Lost Highways (A Valentine Novel) (4 page)

Within seconds, the boy said, “It’s stoppin’,” in a tone that indicated he now believed he would live after all.

Her stranger, straightening, advised the boy to get the earring out of his nose, as it was already swelling.

Once more back at the pickup, they stood there watching the boy leave in his Trans Am. She said, “I don’t know what makes boys think fightin’ is so much fun.”

“He didn’t think it was fun, but the boy that hit him sure did,” her stranger commented in a knowing manner. And then he was
looking at her with a crooked grin. “He’ll have his turn…every boy likes to say he has punched some guy at least once.”

She shook her head and allowed that it had to be a guy-thing.

Then they were standing there again.

“Well, do you suppose you could take me to a motel?” he said.

“Sure,” she said. There was nothing else to say.

She asked him what motel he would prefer. He said any one that was convenient. When she suggested the La Quinta, he said that would be fine, and he thanked her with the utmost politeness for going out of her way.

“It’s not out of my way,” she told him. “I’ve got to go right by it.”

Her mind was filling with all sorts of conjecture about him. Surely he wasn’t some sort of criminal, although how could she really know?

As she pulled the truck out onto the highway, she asked him where he was headed. “I might be going near where you were goin’. I’d be glad to drive you, if I can.”

“I wasn’t going anywhere in particular. I was just driving,” he said in a weary voice, his eyes directed out the windshield but seeming to look a lot farther than down the immediate highway.

She thought he seemed to be doing what her mother would have called looking painfully backward.

She did not want to leave him at a motel. She justified this overwhelming urge by telling herself that he should not be left alone, in case he had had a concussion. And there was still the matter of those three ibuprofen he had taken on an empty and unsettled stomach. What if he started to vomit and there was no one there to wipe his face with a cool cloth and make certain he did not choke?

She wore herself out with the worrisome thoughts during the ten-minute drive over to the motel. Her fertile mind drew a disturbing picture of him alone in a motel room, one with bleak off-white walls and a wide bed with a gaudy spread and sheets all tangled, staring mindlessly at a television set until the hotel clerk came pounding on the door, which her stranger wouldn’t open, as he was either zoned out from a concussion or contemplating ways to hang himself with his belt.

She was growing quite panicky by the time she saw the La Quinta sign. And then her gaze fell on the restaurant next door, an all-night Denny’s, as if it had been plopped down on earth for the sole purpose of being an answer to her worries.

“I’m starved,” she said. “I think I’ll go over there and get somethin’ to eat. Would you like to join me? I really hate to eat alone. I’d sure appreciate it if you’d join me.”

She knew he was a gentleman and would not be able to refuse, which he didn’t. He seemed, in fact, to take hold of the opportunity. Freddy, and sometimes even Charlene, was forever telling her that she imagined all sorts of things, but in that moment Rainey was certain she was correct in her estimation of the man and the situation. She was here at this particular place in time for a reason, and so was he. Nothing happens by coincidence, her mother had forever told her, and she felt in that moment that her path and this man’s were destined to cross.

They went inside and sat at a booth next to the night-black window that reflected their own images. Seeing him wince when he swiped back his hair, she got up and examined his head wound. He probably allowed this because he was so surprised by her boldness.

“It’s fine,” he told her. “It’ll just be tender for a few days.”

She was satisfied to see the broken skin already sealing itself.

“You’ll need to wash it good, though,” she said and slipped back to her seat.

He still did not want to eat, but she talked him into getting a piece of pie, pointing out that he should eat something on top of all the ibuprofen he had taken.

“I’m a pharmacist’s assistant,” she told him, wanting him to realize that she knew what she was talking about when it came to tending the body. “I’ve just taken a few weeks off to do a bit of barrel racing.”

The way it came out, it sounded like she was on a vacation. She didn’t mention that when Mr. Blaine would not give her a leave of absence, she had quit, and Mr. Blaine had been so annoyed that he’d told her not to let the door hit her in the butt on the way out, so therefore she was really out of a job. She was reluctant to sound like an unemployed drifter to him.

The waitress came and took their order, smiling at him as if he were so much candy. He didn’t seem to notice. Possibly women always looked at him in such a way, Rainey surmised.

She learned that he took his coffee black—indeed, he raised an eyebrow at how much sugar she put into hers—that his favorite pie was cherry, that he was from Houston, that he was observant enough to notice the name written on her trailer was the same as her own, and that he could sit very still and watch her eat.

When they finished their snack and umpteen refills of coffee, and walked out into the cooling night, she gave in to saying, “Are you sure you don’t want to go to the hospital? I really think you should have your head looked at. I’ll be glad to drive you.”

“No, thanks. I’m fine.” His eyes were on hers with some intensity. “I appreciate all you’ve done.”

