A Song For the Road

by Rayne Lacko

  Kaia managed the shadow of a smile. “I like that song.” Her eyes were as dark as the wings of a black swallowtail butterfly. Carter hadn’t noticed that before.

  “Playing old songs is like holding on to the past but living well in the present,” he told her. “We need to take care of what we have. My mom says, ’If the leg of a chair gives out, or a scrape across a tabletop runs deep, we don’t give up. We can look at it in a new way.’”

  “Is your aunt as cool as your mother?” Kaia asked.

  No one had ever used the word cool to describe his mom, but Carter appreciated it. “I’m not going to my aunt’s.” He figured he ought to tell someone. “I’m going to my dad’s house in Los Angeles. Well, Santa Monica to be exact. But he doesn’t know I’m coming.”

  Carter took his hand from Kaia’s shoulder and stood up, looking into the restaurant’s wraparound windows to where his guitar leaned against their table. “I haven’t told him because he might not—” Carter swallowed hard when Kaia picked her head up and looked him straight in the eye. “He left when I was nine and he never looked back.” That was enough, he warned himself. He wasn’t about to go and admit his daddy was none other than Eddie Danforth.

  “You’re flying to LA without telling him? If your aunt’s expecting you, don’t you think she’s going to call your mother when you don’t show?”

  Carter didn’t want to consider the answers to any of Kaia’s questions. They were too painful to consider and besides, they weren’t his biggest trouble.

  “I can’t buy a plane ticket.”

  Carter picked up a stick and scratched at the dry earth. Kaia stared at him, mouth hanging open but no words coming out.

  “I spent all the money on my guitar.” Carter didn’t bother to mention that he’d stolen it. He could barely admit as much to himself.

  “How are you going to get there?” Kaia asked, shielding the sun’s glare with a hand covering her brow. “Santa Monica is a long way from Albuquerque.” She didn’t have to tell him that; he wasn’t failing geography.

  “Just like I am now, hitching rides.” Carter squared his shoulders, firm in his decision. Why risk asking his father for money when he could just get there himself?

  “Kids! Come inside, your pancakes are ready,” Mrs. Liu called from the doorway of the restaurant. He watched Kaia walk ahead to the table, wishing he’d made her promise not to tell.

  Chapter Eleven

  AFTER THEY FINISHED EATING, KAIA AND HER MOTHER climbed into the SUV. Carter hung back while Mr. Liu settled the bill. “I just want to thank you, sir,” Carter said. “For everything.”

  “Son, it’s nothing. You’ve been through a lot. Jiao and I both feel terrible about what happened with your mother.”

  “She’s going to be okay.” Carter heard himself reassuring an adult, when he himself couldn’t be sure at all. “She can handle anything.” That much was true, so he decided to hold to that thought.

  When Carter returned to the car, Kaia was holding her violin case in her lap and shuffling through pages in her schoolbag. “Here, I think you should try these,” she said, shoving sheet music at him and nodding to Carter’s guitar. He looked at the papers she’d handed him. Classical music, of all things. Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky, Mozart.

  He cocked a brow at her. “You realize all this time we’ve been driving historic Route 66?” Carter bet that was a bit of geography she didn’t know. He shook his head with a grin. “I think there’s a law around these parts prohibiting European composers.” Carter unlatched his guitar case and pulled out the Martin. “There used to be famous music halls right here in Amarillo, the Nat Ballroom and the Aviatrix. My dad told me all about them. Louis Armstrong played there, and Jimmy Dorsey, Duke Ellington, and lots of others. How about we try a few of the old—”

  The quiver of Kaia’s bow on her strings stopped him short. With her sheet music propped on her knees, Kaia played a minuet. Her bow rocked back and forth over the violin’s delicate arc of strings.

  Carter had heard the violin plenty of times, and fiddlers were popular at street festivals and county fairs around Tulsa. But her music sounded different, richer, in the soft, upholstered interior of the Lius’ SUV.

