Lost Highways (A Valentine Novel) (14 page)

She threw a towel down for the puppy to lie on, took off her boots and turned out the light, then climbed up onto the quilt-covered mattress that served as a comfortable bed in the goose-neck of the trailer. She thought of the need to remove her makeup but was too tired.

Out the narrow window at the front, she could look down
into the rear window of the truck. She saw his shadow. He was still sitting up. The light from the dash showed he had turned on the radio; she thought she could hear it, but there was music playing from somewhere else, too. There was the sound of cars on the road, the squeak of metal from somewhere.

His shadow moved as he lay down in the seat. She stared at the window another minute, and then she rolled to her back and lay there thinking about him and how he looked at her and the way he made her feel.

But she could not trust her feelings when it came to men. And she was way too tired to be thinking on it, anyway. She had enough trouble thinking rationally without being tired.

Pulling up the blanket, she closed her eyes.

First Light After a Long Night

A
voice and the puppy whining and scratching at the door awoke her. It was first light, barely. There was a thump on her door, and then recognition of Harry’s voice came through her foggy brain.

“Rainey…I got coffee.”

Harry and coffee!
That got her up, falling from the mattress up in the gooseneck and stumbling over her boots, making a great deal of noise and trying to smooth her hair as she went to open the door. The puppy jumped out, and then she was staring at Harry, who stood there holding two white foam cups.

She winced inwardly at the cup, but she was desperate for the coffee and took it immediately, sipping from it, while he got the puppy and brought him back.

“What happened to the warm weather?” he said, as he and the puppy came into the trailer.

“You are now in North Texas,” she said, “and it isn’t even daylight.”

“It’s daylight,” he said, glancing out the window with puzzlement, as if making certain he had not mistaken things.

“It may be light, but the sun isn’t up yet. That qualifies as not yet daylight.”

“Oh.”

She told him to have a seat on the trunk, the only other place to sit besides up on the mattress in the gooseneck. He would not have fit up there; his head would have bumped the ceiling.

She sipped the steaming coffee again and decided it definitely had a foam taste. Riffling around in the cabinet in the corner, she found her favorite ceramic mug. She poured the coffee into it, and then she happened to look over at him. He was watching her.

“I only have this one ceramic cup,” she said, holding it with both hands. “I had another one, but it broke.”

She rather heard the voice of Saint Peter prodding her to offer him her cup, but she held on to it. She figured that, as a doctor, he probably drank out of foam cups a lot and didn’t mind it. She managed to climb back up on the mattress, where she held the warm cup in both hands, inhaling the aroma of the coffee.

“You’re pretty much a mess in the mornings,” he said.

She looked up to see him grinning at her. “This is still night to me. And you need a shave.”

Then she saw him rubbing his chin. “Maybe I’ll grow a beard.”

She shook her head. “No. Won’t fit you.”

“You don’t think so?”

His voice brought her eyes to him again. He looked as disappointed as a boy. He was wanting to be new and different, and she had dampened him.

“Well, you might try it. Just to see. I could be wrong. I am
on rare occasions.” The burst of energy that drummed up the answer faded, and she went back to sipping her coffee.

“This looks pretty cozy,” he said, looking around. “Mama had it fixed up for sleeping comfortably. It has an air conditioner.” She pointed. “But she didn’t want cooking equipment or a portable toilet. She said that’s why there are restaurants and gas station bathrooms.”

“Sounds reasonable.”

That made her think how Freddy had said on a number of occasions that the words
reasonable
and
Mama
did not go together. She didn’t comment on that, though. She felt as if her mind was too weak for her to trust speaking much of what came out of it.

He told her that he had found a great place to get breakfast. “They have biscuits and gravy.” He seemed eager about the prospect.

“That’s good.” She sipped her coffee, yawned and sniffed her runny nose, self-consciously keeping her eyes from his because of the disheveled way she knew she looked.

“Are you sure you’re going to live?” he said, chuckling now.

“Well, if I start to go, you are a doctor. Surely you could do something to revive me.”

Their eyes met.

He said, “I imagine I could do something.”

A little startled, she looked into her cup and drank deeply.

A mischievious inner voice whispered, You’re sittin’ on a bed. Why not haul him up? And suddenly the image of them both entwined bare naked popped into her mind. It was very disconcerting.

