Episode 7
Well, not a sports car, but a sporty one, a convertible. And the top’s down. Daddy’s girl with her first wheels, the kind Jerry’s always talking about. As if he’d ever been near either one.
Ernie doesn’t show a lot of interest until she finishes checking her hair and lipstick in the rear view mirror and swings long tanned legs out of the car. Her white dress is too small, not because she’s fat but because she bought it that way, and the heeled sandals make her teeter towards us.
“Hello.” She takes off oversized sun glasses. She’s speaking to him, acts like she doesn’t see me right beside him.
“Hello,” Ernie answers, and I can’t tell anything from his tone. He does sit up, though, crossing his ankles and resting his arms on his knees.
“Is this a private party, or can anybody play?”
“It’s a public place. Pull up a chair.”
“Cute kid,” she says, still watching him.
Ernie answers, “Not mine!”
She laughs and points at me. Then I remember that’s what my thrift store tee-shirt says on the chest. Cute kid. It should say Mouse.
A toss of her head flips her long hair back and forth. “I’ve never seen either of you cuties around here before. You guys brothers?”
Together we answer. I say “Yes” he says “No” and she gives us an amused look.
“Which one of you is clueless?”
We point at each other. “He is.”
She laughs again. “You could take this act on the road.” There’s about two seconds of silence before she adds, “Wanna ride?”
“Sure,” Ernie says and I nearly fall off the picnic table.
“Back in a sec.” She goes toward the Ladies’ side of the building.
Ernie starts folding our dry clothes. I help, and we pack our bags.
When we’re in her car–me in the back with the duffel and blanket–I want to ask where we’re going but she floors the gas pedal and I’m jerked breathless. Her hair flies in the wind, and she’s talking to Ernie and he’s answering but I can’t catch the words. His hand clenches the console as if he might be regretting this decision already.
We fly along the Interstate until we pass a speed limit sign and she slows down. I start to breathe again. By the time I’m relaxed enough to enjoy the ride, we’re many exits from the rest area and she signals a turn. At the top of the ramp there’s signs for everything, including food. I like her better now.
We end up at some little Italian restaurant that promises a meal anytime, day or night. I’m ready for spaghetti and garlic bread. The smells filling the place remind me of Friday nights when Collins would take a bus load of us to Nikky’s Ristorante in Hackett. It had to be somebody’s birthday, and Nikky would come to the table and sing a sappy song in Italian to the Happy Birthday tune.
She puts the car top up and we go inside. Fancier than anything I’m used to, with table cloths and a space for a dance floor. There are booths and we have our choice of seating. Nobody else is eating pasta at five in the afternoon, and the waiter must have gone home or is in the back washing dishes. We munch on breadsticks for what feels like an hour. The blonde is older than I first thought, twenty-five or more, and she’s sitting so close to Ernie, what she’s saying reaches his ears but not mine.
Her hand keeps straying to his necklace. Strokes it like a pet pooch. If she’s laying on the lovey-dovey talk, I don’t really care to listen. Can’t tell how Ernie’s taking it. She probably can’t, either.
Finally a waiter writes up our order. He brings a large green bottle of some pale wine. She studies the label, tips the guy with a smile, and he fills a glass each for her and Ernie. They sniff and sip like they know what they’re doing.
It’s another long time before the waiter brings a tray loaded with small salads and dishes of pasta. The meatballs are tender and tasty, so I leave off wondering what’s going on in my dorm, or what will happen later tonight. Somewhere soft music plays, and Ernie and his new friend leave stuff on their plates and go off to dance.
The salt and spices make me thirsty, so I finish my soft drink and fill the glass from the wine bottle. Steve used to have an uncle who got drunk every Friday night, to dull his pain. Right now, with a belly stuffed with spaghetti, garlic bread, and cola, I don’t have any pain, just curiosity. I sniff and sip, and it’s not bad. Grape juice with a bite.
Before the music stops and the dancing comes to a halt, I’ve drunk half a bottle and am feeling fine.
They come back to cold food. She sends Ernie to find the waiter, who takes the plates away, returns them steaming from a microwave. “Any dessert?” he asks me.
“Go ahead,” she urges. “They have a coconut pie to die for.”
Coconut pie, who can resist that? It’s one of my favorites, and she’s paying. At least, I hope she is.