  Carter held his breath and listened. He sank back in his seat and closed his eyes, focusing his attention on the tiny space between the strings and her bow, their meeting and sliding apart. Without opening his eyes, he wrapped one hand around the neck of his guitar and laid his other over the strings. He tried to follow her lead with his ears. It would be easier, he supposed, to just look at the sheet music. He wouldn’t make so many mistakes. But every time he opened his eyes, each note became too real, chained to the material world, the place where he made one dumb mistake after another. Besides, Kaia said nothing. She just played on.

  He did his best to keep up, listening with more than his ears, anticipating the rise and fall of the music. When Kaia repeated the music a second and then a third time, he caught it. Holding it like a butterfly in his cupped hands, Carter played along with her. When she finally laid her bow to rest, he opened his eyes and looked at her. It was the first time that day he’d seen her smile.

  Shuffling through her sheet music, she chose another song. This time, he read it through with her first, learning the melody before closing his eyes. On the third piece of music, they traded. He held it in his lap and she checked out, closing her eyes and following his lead.

  “You’ve got some talent, son,” Mr. Liu remarked. “Have you been playing long?”

  “My dad taught me when I was little,” Carter responded. He didn’t bother to mention that music was his past, not his present. The truth was, right then, Kaia was as much his teacher as his father had been.

  There were only a few hours left until they made it to Albuquerque. In the backseat, Kaia pulled her notebook from her schoolbag.

  What are you doing for your independent research project? she wrote on an empty page and passed it to Carter, offering him her favorite scented sparkle pen. He read her note and ignored her offer of the pen, turning to look out the window. Carter worried he’d already told her too much back at Ma Joad’s. Telling Kaia his secrets came too easy. There were certain things he knew best to keep to himself.

  She dropped the notebook to her lap and clicked the pen shut. They rode on in silence, long enough that Mr. Liu began to fiddle with the radio again. At last, Kaia sighed and leaned forward to return the notebook to her bag.

  Carter shook his head, thinking he ought to know better, and reached over and took the notebook and pen from her hands. He appraised her pen’s scented sparkles with an eye roll, then clicked it open and wrote: No clue. Guess I’ll figure that out when I get to my dad’s. You going to write about fancy food?

  She smiled, looking thankful to have him “talking.”

  Historic Route 66, she wrote in large bubble letters, drawing hearts for the two i’s in historic and a huge heart around all of it. She held it up to show him with a smirk, then lowered it to her lap. JK, she wrote across the bottom: just kidding. Then she struck that out and wrote, But seriously, Route 66. For sure. I’m not cooking without Ethan.

  He laughed and motioned for her to give him the notebook. Then I guess I have to write about Rachmaninoff?

  He handed it back to her and they both broke out in giggles. In the front seat, Mr. and Mrs. Liu talked quietly about paint colors for their new front entrance. A crescent moon rose over the city line as they approached Albuquerque.

  The notebook passed back and forth between Kaia and Carter faster now. As their trip came to an end, it seemed there was still so much they needed to say.

  You’re really going to do this, huh?

  What? Carter replied, sketching a winky face.

  Hitchhike to California, stupid. You’re fifteen, last I heard, she wrote back.

  Not much choice. Hey, I’m already ten hours closer than I was this morning. Day One of my trip was a winner.

  Kaia drew a smiley face, then
stopped. She hugged the book to her. Clicking the pen shut, she covered her heart with her hand. Carter held her gaze across the backseat. He would never forget this ride. Kaia turned the notebook back to her lap and scribbled her cell phone number. Text me, she wrote, pushing the pen tip harder, like it was an order.

  I don’t have a phone.

  Kaia crinkled her nose, shooting him a look that said she didn’t entirely believe that. Sighing, she scribbled her grandmother’s address in Albuquerque. Below it, she wrote, This is crazy. Write me every day to prove you’re alive. If you know about Paleozoic music halls, you can stick a stamp on a letter, right?

  Carter took the book and tore the page out. He folded it neatly and tucked it into his backpack. On a fresh page, he wrote, It’s crazy, but I can do it, and passed the book back.

