Walk Me Home (19 page)

She even worries about all the work she has to do in the morning. How it will feel on no sleep. The more she tries to will herself to sleep, the more the pressure builds and cements her sleeplessness.

She tried to tell herself, before waking Jen, that she was doing it for a better reason than misery loving company. She hopes that was the truth.

“I’ve got to tell you something.”

“I hope this is not bad news.”

“It’s…not real bad. It’s fixable. Just sort of inconvenient. You’ve got to trust me to fix it.”

Carly waits. But Jen only sighs.

“I tried to tell you this before. Before we even got caught in the henhouse. But then you were asleep, or maybe you were even passed out or something, and I went through the whole speech, and now I don’t know if you heard a word of it. If any of it sounds familiar, say so.”

“Just tell me, Carly. Just tell me what it is.”

The moon is more than three-quarters round. Carly can’t see it through the little trailer window, but she saw it less than an hour ago. And she can see the moon shadows cast by the henhouse and the spooky light the moon throws directly on the big mesa.

“Teddy doesn’t live in Tulare anymore.”

“That doesn’t sound familiar,” Jen says.

“He moved to a little place called Trinity in Northern California.”

“You got his number?”

“No. But I’ll get it. I’ll find him. You’ll see.”

A long silence falls. Jen rubs her eyes. Yawns.

Then she says, “Maybe we just forget about Teddy.”

She might as well have driven an elbow into Carly’s gut, without warning or provocation, knocking her to the floor. That wouldn’t—couldn’t—have been any more of a shock.

“What did you just say?”

“Did you really not hear it?”

“Jen. Teddy’s all we’ve got. Who the hell else is going to take care of us?”

“Maybe Delores would.”

Carly whips back the rough blanket and jumps to her feet, pacing barefoot on the cold linoleum floor. She felt this coming, saw it somehow before it even showed its face, but convinced herself it was impossible. That she was being paranoid and foolish. What does this say for her other worries? Are they all a possibility?

“We’ve known her for, like, one day, Jen.”

“I like it here, though. I really like it.”

“She’s not going to take care of you.”

“How do you know? She likes me.”

“She’s not going to take care of
me
. She doesn’t like
me
. And besides, I won’t allow it. I wouldn’t let her. And you want us to stay together, don’t you?”

Jen sits up. “Sure, Carly. Yeah. Of course I do. I didn’t mean what I said. I’m just sleepy, OK? You just woke me up and I didn’t know what I was saying. Come back to bed, Carly. Please. I didn’t mean it.”

Carly sits down on the edge of the bed, and Jen tucks back in again.

Finally, when she’s settled herself a bit, Carly climbs back under the covers. She doesn’t get to sleep for hours.

Jen is snoring lightly in a matter of minutes.

WAKAPI LAND

May 15

Delores Watakobie has a time getting into the passenger seat of her own truck. Carly sits behind the wheel, both doors open, in the shade of the carport, feeling a sense of minor power for the first time in a long time. Driving does that for her. She watches the old woman reach up, reaching for a handle above the doorframe. Delores steps up onto the running board of the truck and grunts out an odd series of sounds as she attempts to pull herself in.

Carly is about to jump out. To go around and help. Push or something. But she’s only just barely flinched toward doing so when Delores stops her with words.

“Don’t you dare.” Her voice is even—doesn’t rise in volume—but the words pack a lot of power. It’s a stern warning. “Day I can’t step up into my own truck’s the day I let my creator put me six feet under. No point hangin’ around if you can’t even do for yourself.”

With one final grunt, she drops into the passenger seat.

Carly looks in the rearview mirror. Checks, again, the way she and Jen have stacked the first load of junk in the truck bed.

“Sure we don’t need to tie that stuff down or something?”

“Can’t go that fast on these roads anyways. Should be OK. You disconnect the batt’ry charger?”

Carly says nothing for a beat or two. She doesn’t even know what a battery charger is or how to spot one, not to mention how to disconnect it.

