I was starting out a whole new life, where nobody knew me and the only ties to the past were in my own mind, however strong or fragile those ties might be.
I had no idea what was going to happen between us, or even if anything would, but for right now, this moment, it felt good—it felt right—to be with Aurelius, his brimstone eyes looking at me over a bowl of soup. Everything else I would shove to the back of my mind with the rest of the confusion already piled up there, and, like Miss Scarlett, think about it another day.
11
* * *
THE TAN THUNDERBIRD
It was the end of Baby’s and my first week of practice teaching in our separate schools, and the weather was warming up some. The snow had begun to melt, leaving bare patches of grass outside the parking lot of Big Bob’s Burger and Beer Joint on the Buchanan strip, and there was a whiff of spring in the air. Baby and I had met at Big Bob’s to have supper and compare notes. I think I was ahead in the supervising-teacher department, since Father Leo turned out to be as great as Cassie Culver had said. He had long wavy hair and a beard, and smoked cigars. He didn’t care if the boys said a swear in class, and they all thought he was the coolest teacher ever. So did I. He liked my painting, said I had a great color sense, which was why he had picked me to be his student teacher. How can you keep from liking somebody who loves you for your work and not your curly hair?
On the other hand, Baby’s supervising teacher, Alice Sinclair, wasn’t even going to be there to help her at all, since she was eight months pregnant and big as a cow. In fact, the first day, she introduced Baby to the kids and then took off, never to be seen again. Baby was probably slightly ahead of me with the kids, though, since hers seemed to like her a lot and all of mine were boys and, for the most part, all they did was ask me to get things from the bottom shelves so they could see me bend over, the little brats. I had forgotten that high schoolers were not children. One or two who were on the basketball team were even taller than me. I would have to wear my bell-bottoms and leave all the miniskirts in the drawers or I’d never get anything across to them. But it was kind of fun, being the only woman in the whole school. I would be a liar if I said otherwise.
Baby and I got in my car, our bellies full of burgers and fries, and headed toward St. Juniper’s, leaving the neon lights of Big Bob’s behind us. I wanted to show her the cute guest cottage where I was staying out behind the abbey and fix her some coffee in my little kitchen. It was almost like a playhouse there, and I loved being all on my own. Baby had an apartment in Buchanan in a house owned by a cranky landlady who knocked on the door if she heard the bathwater running too long and complained if she thought Baby had eaten one of her prunes or whatever, so it was almost as bad for her as being at home.
The road was deserted this time of night, and the sky was full of stars. The only other car on the road was a few hundred yards in front of us, and we slowed down when it braked and put on its blinker to cross the train tracks that ran parallel to the highway. Only it didn’t cross. It stopped right in the middle of the tracks, and the driver put out the headlights. As we came closer, we could see it was a light-colored Thunderbird.
“Good Lord, Baby! That car is sitting right in the middle of the tracks! If a train comes along, it’s going to get hit!”
“Maybe the motor died.”
“Then why did they turn off the lights?”
“I don’t know. Do you think they might be in trouble? Maybe we should stop and see if they’re sick or something.”
I turned, pulled in behind the car, and honked the horn, but it didn’t budge. I killed the motor, and Baby and I got out of the VW and walked up to the car.
“Hey! What are you doing? You can’t sit here on the train tracks!” Baby called out as we went up to the window. I was surprised to see Cassie sitting in the driver’s seat. She had the window rolled up, and I banged on it.
“Cassie! What do you think you’re doing? Do you want to get run over by a train?”
She rolled down the window halfway and calmly looked down the tracks.
“Looks like it, don’t it?” Her words were a little slurred. I smelled liquor on her breath. A whistle sounded, low and lonesome in the distance. I turned to look, and sure enough, way on down the track, there was a light.
She was just going to sit there and get run over.
“Cassie, this is stupid. Come on. There’s a train coming.”
“I know there is. I might be stupid, but I’m not ignorant. Lale run off and left me, and I’m killing myself.”
She pushed down the lock on the door and started rolling up the window. I tried to get my hand in, but the window kept on coming and I had to jerk my hand back before it pinched off my fingers.
“Cassie! Roll down this window!”
“Let me alone! Just get out of the way!”
“Are you crazy? Don’t do this! Baby! Help me!”
Baby ran around the Thunderbird to open the door from the other side, but Cassie was too quick and pushed down the lock before Baby could get in.
The train was coming on hard down the track, but she still had time if she would just get moving. We pounded on the doors, but Cassie put her hands over her ears and rested her head against the steering wheel.
“Let’s try to push it, Cherry,” Baby said, coming back around. We got behind the car and pushed with all our might, but the car didn’t budge an inch. That old story about a person turning into Superman in a crisis didn’t seem to be true in our case. The train was getting closer, and I was beginning to panic. I went to the window and banged on it one last time. Cassie had her head turned away, but she could hear me, I was pretty sure.
“Listen, Cassie. I know you’re all upset about Lale and everything, but I can promise you that he won’t even come home for your funeral if you do this. He’s probably having a high old time right now with some other girl, and after you’re dead and buried, he’ll still be having one. Think about it. Even if you want to smash yourself into meat loaf on the front of a train, do you want to kill that baby, too? Cassie?” I had no idea if she really was pregnant, but all the signs pointed to it. She half lifted her head. At least she heard me.
