Chapter Five
C HAPTER FIVE
J OE STOOD AT THE CORNER OF FIRST AND MAIN, LOOKING down the street at a town whose name he couldn’t remember. He shifted his backpack around, resettled it on his other shoulder. Beneath the strap, his shirt was soaked with sweat and his skin was clammy. In the windless, baking air, he could smell himself. It wasn’t good. This morning he’d walked at least seven miles. No one had offered him a ride. No surprise there. The longer—and grayer—his hair got, the fewer rides he was offered. Only the long-haul truckers could be counted on anymore, and they’d been few and far between on this hot Sunday morning.
Up ahead, he saw a hand-painted sign for the Wake Up Café.
He dug into his pocket and pulled out his wallet, a soft, smooth, lambskin artifact from his previous life. Flipping it open, he barely looked at the single photograph in the plastic square as he opened the side slit.
Twelve dollars and seventy-two cents. He’d need to find work today. The money he’d earned in Yakima was almost gone.
He turned into the café. At his entrance, a bell tinkled overhead.
Every head turned to look at him.
The clattering din of conversation died abruptly. The only sounds came from the kitchen, clanging, scraping.
He knew how he looked to them: an unkempt vagrant with shoulder-length silver hair and clothes that needed a heavy wash cycle. His Levi’s had faded to a pale, pale blue, and his T-shirt was stained with perspiration. Though his forty-third birthday was next week, he looked sixty. And there was the smell… .
He snagged a laminated menu from the slot beside the cash register and walked through the diner, head down, to the last bar stool on the left. He’d learned not to sit too close to the “good people” in any of the towns in which he stopped. Sometimes the presence of a man who’d fallen on hard times was offensive. In those towns it was too damn easy to find your ass on a jail-cell cot. He’d spent enough time in jail already.
The waitress stood back by the grill, dressed in a splotchy, stained pink polyester uniform. Like everyone else in the place, she was staring at him.
He sat quietly, his body tensed.
Then, as if a switch had been flipped, the noise returned.
The waitress pulled a pen out from above her ear and came toward him. When she got closer, he noticed that she was younger than he’d thought. Maybe still in high school, even. Her long brown hair, drawn back in a haphazard ponytail, was streaked with purple, and a small gold hoop clung precariously to her overly plucked eyebrow. She wore more makeup than Boy George.
“What can I getcha?” She wrinkled her nose and stepped backward.
“I guess I need a shower, huh?”
“You could use one.” She smiled, then leaned a fraction of an inch closer. “The KOA campground is your best bet. They have a killer bathroom. ‘Course it’s for guests only, but nobody much watches.” She popped her gum and whispered, “The door code is twenty-one hundred. All the locals know it.”
“Thank you.” He looked at her name tag. “Brandy.”
She poised a pen at the small notepad. “Now, whaddaya want?”
He didn’t bother looking at the menu. “I’ll have a bran muffin, fresh fruit—whatever you have—and a bowl of oatmeal. Oh. And a glass of orange juice.”
“No bacon or eggs?”
“Nope.”
She shrugged and started to turn away. He stopped her by saying, “Brandy?”
“Yeah?”
“Where could a guy like me find some work?”
She looked at him. “A guy like you?” The tone was obvious. She’d figured he didn’t work, just begged and drifted. “I’d try the Tip Top Apple Farm. They always need people. And Yardbirds—they mow lawns for the vacation rentals.”
“Thanks.”
Joe sat there, on that surprisingly comfortable bar stool, long after he should have gone. He ate his breakfast as slowly as possible, chewing every bite forever, but finally his bowl and plate were empty.
He knew it was time to move on, but he couldn’t make himself get up. Last night he’d slept tucked along a fallen log in some farmer’s back pasture. Between the howling wind and a sudden rainstorm, it had been an uncomfortable night. His whole body ached today. Now, for once, he was warm but not hot, and his stomach was full, and he was sitting comfortably. It was a moment of Heaven.
“You gotta go,” Brandy whispered as she swept past him. “My boss says he’s gonna call the cops if you keep hanging around.”
Joe could have argued, could have pointed out that he’d paid for breakfast and could legally sit here. An ordinary person certainly had that right.
Instead, he said, “Okay,” and put six bucks on the pink Formica counter.
He slowly got to his feet. For a second, he felt dizzy. When the bout passed, he grabbed his backpack and slung it over his shoulder.
Outside, the heat hit him hard, knocking him back. It took a supreme act of will to start walking.
He kept his thumb out, but no one picked him up. Slowly, his strength sapped by the hundred-degree heat, he walked in the direction Brandy had given him. By the time he reached the KOA Campground, he had a pounding headache and his throat hurt.
There was nothing he wanted to do more than walk down that gravel road, duck into the bathroom for a long hot shower, and then rent a cabin for a much-needed rest.
“Impossible,” he said aloud, thinking of the six bucks in his wallet. It was a habit he’d acquired lately: talking to himself. Otherwise, he sometimes went days without hearing another human voice.
He’d have to sneak into the bathroom, and he couldn’t do it when people were everywhere.