Delores sighs heavily. “You think I’m gettin’ down ’n then up again, you got another thing comin’. You can do this. Get out. Open the hood. It’s unlatched. See two wires goin’ in. One’s clamped on the batt’ry, one on a strut. Take ’em off one at a time. Don’t touch ’em together whatever you do. Slam the hood real good. Leave the charger where it lays.”

Carly climbs down. Circles around to the front of the truck. Approaches the charger the way she might approach a venomous snake. It’s sitting in the dirt, about the size of a car battery or a little bigger, with a wide, black molded handle.

She opens the hood of the old truck. The squeal of the hinges sounds just like the door of the pink trailer prison. Maybe a little deeper. More bass. But close.

She reaches for the clamp on the battery. Squeezes it. As she’s pulling it off, it sparks, startling her. She drops it into the engine compartment.

“Ain’t gonna bite you,” Delores calls. “Just don’t touch ’em to each other, whatever you do.”

Now there’s a mixed message if Carly ever heard one. It won’t hurt you. Just be careful not to get hurt.

She takes hold of the insulated cable and carefully pulls the clamp back up and out again. Sweat drops off her forehead, and she wonders how much is the heat and how much is that jumpy feeling, like she’s disarming a bomb.

She throws the clamp in the dirt. Realizes the other probably has no charge now. She pulls it off and throws it into the dirt as
well, near the first one. As it falls, she remembers. They mustn’t touch. Her heart stops beating for the half second it takes to watch it land. Two inches from disaster.

She breathes out her relief.

Mentally, she kicks herself hard. Why are you always so afraid, Carly? Damn you. Why can’t you just do things? Why can’t you handle these simple little things that other people handle all the time?

She looks across the yard at Jen, who’s happily feeding the goats.

Jen could have disconnected the battery charger. No problem. No fear.

Carly slams the hood hard. Too hard, maybe. Climbs back into the truck. Looks down at the gearshift.

It’s a stick.

Carly doesn’t know how to drive a stick. Teddy’s car was an automatic. She only knows how to drive an automatic. She can’t believe that observation didn’t break through in her brain until just this moment. As she was actually ready to start it up and drive.

The moment stretches out.

“What?” Delores croaks.

Carly doesn’t answer.

“Speak up, girl. What’s it this time?”

“How much harder is it to drive a stick shift than an automatic?”

Silence.

Delores rolls her head back, as if attempting to seek heavenly guidance right through the roof of the old pickup. Then she drops her head into both spotted hands and shakes it—and the hands—back and forth three or four times. Slowly.

“Trade places,” she says, dropping her hands hard into her lap.

Carly’s one tiny bit of power is lost. Figures. That’s been her lot for as long as she can remember.

“Maybe I could learn it.”

“Oh, no. No, no, no. Not on my truck, you don’t. Not on my clutch. This clutch’s lasted since 1973, ’n it needs to keep goin’ long as the truck does. Long as I do. Won’t do to have you strippin’ my gears, no thanks. Trade places.”

“Can you see well enough to drive?”

“Nope. You’re gonna have to see for me.”

Carly sits still a minute. Lets that filter down. She’s been asked to take a ride on a dirt road with a blind woman driving. Sure, she wants that phone. Badly. But she needs to survive long enough to get back to Teddy.

“That sounds…dangerous.”

“That ’r stay home and forget the whole deal.”

Carly looks again at Jen. Jen’s scratching a goat on the forehead, between its eyes. The goat is trying to rub its head against her. Jen doesn’t seem afraid of the horns. She’s laughing. Carly can’t hear it, but she can see it. She can see Jen’s face, laughing.

They’ll go slow. Even if they crash, it probably won’t be fatal.

Carly sighs. Climbs down. By the time she goes around the back of the heavily loaded bed, Delores has slid into the driver seat and is gunning the old engine to life.

“You’re going in the ditch!” Carly shouts.

They’re not literally driving into the ditch on the right-hand side of the rust-colored dirt road. Not yet. But they will if Delores keeps going the direction she’s going.

