Dancing on the Edge of the Roof

by Sheila Williams

  There wasn't any hostility. And I didn't think the manager would ask me to leave or anything. But I could just tell that they didn't see people like me very often. And from the looks on their faces, they weren't sure yet if that was bad or good.

  So I sat in the little booth, chewed on the roast beef, and wondered whether I should scrap my trip to Paper Moon and head for Seattle instead. I almost changed my mind. It's a good thing I met Peaches when I did.

  “You're not from around here.”

  Startled, I looked up and found a broad-faced young woman smiling at me and fixing to sit down. I had seen her when I first came in here, but from the back I had thought she was a man with her stocky, fireplug-like build, square jaw, and dirty blond hair tucked under a Reds cap.

  Her voice was hoarse and a little rough to listen to, a serious smoker's voice but not unpleasant, and from under the brim of the cap, her blue eyes twinkled at me.

  “What tipped you off?” I asked her, sarcastically.

  “The scarlet-and-gray sweatshirt,” she answered guilelessly. I could tell my sarcasm would be wasted on her. “No Buckeyes up this way. Mostly U of M brown and yellow.” She shrugged her shoulders a bit. “Yeah, the air-conditioning is going full tilt in here.”

  She moved to sit down, but my two dusty, beat-up suitcases were in her way. It didn't matter. She just scooted them over and made herself right at home in my life. “Looks like you're running away from home.”

  “Yeah, sorta,” I said, amazed at her boldness. She didn't know me from Adam.

  But there was something about her that I liked right away. She was one of those real-deal, open people. Guileless. (Another one of my new words.) She didn't look like her but this girl was a lot like my sister, KayRita. She didn't know any strangers.

  “You go, girl. Sometimes you gotta do that. Show 'em who's boss. Keeps 'em from taking you for granted at home.” She took a long, deep drink from the huge travel coffee mug she was carrying. “Ernie's Truck Stop 'n' Suds” it said in green letters.

  “Ah, well, I …” I couldn't think of anything to say. Not that it mattered. She was on to her next sentence.

  “Mind if I join you? Seeing as you're a fellow Buckeye.” Nice of her to ask. ”Sorry to be so blunt, but I'm from Middletown, myself. Don't see many folks from Ohio out here. Ohioans don't usually pass through Montana on their way West. They fly over it, and go directly to L.A.” She plopped her ample behind onto the Naugahyde seat with a “whoosh” and held out a square hand. “Didn't mean to come at ya in such a rush. I'm Penelope Bradshaw. But anyone who doesn't want to lose a few teeth calls me ‘Peaches.’ ” She lit a cigarette. The smoke came out of her nose all in a big gray cloud like it did from Mount St. Helens in pictures that I saw a while ago when it blew its top.

  “I'm Juanita Louis, nice to meet you.” I had to talk fast.

  She exhaled again and took her hat off, revealing a round head, freckles, and a huge, Kool-Aid grin. Blond hair spilled everywhere, falling over her shoulders in a waterfall of hair down to her waist.

  “Where you from?”

  “Columbus.”

  “Ahh … the capital.” She nodded, taking another sip of her coffee. “Yeah, we used to go there for the fair. Biggest damn fair in the country, isn't it? Mom and Dad loved the corn dogs and the ices. I'd stuff myself with Belgian waffles, onion rings, and cotton candy till I puked. It was great. Boy, do I get homesick!”

  I was getting sick myself, but I took a sip of Coke instead.

  “Don't you get back there much?” I asked her.

  Peaches shook her head. Her hair went every which way.

  “No reason to. Dad left when I was thirteen and Mom's been dead for years. I have a sister but …” She lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. She changed the subject. “ 'Sides, I live in Wyoming and all of my routes are west and north. What brings you out here? Butte isn't exactly a hot spot. You passing through?”

  “I …” I paused for a few seconds. I had to stop and think. Just how much of your business do you tell to a complete stranger? And what should I say anyway? I'm a forty-two-year-old grandmother who's running away from home to see the world? I've left a pregnant, unemployed daughter, a drug-dealing son, and another son who's in prison? That I've quit my job, and I have a little less than two thousand dollars to my name? And I've set out to find my fortune? To have a great adventure and see things I've never seen before? That I'm becoming a new person? Do you tell that to people you don't know but who want to know who you really are?

