American Quest (28 page)

Shannon chortled from the driver’s seat. “I don’t think we’ll find a diner out here, anyway. There’s nothing but mountains and trees. Smell it? So beautiful. Oh my God, look! A chili dog stand!”

The van lurched suddenly and they grasped at armrests.

“Sorry, guys. I can’t believe there’s a chili dog stand out here in the middle of nowhere.”

Bedelia retrieved the mirror from between her feet where she’d dropped it at the van’s sudden movement. “That is odd. It’s hard to believe they’d park it right there on the shoulder. Do they even eat chili dogs in Kentucky?”

She held the mirror up for Emily.

“We’re not in Kentucky anymore,” Emily said with authority. “We’re in Virginia. Hey! I look weird!”

Emily tugged her braids out sideways and made an O with her lips. Bruce grinned at her.

“Watch it, kid,” Shannon said. “We might just nominate you the new Quester Jester.”

Emily beamed with pride. Shannon parked along the shoulder and they hopped out, Emily swinging her head from side to side to make the braids whip at her neck.

The guy inside the stand nodded at them with a placid smile. Or maybe it wasn’t a smile; his thin wide lips might have just spread across his face in a blank expression that resembled a smile. He wore little round glasses and kind of reminded Bruce of a frog.

“Hello, folks,” he said.

Bruce surveyed the tiny setup. “Hi. Got any sandwiches?”

The frogman shook his head. “Just hot dogs and chili dogs.”

“I guess that makes the choice easy. We’ll take six chili dogs.” Bruce scanned the mountain behind him. “We got kind of sidetracked leaving
Cincinnati. Do you know how to get back to the interstate from here?”

The guy licked his lips and darted his eyes from side to side.

“Which way ya headed?”

Bruce sighed, still not bought in to the idea. “New Orleans. I guess at this point we’re trying to get to Knoxville.”

The frogman whistled. “You’re a ways off, buddy. Your best bet, take 63 on over to I-75.”

Bruce shook his head. “Detours all over I-75. That’s how we wound up here.”

“Umf. That case take 33 on down to Knoxville. It’s slower but it’s sure.”

Emily cocked a brow at him. “How do you know it’s sure?”

“It’s a reliable road,” the frogman replied.

“But how do you know?”

Bruce knew what Emily was up to. They kept getting blown off course. First from road signs that pointed in the wrong direction, then from a series of detours and seemingly bad omens. Bruce had switched driving with Jamie who then switched with Shannon, as if changing drivers might make a difference.

Somehow, they seemed to keep getting nudged northeast when they meant to travel southwest.

The frogman shrugged. “People come through here all the time. Get to talkin’. They all seem to be going 33.”

Emily narrowed her eyes. “And where do you come from?”

“Harrogate.”

“And where is Middlesboro?”

“Kentucky side of the tunnel.”

“And Meldrum?”

“What are you, the inquisition?”

Emily raised her brow. Bruce suppressed a smile.

The frogman sighed. “Meldrum’s on the Kentucky side, too.”

Emily frowned. “Wrong, it’s on the Virginia side.” She passed a sidelong look to Bruce.

The frogman looked exasperated. “Is it? Jeez, little lady, I don’t know. Don’t go to Meldrum much.”

She shrugged. “Actually, it
is
on the Kentucky side. Just seems like if you live around here you’d know for sure.”

“Look. You folks want cheese and onions on your chili dogs?”

Bruce turned to the rest of the troops. Five yeses and one cheese only.

Bruce eyed little miss cheese-only herself, abandoning the interrogation and suddenly a little girl again, pursuing a tabby cat into the bushes.

“Cute kid,” the frogman said, his tone less than convincing.

Bruce gave a mild shrug and called after her. “Careful, Emily. I’d feel better if you stayed close.”

“Okay.” She turned back toward the stand, waving at the cat with one of her braids, and Bruce relaxed slightly.

Everything brought paranoia. Emily’s inquisition was borne from a string of suspicious moments along the highway. An old woman in a Buick who blocked their passage. A wild dog that glowered at them outside a rest stop. Everything they saw could be another version of that green woman with mosquitoes in her teeth.

Or just coincidence. It was maddening.

