Apprehensions and Other Delusions (15 page)

“Tough,” her boss said after an initial show of concern. “Better rent a car tomorrow and head back. I’ll tell Stan to take over for you. Hey, and drive carefully, won’t you?”

At another time Ruth might have felt touched by this, but now it struck her badly, and she bristled. “If you didn’t think I could handle this, why did you ... ?”

“Hey, kid, easy,” Randy interrupted. “I didn’t mean anything like that. Jeez, you better get some rest. You sound worn out.”

“I am worn out,” she admitted, feeling tears start at the back of her eyes. “It wasn’t very nice.”

“Shit, no,” Randy said with more feeling.

“I’ll call you tomorrow before I leave. Tell Stan I’ve already got the material from Sacramento”—she realized her papers were still in her car; she would have to phone the police and find out where it had been taken—“and the man to see at County Planning is a Mister Gafrick.”

“Good work.” Randy was clearly trying to help her feel better. “I’ll tell him. He might be able to catch a shuttle out of Fresno. It could save us a little time.”

Ruth wanted to ask him why he had made her drive when he was willing to pay for a shuttle airline for Stan, but the words caught in her throat and all she could do was sigh, hoping that she could hold off her tears until she was off the phone.

“Well, we’ll see you soon, okay? If you can rent a compact, do it. I want to keep the costs down if I can. And, Ruth, take your time getting back. You’ve had quite a time of it, I can tell. So I won’t expect you tomorrow or Friday. Take your time and get steady. We’ll arrange for this to go on your sick pay.”

His tone was indulgent, but Ruth did her best to accept the offer gracefully. “Thanks a lot,” she said, knowing what was expected of her. By the time she put the receiver down, she could feel wetness on her face.

She called the Highway Patrol and requested that her briefcase be brought to the motel. It was in the trunk of her car, and she said she would need it in the morning. The woman who spoke with her assured her it would be done.

Last, Ruth called the front desk and asked that she not be disturbed. Then she took one of the capsules Doctor Forbes had prescribed, and in her pea-green motel room gave herself over to oblivion.

The Ford Escort was the cheapest car available from the local rent-a-car, and as she started to drive it, she realized that it did not have the performance she was used to from her Volvo. Driving made her nervous, and she kept to the slow lane as she made her way south toward Sacramento. Her hands were sweating although the day was cool, and from time to time she had to wipe them on her skirt.

Interstate 5 was mesmerizing, stretching out across the San Joaquin Valley. Ruth had driven it before, but this time there seemed to be many extra miles added to the road. She kept her speed at fifty-five and ignored the huge trucks barreling along at higher speeds. She promised herself that she would not stop for lunch until she reached Coalinga. Then she would take the time to have a good solid meal and collect herself for the last leg of the journey across the hills to 101.

Two Highway Patrol cars shot by and Ruth flinched at the sight, hating to look at the road ahead in case there was another accident. She tried singing to herself—the Escort had no radio—but her voice sounded thin and cracked, so she fell silent again.

She could not recall the last thirty miles before Coalinga. The off-ramp came as a surprise and she nearly overshot it, blinking at the overpass as if it were a mirage. She decided that she had been driving too long, and gratefully pulled into the parking lot of Harris Ranch, resolving to dawdle over her food, giving herself enough time to calm down. She had heard of highway hypnosis, but until now had not experienced it, and it frightened her.

It was less than ten minutes after she left the restaurant that Ruth saw the animal lying beside the highway, drawn up into a protective half-ball in a last futile attempt to keep its guts in its shattered body.

Ruth was assailed by nausea, the excellent meal she had so recently eaten threatening to spill out of her. She stared ahead blindly, her face ashen, her breath fast and shallow. What was the animal? A cat? A raccoon? She had not seen it long enough to glimpse more than the destruction and dark striped fur. The headache, which had retreated to a painful itch behind her eyes, now gripped her skull in its vise.

It was all she could do to hold her car on the road. Dust was blowing from the west, reducing visibility with the tenacity of fog. The highway surface was made slippery by the sand, and she could not be certain how far she had come.

