The Ambassador of Nowhere Texas

by Kimberly Willis Holt

  A prickle ran up my arm. “No, he didn’t, and believe it or not, Antler is included on the Texas map.”

  “You sound like the Ambassador. The Ambassador of Nowhere, Texas.”

  I took a breath, reminding myself that he was a guest, trying to avoid those brown eyes and long eyelashes.

  He went back to studying the photo. “She wasn’t a bad photographer.”

  “I know. She was good. I never saw her take a picture, but Dad says she used to do it all the time. She was really old when I was born, but I went to her house a lot.”

  “You mean our house?”

  “Well—” I cleared my throat. “Yes. Dad used to mow her … I mean your lawn.”

  “Does he still want to?” Joe asked.

  “What?”

  He half laughed. “You really don’t have a sense of humor, do you?”

  “Yes, I do,” I snapped.

  Joe backed away, palms up. “Okay, I take it back.”

  I didn’t know if he was trying to be funny or insulting. It kind of seemed like both.

  He eased the photo back to its leaning position on the wall, and for a long moment, neither of us spoke.

  I felt trapped.

  Mayzee was setting the table, something she actually thought was fun.

  “I’ll help you,” I called out from the living area.

  “No! It’s my turn.” She rolled a napkin and tied it in a snug knot.

  I was so relieved when Mom called out, “Time for dinner!”

  “Warning,” I said in a low voice. “Mom’s meatloaf may be on the rubbery side. Your gut might bounce back to New York.”

  Joe broke into a quick grin. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe you do have a sense of humor.”

  CHAPTER 17

  Somewhere between the dry meatloaf and Mom’s delicious blackberry cobbler, we learned that Maria Toscani was a physician’s assistant and that she’d start looking for a job in Amarillo as soon as they got settled. Both of her parents had died a while back, she told us.

  “It’s only Joe and me,” she said.

  Joe, who had been quiet through the entire meal, spoke up. “How about Uncle Tony? And Aunt Marissa? And Tasha and Sal? They’re family, aren’t they?”

  Mrs. Toscani gave him a sharp look. “Of course.”

  The room grew quiet except for the scraping sounds of forks moving bites of meatloaf around. Mayzee sneakily dragged half of hers across the plate and hid it under her salad.

  “What neighborhood in Brooklyn?” Dad asked.

  “The best one,” Joe said.

  Mrs. Toscani spoke up. “Bay Ridge. It’s in South Brooklyn.”

  “Cal has a sister in Park Slope,” Dad said.

  “Oh?” Mrs. Toscani smiled politely at Uncle Cal.

  “She’s a theater costume designer.” Uncle Cal’s gaze was fixed only on Mrs. Toscani. “Mom and Dad tried to get her to come home after what happened in September, but she wouldn’t.”

  Mrs. Toscani glanced down at her watch.

  “Maybe she is home,” Joe said. “Some people don’t run away.”

  Mrs. Toscani looked out our kitchen window.

  “That was so terrible what happened,” Mom said. “September eleventh still doesn’t seem real.”

  Both Joe and Mrs. Toscani popped bites of Mom’s meatloaf in their mouths and chewed, chewed, chewed.

  After the Toscanis left, Uncle Cal settled on a bar stool and watched us clean the kitchen. Mom and Dad started clearing the table while I filled the sink up with soapy water.

  “Did Joe tell you anything about his dad?” Mom asked me.

  I shook my head, feeling bad that I hadn’t given it much thought.

  Before dropping the pan into water, Mom dug out the remaining meatloaf and placed it in a storage container. I almost groaned.

  “She never mentioned if she was divorced or widowed,” Mom said.

  “Well, the circumstances don’t matter,” said Uncle Cal. “She’s not married, and that’s a beautiful thing. She’s a beautiful thing.”

  Mom sighed. “Oh, Cal, are you falling in love again?”

  Dad placed his hand firmly on Uncle Cal’s bony shoulder. “Okay, Romeo, remember, she’s our neighbor. When the romance is over, she’s still our neighbor.”

  In bed, I remembered what Joe said about Kate probably thinking of New York as home. Maybe that was the way Joe felt too. That Bay Ridge was where he belonged. The same way I felt about Antler. I wondered if he’d ever give our town a chance.

