Earthly Possessions (9 page)

“But—” Mama said.

That was all, though.

I should have refused. I wasn’t helpless, after all. I should have said, “I’m sorry, I can’t fit you in. I never planned to take a second person on this trip.” But I didn’t. He was sitting next to me, and the leathery, foreign smell of his skin called up so much love that I seemed to be damaged by it. Everything he said was peculiarly clear, as if spoken in crackling cold air. It really didn’t occur to me to turn him down.

I woke with a sense of being rocked and shaken. I sat up and looked around me. The sun was so bright it made my eyes ache, but I could see that we were parked in a marshy, straw-colored field. Jake was at the wheel, muttering something. Two men in denim jackets were flinging themselves against the rear of the car. “Now!” one shouted, and I felt the thud of their bodies. The wheels spun. “Dunderheads,” said Jake, shutting off the ignition. “If those two would get together, for once …”

“What’s going on?” I asked him.

He gave me a slit-eyed look and got out of the car. “What we need is that there tractor,” I heard him telling the men. “All you got to do is bring it up behind and give her a shove.”

“Tractor? What tractor?” one man asked. “You talking about that yonder? Why, she’s just a little old twelve-horse thing my wife uses for the kitchen garden. You think we’re
going to push you out with that? And there’s no way of getting in behind you; this bank is rising up too steep to your rear.”

“Pull her from ahead then, I don’t care.”

“Pull her neither, you’re looking at a toy. That thing don’t even tote manure good.”

“Look,” said Jake, “I got twenty dollars says you can do it if you work it right.”

Through the rear window, I saw him dealing out money to the man in the red plaid cap. Little puffs of mist were coming from their mouths. “In
ones?”
the man said.

“Money’s money.”

“Well, I reckon we could give her a try. Come on, Cade.”

He and Cade walked off across the field. Jake got back in the car, bringing cool air with him, and I shivered and folded my arms across my chest. I felt dislocated; I had somehow lost a whole night. “Where are we, anyway?” I asked.

“If you would take a look out the window, you’d see we’re in a wheat field.”

“I mean, how’d we get here?”

“Guess I fell asleep at the wheel,” Jake said. He started rubbing his chin, which was bristly by now. “Fact is, I must have,” he said, “but it don’t make sense. I am known for not sleeping, see. I just don’t need sleep like most people do. At a party or something I can stay up all night and be on about my business in the morning same as usual, stay up the next night too if I’ve a mind to. Gets lonesome, sometimes. Everyone sacked out and me awake. But there you are: I was just driving along not thinking a thing and next I know I’m in a wheat field. Middle of the night, no one about; and you were just dead to the world. All there was to do was go on back to sleep. Had me some wait this morning too till I seen these fellows come stomping through the oats.”

“Wheat,” I said, though to be honest I couldn’t tell one from the other. I squinted out the window at the yellow weeds.
I saw the man in the cap driving toward us on a little green tractor, while Cade walked beside him swinging a few loops of rope. “Watch, now,” Jake said. “That baby’ll get us out quick as a cricket, wait and see. I been in lots worse spots than this.” He rolled down his window and shouted, “Hitch her up, guys, then take her nice and easy. Don’t pull too sudden.”

The men ignored him and went about their work. Jake didn’t know how to deal with them, I thought. I was ashamed to be found in his company and I scrunched down lower in my seat, so I didn’t see them hitching us. I felt it, though. I had been in this car so long it was like a second skin to me. I felt, or thought I felt, their knotty hands fumbling at the bumper, running a raspy rope through and tying it. Then Cade came up to Jake’s window. “You going to let the lady out?” he asked.

Jake thought a minute. “Naw,” he said.

“Give you a mite less weight.”

“Her door is busted,” said Jake. “Never mind all that.” He turned the key in the ignition. Cade stepped back, and the tractor increased the sound of its motor to a high, complaining hum. I felt the rope go tight. Our tires whizzed. We moved ahead a foot or two. Then we jerked and I heard a
ping!
and the car came to a halt. I sat up straighter and looked out the window, just in time to see our front bumper go trundling across the field. “Jesus,” Jake said.

The tractor stopped and the driver slid off. The two men returned, scratching their heads. Jake got out of the car and went to join them. Now all three were scratching their heads, and frowning at where the bumper used to be. “This here is a genuine, nineteen fifty-three Woolworth’s,” said Jake. The men nodded, as if making notes. “And look at these tires, slick as a garden hose.” He kicked one. I felt the jarring. There was a long, solemn silence.

