by Veen, Milena
“A problem! What problem? I don’t think he has a problem,” Rodriguez said through gritted teeth. “I think this little louse here is trying to make a moron out of me, winking and coughing like that.”
I knew it wasn’t going to end well. I saw a portentous hitch of Joshua’s upper lip before he opened his mouth and uttered, “Moron! Moron!”
Rodriguez opened the front door, jumped out, grabbed the side door and howled, “Get out, both of you! You lousy jackanapes!” He slammed the door behind us. I swear I could see the steam coming out of his ears.
And there we were – two drifters on Interstate 8, just like characters from some beat generation novel. Joshua was apologizing and explaining how his symptoms sometimes got worse when he was excited, and I only let him do that because I wanted to enjoy the dark-chocolate-coated sound of his voice. But I wasn’t blaming him. I didn’t regret my decision to take this trip for one second. I wasn’t scared or even worried. The only thing that was making me sad was the image of Mrs. Wheeler’s closed eyes and paper-like skin, but the thought that she might be proud of me for finally breaking free from my mother’s arms soothed my pain. I looked at Joshua’s face. I knew that I wouldn’t be there if it hadn’t been for him. He gave the breath of life to my cravings and strength to my decisions. It had been less than a month since I met him, but I felt that he knew me better than anyone else in the world.
“Hey, did he say jackanapes?” said Joshua when he was through with apologizing.
“Oh my God, he did – he said jackanapes!” I laughed. “Oh, I’m so glad we are here!” I said, spreading my arms like I wanted to embrace the whole world.
“Here, in the middle of nowhere?”
“Yes. The middle of nowhere is the best place on Earth,” I said, eagerly inhaling the warm air and wrapping my arms around his neck. “I’ve never felt so alive.”
I glanced at the Dodger blue sky and the endless road ahead. Not a soul in sight. Sand and scrub plants as far as the eye can see.
“I never imagined that it would be so easy to leave everything behind and just be free.”
“We are all born free,” Joshua said. “But most people decide to choke their freedom while they’re growing up and live life by the rules of the majority without even realizing it’s not their life. It’s easier that way.”
We were walking down the road for more than two hours before another car stopped, a yellow caravan that looked like a giant insect. The driver was a red-headed woman in her forties. A black cocker spaniel was sitting on the passenger seat. Joshua warned her about his Tourette’s as soon as we climbed inside so he could wink, clear his throat, pull his ears, and yell as much as he wanted. But he didn’t do any of the four, surprisingly. Our fellow travelers were quiet, which was rather delightful after all that mess with Rodriguez. We stopped at the gas station once to buy water and get some fresh air, and entered Yuma at half past two. The kind lady wished us a safe trip. She even invited us over for lunch at her sister’s restaurant, but the time was unrelenting. We had to continue our journey as soon as possible.
When we got out of the car, the heat crawled under my dress and stuck to my skin like duct tape.
“So this is where Ben Wade spent his life,” Joshua said, sliding his eyes over the unadorned landscape.
I had no idea who Ben Wade was.
“You know – the guy from 3:10 to Yuma,” he said when I gave him a puzzled look.
How am I supposed to know things like that? If I was going to choose a movie to watch, it would be Roman Holiday or The Sound of Music, not some western movie.
I suddenly felt monstrously hungry. It was like carrying a bottomless pit inside my thin body. We sat on the edge of the sidewalk.
“What do you have?” Joshua asked, dipping his hand in his backpack.
I opened mine. We swapped our sandwiches. Tuna with dill sauce never tasted so good.
***
I was lying on my back in that musty motel room twelve miles from downtown Phoenix, listening to Joshua’s deep breathing. My old life, the one I left behind that morning, seemed unreal and distant. I knew my mother was somewhere out there sitting alone in an uneasy silence. I knew that Mrs. Wheeler was lying under the dim hospital lights, and the oaks were gently shaking their crowns in the air in the park where Joshua and I met. I knew that everything was unchanged in our sleepy little town, but all those pictures were lacking tangibility. Suddenly, the words that I was going to tell Sarah popped up in my mind, clear and convincing. I scribbled them down with an invisible pen and put them in the drawer of my brain marked “important”.
