Northward to the Moon (8 page)

“But now, with this new evidence, I think, I mean, like, I can see a different meaning, if you get my take. Like, he meant, like, he was going to take a powder. You think?”

“I don’t know,” says Ned. “What do you think?”

“Well, gosh, maybe,” says the woman in a wondering tone as if no one had ever asked her for an opinion before and it is a momentous occasion. “ ’Cause I think he’s in a bit of trouble.”

“Oh no,” says Ned.

“Don’t worry, he’s always in a bit of trouble.”

“Any idea where he’d go?” asks Ned.

The woman gets some lines between her eyes as she puzzles this out. This is a very big night for her. Twice someone has wanted to know what she thinks. She is clearly racking her brain for any and all help it can give her.

“Well, gee, he said to never tell no one but his mother lives up somewhere by Elko and sometimes he takes off there. She’s got a horse ranch.”

“Mom has a
horse
ranch? In
Nevada?”
says Ned. “I don’t believe it.”

“Oh yeah. I been there. Near Elko,” she says again helpfully. Then she stops and she gets those funny lines over her nose again as she has another lightning-quick flash of genius. “Oh yeah, she would be
your
mom too.”

“And you say John goes there?”

“On account of you’re brothers.” She circles back to this in case Ned is having a hard time keeping up with her deductive reasoning.

“Yeah, I know,” says Ned. “Now, you say that John goes to my mother’s
horse ranch?”

“Near Elko. Well, I only know he went the one time, ’cause he took me there. He couldn’t help it, we were between shows and he thought it would be a good place to hide.”

“To
hide?”

“Oh sure. I used to hide all the time with Johnny.”

“He calls himself
Johnny?”

“No,
I
call him Johnny,” says Shirley gently as if Ned is stupid. “ ’Cause he don’t mostly call himself. Anyhow, maybe he’s there but don’t tell no one I told you. It’s, like, his …” She pauses. She is at a loss.

“Refuge?” says Ned.

“Yeah. Like with elephants,” she says.

“My mother is keeping horses
and elephants?”
squeals Ned.

I nudge Ned in the ribs. “I think she means refuge. There are wildlife refuges with elephants.”

The woman nods compassionately at Ned. She knows what it’s like to get all mixed up. “Yeah. I always wanted to go to Africa to those elephant refuges. Maybe I’ll do that now. You think it costs a lot?”

“Yeah, probably,” says Ned, so concentrated on our little problem that he isn’t worrying about raining on her parade.

“But, anyhow, if you see him tell him, like, I quit. You know, I don’t get paid when he don’t show up and he hasn’t been showing up regular lately. Okay? Like, how am I ever going to get to see elephants?”

“Yeah, sure. And listen, don’t tell anyone else about the horse ranch,” says Ned.

“Hey, I told
you,”
says Shirley in outraged tones. “It was, like,
my
secret. Maybe you shouldn’t tell anyone about
the elephants.”

“Right,” says Ned. “Listen, do you know exactly where this ranch is?”

“Near
Elko,”
says Shirley, enunciating as if he is deaf.

“Can you be more specific?”

“You mean like an address or something?” says Shirley, looking confused.

“Yeah, like an address,” says Ned.

“Nah, I don’t pay attention to things like that,” says Shirley. “I’m kind of an in-the-moment girl.”

“I can see that,” says Ned.

“So where’s the guy I come out with?” asks Shirley, looking around the parking lot, but he has disappeared too. “Oh jeez, when it rains it pours.” She gets into a beaten-up old black car and speeds away with rubber burning.

We walk back to the car.

“She’s not the brightest lightbulb in the box,” I say to Ned. “I mean, she had no proof you were John’s brother. For all she knew you were one of the guys showing up to give John trouble. But she went ahead and told you where to find him.”

“I know,” says Ned, ruffling his hair in weariness. It stands up on end as if it has been gelled, but it’s just sweat. “We’re lucky anyhow that she was a trusting soul, because no one else around here seems to be.”

