November Road

by Lou Berney

  “Rosemary took a tumble, I’m afraid,” Charlotte said. “We were having a discussion about California.”

  He grasped the situation and crouched to examine the knee. “Tell me what happened, Rosemary,” he said. “And don’t leave out any details.”

  “I fell,” Rosemary said.

  “That’s it? Rosemary, an adventure like this deserves an interesting story. Don’t you agree?”

  Rosemary continued to sniff and snuffle, but she liked adventures, she liked stories. “Maybe,” she said. “Yes.”

  “‘I fell.’ You can do better than that,” he said. “I’ll give you an hour. Two if you need it. Do we have a deal?”

  Up in the room, Charlotte washed the knee with soap and put a Band-Aid on it. Rosemary’s face needed washing, too, after all the crying and the sugared elephant ear.

  They packed their bags and carried them downstairs. Frank had already settled the bill, so Charlotte opened her wallet and took out a twenty-dollar bill.

  “The room’s already paid for,” he said.

  “No,” she said. “It’s not.”

  “Charlotte …” But when he saw that she wasn’t going to yield, he accepted the money. “I’ll bring the car around.”

  While she waited, she asked the room clerk if she could use his desk phone to make a collect call. Dooley picked up immediately, as if he’d been staring at the phone and just waiting for it to ring.

  “Charlie?” Dooley said. “Is that you?”

  “Yes, it’s me,” she said.

  “Where the hell are you, Charlie? You said you were coming home.”

  She hadn’t said that. She knew she hadn’t. “I’m not coming home, Dooley. I’m going to get a divorce. I just wanted to let you know that we’re fine. The girls are fine. I don’t want you to worry.”

  “You don’t want me to worry? Why are you doing this to me, Charlie? I can’t stand it, another second away from you and the girls.”

  He sounded the way Rosemary’s knee looked, scraped and raw. When Charlotte remained silent, he tried again, his voice softer, gentler.

  “I’ll stop drinking, Charlie,” he said. “I know I’m not worth a damn, but I can do that. I’ll stop drinking, I swear. I can do that for you.”

  Charlotte’s old self would have wavered. Was she a terrible person for leaving her husband of nearly ten years behind? Her new self marveled at how easy it was for her to recognize now, from this fresh perspective, Dooley’s various tactics.

  “Do you want to say hello to the girls?” she said.

  “I want you to come home, Charlie. That’s what I want. Now, listen to me. If—”

  “Good-bye, Dooley. Take care of yourself, will you?” she said. “I’ll call you again when we get to California.”

  She hung up. She thought for a moment and then asked the room clerk if she could make a long-distance call and pay him for it. He agreed, and Charlotte dialed Aunt Marguerite’s number.

  “Aunt Marguerite,” Charlotte said when she answered, “it’s me again. It’s Charlotte.”

  “Charlotte.”

  Clipped, curt, and followed by what Charlotte suspected might have been a sigh. Charlotte chose to ignore it. She chose to ignore the jab of panic between her ribs, the flush of embarrassment spreading over her, the voice in her ear that whispered urgently, Sit down, be quiet, what do you think you’re doing?

  You could do that, she was discovering. Experience an emotion without allowing it to determine your actions. Hear a knock on the door without feeling compelled to open it. The world didn’t end, towers didn’t topple. Life went on.

  “Hello, Aunt Marguerite,” she said. “How are you?”

  “I’m quite busy at the moment,” Marguerite said.

  “Then I’ll try not to take up too much of your time. My husband and I are getting a divorce. It’s decided. I’ve decided. And I’m coming to Los Angeles with the girls. I’ve decided that, too. We’d like to stay with you for a month or two, until I find a job and a permanent place to live.”

  “Charlotte—”

  “I know you said that it’s not a good idea,” Charlotte said. “And I wholeheartedly agree. But I don’t have a better idea right now, Marguerite. I’m quite new at this, and it’s quite overwhelming, and my plan, such as it is, is to put one foot in front of the other, one step at a time. My daughters are very well behaved. Well, they’re little girls, and I don’t doubt that they’ll be a disruption. I’m happy to share a room with them, of course. I’m happy to sleep in a cupboard, if it comes to that. I’m under no illusions how difficult Los Angeles will be. I don’t think I am, anyway. I’ll have my own car. I hope to have my own car. I’m under no illusions how difficult my life will be wherever I go, which is why I’d be so very grateful for your help. You’re the only family I have left.”

