Lamb (9 page)

He put his arm around her shoulders and when she turned to look up at him he stooped beside the trash can and took her face in his hands and brushed the tears from her freckled cheeks with the edge of his sleeve, wiped the snot from her lip with his thumb and wiped it on his jeans. “Do you want to go home, Tommie? Shall I take you home to your mother?”

“Yes.” Her chest broke open now and she snorted and inhaled stuttering breath. “No.” She looked to him for help.

“Come,” he said. “Come get in the truck. Let’s talk.” He took her hand and walked her there. In the Ford he put the cell phone in the glove compartment and closed it. “We’ll turn around. We’ll drive straight through the night, okay? You can walk home from that pretty white hotel where we stayed, or I’ll give you taxi money. You can go back to the apartment and all your friends. Tell your mom you wandered off into the woods and fell asleep for days. Like a pretty little girl in a fable.”

She sat nodding and sniffling in the passenger seat.

“I’m sorry, Tom. This was a bad idea. I should have known better. People don’t do this, do they? This isn’t the way people behave. I’m older and I should have known better.”

The girl held her head in her hands. “I’ll get in so much trouble.”

“No you won’t. You won’t. Everyone will be so happy to see you. You need to just let me steer this now. I’m going to feed you really well and we’ll set you up in back so you can sleep and before you know it you’ll be waking up in your old neighborhood.”

“Okay.”

“And I’ll leave town so you have all the room you need to get over this. Nine hundred days and the whole city to yourself. Maybe I’ll drive back
through Chicago in a few years, and you can sneak away from your boyfriends and girlfriends to give your poor old horse a little company. Come steal him away from his tall metal hotel downtown, right? Have a run through the open grass before we sneak you back in time for algebra. Right?”

“I want to stay. I want to stay.” She waved her hand at the windshield. “Go,” she said. “Drive.”

Our guy picked up her hand. “We’re just going to sit here a minute.” He waited until she stopped crying, then pulled away from the gas pump and parked beside a derelict pay phone. “We are not going to do anything unless I am absolutely certain it’s what you want to do.” She nodded and wiped her nose across her skinny bare forearm. “Oh no,” he said, “don’t do that.” He opened the glove compartment and withdrew a handkerchief. “Here,” he said. He dabbed her tears and held it to her nose. “Blow,” he said. “Go on.” She looked at him, red-eyed and ugly. “Harder,” he said. “Yes. Now that’s a nose-blow. That’s a girl with a little strength!” He dropped his hand into her lap. “My God,” he said, looking at her, “that’s the most extraordinary sound I’ve ever heard. You sound exactly like a goose, or a loon. Do it again.” He lifted the handkerchief, and they both laughed.

“Better?”

“Better.”

He rolled down both windows and turned off the engine. The sound of passing cars and birdsong filled the truck. “All right,” he said. “Let’s try to talk about this rationally. What are the facts?”

“I’m being a baby.”

“That’s not a fact. That’s an interpretation, and not one with which I particularly agree. Let me give you an example of a fact. We’re in north South Dakota. Fact.”

“Okay. It’s early evening.”

“Hey.” He raised an eyebrow. “That was a pretty little sentence, Tom.” She smiled.

“What else have you got?”

She paused and looked him in the eye. “I’m running away from home.”

Lamb widened his eyes. “You are?”

She looked down at the handkerchief, twisted in her hands. “Maybe.”

“Oh, Tommie.” He stared out the windshield. “I don’t know how that makes me feel.”

Nothing.

“You could have told me that was what you were doing. Did you think I wouldn’t let you come with me?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me the truth.”

“I thought you wouldn’t let me because I don’t want to go back.”

“But right now you do want to go back.”

“I feel bad!” Her voice rose to a thin, hysterical pitch and she was crying again.

“Ssh. I know. It’s okay. Listen. Listen, Tom. Do you remember our deal?”

“We spend a week, then you take me back.”

“Almost.”

“We spend a few days and you take me back.”

“That’s correct. And is that running away from home?”

She shook her head.

“That’s like a vacation, right?”

“But a secret vacation.”

