Shiloh and Other Stories (21 page)

“We might get there today!” Bill said when they got up at four. No one else in the camp was up.

“You thought it was milking time,” Imogene said. “I couldn’t sleep either. I was too wound up.”

After a large breakfast of bacon, eggs, toast, and cereal, they drove awhile, then stopped for a nap.

“We’ll never get there,” said Bill.

They drove south to Birmingham, then across several smaller routes toward Plains. There was a lot of traffic on the small roads. Georgia drivers were worse than Kentucky drivers, Bill thought, as he tailed a woman who was straddling the line in a battered old Buick with its rear end dragging.

“Look, there’s a old mansion!” Imogene cried. “One of those with the white columns!”

The mansion was so close to the road there was no yard, and they could look through the front door and out the back. Weeds had grown up around the place.

“See them old shacks out back,” said Bill. “That’s where the slaves used to live.”

“Looks like they’re still living there,” said Imogene, pointing to some ragged black children. “Law, I thought we had poor people at home.”

In Plains, Imogene bought postcards and sent them to the kids, who were scattered all over. Imogene wrote the same message on each card: “Your daddy and me’s headed out to see the world. Will let you know how it comes out. If I live that long. (Oh!)” Bill and Imogene walked down the tiny main street, which was crowded with buses and campers. People from everywhere were there. Imogene wanted to take the tourist bus, but Bill said they had a new twenty-thousand-dollar vehicle of their
own and knew how to drive it, so they drove around awhile, doubling back on themselves. Then, at Imogene’s insistence, Bill stopped at Billy Carter’s filling station.

“I think that’s him,” Imogene said, peering toward the back of the station, where there was a crowd of people standing around. “No, that’s not him. Looked like him, though.”

A sweaty man in an undershirt with skinny straps filled up the tank.

“Reckon Billy ain’t around,” said Imogene, leaning over toward Bill’s window.

“No, he’s off. He’s off over to Americus.” The man pointed.

“We went through there,” said Imogene.

“No, we didn’t,” said Bill.

“All these tourists just driving you folks crazy, I expect,” said Imogene, ignoring Bill.

“Oh, you get used to it,” the man said, leaning against the gas pump. “You never know what you’re liable to see or who you’ll meet. We get some characters in here, I tell you.”

“I ’magine.”

“Are you ready?” Bill asked Imogene.

“I guess.”

“Y’all come back now, hear?” the man said.

“We will,” said Imogene, waving.

“Seen enough?” Bill asked.

“I can say I’ve been here anyway.”

Bill was getting tired, and he drove listlessly for a while. He could not make the connection between Plains and the White House. Plains looked like the old slave shacks outside the mansion they had passed. The mansion was the White House. Bill thought of Honest Abe splitting rails, but that was a long time ago. Things were more complicated now. Bill hated complications. If he were running the show, it would be pretty simple. He never had trusted those foot-washing, born-again Baptists anyway. And now the President had let a whole country in the Middle East be taken over by a religious maniac. It made him sick. What if Billy Graham decided to take over the United States? It would be the same thing.

Bill and Imogene, no longer talking, meandered throughout Georgia, through tiny towns that looked to Bill as though they hadn’t changed since 1940. The grocery stores had front porches. Georgia still had Burma-Shave signs. Bill almost ran onto the shoulder trying to read one.

There was a word missing. The signs were faded and rotting.

Between Plains and the Florida border, Bill counted five dead animals—a possum, a groundhog, a cat, a dog, and one unidentifiable mass of hide and gristle. He tried to slow down.

They stopped at a camp on the border, and Bill filled up the water tank. The camper was dusty but still looked brand-new. Imogene checked to see if anything was broken.

“I don’t see why this gas stove don’t explode,” she said. “All this shaking in this heat. They say not to take a gas can in your car.”

“A camper is different,” Bill said.

They walked around the campground. A lot of vehicles had motorcycles strapped onto them, and some people had already cranked up their motorcycles. The noise bothered Bill, but he liked to see the bikes take off, disappearing behind a swirl of dust.

Bill stopped to pet a friendly collie.

“That’s Ishmael,” said the girl who held the collie by a leash. “He’s so friendly I never have any trouble meeting people. I meet lots of guys that way! People do that with dogs, you know?”