Delores adjusts right, steering them even closer to the ditch.

“The other way!”

Delores stomps the brake, sending Carly slamming into her shoulder belt. She bounces back again, hitting the ripped vinyl bench seat. She can feel an exposed spring against her lower back.

“Let’s get somethin’ straight,” Delores says. “There’s two ditches. One on my right. One on my left. If you yell at me I’m gettin’ too close to one, don’t you think it might be wise to specify?”

“Sorry. You were too far right.”

“Now that’s a little clearer.”

“Sorry.”

Delores sits a minute, as if waiting for her patience to catch up. Then she reaches out and feels around close to Carly, grabs hold of Carly’s left wrist and pulls her hand over to the steering wheel.

“You steer,” she says flatly. An order. “I’ll go slow. You tell me if there’s anything to hit, ’n I’ll go even slower.”

Delores downshifts from second to first and hits the gas again. Accelerates all the way up to five or six miles an hour. It makes Carly nervous at first because she’s never manned a steering wheel without sitting directly behind it. It requires some adjusting.

Within a minute or two, she finds it far less nerve-racking than watching the truck she’s riding in head straight for a ditch.

Delores rides with her left elbow out the open window, right hand in her lap. Carly quickly learns not to look. It’s alarming to watch a driver who hasn’t got the wheel. Even if your brain knows you’ve got it yourself.

They’re about to pass two little houses now, one on each side of the road. First…anything…they’ve come to.

“There’s a dog up there,” Carly says. “And three little kids.”

“I know it.”

“You can see that far?”

“Didn’t say I could see it. Said I know it. That’s Hal and Velma’s three girls. I know how far down the road they live, and I know what time they wait for the school bus ever’ mornin’.”

“Then what do you even need me for?”

“Well. If you see one right in the middle of the road, lemme know.”

As they pull closer, Carly sees the faces of the three little Wakapi girls. They look an even year or two apart in age and size. They’re waving. The littlest one is smiling widely, showing missing front teeth.

“Hi, Delores,” the oldest girl calls, cupping her hands around her mouth. “Be careful, Delores.”

The old woman leans half out the window as they roll by.

“Don’t you worry none about me, Hannie,” she says as they pull even. The dirty white dog stands up and wags its tail. “Got me a borrowed pair o’ eyes.”

“Who’s your friend?” the little one asks.

“Don’t matter,” Delores says, then pulls her head and torso back inside.

They drive another minute in silence.

Carly looks back at the kids and the dog, suddenly feeling like, if only she’d had a dog who waited for the bus with her each morning, everything in her life might’ve turned out OK. Or, at the very least, better than this.

The old woman’s last words echo, a delayed reaction.

“I don’t matter?”

“Didn’t say that. Said ‘it’ don’t matter.”

“How’s that different?”

“Look. How much of that story you want me to tell out the window of some movin’ truck? For that matter, how much of that story do I even know? I keep thinkin’ you’ll open up in time if I just lay off it. Beginnin’ to doubt that system.”

Carly falls silent. She does not open up.

She also does not shake the feeling that Delores said what she really meant. Carly is nobody. Carly isn’t worth explaining. Carly doesn’t even matter. Maybe everybody thinks that about Carly. Maybe Carly is even beginning to agree.

“This should be Chester’s place right up here a piece. You see a blue sign?”

“I see a sign,” Carly says. “It’s too far away to see what color.”

“Should be it round about now.”

“There are three big dogs running out into the road.”

“Yup. That’s Chester’s.”

“Slow down! Don’t hit the dogs!”

The three dogs, one beastly yellow mutt and two German shepherd types, are running straight at the grill of the pickup, barking their fool heads off. Delores isn’t slowing down.

“Tell me when we get to the driveway. I’ll slow down, and you turn us in.”

“You’re gonna hit the dogs!”

“I ain’t gonna hit no dogs. Chester’s dogs know how to duck. If they didn’t they’d be dead a long time.”