“Well. I don’t know how I feel about the word secret. It’s more like the kind of thing a teenager would do, right? A teenager vacation.”

She wiped her nose with the handkerchief.

“And you agreed to this deal.”

“Yes.”

“No running away.”

“No.”

“Good,” he said. “I don’t know how it makes me feel, that you were keeping this from me.”

“I’m sorry!”

“Hey now, hey now.” He ran his hand from her forehead into her hair. “Take it easy. I was a teenager too, once. Ten thousand years ago. I know what it’s like. And I bet seeing that mom and her little girl gave you a little bruise right here, right?” He pressed her breast with his thumb, right where her heart would be.

She nodded.

“Well, let’s talk about this. Because if you feel bruised about something you didn’t even do—like run away—then our trip is off to a pretty shaky start. And we have to get it back on track together. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Tom, look at me. Good girl. Can you give me a smile? I love to see that. Good. Now tell me if you feel like you’re running away.”

She shook her head.

“Why not?”

“Because I’m going back in a few days.”

“You’re not abandoning your mother.”

She shook her head, lips pulled into her mouth and her eyes filling up again, and he put his hands around her face and drew in close, his breath warm and steady on her mouth and nose and chin.

“No. You’re not. She is probably worried, but we’ll send a postcard, and she’ll get it tomorrow, or
maybe the next day, and that will make her feel a lot better.” He held her face close and spoke nearly into her mouth. “And by the time she gets worried again, you’ll be knocking at the door. A little more mature, a little wiser. Your beautiful long hair kissed with October sun from being so high up in the mountains. And she’ll be able to see all this, won’t she?”

“Yes.”

“And it will be such a relief to her, that you’re growing up wise and straight and tall.” His voice a soft and easy rush against her face.

“Yes.”

“And she’ll love you more than ever. And you’ll love her more than ever.”

“Yes.”

“There is room enough in your heart, Tom, for more love than you know, okay?” He looked directly into her eyes. She glanced up, and down again to the thin yellow stripe across the chest of his shirt, and back up again.

“Okay.”

“That probably doesn’t mean much to you now, but I want you to remember that I said it. I want you to remember that your heart includes everything. It is very, very big. No matter what gets in there—bad feelings, sorry feelings, ashamed feelings—you don’t have to cast it out. You just let your heart contain it all.”

“Okay.”

“I sound a little funny, don’t I?” He backed up, releasing his hands from her face. She smiled and nodded. “How are we doing now? Should we go back to our facts?”

She nodded.

“I’ll start. Here’s a fact: you blow your nose like a honking loon.”

She laughed. “You make me laugh.”

“Oh, sweetheart. That’s my favorite fact of the day.” He smiled broadly and took her face in his hands again and kissed her forehead. “Is that okay? If I do that?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay,” he said, sitting up straight. “I think that made me blush a little. Did that make you blush?”

“A little.”

He smiled. “How about this one: we’re almost there.”

“We are?”

“Another fact: this is the only time you and I will ever be in his truck together, in the middle of the day, at the skirt of the mountains.”

“We could go west or east.”

“Eventually, come hell or high water, Tom, you’re going back east.”

“I think we should go on to the Old El Rancho Road.”

He raised a hand. “Now don’t be so hasty, Tommie. If you change your moods so fast, I’ll feel like you don’t really know what you want. Like you’re too young for this. I’ll get to thinking you’re just saying what I want to hear.”

“Oh.”

“Listen, dear. It is of the utmost importance to our friendship—to me—that I not feel like a bully here. Okay?”

“But I really do think we should go.”

“Let’s do this. Let’s park this truck across the street—see that place over there?” It was an empty boarded-up restaurant made of dark slabs of wood and fashioned with a porch to resemble a general store. “Then we’ll take a walk. Just to clear the air a little, right? And when we get back to the truck, we’ll make a decision.”

Outside the air was cool and bright yellow. Lawns around the houses were deep and soft, the air fragrant with sweet and rotting cow manure. A metal sprinkler ticked and a few kids in dirty T-shirts were circling each other on their bikes in the middle of the wide street. Crickets and frogs in the muck-filled retention ponds were in full chorus, the faces of the tiny houses blinking blue and gold-lit windows.

