Lost Highways (A Valentine Novel) (13 page)

It was an old familiar feeling. She felt she could hardly breathe, and that someone was drilling a hole in her heart.

Getting into the truck cab, she slammed the door, thinking hotly, If he knows what’s good for him, he’d best not say, “You wanted to get rid of him.”

Realizing she still clutched the paper sack with the corn dog, she smacked it onto the seat. Her throat got all tight. She didn’t want to cry and make a fool of herself in front of Harry.

She squeezed her eyes closed.
Please, God, take care of that dog. I’m sorry…sorry for being so stupid
. She swallowed and commanded herself not to cry.

When she opened her eyes, Harry was gazing at her through the window. He reached out and opened the door. She sure hoped her eyes didn’t look like she wanted to cry. Possibly he couldn’t tell in the dimness, anyway.

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go call him again. Just give him a couple of minutes.” When she didn’t immediately move or reply, he added, “We aren’t in any rush to go, are we?”

“No…I suppose not.”

“Come on, then.” He motioned with his head, his hands being tucked into his pockets, and hunched his shoulders a little against the night cool.

She got out reluctantly. She didn’t think she could face the puppy not coming back. She thought of her mother lying in the casket, never coming back.

Then he took her hand in his, which was warm and secure.

They went back across the field, calling, “Here, pup! Here, dog.”

“Oh, he isn’t gonna come,” she said.

“You don’t know that.”

“Yes…I do.”

“No, you don’t.” His hand tightened on hers.

“We’ll probably get all sorts of dogs showin’ up,” she said drearily, and no sooner had the words cleared her mouth than, sure enough, two others came—a hound dog of some sort and a cocker mix.

“We are goin’ to be accused of stealin’ dogs,” she said. “Shoo…get!”

They succeeded in getting rid of the strange dogs and didn’t dare go to calling the puppy, for fear of bringing the wrong ones back.

Then, just when Rainey felt the last of her hope slipping away, there came a yip. Hope flickered anew. She looked at Harry, who was a black shadow, then stared into the darkness, holding her breath.

Harry whispered, “Here, boy.”

The puppy appeared, wriggling around their legs.

Rainey swallowed, squeezed her eyes closed and sank down on her knees, gathering the dog to her. Then she scooped him up and carried him back to the truck, leaning backward to balance his weight. There she broke off a piece of her corn dog and gave it to him.

“I guess I’m gonna have to keep you after all this trouble. I’ll have to give you a name.”

“Roscoe,” Harry said at her shoulder.

She raised an eyebrow at him.

“He looks like a Roscoe.”

She looked at the pup and said she thought he looked more like King or Duke.

They argued about the name as they got back into the truck. Rainey maintained that something of some substance was
needed so that the puppy could live up to it, and Harry said he found the name Roscoe to have plenty of substance.

As she headed the truck once more down the highway, she glanced over at Harry. “Thanks,” she said.

“No problem,” he answered.

Then he motioned toward the dash, saying, “Mind if I find some other music?”

He tuned until he found what suited him—blues or jazz, Rainey thought with some consternation. Robert had really liked blues and jazz.

Our Own Corner of the Universe

“A
re you going to tell me about your husbands?” he asked, holding out an open bag of Cracker Jack.

Surprised, she glanced at him. Then she dug into the bag, saying, “I don’t know. Are you going to tell me about the women you’ve been involved with?”

“That would be a short story.”

She cast him a look that said, So tell it.

“I suppose I’ve had one sort of serious romance. Amy. My mother had these hopes for us since we were kids, because Amy was the daughter of my mother’s best friend. I liked Amy, and she liked me, and for a while there we worked up to something that was sort of serious, but then that turned into absolutely nothing except annoyance.

“I always had an idea that Amy was disappointed in me. She could see my father and my brothers and was really impressed, and she had these ideas of what could happen with her life attached to mine. But she began to see the truth of me a long time
before my family or I could. Amy wanted a man who had a lot more ambition than I was ever going to have.”

“Ambition for what?” Rainey asked, already forming her own ideas.

“Oh, Amy wanted to host a lot of important parties with important people, and she pretty well figured out I wasn’t going to come up to that. She ended up marrying a senator. Biggest wedding I’ve ever seen. Governor came, and television news anchors. My mother was really disappointed not to be the mother of the groom at it.”

She glanced over to see him thoughtfully popping Cracker Jack into his mouth. “You are tellin’ me that you have not had anyone in your life but this Amy?” Who sounded pretty much like a gold digger and not his type at all.

“I’ve had dates…a couple of wild ones, too. But, no, Amy was the only one that might be considered important. So tell me about these fools who let you go.”

She looked ahead at the beams of light on the road, then glanced over at him, seeing his face in the silver glow from the dashboard. The atmosphere lent itself to bringing things out of hidden places, sitting there as they had been for miles and miles, only a foot from each other in the dimly lit truck cab. Breathing the same air and hearing the same sounds. He regarded her patiently.

“Robert was a lot like you,” she said, and his eyebrows went up.

