“Oh. Well, I understand that. I’ve been doin’ that.” She knew well what he was saying. She knew it deep down.
Again they were looking at each other. Gazing into each other’s face and wondering all the things that cannot be said. For her part, Rainey thought of the bleak motel room.
She asked him then to go with her.
As his eyes widened, she corrected, “I don’t mean with me alone, but up to my Uncle Doyle’s. That’s where I’m goin’. He lives a few hours from here—up just outside of Childress.”
She told him that she was going to spend a couple of days with her uncle, and about her uncle’s house that sat all alone in the rough country just west of the Red River and how there weren’t any other houses to be seen for miles.
He tilted his head and gazed downward in a fashion she could not gauge.
“It’s not fancy,” she said, “but it will be quiet and certainly away from things. Uncle Doyle won’t mind at all.”
Her mother would have called this one of those things that seemed to be the thing to do at the time.
And then he sort of nodded and said simply, “I think I’ll take you up on that.”
Rainey had a sense that he surprised himself as much as he did her.
CHAPTER 4
Driving at Night
Thinking it unwise for him to sleep again, because of his possible concussion, she kept talking as they went north along the dark road. She talked of country songs that she liked, of the good roads in Texas, and of how the puppy had been dumped on her.
He contributed little to her efforts beyond, “Yes,” “No,” or “Mm-hmm.”
At one point she said, “Back home, we have a law about dumpin’ dogs and cats, and if caught, you’ll pay a fine of a hundred dollars and have your name run in a square box in the Valentine Voice. My mother got that last part put through. She thought shame was the best deterrent. Of course, not many people have ever been caught at it. Only one actually, and that was because he was from another town and didn’t know what would happen to him in ours.”
“Back home,” he said and cracked his eyes to look at her. “Where would that be?” he asked.
“Valentine, Oklahoma. Cultural center of the universe,” she added, thinking that rather witty. “Great-grandaddy founded the town.”
“Hmm.” His eyes were once again drifting closed.
“Are you originally from Houston?” she asked.
He cracked one eye at her.
“Your accent,” she said. “It’s not as pronounced as some, but I’d imagine you’re from East Texas, maybe south Arkansas.”
“Mm-hmm.”
A few seconds later he repositioned himself and said, “I’m not passing out. I’m just going to nap.”
“Fine.” But worry nagged at her.
He leaned against the side of the cab and grimaced when he hit the tender wound on his head.
“There’s a little pillow tucked behind your side of the seat,” she told him, feeling quite generous.
He found her mother’s pillow, rested his head on it and was asleep so quickly it was like he had passed out again.
She assuaged her worry about his concussion by telling herself that for all she knew, this manner of falling asleep quickly was normal for him.
The miles sped away under the rumbling truck as she drove through the night, the same as if she’d been alone, which she found mildly irritating.
Driving at night encourages all sorts of thoughts. Long ago, she had come to the conclusion that many of the ills of the world could be solved in one month, if more of the people in charge of those ills simply went to driving around at night. Freddy always said this theory on her part showed conclusively that she was a few bricks short of a load.
Unlike her passenger, she had never been one to fall quickly asleep. Her mother had said that from birth she awoke about every two hours and that she could hear neighbors whispering in their own homes.
It was normal for her to lie for thirty or more minutes, her mind wandering from this to that, before falling into a light sleep full of dreams, from which she would awaken several times in the night, worries and wonderings prodding her. She had in the past suffered terrible bouts with insomnia, and her mother had encouraged her to deal with this by going out and driving around. The driving did not cure the insomnia, but it did make her a good night driver. She generally enjoyed driving at night, when she had the road to herself and even her mind was more thoroughly all her own, with no intrusive noise from the collective thoughts of other people.
While she drove now, her mind replayed scenes from the evening, and it came to her that she had on the same evening managed to pick up a puppy and a man.
Freddy, when he learned of this, would have a few terse comments.
The puppy lay just on the other side of the glass, and the man was eighteen inches away, breathing the same air as she did.
She couldn’t understand how she had come to have them. She had been going innocently along in her lonely, depressed and confused life when a dog and a man had been thrust upon her.
“Everything in season and for a purpose—even if we never know why,” her mother used to say.
What was the reason for this? She glanced over at her passenger and felt a tightening in her chest. Sharp apprehension that something she didn’t understand had entered her life. That something was going to be required of her. Commitments she felt unprepared to take on.
She had the explicit urge to pull over and tell them both, “Out! Get out!”
The bumps jarred her passenger awake.
“We’re at Uncle Doyle’s,” she told him.
It was just after two o’clock. She drove down the narrow rutted drive to the dark, weathered wood house. There was a light on in the kitchen. As the truck rumbled to a stop, the yellow porch light came on, and Uncle Doyle, a man so skinny that he had no shape at all, held open the screen door.
“Who’s this you got with you, Rain-gal?” he asked, batting moths away from his head where only a few strands of hair stretched across the top.
“A friend, Uncle Doyle—Harry.” She kissed her uncle’s cheek as she passed into the kitchen, where a single light burned over the sink and the faint scent of cigarette smoke hung in the air. There were books and magazines everywhere, she noticed, then turned to see her passenger coming inside, blinking and looking uncertain, and as if his head pained him greatly.