“Pretty little town.”

“Yeah.”

“I wish I could buy your mother a house like that. In a town like this. Or like one of those, with a glassed-in porch. With a bedroom from where you can hear the train whistle in your sleep. And a little breakfast nook downstairs for hot rolls and coffee in the morning.”

“That’d be the day.”

“Tell me,” he said and held up his face to her. “Is it a good face?”

The girl shrugged. “Sometimes I think maybe this is just a movie we’re in.”

“No, Tommie, this is real. Real arms. Real legs. Real trees.”

“Okay.”

“None of this will matter to you the way it should if you start thinking it’s just some movie. You’re not pretending, are you?”

“No.”

“Promise?”

She laughed. “Swear.”

“What I was going to ask you,” he said, “was if your mother would like my face. Because wouldn’t that be the perfect solution,” he said, “to our little problem?”

The girl tipped her head at him. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Maybe when we get back, when I take you back, we could rig things so I meet your mother. What do you say to that?”

“Yeah.”

“Maybe—and I don’t want to get ahead of myself here, because you’d have to say yes first—but maybe we could have a small, private wedding. On a green green lawn. Or no. In a house with big windows, and all snowy outside. And beautiful fine china, and roasted duck. Right? And your mother in a beautiful white cape. And you in red velvet. Or blue. What do you think? Blue or red?”

“Red.”

“And I’ll buy her a big beautiful house and get her three maids just to help her dress in the morning, and she’ll never have to work another day in her life. How about that?”

“Oh, my God, she’d love you.”

“And we’ll have horses.”

“But maybe you wouldn’t like her face.”

“I think I’ve already seen it.”

“You have?”

“Does she have short dark hair?” He made a motion with his hands, cutting the hair at chin length.

“Yes.”

“I have to make a confession, Tommie. Don’t be mad. I went over there the night you were waiting for me at the hotel.”

“To ask if I could go with you?”

“What? No. No, not like that. I just wanted to think about whether it was a bad idea, what we were about to do. I wanted to put my face right up to the facts: that you’re eleven, and your parents—your mom—would be waiting for you in the apartment. I wanted to make myself really think about that. You understand?” He turned to face her.

“Yes.”

“It’s the only way to do this. We have to be honest about these things.”

“I know.”

“I saw a young woman and man there. I thought maybe it was your mom and Jessie.”

“Probably it was.”

“And Tom, here’s my real confession, okay?” She watched him. “Ever since that moment?” He paused and looked up.

“What?”

He looked at her. “Ever since that moment, Tom, I’ve been haunted by her beauty.”

“My mom?”

“Your mother, yes. Don’t you think she’s beautiful?”

“I guess.”

“You guess. Let me tell you something. She is. And I’m an expert on such matters.”

“I know.”

“You do?”

“You already told me that one.”

He put his thumb and forefinger beneath her chin and lifted her face. “Look at me. We know the facts, right?” She nodded. “And we’re proceeding with due caution, right?”

“Yes.”

“Because we love this world. And everybody in it.”

“Yes.”

“Good.” He let go her head, put his hand on top of her hair. “So we’re all saddled up pushing on. Because it’s what people like you and me do.”

He drove into the night, along a cursive pass etched in granite, above the stands of green-fingered oaks and red-beaded hawthorns and all the aspen, above the trees that listed to the southeast, needled black along one side, twisted and deformed by forbidding glacial wind, and between great planed walls of rock dressed in little aprons of snow and shattered stone sliding down onto the road.

The rock walls flattened as they crested the pass, and they slowly descended through the sparse coniferous trees, silver needles flashing mutely in the
car light. They wound down past the neon yellow road signs and steep grade warnings and through the pines again and back to where the aspen were still yellow and pale green.

“It’s scary up here.”

“Well.” He watched the road. “It’s severe, is what it is. And high.”

“How high?”

“Twelve, thirteen thousand feet. That’s over two miles high.”

“I know that.”

“I forget sometimes how smart you are.” He glanced at her and back to the road. “Know what happens now that we’re over the top of the mountain? All the rivers start running the other way.”

“Big whoop.”