The pie’s fresh and the slice is huge. The first few bites are delicious but I find myself forcing the rest on top of everything else in my stomach. Their quiet voices pick up where they left off, and her laughter tells me she’s enjoying Ernie’s company more than the warmed-over lasagne. An afternoon rainstorm blows in, darkening the place.
The waiter lights some candles and places them on the next table. The distant yearning music starts again, their desserts are on the way, and suddenly I’m so sleepy I can’t keep my eyes open.
I’m jostled awake just enough to realize Ernie’s picking me up off the booth seat. The woman says, “Your bro’s okay. It’s a quality wine.”
“He’s underage,” Ernie answers, sounding pissed.
“Shhhhhhh!” She giggles. “How was I to know he’d guzzle it down like a little wino?”
“Give me the keys. I’ll carry him out.”
“I can walk,” I say, the words leaving my mouth on little bird wings and flying ahead of me. I’m flying too, in the candlelit music, right out the door and into the storm.
Ernie lays me on the back seat and I think I’m asleep and dreaming. Like that night at the Morningbird. I wonder what a morning bird is. Does it cry and moan? Maybe it’s a mourning bird, and that’s the sound I heard. Not John at all. But birds don’t drive big bulky antique cars. Or sleek red sporty cars.
“Think he’ll tell your father?”
There’s a pause. “No. But he won’t feel too good when he wakes up.”
“That won’t be for a while.”
*****
Lightning flashes in the rain-dark sky. Or is it night? The car has stopped. The world keeps going around and I figure I’d better not try to sit up. I can see them in the front. She’s got Ernie scrunched against the passenger door, but he’s not making any moves.
“I bought the meal.” She sounds peevish.
“Thank you.” Ernie answers like he doesn’t know she’s mad, but I’m not fooled. He knows, doesn’t care.
“Did you think I wouldn’t want anything in return? I pay, you pay.”
“Not like that.”
“Why not? Afraid I’ll give you a disease?”
Mouse lies still, hoping they don’t realize I’m awake and listening. But when Ernie tells her, “I’ve made a rule not to have sex with anybody I haven’t known at least a month,” I snicker.
She thinks he’s joking, since she says in a sweeter tone, “I can’t wait that long. Can you?” She leans into him, and in a panicked voice he yells, “Vinnie! Unlock the door!”
Swaying like the drunken kid that I am, I leap up and pop the master door lock on the driver’s side. She screams, “Get out then! Get out of my car and take the little bastard with you!”
Ernie’s feet are on the ground before she finishes ranting. Opens my door, hauls me out. Shoves my duffel bag into my arms and snatches up the blanket bed roll. My head spins and my knees buckle but I manage not to collapse. She starts the engine, guns it, and the car leaps away so powerfully that the open doors slam shut.
We watch her tail lights disappear down a lonely back road. Summer lightning still plays about the evening sky. I’m standing in a rain-filled pot hole. “Where are we?”
Now Ernie sounds peevish. “About ten miles from the restaurant. At least twenty from that rest area. And a helluva long way from the last town.”
“Ten miles. Piece of cake.” I stagger toward the side of the road, and am grateful when Ernie steers me back onto the asphalt. Thunder in the distance. Lightning. Dark clouds roll across the moonlit sky towards us. Feels later than it could possibly be.
Far down the straightaway we see car lights coming back. “Think that’s her?”
He shoves me across the ditch and into waist-high weeds, where we crouch until the car zooms by. “Guess it was.”
“Sorry we didn’t let her pick us up again?”
We walk along the dark road for maybe a hundred yards before he answers. “No.”
Another hundred yards. “You heard me snicker, didn’t you.”
“I’m glad you were alert enough to pop that lock.”
Another hundred yards. “Um. If you didn’t want to bonk her, what did you two do for the last three hours?”
“Told each other lies.”
“Tell them to me.”
“Like a bedtime story?” Humor has crept back into his voice.
“Yeah, I –” Another pot hole. Except this one throws me. Knees and arms catch the impact, my face hits as an afterthought.
Ernie picks me up. “Are you all right?”
Now I do have a pain, like my brain’s two sizes too big and the world’s spinning again. I want to sit down but that would be wimpy. “Never felt better.”
“I bet.”
