Hit the Ground Running Page 9

  Dee scanned the signs that had begun to dot the side of the highway. Motels ahead, not that they could afford to waste money on those. Restaurants. Idaho State University. A sign welcoming them to Pocatello, “Smile Capital” U.S.A.

  Hello, Pocatello. We need all the smiles we can get. You might be the answer to my prayers.

  A sign for the community recreation center (Just Minutes Away to Play) decided her. Oh, please be open, please be open.

  “Time check, Eddie?” she asked.

  “5:47 PM, Friday, July 25,” he said.

  It will be just my luck if it closes at five. Exactly my luck. She saw the building, pulled into the parking lot and swung by the hours-of-operation sign at the front door. M-F: 6 AM-10 PM.

  “Grab your stuff, Eddie,” Dee called, swinging into a parking spot. “We’re going swimming!”

  “Oh, no, Dee!” Eddie’s face was tragic as he looked up from rifling through his backpack. “I forgot to pack my bathing suit!”

  “Let me check.” Dee emptied the backpack out on the hood of the car. Eddie had underestimated. He had forgotten to pack almost everything. An old Lakers hoodie, a men’s size XL that Theresa’s brother had given him, took up most of the space. There was a T-shirt with a prominent hole in the front, a pair of sweats that Dee knew for a fact were about four inches too short, a dress shirt he’d worn in the Christmas play and three socks.

  No underwear.

  No pajamas.

  No shoes.

  No bathing suit.

  She looked over at Eddie, and the sarcastic comment died on her lips. He had his face turned away like he was studying a bush in the parking lot. His mouth was tight, his arms crossed, and he was blinking hard.

  “Do you have any scissors, Eddie? Anything scissorlike?”

  “Scissors?” He frowned, his swimming eyes gratefully focused on the problem of scissors. “Well, there’s a little pair on my Swiss Army knife.” He scrabbled in a box in the backseat. “Here. Why?”

  Dee picked up the too-short sweats.

  “You may see before you some average sweatpants, Eddie,” she said. “I see a bathing suit just waiting to happen.” Eddie laughed delightedly as Dee snipped at a seam, then carefully ripped and hacked each leg off. Finally she held up the uneven legs.

  “Not exactly a professional job. But you figure that’ll do?” she asked.

  “Perfect,” said Eddie. “Let’s go.”

  When they’d paid the admission (only six bucks total) and come out of the change rooms, Dee caught a glimpse of their reflection in a mirror as they hung up their stinking seat towels. Eddie’s skinny little torso emerged from his “bathing suit,” which looked exactly like a pair of sawn-off sweats, the pockets inside hanging visibly lower than the shorts. Dee’s bathing suit was a supremely ugly yellow one-piece that was so old it was practically see-through. She wore a baggy gray T-shirt over top.

  We are quite a pair, she thought. Quite an awesomely neglected-looking pair of kids. Thankfully there weren’t a lot of people to notice them. The place was very quiet. A new mom and her tiny baby, completely absorbed in each other. A few boisterous kids doing cannonballs into the deep end. An old guy doing methodical lengths in the roped-off lane. A teenage lifeguard slumped against the wall, texting on his phone. Dee smoothed her hair and pulled down her T-shirt.

  She made Eddie scrub down in the shower by the pool’s edge.

  “Sign says we have to shower before we go in,” she pointed out, as if it was only polite that they follow the rules in this foreign place. We’re so disgusting, she thought, pumping the dispenser for a handful of soap to dump on his hair. May as well get this grubby little boy as clean as I can. Border tomorrow if the car doesn’t die first, and we probably shouldn’t arrive looking homeless.

  When Eddie escaped, slipping into the shallow end and hopping up and down to get warm, Dee took her turn in the shower. It was wonderful to feel the warm water rinsing the grit and sweat out of her hair, to soap her blackened feet into normal foot color, to really scrub her face.

  “Dee, it’s fun in here!” Eddie called. She slid into the cool water, hopping and bicycling her legs to keep warm.

  They took turns diving underwater, one being the predatory shark, the other the unsuspecting, doomed ocean swimmer. Eddie was better at being the shark than the swimmer. He panicked easily, kicking frantically with his bony legs as if she really were some cartilaginous ocean monster.