They went to the barn to feed Lulu and to wash up in the rest rooms. That took Rainey some time; she thoroughly
washed her face and brushed her hair, pinning it up, and then she reapplied her makeup. She felt enormously better when she came out.

Harry was nowhere in sight.

She walked outside the barn and looked around. The fair-grounds were coming alive. The first of the morning sun’s bright rays shone on the fall-colored trees and yellow-block buildings and the Ferris wheel skeleton poking up against the pale sky. A number of trucks and stock trailers were arriving. A woman wearing chaps and a fancy shirt led two beautiful horses into the barn where the cutting competition would soon begin. Men could be seen stirring over at the carnival rides, beginning their inspections and maintenance.

Then she spied Harry over in the area behind the stock barn, where fencing was being set up. She knew him because of his height, and the way he stood.

“It’s pig racing,” he told her when she joined him.

“Yes.”

Nearby sat a truck and trailer that had Jernigan’s Racing Pigs emblazoned on it.

“Are they going to ride them?” Harry asked. “How fast can they go?” Clearly he was fascinated with the prospect of racing pigs.

Rainey told him that no one rode the pigs, they just raced on a course, and that it was quite a lively act, too. “But right now, I’m hungry,” she said, tugging his arm. “Let’s go to that café you were talkin’ about. We can eat some pigs.”

He looked startled, then glanced from her to a single pig, which had been unloaded into a pen. The pig was huge, pink and cute.

“Now I don’t know if I can eat sausage,” he said, coming along.

“Oh, they aren’t that cute close up. They’re really ugly.”

He led the way to the café he had found, acting, she thought, quite proud of himself. Rainey was not familiar with it and judged it to be a new addition since she had been to the fair. She was immediately relieved to see coffee served in mugs and food served on plates, even if they were plastic, and with stainless silverware.

“This is a great place,” she told him, when they sat down.

He looked pleased.

She ordered scrambled eggs and hash browns, and a big cinnamon roll and orange juice. Harry ordered two eggs, hash browns, and biscuits and gravy, and sausage, too, after a moment’s thought.

“I have corrupted you.” She looked at his plate. “All that fat and salt…a heart attack waiting to happen,” she added, using his own term.

“What?” he said, stretching up and looking down at his skinny self. “Do you think I need to worry about my weight?”

She looked at his slender body. “I guess not. In fact, here, have some of my cinnamon roll. You know, you may have met me just in time.”

His reply amazed her. “Yes, I think I did meet you just in time.” Her gaze flew upward to see him slowly taking a bite of the rich biscuit, while his brown eyes held a decidedly sexy light.

She averted her gaze to take up her coffee cup, thinking,
Oh my Lord, what did I say and what are we doing?

Rainey purchased three sausage biscuits to go, for the puppy. When they stepped outside, she said, “I guess we can look around, if you want. I’ll need to let my food settle before I exercise Lulu.”

First they walked around the carnival. It was early, and none
of the rides were in operation, but people were stirring. This time was used for maintenance and relaxation, too. While people would soon begin streaming into the fair exhibits, most would not come to the carnival until afternoon.

Harry looked at it all in that curious manner he had of looking at everything. He said he had never been to a carnival, nor even the state fair. “I have been to Six Flags…back in college,” he said.

Rainey, on the other hand, had been to many a carnival. “There’s a small circus that comes to Lawton every year, and they have a carnival, too. Mama and Daddy and I went most years. Daddy used to work with a carnival, back in his early twenties.”

Her father had explained the dynamics of each carnival game to her, she told him. While the games looked more modern, the basics of them had changed very little over the years.

“See the ball toss. Well, first off, it’s difficult to get balls in the glasses because the balls are of a perfect size just to barely fit, and they’re plastic, which makes them want to bounce over the rims. And that ring toss on the bottles…some of the rings will be made a hair smaller than others, and you can’t tell it just by lookin’. They will hardly fly over a bottle. And see those glasses for tossin’ in coins—some will sit a hairbreadth lower or higher. Anymore, there isn’t much out-and-out cheating—the police watch for tricks—so mostly it is all these little dynamics, so that when you win a prize, you put out enough money to pay for it.”

As Harry and Rainey walked past, a few of the carnies in the booths called lazily for them to come and try the games. Rainey kept shaking her head.

Then they passed a dart-throwing booth. When the round man there called, “Hey, come give it a try. I’ll give cut-rate this early in the mornin’!” Harry grabbed her hand and tugged her over.

