Episode 6
Ernie charges toward the SUV like he thinks he’s going to catch it. I shoulder my duffel bag and chase after him, but the light changes and the SUV moves on into the next block. I stop. Ernie doesn’t.
If the next light turns in our favor, there’s a chance he might make it to the door in time to– Do what? Jump in? Haul Franny out? I take off running again, to be there when whatever’s going to happen, happens.
Morning traffic is heavier now, but it’s a small town, few people on the sidewalks. One of the storefronts I pass proves to be a Laundromat. At the end of the block the light is still green and the SUV skims through it and away down a long hill toward an Interstate ramp.
Catching up to Ernie, I want to say ‘Give it up, pal.’ Head back to Main Street and bum enough coins to do our laundry. Brush my teeth at the sink while the machines are churning. He has other ideas. “Come on!” He’s spotted a cab stand.
A middle-aged driver sits in his cab, reading a newspaper. Looks up when Ernie snatches open the back door and we pile in. His eyes in the rearview don’t come across as friendly. “Where to?”
“See that blue SUV going up the ramp? Follow it.”
The cab motor doesn’t start on the first try, and Ernie’s impatience shows in every tense line of his body. When we’re moving, he sags in relief. We’re two cars behind the SUV on the Interstate. I wonder where they’re going. What we’ll do when they get there. How we’ll pay the driver.
Ahead, Hoodoo pulls off only a few exits later, at a rest area.
“There is a God,” Ernie says softly.
Our cabbie signals a lane change and takes us to the edge of the parking lot, where cars go one way and trucks veer off to a larger space. Ernie’s door is open before the brakes finish, and the cab driver yells, “Hold on, bub! You gotta pay.”
“Wait–”
“Pay now or I call the cops.”
Ernie rips a silvery necklace over his head. “Here!” The clasp is one of those magnet types, and he slides off a small medallion before dropping the chain on the front seat. He’s gone, but the cabbie holds up the chain with a greedy surprised look that prompts me to grab it out of his hand. “Not that.” Fumbling in haste, I eject the cartridge from my camera and toss the camera over to him. “Three exits’ worth.” I slam the cab door. His tires screech angrily half way across the trucker’s lot.
It’s an old rest area and the untrimmed bushes lining the walk make good cover. As soon as I join Ernie behind one, he says, “Watch the doors and whistle when one of them comes out.”
About 5 spaces farther on, the SUV stands head and shoulders above lesser cars. Curtains are open and I glimpse Ernie inside. Either he has a key, or one of them left it unlocked. Then I concentrate on watching the rest room doors. Some traveler puts coins in a drink machine and the can clunks into the tray. A car pulls out. Birds twitter in a tree nearby.
The men’s side is nearer me. I wish Ernie would come back but since I don’t know if he’s coming back, my palms start to sweat and spit dries up in my mouth. Then Hoodoo steps into view in the lobby area and I try to whistle. Useless.
Dodging along the row of cars, I reach the back door of the SUV just as Ernie jumps out almost on top of me. He’s carrying a gray blanket wadded into a bundle and sweat has made spikes of hair stick to his forehead. Hunkered, we hurry away from the scene of the crime and crouch down on the far side of a silver Lexus. I pop up for an instant and see Hoodoo outside the lobby, kicking at an acorn on the walkway, smoking.
“What’d you find?” I nod toward the gray bundle.
Ernie doesn’t answer. He’s looking up at a sturdy white haired lady who’s come up to the car and stands motionless like she’s about to step on two snakes.
“Harold.”
Her voice holds a quiet but stricken warning.
From the driver’s side of the Lexus, Harold answers, “What?”
“Don’t unlock the car. There might be a b–”
His key clicks, he opens the door, there’s the clack of her door unlocking and the power window rolls down. His tone is peevish. “What’s the matter with you?”
At that moment something small escapes Ernie’s wadded blanket and hits the asphalt like a pigmy bomb. The woman leaps a foot into the air and squeals. Harold’s voice demands, “What the hell’s the matter? Get in.”
Ernie’s hand shoots out and retrieves a brown pill bottle. The woman cries, “Lock the door Harold!”
She can’t get in because we’re blocking her door. She’s still standing, barely, knees trembling. It’s too pathetic to be funny, yet laughter bubbles up and when I glance at Ernie he’s holding it in, too, like when Steve got the giggles in chapel and we all ended up in D-hall for three days. Snickering like fools, Ernie and I scoot away from her car and stagger across the road into the safety of another bush and collapse.
We’re heaving deep breaths when the Lexus rolls by us and down the slope toward the Interstate. The woman’s putting on her seat belt. I can almost hear Harold cussing. I feel sorry we gave her such a fright. Then the whole thing flashes like a double-time commercial and it’s funny again. The way she couldn’t move. The way he not only unlocked the door but put the key in the ignition and unlocked hers. And rolled down her window and yelled at her like everything was her fault.
Then it isn’t funny. She will forever believe we’re druggies. Car thieves. Terrorists. And clueless Harold who didn’t see us will never believe she did. I keep snickering. Nerves I guess.
“Shhh!” Ernie draws his legs in, backing into the bush, and I do the same.
Doors slam, and the SUV zooms past toward the Interstate.
They’ve been gone at least two minutes before Ernie crawls out of the bush with the bundle and squats on the grass. His hands are shaking when he unfolds part of the blanket. A plastic grocery bag full of prescription pill bottles spills over. “No wonder he’s crazy,” I say.