  “Hey, this pool would be a great place for freaking out!” He thrashed around in demonstration, slapping the water.

  “Down, boy,” she said, laughing. “Want to try that slide over there?” Of course he wanted to try it. A million times. As he clambered out of the water and rocketed down the small slide again and again in an obsessive loop, Dee floated on her back, her T-shirt billowing up in odd balloon air lumps.

  “Did ya see that one, Dee?” Eddie’s running commentary was muted by the water. She smiled over at him, raising a thumb. She stretched her arms and legs wide, like a starfish, stared up at the peeling turquoise metal ceiling beams and rocked gently on the waves of Eddie’s splash-entries. She forgot the highway, the trucks and the noise, the border, the breaking-down car. She felt weightless, timeless, absolved from thought and worry.

  For the first time in as long as she could remember, she felt free.

  Hours later, when they were, as Eddie put it, “all swum out,” they soaked in the hot tub for the last time, idly reading the Rules and Regulations of Hot Tub Use affixed to the wall.

  “I’ve been in here for way longer than it says,” said Eddie. “Way longer.”

  “Yeah, but at least we refrained from use while intoxicated, pregnant or with rashes, open sores or communicable diseases,” Dee said. She centered a jet on her back, feeling the driving-clenched muscles soften and relax. The clock on the wall read 9:35 PM.

  I wonder if we could just stay here, she thought sleepily, just hide out here in old Pocatello, Idaho, smile capital of the world. Maybe we could become smiley Pocatellans? Idahoans? And we could come to this pool every day. Or maybe just live our lives hiding out in the locker rooms…

  “I’m starving,” Eddie said and yawned.

  “Yeah, me too,” said Dee. “Let’s go see what we have to eat in the car.”

  “And I guess we have to find somebody’s yard to park in for the night!” Eddie said.

  Dee laughed, but the worries came slithering back in a rush.

  Because when you really thought about it, the night was always scarier than the day.

  They ate tinned pineapple, granola bars and fruit gummies in the car, shivering in the cool evening air after the warmth of the hot tub. They both reeked of chlorine, and their fingertips were bleached and puckered. Eddie nestled inside the huge Lakers hoodie like it was a tent, draping it over his whole body and tucking it under his crossed legs. The only visible Eddie parts were his face and a small hand that snaked up through the face hole to ferry gummies to his mouth from a stash inside the hoodie. Dee dug out sweats and a sweater.

  “We should stop on our way out of town and buy you some underwear and a T-shirt.”

  “Nah, I’m good.” Eddie gestured to his one T-shirt and pair of shorts.

  As Dee shoved garbage into a receptacle, she scanned the parking lot. Too exposed, she decided, noting the lack of trees and the bright lighting. But she was reluctant to leave. This place felt safe, and who knew what the rest of this town was like.

  Only two other cars were left in the lot, probably the lifeguard’s and the receptionist’s, neither of whom had paid them much attention.

  “Okay, keep still and low,” she said to Eddie in a dramatic whisper. “We have to wait. Let me know when the parking lot is clear.” It was their old game of Spy-Guys. Eddie scrambled to the backseat, crouched low and peered out. A reliable sentry, a dependable, sneaky little spy.

  Ten minutes passed. Eddie didn’t move a muscle. Then he tensed.

  “Psst. Here they come. Tog
ether,” he whispered, as if that fact was crucial. Sure enough, shortly after ten the stout receptionist and the teenage lifeguard walked out to their cars. Dee and Eddie heard them talking, saw them wave, heard car doors slam, engines start. The teenager sped off in a loud blast of music. Friday night. Heading off to a party maybe. Or watching movies with friends, getting pizza. Hanging out with his girlfriend. Dee thought of all the things normal teenagers did. She was thankful they had parked across the parking lot so he didn’t see her crouched in a beat-up car with her little brother. The older woman took longer to leave, and when she did, she turned her head and stared in their direction. The overhead lights glinted off her glasses, making them opaque and giving the woman an oddly creepy, robotic appearance.