For all he knew, the cat could suddenly turn into a nine-eyed pig monster intent on devouring all of them. Bruce wasn’t about to take any chances. And if Emily felt the need to grill the poor hot dog guy/frogman, Bruce wasn’t going to second-guess her.

Forte shuffled closer, scanning a folded newspaper. “Check it out! Skynrd’s in Nashville tonight. Aw, man. Don’t you think we should go there instead? Maybe this newspaper’s a sign!”

Bruce shook his head with a laugh. He’d like nothing more than to see Lynyrd Skynard himself, especially in the company of a musician like Forte. “Sorry, man. But hey, New Orleans is a big music city, too.”

“Yeah,” Forte groaned. “But it’s Skynrd. We’re talking classics from the Ronnie Van Zant days. But his little bro plays a mean guitar now. He really makes good. Their later stuff is awesome, too. Just hard to live up to that first legacy before the plane crash.”

His face contorted and he pretended to cry. “Skynrd!”

Shannon patted him on the shoulder. “You know what we ought to do? We ought to take a road trip after this is over. It’s so gorgeous out here. I didn’t even know about the Cumberland Gap. And we can head over to Nashville and take in the music scene.”

Forte swung an arm around her. “That’d be cool. I always wanted to go to the Bluebird Café. It’s like all low-key, pure acoustic and no more than two instruments at a time, but they give the local songwriters a chance to perform, and they’re real picky. And they don’t allow people to talk while the musicians are playing. I love that. It’s the real deal. Hey, if you took a little Skynard, and then canked it with a little Cumberland Gap bluegrass. You know? Like blaudeyowdanka danka dinga. That’d be a cool start for a tune.”

He grabbed a wadded up piece of paper and a pencil stub from his pocket and jotted it down.

Bruce watched them. It was bittersweet to observe them spending so much time together and to see the effect it had on them. They seemed closer every day. It gave Bruce a sharp yearning for Gloria. He’d love to take her to the Bluebird Café, too. And he’d take her into these mountains to show her all of the plants and trees and geological curiosities of the Cumberland Gap.

The frogman handed over two grease-spotted bags of chili dogs, one to Bruce and the other to Emily.

“That’s the cheese only,” he said to the kid.

“Thanks.”

The tabby returned and rubbed its face against Emily’s leg. Emily responded by digging into her bag, pulling off a hunk of meat, and tossing it to the cat.

Bruce put a hand to her head. “Careful, Em. You just never know.”

“Gots to give the helping hand,” she replied with a bubble to her voice. And then, with her expression growing serious, “Do you and Gloria have a cat?”

“No,” Bruce said. “Gloria wants one, though.”

“Maybe you should bring her this one.”

“Bad idea. Shannon’s allergic. I’ll have to wait till Gloria’s home safe.”

“Okay.” Emily watched the cat eat and then looked back up at Bruce. “What’s Gloria like?”

Bruce drew in a slow breath, the pine-scented air seeping in. “She’s pretty. Brilliant. Curious about things. So much so that if I run out of things to tell her about, I start making them up. If she were here right
now, I’d be telling her all about the Cumberland Gap. About the trees, the minerals in the soil, that sort of thing.”

“And what would she be telling you?”

“Telling me?” Bruce blinked. The sounds of the highway trickled off, and in their place a swelling wind fluttered the pines. “She would be telling me to listen. Listen to the people around me. Hear how they talk.”

“Why’s that?”

“I’m writing a play. I can’t seem to nail down the way the characters should come across. Gloria keeps telling me to watch the people around me. And listen. Funny; now that I think about it, Shannon reminds me a lot of how my leading lady is supposed to speak and act.”

“What about me?”

“You? You know, you’d make a good Howie, actually.”

Emily looked scandalized. “Howie? A boy?”

Bruce laughed, a sudden barking release, and the cat turned toward him and crouched with an ill-humored growl. Bruce frowned at the thing, suspicious. He was suspicious of the frogman, too, and of everyone and everything that wasn’t part of their core group.

“It’s okay,” Emily said to the cat in her bubble voice. She looked back up at Bruce. “I think he’s lost.”

Bruce snorted. “We are, too. The fro—I mean, the hot dog guy said our best bet’s to follow Highway 33. Do you think you could find that on the map?

She straightened. “Absolutely-resolutely!” And in a flash, she was off galloping for the van.

Forte gave a salute and strode for the woods. “Be right back. Gotta find me a tree.”