  The day I don’t get a letter, I’m sending the cops with a canine unit to your last location so they can sniff out your dead body, she wrote, and stuck out her tongue at him. She passed the book and pen to him, but he set them on his lap without responding. The SUV passed under a sign directing them to the airport. Kaia smiled a hopeful smile, but worry dented her brow. The last rays of sunlight hung like loose threads in the dark sky.

  A greenish glow from the dashboard illuminated Carter’s hand when he reached across the backseat to offer it to Kaia. She took it in hers and they held on until her father pulled into Departures.

  “There’s the ticketing counter.” Mr. Liu left the engine running but got out to open Carter’s door for him. “You need a hand?”

  “Don’t be silly, Daddy,” Kaia interrupted before Carter could respond. “He flies to his Aunt Sylvia’s by himself every summer.”

  Mr. Liu patted Carter on the back. “You’ll be safe at your aunt’s before you know it,” he said, slipping him a twenty-dollar bill. “Get yourself some dinner.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Carter said.

  From the backseat, Kaia scribbled invisible words in the air with an invisible pen, mouthing their meaning: Write every day. When he lifted his hand to wave good-bye, Carter was still holding her pen.

  Chapter Twelve

  THE EVENING WAS WARM AND DRY. CARTER sauntered through the automatic sliding doors toward the ticket counter like a seasoned jet setter, throwing his jacket over his shoulder. When he was sure the Lius were gone, he circled around a bank of pay phones and tried to blend into the passing herd of travelers with cell phones pressed to their ears.

  They know full well where they’re headed, Carter thought, and probably when they’ll return. Unlike me, hanging in the gap between hasta and luego.

  The reality of what Carter was doing started to fall on him, one drop at a time, thudding with a hard splatter like rain into the bottom of a bone-dry rain barrel. It’d been easy to brag to Kaia about hitchhiking across the country. It was something else entirely to find himself alone in an airport in Albuquerque.

  He’d scratched his dad’s home number across the backside of a losing lottery ticket at the hospital. It would be stupid not to try calling one more time before getting in a car with some stranger. Camellia had no business deciding whether his dad should take him in. It would only be temporary, after all, and the man was his own blood.

  For a kid who’d wanted to destroy all evidence his father was ever in his life, he was now about to ask the very same man for a plane ticket, a place to stay until his mother was better, oh, and would he mind autographing the guitar he pawned when he left his boy and skipped town?

  Carter picked up the receiver of a pay phone. When his father used to nudge him out of the shadows and into the spotlight as a little boy, he’d tell him: just put it out there. Holding his breath, Carter dialed the number. He hated to admit he’d forgotten the sound of his own daddy’s voice.

  “Hello?” The voice on the other end was just a kid. A girl.

  “Uh, hi, hope you don’t mind my calling so late. Is your,” Carter began, caught off guard, “dad at home?”

  “You talk funny.”

  “I reckon I talk like anyone from Tulsa.” Carter wished he hadn’t taken a tone with . . . what should he call her? His sister? “Would you kindly put him on the phone, Miss?”

  “Who are you?”

  He let out one long audible breath. “I’m Eddie’s son, Carter Danforth.”

  “His son?” She sounded about as sweet as dill pickle pie. “Oh yeah, Daddy had a starter wife. He never said anything about having a kid with her.”

  “Starter what now?” Carter didn’t like that crack one bit. But his daddy never spoke one word about him? Couldn’t be true. She must be messing with him. Wasn’t Camellia’s oldest girl Aurora only thirteen or some such? A Southern mother would smack that kind of sass faster than green grass through a goose. Worse, she’d called his father “Daddy.” He couldn’t ignore the stab of jealousy he felt when he did the math: Eddie had raised her from about age seven. He was more her father than his.

  He tried to get on the girl’s good side. “Looks like we might be family of sorts. Hope to make your proper acquaintance one day.”

  “Hoo-wee.” Aurora affected a cartoonish twang. “Y’all country up in here, ain’t ya now?”

  Why was she making fun of his accent? His father was Okie, born and bred. She ought to be used to it.