  “Aaaaand, they’re gone!” said Eddie triumphantly, climbing back into the front seat. “What do we do now?”

  Pal, if you’re looking for answers to almost anything, you got the wrong person. I wonder if this is how parents sometimes feel—like they should have a plan but are mostly making it up as they go along.

  She considered the options.

  “Well, may as well just drive around back and see if there’s anywhere to park that’s less public,” Dee said. The car started well enough. It was when she put it into gear that the engine died. Dee froze. She waited a minute, then started it again, slipping it quickly into Drive, flooring the gas and lurching forward. It seemed to be all right, other than the grrrrgrrrgrrr sound.

  They skirted the building, going the wrong way on an Employees Only road. Dee backed in beside a dumpster that hid them from the main road. A few bushes shielded them from the playground behind the rec center. It was as good as it was going to get.

  They spread out their blankets and used their damp towels on top for extra warmth. Dee crammed garbage bags of stuffed animals on the front and back dashes, blocking the windshields, and mostly covered the side windows with pillowcases. She didn’t know which made her feel safer, the fact that nobody could look in or that the black night was blocked out.

  Eddie fell asleep in his bed up front as Dee settled into the backseat, ears alert for any strange noises. Nothing. Just the distant sound of a car or two, the rustle of the wind in the playground trees, the slight, rhythmic creak of the swings.

  She was beyond tired, curled up, half-asleep, the day seeping away from her. Up at six, drive for twelve hours, swim for three and a half…long day. A long day ending here in…For a minute she couldn’t even remember where they were. Nothing. They were beside a dumpster, she knew that. But where was the dumpster? She couldn’t place the town or state, not anything about where they were.

  Where in the world were they? She lay rigid in the dark in a fog of worry and fatigue, trying to figure it out, trying to retrace the path that had led them to this moment. And just when she was starting to grope over the seat to make sure Eddie was still there, she thought of her mother. She was laughing, looking right at Dee, her brown eyes crinkled up, her long, dark hair rumpled.

  A tear slipped out of Dee’s eye, sliding a warm path down her cheek onto the pin-pricked vinyl seat.

  Home.

  The word slipped into her mind, clear and clean.

  Home. We’re going home.

  Dee woke to a rhythmic, distant beeping. In a haze of sleep confusion, she turned onto her back, knees bent, listening. It was a truck-backing-up sound, she decided. Nobody honks like that other than backer-uppers.

  Won’t it be nice, if we ever get out of this car, to wake up to some other sound? Something other than honking, beeping traffic sounds? Anything else.

  A loud crash had Dee jackknifing bolt upright, straining to pinpoint just how close it was. She ripped the pillowcase from the window and looked out. A garbage truck across the playground was lowering a recently emptied dumpster. It turned and moved slowly in their direction. It’s coming here. To this dumpster, she thought wildly. Our dumpster, the one directly beside us.

  Dee scrambled into the front seat, shoved Eddie over and ripped the garbage bag full of stuffies from the front dash. She turned the ignition. It made an unfamiliar whirwhir sound and would have died had Dee not hit the gas pedal—hard. She slammed the car into Drive, and they shot out of their spot by the dumpster and screeched left just as the garbage truck turned into the back lot.

  Dee gritted her teeth as the car lunged and bumped off a curb. Wouldn’t it be nice, if we ever get out of this car, to not have to flee like escaped convicts every single frigging morning?

  Eddie was still cocooned in his blankets, half on the seat, half in the footwell.

  “What the hell?” he said as he struggled onto the seat.

  “Don’t say hell,” Dee said automatically.

  “You do,” he snapped, huddling deeper into his blankets.

  I thought I only thought it.

  She pulled the car over in a spot at the far end of the rec-center parking lot. She put the car in Park but didn’t shut off the engine.

  “Sorry about that, Eddie. But there was a garbage truck coming to empty that dumpster we parked beside. Didn’t want him to miss and shake us into his truck.” She held her hands like the prongs of the truck, raising their car and shaking it. “Whole new meaning to the phrase ‘dumpster-diving.’ ”

  Eddie laughed, delighted with the image of them falling through the air into a pile of garbage. He sat up and looked around. The garbage truck was disappearing down a residential street.

