Piper (29 page)

While he changed into his clothes, I rifled through Dad's room until I found the keys to the Skylark, which had been stored in the spare garage over at the Socket Street house since the fender bender with Buzz Little. Dad had naively hung them on a high nail in his closet, probably assuming they'd be out of reach for a five-foot three geriatric delinquent, but this time Willard had a taller accomplice. I packed my own stuff into a duffel bag, favoring the more expensive things like sweaters over T-shirts that had been given to me as souvenirs from Sodality Retreats and Antique Car Festivals. I also threw in my diary, three Anais Nins,
Portrait of an Artist
, half a box of Tampons, and
The Second Sex
, which I'd purposely never given back to Rozene so I'd have an excuse for her to call me. I didn't know when, if ever, I'd be back so these humble possessions would have to suffice as the contents of my time capsule. When I went back down to the basement, Willard was sitting on the oval rug next to the bed, surrounded by his dogs, still pantsless.

“Come on, Willard! You gotta get dressed.”

He looked down at his hairless, milky legs. “I forgot.”

“I'll be back in fifteen minutes. Don't leave this room. And do the pants.”

The garage doors sagged on their hinges and I had to lift them over the dead weeds in the crown between the wheel troughs to open them. Somebody must have used the car since Dad put it in storage because the blue tarp was in a heap on the floor. The smashed fender had been pried away from the tire. The whole place smelled like a litter box. A spider web the size of a continent had been spun from the outside mirror and antenna to the wall of the garage. I looked around on the dirt floor and found a brick with mortar stuck to one edge, held it above the spider web, and dropped it. The strands crackled like static electricity as the brick ripped through, hit the wheel of the hand mower, and bounced against my ankle. “Ouch!” This was beginning to feel like how I imagined Purgatory, nothing ever working right.

The garage was so narrow I had to turn sideways to slip myself through the door and into the front seat, where I was greeted with the smell of cigar ash. The key with the square shoulders slipped easily into the ignition and the lights on the instrument panel came on as I turned it clockwise. Although I'd never taken driver's ed, Mom had let me drive on her sketching trips into the countryside, apparently more fearful of missing a good landscape than of me missing a turn in the road. The engine labored, coughed, sputtered, and despite my pumping on the gas pedal, settled into a steady rhythm of futility.
Err … err … err … err … err … err
.

I turned the key back to center and just sat there in case it was flooded, trying to imagine what Dad and the staff were doing and how much time I had. Marge had probably fixed them her iceberg lettuce and tomato salad, maybe spaghetti and meatballs, and toast sprinkled with Parmesan and garlic salt. When I tried again, the engine sounded like it was pulling old taffy the way it bogged down and quit. “Come on, you sack a shit!” I yelled, slapping the dashboard, making the little plastic hula girl swish and sway her hips. I hadn't figured on the damage inactivity could inflict on the spirit of the internal combustion engine.

I finally put it in neutral, climbed out, and braced myself between the back bumper and the garage to get it moving. The troughs in the driveway guided the wheels like the gutters of a bowling alley. To get over the hump in the “Y” where the driveway intersected the alley, I had to dig in and lift on the bumper. Then the car suddenly became lighter and I had to run to catch up. I jumped in and steered the car across a compost pile and through a couple of plastic garbage cans that tumbled out of the way like tenpins before I popped the clutch and the engine shuddered into being. Dirk had taught me how to start a car by compression, something he'd seen in
American Graffiti
.

Willard didn't make a very good fugitive. Contrary to my instructions, he was out in the back yard with one of the dogs when I pulled up in the Skylark. I left the car running and ran inside for our belongings. My duffel bag was heavier than Willard's suitcase, probably because of all the books. We'd already loaded the four dogs into the car when Willard reminded me of their food, so I ran back to the basement, nested the rubber food dishes, and shoved them into the top of an open bag of Purina Chow. Willard had left the brakeman's cap on the apple crate nightstand and I put it on. It was a little tight, but it fit.

