Lost Highways (A Valentine Novel) (11 page)

Reach Out and Touch Someone

“I
’m takin’ the doc here out to learn ‘bout puttin’ up hay.” Uncle Doyle cast her a wave as he headed across the yard. “Don’t worry ‘bout lunch—we’ll go in to the café in town and get us a chicken-fried steak.”

Harry waved with his hat and grinned the grin of a boy going off on an adventure.

She stood there a moment at the porch screen door, blinking in the bright light, watching the battered blue pickup truck drive away, realizing it was just as well the men were leaving. She again wore nothing but a big shirt.

She had drunk Uncle Doyle’s strong coffee, made herself and the puppy scrambled eggs and toast, which to her notion was not a very substantial start to the day, and cleaned the entire kitchen before she remembered she needed to get some pants on.

The phone rang as she passed it on her way up the stairs.

It was Charlene. Rainey sank down into the unpredictable gooseneck rocker, careful to slide all the way back.

“I’m glad you haven’t been murdered yet,” her sister said. When Rainey was confused, she explained, “By that guy you picked up.”

“Oh. No, we’re all fine. He’s a doctor.” She instantly regretted the absurd prompting that had made her say that, knowing her sister would jump on it.

“He is? Well, why didn’t he have somewhere to go? I never heard of a doctor not havin’ to go somewhere, like to the golf course. Why was he out on the highway?”

“He had wrecked his car. I told you.”

“Well, I imagine a doctor would have Triple A or somethin’.”

“He might have. I didn’t ask.”

“So, here we have a doctor with still no place to go?” Her voice was ripe with suspicion.

“Right now he’s off with Uncle Doyle, to help load hay,” Rainey answered, getting stubborn.

“Why is a doctor going off to help Uncle Doyle load hay? I’ve really never heard of such. What is the story on all this?”

“Have you never heard of someone needin’ to take time off and have a vacation?” Rainey said. “He’s been under a lot of pressure, and he needs to have a little getaway. That’s all.”

“Well, you don’t have to get snippy. I was just thinkin’ that you need to be careful. I do worry about you.”

“Thank you, Charlene,” she said, feeling guilty but not knowing exactly why.

The line hummed for several seconds, and then Charlene said, “Well, Mr. Blaine took me aside yesterday when I stopped in the drugstore. He wants you to come back to your job.”

“He does?”

“Yes. He is desperate. Della Mayes is messing up people’s prescriptions
and generally driving everyone nuts. Mr. Blaine said he’d give you a fifty cent raise. I told him he’d better think in the range of two dollars, at least.”

Rainey was surprised to find a homesickness for the drugstore slice into her. She remembered the smell of the old wood and how she always liked to fill her basket with the prescriptions, then go out and deliver them. She’d just had a cardboard box at first to hold the prescriptions, but then she’d found a big picnic basket on sale at Wal-mart, with a red-checked liner and lid. She loved the basket, and she loved waking to a planned day each morning, where she got to chat with other people. It made her feel somewhat personally responsible for helping heal people by delivering their medicines.

It struck her then, how much she had in common with Harry.

“Monte was here, too, for the third time,” Charlene said. “He looked desperate, too. I gave him twenty-five dollars for you, so you’ll owe it to me. He doesn’t ever pay you back, does he?”

“Sometimes he does.” Mr. Blaine and Monte were marching across her mind, and it was a couple of seconds before she realized that her sister had gone on talking.

“Freddy and Helen are havin’ a little dinner party on Sunday night. They originally wanted it on Saturday, but Daddy refused to come because
Bend of the River
is playin’ on the Western Channel, and he didn’t want to miss it.”

She paused for effect and added, “Freddy told Daddy to bring That Mildred Covington
as a date
.”

“Oh.”

Rainey thought of her father, picturing him in one of his white starched shirts and the way he always pulled at the neck. Surely he would not wear a good shirt for Mildred. He wouldn’t hardly wear one for Mama.

“Is Daddy goin’ to?”

“If Freddy has anything to do with it, he will. He does not care that Mama has been gone less than six months. You know what he said to me? He said, ‘Mom is gone, and it won’t do Dad any good to stay alone. He might need someone to take care of him soon, anyway.’”