“You’re a good boy,” said Bill, patting the dog. “Nice boy.”

Ishmael licked Bill’s hand and then tried to sniff up Imogene’s dress.

“Ishmael, don’t be so obnoxious. He’s always this friendly,” the girl said apologetically. She had on a halter top and shorts.
Her legs were smooth and brown, with golden hairs on her thighs.

“He loves dogs,” said Imogene. “He can’t stand to be without a dog. Or a cow or something! We sold all our cows and everything and here we are. Our whole farm’s tied up in this.” She waved at the camper.

“Wow, that’s nice. That must have cost a fortune,” the girl said, shading her eyes as she looked at the camper.

“Where are you headed?” Bill asked, with unusual politeness, which embarrassed him slightly.

“Oh, I was on the Coast, but it got to be a drag, so now I’m on my way to Atlanta, where I think I know this guy. I met him out in L.A. and he said if I was ever in Atlanta, to look him up. I hope he remembers me.”

The girl said her name was Stephanie. Bill thought she might be college age. He wasn’t sure. She looked very young to be traveling around alone. He thought of Sissy, his youngest daughter. Sissy had come home from San Francisco finally and had lived to tell the tale, though there was not much she would say about it.

“See, Ishmael is number one,” Stephanie was saying. “If a guy can’t take my dog, then I’m going to leave, right?” She looked up at Bill, as if for approval. Bill patted Ishmael, and the dog licked Bill’s hand again.

“I got a ride with this guy who customizes rec-v’s,” Stephanie went on. She pointed to a beige van with designs of blue and red fish painted on the side. “See, people buy them stripped and he outfits them. He’s supposed to be back any minute. He’s checking out a deal.” She looked around the campground. “See his license plate,” she said. “KOOL-II. Isn’t that cute? Here, look inside.”

Bill and Imogene peered inside the van. It was lined with shag rug. In the back, crosswise, was a king-sized bed with a leopard-skin cover. The ceiling was shag carpeting too, white, with a red heart positioned above the bed.

“There’s not a kitchen in it,” said Imogene.

“Just a refrigerator, and a bar,” said Stephanie. “Isn’t it something? This interior just blows me away.”

She let Ishmael inside the van and took his leash off. Ishmael
hopped onto the bed and stretched his paws out. The bed seemed to ripple with the dog’s movements.

“It’s a water bed,” Stephanie said with a laugh.

“We’ve been tied down on a farm all this time,” said Imogene.

“We’re going to travel around till we get it out of our system,” said Bill, again feeling embarrassed to be telling the girl things about himself.

“That’s really sweet,” said Stephanie, pulling at her halter. “Wow, that’s really sweet. Here I travel around and don’t think anything about it, but I bet you’ve been waiting all these years!”

“You come and eat some supper with us,” Imogene said. “You don’t have a kitchen.”

“Oh, no, thanks. I better wait for this guy. We were going to check out the McDonald’s up on the highway. I’m sort of waiting around for him, see? Hey, thanks anyway.”

Stephanie waved good-bye and wished them luck.

“We’ll need it,” said Imogene.

After supper Imogene and Bill sat in their folding chairs outside and watched the lights come on in the campers. It was still hot and they swatted at giant mosquitoes.

“I gave my antique preserve stand to Sissy,” said Imogene. “She won’t appreciate it.”

Bill was quiet. He was listening to the sounds, the TV sets and radios all blending together. He watched a blond-headed boy enter the KOOL-II van.

“Can you just imagine the trouble that girl has been in?” said Imogene thoughtfully. “I believe she was one of those runaways they talk about.”

“How do you know?”

“You never know, with people you meet, out.”

Bill watched as the blond-headed boy emerged from the van and headed toward the shower building. Bill liked the way the boy walked, with his towel slung over his shoulder. He had hair like a girl’s, and a short beard. The boy walked along so freely, as though he had nothing on his mind except that van with the red heart on the ceiling. Bill thought uncomfortably of how he had once promised Imogene that they would see the world, but they never had. He always knew it was a failure of courage. After the
war he had rushed back home. He hated himself for the way he had stayed at home all that time.