  He had called me the Ambassador of Nowhere. Didn’t ambassadors represent the places where they were from? Maybe if I showed him what I loved most about our town—the Bowl-a-Rama Café, Opalina’s Opry House, Innis’s Drug Store’s soda fountain bar, Gossimer Pit, where there used to be a lake, and Mrs. McKnight’s rose tunnel—maybe then he would see that Antler was somewhere. My neck and face burned when I remembered what I’d always dreamed would happen under those salmon-colored petals. Well, maybe we would skip the rose tunnel.

  CHAPTER 18

  It was early morning, still dark outside, and I was wide awake. Outside my window the sound of a fast bicycle whirred past our house. Without looking, I knew it was Uncle Cal.

  The morning could be lonesome for people like me, who rose before the alarm while the rest of the world slept. It was like arriving at a party too soon. I closed my eyes and thought about the day I’d planned.

  By the time the sun came up, I heard Dad downstairs moving around in the kitchen. We were expecting a syrup shipment, so a little later he left to meet the delivery guy at the stand. Dad would stay and work the morning shift.

  Then I’d take his place at noon, since Mom would be with Mayzee at rehearsal for tomorrow night’s presentation at the opry. Mayzee went on before the Polka Pals, a group from outside of Houston. On polka nights the audience looked like a sea of silver and gray, stomping their feet to the accordion music. Polka night wasn’t my favorite.

  I ate quickly and washed up. It was going to be unusually hot today, so I wove my hair in a long braid. Then I unbraided it. I tried a deep part and swept my hair across, covering my left eye. Nope. Next I tried to imagine myself with a pixie hairdo like Twig’s. Not a chance. It would look like a knit cap tightly hugging my head. Besides Twig seemed to be growing hers out. Finally I gave up and gathered it into a high ponytail.

  Mom had skipped the gym and was still sleeping. It was eight o’clock. Joe was probably asleep, too. I decided to check for early morning movement anyway, dragging my bike out of the garage and riding around the corner to Miss Myrtie Mae’s house.

  To my surprise, Joe was sitting sideways on the deep second-floor windowsill of Miss Myrtie Mae’s old bedroom, the one she slept in before moving to a room downstairs. I remembered her staring out of the window on the first floor a lot the last year of her life, her pale face against the sheer drapes. Twig had said she looked like a ghost, peering out on the world.

  Joe wore sweatpants and a white T-shirt, and his feet were bare. When he noticed me, he called down, “Hello, Ambassador.”

  “How about a tour?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Nothing else to do.”

  “Get your bike,” I told him.

  “I don’t have one.” He said it quickly and with a matter-of-fact tone, as if he didn’t have any plans to ever own a bike. I’d never known anyone my age who didn’t have one. Although I might as well not have had one now. I hadn’t ridden mine much since Twig and I stopped being friends.

  “We can walk,” I told him. “Wanna meet over at my house after you dress?”

  “And eat my Wheaties. They’ll make me good and strong.” He flexed his skinny arm.

  About fifteen minutes later, he was at my front porch.

  Next door, Mrs. McKnight was in her garden, spreading compost around her rose plants. The leaves had started to appear, and they’d be blooming in a month or two. I waved to her, and she waved back. “That’s Uncle Cal’s mom. Come on, I’ll introduce you.
”

  I stepped in her direction, but Joe grabbed my wrist. “Actually, I really don’t feel like meeting anyone.”

  “Oh. Okay.” I kept walking down our road.

  After we passed a few houses, Joe asked, “So she’s your grandmother?”

  “Who?” Then I realized he meant Mrs. McKnight. “No, we’re not related.”

  “I don’t get it. I thought Cal was your uncle.”

  “We call him that because he and my dad have been best friends all their lives.”

  “And the guy in the picture?”

  “You mean Zachary?”

  “Yeah, didn’t you say he was their friend?”

  “Yes, but he was only here a little while, a summer back in the 1970s.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Is he alive?” Joe seemed as curious as me about Zachary.

  I shrugged.

  “Your dad doesn’t know if he’s alive?”

  “No, he lost touch with him.”

