I Can Hear the Mourning Dove (22 page)

“I feel much better now,” I say. “But have you thought about what I said?”

“I'm on my feet, right?”

“What does this mean?”

“It means we're goin' back. We're gonna try it your way.”

All of a sudden I have a lump inside which is euphoric. He's coming back. He trusts me. “I'm so glad, Luke. You won't regret this.”

“I already do. I'll tell you what the point is, Red. You knew where I was, you could of told the bullshitters. But you didn't; what you did took guts.”

Can it be this easy? I did the right thing. “I tried to explain it to DeeDee. It's very hard to believe in impulses, especially when you're not used to having them.”

Luke turns to pick up the duffel bag and he grunts. It is a grunt of pain, as if he's had a punch to the stomach. “You're hurt,” I say suddenly. “Where are you hurt?”

“In my left leg. It's nothin' serious, I'll be fine.”

“But how did it happen?”

“It happened between me and Four Eyes. We busted up some glass in a cubicle.”

“Oh no. I knew where you were and I knew you were wounded. It came to me crystal clear.”

“Forget it. I told you I'll be fine.” He has the duffel bag over his shoulder.

I understand his perspiration now and I'm afraid for him. “What are we going to do next?” I ask.

“We said we're goin' back, right? Let's go get the Iron Horse.”

He means to drive us back on the motorcycle, and I've never even sat on one. “But you're hurt; how could you drive? We don't have to go now, we can wait until it's light. I can call my mother or DeeDee to come and get us—I can use the caretaker's phone.”

He is shaking his head. “No way.”

“But why?”

“Nobody's
takin'
me back. If I'm goin' back, I'm goin' the same way I came. On the bike.”

“But your leg—”

“Forget about my leg, it doesn't matter. The point is, your mother knows where you are. That means she knows where
we
are.”

My teeth are still chattering lightly and my heart is thumping. Why did I think it would all be easy, once the decision was made? I say to Luke, “I know what you're saying. She will call the authorities; she won't have any choice.”

“I'm no expert, but I think that's how mothers do things. If there's any cops comin', I want to get the hell out of here now. No bullshitter is takin' me back.”

I have to swallow hard and breathe a little. I can understand his point. He has trusted me, so I should trust him now. “Okay,” I say meekly.

The trees are dark walls lining our path; we walk a hundred yards or so on the crunchy gravel to a service exit on the other side of the sunken garden. We are walking slowly; part of the time he leans on my shoulder.

Even in the dark, the motorcycle is black and gleaming. Just barely, I can make out a flared gold eagle on the gas tank. Luke grips the handlebars and yanks it forcefully onto the shoulder of the roadway. He grunts his pain.

“It must be so heavy,” I say.

“Liftin' it on one leg, it's heavy,” he says. He is short of breath. I feel so helpless. It grieves me that he is in pain, but I must let him do it his way. He climbs onto the seat and kicks down twice with his right leg. The motor roars to life, very very loud.

Luke is grinning now. “This is the Iron Horse,” he says in a loud voice.

The Iron Horse scares me. I have never been on a motorcycle in all my life. I tell him it's very nice, even though I wouldn't know a nice motorcycle from a not-nice motorcycle.

“What? Speak up!”

“It's very nice!” I say, louder. There is no static, but so much motor noise. Will we be conspicuous, making so much noise in this quiet place? Luke has both feet on the ground to hold the bike upright.

The motor is blubbering. He is wearing a leather jacket and putting on a tight wool stocking cap; his long hair trails below like streamers. He hands me leather gloves and a green wool stocking cap from the duffel bag. “Put these on,” he says.

I put them on quickly.

“These are Johnny's too,” he says loudly. He is strapping the duffel bag to a metal frame above the taillight.

“Aren't we supposed to wear helmets?” I ask.

“Helmets suck. They're for wimps. Climb on, Red, the road's callin'.”

His enthusiasm is a side of him I haven't seen. Even with the pain he must feel. I climb on behind him slowly, and he tells me, “We're gonna stay on back roads; you know, county blacktops and like that.”