A mile or so ahead, a security light guards a construction site. Thunder’s closer now, and I smell rain coming. Near the chain link fence, sections of a huge drainage system wait to be installed. It reminds me of the fence at East Wind and right now I’d trade my comic book collection to be safe inside those familiar brick walls. Or at least inside one of these giant pipes, shelter from the storm. Ernie reads my mind, because he asks, “How good are you at climbing?”
“Drunk or sober?”
“How drunk are you?”
“Not enough to try climbing over that fence. I did that at East Wind, and see where it got me.”
“I thought you loved the life of the open road.”
“Sometimes I guess I do. Not when I’m about to be struck by lightning.”
Wind rolls in tree-shaking gusts over us, bringing the downpour. “We’re more likely to drown if we stand here.” Ernie starts running down a side road. With no other plan, I stumble along after him, dizzy, wet, cold, and queasy from undigested stuff like a rock in my gut.
We leave the construction site behind. Soon I don’t see its light anymore. We pass through a blind space, trusting the asphalt beneath our feet to keep us moving. Presently, little lights mark a utility outpost, a roadside stand locked up for the night, and a small used car lot. Ernie halts in front of me so suddenly that I bang into him.
“Sanctuary,” he tells me.
“You’ve found a church?” Shivering, my teeth chattering, I long for quiet, dry, candlelit. Peering into the darkness ahead of us and see a large old brick building. Tall windows glisten from a flickering flood light shines on a sign that reads ‘Haw Creek Elementary School.’
I groan. “Not another school.”
Ernie searches in the weeds, finds a bottle, draws back to throw. I grab his arm, screeching, “East Wind has a burglar–”
It’s the wrong arm and he completes the throw. The bottle crashes through a bottom window, breaking out several panes and the thin rotten wood strips that held them in place. “–alarm.” If I weren’t so sick and tired, I’d flee the scene before the cops arrive, but I am sick, and tired, and my head’s throbbing. My nose, knees, and arms burn from the fall on the asphalt earlier.
Nothing happens. No one comes. No sirens, twirling lights, uniforms or handcuffs.
Ernie takes Hoodoo’s gun from the bed roll and knocks off the shards of glass with the barrel. Half expecting the gun to fire and give us both a heart attack, I’m actually relieved when Ernie says, “Come on. I’ll boost you up.”
We land in a classroom dimly lit by a distant street lamp. Fourth grade artwork is taped around the walls. We move between rows of desks toward an open hall door. We’re nearly there when Ernie rushes me into a closet where we cower. I’m glad there are no wire hangers to clatter. Something squishy is underfoot but I’m more worried by the heavy footsteps coming into the room. A flashlight darts around but doesn’t spot us behind the louvers.
As the night watchman moves down the aisle toward the broken window, I hear him mutter, “Damn vandals.” He picks up the bottle and tosses it into a metal waste basket. The loud bang zings through my head like a bullet and almost makes me throw up.
He goes out and shuts the door. I listen hard to see if he locks it, but the drumming between my ears is too loud. We wait in the closet until I think I’ll smother. Then we wait in the classroom, standing ready to hide again in case he comes back.
I’m dozing against Ernie’s shoulder when he whispers, “Think he holes up in the infirmary?”
“Nah, it’s probably locked to keep the drugs from escaping.”
“You’re a witty dude, you know that?” Ernie cautiously opens the door and we wait some more. I’m not cold now, and the draft from the broken window feels good on my face.
“Then, if we break in there, he’s not likely to find us.”
“You looking for a fix?”
“Yeah, but not that kind. A cot and maybe another blanket.”
“I could go for that.”
The long hallway is backlit through a row of rain-patterned windows. I wonder if there’s a town nearby, and the prospect of breakfast without strings attached is appealing. I wonder what kept Ernie from having a fling with that blonde. Her age? The excuse he gave her? Me?
We pass a closed door that has a brass sign bolted on. TEACHERS LOUNGE. Light shows beneath it, and inside a radio plays low. Sounds like ‘A Prairie Home Companion’ and I’d like to stop and listen but Ernie keeps going until there’s another brass sign. INFIRMARY.
He lays down the bed roll, limp because he’s carrying Hoodoo’s gun in his waistband. Tries the door. Uses his pocket knife to jimmy the lock.
“You’re good at this, you know. Breaking and entering.”
“I’m good at a lot of things,” he tells me, and then we’re inside the windowless room. Before he closes the door behind us, I get a glimpse of shelves, cabinets, and a desk.
TO BE CONTINUED!