She thought about this for several seconds and shot another glance at him. “No, he wasn’t anything like you,” she said, revising her opinion.

“Well, I think I’m relieved.”

She said, “He liked fine things—watches, designer clothes, European sports cars…and blues. He liked blues and jazz.”

“I probably don’t want to say this, but he had taste.”

“Oh, yes, he did. If he had not, I wouldn’t have fallen in love with him.”

“You did love him, then.”

“Well, of course. I married him. I’m not somebody who would go around marryin’ somebody if I didn’t love him.”

“No, I wouldn’t think you were.”

She popped the rest of her handful of Cracker Jack into her mouth and focused on the road illuminated ahead. “Robert was very particular. It was never goin’ to work with us from the get-go. We were so very different,” she said, not wanting to sound critical of Robert.

“Opposites attract, so they say.”

“Well, they certainly did—at first, anyway. We were crazy for each other. But in the long term, we got annoyed with each other, too. I think he got disappointed before I did, and then I got disappointed that he was disappointed. I never could give Robert what he wanted.” She sighed. “I guess I was pretty much of an embarrassment to him.”

“An embarrassment?” he asked, holding the Cracker Jack bag toward her again. “Couldn’t be. He had to be a foolish fellow.”

She dug out another handful of caramel corn. “I’m so glad you are so much on my side.”

He almost grinned.

“Robert’s sophistication was what I liked about him in the beginnin’. He was a such a contrast. Physically he looked rough, but he dressed and talked very suave. He knew exactly what to say, what wine to order, drove a Mercedes and read all these highbrow books. I met him in my first year of college, so I was all impressionable and everything, naturally.”

“Very naturally. And you were perfect to stoke his low self-esteem.”

She glanced at him with a raised eyebrow.

“Sorry. Sometimes the stuff I learned in therapy just naturally comes out.”

She inclined her head. “I suppose it was like that a little. The thing about Robert was that he’d actually come from a little town over in eastern Oklahoma and from dirt-poor parents he wouldn’t even go back to visit. Once he’d told me that his daddy had beaten him and that he had escaped that kind of life and would never go back.”

A glance at him, and she saw understanding flicker over his face. He looked ahead out the windshield.

“Robert had made himself over into this sophisticated kind of guy, and he thought I would want to do the same thing. I did, sort of, at the time. He tried to help me, but I never really could do it. He’d get so annoyed that I found the books he wanted me to read boring, and he just about pulled his hair out at the way I talk. Whenever I said, ‘Well…’ he’d say, ‘That’s a deep subject.’ He made great fun of my accent.

“The instant it ended—after I’d put him through his last two years of schooling and he’d gotten a position on the university faculty, I might add—” she heard the pain in her voice, after all this time “—was when I wrecked the Mercedes, and he came yelling at me for that, never askin’ how I was.”

She gazed at the headlights on the road, remembering, feeling again how small and worthless she had felt when Robert had yelled at her like that, while the nurse put a bandage on her head. She had felt herself shrinking, even as she realized that Robert had been making her feel worthless for a long time. In her panic that she might completely disappear, she had yelled at Robert, “Screw you,” which had given her enough strength in that minute not to disappear.

She laughed in the telling of it. “You know what he said to
me? He said, ‘That is about what I would expect you to say.’ Oh, I was already so embarrassed that I’d said that and right in front of the nurse. I screamed it,” she admitted, wincing.

“Then I looked over and saw the scissors right there. I jumped off that emergency room table, snatched up those scissors and cut Robert’s fifty-dollar tie right in half, then handed him the cut half and walked out, leaving him standing there with a stunned expression and his half a tie.”

Harry laughed at all of this, and she thought that was great of him.

“I think that’s the first time I’ve heard you really laugh,” she said.

“It’s a great story,” he said.

“It is, isn’t it?” They laughed again and she felt a warmth washing over her. She realized she had let go of the embarrassment at the memory.

He told her, “I’ve seen a number of marriages break up in an emergency room. It’s a really good place for it. If there’s any violence, it can be handled, and if anyone collapses, that can be handled, too. What about your second husband? What happened with him?”

He shot her a raised eyebrow. He was an incredibly handsome man.

“Monte? Oh, Monte was just one of those foolish mistakes a woman makes when she’s in a terribly low period, seeing the years slip by and wishin’…oh, just wishin’.” She sighed. “What a girl ought to do when she finds herself in such a condition is to lock herself in her kitchen with lots of herb tea and study the Bible and all those self-help books that tell a woman how to find herself. Perversely, what most of us do is what I did—I went crazy over Monte and got pregnant and ended up marrying him.”

“Pregnant?” he said, obviously startled. “You have a child?”

She hadn’t meant to tell it. She had meant to skip that part, because even after all these years, she sometimes cried.

She shook her head. “No. I miscarried at four months.” She blinked rapidly as the glow of the headlights on the road blurred.

“Oh.”

She felt his eyes on her; he was that way, didn’t try to hide his curiosity.