I nod my head rapidly up and down, but I don't speak. He gives me instructions, which I am able to hear over the noise because our heads are close together: “Put your feet on the pegs and hold on tight. You're safe, you got the sissy bar behind you.”

I clutch the sides of his jacket tightly with both hands.

“When we go into turns, you have to lean your body into the turn. It's safer that way because it keeps the bike balanced.”

“I'm scared to think about the turns.”

“It's only a little scary until you get used to it, and then it's a lot of fun. You'll see, everything is cool.”

There is a little static popping his voice. “I left my mother a note,” I say. “I hope I'm not causing her to suffer.”

“That's not my department,” he says, with his widest smile. “I don't know anything about mothers. Besides, I'm a psychopath, remember?”

Then there must be a look on my face because he says, “Chill out, Red, you're gonna dig it.”

The motor roars suddenly and shakes. We leap forward with no warning, spinning gravel and throwing it up behind. My heart is in my mouth. We are whizzing along the blacktop and swerving suddenly to avoid the speed bumps. It is like I am flying through space with every connection to the earth cut. If I had time to think, surrendering to him like this would panic me. The wind is so strong and so loud and so cold.

We are flying out of Allerton and into the dark. The dark is the abyss, why couldn't we stay longer? The abyss is black and cold, but I absolutely mustn't get scrambled, not on the back of a whizzing Iron Horse. The wind is roaring in my ears. Luke's back seems big and strong as a brick wall. I close my eyes and grip his jacket with all my might and press my head between his shoulder blades.

Ten

Luke calls this place a roadhouse. It is a bar, a restaurant, a grocery store, and a poolroom, all under one roof. The lighting is dim. The dark wooden booths are empty, except for the one where we are sitting. On the floor next to the juke box there is a metal bucket which looks like it's meant for catching drips.

Behind the bar there is a long horizontal mirror but it's hard to look in it because it's recessed and because of all the lined-up liquor bottles. There is a transparent sphere Budweiser clock which hangs at the end of a gold chain from the ceiling above the bar. The clock rotates with little pops of light; it is the eye in the sky. The eye in the sky sees everything, but this is not the sky. If the sky has an eye, then whose eye is it, is it God's? My father and I made many God's Eyes.
Ojo de Dios
. It's not good for me to think this way; maybe I need my medicine.

“This place is great,” says Luke. “There's no tellin' what you'll find when you go on the road.”

I don't know why we need to loiter here, but Luke says he is very hungry and he also says we need to take the time to enjoy being on the road. We rode until it was dawn, stopping once while Luke siphoned some gas from a car parked on a side street in a tiny town. The road and the miles whizzed by, but I was lost in the dark and the dark was the abyss. We were whizzing into the abyss. My body is stiff and I am so tired. My head is thick and my eyes are burning. When I turn my head, the objects I look at have little trailers of popping lights like the spots that linger after flashbulbs. Luke says it's probably just fatigue; he may be right, who knows?

“You need some breakfast,” he says.

“Please, I'm not hungry. You must know by now what my appetite is like.”

“Then drink your coffee. You can't do this without a little caffeine.”

“But Luke, I don't like coffee.”

He shrugs. He is eating scrambled eggs and American fries. I look at the bar where two men in coveralls are drinking coffee. The waitress has a hairnet, lots of red lipstick, and is smoking a cigarette. She is standing directly beneath the eye. She does not control the eye, but the eye may control her; I'm not sure.

Next to the bar is a pay phone. “Maybe I should call my mother.”

Luke's mouth is full. “Go ahead. Tell her we're comin' back, but don't tell her where we are.”

“How could I? I don't know where we are.”

He shrugs and keeps chewing. I call DeeDee. She is so relieved to hear from me; she thanks me for keeping my promise. I tell her everything is okay and we're on our way back.

“DeeDee, please do me a favor and call my mother. Please tell her what I've told you.”

“But you said you were going to call her.”