“Maybe it’s all this gambling,” I say. “Everyone looks kind of lean and desperate. So maybe they prey on each other and after a while no one really trusts anyone else.”

“You could say that about an awful lot of places, Bibles,” says Ned.

“Whoa!” I say.

“I’ve been around, Bibles, I’ve been around,” he says, but jovially, and smoothes his hair back down. Now it is lying as if gelled flat. He’s really not having a good hair day.

“What kind of trouble do you think John is in?” I ask as we get back in our car.

“Well, if it’s the kind that comes accessorized with a bag full of money, I don’t even want to guess,” says Ned.

We drive silently back to the motel. The bright lights keep flashing even though we are far away from the Strip. I am suddenly tired of all the speed and noise and light here and I just want to sit quietly on our porch in Massachusetts and listen to the waves.

After we park, Ned and I go to our motel rooms, but no one is in mine. I go into the other one, where everyone is awake and dressed. My mother is sitting ramrod straight on the bed, looking unusually prim, her knees together, her hands folded in her lap as if she is waiting for a bus.

“What’s the matter?” I ask when I see their stricken faces.

“Bedbugs,” says Ned, looking defeated.

“It’s DISGUSTING!” yells Maya.

“We’ll have to find another motel,” says my mother. “We can’t sleep here.”

“I’ve got a better idea,” says Ned, suddenly brightening. “Who wants to go to Elko?”

We collect our things and head out into the night. Then we start driving north.

“Where are we going
now?”
asks Maya.

“We’re going to visit my mother,” says Ned. “She has a horse ranch up in cowboy country.”

“Cool,” says Max.

“Cool,” says Hershel.

“I can’t believe I am finally going to meet your mother,” says my mother.

“Yeah,” says Ned unenthusiastically.

“Where’s your mother been?” asks Maya.

“Well, that
is
the question,” says Ned. “Not that I was looking real hard.”

“Ned …,” says my mother.

“All right, aterlay,” says Ned.

“That’s ‘later’ in Pig Latin,” says Maya.

“Who taught you Pig Latin?” asks Ned. “Not Mrs. Gunderson?”

“Mrs. Gunderson speaks five languages,” says Maya enigmatically.

“There’s the moon!” screams Hershel, pointing out the window.

Tonight it is a luminous cream-colored orb. Why does the moon always look different? Always different, always personal.

“Listen, you kids may as well go to sleep. It’s a long, long drive ahead of us.”

“How are you going to find your mom’s ranch?” I ask.

“I’ll stop in at the sheriff’s. Sheriffs at these sparsely populated places know everyone. Especially the ranch owners. I think.”

“Jane, can you get some blankets out of the box by your feet? Max and Hershel, why don’t you take a blanket and curl up?” says my mother.

I pass out blankets to all. Ned has the heater on but it doesn’t work very well. The car was old when Ned bought it two years ago and things keep going wrong that we can’t afford to fix. I like being a little chilly with a blanket wrapped around me like
a tent. It is also a place to escape from Maya. My mother wears a blanket as well. Only Ned has to be blanketless and cold but he says he doesn’t mind. He seems distracted and angry when we mention his mother. Angry is a new mode to observe him in. In the past two years I have barely ever seen him so.

All is quiet in the car. Maya falls asleep quickly. I had expected more pressing questions from her, her voice had that tone, but I guess she is too tired. Max and Hershel are completely worn out. I would like to sleep but I know that my mother and Ned are just waiting for us all to drift off so they can discuss this new turn of events. I pretend to doze. I let my head roll from side to side in case they are sneaking peeks at me through the rearview mirror. Then I start to breathe deeply and rhythmically. This is harder than you’d think. Finally, when they still do not speak, I begin to give out a little snore now and then. I hope I am not overdoing it. I am almost asleep for real when my mother says in a quiet voice, “So, what happens next?”

“We see if he’s at my mother’s ranch. If he is we give him the money.”