  “We sure will have some funny stories to tell Dad, hey, Dee?”

  “Yeah. Auntie Pat and Uncle Norm too.” If the car lasted, they could make the Canadian border today. And then what? She took a few deep breaths.

  “So…breakfast?” Eddie shivered and checked his watch. “6:07 AM. Saturday, July 26.”

  “We really are getting some good early starts here, hey?” Dee muttered. “I figure we should drive a while, then stop to get something to eat, okay?”

  She didn’t want to turn off the engine, and there was nobody else around, so Eddie peed on the grass outside the car while Dee looked away and held up the open map like a curtain. He climbed into the backseat, and then they headed out into the misty Pocatello morning, back to the I-15.

  “Still north, hey?” said Eddie as they swung onto the ramp.

  “Always.”

  “Someday want to drive west? Or east? Just to see what those directions look like?”

  “You bet. I hear southwest rocks.”

  “Probably northeast as well. Or northwest or southeast. All of ’em. Once we finish this trip north, we can maybe try out some other way.”

  “Deal,” said Dee, happy to promise anything for the future.

  They split their last granola bar for breakfast.

  MONTANA

  SATURDAY

  Blackfoot, Idaho Falls, Roberts and Dubois, and that’s all there was of Idaho.

  “Aaaand adios Idaho,” Dee murmured as the border sign came up on their right. One more state to go.

  Eddie sat up eagerly.

  “Welcome to Montana. The Treasure State!” he read.

  “Don’t get your hopes up, Eddie.” Was it her imagination, or was every day repeating itself? She looked around at the mountains in the distance. At least Montana looked kind of interesting.

  Dee had been so afraid to stop the car that she thought they must be dangerously low on gas. On the outskirts of Butte she pulled into the next station she saw. Eddie was desperate to get out of the car. He was finding it increasingly hard to sit for so long. Dee glanced at him in the rearview mirror every so often to find his eyes fixed intently on her, willing her to pull over. Or she’d notice him rocking rhythmically from side to side. Like a caged animal. Panicky.

  Dee anxiously watched the meter as the gas burbled into the car. She tallied her stash as she stood there. They had less than two hundred and fifty dollars left.

  Eddie ran around the deserted lot.

  “Hmmm, looks like a gas station, another building and a restaurant!” he ca
lled. He trotted back, his face intent. “Dee, how about getting a burger?” he asked. “With fries?” He linked his thin hands together tightly, as if in prayer.

  She hesitated. We have zero car food left. So if we eat a big meal now, we won’t need a real dinner. Maybe we could buy a few apples and granola bars. In a few quick calculations, lunch and dinner were solved.

  “Hey, good idea,” she said, turning back to the pump. Forty-two more dollars gone. “Just let me pay for the gas.”

  The diner was tiny, with only a few tables and four stools at a counter. Someone had put in a lot of work to make the place homey. One wall was covered in framed sayings. Bless this Mess. Home is Where the Heart is. Fake window frames had been painted on the dark paneling; beyond the windows brilliant white sheep grazed in fields of fluorescent green at the foot of craggy mountains. Bizarre Switzerland theme we got going here, Dee thought.

  A shelf about three feet from the ceiling ran all around the restaurant. Dolls, tons of them, sat splay-legged in varying states of stiff vacancy, staring sightlessly down. Old dolls, the kind that weren’t smiling and pink-lipped. Grim, watchful, dusty, pioneer-style dolls. Dolls for unsmiling girls in black-and-white pictures.

  Eddie looked at the doll collection and shivered.

  “Creepy,” he whispered. “Imagine when it’s dark in here. When it’s night.”

  “I know. There’s your ghost story, Eddie.”

  The place was empty, and they hesitated in the doorway.

  “Counter seats!” Eddie pointed at the stools.

  A thin, small woman bustled in from behind the Swiss mountains, wiping her hands on a tea towel.

  “Sorry, sorry, heard you come in, but I had potatoes on the boil. Is it just the two of yas?” She grabbed two menus and gestured widely. “Looks like you got your pick.”

  They settled at the counter, and the woman disappeared again.