“DeeDee, please. I'm out of quarters and the waitress here is curt. She makes me uncomfortable.” I'm very careful not to mention the eye.

“Okay, I will. But come home right away.
Please
.”

“Thank you, DeeDee.”

When I get back to the booth, I take a sip of the bitter coffee Luke has ordered for me and I feel an acid turn in my stomach.

“How do you feel?” he wants to know.

“It's important that I've contacted my mother; I don't want her to suffer. I feel a little numb. Sometimes I get too numb to be scared.”

“You need to mellow out,” he says.

“I can't go flat out, though. That's one thing I absolutely can't let happen.”

Luke is finished with his breakfast. He is drinking coffee. He smiles his wide smile and lights a cigarette and says, “After you put away that first breakfast, then sit back and light up, that's when you know you're truly on the road.”

“I don't understand.” I try just a little bit more of the coffee.

“On the road means out from under. Back in June, when me and John went on the road, we rode all night the first night, then in the morning we stopped at a truck stop someplace in Michigan. We had eggs, and toast, and bacon, and after we finished eating, we both lit a cigarette and kicked back. It was at that exact moment that I felt like I was closin' a door behind me. I don't think I could explain it to you, Red. I felt free and clear like I'd never felt before. With this big grin on his face, John said to me, he says, ‘Welcome to the road, Luke.'”

“You were on your way to do migrant work. Migrant work would scare me; there's no support system.”

“No bullshitters, you mean. And if you want the truth, on the road doesn't always mean you have a destination. It just means out from under. The way John used to say it was, if you stand too long in one place, the system will claim you. If the system claims you, you will spend your life against the flow. I didn't understand all of it, but at least I knew what he meant by the system; he meant the system of bullshitters which runs your life. The truth is, I didn't even understand why he wanted me around. He was so much older than me. He told me once he thought I had a good mind. I couldn't believe it, it was the only time anybody ever told me that.”

Luke is blowing smoke rings in the still, dim air. My eyes are burning from weariness, not from the smoke. “I can't believe I'm here doing this,” I say. “I've never been away from home except for the times in the hospital.”

“I keep tellin' you to mellow out.”

“I would hate to be away from home alone. I know how resourceful you are, but sometimes you scare me. Please don't be offended.”

He is putting out his cigarette. “It's no problem. You heard what I was tellin' you about me and John. There's one thing I wish I knew.” His dark eyes are suddenly glittery, like mica. They are mirrors, and I am in his eyes again, only double, like tiny twins.

I'm uncomfortable, but I ask him what the one thing is. He says, “I'd just like to know if John was truly my friend.”

“How do you mean?”

“I hate to admit this, but I don't think I ever had a real friend. Not a real one. Not movin' every year or two from one group house to the next one, not with your basic weirdos and misfits. You know what I mean? I hate to put it this way.”

“I think I understand.”

“Here's what I'm gettin' at. Whenever I think about pullin' John's plug, and if it was right or wrong, it seems to come down to, were we really friends? Don't ask me why, it just seems more important than what I actually did.”

The way he asks the question is very moving, but I am looking at my tiny selves in his glittery eyes. “I think he asked for your help when he was dying, and you were willing to help him. In fact, you were willing to take a risk to help.”

“Yeah, Red, but that's what I already know.”

“Please, I'm used to
needing
insight, not giving it. In my opinion it means you were the best friend John could have and probably the best friend he did have. I don't think you want to hear this, but it might be a good question to ask Dr. Rowe.”

He turns his face away quickly. “I don't want the opinion of a bullshitter, I just want yours.”

I can feel my pulse starting to race but I say, “Please, Luke, I've tried to tell you that Dr. Rowe is not a bullshitter.”

“What difference does it make?”

“I think maybe it makes a big difference. I'm not very good at this, but you told me about pulling John's plug. When you were able to see pulling his plug as an act of rebellion, you were able to make your decision. If you make rebellion a way of life, you can't really be free; you can't really make your own choices.”