“Cassie, you know suicide’s a sin,” Baby chimed in. “You won’t go to heaven, and neither will the baby.” Baby’s grandmother had been Catholic and she knew which buttons to push. “You don’t want to go to hell, Cassie.” Baby kept on at her. “Hell is like dousing yourself with lighter fluid and sizzling and frying forever and ever.”
“Yeah, you might not care for yourself,” I said, taking over, “but killing a baby is the worst sin you can commit. It’s an innocent little thing and it doesn’t have any say in it. Let the baby live, Cassie!” I felt bad about saying those things to her with the shape she was in, but at this point I had run out of options.
“We better get out of here, Cherry,” Baby said in a panic. “There’s nothing we can do for her now.” The train was charging on down the track, blowing its whistle like there was no tomorrow, and I suddenly realized that if it hit the car, we’d be right in the line of fire. I banged on the door again.
“The train is coming, Cassie. We’re out of here. Good luck!”
We didn’t have time to move the VW, so we just ran down the incline and jumped into the ditch, praying the car wouldn’t land on us when the train crashed into it. As we hit the ground, I heard the T-bird’s engine cough and turn over as Cassie popped the clutch, and the car lurched off the tracks, rolling down the grade on the other side just as the train roared through, so close I could see the glare from the headlight through my squeezed-shut eyelids. Tons of iron whizzed by, only feet away from us, and the noise from the whistle nearly deafened me. I imagined I saw faces in the windows with a look of horror on them, and nearly peed my pants. On the other side of the train, the taillights of the T-bird shone red between the wheels of each car as they went by, exhaust smoking out of its tailpipe.
The caboose finally passed, and Baby and I w
ent running across the tracks.
“Are you all right? Cassie! Open this door!”
The door opened and Cassie staggered out. I grabbed and hugged her, then she slid to the ground and sat with her back to the car, crying, which made us cry, too, in relief.
“Why did you have to do that?” she said, through her tears. “Why couldn’t you have let me alone?”
“Because I hate the sight of blood,” I said, wiping my nose on the back of my hand. “Now come on. What’s going on?”
“I told you. Lale run off and left me,” she sobbed. “I don’t even know where he is. He doesn’t want to marry me or even see the baby.”
“So there really is a baby?”
“Not yet. But you were right—there’s going to be. Everyone in town will know it soon, and they’ll know he didn’t want us.”
She staggered to her feet and lurched over to the side of the road, where she threw up.
Baby went and got a box of Kleenex out of the car and handed her a couple. “Here, take some of these,” she said. “Are you all right?” Cassie shuddered at the sour bad taste of regurgitated wine in her mouth, but seemed a little more clearheaded. She nodded.
“Yeah. I’m all right. Y’all can go on.”
“Oh, no. I think not. We need to get you home. Baby, you drive my car, and I’ll take Cassie in the T-bird.”
“It’s Lale’s T-bird. He gave it to me. Payment for his conscience.” She laughed a hard little laugh, blew her nose, and leaned against the hood of the car. “I’m okay. Let me just sit for a minute. I don’t want to go home like this. I can’t face Mama.”
She sat on the ground and bent her knees, resting her forehead on them. We stood around, not knowing what to do. After a few minutes, she raised her head and looked at us. I’m not sure she’d really known who we were before.
“I remember you. From the restaurant. Cherry?”
“Yeah. Sure you do. It was only a few days ago.”
“Who are you?” she asked Baby.
“I’m Baby, Cherry’s friend. Nice to meet you.”
“Nice to meet you, too.” She held out her hand and Baby shook it. “Thank y’all for saving me. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I don’t know what got into me. I really didn’t mean to do it.” She began sobbing all over again.
“No, I don’t think you did,” I said. “No man in the world is worth killing yourself over. He might feel bad for a minute, but then he would have his whole life ahead of him, and you’d still be dead.”
“You’re right about that.” She sniffed. Baby took a couple more Kleenex and handed them to her. She blew her nose again. “I guess my guardian angel sent you. Or maybe it was the baby’s guardian angel.”
“Maybe she did. But she might not send us the next time, so no fooling, I hope you won’t try anything else like this. I don’t think I could take it.”
“I won’t. Don’t tell my mother. Please don’t tell her.”
I wasn’t going to promise. I thought Annie probably needed to know about this.
“Look, Cassie, I don’t think you ought to be by yourself right now. If you don’t want to go home, why don’t you come on with us to the cabin up at the abbey for a while? We can sit around and listen to music, I’ll fix us some coffee, and you can tell us all about Lale.”
“All right. That sounds good.” She pushed herself up with some difficulty. “I’ll follow y’all.”
“I don’t think so. Baby, you drive the Bug and I’ll go with Cassie.” I didn’t want to let her out of my sight for a minute.
I got into the T-bird, turned it around, and bumped back over the railroad tracks. I shivered again at the thought of how close the train had come. Amazing. A few feet of space was the difference between life and death. Cassie got in, and we led off, Baby following. I only then noticed that the backseat was full of gifts.