“Is Daddy sick?” Rainey said, alarmed that she might have missed something Charlene had told her.

“No. Freddy’s just lookin’ ahead, anticipating. He doesn’t want to be havin’ to take care of Daddy.”

It made Rainey sad to think of her father getting sick, and of Freddy saying it like that, like money and convenience were his chief concern, above their father’s happiness.
Her father? Did she have a right to think that way?

“But if Daddy is happy with Mildred, Charlene, that
is
all that matters.”

“That Mildred is makin’ certain Daddy is happy with her right at this moment,” Charlene said in a tone that said she knew how the world worked. “Kaye Upchurch told me That Mildred did this same thing with Dwight Lowe last year after his wife died. That Mildred would have hooked him, too, but he moved to a fancy senior living center out in California with his sister.”

Rainey pictured Kaye Upchurch. She was the mayor’s wife and knew everything about everyone in town. Rainey also knew that Kaye had had a terrible time with menopause and had for some time taken an antidepressant, which had been a blessing to her. She clamped her jaw shut. She was always careful not to tell what she knew about customers.

Charlene said, “I’ll bet if we ask around, we’ll find out there’s a few more men that widow has cozied up to at one time or another.”

“Well…” Rainey looked for a positive response. “She’s been widowed for five or six years. She’s probably really lonely.”

“Oh, Rainey, everybody’s lonely at least half the time. She should just get a hobby.”

“Well, I guess she has,” Rainey said before she thought.

At least that made Charlene laugh full out.

“Oh, Rainey, I know it’s true,” her sister said, her voice now pliable and warm. “I know Mama is as dead as she’ll ever be, but I just do not like this thing with That Mildred. I just don’t like it. And it gripes me to pieces to see Daddy actin’ like a silly old fool. Freddy thinks he’s an old fool, but he isn’t, Rainey. Well, except about this stupid Mildred.”

“Daddy isn’t a fool, Charlene. He never was with Mama.”

Charlene sighed heavily. “He’s eighty-two, Rainey, and Mama’s dyin’ has knocked the stuffin’s out of him,” she said in a mournful tone that slid into desperate. “I just don’t know what to do to help him. I just don’t know what to
do
.”

Rainey thought that if Charlene didn’t think she knew the answer, then no one else was going to have a clue.

She found herself saying, “I’ll be comin’ home, Charlene, Sunday, after the Amarillo rodeo.”

“What? You’re whisperin’, Rainey.”

“I said, I’ll come home on Sunday.”

“Then try to get here in time for Freddy’s dinner. It’s at seven o’clock. Well, this is long distance, you know, and my story is fixin’ to come on. Bye.”

“Bye…”

She heard the line click and the dial tone return before hanging up.

For quite a few minutes, Rainey sat in the gooseneck rocker, staring, seeing her sister, her father, the drugstore and the town, with its wide main street and sidewalks, colorful seasonal signs flapping from the streetlamp posts, the Main Street Café and Blaine’s Drugstore and the bank on the corner, and the tree-lined
neighborhood streets where children and dogs played. Valentine, where she had lived all of her life, except the two years she had been married to Robert.

Quite suddenly, she wished she hadn’t told Charlene she was coming home. She didn’t feel ready. She thought she might never feel ready. She had the awful fear that maybe she didn’t belong in Valentine anymore. Maybe she didn’t belong as a Valentine.

Then she realized that she was staring at the thirty-year-old console television set and remembered her sister had said, “My story is comin’ on.”

All My Children
. Charlene had watched that forever.

Wondering if the old television set would even work, she got up and switched it on. The picture was a little hazy and blue, but right there was Erica smiling that brilliant smile, the one she had when she was about to do something wiley.

Rainey had seen the program while visiting their Aunt Pauline down in San Antonio. Aunt Pauline taped it each day while she worked and saved one or two weeks of episodes to watch at once in marathon viewings. She liked them best in bursts, Aunt Pauline said. Rainey had watched with her aunt and gotten caught up on all she had missed in two years of working at Blaine’s.

Slipping back into the gooseneck rocker, Rainey thought she would watch, even if the picture was hazy and off-color. The people on the program had much worse problems than she did.

She telephoned Neva at the bank. “I told Uncle Doyle that you and Buck were married.” She had begun to worry that her cousin would be annoyed that she had stepped into her business.

