Walk Me Home (retail)

by Catherine Ryan Hyde

  Lois sits on the couch next to Carly. Fairly close. She still hasn’t turned on a light. She presses her hand against Carly’s palm. At first Carly thinks the old woman is trying to hold hands with her, which feels mildly alarming. Then she feels it. Cash. Some folded bills. Carly doesn’t know what kind of bills, or how many. Maybe three or four from the feel of it.

  ‘It’s going to be late when that bus gets in tonight, and I want to make sure you have someplace to stay.’

  ‘I can stay with my stepfather,’ Carly says.

  But she’s not a hundred per cent sure that’s true. She’s been up all night thinking of a hundred reasons why Teddy might not be able to take her in. Or why she might not want him to.

  ‘I just worry that it’ll be late and maybe the first night you won’t have any place to go. I’d just feel better if you have enough on you to get a room.’

  So now Carly knows the bills are not ones. Or fives.

  ‘OK, thanks,’ Carly says. ‘But I’m writing it down in my little book. And I’m going to pay you back.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ Lois says.

  Then they sit without talking for a moment. Carly wants to say something, but she can’t imagine how to phrase it. Can’t imagine what words will not completely misrepresent her feelings. Then she realizes that she has that trouble a lot. Nearly all the time.

  ‘I really, really appreciate that you’re being so nice to me,’ Carly says. ‘But I don’t know why. I appreciate it, but I don’t know why you’d want to. You don’t even know me.’

  Carly hears Lois sigh in the mostly-dark. Her eyes are adjusted enough to the low light to see that the older woman’s hair is down, long and white and wispy and thin. It makes her look even older. And a lot more vulnerable.

  ‘Both my parents died when I was young,’ Lois says. ‘Younger than you.’

  Immediately, the tears come to Carly’s eyes. Because her mother died. It hits her that every time she’s cried since leaving New Mexico, no matter what she thought she was crying about, she was really crying because her mother died.

  ‘I went to live with my granddad. And that was OK, I guess. I’m lucky I had him. But he was already pretty senile. So it felt a lot like being alone.’

  It strikes Carly as a cruel trick for life to play on poor Lois. Twice.

  ‘Bet you must feel the same way now,’ Carly says. Then she immediately regrets saying it. ‘I’m sorry. What a stupid thing to say. I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean that to come out the way it sounded.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ Lois says, neatly wrapping up the moment and putting it to rest. ‘You’re absolutely right. I’m just saying my heart went out to you. You can understand that, right?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘Lois.’

  ‘Yes, Lois. I can understand that. I don’t like being alone, either.’

  ‘I don’t think anybody does.’

  But Carly thinks some people are better at it than others. Like Jen. Jen can rely on her own wits and be OK. But Carly doesn’t say so.

  Thinking about Jen brings a great pang of missing Jen.

  It strikes her that she hasn’t even told Lois she has a sister. It strikes her that this older woman, whom she inwardly accused of taking over her life, has actually asked very few questions about Carly’s situation.

  ‘Well, sit tight,’ Lois says. ‘I’ll make you some bacon and eggs and fried potatoes and pack you a lunch for the bus.’

  The suggestion that Lois would do all that for her – no, the very fact that someone is even around to be able to do all that for her – makes her cry all over again.

  They walk into the station together, Carly feeling fresh and revived from the shower she took in the tiny motor-home bathroom. Lois hands her what’s supposed to be her lunch in a brown-paper bag. It feels more like dinner for six.

  Carly doesn’t know what to say.

  So she says, ‘When you get home, will he still try to drive away?’

  ‘Oh, no. When he’s home, he’s home. He’ll hook up the sewer drain. Hook up the water. Rinse out all the tanks. Plug into power. Cover the tires. All the stuff you’re supposed to do after a trip. He knows not to drive away after that.’

  ‘So … then … what does he do?’

  Lois thinks that over for a moment.

  ‘Absolutely nothing,’ she says.

  Now Lois seems uncomfortable. They both do.

  ‘You don’t mind if I don’t wait with you, do you?’ Lois asks. ‘’Cause, you know, he’s awake now, and he’ll be wanting to go.’

