Signed, Skye Harper (8 page)

Nanny’s silence seemed to suggest she might be considering Steve’s offer.

“I don’t think I can drive when it’s dark,” I said. My voice was a whisper. Thelma pushed her head up next to Steve’s leg and he petted her.

“I can teach you,” he said, and looked me right in the eye.
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77

Worries

Nanny had me make dinner. Then she made me feed her the peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I wasn’t sure why. I’d seen her cook lobsters, steam broccoli, and run out for a smoke all in less than ten minutes and using just one hand. Could this motor home be causing her this much grief? Perhaps guilt had something to do with her nerves.

“You worried?” I asked her as I helped her sip Coke from the bottle.

“What?”

Denny sat on my seat while I knelt beside Nanny.

Steve had a guitar (where had
that
come from?) and was tuning it.

“I said are you worried?”

Nanny sort of looked at me, not quite taking her eyes off the road. We were headed to Tallahassee now and the traffic was thick. Maybe people were going to New Smyrna to help find a lost teen. “Not really.”

“Seems it.”

Steve strummed the guitar and in a moment started singing. Dang it! He sang the dumbest song this year, “A Horse with No Name.” He sounded pretty darn good. His
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peanut butter and jelly sandwich balanced on his knee. And look at that! Thelma didn’t even try to lick it. Had that been my dinner she would have swallowed it whole.

What was this? It seemed all of nature conspired against me.

“I started headed west in a rig with no name,” Steve sang. “It felt good to be out of my home. Headed west, you can remember your name . . .”

“I mean,” I said, trying my best to ignore Steve, “you’re gripping the steering wheel. And you have to look a hundred years older the way you’re driving.”

“What?” Nanny swerved a little and someone behind us beeped. Out the window Florida seemed to not have an ocean nearby. “That was rude.”

“You got a bug up your butt and it’s noticeable to other drivers.”

Nanny took a swig of Coke, her lips coming out like a camel’s toward the bottle I held. Then she let out a long sigh.

“It’s your momma,” she said. “I’m concerned for your momma.”

I flopped down on the floor so I didn’t wear my legs out before I had a chance to swim. Whenever that would be.

“There’s nothing new about those worries.”

That’s the whole truth. Nanny still worries over my momma all these years later, even when we never hear from
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her months at a time. Even when she hasn’t seen her in a decade.

Momma! My eyes went all squinchy and I couldn’t even stop it. She wasn’t a momma at all. Not a daughter. She was a somebody me and Nanny didn’t know anymore.

And why Nanny felt such concern was beyond me. But I kept my mouth shut.

Again Nanny sighed. “You’re right, Winston, yes you are. I got to keep positive. Smile. Not be so uptight. I got me a case of the nerves right when we pulled out of New Smyrna and headed north.”

“That was fear, Nanny. Fear because the police and FBI are gonna be after you.”

Nanny puckered her lips again so I could give her another sip. “That’s all for now,” she said after swallowing. “I’m gonna trust you on this one, Winston. Sometimes a girl has to do what a girl has to do. And I have to do this.”

I set the Coke bottle down with a thunk. Thelma looked at me.

“Nanny,” I said, and put my arms around her neck. I kissed her face. “Loosen up and enjoy the trip. We got us some real driving to do. You wanna be sick the whole trip? Momma needs help and you aim to do that.”

“Winston,” Nanny said. Her voice was all soft and mushy. She gave me a quick look then stared back at the road. “You are the best girl a grandmother could have.”
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78

Singing

“A Horse with No Name,” with new words, went on way too long. All of about five minutes. Then I’d had enough. Want to ruin my disposition? Play music I can’t stand. Like something from the band America.

At last I slid on the sofa near Steve. “You know Bobby McGee?” I said.

He gave a little nod, changed his fingering, and started playing.

“Don’t mess with the words this time,” I said. I scooted closer still and our knees touched. It felt like someone had struck a match on my kneecap.

“That’s gotta be my favorite song ever,” Nanny said. “I am so sorry that Janet Joplin is gone.”

“Janis, Nanny,” I said.

Steve smiled, dipped his head a bit over the guitar. Looked at me all squinty eyed. “ I love your grandmother,” he said. And then: “You sing?”

“Maybe,” I said. “A little.”