  I couldn't tell her that! She'd think I was some kind of nut! Like I walked away from a padded cell yesterday. It was the truth, but when I put it into sentences it sounded crazy! And stupid!

  The next thing I knew, one side of me was arguing with the other.

  “You can't be goin' around telling some strange white woman about your business, Juanita! What's wrong with you?”

  The other voice said, “Negro, please … Like you're holdin' secrets for the FBI? What could possibly be goin' on in your $3.50 life that needs to be locked up in a vault? Tell that woman anything you want!”

  I made up my mind to do just that but I didn't get the chance to do it right then. Peaches had moved on with the conversation, and so I ended up listening instead, between bites of pot roast, mashed potatoes, and green beans. She told me all about herself, between long drags on her Viceroys and deep gulps of black coffee.

  She was twenty-eight, lived in Cheyenne, and owned her own eighteen-wheel tractor trailer, hauling for some of the large discount retailers in this part of the country. She was one of very few female truckers working in the Northwest, and her “handle” for the CB was “Orchard Honey,” referring to her nickname of “Peaches,” a childhood nickname given her by her mother, whom she had loved a lot.

  “My mom was a sweet woman, she had class and manners. Not like me.” Peaches paused and took this opportunity to belch loudly. Then she grinned, her smile wide and bright like a child's and just as full of mischief. Then she belched again. “Love that Coke!”

  I had to giggle.

  “Mom was a large woman, close to three hundred pounds, but she had a tiny little voice, all whispery, like the way Marilyn Monroe sounds in movies.” Peaches stopped for a moment as if she was trying to remember something. “She was born in a little spot down in Randolph County, West Virginia, no running water, no toilets, you know, real hillbilly life. Her family never had money, they just scratched out a living. Mom never even wore shoes much until she married my dad and moved to Ohio. But you know, my mother had more style and honest love for people than anyone I ever knew. She tried to teach that to my sister and me.”

  I thought that Peaches's mom sounded a lot like my mom.

  “Do you get to see your family much?” I asked, thinking for a moment about my own sister, so far away, and my mother, now long gone. “Oh, sorry,” I said. “I asked you that before.”

  “That's OK. Not much family left,” Peaches said matter-of-factly. “After Dad ran off, Mom got the sugar so bad …” She stopped and lit a cigarette, but didn't say anything.

  “Just you and your sister, huh?” I tried to finish the thought for her. I knew how she felt. KayRita and I were the only ones left in our family. And even though I was a grandmother, and closer to fifty than to twenty, there was something a little lonely about there being just the two of us left. Without Mom and Daddy around, without our brother Jerome, the world was cold and empty and scary— the memories were the only things we had—and Kay and I were the only ones left who remembered them. I shivered a little. I tried not to think of what life would be like if I didn't have my sister.

  “Well, yes,” Peaches agreed slowly, blowing a thick cloud of smoke into the air. “But we don't get along. She doesn't approve of my … my …” She chuckled. There was something off-center or offbeat about that chuckle. Like an orange that was tart instead of sweet, or a Coca-Cola that had gone flat.
Peaches smiled wickedly.

  “She doesn't approve of my ‘lifestyle choice,’ ” she said sarcastically, pronouncing each word as if I would give her a prize for the number of syllables they had.

  At first I didn't get it. Let me say that again. I got it, but I had to think about it a little.

  Then I felt dumb.

  When I first started reading, and then really noticing the world around me, I got real embarrassed. The books seemed to shine a light on just how ignorant and unaware I was. There were all kinds of things going on in the world that I just had no idea about. Situations I had never heard of, history that I had not known about. Places I'd never see.

  I felt stupid all of a sudden. Wanted to hide myself, thinking that somehow my ignorance showed on my face, like one of those signs they have at football games that tell you where the Coke and popcorn are sold, and what the score is. Only this one said “Juanita don't know shit.”

