by Jim Kraus
George grinned.
“No one says that anymore, either. And the RV is back at the RV park.”
Irene grew puzzled.
“So . . . did you two walk?”
And that’s when Lewis grew excited again and bounded off toward the scooter, eager to show Irene their new mode of transportation.
* * *
Tess looked up from the computer on her desk in the kitchen and stared, her face a mask of stark unbelief.
Even Gary, her husband, not one to take much notice of subtle, or even not-so-subtle, clues his wife often used, looked up from the newspaper.
“What’s up? You get an e-mail from the Nigerian prince again?”
“No. It’s actually more unbelievable.”
Gary lowered the paper.
“You won the lottery?”
“Nope.”
“Then I give up. You know I’m no good at guessing games.”
“I do. And it’s one of the things so endearing about you. And it means I can always beat you at twenty-one questions.”
“Just because I’m in a little slump . . .”
“Gary, you never once get the answer in just twenty-one questions. Never once. And we’ve been married for eight years.”
“Well, it’s sort of true . . . but maybe my luck is changing. I feel it. Let me try this one.”
Tess smiled and sighed.
“You’ll never get it. Never in a million years.”
Gary stroked his chin, pretending to be deep in thought.
“Never in a million years . . . hmmm . . . then I will guess your dad went out on a date. It would never happen in a million years, right?” he said and chuckled softly.
Tess’s previous expression of unbelief just amplified by a factor of ten.
“Gary,” she all but shouted, “Did you read this e-mail before! Did you cheat?”
Gary stood up and made the sign of an X over his heart.
“I swear I didn’t. Cross my heart. Did I guess it right? I won once? A date? I won. I won. I won.”
Gary let the paper fall to the floor as he did a most uncharacteristic victory dance in front of his favorite chair. Had Tess the presence of mind to grab her phone and take a video of his small, disjointed, awkward celebration, she knew it would have gone viral, for certain.
But she was still reeling from the e-mail report from her father.
“Read it to me,” Gary said. “Let me luxuriate in my triumph.”
Tess smiled and shook her head.
“Okay. But no gloating. You got lucky.”
“Says you.”
Dear Tess and Gary . . .
“Hey, he remembered my name. Another first, isn’t it?”
“He knows your name, Gary. He’s just judicious when he uses it.”
It had been a good-natured game between them—debating which set of in-laws were more oblivious to the other side of in-laws. Tess was pretty sure her father usually was most obtuse and distant.
“Go on. I’m enjoying this,” Gary said, the gloating still obvious in his tone.
We’re in Chattanooga. Almost hot here. Had Lewis dethatched by Luella. Looks lighter and cooler.
“He’s also judicious when using words, too,” Gary said. “He does know he is not paying by the word, doesn’t he?”
Tess smiled but ignored her husband.
Chattanooga is a nice city. Not too big. Wonderful scenery. Went up to Lookout Mountain and drew some pictures of the site of the Civil War battle.
“I thought he was just drawing buildings. Engineered stuff. Man-made.”
Tess shook her head. “No, he started drawing just normal things . . . like outdoor scenes. Might have started back in Gettysburg.”
“Oh, yeah, he told us about the dog—how he acted, remember?”
Did I ever tell you about Irene and her VW bus?
I met Irene, or should I say, WE met Irene, during the first week or so of the trip. In Towanda. She’s a widow. I think she said three times a widow.
“Think she’s some sort of ‘black widow’ preying on unsuspecting engineers?”
Tess scowled, although part of her was thinking the same thing.
“No. Not with Lewis there.”
“Just asking.”
She said she’s been trying to catch up with us ever since. I’m not sure why. She said she wanted to see Lewis again.
Maybe that’s it.
We went out to dinner last night. The three of us. Outdoor seating and barbeque—a perfect combination.
We had a nice time.
I said we were headed south and then on to the coast—Charleston/Savannah—like I told you before. She said that she has friends who live in the historic part of Charleston in a four-story house looking over the harbor, and she wanted to know if I would enjoy visiting them with her. She said they love company. I think the husband has some sort of condition. She said “crippled,” but didn’t go into detail.
She did say he was an engineer, too, and she thought he would enjoy talking with me. Since we’re headed there, and Lewis seemed to get excited about it, I said yes. We won’t get there for another week. I have a few stops to make in Atlanta.
Always wanted to visit the Coke place there. Lewis won’t be able to go. I don’t think I can get him in by saying he is a therapy dog.
And maybe the new aquarium. I hear it is an engineering wonder.
This is all the news from the road.
Hope you and Gary are well.
“Twice he used my name. A new record.”
“Oh, hush.”
I’ll try and set the Skype thing up in Charleston—if the house is as nice as Irene said it was.
She said it could be a museum.
Love, Dad.
“Does he always sign his letters with ‘love’?”
Tess pursed her lips in thought.
“I don’t think he does. Or did.”
“Your dad has a girlfriend,” Gary said in a singsong voice, as if he were back in grammar school. “Your dad has a girlfriend.”
“Wait,” Tess said. “He sent a picture with the e-mail.”