  ‘No,’ Carly says. ‘Not at all. I’ll be fine. You’ve done plenty. Thank you.’

  They stand awkwardly for a moment.

  Then Carly dives in and gives Lois a hug. It wasn’t exactly premeditated. It just happened that way. Lois seems surprised. Unbalanced. She just stands there, with her hands at her sides. But in time, she gives Carly a pat on the back, then on the head.

  Carly lets go.

  ‘You travel safe, now,’ Lois says.

  She hurries out of the station.

  Carly hears the noisy engine of the motor home roar to life. She crosses to the window and watches it drive away.

  Now she’s alone. Just as surely as she was alone out on Wakapi land in the middle of the night, under the stars. It’s light in the bus station, and there are a few people around. But that doesn’t matter. Carly knows by now how it feels to be alone. And this is it.

  She digs the money out of her pocket and looks at it in the light. She’s wanted to count it a dozen times since Lois gave it to her. But it seemed rude, with Lois right there watching.

  It’s four twenties.

  It strikes Carly that, if she’s going to be alone, it’s better to be alone with eighty dollars, a bus ticket, and a big bag of food.

  She knows she’s had worse.

  A few hours into the long bus ride, Carly wakes suddenly. Her neck is sore, and her face feels smashed and sweaty from pressing up against the glass of the window. But the rest of her face is cool, because the air conditioning blows up from the base of the window. Right on to her face.

  The bus has left the more flat and hot inland sections of Highway 101 and is winding up through a forested section. Carly looks out the window, wishing she’d sat on the other side. The left side. She doesn’t know how soon they’ll see the ocean, but she knows the best views of the ocean are on the left side when you’re heading north. She should have thought of that.

  She’s never seen the ocean before. Until recently, she’d never thought much about it. But now she feels her life will change when she finally sees it. Whenever that might be. She tries to look out the windows on the other side of the bus, hoping to see a glimpse of it, but the man sitting next to her keeps acting as though she’s looking at him, which is making them both uneasy.

  Carly opens Lois’s bag.

  In it is a sandwich on a big French roll, cut in half, and wrapped in plastic film. On closer investigation, it turns out to be homemade chicken salad. It’s easily big enough for two meals. Under that is an orange, a banana, a bottle of apple juice, and a sealed cup of store-bought chocolate pudding.

  There’s also a plastic spoon, and two paper napkins.

  It makes Carly cry again.

  Are the tears still because her mother died? She asks herself that.

  Turns out that’s partly it. It’s also the fact that, even when her mother was alive, she never did anything like this. Never took this good care of her. Maybe gave her money to buy lunch at school. But only if Carly reminded. Insisted.

  She wonders if Lois’s mother packed her lunches like this before she died. She wonders how Lois’s parents died.

  Suddenly, in one big rush, she wonders if Lois would take her in if Teddy won’t. Or if she can’t let him. And Jen. She could go back and get Jen and bring her to Fresno. Lois doesn’t want to be alone. And Carly has her address.

  Then the truth rolls over her, and sets her back to where she started. Lois and
Malcolm live in a motor home. It’s barely big enough for two people. Besides. What a weird thought to have about strangers. What’s happening to her?

  No, it’s Teddy or nothing. There is no Plan B.

  It causes the trembling to start again. Now she’s trembling and crying. In public. On a bus. With a grown man sitting right beside her. She thinks he’s going to ask her what’s wrong. And she doesn’t want that. He averts his gaze. Pretends he can’t hear or see. Then Carly wishes he’d asked her what’s wrong instead.

  Carly is sleeping on the back seat of the bus, which is all one long bench seat, from one window to the other. Because the bus is not so crowded now. Lots of people have gotten off, but not so many have gotten on.

  She wakes, and sits up. Looks out the windows. It’s dark. She wonders if they’re almost there. Or if she passed her stop. But no, Arcata is the last stop.

  Isn’t it?

  But she knows she couldn’t have overslept. Because that tailwind would never allow it. It’s just so clear now. She’s getting help. Something or someone is looking out for her. Otherwise, how was she supposed to cover twelve hundred miles in two days, with barely a cent in her pocket?