  Charlotte took a breath. She’d intended her speech to be more succinct, less haphazardly organized, but she supposed that she’d made her point. Whatever Marguerite’s answer might be, Charlotte at least felt better about herself now.

  “Well.” And then Marguerite laughed. A surprise in itself, but even more so because her laugh—a hearty boom and an expansive rippling—in no way resembled her clipped, chip-of-ice speaking voice. “It appears you haven’t given me a choice, have you?”

  “We have a dog, too, by the way,” Charlotte said. “He has epilepsy.”

  “I have a cat with one eye,” Marguerite said. “Perhaps they’ll be friends.”

  Charlotte took another breath, and then she laughed as well. “Thank you, Marguerite.”

  “When will you arrive?”

  “We’re going to Las Vegas for a day or two first. So we should be in Los Angeles by the end of the week, I think.”

  “Very well. I’ll prepare the cupboard for you.”

  Frank had returned with the car. Everyone piled in. As they drove, Rosemary related the story of her scraped knee. It involved outlaw bandits, a giant Indian with a tomahawk who badly needed a friend, a headlong chase across the desert. On and on the story went. Charlotte smiled, drowsing contentedly in the front seat. Rosemary was still adding details to her adventure when they turned north and crossed the Nevada state line.

  22

  “I never been nowhere but Texas before,” the colored kid said.

  “Congratulations,” Barone said. “You’re a world traveler now.”

  Tucumcari, New Mexico. Half a dozen motels strung along Highway 66. Barone checked them all.

  I’m a private dick. I’m looking for a guy. He ran out on his wife and kids back home, and the wife hired me to find him. Might be driving a Dodge, blue over white. I don’t know what name he’s using. Let me tell you what he looks like.

  After that: two motels in Santa Rosa, two in Clines Corners, one in Moriarty. The same spiel, the same blank look in return, the same, Sorry, nope, nuh-uh, haven’t seen him.

  Barone watched the rearview mirror. Now that they were out of Texas, he wasn’t too worried about the cops. They didn’t have any good way to track him down.

  They spent Wednesday night in Moriarty. Barone had overdone it. He could barely make it from the car to his room. The kid walked down the street to the only restaurant in town and brought back a bowl of soup for Barone. He gave Barone his pills and crumbled saltines into the soup, the way he said his sisters did for him back in Houston whenever he was sick.

  A full night’s sleep did wonders for Barone. Thursday morning, Thanksgiving Day, he felt more or less right again. The swelling in his hand, when he peeked under the bandage, had gone most of the way down.

  It took Barone all day to check the motels and hotels and rooming houses in Albuquerque. In between stops the kid shared his many opinions. He said he’d never go to work for a company like Barone’s, one that didn’t let him have a day off every now and then. He said he planned to find himself a pretty woman with a head on her shoulders and get married just as soon as he graduated high school, year after next. Or maybe he’d join the army
first.

  “You don’t want to join the army,” Barone said.

  “Why don’t I?” the kid said.

  “Just listen to me. And why are you so hot on getting married so quick?”

  “Shoot. Why am I so hot on getting married so quick.”

  “I don’t know. That’s why I asked.”

  “Why don’t you introduce me to her?” the kid said. “That colored-lady lawyer you was talking ’bout the other day.”

  Friday they covered the rest of New Mexico and a good piece of Arizona. As they neared Holbrook, one radio station faded out and another faded in. The song that was playing emerged bit by bit, like bubbles rising to the water’s surface.

  “’Round Midnight.” There it was again, the Billy Taylor piano version this time. It was like the song was following Barone. Or like he was following it.

  “Do you believe in God?” Barone said.

  “Why you want to know?” the kid said.

  “Why don’t you want to tell me?”