  “May I speak with Eddie, please?” Carter chose his words carefully.

  “He’s out of town. Seattle, I guess. Maybe Austin; can’t remember. Should be back Saturday.”

  Carter checked the Departures board for the date and counted two forward. “April eighth; got it.”

  “Yee-haw. Can’t wait to tell Mom we’ve got a hillbilly half-brother.” Clearly, she didn’t know the difference between a half-brother and a step-sibling. Carter figured she probably couldn’t tell a crawdad from a Cadillac either.

  “May I, uh, does he have a number where I can reach him directly?”

  “Yeah right. Do you know how many randos ask for his private cell? He’d kill me if I told one more person. If he wants you to have it, he’ll give it to you himself.”

  Carter had been telling himself the same thing about the Martin for six years.

  WANDERING aimlessly through the airport would sure enough draw the wrong kind of attention. The last thing Carter needed was some security officer to notice him, so he found a bench in Arrivals and pretended to wait for someone to pick him up. For a while he watched cars and trucks pull up to the sidewalk. Suitcases wheeling past him were loaded into trunks. The hugs were the hardest.

  A flickering clock over the baggage claim carousel caught his eye. Back in Oklahoma his mother was about to go into surgery. Unconscious, going under the knife. Alone.

  Reaching into his backpack, he pulled out his notebook and wrote a quick letter to his mother, confessing everything he’d done. The stolen money, the night he’d spent in the pawn shop, and the truth that he was fixing to get to Eddie’s house in Santa Monica whether he was wanted there or not. He had to make that unlucky guitar lucky again, and the only way to do that was to sell it for as much money as they could get. He wanted to do right by her.

  Carter looked away from the page, away from his fool feelings, and tried to get a grip on reality. He was as invisible to the world as the words Kaia had written in the air as her dad’s SUV pulled away. Carter ripped the page from his notebook and crushed it into a ball between his palms.

  He needed his father’s help. It was bad enough they’d lost the house they’d lived in together as a family. But he was fifteen, soon enough a man. It was high time he and his dad had a few words.

  Carter found another pay phone and dialed. When Aunt Sylvia’s voice mail came on, he almost hung up. At the last second, he blurted out, “Hi, Aunt Syl; it’s me, Carter. I, uh, can’t get a flight for a few days. I’m staying with our neighbors, the Lius,” he said in one rushed breath. “In Albuquerque?” he added, his voice rounding up at the end like a question. Awkward. “I’ll call you when I get a flight out.” He didn’t like lying.
“So, thanks. Bye.”

  Hanging around Arrivals wasn’t doing him any good. There wasn’t much to see this side of the security gates, so Carter slipped through the automatic doors to the sidewalk. The stars seemed sharp points puncturing a thin-skinned sky. He put his jacket on and walked, leaving the airport behind.

  In less than ten minutes, he found himself on the corner of Sunport and Yale by the Shoretown Inn, a chain hotel with an airport commuter van parked out front. The deep fabric sofas in the lobby looked mighty cozy. He remembered staying at a Shoretown once that offered free hot chocolate and a snack buffet in the breakfast room.

  It was late, past midnight. Carter was fairly certain his friends, Landon, Caleb, and Kaia—he reckoned he could count her among his friends—were warm between soft, clean sheets somewhere, fast asleep. Carter was tired by the weight of a day that’d held both its hours and the miles between him and his hometown. He’d played his father’s guitar again, to an audience no less. That was heavy, too.

  Sure enough, the Shoretown had a breakfast room. The place was deserted and the only sustenance was a tray of cookies and a bowl of apples and bananas. Carter descended on it, gorging himself. Before long, he had company.

  Chapter Thirteen

  A GROUP OF FOUR GUYS PILED INTO THE ROOM, loud and wide awake. Three of them carried guitar cases. Carter stopped chewing and listened in on their conversation. He overheard them discussing their gig that evening at the Piñon Music and Art Festival.

  “Where y’all from?” Carter tried to be polite, sitting up in his chair in hopes of looking older.