When had the wind come up? Ruth could not recall. It had to be her headache or the memory of the dead animal that had distracted her, but for how long? What had happened in the last—how many?—miles? She was not at all sure where she was. Had she taken the off-ramp to San Luis Obispo? Was she still on Interstate 5?
Where was she?
The question echoed in her mind in a shriek. She looked at the clock on the dashboard and saw that it was after three. She should be almost home by now, but instead she was caught here in the blowing dust.

She saw dimly another sign, an off-ramp beyond that, and after a moment of hesitation she took it, hoping that it would bring her quickly to a town where she could make a few phone calls and find out how far she had strayed.

Immediately adjacent to the off-ramp there was a service station, but as she drove up Ruth saw that it was closed. She pulled into the dust-covered parking area, her tires slithering for purchase on the asphalt. She opened the door of the Escort and felt the bite of the storm. There was a telephone booth not more than thirty feet away. She walked toward it, her purse held to shelter her face.

The telephone was not connected, and where there had been phone books, the securing chains hung empty.

With a cry of vexation, Ruth flung herself out of the phone booth and struggled back to her car. She was moving against the wind now, and there was little protection. Dust made her blink, and when she sneezed her whole face hurt.

Back in the car, she lowered her head against the arch of the steering wheel and sobbed. Within a few minutes she was on the verge of hysteria. Everything she had endured for the last two days caught up with her at last. She was ashamed at her lack of control but powerless to remedy it. Sometime in the last forty-eight hours something crucial had deserted her and left her rudderless. The minutes and hours she could not remember, the panic that welled in her at this admission. Her body was shaking as with palsy. She looked, appalled, at her hands, which no longer seemed to be part of her.

Where am I now? Where?

As her high sobs dwindled, she tried to make a sensible decision, but was capable of little more than restarting the car. I have to get back to the freeway, she told herself, her thoughts moving as delicately as an invalid with a walker. I have to find the exit for San Luis Obispo.

Once in motion, she managed to feel her way through the blowing dust to the overpass and the on-ramp leading north. She was certain that, wherever she was, she had come too far south. But now she was determined to find her way back.

Driving was even more difficult than when she had been southbound, but she kept her hands locked on the steering wheel and her attention on the road ahead. She blinked often, as if that might clear the obscured windshield.

The street was almost empty and most of the storefronts were boarded up. Litter blew in the gutters and trash stood uncollected in overflowing bags at curbside. The stop sign canted at two o’clock, token of a mishap long past.

Ruth braked, staring around her.

It was night, late night by the look of it, and the few operating streetlights revealed that most of the block was deserted. Her dashboard clock said one twenty-seven; she stared at it for some little time, listening to her engine idle, refusing to believe what she saw. On the passenger seat there was a gasoline receipt from a Union station in Buttonwillow. She refused to touch it, fearing that it might be real. A quick look at the gas gauge showed that the tank was almost empty. Presumably she had driven more than two hundred miles since she left Buttonwillow, if the tank had been full then.

As she peered down the side street, she saw three motorcycles drawn up near a small metal-roofed building. The machines were large—Ruth did not recognize the symbols emblazoned on them—but their very strangeness added to her apprehension.

“I’d welcome a Hell’s Angel,” she said aloud, giggling in a way that made the fine hairs on her neck rise. “God. Oh, God.”

A page of newspaper, open as a scudding sail, flew down the street, twisting and moving until it wrapped itself around a lamppost. Something metal clanged, perhaps a garbage can, perhaps a door. Its echo rattled off the buildings.

On a billboard angled precariously over the intersection ahead, Ruth saw enormous letters advertising Spring cigarettes. The whole thing was faded and there were slogans and symbols spray-painted over the face of it, but it was still possible to make out two faint figures walking in a meadow, long since turned from green to gray-brown. Ruth stared at the billboard for some time as if she hoped to learn something from it.

“I’ve got to find a phone. Ruthie, you’ve got to call someone.” She said it sternly but in a girlish voice, the way she used to talk herself into doing her homework, a quarter of a century ago.