“It was hard on Monte. He had been so excited. We hung in there for almost two years, but it just never worked. I couldn’t fill the hole in Monte, and he couldn’t fill the hole in me. You know what I think causes divorce? I think it is not a lack of love but way too much disappointment. You have so much hope for someone’s love to conquer all, to help fill you up, but then you find out that it doesn’t. That is hard to love through.”

She glanced at him, somewhat amazed at herself for revealing such intimate thoughts.

“I never would have thought I would be married twice,” she said. “I mean, I really don’t believe in divorce. Sometimes I wonder if I know myself at all. My mother used to say, ‘It seemed the thing to do at the time.’ That seems to be how it is, at least for me.”

“I think Robert and Monte were fools.”

“You do?” She glanced at him, surprised at his words and his tone. It was decidedly intimate. His gaze was, too.

“Any man’s a fool who lets you get away.”

“Well,” she said, not quite certain what to say to that, “I suppose we were all fools, but I have learned. I learned mainly that married love had better be much more than a feeling. The feeling—the fire—burns out, but real love is an action. It is something you do. And in marriage
both
people have to do it, even when they’d rather not.”

She motioned for him to pass across the Cracker Jack bag, and they shared what remained. When he dug out the last kernel, he offered it to her, put it right in her mouth.

Just outside Amarillo, she pulled beneath a pole lamp and got the puppy up in the seat between them. She did not want to take a chance that he would see something on a city street and jump out, and she didn’t feel like tying him. The night air had cooled considerably, and she had begun to get tired, to experience a strong sinking sensation. Whenever she got tired, she did so very quickly and wanted nothing but to lie down. This tended to make her a little impatient, and peevish, too. She tried not to be this way, but she didn’t seem to make much headway. She was too tired to make headway.

“So far Roscoe hasn’t jumped out while the truck is moving,” Harry said, petting the dog’s head.

“The key words are
so far
,” she said. “He ruined my confidence back there, and now that I have settled on keepin’ him, I don’t want to lose him, which is probably exactly what will happen, but I’ll do my best anyway. And his name is not Roscoe.”

The dark streets were nearly empty, the most traffic coming as cars left the fairgrounds that grew up behind a tall chain-link fence. The colorful lights were lit, but the Ferris wheel was still and empty.

Slowly turning into the entry for participants, she lowered her window to speak to a man in a thick coat, who took note of her truck and trailer, then told her to park where she found room, but advised that all the camper hookups were already taken.

She drove past trucks and trailers looking for a space. The only space she found was far from the barn and the rest rooms,
and she had to back the trailer into place. She had to ask Harry to get out to help guide her. Inexperienced, he gave her all sorts of confusing hand motions and looked more like he was directing an orchestra.

“Just yell ‘stop’ if I’m about to hit that trailer there,” she told him.

She suddenly wondered what Harry thought of the primitive accommodations and felt very self-conscious. She knew what Robert would have said. As long as she’d been divorced from him, she thought, he could still haunt her.

“I usually just sleep in my trailer until the morning,” she said, more forcefully than she had intended, “rather than go to all the trouble of unhooking to drive to the motel. I have a reservation over at the La Quinta for tomorrow. For now, you can have the entire front seat, and I’ll get you a blanket and pillow.”

She didn’t look at him. She was annoyed with the way she felt, all defensive, and this made her all the more annoyed with him. She thought that if he hadn’t been along, she wouldn’t have this feeling, and she would be free to simply be how she was. That was the problem with entanglements. One had to accommodate oneself to others—and so many times, once one did that, the other one up and left.

“Okay by me,” he answered smoothly, drawing her gaze to see that it really did seem okay with him.

“Well, good.”

Outside the truck, the high-plains breeze was downright cold, ruffling their hair and whispering through their jackets. It brought the aroma of greasy fair food, and the scents of animals and damp earth. From the carnival on the far side of the fairgrounds, music abruptly stopped, and colorful lights began to go out.

By the light in the trailer and the glow of sparsely placed pole
lamps, she got Lulu out and led her to a stall in the barn. Harry and the puppy followed along. It was all new to both of them, and while Rainey readied Lulu and the stall, they avidly investigated the block walls of the stalls, the other horses, the small arena in which a few people rode even at this time of night. He helped her to get the hay and water for Lulu and was in such good humor that Rainey had to remark on it.

“I’m used to odd hours,” he said. “I can pretty much drop to sleep or wake up at an instant’s notice.”

“Well, I’m tired, and when I get tired, I can’t hardly stand anyone in a good mood.” She felt that if she didn’t lie down, she was going to fall over right there. Possibly she would not go directly to sleep, but she needed to get off her feet.

She got the things from the room of her trailer. “I think this is all you’ll need. Oh, and the keys are in the ignition. That way I have light back in the trailer. You might want to listen to the radio. The battery’s real good.”

She felt anxious now to please him in any way that she could, since she was in such poor humor.

“Thanks.”

“I’ll take the pup. I have more room.”

“Okay.”

She called the puppy to come with her, trying out the name of Duke. The puppy, pricking his ears, looked from her to Harry, who was opening the truck door. “Here, pup,” she said more firmly, and he came, wagging his tail.