Juliet in August (21 page)

And then that same year, both of Hank's traveling partners got married, one at Christmas and the other in the spring, and although no announcement was made, they all gave up rodeo for good and settled down to being plain old-fashioned mixed farmers with wives and children. Hank bought another quarter section of cultivated land and leased another of pasture so he could expand his operation. He loved his girls. Lynn believed that he loved her—that he had never stopped loving her. The night with the rodeo girl faded into a memory in the same league as high school. The threat of another woman never again reared its head.

Until today.

Lynn gathers her lunch plate and coffee cup and takes them to the kitchen, where Haley is pretty much hiding from her.

“Don't worry,” Lynn says to her. “I'm over it. You can sweep under the tables now. Please.”

Haley grabs the broom and dustpan and hurries for the door, not believing that Lynn is over whatever was bothering her. And as Haley leaves the kitchen, Lynn stares after her, at her tiny waist and her skin-tight jeans, and thinks about how her own daughters are grown up and don't need her anymore, and once again how she's let herself go. She can just hear the snobby town women like Lila Birch:
Lynn Trass has sure let herself go, hasn't she, too bad, she used to be quite attractive.
Women like Lila go to fitness classes in fancy outfits and have treadmills in their basements. Well, who but the banker's wife and the doctor's wife have got time and money for that?

Obviously, she's not over it. She goes once again to the pay phone and dials Joni's number, lets it ring until a girlish voice says hello, and then she hangs up.

It doesn't make her feel good to behave so irrationally. It just makes her feel older, and more depressed about being older. And then this makes her want to dial the number again, and listen to the voice say, “Who is this? I can trace the call, you know. If you call again, that's what I'm going to do.”

Lynn slams the phone down. They can't trace calls from a pay phone, can they? She thinks about how embarrassing it would be to get caught. But she's not giving up; she's not done with young Joni yet. She's got a cell phone out in the car for emergencies and she's pretty sure you can't trace cell-phone calls.

She goes to the door of the restaurant and yells to Haley, “I'll be right back. Everything okay in there?”

“No problem,” says Haley, who thinks Lynn is acting pretty strange today, all these trips to the foyer. She followed her once and peeked through the glass door to see where she was going, and saw that she was dropping a quarter in the pay phone. Now she watches as Lynn goes to her car. She almost expects her to get in and drive away, go on some mysterious errand, but Lynn doesn't; she gets something from the car and then walks back toward the restaurant, so Haley ducks behind the counter and makes like she's interested in what's under the glass. Not gum and candy bars as you might expect but Hank's barbed wire collection.
IMPROVED 2-POINT TWISTED
Haley reads on a card next to one of the samples of wire.
Twisted is right,
she thinks, and then,
I come from a town where people collect barbed wire.

As Lynn comes through the restaurant door, Haley notices that she's tracking a piece of yellow paper under her shoe, a flyer of some kind, and it drops right next to where Haley is standing, so she bends over and picks it up.

“‘The end is near,'” Haley reads out loud.

“What's that?” Lynn asks.

“‘The end is near,'” Haley says, holding out the flyer. “That's what it says.”

“Oh, for heaven's sake,” Lynn says. “Throw it out.”

Haley does. Then she goes to the washroom, and when she comes back she says to Lynn, “Do you think I have too much body fat?”

Lynn just about chokes. “You can't be serious,” she says.

“I don't know,” Haley says. “That's why I'm asking. Those athlete girls—the really competitive ones—have no body fat. They don't even have periods, I read, because they don't have any body fat.”

“You're not fat,” Lynn says in exasperation. She'd like to shoot the girl.
Wait thirty years,
she thinks,
and then you'll know for sure what body fat is. No periods and a whole lot of body fat. Just you wait.

“Anyway, I guess I'll go now,” Haley says. “Seth is picking me up. See you tomorrow.”

Lynn watches as Haley goes outside and stands in front of the restaurant, waiting for her ride.

Haley's replacement is late. Lynn schedules the girls so they overlap by fifteen minutes just to make sure she's not stuck on her own, especially for the supper hour. She'd better call now and make sure her next girl is coming—she thinks Rosemary is scheduled until closing, an extra-long shift. On second thought, there's another call she should make first, while she's alone. She gets out the cell phone and dials Joni's number, but this time a voice tells her that the number is unavailable. So Joni has her phone turned off. Well, Lynn thinks, that won't last long, since phones are like oxygen to girls these days. She calls Rosemary's home number (Rosemary must be the only girl in Juliet who
doesn't
have a cell phone) and is told by her mother that her boyfriend picked her up half an hour ago. Rosemary's mother wonders if something has happened.