He plunked down a dollar, and the man handed him five darts. Harry cut his eyes to her and then focused on the board of balloons for a full minute. So long, in fact, that Rainey had begun to wonder if something was wrong when, in quick, smooth succession, Harry threw the darts. Five times and five broken balloons.

The carnie looked at him and put five more darts on the counter. Harry plunked down a dollar, picked up the darts, stood there and looked at the board, and then did it again.

“Now I got to blow up a bunch more balloons,” the carnie said. Apparently having been entertained as much as he could stand, he waved his hand at a row of prizes.

“The mouse,” Harry said, pointing. He immediately handed the stuffed gray mouse to Rainey, took her elbow and led her away. “I used to play a lot of darts in school and early in my residency days,” he said. He was, she could tell, extremely pleased with himself. He was quite irresistible that way.

On the way back to the truck, she led the way through the stock barn, where people were preparing their animals for the day’s shows. Today it was cattle of various breeds.

“Be careful where you step,” she cautioned. She held her stuffed mouse close. She didn’t want to drop it in the dirt, and she also had to remember not to rub it against the greasy paper bag of sausage biscuits for the dog.

It was clear that Harry had never seen cattle so close up. He was amazed at the cows’ big soft eyes and the rings in the bulls’ noses, a little disturbed by those that were chained to posts and more disturbed by those that were not.

“What if they run off?” he said, eyeing intently an enormous bull that was not chained, and that eyed him back in a lazy manner.

“Where are they gonna go?”

To his raised eyebrow, she explained that these show animals were not like wild ones. “They’ve been handled all their lives. It isn’t likely they will break into a sudden spree of terror. Doesn’t he seem content lying there?”

She gazed with warmth at the bull, whose long lashes entranced her. She had gone through a period in her life when she refused to eat beef, because of the animals’ lovely eyes.

Then she look over to see that Harry still had a skeptical expression on his face. She pointed to another bull farther along.

“Even an animal considered dumb knows when he’s well-off,” she said as they came to that bull. His owner was grooming him, scratching the bull’s head in the process. The nameplate nearby read: Big Babe.

“Just don’t wave nothin’ in his face,” the man told Harry. “He doesn’t like to be teased…no animal does. You want to scratch his head?”

Harry, clearly delighted, did so and ended up in a full discussion about the animal and its grand attributes, according to his owner.

Watching the light in his eyes and the way he tilted his head to listen, Rainey suddenly experienced a disconcerting feeling in her chest. She turned and stepped away. Seeing the open doors to the rodeo arena that was attached to the stock barn, she walked toward them. She thought it would be a good idea to refresh her mind about where she and Lulu would be running. As she stood there gazing into the cavernous building, Harry came up beside her.

“Is this where you’ll race tonight?”

“Uh-huh, and tomorrow night, too, if we’re lucky.” She walked out atop the dirt. “It’s a little small, and the entry is off center. That won’t bother Lulu, but a lot of professional racers won’t come to these arenas with off-center entries anymore.
They have their horses trained for entering straight in, and an off-center entry cuts their times.

“This place is perfect for bull and bronc ridin’, and ropin’, though. And the people sittin’ in the front rows get a really good view.”

He began to ply her with all sorts of questions about the rodeo. As she answered, he nodded thoughtfully and roamed his eyes over the pens and the seats and the tall ceiling, as if trying to picture it all. He went to look at the bull and bronc chutes, bending and peering through the rails, then climbing up to get a better look.

Encouraged by his avid interest, she pointed out the old wooden ceiling and spoke of what the building must have seen in its time. They speculated on the building’s age.

“Daddy rode broncs a couple of times here, and my mother almost won the All-Round Cowgirl title at an all-girl rodeo here in the fifties. She had to ride a bronc in tryin’ for that, and Daddy told her that if she was goin’ to give it a try, she damn well better not come off. She did come off, though, and the horse stepped on her hand and broke it in two places. Cost her and Daddy over a thousand dollars in medical bills. Mama began and retired from bronc riding at the same event.”

She had not recalled this history in a long time, had had no reason to do so. Now she thoroughly enjoyed the telling of it all to Harry. And she enjoyed the way he looked at her and cocked his head, listening intently, as if he wanted to know everything she could tell him.

She simply adored looking at Harry.