The truth is, all the Fletchers, from start to finish, can sing. Nanny herself sang with her sisters on the radio when they were teens. I know it! Who knew there was a radio way back when?
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“Are you joking, Steve?” Nanny said. She said the words kinda slow and her hands looked all clenchy. “Winston can sing any part out there. Anything but bass. We sing in the choir at our church. And if I could coax her, I’d have the girl singing in school choir. And maybe on television.”

I shot a glance at the back of Nanny’s head. “I’d rather swim,” I said.

Steve gazed at me. Like right-in-the-eye gazing. “I know she’s a good swimmer,” he said. “I saw that my own self.” He moved his mouth close to my ear. “Looked sexy. Yes, you did.”

I felt my face grow warm. Who said that boy should be able to control my embarrassment genes? And how much had he seen? I had done the back stroke, nekkid.

“You know she’s hoping to be an Olympian?”

“Nanny,” I said. “Shhh. Don’t say anything about anything.”

“I
didn’t
know,” Steve said. He kept strumming the guitar. And doing this little almost smile. And burning me with his matchlike knee.

“No one does,” I said. “I keep private things private.” I said the last part loud so Nanny would get the hint. She didn’t.

“She wants to be a Mark Spitz.” Nanny let out a laugh of genuine pride. “A
female
Mark Spitz.”

Steve raised his eyebrows. “A Shane Gould,” he said,
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My tone was reverent. “Yes,” I said.

“Too sexy for that,” he whispered, looking through his bangs at me.

What would Angel do right now? Laugh and pretend to hit Steve? Show him her tan lines? Smack her grandmother? “Let’s sing,” I said.

The music put me in mind of how Janis Joplin had overdosed and died when she should still be singing and how Nanny wouldn’t let me play too much Alice Cooper when she was in the house and how Roger Miller was played down at Leon’s restaurant ’cause he actually stopped in for a meal on occasion. Music can do that to you. Take you anywhere.

And it can ease the thought the boy you loved had seen you in your birthday suit. Well, a birthday suit that included undies.

We sang halfway to Mobile, Alabama, then Nanny said, “Go rest, Stephen Lovett. I’m turning the driving over to you soon as the sun goes down.”
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79

Sleeping Arrangements

Steve set the guitar down and stood. He rocked with the movement of the motor home.

Outside the sky took on that afternoon look. Sort of tired and damp and ready-for-evening that the South gets after a day of too-hot-for-comfort.

“You better rest, too, Winston,” Nanny said. “I can’t have him driving alone. I’ll get us out of Mobile, then wake you both.”

“Okay,” I said.

I climbed over Denny and went to where the bag of my things sat. My pillow was on top.

“I’ll crash here, if you want me to,” Steve said, and gestured at the sofa. “It pulls out into a bed, you know.”

Would wonders never cease? “Are you kidding?” I said.

Steve shook his head. “No. I mean it.” He grinned at me, like I was a little kid or something.

For some reason I felt like my own feathers had gotten ruffled. Every joint in my body stiffened. “Some people don’t have money to throw away,” I said, under my breath. “Some people don’t have money for fancy stuff.”

“What?” Steve said, and he made to grab my hand, but I moved out of his reach.
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“Go sleep in the bed at the back,” I said. Tears stung my eyes. Sheesh, I
was
tired! My feelings were hurt. How could that be?

“What did I do?” Steve said. “Did I say something wrong?”

I shook my head. The tears cooled my eyeballs off.

“Feeling sensitive?” Steve said. He ducked his face close to mine.

“Get going, you two,” Nanny said. “We got miles to go before we sleep.”

Steve walked the couple of steps until he stood in front of the stove. I clutched the pillow to my chest.

Cute. He was so cute! My feathers settled right down. He stepped back to me again.

“You should come sleep by me,” he said, whispering. “In the back. It’s more comfortable than the sofa bed or the one above the cabin.” He slid a bit closer. I could have let him kiss me, but Steve didn’t try.

“Are you kidding? Nanny would rather run over us both with this bus of a vehicle before she allowed that.”

A picture of Angel popped into my head. Had they . . . ? Had they . . . ? You know. Done. It. You know. Together.