“Well, howdy young fella,” Uncle Doyle said. “Come in and welcome. By golly, it’s the middle of the night. I’d gotten to readin’ and hadn’t really noticed. Maybe y’all would like a bit to eat.” He suddenly looked a little at a loss as to what to do with them.
“We’ve had a bunch of snacks, Uncle Doyle. Aunt Pauline sent you some praline patties and some reports from her trip to Argentina.”
“Ah, yes…” Her uncle’s eyes lit up behind his thick glasses, and he immediately opened the file folder Rainey passed him, ignoring the bag of praline patties. “That Pauline is good to her ol’ brother-in-law,” he mumbled, already losing himself in the papers.
His eyes on the pages, he walked away through an open doorway to a small room where a lamp lit several open books on an oak desk and stacks of books all around it. The room of a studious man.
Harry was staring after her uncle. Rainey touched his arm. “I’ll show you to your bed.”
Up the stairs and past the small bathroom and into a bedroom with a slanted ceiling and twin iron beds set against opposite walls. She told him to take his choice and went to shove open the dormer window. Then she dug into her purse, pulled out the bottle of ibuprofen she had retrieved from the truck seat and tossed it to him. He caught it, looked at her with a raised eyebrow.
“Clean towels are in the bathroom cabinet. If you’re hungry, feel free to look around the kitchen. I have to go take care of my mare.”
Not understanding herself why she had become so cool, she left him sitting gingerly on the side of the bed, rubbing the bac
k of his head.
The puppy, apparently concluding that they had reached a safe destination, had gotten out of the truck and was waiting at the back door. When she came out, he met her eagerly and followed at her heels as she got Lulu from the trailer and put her in a paddock off the tin barn and ran water in the narrow stock tank, all more or less by the light of the stars. The single pole lamp was at the far corner of the barn.
Lulu ran to the middle of the paddock, sniffing the air and then the ground. Then she trotted closer to the fence where Rainey was and began to crop grass. The paddock had not seen a horse or cow for a long time, and there was plenty of grass. Lulu stayed near Rainey, seeking the reassurance of a friend in this strange place, while the puppy sat beside her feet, and she stood leaning on the top fence rail, looking up at the stars, her chest filling with the familiar sense of wonder.
“It’s like they’re all lights, isn’t it?” she said to the puppy and the horse. “Makes you know there’s a lot in this world that we don’t know about.”
Thank you, Lord, for another day…for bringing me safely here…and that I didn’t run him down. She thought of this with a great relief, then, very unnerved at what might have been, swiftly moved her thoughts along. What is going on here, Lord? Should I just have left him in Abilene? Please send someone who’ll take this dog….
The puppy followed her back to the house. She shut the door against him, and moments later opened it to set out a pan of water and a crusty biscuit she had found in a pan on the stove. Her hand hesitated, and then she touched the top of his head.
Closing the back door, she stood for a moment with her hand on the knob. The kitchen looked quite messy. Uncle Doyle was still reading whatever Aunt Pauline had sent him and likely would for some time. Rainey called to him, and he smiled at her.
“Guess I’ll go on to bed,” she said. She was suddenly very weary.
“You look all done in, honey. See you in the mornin’.”
She went upstairs to the same bedroom where she had left her passenger. She saw him in the light from the hallway. He was fast asleep in the narrow bed, undoubtedly had fallen there instantly. His expensive clothes lay across the cotton quilt at the foot, and his shoulders were bare.
Rainey wondered what he would do if she crawled in beside him.
Probably go on sleeping, she thought with a smile. He appeared done in.
She turned out the hall light, undressed, putting back on her shirt to sleep in, and slipped beneath the covers of the opposite bed. It was the only one left available, and no one could sleep on the short Victorian sofa in the living room.
CHAPTER 5
Every Heart Has a Story
She slept until the sun was high, a light sleep from which she would drift up at different sounds—the telephone’s ring, a squeaking door, the rustle of her passenger rising, when she’d peeked and seen his long bare legs as he slipped into his trousers, then the gurgle of water through pipes, and a truck driving off.
She slept as well in this bed as she did in her own. While she had not been in this house for several years, it seemed perfectly familiar and comfortable. The family—the Valentines on her daddy’s side and the Overtons on her mother’s—was spread out over southern Oklahoma and Texas, yet despite the distance, as strong a bond remained as if they all lived on the same street. “We carry the family traits in our blood,” her mother had often said. “Good or bad, can’t be denied.”
Uncle Doyle’s wife Thelma had been her father’s sister, so to all the Valentines, he had become a Valentine, no matter what the legal papers said. Having been an orphan, Uncle Doyle himself often forgot that his name was Smith. When reminded of it, he would say that there were plenty of Smiths, so they wouldn’t miss him.
The quilt under which Rainey snuggled bore the characteristic Vs of all the quilts made by Grammy, her father’s mother, and there were the same scents in the house from the laundry soap favored by the women of the family, as well as the tendency of the elder men to smoke Camels.