“Oh, he doesn’t take them all. Just maybe half.”
“And sells the rest.”
“You got it.”
“We won’t do that, will we?”
Ernie’s glance is sharp enough to cut. “Of course not.” He wrestles with the loose ends of the blanket, picks it up. We go toward the Men’s.
“Why didn’t we take the wheels? You have a key.”
“I have a duplicate door key. Hoodoo has the ignition.”
“Oh.” Too bad. Riding in luxury for a change would be nice.
In the rest room Ernie goes into a stall and I hear bottles rattling against each other and pills dropping into the commode. Flush. More pills. Flush. He comes out, the bag looks full but half are empty containers. Goes into another stall. Repeats. When he comes out this time with the gray blanket, it’s a neat sausage shape, a cowboy’s bedroll. There’s still something inside, bulging the middle like an egg in a snake. That makes me laugh again, imagining the woman in the parking lot telling her friends about the two drug dealers who almost stole their Lexus.
Ernie’s face stops me mid-chuckle. “Let me have your belt.”
I unbuckle it and he uses it to strap the ends of the bedroll so whatever’s in there won’t fall out. “What is that?”
“Hoodoo’s gun.”
“Hoodoo had a gun?” A mixture of fear and awe tips my stomach but doesn’t turn it over. I feel lucky he didn’t at some point shoot one of us, and pride in Ernie for stealing it out of the SUV without getting caught.
“You didn’t find your credit card?”
“No. I’d have to pick Hoodoo’s pocket.”
We’re too far away now to go back to that Laundromat, but I can hear old Collie’s voice prodding me, “Cleanliness is next to Godliness.” I’ve discovered that three days of sweat is my limit, not to mention that little accident when Hoodoo decked Ernie. And to keep the dentist away from my teeth, I’m determined to clean up while the means are available.
“Watch the door,” I say, and Ernie meanders to the entrance while I strip down and fill a sink with hand soap and hot water. In go the whites. I let them soak while the next sink fills with warm rinse water.
When I’m finished, jeans teeth hair and all, and wearing the thrift store outfit, I’m stuck with wet clothes and don’t know what to do with them. The hot air hand dryer would take all day, even if it worked.
“Your turn,” I tell Ernie. He gets up from the doorway like he’s a hundred years old. I take his place beside the bedroll, and wave away a twenty-something who looks like he needs to go right now. He moves on to another Men’s farther along. Ernie says behind me, “What are these?”
I know what he means but glance around to see his expression. He’s holding up the clothes I bought for him. “Yours. Think they’ll fit?”
“Yeah,” he answers and goes off to take his bath and change. I hear him filling sinks and sloshing his dirty clothes, and when he gets to the shampoo part he actually whistles a tuneless tune.
I envy him his expensive running shoes. My sneaker soles feel as thin as a mouse pad. “Mouse,” I say softly, missing the computer in the library, even if it does have a zillion kid controls imposed by old Collie.
“Mouse?”
Ernie’s wet hair is slicked back off his face, like he’s just climbed out of the East Wind swimming pool. Even in faded jeans and tee-shirt he still has the slumming executive look that I’ve come to know. I realize he’ll never be one of us. ‘Us’ meaning the under-dog waiting-for-a-break with a mandatory sentence of three-to-five ahead of him. I don’t know where I’m going from here, but it’s sure not back there.
“Ready to roll?” I stand up. “Man, I’m hungry!”
Ernie laughs. “You sound like Fran.”
Then he holds up his dripping upscale shirt. “I hate to throw this away, but the tag says ‘Dry Clean Only’ and wringing it out will finish ruining it.”
“You wrung out the pants. Go ahead. Make them match.”
A pained frown before he laughs again. “What the hell.” He twists the shirt tail and a pint of water flows out into a floor drain. Holding it by the shoulders, he snaps it a few times, then lays it over his arm on top of the pants.
I remember his chain and take it from my pocket. “Here. This might make you feel better.”
He picks the double-linked necklace off my palm as if it’s treasure from the Atocha. “How’d you get this?”
“Trade,” I answer, watching him replace the medallion and anchor the magnets around his neck. He picks up the bulky bedroll.
“Traded what?”
I pick up my backpack. “My camera.” His mouth flies open to protest but I show him the film cartridge and we step out into the summer sunshine as happy as if we had good sense. That’s what Steve claims his grandma used to say, before she died and his parents split up and put him in custodial care. I wonder if my parents are alive or dead, remarried with new families or pushing up daisies.
Collins had made it clear he couldn’t–or wouldn’t–answer questions like that. Clear too that I was NEVER to ask anybody in the couple of foster homes I’d been in when I was little. I try hard, not for the first time, to remember a grandma or other relatives, but the blurry faces I used to think I remembered have gone the way of the voices, which I can’t hear anymore.
I check the drink machines and find enough coins to buy one can. Ernie and I spread our wet clothes on a picnic table, then sit on the shaded bench and share the drink. We watch rest stop patrons come and go. After a while, the parking spaces are empty. Birds have gone deeper into the woods in the noon heat and travelers are sitting in air-conditioned cafes chowing down on salads and burgers. “What day is it?”
“Damned if I know. Thursday?”
No school, no tv, no schedule, no plan. What day it is no longer matters. I stretch my legs out in front of me and lean back against the picnic table. Aluminum snap crackle pops as Ernie squashes the empty can. He lobs it into the wire bin ten feet away.
Then a blonde girl about Ernie’s age drives up in a screaming red sports car.
TO BE CONTINUED!