I waited.
“That makes me feel like I’m supposed to be defective or something. Like you think I’m crazy.”
“Maybe just look at it more like your world has gone crazy. All around you. And you just need some help adjusting to it all.”
We sat that way for a long time. Literally minutes. How many minutes, I couldn’t say. Three or four maybe.
“I’ll think about it,” she said, and stood to go.
I almost let her. But then I caught up to her, turned her around, and gave her a long hug. She allowed it for a surprising length of time. Melted into me and let herself be completely held.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Anytime,” I said.
She let herself out. I watched her walk halfway down the driveway before I remembered what I wanted to ask.
“Abigail,” I called, and she stopped and turned. “Did Esther die?”
She nodded sadly, sobbed once in a hiccupy sort of way, then walked away without further comment.
• • •
I checked phone messages before bed, but there was nothing. I checked my email, but found only spam. Not even an email from Connie with her phone number, as promised.
I didn’t have the energy to wonder why. I just needed sleep. I needed fuel. I needed life force. I needed repair.
Actually, I think I needed my life back the way it was before. But that was off the table, so I settled for a night’s sleep.
• • •
I hurried out to get my mail in the morning, suddenly and oddly sure I would have a postcard from Vida.
I was right.
What did that mean, I wondered? I had never before known something in advance like that. Not that I was aware of, anyway.
The front of the postcard said, “Greetings from Baker, California, home of the world’s largest thermometer.” And of course it had a picture of the thermometer in question. It was a towering spire of many storeys which had been photographed showing a readout of 100 degrees.
I turned it over, feeling oddly empty. But I did note that my heart was beating harder and faster than normal.
“Dear Richard,” I read. “Car trouble for days and it’s very hot here. Hope to get back on the road soon. The car has no air conditioning but at least you can roll down the windows and drive fast. When it’s running, that is. I’m looking for something but I don’t know what it is. But when I figure it out, you’ll be the first to know. Well. The second, actually. I’ll know first. Love, Vida.”
CHAPTER 5: VIDA
The World’s Tallest Thermometer
Eddie asked me, “What’s that little book you keep writing in? Is it a diary?”
So then I took about twenty minutes to tell him all about Esther and the blank book she gave me, and the worry stone, and how she died (which made me cry again), and a bunch of other stuff he didn’t exactly ask about.
But I really needed something to do.
Eddie is the mechanic who is fixing Victor’s car. Only not right then, he wasn’t. Right then, when he asked about my book, he was fixing somebody else’s car. A nice blue BMW that belongs to some other poor fool who was just trying to get through the desert in one piece.
He can’t work on Victor’s car yet because he had to special-order a water pump and it hasn’t even shown up. It’s taking a long time. Longer than anybody thought it would.
And besides, even when the water pump shows up, he still needs to put paying customers first.
I like Eddie. He’s my friend.
He’s older than us. Forty or fifty. And he’s Indian. I don’t mean like an Indian from India, I mean like an American Indian. Or I guess I should say Native American. It’s probably more respectful and more right. After all, how long can you hold on to a name just because Columbus was an idiot out looking for spices who didn’t even get that he ran into something that wasn’t nearly India?
But I should be careful not to get too far off track. Anyhow, Eddie has a long ponytail that goes way down his back, and he keeps it tied in three places. He ties it with leather thongs. It’s tied close to his head, but the bottom of it is tied tight, too, and it’s also tied in the middle. So it’s thin. And black. And he has a great big stomach.
He’s also very nice.
He knows we don’t have much money, so he’s been sending Victor out on errands in his truck. Picking up parts and stuff. He’s been letting him work it off. And he let us put up Victor’s tent behind his gas station. But I can’t be out there until at least four in the afternoon, because that’s when the gas station gets in-between the sun and the tent, so there’s some shade. Otherwise, you could die out there. Literally. I’m not just being dramatic.
He also lets us take ice out of his ice-machine anytime we want, which may have saved my life, and definitely saved Jax’s life. About once an hour I hose Jax down with the hose at the side of the station, and then I feed him ice and hold some ice on his paw pads, and then he perks up a little, like a sad, droopy plant when somebody waters it.
Jax will be happier than anybody when we get back on the road. And Victor and I both want it pretty bad ourselves.
Victor isn’t here now because he’s off working, running errands in Eddie’s truck.
If I wanted, I could be in the little tiny snack shop that’s part of Eddie’s gas station, and which is air conditioned. (Because if it wasn’t, people wouldn’t stay in there long enough to buy anything.) But right now I don’t want to be in there because the bad cashier is on duty. And besides, there’s no place to sit. I have to sit on the floor, and the customers look at me funny.
The good cashier likes dogs, and she lets Jax lie on the floor behind her counter, where nobody even sees him except her. That way he gets to be where it’s cool. The bad cashier hates dogs (and actually, people, too, now that I think about it), and says she will report her own place of work to the health department if she sees that dog inside.
I asked Eddie once why he has her working here, and he said he would get somebody with a better disposition if he could, but it’s not likely that anyone will be looking for a job here in the summer.