She thought it was time to say goodbye, but what came out was, “You aren’t goin’ to kill yourself, are you?” She would rather feel foolish than regret.

He looked shocked, and then he shook his head, “No. It might have crossed my mind in the past weeks, but I never seriously entertained the idea.”

He gave an amused grin and gazed at her for a moment.

“I just need a little time away from things for a few days. That’s what I was doing when I wrecked my car—getting away. Guess I got pretty far, too,” he said, his crooked smile widening a bit.

“Oh. Well, I understand that. I’ve been doin’ that.” She knew well what he was saying. She knew it deep down.

Again they were looking at each other. Gazing into each other’s face and wondering all the things that cannot be said. For her part, Rainey thought of the bleak motel room.

She asked him then to go with her.

As his eyes widened, she corrected, “I don’t mean with me alone, but up to my Uncle Doyle’s. That’s where I’m goin’. He lives a few hours from here—up just outside of Childress.”

She told him that she was going to spend a couple of days with her uncle, and about her uncle’s house that sat all alone in the rough country just west of the Red River and how there weren’t any other houses to be seen for miles.

He tilted his head and gazed downward in a fashion she could not gauge.

“It’s not fancy,” she said, “but it will be quiet and certainly away from things. Uncle Doyle won’t mind at all.”

Her mother would have called this one of those things that seemed to be the thing to do at the time.

And then he sort of nodded and said simply, “I think I’ll take you up on that.”

Rainey had a sense that he surprised himself as much as he did her.

Driving at Night

T
hinking it unwise for him to sleep again, because of his possible concussion, she kept talking as they went north along the dark road. She talked of country songs that she liked, of the good roads in Texas, and of how the puppy had been dumped on her.

He contributed little to her efforts beyond, “Yes,” “No,” or “Mm-hmm.”

At one point she said, “Back home, we have a law about dumpin’ dogs and cats, and if caught, you’ll pay a fine of a hundred dollars and have your name run in a square box in the
Valentine Voice
. My mother got that last part put through. She thought shame was the best deterrent. Of course, not many people have ever been caught at it. Only one actually, and that was because he was from another town and didn’t know what would happen to him in ours.”

“Back home,” he said and cracked his eyes to look at her. “Where would that be?” he asked.

“Valentine, Oklahoma. Cultural center of the universe,” she
added, thinking that rather witty. “Great-grandaddy founded the town.”

“Hmm.” His eyes were once again drifting closed.

“Are you originally from Houston?” she asked.

He cracked one eye at her.

“Your accent,” she said. “It’s not as pronounced as some, but I’d imagine you’re from East Texas, maybe south Arkansas.”

“Mm-hmm.”

A few seconds later he repositioned himself and said, “I’m
not
passing out. I’m just going to nap.”

“Fine.” But worry nagged at her.

He leaned against the side of the cab and grimaced when he hit the tender wound on his head.

“There’s a little pillow tucked behind your side of the seat,” she told him, feeling quite generous.

He found her mother’s pillow, rested his head on it and was asleep so quickly it was like he had passed out again.

She assuaged her worry about his concussion by telling herself that for all she knew, this manner of falling asleep quickly was normal for him.

The miles sped away under the rumbling truck as she drove through the night, the same as if she’d been alone, which she found mildly irritating.

Driving at night encourages all sorts of thoughts. Long ago, she had come to the conclusion that many of the ills of the world could be solved in one month, if more of the people in charge of those ills simply went to driving around at night. Freddy always said this theory on her part showed conclusively that she was a few bricks short of a load.

Unlike her passenger, she had never been one to fall quickly asleep. Her mother had said that from birth she awoke about
every two hours and that she could hear neighbors whispering in their own homes.

It was normal for her to lie for thirty or more minutes, her mind wandering from this to that, before falling into a light sleep full of dreams, from which she would awaken several times in the night, worries and wonderings prodding her. She had in the past suffered terrible bouts with insomnia, and her mother had encouraged her to deal with this by going out and driving around. The driving did not cure the insomnia, but it did make her a good night driver. She generally enjoyed driving at night, when she had the road to herself and even her mind was more thoroughly all her own, with no intrusive noise from the collective thoughts of other people.

While she drove now, her mind replayed scenes from the evening, and it came to her that she had on the same evening managed to pick up a puppy and a man.

Freddy, when he learned of this, would have a few terse comments.

The puppy lay just on the other side of the glass, and the man was eighteen inches away, breathing the same air as she did.

She couldn’t understand how she had come to have them. She had been going innocently along in her lonely, depressed and confused life when a dog and a man had been thrust upon her.

“Everything in season and for a purpose—even if we never know why,”
her mother used to say.