  The kid scowled for a mile or two. He was a careful and conscientious driver. He never took his hands off the wheel or his eyes off the road. Maybe when all this was over, Barone would introduce him to Seraphine, put in a word and get the kid a permanent job.

  “Yes and no,” the kid said, “do I believe in God.”

  “You can’t have it both ways,” Barone said.

  “I believe Jesus wasn’t no white man.”

  “Where’d you hear that?”

  “I heard it.”

  They stopped for the night in Holbrook and checked in to the Sun and Sand Motel. Tried to check in. When the manager saw the kid, he shook his head. The manager was bloodshot and fat, maybe an ex-cop gone to seed, that kind of curl to his lip.

  “Nope,” the manager said. “No. Nosirree.”

  “What?” Barone said.

  The manager curled his lip. “We’ve experienced a sudden lack of vacancy.”

  Barone could have shot him. Better yet, strap him to a chair and drop him in the deep end of the swimming pool. Watch down through shifting plates of light and water as his eyes bulged out and it dawned on him—this was it, the end, curtains. The moment took a lot of people by surprise, even when it shouldn’t have.

  The kid had disappeared. Barone found him back outside in the car.

  “What are you doing?” Barone said.

  “Sleep in the car. I don’t mind.”

  “No.”

  They backtracked a quarter of a mile to Lucille’s Come On Inn. Lucille, if that’s who she was, eyeballed the kid. She shook her head as if to mourn the sorry state of world affairs, little Negroes roaming free on the mother road. Finally, though, she surrendered a room key.

  The kid soaked a cold washrag for Barone to put on his forehead. “We need us a Green Book.”

  “A what?”

  “A Green Book. Shows you where to stop along the way if you’re colored. So you don’t ruffle no feathers. Colored folks take vacations, too. Shoot. You think they don’t?”

  Barone didn’t know what the hell the kid was talking about. He was used to it by now.

  “Here’s a five-dollar bill,” Barone said. “Bring me some whiskey or don’t come back.”

  “Take your pill,” the kid said. “Drink that water.”

  The next day, Saturday, Barone checked Winslow. No luck. On to Flagstaff.

  At an old-timey hotel downtown, he ran through his spiel for the thirtieth, the fortieth, the fiftieth time.

  I’m a private dick. I’m looking for a guy. He ran out on his wife and kids back home, and the wife hired me to find him. Might be driving a Dodge, blue over white. I don’t know what name he’s using.

  The clerk wore an old-timey string tie made out of braided leather, with a silver-and-turquoise clasp. Probably the hotel owner made him wear the tie so that he fit with the hotel.

  “No, I can’t think of anybody like that.” The clerk checked his big book. “No. Just families and lovebirds.”

  Barone had this all wrong. It was a possibility. The sheriff in Texas had lied, and Barone had been snowed. Barone didn’t like to think so. Guidry could have headed east, not west. Or he’d driven twenty-four hours straight to Los Angeles, not stopping to sleep along the way. He was already in Mexico.

  Half past noon. It felt like half past midnight. Barone wanted to lie down and sleep for a year or two. But he never quit a job. It was his only good quality and had been so for his entire life. Even his stepmother, who hated his guts, used to admit it. Paul Barone never quits.

  And the song he’d heard again yesterday. “’Round Midnight.” Maybe it didn’t mean anything. Maybe it did.

  So he described Guidry—for the thirtieth, the fortieth, the fiftieth time—to the clerk in the old-timey string tie. Height and weight. Dark hair, light eyes, the smile. The way Guidry tried to make you feel like the two of you were already old pals.

  The clerk thought about it for a second. “Well, you know … No.”

  Barone felt a prickle. “Go ahead.”

  “That does sound an awful lot like Mr. Wainwright,” the clerk said. “But he was with his wife. And his daughters.”

  “His wife and his daughters?” Barone said.

  “They arrived together. Yes. I watched them leave together, too.”

  That wasn’t Guidry. It couldn’t be Guidry. “What else about him?”

  “What else about him?” the clerk said.

  “About Mr. Wainwright. Think.”

  “Well …” The clerk perked up. “He had a bit of an accent, now that I think about it. A bit like yours.”