I thought of letting Willard drive until we were out of town, but he was still so dreamy and absent-minded I feared he would space out and get us into another wreck. Anyway, he wanted to ride in the backseat with the dogs, who were panting and gawking around as I counted them again through the rearview mirror. When I put my hand on the gearshift to put us in drive, I had a pang of conscience like a bone caught sideways in the throat. I remembered how often I'd regretted that Mom hadn't left a note. It would have helped so much to have that connection.

“Willard, stay here, I forgot something. And I mean
in
the car.”

In the kitchen I found a flyer for the St. Augustine's Bazaar, turned it over, and wrote on the back:

Dear Dad,

I don't want you to get all freaked out by this, but Willard and I are going away. Please don't come searching for us. I'm almost of legal age and certainly will be by the time anyone finds us. I'm sorry I didn't turn out as planned, but you and Mom have given me a good start and for that I will always be thankful. My timing is either the worst it can be or the best it can be. But I thought better to get all the crap out of the way at once. Even though you seldom show it, I can only guess at how much agony you're in. I can't tell you everything right now, but someday I hope I can, at least by letter. And don't worry about Willard, he has his dogs, four of them (one died). Sorry to keep this from you too. I'll be thinking of you always.

Love,

Piper

PS. You're a whale of a journalist and I've been proud to touch the raw material that you chiseled into statuary.

I put the note in his bathroom sink in case he didn't go into the kitchen for a while, and took a deep breath that caught at the edges going down. The note to Dad must have reminded me of something else I was leaving behind, because I went upstairs to retrieve Mom's brass hand from my nightstand before heading out the front door.

It was just bad luck that Mrs. Norman was out on her parking strip jockeying a recycle bin into place as we pulled out and I turned my head the other way as we went by. “Duck, Willard!” With the brakeman's hat, maybe she wouldn't recognize me. The escape would have worked better at night, but we didn't have that luxury. The gathering at Marge's wasn't going to last all day. The Bagmore story would spread and, without the newspaper, Dad had no place to go but home. I watched out the rearview mirror to see if Mrs. Norman was writing down the license plate number, but she just stared after us and I hoped she didn't have a good head for numbers.

I made one sentimental detour, a drive-by of the trailer park. I wasn't going to see Rozene again either. By the time I did she'd have a husband who was an insurance broker and be living in the suburbs of Seattle with a triple garage larger than our house, and a nanny for the kids so she'd be free to do her aerobics and volunteer work during the day. Down the middle row, I saw the brown Corolla, with its hood under the canvas awning at the side of her trailer. She must have left the car home for her mom. The cafe curtains had been pulled open but the windows were as dim as the insides of an empty packing carton.

We took the back roads, staying off Horse Heaven Highway until we got farther out of town, and headed east where there was more open space and nobody who'd ever heard of the
Herald Stampede
or Scanlon. Pretty soon we were passing three-wire fences instead of pickets, hen houses instead of garages, silos instead of neon signs. The setting sun shone like track lighting through a slot between the horizon and a ceiling of dark clouds. Even though there was a breeze blowing through the car from the window Willard had opened for the dogs to stick their heads out, my hands were sweating and I had to keep wiping them off on my pants.

“Where we going?” Willard yelled over the wind.

“Surprise.” The only destination I'd thought of was Seamus's place in Manhattan, if the car would make it that far. I knew he'd take us in. Seamus was another bent arrow, someone who'd bummed around and fought off the responsibilities of the world, and he knew how impatient Dad could be with screwoffs like me and Willard. Trouble was, he might feel obligated to call Dad. As unreliable as he'd been, I didn't want to test Seamus's brotherly infidelity with Willard's freedom.

Willard grinned at me and a wisp of hair danced on the top of his head. I thought he'd be nervous about going away, old people were supposed to be such creatures of habit, but he seemed grateful, the way a dog was when you took a thorn out of its paw. As far as stealing the car, I figured it was Willard's anyway and Dad and Mom had even talked about buying it for me when I graduated. Besides, the car was small potatoes compared to our reasons for leaving.

Passing through the small towns—Frylands, Duvall, Novelty, Stillwater, Pleasant Hill—triggered recollections from Willard's middle and deep memory. He talked about places where he'd bucked hay, played pool, square-danced, gone to church, played cards, hunted pheasant, fished, fixed cars, built barns, even worked on highway crews. I was relieved he was able to put aside the memories of his traumatic night. We could deal with all of that later. Right now, we were unrestricted as to time and geography. As long as there was gasoline left to be pumped in the free world, we could stay on the move.