Finally, awakening as slowly as she had gone to sleep, she stretched lazily and then looked over at the opposite empty bed, gazing at it for several long seconds. For some reason she pictured her passenger hitchhiking away down the lonesome highway. Going out of her life in the same strange manner in which he had arrived.
She wouldn’t be surprised if he had gone, she told herself, getting up to pad downstairs in her big denim shirt, panties and sock feet, not bothering with either her jeans or combing her hair. Not being a cheerful morning person, even at ten o’clock, she would not attempt any unnecessary effort until she’d had her coffee.
The house was silent, the shades drawn in the living room and dining room, both of which went generally unused. They were neat, if dusty.
The kitchen, annoyingly bright with sunshine, was empty. There was hours-old coffee, thick and strong, left in the pot, and she found a single clean cup in the cabinet. Poured it full, one teaspoon of sugar. She drank deeply and then had to cough.
Another couple swallows of coffee and she became sufficiently awake to see the kitchen in its entirety. She saw with a little shock that it was a terrible mess.
She had noticed a certain disorderliness last night but had been too tired to see the true scope of the situation. Rolled up newspapers not yet read, mail, files and books, dishes covered the table. Food encrusted dishes were stacked in the sink and spread across the counters, along with an open bag of chips and several slices of stale bread, and some little things that looked like tomatoes but might have been shriveled red peppers.
She wondered if Uncle Doyle was depressed. She had recently read an article in the newspaper about older people getting depression, and one of the signs was a letting go of cleanliness.
Well, where was her cousin Neva? Why wasn’t she looking after her daddy better than this?
No doubt Neva was busy with her own affairs, Rainey thought, a doleful feeling about life in general washing over her. Everyone was busy with their own lives, and that left people like Rainey and Uncle Doyle all alone in theirs.
Except that she wasn’t quite as alone as she had been the day before, she thought, remembering both the dog and her passenger as her gaze lit upon a deep-blue sport coat hanging on the back of one of the kitchen chairs.
She reached out and laid a hand on it.
Seeing no one through the window over the sink, which gave a limited view at best, she went to the door and stepped out on the porch. The puppy was there and came immediately to wriggle around her legs. He did not jump on her, a point in his favor. She hated dogs that jumped on a person, and this one just sniffed and wriggled.
Then she saw the curious sight of her passenger bending down by the front tire of her truck.
“What are you doin’?” she called, going to the edge of the porch. She could see what he was doing, of course, but she wondered if he should be exerting himself like that in the hot sunshine.
He looked around at her, then straightened slowly. “You had a flat tire. I’m changin’ it.”
“Well, do you think you should be doin’ that…since you had a concussion yesterday?”
He was changing her tire in his silk shirt and rayon trousers, but she didn’t comment on this, getting distracted by the surprising sight of his muscular shoulders beneath his shirt and the way the sun shone on his dark hair.
Returning her gaze to his face, she said, “I could have done it. You shouldn’t be exerting yourself, and you might get your shirt dirty.”
“I can do it fine,” he said, walking forward and brushing one hand against the other, the gold of his wristwatch catching the light. “I was not diagnosed with a concussion, and the least I can do for you is change your tire.”
She saw then that he was looking at her legs, which reminded her that she wore only her shirt and socks. She supposed he’d seen a woman’s legs before…and if he could think to look at her legs in such an appreciative manner, his head was obviously okay.
He sq
uinted up at her. “You picked up a nail somewhere, and it gave you a slow leak. You’ll need to get it plugged. I’d have sent it with your uncle—he went into town to get some part for his baler—but I didn’t see the flat until after he’d left.” His gaze drifted back to her legs.
“Thanks.” She pressed her legs tight together. “I’ll take it to town this afternoon. Have you had breakfast?”
“Had a piece of toast and coffee with your uncle. I’m not much of a breakfast person—and your uncle’s coffee is strong enough to stand a person up all day.”
“It’s strong, all right, but it’ll wear off at an inopportune time. I’m a breakfast person, no matter what time I get up, and you really should eat. I’ll find somethin’ to cook, if you want to come on in when you get done.”
She went upstairs and put on her jeans, not wanting him to get some mistaken idea about her. And she combed her hair in an effort to look more proper.
Proper really wasn’t exactly her strong suit, she thought, recalling how she had asked a veritable stranger to come along with her. She was very honest, though. Even Freddy said this. He would say, “Rainey is honest, even if she is a dingbat.”
Slowly lowering the brush in her hand, she stared long at her reflection in the mirror, her spirit faltering as she wondered if she had once again given in to foolishness. What had she expected by asking Harry to come along?
Things so rarely turned out as one expected.
There was a huge bowl of brown eggs in the refrigerator, and some sausage links that looked fairly fresh, a carton of milk that smelled okay, even though it was out of date. She managed to scrape together a healthy breakfast of scrambled eggs, sausage, biscuits and gravy, and even a tomato that wasn’t too old.
“Is that all you’re goin’ to have?” she asked, concerned by the single scoop of eggs and lone biscuit her passenger put on his plate.
“I’m not all that hungry.”
Lost Highways (A Valentine Novel) Page 5