“Oh, we don’t think of it as just a male name or a female name,” the boy explains, still nervous but pleased by his growing fluency, which improves when he keeps his attention on the pooch instead of looking up at the trucker. “Any dog could be a Yeller.”
“Evidently so. I think I’ll buy me a girl cat and call her Mr. Rover.”
No meanness is evident in this tall, somewhat portly man, no suspicion or calculation in his twinkling blue eyes. He looks like Santa Claus with a dye job.
Nevertheless, standing erect, the boy wishes the trucker would go away, but he can’t think of a thing to say to make him leave. “Where’s your folks, son?” the man asks.
“I’m with my dad. He’s inside getting takeout, so we can eat on the road. They won’t let our dog in, you know.”
Frowning, surveying the activity at the service islands and the contrasting quiet of the acres of parked vehicles, the trucker says,
“You shouldn’t stray from right here, son. There’s all kinds of people in the world, and some you don’t want to meet at night in a lonely corner of a parkin’ lot.”
“Sure, I know about their kind.”
The dog sits up straighter and pricks her ears, as if to say that she, too, is well informed about such fiends.
Smiling, reaching down to stroke the lovely lady’s head, the trucker says, “I guess you’ll be all right with Old Yeller here to take a chunk of meat out of anyone who might try to do you wrong.”
“She’s real protective,” the boy assures him.
“Just don’t you stray from here,” the driving machine warns. He tugs on the bill of his green cap, the way a polite cowboy in the movies will sometimes tug on the brim of his Stetson, an abbreviated tipping of the hat, meant as a sign of respect to ladies and other upstanding citizens, and at last he goes inside.
The boy watches through the glass door and the windows as the hostess greets the trucker and escorts him to a table. Fortunately, he is seated with his back toward the entrance. With his cap still on, he appears to be at once enthralled by the offerings on the tall, two-fold menu.
To the faithful canine, the boy says, “Stay here, girl. I’ll be back soon.”
She chuffs softly, as though she understands.
Out in the vast parking area, where cones of dirty yellow light alternate with funnels of shadow, there’s no sign of the two silent men who wouldn’t stoop to pick up five dollars.
Sooner or later, they’ll come back here, run a search through the diner, around the motel, and wherever else their suspicion draws them, even if they’ve searched those places before. And if not those same two men, then two others. Or four. Or ten. Or legions.
Better move.
Chapter 11
Generous slices of homemade apple pie. Simple white plates bought at Sears. Yellow plastic place mats from Wal-Mart. The homey glow of three unscented candles that had been acquired with twenty-one others in an economy pack at a discount hardware store.
This humble scene at Geneva’s kitchen table was a fresh breeze of reality, clearing away the lingering mists of unreason that the chaotic encounter with Sinsemilla had left in Micky’s head. Indeed, the contrast between Geneva polishing each already-clean dessert fork on a dishtowel before placing it on the table and Sinsemilla waltzing with the moon was less like a mere refreshing breeze than like sudden immersion in an arctic sea.
How peculiar the world had grown if now life with Aunt Gen had become the sterling standard of normalcy.
“Coffee?” Geneva inquired.
“Uh, yeah.”
“Hot or iced?”
“Hot. But spike it,” Micky said.
“Spike it with what, dear?”
“Brandy and milk,” Micky said, and at once Leilani, who was not drinking coffee, suggested, “Milk,” speaking in her capacity as self-appointed temperance enforcer on assignment to Michelina Bell-song.
“Brandy and milk and milk,” Aunt Gen noted, taking the order for Micky’s complex spike as she poured the coffee.
“Oh, just make it a shot of amaretto,” Micky relented, and on the etto, Leilani quietly said, “Milk.”
Ordinarily, nothing made Micky bristle with anger or triggered her stubbornness more quickly than being told she couldn’t have what she wanted, unless it was being told that her choices in life hadn’t been the best, unless it was being told that she would screw up the rest of her life if she wasn’t careful, unless it was being told that she had an alcohol problem or an attitude problem, or a problem with motivation, or with men. In the recent past, Leilani’s well-meaning murmured insistence on milk would have jammed down the detonation plunger, not on all these issues, but on enough of them to have assured an explosion of respectable magnitude.
During the past year, however, Micky had spent a great many hours in late-night self-analysis, if only because her circumstances had given her so much time for contemplation that she couldn’t avoid shining a light into a few of the rooms in her heart. Until then, she had long resisted such explorations, perhaps out of fear that she’d find a haunted house within herself, occupied by everything from mere ghosts to hobgoblins, with monsters of a singular nature crouched behind doors from the attic to the subcellar. She’d found a few monsters, all right, but she’d been more disturbed by the discovery that in the mansion of her soul, a greater number of rooms than not were unfurnished spaces, dusty and unheated. Since childhood, her defenses against a cruel life had been anger and stubbornness. She’d seen herself as the lone defender of the castle, ceaselessly prowling the ramparts, at war with the world. But a constant state of battle readiness had held off friends as well as enemies, and in fact it had prevented her from experiencing the fullness of life, which might have filled those vacant rooms with good memories to balance the bad that cluttered other chambers.
As a matter of emotional survival, she had recently been making an effort to keep her anger sheathed and to let her stubbornness rest in its scabbard. Now she said, “Just milk, Aunt Gen.”
This evening wasn’t about Micky Bellsong, anyway, not about what she wanted or whether she was self-destructive, or whether she would be able to pull her life out of the fire into which she herself had cast it. This evening had become all about Leilani Klonk, if it had not actually been about the girl from the start, and Micky had never in her memory been less focused on her own interests or needs — or resentments.
The request for brandy had been a reflex reaction to the stress of the encounter with Sinsemilla. Over the years, alcohol had become a reliable part of her arsenal, as useful for keeping life at bay as were anger and pigheadedness. Too useful.
Returning to her chair, Geneva said, “So, Micky, will we all be getting together for a neighborly barbecue anytime soon?”
“The woman is either nuts or higher than a Navajo shaman with a one-pound-a-day peyote habit.”
Poking her pie with a fork, Leilani said, “It’s both, actually. Though not peyote. Like I told you — tonight it’s crack cocaine and hallucinogenic mushrooms, much enhanced by old Sinsemilla’s patented brand of lunatic charm.”
Micky had no appetite. She left the pie untouched. “She really was in an institution once, wasn’t she?”
” I told you yesterday. They shot like six hundred thousand volts of electricity through her head—“
“You said fifty or a hundred thousand.”
“Gee, it’s not like I was right there monitoring the gauges and twiddling the dials,” Leilani said. “You’ve got to allow me a little literary license.”