June Bug (20 page)

19

The skinny woman sat with me on the bed and told me it was going to be okay, rubbing my arms and saying, “Shh,” and stuff like that.

There was something wrong with her, but I couldn’t tell what. My dad told me once that there’s something deep down inside that God gives everybody, and he didn’t know what to call it, but it was like a metal detector that beeps when you pass over an old tin can or a buried spoon. And that something deep inside tells you when there’s something wrong with a person or a situation, and whenever you hear that beep go off inside, you should run from it.

I’d pretended I knew what he was talking about when he told me that, but I didn’t. It made sense to me that you could feel something deep inside, because it happened to me a lot. The deep ache of thinking about my mama. Wondering why we never stayed in one place. Making a friend and then having to leave. Wanting a dog so bad I could taste it but knowing we couldn’t have one. But I’d never been able to fit together what he had said about knowing something was wrong in the pit of your stomach and being able to understand it until sitting with that woman.

I don’t think I’d ever been so scared, and it wasn’t the gun that made my stomach queasy. It was the look in the woman’s eyes. It was almost like some rabid animal my dad had talked about. He told me the story of a friend of his in his hometown who had been bitten by some animal out in the woods, and the boy didn’t tell anybody for a long time. And when he did, he told my dad. As soon he did, my dad said there was something that made him think he needed to tell somebody quick. An animal in the woods running up and biting a person is unnatural, and my dad knew it. But by the time he told someone and they checked the kid out, his disease was so far along that they couldn’t do anything. The whole thing gave me the creeps. If a squirrel ever jumped out of a tree and landed on my shoulder and sank his teeth in, you can bet I would tell somebody right away.

Well, that feeling my dad had when his friend told him was the same feeling I got when I looked into that woman’s eyes. There was something wrong, something not there that should have been or was there in place of something else that was supposed to be. I don’t know how to explain it, but the thing hit me like a wasp. My dad says people start running with people who aren’t any good for them when they run out of love or hope or both. Maybe that was why she was in with this guy who seemed like Satan himself. That’s another thing my dad told me, that if you get that feeling you shouldn’t try to figure out what’s wrong, just get out.

We turned into the parking lot of the rest area, with its brick building and trucks and cars parked around with sleeping people. And then I thought about the motion my dad made and I knew. He wasn’t telling me to come up front but that when he stopped I should try to get away.

“Everything’s going to be all right, you’ll see,” the woman said as my dad pulled around some of the big rigs and headed into a spot.

That thing in my stomach gurgled up and I wanted to believe her, but the feeling wouldn’t let me. “I think I’m going to be sick,” I said.

Dad put on the brake kind of hard and the guy stepped forward.

I shot toward the door and ran out.

“Go after her!” I heard the guy yell.

I ran into the dark like I was on a mission from God, which I guess I was. The woman came out and ran around like an old woman, her legs turned in and her arms flailing. I was in a dark spot beside the bathrooms in some big shrubs.

I wanted to yell, “Cold!” because that was a game my dad and I would play sometimes when we’d do Easter egg hunts in the RV. He’d hide a piece of candy from me and I’d go hunting all over looking for it and he’d just say
hot
or
cold
and it nearly drove me crazy until I found the candy bar or Peppermint Pattie or whatever.

I could see my dad in the front seat and the Satan guy yelling at him and I thought it was going to all be over, but then they both settled down.

The door opened on the RV and the guy yelled, “Donna, get back here.”

Dad was still behind the wheel, looking out at the night, not knowing where I was, but wanting to tell me something. He put up one thumb in the air and then with both hands out pointed down. “Stay there,” he mouthed. “Stay there.”

I’m sure he couldn’t see me because he was staring ahead like a blind man, not looking at anything in particular, just in a general direction. So I hunkered down and watched Donna, the rabies woman, huff and puff back to the RV like the big bad wolf. She climbed in and the light came on and I watched my dad buckle his seat belt tight and start the engine.

The other part of my stomach started getting rickety and queasy because it dawned on me that I was watching them pull out and I didn’t want to be left alone, so I ran out. But by the time I made it to the light, the taillight of the RV (only the left one worked) blinked on and then off again and they turned onto the interstate. It was the loneliest feeling in all of the world, and I started to cry because I was sure those two would hurt my dad. It’s one thing to feel bad because somebody you love is about to get hurt, and then it’s another to be lonely in a deserted place at night, alone with that feeling.

A car came barreling into the rest area, its high intensity lights about blinding me—even through the tears—so I turned around and went back into the shadows and watched. It was a mom who got out and a little girl about my age. They were African American.

I remember the first time I met an African American I was down south in Florida playing on a beach, and there was this family playing beside us. I went back to where my dad was sitting and asked him if I could play with “the brown girl.” He laughed real hard and then he took my hand and went out with me to meet the family and they were real nice and even let me borrow one of their buckets. Dad sat right there with me, and we made one of the prettiest sand castles. Even people passing talked about how good it was.

That family left and the two of us kept working until the sun set and then we got a couple of hot dogs and stood up at the railing and watched the tide. I cried when the water first touched the sand castle, and my dad hugged me tight.

“The tide comes in every evening and every morning, June Bug,” he said. “Just a fact of life. And everything that’s built gets flattened.”

“I don’t want it to get flattened.”

“Well, there’s something good about it. Every day you get a fresh start. The ocean cleans up the beach, and then in the morning you get to begin all over again. Kind of like a fresh canvas to paint on.”

