Miles to Go (25 page)

I wasn’t sure what to say.

“We divorced, of course. I quit my job, bought this truck, and started fishing.” He set his plate on the ground. “I’m guessing your wife never wanted to leave.”

I looked out over the river. “No, she would have stayed.” I turned back to him. “Did you ever try to fix things with your wife?”

“When I got over my rage, I asked her to stay. I even told her I’d quit my job. But it was too late.”

“I had a small agency in Seattle. I worked a lot too, but my wife was involved. At least as much as she cared to be.”

“That couldn’t happen at a big agency,” he said.

“No, it couldn’t,” I agreed.

He blew out a cloud of smoke. “I think I was addicted to the stress.”

“I’ve seen that happen,” I said. “Stress is like a drug. It will kill you as well.” I looked at him. “That’s why you fish.”

“That’s why I fish.” He took another long draw on his pipe, then let it out slowly. “What are you going to do when you reach Key West?”

“I don’t know. Eat some key lime pie.”

He started laughing, almost imperceptibly at first, then it grew until he almost doubled over. “Key lime pie,” he said. “Eat some key lime pie.”

By the time we finished eating, it was dark.

“Thank you for dinner,” I said. “We better get going. We still need to make camp.”

“Where are you camping tonight?” he asked.

“I’m not sure. The first campground we come to.”

“That will be a while,” he said. “There’s nothing around here. You’re welcome to stay with me. There’s a couple bunk beds in back. I can sleep up in the cabin.”

“I thought there was no overnight camping.”

“I’m not camping,” he said. “I’m parking.”

Spun like an adman
, I thought.

I slept in a bunk that hung over the truck’s cabin and Kailamai slept on cushions above the table. She was still a little apprehensive about our host, and after I turned out the lights she whispered to me, “You don’t think he’s like a serial killer or something, do you?”

“No,” I whispered back. “Worse.”

“What?”

“He’s an adman.”

I was just about asleep when Kailamai said, “Two muffins are in an oven and one says to the other, ‘Sure is hot in here.’ The other shouts, ‘Holy cow, a talking muffin!’ “

The adman (he never told us his name) made breakfast for us, a homemade concoction he called scramble-mamble, a potpourri of diced potatoes, eggs, cheddar cheese, trout, onions, and bacon. It was actually pretty good.

We thanked him, wished him well, and headed off toward Missoula.

“That guy liked to fish,” Kailamai said.

“Everyone needs a reason to get up in the morning,” I said.

The traffic grew heavier as we neared Missoula, and I fully expected we’d be stopped by the Highway Patrol, but it never happened. As we exited toward the town, we passed a billboard advertising the “Testicle Festival.”

“What do you think that is?” Kailamai asked.

“I don’t want to know,” I said.

Later that afternoon we stopped at a gas-station convenience store for water and a Hostess apple pie for Kailamai. As we came out of the store, we walked past a large semi filling up at the gas pumps. A trucker sat on the front bumper of his truck.

“Howdy,” he said to us with a subtle tip of his cap. He wore a flannel shirt and a belt buckle the size of a pancake.

“Could you tell us where’s the next hotel?” I asked.

“Depends on which way you’re goin’. East or west?”

“East.”

“Maybe thirty miles.”

I groaned. “Thanks.” I turned away.

“Need a ride? I’m headed that way.”

“No thanks. We’re walking.”

“Okay. Be safe now.”

The truckers were always helpful.

A couple hours later I said, “I’ve discovered something.”

“What?” Kailamai asked.

“There’s a secret to naming Montana towns. You pick an animal and then one of its body parts, and combine them.”

She looked at me like I was crazy.

“No, really, think about it. We’ve been through Beaver Tail, Bearmouth, Bull’s Eye—the possibilities are endless.”

“I could be good at this,” Kailamai said. “We could name the next town Moose Antler.”

“Totally believable,” I said. “Or Otter Tail.”

“Rabbit’s Foot.”

“Badger Paw.”

“Wait,” Kailamai said, “I’ve got the best one. Monkey Butt, Montana.”

We both started laughing. I liked this girl.

The next town we came to didn’t conform to my name formula—Drummond—but the first restaurant we passed did. The Bull’s End Café. A sign in front of the eatery proclaimed PAULINE’S BBQ SAUCE MADE HERE beneath the backside of an anatomically correct bull. Not surprisingly, the establishment was out of business.

“That’s just gross,” Kailamai said. “What part of that is supposed to make you want to eat there?”

“That’s why there are advertising agencies,” I said.

A little further down the road we came to the Frosty Freeze, a weathered A-framed building with a sliding window for takeout. Out in front of the building there was a plywood, painted pig holding an American flag under a sign that advertised ITALIAN SLOPPY JOE’S,
YOU’LL LOVE’EM!

The place looked abandoned, but there was a WE ARE OPEN paper sign on the window. As soon as we approached the building, a woman appeared at the counter.

“What can I get for you?” she asked, her breath still pungent from the cigarette I could see smoking behind her.

“I’ll try your Italian sloppy joe,” I said. “How about you, Kailamai?”

“I’ll have the sloppy joe too. Can I have Tater Tots?”

“We’ll have Tots on both and a Diet Coke for me.”

“We have Pepsi products,” she said.

“Fine, a Diet Pepsi and a Sprite for her.”

“We don’t have Sprite, we have Pepsi products.”

“Whatever looks like Sprite,” I said.

“Sierra Mist,” she said, leaving the window to prepare our meals.

The special turned out to be a sloppy joe with the addition of provolone cheese, onions, and garlic, which was surprisingly good, though Kailamai picked out the onions.

That night we pitched our tent near a golf course.

“Do you golf?” Kailamai asked.