  Guidry, the crafty son of a bitch. Somehow he’d managed to pick up a wife and kids along the way, like a hat and coat off the rack. The disguise had almost worked.

  “When did they leave?” Barone said.

  “This morning,” the clerk said. “Around nine.”

  Barone stared. Guidry wasn’t in Mexico. He was only three hours in front of Barone.

  “Where were they headed?” Barone said. “Do you know?”

  The clerk hesitated. Barone had to stop himself from taking out his new Police Positive .38 and sticking it in the clerk’s face.

  “She just wants him to call her,” Barone said. “His wife does. That’s all. She’s torn to pieces. He’s not a bad egg. He fell in love with somebody else. I’m not going to hassle him. But if I don’t find him and get him to call home, I don’t get paid.”

  The clerk relented. “They’re going to Las Vegas,” he said. “I heard her say so on the phone, Mrs. Wainwright did. Or Mr. Wainwright’s … companion.”

  Barone went outside. There was a phone booth across the street.

  “He’s headed to Vegas,” Barone told Seraphine. “I’m three hours behind him.”

  “I see.” She tried to hide the relief in her voice. Barone heard it. Probably she heard the relief in his voice, too. “Carlos will be so pleased. Go see Stan Contini at the Tropicana. You’ll need to tread lightly in Las Vegas. Do you understand?”

  “I know what to do.” He started to hang up.

  “One more thing, mon cher,” she said.

  “What is it.”

  “The incident at the police station in Texas? I’ve just heard from a reliable source that the suspect is a white man traveling with a Negro boy in his teens.”

  The waitress at the diner. Barone had forgotten about her. He’d made himself forget about her.

  “Is this troubling news?” Seraphine said.

  “Why would it be?” Barone said.

  “If the police know that—”

  “I’ll call you from Vegas.”

  Barone hung up. On the way out of Flagstaff, he told the kid to stop at a supper club called the Tall Pine Inn. Fine Atmosphere, Good Food, Beer and Wine to Go. Barone bought two six-packs of Schlitz to go.

  “I know what the doctor said,” Barone said. “It’s just beer. Let me celebrate.”

  “Gimme one,” the kid said.

  “You’
re driving. Forget it.”

  A couple of miles later, Barone handed the kid a can. “Put some music on.”

  They couldn’t find anything worth listening to. Hillbilly yodelers and brimstone preachers and Lesley Gore crying at her own party. She was the worst of the bunch, her voice like getting nails hammered into your skull.

  Barone turned the radio off. The kid finished his beer and reached for a second one. Not asking permission, feeling his oats.

  “No more after that one,” Barone said. “Better make it last.”

  “Shoot,” the kid said. “Better make it last.”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “How ’bout you?”

  “What about me?”

  “You believe in God?” the kid said.

  “Not the one most people do,” Barone said.

  They’d left behind the piney mountains. The bone-dead desert stretched before them. A sign with a bullet hole punched through the sheet metal said las vegas 150 miles.

  The kid started singing the Lesley Gore song in a fractured falsetto. He’d get halfway through the opening and then crack himself up, have to start all over again. Drunk on two and a half cans of weak beer.

  “Whoo!” the kid said. “I gotta take a leak.”

  “I’m not going to stop you,” Barone said.

  There was a dry wash that ran parallel to the highway, fifty feet off into the desert and deep enough that you could do your business in private.

  “Up there,” Barone said. “Pull off.”

  “Let me ask you something,” the kid said.

  “I thought you had to take a leak. Go on. I’ve got to take one, too.”

  “Let me ask you something.”

  “What?”

  “I forgot.”

  Barone followed the kid down into the wash. He’d planned to use his belt, keep it quiet, but he liked the kid and the belt was a slow way to go. Plus, Barone wasn’t feeling all the way up to snuff yet, still weak from the fever and with the bad right hand. So he shot the kid once in the back of the head with the Police Positive and then twice more between the shoulders.

  He climbed out of the ravine. The highway was clear, miles in each direction. Barone got into the car, behind the wheel. The climb had taken the breath out of him, but he didn’t have far to go now.