  “Some friends,” he muttered.

  “You don’t get it,” I said, ticked now that he had insulted my dad and Uncle Cal. “Zachary was passing through town. He was here only a short time. People don’t always stay in touch.”

  Joe stopped walking. “I don’t believe that. If you’re a true friend, you’re a friend for life.”

  I was tired of being polite. “So are you going to stay in touch with your Brooklyn friends? And are they going to stay in touch with you?”

  “Yeah, but I don’t call everyone a friend. I have one true friend. One person who knows me better than anyone. He knows what it’s like when things aren’t great, when things are the worst. And yeah, we’re still friends. I talked to him last night on the phone.”

  “Well, you’re lucky, then,” I said in a soft voice. And I meant it.

  The wind picked up so hard that Joe’s braid wagged like a kite’s tail.

  “This stupid wind!” Joe says. “When does it stop?”

  Never. The Panhandle wind was a pain, but he was as prickly as a cactus.

  “And what’s that stink?”

  I sniffed the air. “What stink?”

  “It smells like manure.”

  “That’s the Martins’ cattle feedlot.” I hardly noticed because I’d grown up smelling it. “It’s twelve miles away. You only smell it when the wind blows in a certain direction.”

  “All the time?”

  I ignored his comment and kept moving.

  Mr. and Mrs. Bastrop were sitting on their porch, drinking their coffee. I waved, but I didn’t speak. They would have surely asked us to come over, and I didn’t want to be rude.

  For a while, we walked along in silence. Then the putter of Buster’s family’s blue pickup truck interrupted the quiet. When they got closer, they waved, and I greeted them, waving back. Buster, who has Down syndrome, opened his window and hollered, “Hey, Ry-lee! Go, Mustangs!”

  I raised my fist in the air, and he did the same.

  “Buster is our school teams’ biggest fan,” I explained.

  Joe seemed baffled. “You know everyone here, huh?”

  I nodded, thinking what he’d said a few moments ago; I’d always thought of them as friends. Now I was wondering, Who is a friend? If any of my neighbors moved away, would we stay in touch? Kate did, but she stayed in touch with everyone, sending birthday and Christmas cards to practically every citizen of Antler. But if Twig moved away, she probably wouldn’t stay in touch. I was certain of that now. I hated the way our former friendship always wove its way into my thoughts.

  We reached the square, but I didn’t turn right. “We’ll pick the square up on the way back,” I told him.

  At the feed store, a gigantic flag hung from the roofline, spreading across the entire width of the porch.

  “Wow,” Joe said, sarcastically. “Patriotic.”

  “Mr. Garrett has kept the flag up since September eleventh. Want to go in?”

  “No,” he said firmly. “You see one feed store, you’ve seen them all.”

  “You have feed stores in Brooklyn?”

  He scowled. “I don’t want to go inside. Okay?”

  “Whatever you say.”

  The parking lot had about twenty Ford and Chevy pickups.

  As we passed the lot, Joe asked, “Do you have to own a pickup to live in Texas?”

  It was a fair question, because there were a lot of pickup trucks in Antler.

  “Well, most of their customers own farms or ranches.”

  Not far down the road was the nursing home, where a couple of workers were sitting on porch rockers, smoking cigarettes.

  Next to the nursing home was the Antler Cemetery. An old windmill in the center click-clanked as its blades blurred against the cloudless sky. Joe turned away with such a force that I figured something must be wrong. Maybe his dad was dead. Or maybe he was thinking about his grandparents. Mrs. Toscani had said they’d been dead a few years. I don’t know why I walked all the way to the edge of town. Nursing homes and cemeteries. He was probably realizing I wasn’t the cool kid in school.

  “Well, that’s the east part of Antler,” I said, heading back west.

  We made our way around the square, and I named off the shops—Earline’s Real Estate, Charlotte’s Antiques, York’s Hardware.

  “I know how to read,” Joe said.

  Of course he did, but how could I give a tour when I couldn’t introduce him to anybody? How could he understand what it was like to pass house after house, business after business, and know everyone under every roof? It was then I realized why Antler was so special to me. My feelings had nothing to do with brick and mortar, but everything to do with the people.