Later, Imogene started crying. Bill was trying to watch
Charlie’s Angels
, and he tried to pretend he didn’t notice. In a few minutes she stopped. Then after a commercial she started again.

“Years ago,” Imogene said, wiping her face, “when I took your mama to the doctor—when she had just moved in with us and I took her for a checkup?—I went in to talk to the doctor and he said to me, ‘How are
you
?’ and I said, ‘I didn’t come to see the doctor, I brought
her
,’ and he said, ‘I know, but how are you?’ He said to me, ‘She’ll kill you! I’ve seen it before, and she’ll kill you. You think they won’t be much trouble and it’s best, but mark my words, you may not see it now, but she’ll take it out of you. She could destroy you. You could end up being a wreck.’ He said, ‘Now I’m not a psychiatrist’—or whatever they call them—‘but I’ve seen it too many times. I’m just warning you.’ I read about this woman that lived with her son and daughter-in-law and lived to be a hundred and three! Nobody ought to live that long!”

“Are you finished?” Imogene had interrupted a particularly exciting scene in
Charlie’s Angels
. Bill didn’t say anything and the program finished. Imogene made him nervous, bringing up the past. If she was going to do that, they might as well have stayed at home. Bill didn’t know what to say. Imogene got a washrag and wiped her face. Her face was puffed up and red.

“I’ve been working up to say all that, what I just said,” she went on later. “I get these headaches and I’ve got this hurtin’. And I can’t taste.”

“It’s all in your mind,” said Bill, teasing her gently. “You’ve been listening to too many old women talk.”

“I get all sulled up,” Imogene said. “Just some little something will bring it on. It wouldn’t matter if we were here or in China or Kalamazoo.”

“You just have to have something to bellyache about,” Bill said. He would have to try to humor her.

“She was
your
mama,” Imogene continued. “And I’m the one that took care of her all that time, keeping her house, putting up her canning, putting out her wash, and then waiting on her when she got down. And you never lifted a finger. You couldn’t be
around old people, you said; it give you the heebie-jeebies. Well, listen, buster, your time’s a-coming and who’s going to wait on you? You can stick me in a rest home, for all I care. And another thing, you don’t see Miz Lillian living at the White House.”

Bill felt sick. “You would go to a rest home and leave me by myself?” he asked, with a little whine.

“I’ve a good mind to,” she said. She measured an inch off her index finger. “I like about this much from it,” she said.

“You wouldn’t do me that way, would you? Who would cook?”

“You can eat junk.”

“I bought you this pretty playhouse. You don’t want to leave me in it all by myself, do you?” He tousled her hair. “You’re not any fun anymore. Always got to tune up and cry over some little something.”

“I can’t help it.” She put her head in a pillow. “Don’t tease me.”

Awkwardly, Bill put his arms around her.

“You don’t make over me anymore,” she said.

“You just wait till we get to the ocean,” Bill said, petting her. He felt like a fool. The muscles in his arms were so rigid he thought they were going to pop. His mouth was dry.

That night Bill slept fitfully. He could not get used to a foam rubber mattress. He had a nightmare in which his mother and Imogene sat in rocking chairs on either side of him, having a contest to see who could rock the longest. Bill’s job was to keep score, but they kept on rocking. His kids gathered around, mocking him, wanting to know the score. The steady, swinging, endless rocking was making him feel seasick. He woke up almost crying out, but awake he could not understand why the rocking chairs frightened him so. He told himself he was an idiot and eventually he calmed himself down by thinking pleasant thoughts about Stephanie and the blond-headed boy. He imagined what they were doing in the van with the red heart on the ceiling. Later, he dreamed that he had a job driving a van across the country. He wore a uniform, with a cowboy hat that said KOOL-II on the front. He drove the van at top speed and when he got to the ocean he boarded a ferry, which turned out to be a
destroyer. The destroyer zoomed across the ocean. Imogene did not show up in the dream at all.

When he woke up he looked at her sleeping, with her mouth open and a soft little snore coming out. He recalled the time in the Andrew Jackson Hotel in Nashville when he watched her sleep for a full hour, wanting to remember her face while he was overseas. Then she had awakened, saying, “I knew somebody was watching me. I dreamed it. You liked to stared a hole through me.” They had not been married long, and they had stayed awake most of the night, holding each other.