The Kind One (38 page)

A radio was playing; when the news came on, the announcer reported that a sensational crime had occurred Saturday night in Los Angeles. Eight people, including notorious gangster Bud Seitz, had been murdered at Seitz’s home in Hollywood. Police said so far they had no witnesses or suspects.

Darla and I locked eyes across the table. The waitress sighed and shook her head as she poured us more tea. “Big cities! You can have ’em! Me, I like a place that’s nice and slow. Like Needles.”

We left the cafe and continued east. It was only a mile to the Colorado River and the Arizona state line. The hell of the Mojave ended at the green river. As we drove over the bridge, we could see a cluster of tents and makeshift shacks and old cars and pickup trucks on the river bank—a Hooverville in the middle of the desert.

Next we had to climb over the ominously named Black Mountains. It was rough going for a while, in places the road wasn’t even paved, but when we came down the other side of the mountains it was with the feeling that the worst part of the journey was behind us.

We were in Arizona now, and we could see a long way, and what we saw was beautiful. Sophie suggested we ought to sing a song like the people traveling to New York on the bus did in the Clark Gable movie.

“Did you know Darla’s a professional singer?” I said.

Sophie looked at Darla, wide-eyed. “You are?”

“Yeah. Sometimes.”

“I’m going to be a professional dancer someday. I’ve got swell dancing shoes. They’re in my suitcase. Danny and Mr. Dulwich gave them to me.”

It took awhile before we could settle on a song that we all more or less knew the words to. It was “The Animal Fair”—

“I went to the animal fair,
The birds and the beasts were there.
The big baboon by the light of the moon
Was combing his auburn hair.
The monkey bumped the skunk,
And sat on the elephant’s trunk.
The elephant sneezed and fell to his knees,
And that was the end of the monk, the monk, the monk, the monk…”

   WE GASSED UP the car at Oatman (POP. 500), and Sophie took Dulwich’s cat out again, and she scratched in the dirt and squatted and peed, and then we kept going. There was plenty of light still left in the day and though I’d hardly slept for the last two days I felt like I was getting my second wind and could drive forever.

Sophie had the road map spread out, and it nearly covered her like a tent. “If we stay on Route 66 all the way, we’ll end up in Chicago. Can we go to Chicago?”

“We can go anywhere we want,” I said.

“But on the way to New York. We’re still going to New York.”

“Of course.”

“Darla, have you ever been to New York?”

“Sure, I been there,” Darla said, with little enthusiasm.

A billboard informed us the Tomahawk Trading Post and Restaurant was just three miles down the road and one could see the Amazing Indian Mummy there.

“Oh, I wanna see the mummy!” said Sophie.

“Wanna see the mummy?” I asked Darla.

She shrugged. “Why not?”

I parked in the shade at the side of the trading post, so Dulwich’s cat could stay cool while we were inside. There was a hitching post out front; no horses were tied up to it, but several cars were parked there, including a sleek silver Zephyr, which Sophie oohed and ahhed at.

The trading post sold all manner of things Indian: pottery and turquoise jewelry and blankets and rugs and beadwork and baskets and buffalo-hide shields and arrowheads and tomahawks. I asked the pimply teenaged girl behind the cash register where the mummy was.

“Right over yonder,” she said, pointing. “In that corner there.”

It was a mummy, all right, in a glass case. A little mummy, curled up on its side, its arms holding its legs and its face tucked into its knees. Sophie began reading from a typewritten card scotchtaped to the glass: “‘The mummy of this little Indian girl’—oh, it’s a little girl!—‘was found in a cave by Bill Miller on his ranch near Kingman in 1912. She is believed to have been a member of the Walapai Indian tribe, and to have lived many hundreds of years ago.’ Many hundreds of years ago,” Sophie repeated as she stared in awe at the grayish-brown brittle-looking thing behind the dusty glass.

We wandered awhile through the trading post with the other tourists—Darla bought some postcards, Sophie an Indian doll called a
kachina
—then we passed through a little hallway to the restaurant. We sat down at the counter, and a fat, jolly waitress named Ruthana served us up ice cream sodas.

“I like your bracelet,” said Sophie.

Darla was wearing her charm bracelet—the one Bud had given her, with the star, the crescent moon, the heart, the man’s hat, the Scottish terrier, the owl, the mermaid, and the lightning bolt.

“Do you?” said Darla, looking at it; and then she began to take it off.

“Here, honey. I want you to have it.”

“Really? No kidding?”