  We approached the Bowl-a-Rama Café, and as always could be predicted, we found Ferris sitting outside.

  “Oh no, not this guy,” Joe mumbled.

  “Hey, Rylee!” Ferris called out. “I see you’ve met my new friend, Joe.”

  Ignoring Joe’s earlier request, I left him at the sidewalk and stepped toward Ferris.

  His uncombed froth of gray hair made him look like a mad professor. Motioning with his arm, Ferris called out, “Step on up, Joe.”

  Reluctantly, Joe moved toward the porch.

  “How would you like a job, Joe?” Ferris asked.

  Joe crossed his arms in front of his chest. “Doing what?”

  “Setting bowling pins. It’s only two lanes. And you don’t have to work every day, only when we open the lanes twice a week, at the most, once for the bowling clubs and another day for the public.”

  Joe smirked. “You don’t have a machine that sets the pins?”

  “What would be the fun in that?” Ferris said. “It’s ninepin bowling. The rules are a little different than regular bowling.”

  For years, two of Ferris’s lanes had been broken. Then while visiting another bowling alley in the Texas hill country, he learned about ninepin bowling, where kids set the pins instead of machines. He decided what the heck? He’d save some money and have a new draw for an old sport.

  “Ninepin?” Joe asked.

  “That’s right,” Ferris said. “It’s older than tenpin. Rylee knows all about it. She used to be our star.”

  My neck felt hot and sweaty. “Ferris exaggerates. I played when I was a kid.”

  “Yeah, she was so much younger. When was that? About a year or two ago?” Ferris winked at me.

  I didn’t know about being the star, but I’d been our team’s highest scorer. I used to love it. But Twig was right. What was the point? Getting a big ugly trophy that no one would want to display?

  “Think about it,” Ferris told Joe. “You can take a look right now at the lanes.”

  Joe didn’t answer. I couldn’t help but wonder if he was just rude or if everyone acted like that in New York. But Mrs. Toscani seemed nice.

  “You don’t have to give me an answer now,” Ferris said. “Why don’t you drop by this afternoon, after the lunch crowd,
and then Vernon can demonstrate how to set the pins.”

  Joe sort of nodded.

  Mr. Pham came in from his daily walk and tipped his green fedora at us.

  “Good morning,” he said.

  “Morning, Mr. Pham,” I said.

  He could be awarded the prize for best-dressed man in Antler. Inside the café, he hung up his plaid sports coat and pulled off his hat and wing-tipped shoes. Then he tied on his apron and slipped on a worn pair of loafers.

  “I might stop by later to talk more about the job,” Joe said, not bothering to thank Ferris.

  That was our cue to leave. “See you, Ferris,” I said. “Bye, Mr. Pham. Have a good day.”

  Ferris seemed unfazed by Joe’s rudeness. “Stay out of trouble, outlaws.”

  As soon as we were a few feet away, Joe asked, “What does Ferris do all day? Sit on the bread box and yap?”

  “He’s not lazy. For years he was the only cook.”

  I could see Joe wasn’t that convinced, so I added, “And he has a war injury.” I didn’t tell him what Dad told me about Ferris shooting himself in the foot to keep from going to the Vietnam War. Even so, that still kind of made it a war injury.

  Joe and I finished circling the square, passing our snow cone stand, where Dad was too busy to notice us. He was waiting on a family that I didn’t recognize, probably people passing through town.

  Sometimes travelers stopped and asked us all kinds of things about the history of Antler or how many people lived here. Dad thrived on that stuff. He recommended they stop down the road in Goodnight to see the famous rancher Charlie Goodnight’s grave and tie a bandanna on the fence in front of it, or drive to the overlook to see the Palo Duro Canyon. Some out-of-towners wanted to know where Juan Garcia grew up. Dad would point across the railroad tracks, or if no other customers were waiting, he’d draw a little map on a scrap of paper. The people always thanked Dad and acted like they planned to take him up on his suggestions. Those were Dad’s kind of people.

  Those weren’t Mom’s kind of people. She dreaded those questions. When they asked her about Antler, she just smiled and said, “Oh, we’re like any little Texas Panhandle town.” They never asked her for more details, so maybe they really didn’t want to know all the things Dad told them.