What was the reason for this? She glanced over at her passenger and felt a tightening in her chest. Sharp apprehension that something she didn’t understand had entered her life. That something was going to be required of her. Commitments she felt unprepared to take on.

She had the explicit urge to pull over and tell them both, “Out! Get out!”

The bumps jarred her passenger awake.

“We’re at Uncle Doyle’s,” she told him.

It was just after two o’clock. She drove down the narrow rutted drive to the dark, weathered wood house. There was a light on in the kitchen. As the truck rumbled to a stop, the yellow porch light came on, and Uncle Doyle, a man so skinny that he had no shape at all, held open the screen door.

“Who’s this you got with you, Rain-gal?” he asked, batting moths away from his head where only a few strands of hair stretched across the top.

“A friend, Uncle Doyle—Harry.” She kissed her uncle’s cheek as she passed into the kitchen, where a single light burned over the sink and the faint scent of cigarette smoke hung in the air. There were books and magazines everywhere, she noticed, then turned to see her passenger coming inside, blinking and looking uncertain, and as if his head pained him greatly.

“Well, howdy young fella,” Uncle Doyle said. “Come in and welcome. By golly, it’s the middle of the night. I’d gotten to readin’ and hadn’t really noticed. Maybe y’all would like a bit to eat.” He suddenly looked a little at a loss as to what to do with them.

“We’ve had a bunch of snacks, Uncle Doyle. Aunt Pauline sent you some praline patties and some reports from her trip to Argentina.”

“Ah, yes…” Her uncle’s eyes lit up behind his thick glasses, and he immediately opened the file folder Rainey passed him, ignoring the bag of praline patties. “That Pauline is good to her ol’ brother-in-law,” he mumbled, already losing himself in the papers.

His eyes on the pages, he walked away through an open doorway to a small room where a lamp lit several open books
on an oak desk and stacks of books all around it. The room of a studious man.

Harry was staring after her uncle. Rainey touched his arm. “I’ll show you to your bed.”

Up the stairs and past the small bathroom and into a bedroom with a slanted ceiling and twin iron beds set against opposite walls. She told him to take his choice and went to shove open the dormer window. Then she dug into her purse, pulled out the bottle of ibuprofen she had retrieved from the truck seat and tossed it to him. He caught it, looked at her with a raised eyebrow.

“Clean towels are in the bathroom cabinet. If you’re hungry, feel free to look around the kitchen. I have to go take care of my mare.”

Not understanding herself why she had become so cool, she left him sitting gingerly on the side of the bed, rubbing the back of his head.

The puppy, apparently concluding that they had reached a safe destination, had gotten out of the truck and was waiting at the back door. When she came out, he met her eagerly and followed at her heels as she got Lulu from the trailer and put her in a paddock off the tin barn and ran water in the narrow stock tank, all more or less by the light of the stars. The single pole lamp was at the far corner of the barn.

Lulu ran to the middle of the paddock, sniffing the air and then the ground. Then she trotted closer to the fence where Rainey was and began to crop grass. The paddock had not seen a horse or cow for a long time, and there was plenty of grass. Lulu stayed near Rainey, seeking the reassurance of a friend in this strange place, while the puppy sat beside her feet, and she stood leaning on the top fence rail, looking up at the stars, her chest filling with the familiar sense of wonder.

“It’s like they’re all lights, isn’t it?” she said to the puppy and the horse. “Makes you know there’s a lot in this world that we don’t know about.”

Thank you, Lord, for another day…for bringing me safely here…and that I didn’t run him down
. She thought of this with a great relief, then, very unnerved at what might have been, swiftly moved her thoughts along.
What is going on here, Lord? Should I just have left him in Abilene? Please send someone who’ll take this dog…
.

The puppy followed her back to the house. She shut the door against him, and moments later opened it to set out a pan of water and a crusty biscuit she had found in a pan on the stove. Her hand hesitated, and then she touched the top of his head.

Closing the back door, she stood for a moment with her hand on the knob. The kitchen looked quite messy. Uncle Doyle was still reading whatever Aunt Pauline had sent him and likely would for some time. Rainey called to him, and he smiled at her.

“Guess I’ll go on to bed,” she said. She was suddenly very weary.

“You look all done in, honey. See you in the mornin’.”

She went upstairs to the same bedroom where she had left her passenger. She saw him in the light from the hallway. He was fast asleep in the narrow bed, undoubtedly had fallen there instantly. His expensive clothes lay across the cotton quilt at the foot, and his shoulders were bare.

Rainey wondered what he would do if she crawled in beside him.

Probably go on sleeping, she thought with a smile. He appeared done in.

She turned out the hall light, undressed, putting back on her
shirt to sleep in, and slipped beneath the covers of the opposite bed. It was the only one left available, and no one could sleep on the short Victorian sofa in the living room.