He crept into a thicket of pine trees behind the lodge. The shade felt good. He eased deep into the woods until he couldn’t be seen; then he sat down with his back rested against a pine tree. His head pounded at the movement, small as it was, and he closed his eyes.
He was awakened hours later by the sound of laughter. There were several children running through the campsites, shrieking. The smell of smoke—campfires—was heavy in the air.
Dinnertime.
He blinked awake, surprised that he’d slept so long. He waited until the sun set and the campground was quiet, then he got to his feet. Holding his backpack close, he crept cautiously toward the log structure that housed the campground’s rest room and laundry facilities.
He was reaching out to punch in the code when a woman appeared beside him. Just … appeared.
He froze, turning slowly.
She stood there, wearing a bright blue bathing suit top and a pair of cutoff shorts, holding a stack of pink towels. Her sandy blond hair was a mass of drying curls. She’d been laughing as she approached the bathrooms, but when she saw him her smile faded.
Damn. He’d been close to a hot shower—his first in weeks. Now, any minute, this beautiful woman would scream for the manager.
Very softly, she said, “The code is twenty-one hundred. Here.” She handed him a towel, then went into the women’s bathroom and closed the door.
It took him a moment to move, that was how deeply her kindness had affected him. Finally, holding the towel close, he punched in the code and hurried into the men’s bathroom. It was empty.
He took a long, hot shower, then dressed in the cleanest clothes he had, and washed his dirty clothes in the sink. As he brushed his teeth, he stared at himself in the mirror. His hair was too long and shaggy, and he’d gone almost completely gray. He hadn’t been able to shave this morning, so his sunken cheeks were shadowed by a thick stubble. The bags beneath his eyes were carry-on size. He was like a piece of fruit, slowly going bad from the inside out.
He finger-combed the hair back from his face and turned away from the mirror. Really, it was better not to look. All it did was remind him of the old days, when he’d been young and vain, when he’d been careful to keep up appearances. Then, he’d thought a lot of unimportant things mattered.
He went to the door, opened it a crack, and peered out. There was no one nearby, so he slipped into the darkness.
It was completely dark now. A full moon hung over the lake, casting a rippled glow across the waves and illuminating the cabins along the shore. Three of them were brightly lit from within. In one of them, he could see people moving around inside; it looked as if they were dancing. And suddenly, he wanted to be in that cabin, to be part of that circle of people who cared about one another.
“You’re losing it, Joe,” he said, wishing he could laugh about it the way he once would have. But there was a lump in his throat that made smiling impossible.
He slipped into the cover of the trees and kept moving. As he passed behind one of the cabins, he heard music. “Stayin’ Alive” by the Bee Gees. Then he heard the sound of childish laughter. “Dance with me, Daddy,” a little girl said loudly.
He forced himself to keep moving. With each step taken, the sound of laughter diminished until, by the time he reached the edge of the woods, he had to strain to hear it at all. He found a soft bed of pine needles and sat down. Moonlight glowed around him, turning the world into a smear of blue-white and black.
He unzipped his backpack and burrowed through the damp, wadded-up clothes, looking for the two items that mattered.
Three years ago, when he’d first run away, he’d carried an expensive suitcase. He still remembered standing in his bedroom, packing for a trip without destination or duration, wondering what a man in exile would need. He’d packed khaki slacks and merino wool sweaters and even a black Joseph Abboud suit.
By the end of his first winter alone, he’d understood that those clothes were the archaeological remains of a forgotten life. Useless. All he needed in his new life were two pair of jeans, a few T-shirts, a sweatshirt, and a rain slicker. Everything else he’d given to charity.
The only expensive garment he’d kept was a pink cashmere sweater with tiny shell buttons. On a good night, he could still smell her perfume in the soft fabric.
He withdrew a small, leatherbound photo album from the backpack. With shaking fingers, he opened the front cover.
The first picture was one of his favorites.
In it, Diana sat on a patch of grass, wearing a pair of white shorts and a Yale T-shirt. There was a stack of books open beside her, and a mound of pink cherry blossoms covered the pages. She was smiling so brightly he had to blink back tears. “Hey, baby,” he whispered, touching the glossy covering. “I had a hot shower tonight.”
He closed his eyes. In the darkness, she came to him. It was happening more and more often lately, this sensation that she hadn’t left him, that she was still here. He knew it was a crack in his mind, a mental defect. He didn’t care.
“I’m tired,” he said to her, breathing in deeply, savoring the scent of her perfume. Red by Giorgio. He wondered if they made it anymore.
It’s no good, what you’re doing.
“I don’t know what else to do.”
Go home.
“I can’t.”
You break my heart, Joey.
And she was gone.
With a sigh, he leaned back against a big tree stump.
Go home , she’d said. It was what she always said to him.
What he said to himself.
Maybe tomorrow, he thought, reaching for the kind of courage that would make it possible. God knew after three years on the road, he was tired of being this alone.
Maybe tomorrow he would finally—finally—allow himself to start walking west.
Diana would like that.