  And another thing. It dawns on her quite suddenly. If she’s getting help to go home to Teddy, then home to Teddy must be the right place to go. Would the universe help speed and ease her way back to a child molester? Of course not. She’s on a good road. She can tell by the smoothness of it.

  She knows this in a way she’s never known anything before. A sureness she always thought was reserved for anyone else in the world besides her.

  Then, in her half-asleep state, it dawns on her that the bus is not moving.

  She stands up and looks through the front wind-shield.

  They’re on a small, two-lane stretch of highway. In their lane, the north-bound lane, nothing but red tail lights as far as the eye can see. Thing is, it’s a twisty road. So the eye can’t see very far. Maybe seven cars. But they’re definitely all standing still.

  In the south-bound lane, nothing. That lane is empty.

  No matter how long Carly stands at the back of the bus watching, no cars come by going south.

  She can only see a half-dozen heads of other riders on the bus, and they all seem to be asleep.

  She makes her way up to the driver. He jumps. As if startled to suddenly see her standing there. As if he, too, was asleep.

  ‘What’s going on?’ she asks.

  ‘Overturned truck a couple of miles up ahead. One of those big logging trucks.’

  ‘Any idea how long we’re stuck here?’

  ‘No idea at all. Pretty remote where we are. Depends how long it takes to get some emergency equipment up here to clear the highway. First they gotta clear the logging truck. Then they gotta clear the logs. Ever seen the logs those things carry? Whole trunks of old growth redwoods. I’ve seen ’em where six logs is a full load. They weigh tons. No idea how they’ll get ’em out of there. Probably they’ll have to bring in an empty truck. And some kind of really big winch.’

  ‘How far are we from Arcata?’

  ‘Depends on when we move again. We’d be there in probably an hour and a half if we could move.’

  It strikes Carly suddenly that the local bus up to Trinidad might not run in the middle of the night.

  ‘Hope I don’t miss the last bus up to Trinidad.’

  The driver shakes his head. Glumly.

  ‘We’ve been sitting here for over an hour. Even if we started to move right now, I don’t see you catching that last bus. I’m sorry.’

  Carly sighs. Thanks him. Walks all the way back down the aisle and sits down on the rear seat again. Her mind is clear. She’s careful of that. No point thinking anything at all.

  She looks out the window. A couple of the trees lining the road have trunks almost as wide as the bus. On her left is a sharp drop-off, with water below, glistening in the moonlight. But it’s not the ocean. More like a wide creek or a shallow river. She wonders again when she’ll see the ocean.

  She lies down.

  Some kind of emergency vehicle comes by, speeding the wrong way up the empty south-bound lane. No siren, just lights. She watches the flashing red lights fire up the giant redwoods.

  Then nothing at all.

  California, 20 May

  The bus driver shakes Carly gently by her shoulder and tells her this is Arcata.

  She sits up, rubbing her eyes.

  They’re stopped in front of a small, squat tan building with a hanging wooden sign that says ‘Arcata Mad River Transit’. Carly has never heard of a place called Mad River. And she isn’t at all sure she wants to hear of it now.

  There’s no one on the bus except Carly and the driver.

  ‘Time’s it?’ she mumbles.

  ‘Half-past midnight. You got someplace to be tonight? I feel bad we got so far behind schedule. You got someplace to go? Station’s already locked up.’

  She thinks about the eighty dollars. She could go to a motel. But it seems like a lot of money to waste just to lie awake all night. She’s been sleeping all day. Her sleep schedule is officially backwards.

  ‘I’m OK,’ she says, grabbing up her backpack. ‘I just need a payphone.’

  ‘There’s a payphone outside the station.’

  ‘That’s fine, then. I’ll call my stepfather. He’ll drive down from Trinidad and pick me up.’

  The last thing Carly needs is another adult watching her movements.

  She shuffles down the aisle and off the bus.

  She looks over her shoulder on the way to the payphone. The driver is still watching her.