Steve stepped past me. “All I’m saying, Churchill, is it’s kinda nice to be swayed to sleep.” He grinned then touched my arm. His hand was so warm my stomach skipped a beat. No wait. My heart skipped a beat and my stomach lurched like we had hit a pothole big as Ohio.
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80

Visitor

Steve was right. Sleeping in the motor home was comfortable. Not a thing like lying down in the back seat of our old Dodge.

I was out for what seemed only a moment.

When I woke, the sky was dark as pitch, and both Denny and Thelma sat in the front seat, in my place.

Nanny smoked and drove with her knees on the steering wheel. There was ash on the floor, and I was too tired, almost, to hold my eyes open.

“You can’t smoke in here,” I said. “We gotta keep this place looking and smelling clean as a whistle. Otherwise the Simmonses are gonna know we stole from them.”

But Nanny didn’t answer.

The curtains opened in the back, and Mark Spitz, wet and wearing a Speedo, came to where I sat. His mustache dripped water.

“What are you doing here?” I said. “Did you win a medal?”

I could smell the pool. Mark Spitz flicked water on my face, and I jerked awake trying to remember where I was, my heart pounding.
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“Nanny?”

She didn’t answer, maybe because my voice was a whisper.

“Thelma?”

Where was I? Nanny ran off the road a bit and I remembered everything. Our lawlessness, my mother, Steve.

I glanced her way. She still sat hunched over the steering wheel, but no cigarette burned. And Thelma was no place to be seen, though it was hard to see anything toward the back of the rig it was so dark.

“Go to sleep, Winston,” Nanny said. “You got another couple of hours to rest.”

How did she know I was awake?

Somehow she always knows.

“’Kay.” I turned over and was soothed to sleep.
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81

A Break in the Trip

The next time I woke, it was for real, to Nanny pulling over. We bounced every which way.

When we came to a halt, a real halt (not a slow creeping up on a halt), there was the smell of salt water and I could hear the crash of waves.

I sat up, feeling dizzy. Steve pushed through the curtains, Thelma trailing behind. They looked like ghosts—a good-looking boy ghost and a used-to-be-the-best-dog-in-the-world ghost.

“So you met someone . . . Goody, goody,” popped into my head, and in my mind I saw Shelley Winters wielding a knife from the movie
What’s the Matter with Helen?
Nanny was right. I needed to stop going to the movie house to watch thrillers.

Now Nanny swiveled around in her chair. Light from outside made her face eerie too. What was this? An Alfred Hitchcock film? “Thought we could take a break, stretch our legs . . .”

“Get a smoke,” I said.

“ . . . and walk the beach,” Nanny said, glaring at me, “before we get on our way again. Some time here on the Gulf will be good.”
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Thelma stretched out long, her tail pointing to the motor home roof. She sort of glanced in my direction and gave me a nod. Then she padded over so I could pet her head.

“I love that dog of yours,” Steve said.

Twice now, he loved something from my family. I swallowed. Thelma eased back by his side.

“She’s a man’s dog. A real dog.”

“You mean a
girl’s
dog, raised and trained by girls,” I said, but Steve didn’t seem to hear.

“A dog you can hunt with. Not a dog the size of your shoe. Yes sirree, I love this dog.” He squatted to pet her. She laid her head on his chest, right under his chin.

“Me too,” I said. “I love her too.” My mouth tasted like a dirty sock—and felt as dry. I scrunched my eyebrows, disappointment in Thelma traveling in my vital organs.

But, sheesh, could I blame her? Steve looked TV ready, his hair kinda messy, his teeth so white. How did he do that, first thing? I bet he didn’t even have stinky breath. Maybe the sweet smell of chocolate milk. For sure, I needed to go brush.

I made my way back to the bathroom, used the facilities, then scrubbed at my teeth. It was time for a clothes change, too, so I slipped on different shorts and an old button-up that was a coupla sizes too big.

Outside the vehicle, I could hear banging and feel a thumping come from under my feet.

Where were we? And did they have earthquakes here?
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I hurried out into the evening.

No one. Not even Denny.

They’d left without me.

Forgotten me?

The moon, shining light thick as sweet cream, splashed down.

Everything was quiet. So quiet. Except for the ocean, which I couldn’t see—it had to be on the other side of the Simmonses’ motor home. No other sounds. What time was it?