I almost offered to do the job myself. At least it’s in the air conditioning. But we’ll be moving on soon.
I’m getting off track again.
So I was sitting in the shop area with Eddie, in a service bay, talking to him. My back up against the wall. Jax was lying on the concrete beside me, freshly wetted down and sleeping flat out on his side in a little shallow puddle, with his tongue hanging out on to the floor. It isn’t air conditioned in the shop, because the service bays are all open in the front. But at least in here we’re in the shade. And there are two big fans blowing, which is better than nothing.
So back to where I started.
I told him all about Esther and the book. And he listened, and nodded. He was leaning over the engine of this BMW. He had the hood off, and he had these vinyl drapes (printed with STP motor-oil company logos) over both sides of the fenders so he could set his tools down without scratching anything.
He said, “Victor told me you had a heart transplant. I wasn’t sure if he was lying or telling the truth.”
“Why would he lie?”
“I don’t know,” Eddie said. “I don’t know why anybody would lie, but I know some people do. Don’t get me wrong. He seems like a good guy. But I don’t know him very well. I just never knew anybody who had a heart transplant before. It’s so rare.”
“It’s not that rare.”
“I thought it was really rare.”
“Not any more. Thousands of people have them every year. I’m pretty sure it’s something like between two and three thousand just right here in the US. Unless I’m remembering wrong. But I don’t think I’m remembering wrong, though. It’s a lot.”
I pulled down the collar of my tee-shirt a little, to show him the top of the scar. He winced, like it was his chest getting cut down the middle.
“Ouch,” he said. “How far down doe
s that go?”
I pointed to the spot where it ended at the bottom, and he winced again.
“That must have been quite an ordeal.”
“Yeah. But better than dying. But I guess I really shouldn’t say that, though, because I’ve never died. But it sure seemed like a better idea than dying at the time.”
“Oh, you’ve died,” Eddie said. Going back to his BMW. “We’ve all died. Numerous times. You just don’t remember.”
“Maybe so, yeah. That could be. I’m going to go see how hot it is.”
“114,” Eddie said.
“Can you see the giant thermometer from here?”
“Nope.”
“Do you have a little one in here?”
“Nope.”
“Then how do you know?”
“I just know. I’ve lived here all my life, and I just know. Bet I’m not off by more than one degree. You don’t believe me, go look.”
I got up and walked out of the shop. Jax stirred, and got up, and came with me to the open doors of the shop, dripping all the way, but then he stopped before I got out into the sun. He wouldn’t walk out into the sun. He stopped and waited for me.
I walked out across the baking tarmac until I could see the giant thermometer. I could see and feel these waves of heat, shimmering all around me. Baking me. I knew I’d have to hurry up and get back in the shade before I got too crispy and well done.
The world’s tallest thermometer is sort of what Baker is known for. Seems like a strange thing to be known for, but I guess every place has to have something. It’s 134 feet tall. A foot for every degree it should ever have to be able to read. Because in something like 1913, it was 134 degrees at Death Valley. At the bottom, it says, “Baker, CA, gateway to Death Valley.” And then it has a lighted sign for every ten degrees, with lines in-between.
It was 114.
The Water Pump
Maybe this is weird. No, definitely this is weird. But anyway, here goes.
I started thinking that a water pump is to a car what a heart is to a body. And then I started feeling like maybe there would never be a pump. Like we were in the hospital waiting for a pump, and maybe it would just never show up.
God knows, it hadn’t been showing up so far.
And then Victor’s poor car would never live and breathe and drive down a road and see the world again. And we would still be alive, of course, but pretty well stuck. Pretty stranded.
But then, the next day after I told Eddie about Esther and the book, there was Victor, standing in the heat waves outside the doorway of the service bays, freshly back from a parts run. And he was smiling really wide, just standing there with the sun beating down on his head, until Eddie said, “Hey, gringo, get out of the noonday sun.” Like I say, Eddie is Native American. Not Spanish. But he calls people gringo if they don’t know enough to get out of the sun, which he thinks is pretty funny.
By the way, I was wrong when I said Victor wears his Goth black trench coat even when it’s really hot. Not when it’s 114, he doesn’t. He just wears a tee-shirt. He’s getting one of those truck-driver tans from his upper arms down to his hands, and on his neck, but I better not get off track again.
Victor came in the shop, still smiling, and Jax got up and wagged like crazy.
And Victor said, “Guess what just came in today?” We knew it was the water pump. He didn’t even have to say it. Victor and Jax and I did the water-pump dance together for a minute, but then it got too hot for dancing, so we stopped.
Victor went out to unload all the parts and bring them in.
I sat back down with my back against the wall, and Jax lay down beside me with a big sigh — I call it his heat sigh — and Eddie went back to his BMW.
“I’m going to miss you when we move on, Eddie.” I said that. Even though I knew it would be another day or two before he put the water pump in. Or longer. A day or two meant figuring no more paying customers would break down near Baker.
“You’ll have to come back through sometime and say hi.”
“Maybe in the winter.”
And he laughed.
“Gringos,” he said.
