“I am a nice boy,” he assures her. “My mother was always proud of me.
Donella’s stern expression softens slightly, though she still won’t give the enchanting smile with which she first greeted him.
Speaking his heart seems the best way to make amends. “You’re so fabulous, so beautiful, so magnificent, Ms. Donella.”
Even his compliment fails to pump the air back into her deflated smile. In fact her soft pink features suddenly appear stone-hard, and cold enough to bring an early end to summer across the entire North American continent. “Don’t you mock me, Curtis.”
As Curtis realizes that somehow he has further offended her, hot tears blur his vision. “I only want you to like me,” he pleads.
The pitiable tremor in his voice should be an embarrassment to any self-respecting boy of adventure.
Of course, he isn’t adventuring at the moment. He’s socializing, which is immeasurably more difficult than engaging in dangerous exploits and heroic deeds.
He’s rapidly losing confidence. Lacking adequate self-assurance, no fugitive can maintain a credible deception. Perfect poise is the key to survival. Mom always said so, and Mom knew her stuff.
Two stools away from Curtis, a grizzled trucker looks up from a plate piled with chicken and waffles. “Donella, don’t be too hard on the kid. He didn’t mean nothing by what he said. Nothing like you think. Can’t you see he’s not quite right?”
A fly line of panic casts a hook into the boy’s heart, and he clutches the edge of the counter to avoid reeling off the stool. He thinks for a moment that they see through him, recognize him as the most-wanted fish for which so many nets have been cast.
“You hush your mouth, Burt Hooper,” says the majestic Donella. “A man who wears bib overalls and long Johns instead of proper pants and a shirt isn’t a reliable judge of who’s not quite right.”
Burt Hooper takes this upbraiding without offense, cackles with amusement, and says, “If I got to choose between comfort and being a sex object, I’ll choose comfort every time.”
“Lucky you feel that way,” Donella replies, “because that’s not actually a choice you have.”
Through a blur of tears, the boy sees the glorious smile once more, a smile as radiant as that of a goddess.
Donella says, “Curtis, I’m sorry I snapped at you.”
Trying to regain control of his emotions, but still blubbering a little, he says, “I don’t know why I offended you, ma’am. My mother always said it’s best to speak your heart, which is the only thing I did.”
“I realize that now, sugar. I didn’t first see you’re… one of those rare folks with a pure soul.”
“So then … do you think I’m ‘not quite right’?” he asks, fiercely gripping the edge of the counter, still half afraid that they are beginning to recognize him for the fugitive he is.
“No, Curtis. I just think you’re too sweet for this world.”
Her statement both reassures and strangely disconcerts the boy, so he makes another effort at compliment, speaking with sincerity and emotion that cannot be misconstrued as anything else: “You really are beautiful, Ms. Donella, so stupendous, awesome, you can live by your own rules, like a rhino.”
Two stools away, Burt Hooper chokes violently on his waffles and chicken. His fork clatters against his plate as he grabs his glass of Pepsi. Sputtering, with cola foaming from his nostrils, face turning as red and mottled as a boiled lobster, he at last clears his throat of food only to fill it with laughter, making such a spectacle of himself that it’s evident he would be a lousy fugitive.
Perhaps the trucker has just now remembered a particularly funny joke. His unrestrained hilarity is nonetheless rude, distracting Curtis and Donella from their mutual apologies.
The divine Donella glares at Burt with the expression of a perturbed rhino, lacking only the threat of a large pointed horn to make the comparison perfect.
In the same way that a clatter of laughter had knocked its way through the last of Burt’s choking, so now a rattle of words raps out of him between guffaws: “Oh, damn… I’m splat… in the middle… of Forrest Gump!”
They boy is puzzled. “I know that movie,”
“Never you mind, Curtis,” Donella says. “We’re no more splat in the middle of Forrest Gump than we are in the middle of Godzilla.”
“I sure hope not, ma’am. That was one mean lizard.”
Burt is spluttering again, half choking, even though his throat was clear a moment ago, and his deteriorating condition causes the boy concern. The trucker seems on the brink of a medical emergency.
Donella declares, “If anyone around here has a box of chocolates for a brain, then he’s sitting in front of a plate of chicken and waffles.”
“That’s you, Mr. Hooper,” Curtis observes. Then he understands. “Oh.” The trucker’s tears of laughter are this poor afflicted man’s way of dealing with his loneliness, his disability, his pain. “I’m sorry, sir.” The boy feels deep sympathy for this truck-driving Gump, and he regrets being so insensitive as to have thought that Burt Hooper was simply rude. “I’d help you if I could.”
Although the trucker looks vastly amused, this is, of course, purely sham amusement to cover his embarrassment at his own shortcomings. “You help me? How?”
“If I could, I’d make you normal just like Ms. Donella and me.”
The intellectually disadvantaged trucker is so deeply touched by this expression of concern that he swivels on his stool, putting his back to Curtis, and struggles to master his emotions. Although to all appearances, Burt Hooper is striving to quell a fit of giddiness, the boy now knows that this is like the laughter of a secretly forlorn clown: genuine if you listen with just your ears, but sadly fraudulent if you listen with your heart.
Exhibiting rhinoscerosian contempt for Mr. Hooper, Donella turns away from him. “Don’t you pay any mind to him, Curtis. He’s had every opportunity to be normal his whole life, but he’s always chosen to be just the sorry soul he is.”
This baffles the boy because he’s been under the impression that a Gump has no choice but to be a Gump, as nature made him.
“Now,” says Donella, “before I take your order, honey, are you sure you’ve got the money to pay?”
From a pocket of his jeans, he extracts a crumpled wad of currency, including the remaining proceeds from the Hammond larceny and the five bucks that the dog snatched from the breeze in the parking lot.
“Why, you are indeed a gentleman of means,” says Donella. “You just put it away for now, and pay the cashier when you leave.”
“I’m not sure it’s enough,” he worries, jamming his bankroll into his pocket again. “I need two bottles of water, a cheeseburger for my dad, a cheeseburger for me, potato chips, and probably two cheeseburgers for Old Yeller.”
“Old Yeller would be your dog?”
He beams, for he and the waitress are clearly connecting now. “That’s exactly right.”
“No sense paying big bucks for cheeseburgers when your dog will like something else better,” Donella advises.
“What’s that?”
“I’ll have the cook grill up a couple meat patties, rare, and mix them with some plain cooked rice and a little gravy. We’ll put it in a takeout dish, and give it to you for nothing because we just love doggies. Your pooch will think he’s died and gone to Heaven.”
The boy almost corrects her on two counts. First, Old Yeller in this case is a she, not a he. Second, the dog surely knows what Heaven’s like and won’t confuse paradise with a good dinner.
He raises neither issue. Bad guys are looking for him. He’s been too long in this one spot. Motion is commotion.
“Thank you, Ms. Donella. You’re as wonderful as I just knew you were when I first saw you.”