had filled up the trailer. By then the boys were going to be late for school, so I got them all gathered up and figured I’d take care of the mess when I got back.
‘I walked the boys to school, which is about eight blocks, but when I got back to the trailer I couldn’t open the door. I don’t mean it was stuck or I’d forgetten the key – I just could not open it and go back inside to the smell of burnt oatmeal and spilled milk and dirty laundry. Physically couldn’t. So I turned around and started walking.
‘At first I thought I’d go to Curry’s market a couple of streets down, but I walked right past it – just as well,’ cause my purse was in the trailer. Then I thought I’d go by the old Baptist church, but when I saw it, with all the stained glass and heavy doors, I didn’t want to go in. I walked on past the church and just kept going, know what I mean? Not thinking about anything in particular except how good it felt to be moving in the clear air. Just walking. When I reached the highway and saw the broken white lines going on so far in the distance that they seemed to turn solid, I felt happy. I kept walking. Two or three cars stopped but I shook my head. I wanted to keep going.
‘I know I’m a little overweight but as I walked along I started feeling lighter and lighter and lighter, like the wind could pick me up and fly me away, the way I felt it could when I was a little girl. Then it all collapsed in me and I started crying.’
Donna blinked rapidly as she remembered that moment, jaw quivering, but there were no tears. She shook her head. ‘But you know how it ended. Here I am. But I walked a long way down the highway thinking how every promise gets broken one way or another, how every hope you have is hoped for so hard and so long it’s almost like praying, praying so you can believe in something, but it never turns out that way. I’ll tell you what really got me blubbering, was that I knew I was going to turn around, cross that damn road, and come back. Knew I couldn’t leave. I’m ashamed to admit it, but there’s been a few nights when I felt like the best thing to do was get the butcher knife out of the kitchen and go stab the boys in their sleep, kill them before they found out what happens t
o dreams. Is that sick? But you can’t do that any more than you could let them come home to an empty house with Daddy in Germany and Momma run away crazy. They’re too real to hurt like that, too real to escape. So I’m coming back because I don’t really have a choice. I didn’t understand it, but I made a choice with Allard and Danny. I’m going back and opening that goddamn door of that trailer and walk into the smoked-in smell of scorched oatmeal and curdled milk and filthy socks. Now that’s grim.’
‘I admire your courage,’ I told her.
Donna shook her head. ‘If I could walk away and be happy, I’d still be going. But something that wrong gnawing on my heart, I could never be happy. Not that I’m happy now, with no break from the boys and the walls pressing in and a husband I don’t know about, but this way there’s a chance things’ll work out. Maybe not, but I have to do what I think’s right and hope it is, I guess.’
‘I hope so, too,’ I said, ‘and I think it is. But if Warren ever hits you again, I’d get out from under. No maybes. Just leave.’
‘Yeah,’ she said, ‘I told myself that.’
‘Promise yourself.’
‘What about you?’ Donna asked. ‘You coming or going?’ She was deflecting the pressure of the question, not begging it, and she’d had enough pressure for the day. So, still sitting in the Caddy, our half-eaten burgers long cold, I told Donna what I was up to, my own mess and now this journey. I didn’t mention Eddie getting run over – it wasn’t necessary – nor that the car was stolen. I did tell her about dancing with a cactus and the little orange man and the upwelling babble in my brain. In the course of explaining, I was taken with a strong intuition that she’d appreciate Harriet’s letter, so I asked. She thought about it a moment and said she would. I dug it out of the glovebox and handed it over.