  Then I put that feeling sorry for myself stuff aside and read even more. I tried to read the hard-core stuff like Moby Dick (don't know why, but I just couldn't get into that whale), Edgar Allan Poe (he made me more sad than scared), and the Brontë sisters (something different about those girls, I'll tell you that). The stuff between the lines got easier to understand as the words on the lines did.

  But just as I thought I had it, just as I thought I knew language and what words meant, even when they had lots of meanings in the dictionary, the fashionable words came in.

  And I got ignorant again.

  People weren't experts on things, they were “gurus.”

  A person with a hearing aid became “auditorially challenged” and all around me restaurants were turning into “bistros” serving chicken from a “free range.”

  And as I found with Peaches, a decision about who to love had turned into a “lifestyle choice.”

  It was so complicated!

  The “life's choice” that had put her and her sister at loggerheads was not the vagabond life of the trucker but the fact that Peaches was gay. Her sister was one of those tight-assed Bible-belt types who would disapprove of chewing gum if given half a chance. She had told Peaches she would die in agony and burn in hell forever. Peaches's reply was classic: If heaven was full of people like her sister, then hell would definitely be the way to go. I guess that remark separated them for good.

  “I told her, ‘You know what, Lorene? Your ass is so tight that you'd have to get someone to give you mouth-to-mouth just to open it up a little so that you could use the can once in a while!’ ”

  I laughed so hard that I choked on my water.

  I was on dessert—banana cream pie—when she finished telling her story and finally got around to asking me where I was headed. We'd been talking for almost an hour and I guess we'd talked about everything but that.

  “Paper Moon.”

  Peaches's blue eyes widened and she set her coffee cup down.

  “Paper Moon? Montana?” She stared at me with her mouth open.

  I nodded.

  “Why on earth would you want to go there? It's in the middle of nowhere. The only reason I even know about it is that I drive that way once a month or so, on my route to Canada. Humph … little Paper Moon … I haven't been there in a while.”

  “I thought I'd take the bus to Missoula, then on to Redfish,” I told Peaches. “I'd probably have to spend the night there and try to meet up with someone who's going north. Maybe one of the students at….” I studied the little atlas. “West Montana Valley State College. The bus driver says that the students are always going somewhere on the weekends, and by then it'll be Friday.”

  “Don't bother, I can take you there,” Peaches said with finality. “No use you going through all of that. That's almost like hitchhiking. And there are a lot of sick puppies out there, let me tell you. Besides, there aren't many students at Valley State for summer term anyway. It might be tough to get a ride.”

  “Oh, no,” I told her. “That'll take you out of your way. I can manage …” I knew she was going to Coeur d'Alene, and Paper Moon wasn't exactly on the way.

  Peaches shook her head. “Don't worry about it. It'd only be a little detour. I have a couple of stops to make, but I can get you there early tomorrow morning. I'll drop you off, then hook back up with Montana Route Ten, and catch Ninety going west.” She looked at me funny. Blew out a cloud of smoke. “I just have one question.”

  I inhaled deeply. Loved the smell of the cigarette smoke, even though I was supposed to be quitting.

  “What's that?”

  “Why Paper Moon, of all places? I thought you left home to find great adventures and excitement and mysterious things …” Peaches had the grin of a seven-year-old who's just eaten all of the cookies. “There ain't shit in Paper Moon.”

  I shrugged my shoulders.

  “I ain't never been there. Figured it'd be different from where I came from.”

  She mimicked me, grinning, and shrugged her shoulders. Blew out more smoke.

  “That's as good a reason as any, I guess. You're right, too, it's nothing like Ohio. Just a spot in the road, really. There's a nice lake there, though. Arcadia, I think it's called. There's a Best Western right across the road. Sometimes on the Tulsa to Calgary route I sleep there. The Paper Moon Diner sets close to the interstate, you can't miss it. It's got good food, too. Kinda different but good. The owner's a crazy Indian, though. I heard he got doused with the orange stuff in 'Nam. A few sandwiches short of a picnic, if you know what I mean, but he cooks OK.”