“Really and no kidding. Hold your hand out.”

She fastened the bracelet around Sophie’s wrist. Sophie held her arm up, and gazed blissfully at the dangling charms. She tapped the crescent moon with her fingertip, and it rocked back and forth.

“Gee, thanks, Darla.”

“You’re welcome.”

Soon Sophie’s straw was making slurping noises in the bottom of her glass.

“Can I go back and look at the mummy?” she said.

“All right,” I said. “But don’t wander off.”

“I won’t.”

She hopped off her stool and ran through the door, as Ruthana watched her approvingly.

“You sure do have a cute daughter,” she said to Darla and me.

Darla and I exchanged a look. She opened her purse, took out her cigarettes. Lit up.

She looked exhausted. It seemed like a long time ago that she had been butchered by Dr. Brunder, but it had actually only been a few days.

“That was nice,” I said. “Giving Sophie the bracelet.”

She blew out a thin, fluttering stream of smoke.

“She’s a good kid. A little trooper. She never once complained, going across the desert. She deserves a lot more in life than just some crummy bracelet.”

“She’ll get it. She’ll get everything she deserves.”

Darla looked at me musingly. “You’ll see to it, huh?”

“Well—maybe
we’ll
see to it.”

She tapped her cigarette on the edge of the ashtray, even though she hadn’t been smoking it long enough to make any ash. Then she opened her purse again and took out her compact and looked at herself in the little round mirror, tugging at her hair, fiddling with an eyebrow.

“Jesus. I look a fright. I’m gonna go powder my nose.”

“Okay.”

She slid off her stool and walked off, toward the restrooms in the hall. But then a moment or two later I felt a hand on my neck, and looked around and Darla’s face was just inches away, and she smelled like Jean Harlow and then her lips were on mine. This was a real kiss, a lingering kiss, a moist kiss. Then she pulled away a little, and looked at my face all over, and smoothed out the hair on the side of my head with her long fingers; then she turned and walked away.

I wasn’t sitting any longer on a red leather stool, but on Cloud Number Nine.

I ordered a cup of coffee from Ruthana.

Half a chocolate cake sat on the counter under a glass cover. A fly landed on the cover, crawled around on it for a while, then just settled down to stare at the cake.

Several minutes passed. Neither Darla nor Sophie came back. I got a check from Ruthana, paid up, and went into the trading post.

Immediately, Sophie came running up to me with a can in her hand.

“Could I get this?”

I looked at the label.

“Rattlesnake eggs? What do you need rattlesnake eggs for?”

She rolled her eyes as if the answer was obvious.

“Please?”

“Okay.” I looked around. Didn’t see Darla anywhere. “Do me a favor? I think Darla’s in the ladies’ room. Would you go in there and check on her? Just make sure she’s all right? In the meantime, I’ll pay for…this.”

“Okay.”

Sophie took off. I gave the can to the pimply girl at the cash register.

“That’ll be fifty-nine cents.”

I dug in my pocket for some change.

“The last place I got rattlesnake eggs, it wasn’t nearly that much.”

“Oh really?” and then she saw I was kidding and she laughed. She took my money and gave me a penny back.

“That lady you was with?”

“Yeah?”

“She asked me to give you this.”

She handed me a postcard. On it was a picture of the Petrified Forest. I stared at it, mystified, then turned it over.

Dear Danny—
The best thing I can do for you is just get out of your hair. I mean it. I’m bad news for you. Take care of the kid. She’s swell. And the cat too.
I can’t believe what you did for me. I’ll always remember you. But I hope you forget me.
Love,
Darla

“Did you see where she went?” I asked the girl.

“Yeah.” She motioned toward the window. Toward the road. “She went off with that fella that had the Zephyr.”

“What fella?”

“He was in here earlier. When you was over there looking at the mummy, he was looking at it too. Nearly standing right next to you. You didn’t see him?”

I shook my head. Sophie came back. “I can’t find her anywhere,” she said.

“I know.” I handed her the rattlesnake eggs. “Let’s go.”

We walked outside. The spot where the Zephyr had been parked was empty. I looked at Route 66. I wondered which way they had gone. I could have asked the girl. But I decided not to.

“Darla’s gone, Sophie. She’s not coming back.”

“Gone? What do you mean?”

“She got a ride with somebody. She’s decided to go off on her own. So it’s just you and me now.”

Sophie stood there, and thought about it, and then said: “And Tinker.”

“Right. And Tinker.”