Getting to Phoenix had been harder than we imagined. We waited for more than three hours for someone to pick us up. We found out later from Dan, the truck driver who gave us a ride, that police officers in Arizona were notorious for hassling hitchhikers. Exhausted from the long walk in the sun, we both fell asleep as soon as we entered Dan’s truck, and he was so nice for not asking questions. So we didn’t make it to Flagstaff on our first day, but we weren’t worried; we still had plenty of time to get to Oklahoma and back home by Monday.
I thought that I would swoon away the second my body touched the bed, but the excitement of our first they on the road was keeping the dream away from me. The same couldn’t be said for Joshua. His face was slightly illuminated by the light that was seeping through the shutters. I wondered how he could sleep so peacefully while my mind was afflicted with everything that happened that day: a fiery scene with flammable Rodriguez, the black cocker spaniel’s lolling tongue in the yellow caravan, our late lunch on the outskirts of Yuma, my mother’s crying voice on my cell phone after she had found my note, the distant sight of Phoenix through the dirty truck windows.
I sat on the bed for a moment. The warm desert air was luring me outside. I stood up, put my jeans on, and headed toward the door. The plastic lamp reeled on the edge of the table as I tripped over its cord, and the sound of it hitting the ground made Joshua squirm in his bed.
“Where are you going?” he asked, slowly raising his head from the pillow.
“I’m just going to get some fresh air. I can’t sleep.”
“I’ll join you. I have trouble sleeping, too.”
“What?” I laughed. “You were sleeping like a bear!”
“Oh, was I?” he mumbled, rubbing his eyes. “I’ll go with you anyway.”
The night was warm and starry, and we were four hundred miles from home, joined in bravery and suspense. But did he kiss me? No. He talked about mixtapes instead. His words were pleasant to listen to, but my body was craving his touch. I was sure that he was aware of that longing; I felt it radiating from my skin and there was nothing I could do to hide it.
The sounds of the highway were so close and the darkness of the desert behind the motel so intimidating that a proper walk was impossible. We made a circle around the motel and across the parking lot, when C-3PO suddenly crossed our way holding a six-pack in his arms.
“Hey, guys, will you join us?” he said cheerfully.
We looked at each other with joyful disbelief.
“We’re having a little outdoor party. It’s Han Solo there, sitting on the sidewalk, and you recognize Chewbacca, of course. We have princess Leia, too, she’ll join us in a couple of minutes.”
“I hope she’s female,” I said. I couldn’t help myself.
“So that’s some kind of a thematic party, obviously?” said Joshua.
“Yeah, there’s a Star Wars convention in Phoenix tomorrow, and we’re kind of getting a running start,” C-3PO explained. “We came all the way from Vegas. So come and join us if you want!”
“Thank you,” I said, “but we have to wake up early, so we should probably go to sleep soon. Have a nice time tomorrow.”
We turned around, looked into each other’s eyes and smiled. We walked in silence for a couple of minutes before I spotted a little bench under the cedar tree just behind the motel, facing the desert. We sat down, raising our heads to the bla
ck sky.
“Stars,” Joshua said. “Did you know that most of them are already dead?”
“I know that,” I said. “All we see are their shiny corpses. It’s magical and romantic.”
“It’s also deceitful,” Joshua said. I was surprised by the harshness in his voice.
He had something against the stars – that was clear. First he accused shooting stars of being liars, and now he was charging all of the others with deception. I thought about that Star Wars convention that slightly intoxicated C-3PO told us about and giggled. When Joshua’s eyes left the stairs and landed on my face, I saw a trace of sorrow in them.
“I’ve always thought that those Star Wars conventions are somehow dull,” I said. “I mean, a bunch of thirty- or forty-something guys in silly costumes. And all those languages. It’s all so… just dull.”
“My sister loved Star Wars,” Joshua said, wiping a tear that was sliding down his cheek.
Ruby, you’re a dumbass.
His eyes were sad like that twinkling of a faraway, long gone star.