On Finding the Someplace
Eddie worked all next morning to finish the BMW so he could start on Victor’s water pump. He sent Victor out on one last set of errands, which worked out pretty well, because they both figured that would be just about enough work to pay off the job. I think he was giving us a little break, but he wasn’t giving it away or anything. He was being fair to everybody, I think, himself included.
I spent the morning in the air conditioning with the good cashier, Ellie, with Jax hiding behind the counter. But then I had to get him out the side door and into the service bay fast when she saw the bad cashier, whose name was Crystal, coming down the road for her shift.
The heat hit me like walking into a blast furnace. Not that I ever have, but I’ve read about them. But it was worth it. Because Eddie was already working on Victor’s big old American car. It made me really happy. I think it might have been the first time I really believed, for real, deep down in my heart — well, somebody’s heart, anyway — that we were going to get out of the desert and go someplace cooler.
“How long do you think it’ll take?”
“Oh, it’s not a very big job, now that I can finally get to it.”
I sat down on the concrete with my back up against the wall, as close to one of the fans as possible, and Jax paced back and forth and whimpered, which was his way of complaining because we couldn’t sit inside. After a while he gave up and flopped.
“Who are you going to have run your errands when we’re gone?”
“I guess it’ll have to be like the old days. If something needs doing, I have my three trusty employees. Me, myself and I.”
“I think you should make Crystal do it. That way she wouldn’t need to be around real people. She’d just be in the truck.”
“There’s real people at the auto-parts store. And I can’t afford to piss ’em off.”
“What about your snack-shop customers?”
“She’s actually pretty civil with them. She saves the mean mouth for us, I think. I never asked where you two kids are going.”
“Don’t know yet,” I said.
“Just traveling for the sake of traveling?”
“Not exactly. It’s like there’s someplace calling me. Like I half-remember it. But I’m not quite sure what it is. Or where it is. I know some things about it, though. Like I know a lot of people go to it. It’s busy. It’s not like some out-of-the-way place in the middle of nowhere. And I know it’s one of those places where, when you first see it, you make a noise out loud. Like you say, ‘Ooooh,’ when you didn’t even mean to. Or you suck in your breath so loud the person standing next to you can hear it. And I know it’s red. I mean, not bright red, but like the way red-rock places are red.”
Eddie whistled softly. “You got your work cut out for you there, kiddo. In the southwest US of A, that does not exactly what you might call narrow things down much.”
“Where would you start looking if you were me?”
“Maybe the Zion and Bryce Canyon area. Sedona’s like that. Grand Canyon, of course. Glen Canyon. Maybe Escalante and Capitol Reef. Or Arches or Canyonlands.”
I sighed, thinking that was a lot of places, and they were probably all hot.
“I guess we’ll have to try them all, then.”
I saw Eddie look up, so I looked up, too. Somebody was driving up to his shop. It was a couple, not too old, maybe late twenties, in one of those really old American pickup trucks that’s been cherried out to look real nice. A classic. But it didn’t sound as good as it looked. It was sputtering and coughing, and there was something like either smoke or steam coming out from under the hood.
“Pull her in here,” Eddie yelled, and motioned for him to take the empty bay, but the engine died, and then it wouldn’t go any farther than that.
Shit, I thought. Even though I usually don’
t swear, not even on the inside. We’re not getting out of here after all.
The guy stepped out and walked around the back of the truck and started yelling and cussing and stomping over something he saw there. I was thinking it was too hot to be so mad, but he seemed to manage. He was wearing one of those wife-beater tees to show off his arm muscles, and tight jeans with a big oval belt-buckle about the size of a flat lemon.
Eddie walked out into the sun and around the back of the truck, and looked at the something with him, and then they pushed the truck inside. I heard just enough to know that the reason the guy was so upset was because water was coming out of his tailpipe. I guess that’s not a good thing.
“You limped it too far to get it here,” Eddie said. “Huh?”
“I could’ve walked, I think, but she didn’t think she could. Or she said she couldn’t anyway.”
He pointed to the back of his girlfriend, or wife, or whatever, who was disappearing into the cool snack shop, shaking her head. Her perfect hair never even moved. She had this look like she was done with this whole mess and wanted no more to do with it.
I guess I shouldn’t make assumptions that she was his girlfriend or wife. I mean, Victor isn’t my boyfriend or husband, just because we’re on the road together. But I still think I was right, because they were ignoring each other with that quiet sort of fighting that friends mostly don’t do.
“It wasn’t even that far, but it was so hot. I think she just wouldn’t. And now I bet I blew a head gasket.”
“Just hope that’s all you did, son. Hope you didn’t warp the heads. Or even crack your block.”
“Oh, shit, man. Don’t wish all that on me.”
“I don’t wish any of this on you. I hope it’s the easiest thing possible. I got more work than I know what to do with. Don’t have to make my whole living just on you. It’s gonna be a big job one way or the other. Even if the heads are just warped, I have to send ’em off to the machine shop in Barstow. We’re probably looking at a few days minimum.”
See? I was right, I thought. We’re never getting out of here.
Second Hand Heart Page 19