She was looking up at me very solemnly. I reached down, mussed up her hair a little. “Ready?”

She nodded. We got in the car, and pulled back on the road. We drove in silence. Sophie unwrapped some bubble gum.

It was late in the day, and the sun was low and behind us now. We passed through a magical, mysterious landscape of vast vistas, of mesas and buttes and faraway mountains. There were all kinds of colors in the land and the sky, pinks and yellows and blues and browns and grays and violets and greens, and the land seemed to reflect the sky and the sky, the land.

Sophie had been letting Dulwich’s cat out of her cage and she had the run of the car. Now she curled up between Sophie and me, and began to doze off.

After a while we saw dark clouds off to the north. Pretty soon they produced gray dragging curtains of rain, and then a spectacular lightning bolt that went all the way down to the ground. But here it was still bright sunshine. It was like the desert was putting on a show just for us.

I thought about Darla, and thought and thought about her, and decided it was okay. After all, it was Gwynnie, whoever she was, that I really loved. And when I got to New York I’d find her and try to win her back from my best friend, whoever he was. Or maybe I wouldn’t bother. Maybe I didn’t love anybody anymore, except Dulwich, who was dead, and Sophie, who was blowing enormous pink bubbles of gum right beside me.

But suddenly Sophie was covering her face with her hands, and making sobbing, sniffling noises. I was appalled.

“Sophie! Sophie, what’s the matter?”

“I miss my mummy!” she wailed. Then her hands dropped, and I saw her dry eyes and sly grin.

“Fooled you.”

“Hey,” I said. “Don’t get wise, BB eyes.”

She giggled. The road stretched out before us. And that’s about all I’ve got to say.

   “The Carioca.” Words and Music by Gus Kahn, Edward Eliscu and Vincent Youmans. © 1933 (Renewed) T.B. Harms Co.; © 1933 (Renewed) LSQ Music Company (used by permission). Rights for the Extended Renewal Term in the United States controlled by WB Music Corp., Gilbert Keyes Music and LSQ Music Co. Rights outside the United States controlled by WB Music Corp. and Polygram International Publishing Inc. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission of Alfred Publishing Co., Inc.

“Life Is Just a Bowl of Cherries” (From
George White’s Scandals
). Words by Lew Brown. Music by Ray Henderson. © 1931 (Renewed) by Desylva, Brown and Henderson, Inc. Rights for the Extended Renewal Term in the U.S. controlled by Ray Henderson Music Company and Chappell & Co. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission of Alfred Publishing Co., Inc. Used by Permission of Redwood Music Ltd. (Carlin) London NW1 8BD for the Commonwealth of Nations, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, South Africa and Spain.

“Forty Second Street” (from
42nd Street
). Words by Al Dubin. Music by Harry Warren. © 1932 (Renewed) Warner Bros., Inc. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission of Alfred Publishing Co., Inc. Reproduced by permission of B. Feldman and Co. Ltd, London, W8 5SW. Used by permission of Albert Music for Australia and New Zealand.

“I Saw Stars.” Words and music by Al Goodhart, Al Hoffman and Maurice Sigler. © 1934 (Renewed) Robbins Catalogue Inc. and Al Hoffman Songs, Inc. Rights for EMI Robbins Catalogue Inc. assigned to EMI Catalogue Partnership. All Rights Controlled and Administered by EMI Robbins Catalogue Inc. and Al Hoffman Songs, Inc. All rights reserved. Used by permission of Alfred Publishing Co., Inc. All Rights for Al Hoffman Songs, Inc., administered by Music Sales Corporation. International Copyright Secured. All Rights Reserved. Reprinted by Permission.

“Stardust.” Music by Hoagy Carmichael. Words by Mitchell Parish. French translation by Yvette Baruch. © 1929 (Renewed) EMI Mills Music Inc. and Hoagy Publishing Company in the USA. All rights outside the USA controlled by EMI Mills Music, Inc. (Publishing) and Alfred Publishing Co., Inc. (Print) All Rights Reserved. Used by permission of Alfred Publishing Co., Inc. “Stardust” by Hoagy Carmichael and Mitchell Parish. © 1929, 1930 by Songs of Peer, Ltd. Copyright Renewed. Used by Permission. For Australia and New Zealand: EMI Davis Music Australia Pty Limited (ABN 37 000 006 799) PO Box 35, Pyrmont, NSW 2009, Australia. International copyright secured. All rights reserved. Used by permission.