“I’m such an idiot.”
“No, you’re not, and I agree with you about those conventions. It’s just that it reminded me of her,” he said. “My mother used to make her princess Leia braids, and she would run around the house in a long white dress.”
“I’m so sorry about what I said.” I took his hand.
“Don’t be. It was even good, in a way. It’s good to hear that people think something she liked was dull, even though I know you didn’t think about nine-year-old girls when you said that. I’m sick of people idealizing her and making an angel of her. As if she had never done stupid things. As if she never farted or cheated at Go Fish. I don’t understand. How can death make of us something that we had never been? And it’s not fair. We don’t get a chance to stand for ourselves and say, ‘Hey, leave me alone, I don’t want to be perfect, I don’t want to be good and kind and clever all the time.’”
He clenched his fist in mine.
“You miss her.”
“When I allow myself to miss her, yes. I feel that I’m still not ready to miss her to the max, though, so I’m just pushing those feelings away, putting them off for the times when I will be stronger. I haven’t even cried since she died, not even once.”
A shooting star lit up the sky. I didn’t make a wish. I just squeezed Joshua’s hand a little harder. I felt safe sitting on that bench beside him while he was opening his heart to me. And I knew there was nothing more that I could ask from that fulgent shooting star, even if she wasn’t a cheater. At that moment, on that narrow wooden bench hidden under the cedar tree somewhere in Arizona, I had everything.
“Will we try to get some sleep now?” Joshua said after a couple of silent minutes. “It’s late, and we have a busy day ahead.”
It was easier said than done. As soon as we laid our heads on the pillows and whispered goodnight, something hit the window. Then it hit again. We both sat up in our beds. It sounded like someone was throwing tiny stones at our window, trying to wake us up.
“Should we do something? Should we call someone?” I said.
Joshua stood up and approached the window.
“I think there’s no need to, it’s just an old woman. She’s asking me to open the window.”
And that’s what he did.
“Where’s that girl with the flaming hair?” I heard her say.
For a moment I didn’t know what to do, but then she shouted again.
“Come here, dear child, come! Old Marianne has something important to tell you.”
I had no choice. I approached the window and carefully peeked behind the curtain. The woman on the other side looked like a bum. Her skin was rough and dark, and she was wearing a long, shredded skirt. A mulberry-jam-colored bandana scarf was wrapped around her head.
“Oh, there you are, dear child,” she said in a quiet, but sharp voice. “Give me your hand, I want to read your palm.”
“Thank you,” I answered, “but I’m really not interested. And besides that, I don’t have any money.”
“Money!” she shouted. “Who’s asking for money! Who do you think I am? God gave me this gift and I use it to help people.”
“I’m not sure I need any help,” I said. “And I’m really sleepy.”
“You’ll sleep when you’re dead,” she said, looking straight into my eyes. “And that may be soon,” she added more quietly, still staring at me with her glassy eyes.
I was about to close the window when she spoke again in a more gentle way.
“Please, my child, I only want to help you. All God’s creatures need some help.”
Of course I don’t believe in fortune telling, but I was trapped between my curiosity and feeling pity for this old woman, so I stretched my arm through the window. Her hand was rough like sandpaper. For a moment I thought about Mrs. Wheeler and her freckled skin. I wondered what she was doing in that insane moment in time. Was she still lying in that vast, empty hospital room? Was she even alive?
“I knew that you were carrying the great pain the moment I saw you,” the fortune teller told me. I opened my mouth to object, but she quickly hushed me.
“Shhhh,” she whispered, touching her cracked lips with her bony finger. “Don’t talk now.”
I felt Joshua’s breath on my neck. He was standing still in the dark behind me.
“I won’t bullshit you with some mumbo jumbo stories,” she said. “I’m not that kind of a person. I have two important things to tell you. First: don’t stray from your path. You will meet people along the way who will try to draw you off it. Don’t succumb to their wishes. And second… this is very important…” She looked straight into my eyes, her right hand raised in the air. “Don’t overlook the red bird. When you see a red bird, you’ll know what to do. That’s all I’ll tell you.”