Then: “Well, I tell you,” the tractor driver said. “I feel real bad about your bumper.”

“Wasn’t
your
fault,” said Jake.

“But I’m wondering could we push her now. See, she’s out of that slant some, you notice? Nose ain’t pointed to the ground so. Maybe the lady could take the wheel and then us three could push.”

Jake came back and stuck his head in the window. “I don’t drive,” I said before he could ask. “You know where the gas pedal is.”

“No, I don’t, and what’s worse I have no notion where the brake is.”

“Sure you do,” Jake said. He got in and started the engine again. He pointed to the floor: gas, brake. “But lay off of the brake,” he told me, “till you get to that there road up ahead. See it? You can’t see it. Little farm road. Gravel. We’re going to push her over there instead of the highway. There’s no
way
she can climb that bank to the highway. Okay, slide over.”

He got out. I slid over. “She ain’t too much of a driver,” Jake said, and the men grunted. I saw now that they got along fine; the three of them stood shoulder to shoulder, resigned, watching my white-knuckled hands on the wheel. Cade said, “Don’t be scared, lady, just give it to her slow.”

“All right,” I said.

“Won’t do to have her spin herself a rut.”

“Of course not.”

They walked off to the rear, out of sight. I felt them settling behind the car. “Okay,” Jake called, “got your foot on the brake?”

I nodded.

“What?”

“Yes.”

“Shift to Drive. D.”

I shifted. The motor changed its tone.

“Now the gas.”

I pressed the gas pedal. The men threw their weight
against the fender. The wheels whined and spun. Then slowly, bumpily, the car inched ahead. It picked up speed. It got free of the men, it bounded over ruts and boulders, scratching its way through the weeds, leaving a flattened yellow ribbon behind. I looked in the mirror and saw the ribbon and the men running down it, waving and shouting. But I had forgotten to look in front of me and found, too late, the little gravel road springing up and fading away again. I panicked and pressed the gas pedal harder. Then I pulled back on the steering wheel. Then I shifted through the gears till I hit on one that screeched the tires, stopped the car dead, and flung me into the windshield. When Jake came up, I saw him through a veil of colored ovals swimming around in black air. I had some sort of extra surface on the center of my forehead. “See?” Jake told me. “Who says you can’t drive?” He climbed into the car, while I floated over to the passenger side. Then he restarted the engine and backed onto the gravel road. He waved to his friends, who were ambling toward us across the field. They waved back. We set off toward the highway.

“I could eat a horse,” said Jake. “Couldn’t you?”

But I was shaking too much to answer.

We had breakfast at a Sunoco station: a bag of bacon rinds and two Yoo-Hoos from a vending machine. I used the restroom, and stood a while staring into the mirror on the paper towel dispenser. I felt I had to gather myself together again. My own eyes stared back at me, surprisingly dark. (I had half expected to find them bleached as gray as Jake’s.) My face appeared pinched and confused. It was a relief to grab up my purse and go back to the car.

This was piney country we were passing through, dotted with farms and new, raw-looking cinderblock supermarkets. Periodically we would land behind some truck or tractor, with no possible way of passing, and then Jake would start muttering.
“Pokey old fool! Hayseed. Dimwit. Good mind to ram him in the tail.”

“Well, I don’t understand,” I said. “Now surely Maryland is not the only state with divided highways. Is this all the road they have here?”

“All the road I’
m
taking,” said Jake. “You know durn well no cop is going to bother with it.”

I thought he had too much faith, but it’s true we weren’t seeing any patrol cars. Just crumpled Chevies, Fords, and those everlasting trucks. When Jake’s temper gave out, every fifteen minutes or so, he would pull up at one of the supermarkets and get us something to eat. Fritos. Oreos. I chewed in time to a whole chorus of TV commercials singing inside my head. Meanwhile Jake would gun his motor and push on, arriving finally behind the selfsame truck that had held him back in the first place. And always on a hill or curve, or with oncoming cars in the other lane. He cursed. I went on chewing. I am gifted with the ability of giving up, and all I had to do was pretend we were on some great, smooth, slow conveyor belt, coasting through the billboarded countryside two and a half feet behind a truckful of lawnmowers.

For lunch we stopped at a diner on the outskirts of a city. “But we’ve eaten all morning,” I said. “I’m not hungry.”

“That don’t make no difference. Point is, I rest.”