“You did?” Neva sounded surprised and relieved at once. “What did he say?” her cousin, the high-powered bank executive, asked breathlessly.

“Not really anything. I guess I didn’t give him much of a chance. I pointed out that this meant he would soon be a grandfather. I hope you guys get on that real soon, because he’s sure to come around then. Will you pick up some strawberries and bring them out? I bought the cream and then forgot the strawberries.”

“Oh, Rainey…maybe it’d be best to cancel. Buck said he might go out with the guys tonight.”

“Neva, you manage that bank, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Then manage Buck just a little. You bring him tonight. I can’t leave here until I know things are started in the right direction with y’all.”

“And what if we come out and things go off in the wrong direction?”

“They won’t. Don’t even think that way. And you might suggest to Buck that he shave. That might be a help. Tell him, just until you guys have some babies, and then he can have as much hair as he wants.”

When she hung up, she thought that she really was her mother’s daughter. She was able to correctly arrange everyone’s life but her own.

When the phone rang that afternoon, she thought immediately of Charlene. She didn’t want to talk to her sister again, but then she told herself to quit being silly. This was Uncle Doyle’s phone; anybody he knew could be calling.

A gruff voice on the line said, “This is Farris Wrecker Service. We got Mr. Furneaux’s Porsche out of that wash. Is this the right number?”

“Yes, it is. Only he isn’t here right now.”

A Porsche? She hadn’t realized it had been such an expensive
car. She pictured him racing down the highway in it, his brown hair blowing in the breeze.

“Well, tell him it’s bunged up good, but I don’t think it’s totaled. Anyway, we got it yeste’dy evenin’ and brought it to our lot. We’ll keep it thirty days, and unless he notifies us of what he wants done before that, we’ll start sellin’ parts.”

“Can you do that?”

“We do.”

“I’ll tell him. You better give me your number, just to make certain he has it.”

Harry and Uncle Doyle came in about midafternoon: Uncle Doyle went straight up to take a shower, and Harry flopped down on the shady porch. He looked worn slap out. Sweat glistened on his face and dampened his shirt, and a fine layer of dust covered him. After one look, Rainey brought him a glass of iced tea and the note she’d written about the call from Farris Wrecker Service.

“They said if you did not notify them in thirty days what to do with the car, they would start sellin’ parts off it. I don’t think they can do that, but the man said they would.” She eased backward and sat in one of the rockers.

“I guess they can do anything they want. They have the car.”

His throat bobbed as he swallowed large gulps of her tea. She hoped he didn’t get a headache from drinking the cold liquid so fast. He had an indentation around his head, so she knew he’d worn his hat, but he still looked to have gotten a lot of sun.

Setting the glass aside, he lay all the way down on the porch. She watched his chest rise and fall.

“I just think that is high-handed, saying they’ll start sellin’ parts,” she said. “How can they do that without the title?”

“Most people can do anything they want to, if no one objects.” After a minute, he added, “Don’t worry over it, Rainey. I’ll take care of it. I’ll call my insurance agent in a few minutes. Did the guy say how badly it was damaged?” He cracked his eyes at her.

“Bunged up good but not totaled. I still imagine it’ll take a lot to get a Porsche fixed.”

He nodded and closed his eyes again, eyelashes long against his cheeks.

“My parents bought that car for me as an early present for finishing my residency,” he said, eyes still closed.

“Oh,” Rainey said. Relationships were all quite complicated, she mused.

She watched him, his chest rising and falling, the hair that blew across his forehead. The puppy got up from his place against the wall and slunk over and lay next to him. A breeze drifted nicely over all of them.

“You know,” Harry said, not opening his eyes, “I see now the value of physical labor in chain gangs. I have never physically worked so hard, and now I can see that when you do that, you stimulate your mental energy. No conscious thinking, beyond lifting the bale of hay and stacking it. The mind is able to focus and give forth all sorts of enlightened thoughts.”

She was a little surprised. “Such as?”

“Such as what is important and what isn’t. Such as giving away your soul because you don’t ever deal with things.”

He did not elaborate on that, and she thought of his term: giving away your soul. She thought there was such a thing as getting lost from your soul. Of maybe never really finding it in the first place.