She kissed my hand and walked away.
“A fortune teller,” Joshua said, throwing himself into bed.
It was, by all means, the most exciting day of my life. And although the critical decision was made the night before, it was Wednesday morning that finally detached me from my former undecided self. Transforming a big, risky decision into action is like standing in a rain shower – you know there’s a chance you’re going to catch a cold, but you’ve just got to do it, and really doing it is far better than simply imagining standing in the rain, or even watching Audrey Hepburn getting soaked to the skin at the end of Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
“She’s just like I would imagine a fortune teller to be,” said Joshua. “Shredded skirt and commonplaces.”
“I think she was nice,” I said, stretching my legs under the violet cover.
“You think everyone is nice,” he said, yawning.
The feeble dawn light was licking the dirty window pane like it was a lollipop. Somewhere outside, four hundred miles away, Mrs. Wheeler was lying in her bed, not knowing that she was actually waiting for me to bring her daughter back to her. I tucked my hair behind my ears and closed my eyes.
A telephone ring woke us up at eight o’clock. It was my mother. She sounded much different than the day before.
“Are you okay, honey? Where are you?” her voice slinked into my sleepy ear.
“Yes, Mom, everything is fine. We’re just about to leave Phoenix.”
“Please, darling, just call me tonight to let me know you are all right. I worry, you know.”
Of course I know, Mom. How could I possibly forget that?
Her voice was soft and calm. It was hard to believe it was her speaking. I asked her to go to the hospital to check on Mrs. Wheeler and talk to that dark-haired, amber-eyed doctor. She promised me she would do that. I couldn’t detect the reason of her sudden change, and honestly, I didn’t have much time or will to think about it. I had more important things to do.
Chapter Ten
“To the bright and shining sun,” Joshua said as we stepped into the morning. He was wearing a Daniel Johnston T-shirt and washed out je
ans, and I couldn’t help but think to myself how he was the handsomest boy on the planet. Ever. And with the greatest taste in music. Ever.
We didn’t change our plan. Flagstaff was our next destination, and the night was supposed to be spent in Albuquerque, New Mexico. We packed our backpacks and by nine, we were out at Interstate 17. I looked around to see the Star Wars bunch or the fortune teller, but they were nowhere to be found. The whole place looked so different in the daylight – tame and somber. It must have been one of those places that only lived under the cover of the night.
A cardinal-red pickup slowed down. The driver was a thirty-something guy with spectacles and bitten nails.
“I’m going to Flagstaff for a job interview,” he said, moving his notebook from the passenger seat so one of us could sit beside him. I kindly handed over that honor to Joshua; the partial isolation of the back seat was more appealing to me. We only slept about three hours and I really didn’t feel like talking with strangers, no matter how nice they seemed. The bare landscape was sliding before my eyes and I didn’t even hear the conversation between those two in the front seats, until Clinton – that was the driver’s name – said, “Is there something in your eye?”
“Oh, no, not again,” I thought to myself. I wasn’t ready for another Rodriguez scene that early in the morning.
“It’s just the muscle in my eyelid, I guess,” Joshua answered. “I have these tics… it can be annoying sometimes.”
“He also clears his throat monstrously, and he yells ‘moron’ every now and then, and sometimes, but just sometimes, he pulls his left ear like he’s going to rip it off,” I said. “So don’t take it personally if it happens.”
I sank into the comfort of the back seat again.
“Thank you for making it clear, Ruby,” Joshua said.
“You’re welcome, my dear friend.”
We arrived in Flagstaff around half past noon. It was green and it smelled like pines. It was just like someplace torn away from the desert. We decided to take a short walk around before continuing our trip. The easiness of our first ride that day made us cheerful and optimistic. And how great Joshua looked under Arizona light! How breathtaking was the smile he gave me when the big fat cat jumped from the garbage container and scared me! And when he quoted William Blake with, “Travelers repose and dream among my leaves,” I felt like I was the happiest person in the world. I was so happy that I even called my mother to tell her not to worry and remind her to visit Mrs. Wheeler that afternoon.