When I hung up, the Negro woman was sitting looking at me with the same look she had been staring with into the dark, a look that seemed to want truth. She was smiling, though. Something pleased her and I reminded her of it.
“This is a very nice home,” I said, resting in the recliner, which felt like the driver’s seat of the Mercedes, and where I’d have been happy to stay.
“This isn’t our house, Mr. Middleton,” the Negro woman said. “The company owns these. They give them to us for nothing. We have our own home in Rockford, Illinois.”
“That’s wonderful,” I said.
“It’s never wonderful when you have to be away from home, Mr. Middleton, though we’re only here three months, and it’ll be easier when Terrel Junior begins his special school. You see, our son was killed in the war, and his wife ran off without Terrel Junior. Though you shouldn’t worry. He can’t understand us. His little feelings can’t be hurt.” The woman folded her hands in her lap and smiled in a satisfied way. She was an attractive woman, and had on a blue-and-pink floral dress that made her seem bigger than she could’ve been, just the right woman to sit on the couch she was sitting on. She was good nature’s picture, and I was glad she could be, with her little brain-damaged boy, living in a place where no one in his right mind would want to live a minute. “Where do you live, Mr. Middleton?” she said politely, smiling in the same sympathetic way.
“My family and I are in transit,” I said. “I’m an ophthalmologist, and we’re moving back to Florida, where I’m from. I’m setting up practice in some little town where it’s warm year-round. I haven’t decided where.”
“Florida’s a wonderful place,” the woman said. “I think Terrel would like it there.”
“Could I ask you something?” I said.
“You certainly may,” the woman said. Terrel had begun pushing his Greyhound across the front of the TV screen, making a scratch that no one watching the set could miss. “Stop that, Terrel Junior,” the woman said quiedy. But Terrel kept pushing his bus on the glass, and she smiled at me again as if we both understood something sad. Except I knew Cheryl would never damage a television set. She had respect for nice things, and I was sorry for the lady that Terrel didn’t. “What did you want to ask?” the woman said.
“What goes on in that plant or whatever it is back there beyond these trailers, where all the lights are on?”
“Gold,” the woman said and smiled.
“It’s what?” I said.
“Gold,” the Negro woman said, smiling as she had for almost all the time I’d been there. “It’s a gold mine.”
“They’re mining gold back there?” I said, pointing.
“Every night and every day.” She smiled in a pleased way.
“Does your husband work there?” I said.
“He’s the assayer,” she said. “He controls the quality. He works three months a year, and we live the rest of the time at home in Rockford. We’ve waited a long time for this. We’ve been happy to have our grandson, but I won’t say I’ll be sorry to have him go. We’re ready to start our lives over.” She smiled broadly at me and then at Terrel, who was giving her a spiteful look from the floor. “You said you had a daughter,” the Negro woman said. “And what’s her name?”
“Irma Cheryl,” I said. “She’s named for my mother.”
“That’s nice. And she’s healthy, too. I can see it in your face.” She looked at Terrel Junior with pity.
“I guess I’m lucky,” I said.
“So far you are. But children bring you grief, the same way they bring you joy. We were unhappy for a long time before my husband got his job in the gold mine. Now, when Terrel starts to school, we’ll be kids again.” She stood up. “You might miss your cab, Mr. Middleton,” she said, walking toward the door, though not to be forcing me out. She was too polite. “If we can’t see your car, the cab surely won’t be able to.”
“That’s true.” I got up off the recliner, where I’d been so comfortable. “None of us have eaten yet, and your food makes me know how hungry we probably all are.”
“There are fine restaurants in town, and you’ll find them,” the Negro woman said. “I’m sorry you didn’t meet my husband. He’s a wonderful man. He’s everything to me.”
“Tell him I appreciate the phone,” I said. “You saved me.”
“You weren’t hard to save,” the woman said. “Saving people is what we were all put on earth to do. I just passed you on to whatever’s coming to you.”
“Let’s hope it’s good,” I said, stepping back into the dark.
“I’ll be hoping, Mr. Middleton. Terrel and I will both be hoping.”
I waved to her as I walked out into the darkness toward the car where it was hidden in the night.
The cab had already arrived when I got there. I could see its little red-and-green roof lights all the way across the dry wash, and it made me worry that Edna was already saying something to get us in trouble, something about the car or where we’d come from, something that would cast suspicion on us. I thought, then, how I never planned things well enough. There was always a gap between my plan and what happened, and I only responded to things as they came along and hoped I wouldn’t get in trouble. I was an offender in the law’s eyes. But I always thought differently, as if I weren’t an offender and had no intention of being one, which was the truth. But as I read on a napkin once, between the idea and the act a whole kingdom lies. And I had a hard time with my acts, which were oftentimes offender’s acts, and my ideas, which were as good as the gold they mined there where the bright lights were blazing.
“We’re waiting for you, Daddy,” Cheryl said when I crossed the road. “The taxicab’s already here.”
“I see, hon,” I said, and gave Cheryl a big hug. The cabdriver was sitting in the driver’s seat having a smoke with the lights on inside. Edna was leaning against the back of the cab between the taillights, wearing her Bailey hat. “What’d you tell him?” I said when I got close.
“Nothing,” she said. “What’s there to tell?”
“Did he see the car?”
She glanced over in the direction of the trees where we had hid the Mercedes. Nothing was visible in the darkness, though I could hear Little Duke combing around in the underbrush tracking something, his little collar tinkling. “Where’re we going?” she said. “Fm so hungry I could pass out.”
“Edna’s in a terrible mood,” Cheryl said. “She already snapped at me.”
“We’re tired, honey,” I said. “So try to be nicer.”
“She’s never nice,” Cheryl said.
“Run go get Little Duke,” I said. “And hurry back.”
“I guess my questions come last here, right?” Edna said.
I put my arm around her. “That’s not true.”
“Did you find somebody over there in the trailers you’d rather stay with? You were gone long enough.”
“That’s not a thing to say,” I said. “I was just trying to make things look right, so we don’t get put in jail.”
“So you don’t, you mean.” Edna laughed a little laugh I didn’t like hearing.
“That’s right. So I don’t,” I said. “I’d be the one in Dutch.” I stared out at the big, lighted assemblage of white buildings and white lights beyond the trailer community, plumes of white smoke escaping up into the heartless Wyoming sky, the whole company of buildings looking like some unbelievable casde, humming away in a distorted dream. “You know what all those buildings are there?” I said to Edna, who hadn’t moved and who didn’t really seem to care if she ever moved anymore ever.