She put her car into gear once more and drove down the wider street. She looked for a lighted storefront or a business open at this time of night—a 7-Eleven or a gas station or a motel—and was dismayed when after several blocks she found nothing like that. True, the decaying brick buildings were behind her and now there were houses, vintage 1925, with faded paint and weed-grown front yards. Occasionally there were cars parked on the street, but nothing was moving. The houses were dark. She saw no one.

She did her best to ignore the wail of panic that was forming between her mind and her throat.

When, fifteen minutes later, she reached the outlying small farms beyond the empty city, she noticed a church with a light on over a discreet and old-fashioned billboard:

Lodi Methodist Church

“Learning to See through Others’ Eyes”

11-12 Sunday Morning

Wednesday 8 p.m. Discussion and Prayer

Lodi? The name came off the sign and hung in the air before her. Lodi was east of Interstate 5, and certainly north of Buttonwillow. Had she been driving in the wrong direction for most of the night? And why had it taken her so long to reach this place? Where had she been before that?

Reluctantly she pulled into the gravel-paved parking lot and stopped. She sat for some time, not thinking, not permitting herself to speculate. She decided that she needed to rest, to calm down. Obviously she was still in shock of some sort and the stress was causing her to do irrational things.

What things?
demanded a treacherous voice within her.
What have you done that you can’t remember?

“I won’t think about that now,” Ruth said aloud in her most sensible tone, the one she usually reserved for business meetings. “The most important thing is to get back to San Luis Obispo and find a doctor. Just in case.” She could not bring herself to wonder in case
what
...

Then, as she sought to avoid such probing, she drifted into unrestful sleep.

“Are you all right?” The knocking on her window was louder and the voice was raised almost to a shout.

Dazed, Ruth opened her eyes and tried to recall where she was. Scraps came back to her, each serving to make her more distressed. Carefully she rolled down the window. “I’m sorry,” she began, not sure what she was sorry for.

The man standing by her rented Escort was over fifty and appeared to be both benign and ineffective. “Is there something wrong?”

Ruth cleared her throat. “I was driving late last night. I ... got lost.”

The man nodded. “That’s the usual reason strangers show up on this road. Most travelers stick to the freeway and bypass us entirely.” He stepped back and made a kindly gesture with his knobby hands. “Would you like a cup of coffee? We don’t have much in the way of breakfast, but I can probably scare up a stale doughnut, if you want one.” He smiled. “I’m George Howell. I’m the minister to this flock.” This was said with a self-deprecating smile that was clearly designed to put her at ease.

“I’m Ruth Donahue,” she told him automatically. “I’m from San Luis Obispo and I was trying to find the way home ... yesterday.” She opened the door and stepped out.

“These side roads do get confusing,” he agreed as he led the way to the side door of the church. “I was here for more than two years before I really learned my way around.” He slipped a key into the lock, saying as the door swung inward, “There was a time we never closed the church, but these days, what with vandals and all, well ...”

“Is it very bad?” asked Ruth, trying to make conversation with this mild-faced man while she worked up some explanation that he might accept.

“There have been problems. The cops try to hold the worst of them down, but they can’t do everything. And you know how difficult it can be to establish some kind of order in a district like this. We’re on the edge of things.”

To her horror, Ruth laughed.

If the minister took offense, he made no sign of it. “I’ve heard that there have been problems in other places, too. I guess you’ve had your share in San Luis Obispo.” He had led her to a pantry adjoining the kitchen, a large, featureless room designed to handle the occasional church dinner or wedding reception. A huge black stove squatted on the other side of the half-open door, six burners and a grill showing on its top.

“Sometimes,” Ruth said. She found that the sight of the kitchen was making her hungry. God, how many meals have I missed? she wondered, her thoughts slipping away from the question.

“The doughnuts are in here somewhere,” George Howell said to her as he opened the old-fashioned cooler. “My secretary is always getting me things to eat, and I can’t convince her that it isn’t necessary.” He found the bag and pulled it out. “Not much left, but you take all of them if you like. She’ll bring me something else at ten-thirty.” He gestured toward the low table under the window. “Sit down and I’ll make some coffee.”