I hadn’t thought of it that way, and I suppose it’s comforting in its own way that the earth takes care of itself. Water smoothing out the rough places and making things new. It’s funny how you remember stuff like that when you think your dad isn’t going to come back alive.

I watched the mom take the daughter into the building, and the dad sat there in the car with a couple of kids asleep. Their license plate said Pennsylvania, and I wondered where they were heading.

That’s when the game we played came back to me. Dad would say the state where the car was from and make up a story about the people, using something from that state in the story. Like this one time he said the driver of the car used to be Brutus, the mascot for the Ohio State Buckeyes football team, but he did a flip one day and landed on a cheerleader, and that’s who the woman was in the passenger side, his wife the cheerleader who never recovered. I laughed till I cried because he made up all kinds of stuff about their kids who were back at home with Brutus costumes on for trick or treat and how they were driving west to see the San Diego Chicken for advice. You wouldn’t know it just by looking at him, but my dad has a really good sense of humor.

So in my head I started thinking about this family from Pennsylvania, just to pass the time and, to be honest, to make me feel a little less scared because I find that thinking about something else is a good way to keep yourself from being scared.

So I imagined this mom and dad and their three children were going to Chicago to see relatives and they were in a hurry, traveling overnight, because their grandma was sick and if they didn’t get there fast she would die and they would never get to say good-bye. That was such a sad thought that it made me think of my own dad out there with those two people.

The toilet flushed inside and the water made this big gushing sound and pretty soon the woman and the little girl came out. It was hot and sticky and there was no breeze whatsoever, but the woman hugged the girl so close that you’d have thought it was January in Minnesota. The mom put the girl in the backseat, and she snuggled down into a pillow that looked so soft it could have been a marshmallow. The dad waited until the seat belts were on before driving away.

Then I thought I had it wrong. They weren’t going to visit Grandma. With all the stuff in the back of their car, they were moving. Maybe this man was a pastor and he was heading to a small church in Iowa and everything they had in the world was stuffed in that car. He was preaching on Sunday about this world not being our home and we’re just passing through. They were probably sad to leave their friends in Pennsylvania.

About that time, I heard the door of a semi truck shut, and there came a mountain of a man heading for the building behind me. He had on jean coveralls and a T-shirt and a hat that looked like it was older than he was. He was squinting into the light, and I thought it was strange he was walking this way because the men’s room was on the other side.

As he got closer I noticed a gray thing around his neck and that it was a beard that was growing every which way. It almost looked like his beard was leading him toward me, and when he got to the edge of where the light was shining he dipped his head.

“What are you doing in there, girl?” the trucker said. I expected him to have a voice like God’s, deep and scary, but it was pitched up high like a woman’s. “Are you singing in there?”

That’s when I realized I was singing “I’ll Fly Away” and didn’t even know it. I didn’t say anything. I scooted back a little bit and hoped he would go away.

“I see you in there. Now come out and tell me what happened. Did somebody leave you?” He was looking into the dark, and then he went down on one knee in the grass. “I saw that woman in the RV looking for you and then they took off. I saw the whole thing.”

When he turned this time I could see the light reflecting in his eyes, and they weren’t anything like the other lady’s eyes that were all hollow. It seemed to me like they were full of something, but I didn’t know what. I was trying to figure out what feeling was in my stomach and if I should trust him or turn and run.

“You’re not hungry, are you?” the man said. “Because I’ve got a sandwich in my fridge, and I’ll bet I could rustle up a Coke or a Dr Pepper.”

He glanced at his truck, and something moved in the windshield. Then a dog barked and the guy said something under his breath. “You stay right there. I’ll be back in a minute.”

He ran to his truck, if you could call it running. It was more like waddling or a person’s fat just rolling in a wave. My dad has told me not to make fun of fat people and I’m not doing that; it’s just an observation. Dad says it’s not kind for people who have my kind of metabolism to make fun of anybody. Still, it’s hard not to stare because it’s like watching a tornado. You don’t get to see one that often, and when you do, it’s hard not to gawk.

So he rolled over to his truck and opened the door and out jumped the cutest little beagle you’ve ever seen with brown, floppy ears and his nose to the ground running across the parking lot, heading straight for me.

He jumped onto the sidewalk, ran to the first tree, and hiked up his leg. I just about busted out laughing because I thought it was me he was so excited about. And, boy, did he have to go. He stood there a long time with the stream going and I thought if my dad could see this he’d let me get a beagle because this one could hold it longer than I could and my dad called me a camel.

Then, when he was done, the dog came to me, sniffing my shoes and my leg, and when he looked up I was actually glad I had been left at this rest stop. I sat down right there, and he crawled into my lap and let me pet his head and scratch his ears.

“He likes you,” the trucker said. “He doesn’t do that to everybody. You must be special.”

“What’s his name?” I said.

“Fred.”

I laughed. “Why’d you call him that?”

“I don’t know; it just seemed to fit.”

The night sounds of the cars and the crickets and the occasional engine starting gave me a peaceful feeling, but I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to feel afraid in my gut. My dad had told me there are mean people in the world who want to hurt little kids, but this guy didn’t seem like one of those types, though I didn’t know what those types look like.

“What’s your name?” he said.

“June Bug.”

He chuckled. “I like that. Almost as good as Fred.”

That made me laugh too.

“You want to tell me what happened?” he said. “Was that your mama out here looking for you?”

I shook my head. “No, that was just a lady with the man who had the gun. Donna was her name, but that’s all I know. They came into our RV while my dad was getting some gas, and this mean guy held the gun up and said he’d kill him if he didn’t drive off. We were headed toward West Virginia, but they made us turn around.”