The dogs had to pee once we reached I-90, so we pulled off onto Denny Creek Road and I let Willard and the dogs empty their bladders beside the car. My waste water must have evaporated because I just stayed at the wheel. I needed to import water, not export it.

At Snoqualmie Pass, the peaks of the Cascades had lanced the undersides of the clouds and they were dripping with rain. It was dark and I was glad we were on a separated highway because from a distance every car coming from the opposite direction looked like it was in my lane. Passing under an arc light I glanced into the backseat. Willard had his knees on the floor and his torso nestled in between Paddy's butt and Mrs. Churchill's flaccid muzzle. When we passed Cle Elum, at the toe of the eastern slope of the Cascades, we were officially in Eastern Washington, territory reputed to be inhabited by rednecks, militia, and just plain hicks if you believed the people from our side of the mountains. They voted Republican, worshiped Protestant, and named streets after John Wayne.

We pulled off for a boughten meal at Martha's Cafe in George, which I chose based on the number of semis idling out front. I made Willard wear the brakeman's hat inside out so nobody would be able to read his name on the front and I pulled a knit cap down to my eyebrows. A gum-snapping girl with red hair and tattoos on her biceps showed us to a booth with disposable placemats illustrated with events from George Washington's life. “Three Times a Lady” was playing on the juke box. The counter must have been the smoking section because plumes of blue smoke rose from the heads of the guys in logger boots with belt buckles as big as cement trowels, who sat there working down their dinners and sipping coffee. Willard took off his hat and set it on the seat.

“Keep it on,” I said. “It makes us look like regulars.”

“Regulars?”

“Truckers.”

When I asked the waitress in my deepest voice which was better, the bacon burger or the cube steak, she said, “Beats me. I'm vegetarian.” Her name tag said “Starbuck” and I asked her what nationality that was.

She laughed. “That's my communal name. We choose our own. My boyfriend's Ishmael.” She cracked her gum as she spoke, with her pencil poised to write down our order in case we ever gave it. “You know … the great white whale and all that.” I looked over at Willard to see if he was getting any of this, but he was busy following his finger down the laminated menu, probably looking for something that would make good leftovers for the dogs.

“What grade are you in?” I asked.

She laughed again and I studied her very full, kissable lips. “You mean in the affairs of man or school?”

“Both.”

She looked up at the greasy ceiling register. “I turned tricks to earn my way through community college. But that was before Ishmael. I'm clean now, except for a little dope.”

So much for John Wayne.

We drove another fifty miles or so after dinner, but I had a splitting headache so I pulled into a rest area and parked as far away from the restrooms as I could get. “That's enough for the first day,” I said.

“Suits me.”

Willard turned the overhead light on, gave the dogs the rest of his pancakes, and divided a single little pig sausage between them. I retrieved the snow emergency blankets out of the trunk, threw one in the back for Willard, and kept one for myself. They smelled like a combination of welcome mat and motor oil, but they represented heat. Willard tried to make room for his disciples in the back and finally gave up. The coonhound was too heavy to lift over the seat so Willard had to lead her out the back door and into the front one. While he was doing that, the other dogs broke out of the car for more sniffs and pees.

Once everyone was back in, Mrs. Churchill kept putting a paw on my seat, begging to get up, and I quietly pushed it back down so Willard wouldn't know I was being so selfish. I sat up with my back against the door and shared a Hershey with Willard. He had a big sweet tooth, which was one of the reasons he wore dentures, but now that he'd crossed that hurdle the incentive to save his teeth was gone. Occasionally, the headlights of a vehicle entering or leaving the rest area illuminated the upper part of the car, then it was dark again, the freeway a dull hum in the distance. I tried to picture Dad finding my note and wondered whether he'd be sad or relieved I was gone. I'd been nothing but a pain in the butt for him since Mom. He'd think of calling my friends and then discover he didn't know who they were. Couldn't blame him; I had trouble with that list myself. Certainly he'd call Dirk.