“What are those presents in the backseat?”
“They’re from the bridal shower. That’s the night Lale run off, and I never did unload them. Need a new chip-and-dip set? I got three. Or a black lace nightgown? Take anything you want.”
“Cassie, stop talking like that. Let’s go over to my cabin and talk it out, all right?”
“Yeah, all right. Just please don’t tell my mother.”
“Wasn’t Annie at the shower that night? Didn’t she know Lale left?”
“Mama went home early. She saw Lale waiting out in the car and thought he would bring me on to the house, and I never told her different.”
“When did you find out he had gone?”
“After the girls started to leave, I came out to see if he was waiting for me. His car was sitting there empty, and he’d left me a note. I don’t even know where he went. Probably hitchhiked out. I didn’t let anybody know what the note said, just said that he’d had to go do something at the last minute and I was going to take the stuff home myself. I’ve been going crazy for days and tonight I couldn’t stand it any longer, so I took one of Bernadette’s bottles of wine and just drove around to try and figure out what to do, thinking and drinking.”
“Thinking and drinking don’t go together too well, I guess.”
“Maybe not.”
“Are you feeling better now?”
“Yeah. I’m okay.”
“Let’s go and get you some coffee. We’ll call Annie and tell her you’re with us, and won’t be home for a while. Okay?” She nodded her head.
I had a bad feeling it was going to be a long night.
12
* * *
ON THE ROAD
“So, what did that awful truck driver mean when he said all that about you running away from some problem? Not that it’s any of my business, but, honey, we all have problems and we’d all like to just get in the car and run away from them. That’s partly why I was here in this dump of a truck stop at five in the morning. I ran hard and fast from one of mine this weekend. I can’t imagine why I followed that loser to Nashville, but that’s what love does to you. It takes away every shred of judgment you possess. All your brains drain right out of your head and down into your wickie. That’s what makes it hard, you know. All those brains. I should have known any western singer I met at Max’s Kansas City in New York was not a real cowboy. I found out the only horse he’d ever ridden was at the five and dime, and the only affection he had for moi was the dough I could shell out to support him until he got his record contract. Ha! Every single waiter and car jockey in Nashville is waiting for their big record contract. He did have a lovely voice, though, really and truly. Although lovely isn’t quite the word. More like sexy. That’s the word, honey, pure and simple. Sexy. One of those rough, gravelly kinds of voices like Johnny Cash has. Like it was dragged out of his throat at four in the morning and beaten with a tire iron. Do you like Johnny Cash? I think he’s sexy, wearing black, and all that romantic drugging and all, back before it was fashionable. I think I must be over my cowboy phase, though. Honey, it was just too, too much in the end. Literally. Not that that usually is a problem, but he wouldn’t leave me alone for a minute! I had to make excuses to even get a few hours’ rest! And a girl like me really needs her rest, don’t you know? Why…”
“Excuse me, Sal, but would you mind not talking for a while? I got a lot on my mind right now, and I need to think.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, cherub. I do tend to run on, don’t I? You just sit and relax and leave the driving to Miss Sally. Yes, indeedy, you must have a lot on your mind—I can see.”
They were heading north, in the baby-blue Mustang. Lale was beginning to realize, with a sinking feeling in his stomach, that his beery decision to run from his problems was probably the wrong one, but he had gone and done it and there was no way he was going to go slinking back with his tail between his legs to face the wrath of his parents and one very big angry girl. Not to mention that he would be the laughingstock of the whole town. He could just hear his friends at the wedding—“Hey, Lale,” they’d yell. “She dragged you to the altar kicking and
screaming, didn’t she?” Not to mention what that would do to Cassie. She was probably going to kill him if she ever saw him, but she’d get over it. Heck, she was probably glad he was gone, in a part of her. Or at least she would be. She’d be all right.
He had insisted on paying for his own breakfast and broken the twenty he had in his pocket, but the rest would have to last him until he made some kind of plan. He had hated like everything to go into the truck stop with Sal, but nobody much gave them a second look. If you didn’t look too close you didn’t realize that Sal had plucked his eyebrows into an arch and still had the remnants of mascara on his lashes. His hair was cropped short, to make the wigs fit better, and truth be told, the truckers probably disapproved more of Lale, his blond hair growing down over his collar. Long-haired hippies were not high on truckers’ lists, as Lale found out when he approached a couple about a ride, and they shook their heads.
“You might as well give it up, Lale,” Sal had called from the front seat of the Mustang as he watched Lale go to the third truck, then walk away. “I’m the only ride in town for you this morning. I’ll be good, I promise. I’m on my way to New York, back to civilization, and you can ride in the old blue horse as far as you want. For free.”
It wasn’t exactly free. Lale paid dearly by listening to the constant chatter, which nearly ran him up the wall after the first couple of hours. This last stretch of silence lasted exactly thirty seconds.
“Well, are you going to tell Aunt Sally your big secret or not? It was a girl, wasn’t it? Your girlfriend? Did she catch you with another girl?”
“Nope.”
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