  I didn't say anything, but it seemed to me that just since I'd been west of the Mississippi, I had heard several comments about Indians, or “Injuns.” I was thinking that, out here anyway, Indians had replaced black folk as the “niggers” of the world. ('Course, maybe that's 'cause there aren't any black folk out here.) If that was true, I wondered what it was going to be like to have company at the bottom for a change.

  “You sure it wouldn't be out of your way?” I didn't want her to think I wasn't grateful for her offering me a ride, but I hadn't planned on traveling with anyone. Part of the adventure was seeing if I could do it alone. On the other hand, part of the adventure was also meeting people, and having experiences I hadn't had before. And I certainly hadn't ever ridden in a tractor trailer with a woman trucker in the wilds of Montana. Obviously, hitchhiking on Route 90 at night, in the cold, in the middle of nowhere, with nothing but elk and moose and bear for company was an experience I hadn't had either. But I thought I'd let that one pass and take the ride with Peaches instead.

  Peaches shook her head.

  “Naw, nothing worth mentioning. I'd make up the time anyway when I got back on Ninety. Besides, it'll be good to have the company.” She grinned that Kool-Aid grin again. I grinned back.

  Paper Moon, here I come.

  Chapter Six

  I had never seen anything like it. And I haven't since. It was the largest purple object I had ever seen in my life. A huge Kenworth truck cab polished to perfection and gleaming in the warm, early-evening sunlight. Her name was emblazoned at the top just above the windshield:

  “Peaches's Purple Passion.”

  Lord Almighty. It looked like a giant grape on wheels.

  Riding in the cab of an eighteen-wheeler is a lot like being on a runaway train. You can feel the power of those engines beneath your butt, and at eighty-plus miles per hour, you get the very real impression that the whole thing is out of control. You know you've got those eighteen wheels, that huge, roaring engine, and the two-million-ton trailer pushing from behind—and the power is amazing. How Peaches kept control of that monster at such a high rate of speed was beyond me. She left other rigs in the dust. She raced a souped-up IROC-Z—and I didn't even see it in the mirror behind us. The decades-old pickups and jeeps that everyone else drove around here didn't stand a chance. And as for me, I just took deep breaths and held on tight to the strap above my head. And said
a prayer. Well, lots of prayers.

  Oh Lord, this is Juanita. Please don't let me be smashed into little bits when this thing runs off the road and crashes. Thank you. Amen.

  On small hills, I watched Peaches as she ran through the ten gears as if she was painting her nails. Somehow she managed to slow the thing down to forty miles an hour when an asshole in a yellow Tercel pulled right in front of us, then slowed down. I was impressed but she scared the shit outta me. I remember that I put down my thoughts in my notebook with a shaky hand. I decided that I would straighten it out later. It's hard to write neatly when you're traveling eight feet up in a huge truck cab going eighty-five miles an hour.

  Peaches glanced over at me, raised her eyebrows, then threw her thirteenth half-smoked Viceroy of the day out the window.

  “What are you writing?”

  I felt stupid and didn't want to tell her, but then I began to think of my favorite romantic heroines and remembered that they weren't afraid or embarrassed under any circumstances, and this was, after all, just a little adventure.

  “I'm … well, I'm writing down everything I do and see, that kind of thing,” I said. “Keeping a diary, I guess.” I closed the little book. I was a little shy about this subject.

  Peaches's eyes widened.

  “No shit! You're a writer?” she said in amazement.

  “I wouldn't say all that,” I started. I hadn't ever thought of myself as a writer.

  “Are you doing a book? Am I in it?”

  “Peaches, it's just a diary kind of thing. Nothing fancy …”

  “I meet a lot of different kinds of people in my business. But you're the first writer I've ever known. That's really something!” Peaches commented, ignoring me. “If you do a book, you'll leave something behind, a real piece of yourself, a legacy. Like an artist … leaving a painting behind for someone to hang in a museum. Not like what I do … leaving the aroma of diesel fuel in the air. What kind of a legacy is that?”

  “What you do is important. People depend on you to deliver things they need …”