She tapped at it, and the screen filled with a picture of two people and a large, happy St. Bernard sitting at a picnic table with hundreds of Christmas lights strung from the trees above. George sat on one side of the table, and Irene, apparently, sat on the other side. Lewis sat on the ground in between them, grinning.
“Tess . . .”
Tess nodded.
“Yes, I see it, too. It’s obvious. She looks like my mother.”
37
Well, I’m glad to be out of Atlanta,” George said as he piloted the RV past the outer beltway ring and found the two-lane road to eventually get him to Charleston. “Sleepy Southern city, my foot.”
Lewis wuffed twice in agreement.
Their RV park, on the outskirts of Atlanta, was situated too far to drive the scooter into the center of town. George had to navigate the thickness of traffic, and it did not seem to matter when he left or returned, the traffic was always the same—thick, fast, and apparently impatient.
And so much for Southern hospitality and gentility.
He did leave the scooter and trailer at the RV park, which made navigation and parking a little less stressful, but not much.
He visited both the Coke museum and the aquarium but did not spend as much time as he might have liked. The weather was hot and muggy, and while he left the air-conditioning on in the RV for Lewis, he also knew anything man-made ran the risk of breaking, at least on occasion, and he did not want to return to a malfunctioning RV—and an overheated dog.
“I didn’t mind rushing through, Lewis, honest,” George explained when he returned after only a brief absence. “It’s hard to enjoy things when you’re alone. And even though the aquarium was amazing, there wasn’t anything there I felt worthy of drawing. And it was crowded. I don’t like crowds.”
Lewis seemed to know and wuffed softly again, agreeing with George.
He picked a route out of Atlanta leading to Athens. From there, they would drive to Augusta. And then on to Charleston.
Irene said she would be there well before their arrival, so George had no firm schedule binding him to a specific date.
“I’ve never driven in the South, Lewis. Might as well take the back roads, right?”
Lewis had his head out the window. He withdrew it, wuffed once, then proceeded to let the wind flutter in his jowls.
While making his original plan, George had not included many stops in the South. There was Atlanta, which they had just left, and which George thought just too big, too not Southern, too congested.
He had included Charleston and Savannah, and he listed St. Augustine. He had decided on visiting Cape Canaveral and the Space Center to see a rocket up close. He had decided to include the old section of New Orleans. And from there, he would leave the Deep South and head west.
“Not many stops in biscuits and grits country, Lewis. I guess we never traveled in the South, so maybe I don’t know what I’m missing.”
He had explored Athens in a virtual way on his tablet. He grudgingly came to appreciate the wonders of technology. A few places he had heard of and included them among his stops—until he saw them on a virtual tour—and afterward, excluded them.
One of the places was the Morton Theater. It had been billed as one of the surviving relics of the vaudeville age. It intrigued George. He liked relics; he often considered himself a relic of a bygone age. But when he saw the pictures of the theater, he was disappointed. The interiors looked wonderfully rococo and ornate and over-the-top, but the outside was no more exciting or interesting than your run-of-the-mill office building.
And I’m not into interiors.
So he crossed the location off his list but added a few others.
The road to Athens, bucolic and green and smelling of freshly mown kudzu—especially fragrant in comparison to the diesel-scented grating urbanness of Atlanta—and the peaceful drive helped remove the jangled tangle of nerves George felt as he headed out of Atlanta.
“Most of Atlanta looks like it had been built ten years ago. Too many strip malls. Too many Starbucks. Not enough Waffle Houses.”
Lewis pulled his head inside the RV when he heard the words “Waffle House.”
He had taken a keen—no, actually an obsessive—liking to Waffle House. Every time he saw one of their oddly out-of-date, and perhaps a little ugly, yellow signs with black letters, he would begin to bark and whimper. Of course, he could not go into the restaurant, even under the guise of being a therapy/companion/service animal. George told Lewis he did not feel comfortable taking their innocent deception so far. And if he had gone inside a Waffle House, with its assorted and often widely varied clientele, Lewis would most likely want to stop and say hello to each and every one of the restaurant’s patrons. George did not think your standard service animal would be so gregarious or avuncular, and thus Lewis’s cover would be blown.
So Lewis would remain in the RV while George would have a quick breakfast. And he would then order a plain waffle to go. It became Lewis’s most perfect petit dejeuner—a delicacy he obviously relished.
As they neared Athens, George kept a lookout for the Team RV Park, advertised as “Just behind the Team Biscuits and Burgers building—the big red place on Danielsville Road.” Apparently, the park catered to all the fans and alumni who tailgated to the University of Athens football games.
The park billed itself as “family-oriented, well-lighted, close to downtown, and walking distance to grocery and liquor stores.”
“Everything we need, Lewis, close at hand.”
Lewis smiled, his head still out the window, the fur on his head nearly permanently smooched in one direction, and wuffed loudly, so George could hear over the noise of the wind.
George found the RV park without difficulty, and since football was not in season just yet, George easily found space.
The environment was oddly small-town urban. Landscaping, some in large pots and urns, tall light stanchions, mostly asphalt, with parking spots only an arm’s width apart.