There were factories and auto graveyards everywhere we looked, and the diner sat on the tiniest concrete apron as if something had been nibbling away at it. Inside, it was full of brushed aluminum and gold-flecked, aging vinyl. The only other customer was a teenager eating a hot dog. The waitress was a stern-faced, churchy woman in tin-rimmed glasses. She curled her mouth downward while taking Jake’s order: everything grilled, greased, salted. (I was beginning to know his
eating tastes, by now.) “Just coffee for me,” I said. The waitress sniffed and stalked off.

When she was gone, I reached over to the stool beside me and picked up a newspaper. Used, badly refolded, but all of it was there. “Want the funnies?” I asked Jake. He looked disgusted. I shrugged. I scanned the first page, then the second. Primaries, cost of living, labor contracts … not a word about Jake or me. We’d dropped out of people’s minds, might not even have existed. They’d moved on to more important concerns. I was stunned. Jake wasn’t, though. When I lowered the paper, he didn’t even glance up. He was too busy filling his pockets with Domino sugar packs.

“We’re not in here,” I told him.

“Huh?” he said. He looked around the diner.

“In the paper. Not in the paper.”

“So?”

The waitress brought our order. I sat staring into my coffee, not touching it. Jake hitched up his jacket sleeves and reached across me for the salt. “How much cash you got?” he asked me.

“Cash?”

“I need to find out.”

“It’s none of your business,” I said.

“I know you got some, I saw it in your billfold.”

“That’s my own private money,” I said.

Ordinarily I don’t give a hoot about money, never have; but this was different. I was on my own and forgotten, deserted by everyone who should have been hunting me, and here was this stranger trying to take my last means of support. Also, my feelings were hurt. I’d enjoyed having somebody buy me things, to tell the truth. I said, “You might show a little consideration.”

“Look. Lady,” said Jake. “Charlotte. This trip ain’t cheap, for the gas alone. I’m running short. Now as a rule I
would no more take from a individual person than
fly
, but in this case I have got to ask you for your billfold.”

I pretended not to hear him.

“Let’s just say it’s a loan,” he said.

“I don’t want to loan it.”

“I’m begging you. I got to have it. What you think, those puny dollar bills will last forever?”

The waitress glanced over her shoulder at us. Light flashed off her spectacles.

“You’re killing me,” Jake said. “Just sitting here killing me.”

His voice was low but cracking around the edges, and I could tell he was about to throw a scene. I hate scenes. I took the billfold out of my purse and slapped it down on the counter.

“Ah,” said Jake.

“Seven measly dollars,” I said. “I certainly hope you’re satisfied.”

“Word of honor I’ll pay it back, Charlotte. Cross my heart.”

“I bet,” I said.

I rested my chin on my fist. Brooded over my coffee, blinking in the steam. Looked around for sugar, but the metal rack was empty. I could have cried. “There’s no
sugar!”
I said.

“Well, there,” said Jake, and fished up a pack from his pocket. He opened it and poured it in for me. I sat back and watched. Then he added cream, and stirred it with a plastic spoon. “Drink it,” he told me.

I felt comforted. All I had to do was lift the cup, which was warm and heavy and solid. Everything else had been seen to. I was so well taken care of.

After Saul and I were engaged, my mother made some adjustments in her thinking. I suppose she imagined ways of keeping us with her forever, somehow. She acted friendlier toward him. She grew more animated and had to be taken to look at wedding gowns. Her heart’s desire was a real church wedding, she said. Saul said that would be fine. Not a one of us
belonged
to a church, but why point that out? I just drifted along. There was a satisfying heaviness in my hands and feet that made me move unusually slowly. Though sometimes I’d sit up with my heart pounding; I’d wonder: Am I really going to do this? Go on through with this? What can I be thinking of? But then I’d make my mind go blank. My muscles would loosen, and the heaviness would swim back over me.

Taking pictures now, I froze so long behind the camera that you might ask who was getting preserved here: my customers
or me. Sitting with Saul in the evenings, I sheltered under his arm and listened to him plot our lives. He wanted six children. I assumed I couldn’t have any (having inherited, in some illogical way, my mother’s non-pregnancy and untrue baby) but I nodded, even so. I imagined six dark, unreadable little boys with Saul’s straight nose, hanging onto my skirts. I imagined myself suddenly as colorful, rich, and warm as Alberta, my narrow, parched life opening like a flower. All I had to do was give myself up. Easy. I let him lead me. I agreed to everything. It was such a pleasure that I felt soothed and sleepy, like a cat in sunshine.