Bruce joined the rest of them, stretching by the van, where Shannon was now using a comb to back-brush Jamie’s hair. He handed the chili dog bag to Bedelia.

“Thanks,” she said. “I’d feel better if we had some green vegetables. I guess broccoli stands aren’t as plentiful as chili dog stands. Here, everyone at least take a multi.”

She produced a handful of multivitamins and passed them around, then distributed bottles of water from the cooler.

“Coke for me, please,” Shannon said.

“Why don’t you have water this time, hon?”

“Yes, Mom.” Shannon rolled her eyes with a giggle and went back to fiddling with Jamie’s hair. “There, girlfriend, now you’re all edgy.”

Jamie laughed at her reflection in the van window.

Bruce rolled his eyes. “Between Bedelia braiding Emily’s hair and Shannon doing Jamie’s, it’s getting a little girlie for my comfort zone. Where’s Forte when you need him?”

“Ha!” Shannon said. “I’d do his hair the same as Jamie’s. Tease it, spike it, mess it up! Mama was the best, though. She used to cut my hair when I was a kid.”

Jamie grinned, looking more like a rocker and less like a pixie. “I never let my mom touch my hair. Style just isn’t her thing. But she can really sew! She sewed my play clothes growing up.”

Shannon snorted. “My mom couldn’t sew on a button. If a button fell off my shirt, I’d have to hide the stapler.”

Shannon offered an outsized laugh before she continued. “She’d just as soon take a chewed piece of bubblegum to a button than a sewing needle.”

The others chuckled, but their laughter became puzzled as they watched Shannon’s face crease with tension.

“Yeah,” Shannon said. “My mom was so . . . she was so . . .”

She stopped, her eyes suddenly brimming.

Bedelia put a hand on her arm. “You all right, honey?”

Shannon nodded, lips tight, but did not speak.

Bedelia leaned over and put her arms around Shannon’s narrow shoulders, and Jamie closed over her from the other side. Tears began to stream down Shannon’s cheeks. Bruce and Emily each laid a hand on her.

Shannon sniffled. “Every once in a while it just hits me out of the blue. I’m okay, though.”

“I know just how you feel,” Bedelia said. “Sometimes it just hits you.”

Emily pulled them both in close. “We love you. We’ll be your family.”

The girl jumped in the van and grabbed some tissues, handing one to each of them, and then flitted around seemingly aghast that she couldn’t do more to help. In the end, she just hung her head, braids drooping over the knobbed bones of her upper spine, and wrapped her
arms around them again. “How long has it been since your mom went away, Shan?”

Shannon blinked hard, and the moisture retreated. “Going on four months now. She had such a tough time there at the end. The cancer just ate her up. I knew she was just hanging on for my sake.”

Bedelia patted her hair. “I’ll bet she was real proud of you.”

Shannon smiled. “She always wanted the best for me. Worked hard, you know, single mom. Her and Charlie got along real well, too. They were a lot alike. Real intense but real easy at the same time. At the end? When Charlie came to visit? He would pick her up and carry her into the backyard so she could sit in the sun. And he’d get out his guitar and sing her favorite songs, ‘Do Wah Diddy’ and ‘Hang on Sloopy.’”

Forte emerged from the woods beyond, chortling from the distance. “Do wah diddy diddy dum diddy doo-WOO-oh-WOAH!”

They all turned and looked at him.

He stopped just short of the van. “What’d I do?”

Shannon smiled, fluttering a hand over her face as though she were brushing away the down of a milkweed instead of tears.

She shook off the sadness and her smile suddenly affected mischief. “Nothing, baby. We just decided we were going to switch off the radio and have one of us play air guitar all the way to Knoxville. Drew straws. You lost.”

Forte shrugged with a grin. “Is that acoustic air guitar or electric? How ’bout a little slide?”

Forte walked over to Shannon and kissed her on the top of the head as the others stepped back. He hugged her head to his chest and then they looked into each other’s eyes for a long moment.

Bedelia produced a box of premoistened napkins. “Here, now everyone take one of these towelettes to wash your hands before we eat.”

Emily did as she was told, then narrowed her eyes at the tree line. She trotted over that way while Bedelia passed around the chili dogs. Bruce watched Emily as she bent over the cat. He tensed.

But Emily immediately came running right back again.