“Tailgating here would be fine. Not so much for extended camping, Lewis.”
Only three of the several dozen spots were taken, so George had an entire row of vacancies surrounding him.
They arrived mid-afternoon. He unpacked the scooter while Lewis watched patiently.
“Ready?”
Lewis climbed into the sidecar and tilted his head back, ready to have the helmet buckled under his chin.
They puttered out onto the street.
“Just a quick tour of the town, Lewis. We’ll get our bearings today and do some drawing tomorrow.”
Wuff.
They slowly cruised down the wide boulevards and headed south toward the University of Georgia’s Athens campus and the downtown area. George turned on Jackson and could see the lip of the football stadium hovering above the tree line. Since it was summer, there were fewer students, apparently. But there were more than enough Georgia Bulldog fans to take notice of an old man and a St. Bernard in the sidecar of a motor scooter, cruising along at a sedate thirty miles an hour.
A lot of them stopped, mid-step, stared, laughed, waved, gave a thumbs-up, or simply nodded casually as if the dog/man/scooter/sidecar was something they saw every day.
“Maybe they do see things like this every day, Lewis,” George said as one more wispy-bearded student in sandals and shorts nodded carefully as they passed.
Lewis wuffed in reply.
“I think they’re called hipsters, Lewis.”
Lewis turned to look at George, the sun glinting off his goggles.
“I heard it on the news station in Atlanta. I wouldn’t have known how to identify them otherwise. Hipsters . . . I think we called them beatniks. Back in the day. When everything still made sense.”
Lewis appeared to shrug and went back to leaning to the left, his front paw on the padded lip of the sidecar opening.
“And yes, Lewis, hippies came in between the beatniks and hipsters.”
George slowed to a stop in front of a square, two-story brick building with four large white columns in front. A small sign on the front indicated it was the Phi Kappa Literary Society, circa 1836.
“Interesting building, isn’t it, Lewis? Common red brick and white columns—an odd pairing for a traditionalist like me.”
Lewis appeared not to be paying attention and instead was focused on climbing out of the sidecar to begin his investigations.
“No, Lewis, not yet. We still have a ways to go.”
Lewis sat back down, and George reached over and adjusted his helmet. It had a tendency to slide to one side.
As he did the adjusting, a young man, better dressed than most of the people on campus, walked up.
“Sir, do you mind if I take a picture?”
George was almost used to the request.
“Sure. Just tell Lewis to smile. Lewis is the dog, by the way.”
The young man did and Lewis did, and George grinned as well, and when the young man raised a large and complicated camera to his eye, George heard the electronic click of a dozen pictures being taken in less than an instant. The young man moved the camera from his face and looked at the back, reviewing his work.
“Back in the day,” George said, “you had to wind the film between pictures. And each picture cost money, so you didn’t just snap away.”
The young man smiled.
“Before my time, sir. Electronic is all I know.”
He took another dozen snaps from a different angle, kneeling on the sidewalk.
“It was better back then. People moved slower. And you had to wait a week until you saw what you had on film.”
“Again, before my time, sir.” The young man pulled out a small notepad. “Do you mind if I ask where you’re from?”
George shrugged, gave his name, his hometown, Lewis’s name again, and the fact that they were on a cross-country tri
p and that George was drawing the sights as they traveled.
“On a motorscooter? Pretty wild. You must pack light.”
“No, no. I have an RV. We have an RV, I guess. We take the scooter in a trailer. We just use it to get around in towns. Easier than driving an RV. Parking is much easier.”
“So tell me, where have you been so far?”
Lewis, you draw all kinds of people to us, you know? Maybe you could take a day off once in a while.
They talked for a few more minutes, and George gave him a thumbnail sketch of where they had gone, what they had done, and where they were going.
“Well, I hope you have a great trip, sir. Seems like Lewis is ready to get going again.”
George started the scooter, waved, and puttered off toward the stadium.
38
Tess almost tripped as she walked toward the Safeway grocery store. She stopped, shook her head, then leaned forward.
“It can’t be. It can’t.”
She hurried to the newspaper box, fished out a handful of coins from her purse, and deposited them, only dropping a quarter once in her haste.
“It is him. And Lewis. My heavens.”
She stood still, in the cool shade of the wide overhang in front of the Safeway store on West Osborne, in Phoenix, Arizona, her shopping list containing two dozen items still clenched in her right hand.
On the front page of the current issue of USA Today, above the fold, nearly taking up the whole top half of the page, was a picture of a man on a motor scooter accompanied by a smiling St. Bernard in a sidecar, wearing a helmet and goggles and grinning as only a satisfied St. Bernard can grin.
“Dad . . . and Lewis. On the front page.”
* * *
The newspaper was spread out on the kitchen counter of the Burden house. Trudy stopped to stare at it several dozen times. When she saw it in the rack by the train station, she bought five copies.
And when Alex returned home from school, she called him over to look.
“I don’t care what’s in the newspaper, Mom. Unless I have to read it for history class or something.”
“No, you’ll want to read this one.”
Alex remained speechless for a long moment.
“Is it really Lewis?”
“It is,” replied his mother.