  She digs into her pocket for one of her many quarters. For one crazy, sleepy moment, she almost drops it into the slot on the phone. Like she was so lost in a dream, maybe she thought she really could call Teddy and get picked up. Instead she pantomimes putting several quarters into the slot.

  A minute later she turns in toward the phone and away from the driver. Like somebody just answered. Like she wants to talk in private.

  She reads the sign on the window of the bus station. It says, ‘NO LOITERING. NO OPEN ALCOHOL CONTAINERS. NO SMOKING WITHIN TWENTY FEET OF BUILD’ – that’s all, just ‘build’ – no ‘ing’ – ‘NO PUBLIC USE OF MEDICAL MARIJUANA.’ That one feels especially perplexing. ‘NO DOGS.’

  She looks over to see a line of homeless people sitting with their backs up against a low wall. Looking at her. They’re all young. Not as young as Carly, but young enough. She wonders if she’s just a step above where they are right now. Or if even that is flattering herself.

  She looks over her shoulder at the bus driver, but he’s gone.

  She hears cars going by behind her back. Fast. Not all that regularly. Not constant traffic. But she can hear the highway from here.

  She turns around.

  Behind her and across the little street is a brick wall, two or three feet high, with a chain-link fence above it. But it’s not a high fence. Maybe five feet. And nothing on top to make it hard to scale. Just a horizontal wire to keep it from sagging. If someone climbs it.

  She doesn’t even hang up the phone. Just lets it drop.

  She looks around one more time, avoiding the eyes of the homeless group.

  Then she runs for the fence and scales it in four big movements. Her body is still sore, and it screams pain at every move, but Carly just absorbs that. Doesn’t let it stop her. Doesn’t let it change a thing.

  She drops down into the weeds on the shoulder of the highway. It’s two lanes in each direction, with a wide grass – well, weed – median down the center. Not very well-lighted, unless a car is coming by. And when one does, Carly ducks into the weeds and crouches down. In case it’s the police or the Highway Patrol. It’s probably illegal to walk on the freeway.

  She sets off in the only direction she can go without crossing the four lanes.

  She doesn’t even know if she’s headed north or south. But in a few minutes she comes to a sign marking th
is the 101 South. So she has to cross the highway and start over in the other direction. There are no cars coming anyway.

  It’s cold. Surprisingly cold. And foggy. The longer she walks, the foggier it gets. And she still can’t see the ocean. It could be right there, right below her and off to the left. She’d never know it. Her visibility has been cut to near nothing. The world is black until a car comes along. Then it’s white.

  But none of that matters. It’s only sixteen miles to Trinidad. And if there’s one thing Carly knows how to do, it’s walk. Sixteen miles is nothing. Walking all night is nothing.

  At least it’s the final stretch. At long last.

  A wind comes up. It’s a wind unlike any Carly can remember. At least, from such an exposed position as outdoors, facing right into its wrath. It feels like a miniature hurricane.

  Carly finds herself leaning forward to push harder against it. She needs to, just to keep moving. She might actually move backward if she stopped pushing so hard.

  The fog is even more dense now, making her feel as though the world has disappeared, leaving nothing but a windy, white outer space. The wind is whipping fog mist into her face. Her face is wet. Her hair is wet. Her jacket is soaking through. Gradually, but it’s wetting her to the skin. She can feel water dripping off the feather and down her belly.

  It’s cold. Really cold.

  Her eyelashes are thick with moisture, and it hurts when the wind whips droplets into her eyes. It’s getting harder to keep them open.

  Carly reaches an abutment for an overpass, and stands behind the concrete structure for a minute or two, blinking and catching her breath. It takes so much energy to walk into the wind, she feels like she’s climbing a mountain. She wants to stay here, hide here, and be safe from the fury. But she’s probably only thirteen or fourteen miles from Trinidad.

  She didn’t come all this way to let a big wind stop her. She didn’t come all this way to let anything stop her.

  She thinks about Jen. Wonders if she’s fast asleep in the trailer, or even in the old woman’s house. If she’s sleeping with a smile on her face. Or if she’s not there any more at all. That reminds Carly that she’d better hurry.