The Last Good Kiss (6 page)

"That's all right."

"No, it ain't all right, dammit. Here I am askin' a

favor of you and hollerin' at the same time. I'm sorry."

"It's okay," I said. "I understand."

"You got any children of your own?"

"No," I said. "I've never even been married."

"Then you don't understand at all. Not even a little

bit."

"All right."

"And don't go around pretending to, either," she

said, hitting me on the knees with her reddened

knuckles.

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"All right."

"And goddammit, I'm sorry."

"Okay."

"Oh hell, it ain't a bit okay," she complained, then

stood up and rubbed her palms on her dusty slacks.

"God damn it to hell," she muttered, then turned

around and gave Fireball a fierce boot in the butt,

which knocked the sleeping dog off the steps into the

skim of dust on the concrete. "Goddamned useless

dog," she said. "Get outa my sight."

Fireball must have been accustomed to Rosie's

outbursts. He slunk away without glancing back, not

hurrying exactly, but not waiting around either. At the

corner of the building, he stumbled over the black

tomcat, who was curled asleep in the deep grass below

the eaves, and they had a brief but decisive and

probably familiar encounter, then went their separate

ways, the cat beneath the building, and Fireball right

back to his place in the sunshine warming the steps. As

he lay down, he gave Rosie one slow glance, then shut

his eyes, sighing like an old husband saddled with a mad

wife. But Rosie was watching the breeze weave through

the hillside grass.

"How about another beer?" I asked.

"I'd like that just fine," she answered without

turning. Sadness softened her nasal twang, that ubiquitous accent that had drifted out of the Appalachian hills and hollows, across the southern plains, across the

southwestern deserts, insinuating itself all the way to

the golden hills of California. But somewhere along the

way, Rosie had picked up a gentler accent too, a

fragrant voice more suited to whisper throaty, romantic

words like wisteria, or humid phrases like honeysuckle

vine, her voice for gentleman callers. "Just fine," she

repeated. Even little displaced Okie girls grow up

longing to be gone with some far better wind than that

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hot, cutting, dusty bite that's blowing their daddy's

crops to hell and gone. I went to get her a beer, wishing

it could be something finer.

"It was the damndest thing," she said when I came

back, "when I was looking for Betty Sue over there."

Rosie still stood upright, her wrists cocked on her hips,

still stared southwest across the gently rounded hills

toward the cold, foggy waters of the Bay. "I never had

no idea there'd be so many folks lookin' for their kids.

Musta been a hundred.or more walkin' up and down

too, holding out their pictures to any dirty hippie that

would look at it. Some of the nicest folks you'd ever

hope to meet, too, some of them really well-off. But,

you know, not a single one of them had the slightest

idea how come their kids run off. Not a one. And the

kids we asked why, they didn't seem to know either.

Oh, they had a buncha crap to say, but it sounded like

television to me. They didn't even know what they were

doing there. Damndest mess I ever did see, you know."

"I know," I said.

And in my own way I did, even though I had no

children to run away. In the late '60's, when I came

back from Vietnam in irons, in order to stay out of

Leavenworth I spent the last two years of my enlistment as a domestic spy for the Army, sneaking around the radical meetings in Boulder, Colorado, and when I

got out, after a brief tour as a sports reporter, I headed

for San Francisco to enjoy the dope and the good times

on my own time. But I was too late, too tired to leave,

too lazy to work, too old and mean to be a flower child.

I found a profession, of a sort, though, finding runaways. For a few years, Haight-Ashbury was a gold mine, until I found one I couldn't bear. A fourteenyear-old boy decomposing into the floorboards of a crash pad off Castro Street, forty-seven stab wounds in

his face, hands, and chest. The television crew beat the

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police to the body, and none of it was any fun at all.

Not anymore. I knew. I had seen Rosie in her best

double-knit slack suit and a pair of scuffed flats

wandering those hills, staring into each dirty face that

came down the street, then back into the photograph in

her hand, just to be sure that it wasn't her baby girl

hiding behind Ian� hair, love beads, a bruised mouth,

and broken eyes.

"It's been so long," I said to Rosie, "so long. Why

start looking again now?"

"She's all I got left, son," she answered softly. "The

last child, the only one I ain't seen in a coffin. Lonnie

got blown up in Vietnam right after she run off,

and Buddy, he got run over by a dune buggy down at

Pismo Beach last summer. Betty Sue's all I got left, you

see."

"Where's their daddy?" I asked, then wished I

hadn't.