“What if he isn’t?”

“I don’t know. Maybe leave it in the desert and go back to Massachusetts. The whole thing has the feel of a wild-goose chase. I’ll tell you one thing, if she knows he’s in trouble, I’d be surprised if she takes him in. Self-sacrifice and maternal protectiveness have never been her strong suits.”

“No, you always describe her as if, after your father left, she wasn’t quite there,” says my mother.

Ned snorts. “No, she was thereabouts.”

I stare out the back window at the stars. The whole back of the station wagon window shows a sky resplendent with constellations. The universe goes out forever. Night covers the desert like a blanket. There is nothing like a sky full of stars to make you lose track of your thoughts. For instance, at first, you realize that all those stars, all those pinpricks of light, are far away from each other but repeated all over the sky thousands of times. They are each glowing hugely alone but not, connected by the deep dark of the universe, part of a whole picture of what we see, the
night sky. The same and all different. Not aware of the picture they present as a whole. But not seeing us below either, the vastness of each of us and the many. Not, for instance, understanding that all these dots below are divided, into such things as Democratic and Republican parties. People who like sweet things and people who like salty or sour. People who put
FREE TIBET
bumper stickers on their cars and people who put
THE MORE PEOPLE I MEET THE MORE I LOVE MY DOG
and things like that on their bumpers. Actually, people who put anything at all on their bumpers and people who don’t. Then I just gaze contentedly at the stars and don’t bother trying to think about anything.

But later it occurs to me how Ned and I wanted to be outlaws and here we are, in the American West, in the high desert. We are escaping who knows what with a bunch of money from who knows where. Do things happen because you want them to? Can you create your life and adventures by imagining them? My head lolls from side to side for real now and when I next wake up, it is morning.

I open my eyes and stretch. I have woken up because instead of the smooth gliding asphalt beneath the wheels, we are bumping along over potholes and spitting gravel. Then I see it is not so much a road as a long driveway. Land stretches in all directions but there is a barbed-wire fence. The fence with its leaning old wood posts serves only to accentuate the vast emptiness of the land. The fence slants in disarray and there is a rightness to this too. This is not a country that values uprightness. In the distance is an old-fashioned windmill. The kind you see from time to time on the plains or the desert, looking as if they have been left here by time in a place that doesn’t change from century to century. They stand in the windswept dust and turn for no one but they still turn.

“Where are we?” I ask.

“At Ned’s mother’s ranch,” says my mother, yawning.

“How did we find it?” I ask.

“We stopped in town about half an hour ago and got directions. You were asleep,” says Ned.

We pull up in front of a big falling-down house.
All the paint has been chipped off the siding by the centuries. When you look at it you see the decades that have gone by. A woman rushes out onto the porch. She squints her eyes to see who it is and yells, “NED!”

T
he woman flings herself at the car and practically drags him out of it. This reminds me of my mother’s first meeting with Ned on the beach when she ran across the sand and flung herself on him. If you want people yelling your name and flinging themselves on you, all you have to do is disappear for years at a time. It doesn’t seem fair somehow. Shouldn’t they upbraid him a little first for his neglect?

“Hi, Mom,” says Ned. “Look at you. What are you doing here?” Ned, who has been hugging her, drops his arms and steps back. “Actually, I’m looking for John.”

“Well, lordy Maudey, what do you want with
him?”

“I’ve got something that I believe belongs to him.”

“Money,” says Ned’s mother, sighing; then she turns abruptly and walks to the porch and starts up the steps. We follow her. “I can’t say I’m surprised. How do you think I got this ranch? John bought it. It rightly belongs to him. There’s more of his money in it than mine. Where he got the money, I don’t know.”

“You bought a
ranch
with John’s money?” says Ned.

His mother stops and turns around and gives him a level stare, which because she is one step higher than him brings them eye to eye. “Well, not entirely with his money. I did have some of my own. Your father, when he died, left me some.
That
was a surprise.”