“I used to,” I said, rolling out my sleeping bag.

“This man was out golfing with his buddies. He was about to putt when a hearse drove by leading a funeral procession. The man set down his club, took off his hat, and put it over his heart until the procession had passed. ‘That was the most decent thing I’ve ever seen you do,’ one of his friends said.

“‘It’s the least I could do,’ he replied. ‘We were married thirty-two years.’”

The next morning the river that had intermittently followed our journey was running alongside us again. I don’t know why the sound of the river made me feel peaceful—I’ve heard it has something to do with our experience in the womb—but few things so easily bring calm as the sound of rushing water.

Perhaps that had something to do with why it was here, along that barren stretch of highway, that Kailamai finally told me her story. We had been walking quietly for a few minutes when she said, “You haven’t said anything about your mother.”

“She passed away when I was eight.”

“Do you remember what she was like?”

“She was lovely,” I said. “She was the kindest person I’ve ever known. Once I saw her give some money to a guy begging on the street. My dad got real mad at her. He said, ‘You know he’s just going to use it to buy booze.’ My mother said, ‘Maybe that’s what he needs most right now.’

“If the world was populated with people like her, there would be no wars or want.” I frowned. “I miss her. After all this time I still miss her.”

“I wish I had a mother like that,” Kailamai said. She bowed her head and we walked a ways in silence. Then she asked, “Do you want to know why I was put in foster care?”

“If you want to tell me.”

“It’s kind of a long story.”

“We’ve got a long walk,” I said.

“Okay.” She took a deep breath. “My mother was the opposite of yours. She was really abusive. Actually, both my mother and my older sister were. Growing up, I thought that getting beaten up was part of life. My sister
beat me up almost every day, and my mother would beat the tar out of me at least once a week. Once she beat me so badly that it took me more than an hour before I could even crawl back to my room.”

I now understood why she wasn’t sorry her mother was dead. “What was wrong with them that they thought they could beat you?” I asked.

“I don’t know.” She pulled her hair back from her face. “Probably because they could. I was smaller than them and they were just mean. They never, like said, ‘Pardon me,’ or stuff like that, they’d just shove you out of the way or pull you by your hair.

“It wasn’t until the fourth grade that I realized that not everyone had a home like mine. I couldn’t believe that some of my classmates actually liked their parents.”

“That’s remarkably sad,” I said.

“My mom was an alcoholic. She lived off welfare and food stamps and whatever men gave her. When I got a little older, the men my mother brought home started noticing me. Every few months one of them would come at me. I knew my mother knew what they were doing, but she just acted like it was no big deal. Then my mother married one of them and he moved in. Kurt,” she said, her mouth twisting a little with the name.

“Kurt was a meth addict and he got my mom and sister on it. I wouldn’t do drugs, so he hated me. Once my sister was beating me up, and he sat there and cheered her on. It was the worst whupping she’d ever given me.

“He’d hit me too. But it wasn’t like he was mad, it’s like it turned him on or something. He’d get mad at me for stupid things, like he’d say I didn’t change the toilet paper roll, and so I was going to get it. He liked to make it last. Once he made me sit in the garage and wait a whole hour
for him to beat me. Usually, he’d make me pull my pants down so he could beat my bare butt.”

“Why didn’t you tell anyone?”

She kicked a stone. “It’s not that easy,” she said. “When it’s all you know, you just accept it.”

I frowned.

“But school was good. When I got to middle school, my life changed. I had this really great history teacher who liked me. Mrs. Duncan. She told me how smart I was. Once I got the highest score on a test, and she held up my test and told the whole class. She even gave me her cell phone number and said I could call her any time I had a question. I never did, but it was cool that I could have.

“Then one day, just before school got out, the school nurse called me down to her office. She started asking me about the bruises on my arm. I told her I fell down the stairs.

“Then she asked me about my mother. I was really scared and I told her that everything was good at home, but she knew I was lying. Finally, after like a whole hour of questions, I just broke down and told her everything. She listened and took notes. When I was done talking, she said, ‘I want you to go home and pack a suitcase. Someone will come get you.’

“She never said
who
was coming. So I walked home wondering what was going to happen. When I walked in the house, my mother was furious. She said that I had left a mess in the kitchen and she went after me. I never ran from her anymore, it only made her madder, so I just stood there while she hit me.

“When she was done, I had a bloody nose and was lying on the floor, and she kicked me in the butt and told me to clean up the blood I’d gotten on the carpet
and then go to my room. I wiped up my blood and then, when I was going to my room, she said something that hurt worse than the beating. She said, ‘Why did you have to be born?’

“I just kind of flipped. I said, ‘You don’t have to worry about me anymore. Someone’s coming to take me away.’

“She started laughing. She said, ‘Who would want a little turd like you?’

“It was like a miracle because just then someone rang the doorbell. My mother looked at the door, then me, then back at the door. She was, like, frozen. They pounded on the door, then a man shouted, ‘Open the door. Police.’ My mother opened it. There were six police officers. It was really scary. Two of them got in my mother’s face and began shouting at her, and another one walked over to me. I thought he was going to shout at me too, but he didn’t. He asked, ‘Are you Kailamai?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘Go upstairs and pack up your things.’

“I ran upstairs and threw everything I had in a pillow case and brought it down.

“When I came back downstairs, the police officer said, ‘If you want, you can say goodbye to your mother.’ I went over to hug my mother, but she wouldn’t have anything to do with me. The policeman got really mad and said, ‘Hug your daughter!’ She hugged me, but it was only because she was afraid. As we were walking out, I started to cry, and I looked back at her and she said, ‘You’re the devil’s child.’ One of the policemen said, ‘Then that makes you the devil. We’ll deal with you later.’ They put me in the back of the police car.”