"Their daddy? Their wonderful, handsome, talented

daddy?" she said, giving me another hard, accusing

look . "Last I heard he was down in Bakersfield sellin'

aluminum cookware on time to widow-wimmen." She

let that stand for a moment, then added, "I run the

worthless bastard off when Betty Sue was a junior in

high school."

"You mind if I ask why?"

"He thought he was Johnny Cash," she said, and

stopped as if that explained it all. "Damn fool."

"I'm not sure I understand."

"Ever' other year, he'd get drunk and clean out the

bank account and take off for Nashville to find out if he

could make the big time as a singing star. Only thing

the damned fool ever found out was how long my

money would last, then he'd drag-ass home, grinnin'

like an egg-suckin' dog. Last time he done that, he

showed up and found himself divorced and slapped in

jail for nonsupport. That's the last I seen of him," she

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said with a grin. "He was sure enough a good-lookin'

devil, but like my daddy told me when I married him,

he's as worthless as tits on a boar hog."

"He's never heard from Betty Sue either?"

"Not that I know of," Rosie said. "Betty Sue was

always stuck on her daddy, but Jimmy Joe was stuck on

himself and he did favor the boys too much, so I don't

know if she ever forgave him for that, but I think he'd

told me if he heard from her. He knows I been lookin'

for her, and he's plumb scared I'll dun him for all that

back support, so I think he'd mentioned it." Then she

paused and looked down at me. "So what do you

think?

"You want the truth?"

"Not a bit of it, son. I want you to spend a few days

lookin for my baby girl," she said, then handed me a

wad of bills that had been clutched in her fist all this

time. "Just till the big fella gets out of the hospital,

that's all."

"It's a waste of my time," I said trying to hand the

sodden bills back to her, "and your money."

"It's my money," she said pertly. "Ain't it good

enough to buy your time?"

"What if she doesn't want to be found?"

"Did that big fella ask you to come huntin' for him?"

she asked.

"She might be dead, you know," I said, ignoring the

point she had made. "Have you thought of that?"

"Not a day goes by, son, that I don't think of that,"

she answered. "But I'm her mother, and in my heart I

know she's alive somewhere."

Since I had never found any way to argue with

maternal mysticism, I shook my head and went over to

the El Camino for my note-and receipt books, carrying

the wad of bills carefully, as if the money were a bomb.

Then I went back, asked questions, took notes, and

counted the money-eighty-seven dollars.

l8

Rosie gave me the name of the boy mend, who was a

lawyer over in Petaluma now, Betty Sue's favorite high

school teacher, who still taught drama in Sonoma, and

her best girl friend, who had married a boy from Santa

Rosa, named Whitfield, divorced him and married a

Jewish boy from Los Gatos, named Greenburg or

Goldstein, Rosie wasn't sure, divorced him, and was

supposed to be going to graduate school down at

Stanford. Details, details, details. Then I asked what

sort of girl Betty Sue had been.

"You'll see," she answered cryptically, "when you

talk to folks. I'll let you find out for yourself."

"Fair enough," I said. "Why did she run away?"

After a few moments thought, Rosie said, "For a

long time I blamed myself, but I don't now."

"For what?"

"I live in a trailer house behind here," she said, "and

one time after I divorced Jimmy Joe, Betty Sue found

me in bed with a man. She took it pretty hard, but I

don't think that's why she run off anymore. And

sometimes I used to think she run off because she

thought she was too good to live behind a beer joint."

"Did the two of you have a fight before she left?"

"We didn't have fights," Rosie said proudly. "Nothin' to fight about. Betty Sue did as she pleased, ever since she was a little girl, and I let her 'cause she was

such a good little girl."

"Could she have been pregnant?"

"She could have. But I don't think she would have

run away Jor that," Rosie said. "But then, I don't

know." Then, in a shamed voice, she added, "We

weren't close. Not like I was to my momma. I had to

run the place 'cause Jimmy Joe wouldn't, most of the

time, and when he did, he'd give away more beer than

he sold. Somebody had to make a living, to run things."

Then she paused again. "I guess I still blame myself but

I don't know what for anymore. Maybe I blame her

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too, still. She always wanted more than we had. She

never said anything-she was a sweet child-but I

could tell she wanted more. I just never knew what it

was she wanted more of. If you find her, maybe she'll

be able to tell me."

"If I find her," I said, then handed her a receipt for

the eighty-seven dollars.

"Is that enough?" Rosie asked. "I didn't get a chance