Lynn assures her that nothing has happened. Kids, she says. They have no sense of time.

Ten minutes later, Rosemary walks in the door. “Here I am,” she announces cheerily. As though the whole world has been waiting for her, Lynn thinks.

“Call your mother, Rosemary,” Lynn says. “Let her know you're here.”

Lynn sticks the cell phone in her apron pocket, wondering if she's going crazy.

Somewhere Else

Shiloh Dolson is standing on the highway with his thumb out. This is a change in plan, but after he'd gone back to the schoolyard for his backpack and then returned to the swimming pool, his mother was gone. He'd checked the parking lot for her car and it wasn't there. He thought about walking up Main Street again looking for her, but instead he walked to the western edge of Juliet with some vague notion of going to the highway construction site where his father is working.

But cars keep passing him by. He's about to give up when, finally, a couple in a pickup stop and a woman opens the passenger door for Shiloh to hop in. He likes the fact that she slides over on the bench seat to make room, and doesn't expect him to get in the middle, like a kid. He puts his backpack on his knee, noticing that the seat behind them is stuffed with suitcases and boxes. The radio dial is set on the local station, a program called
The Trading Post
that Shiloh's mother sometimes listens to. A man named Ernie is trying to sell an old black-and-white television. The picture doesn't work, he's saying, but the sound comes in clear as a bell.

“Now who would buy a wrecked black-and-white TV?” the woman says, looking at Shiloh as if he should know the answer.

He notices that her eye makeup is smeared, as though she might have been crying. She has feathery yellow hair cut all different lengths, and Shiloh thinks she looks like a canary.

She says to Shiloh, “What possible use could an old broken-down TV be?”

Shiloh says, “You could put it somewhere you don't need to watch it and listen to the sound,” just as Ernie is saying pretty much the same thing. The shop, Ernie suggests, or maybe the garage. “That way,” Ernie says, “a guy can keep up with his programs and still get his work done.” The announcer asks Ernie how much he wants for the TV, and Ernie says three dollars or best offer.

“Why doesn't he just give it away?” the bird woman says.

“He's having fun, Janice,” the driver says. “You remember what fun is.”

Shiloh looks at him. He has tattoos on his forearms, as though he just got out of the army, or maybe jail.

“Who knows how many calls he'll get because of that TV,” says the driver, whose name turns out to be Terry. “Keep Ernie busy most of the day.”

“Well, that's sad,” Janice says. “To think someone could be so lonely.”

“He's not lonely,” Terry says. “He's inventive.”

“I hope I'm not going to cry again,” Janice says. “I'm getting tired of doing my eyes.” Then she says to Shiloh, “You're just a kid. Close your eyes if you don't want to see crying.”

There it is again.
Just a kid.

“I'm not a kid,” Shiloh says, trying to sit taller.

Terry snorts, but he doesn't say anything.

Shiloh puts his arm across the seat-back behind Janice, the way he's seen his father do when he's riding with someone else. He's careful not to touch her.

“You shouldn't take a ride with strangers, you know,” Janice says. “Where are you going, anyway?”

“There's a construction site up ahead,” Shiloh says. “I've got a job there.”

“I'm not buying that,” Terry says. “You're too young to work construction.”

Up ahead, the flag girl and her
SLOW
sign come into view. Terry whistles at her as they approach and Janice gives him a playful smack on the arm. Shiloh can see his father's truck parked in the ditch, his father on the packer with his back to them.

“So you want out here, then?” Terry asks.

“No,” Shiloh says. “There's another site up ahead.” He turns his head away from the packer as they pass slowly, and then he makes a decision that surprises him. He asks, “How far are you two going, anyway?” Once he's asked, it seems as though this had been his plan all along.

“I don't know if we should tell him,” Janice says to Terry.

“Why not?” Terry asks.

“Well, duh,” Janice says. “We're on the run, in case you didn't know.”

“We're not on the fucking run,” Terry says.

“It doesn't matter to me if you are,” Shiloh says. Then he asks, “How far west?”

“A lot farther west than your construction site,” Terry says.

“Are you going as far as Calgary?” Shiloh persists.

“Is that where the construction is?” Terry asks. “Calgary?”

“I lied,” Shiloh says. “Bible school. I go to summer Bible school in Calgary. I was supposed to catch the Greyhound, but I missed it.” He congratulates himself for coming up with this.

“Well, you're just lucky we came along, then,” Janice says.

“I guess,” Shiloh says, thinking that Janice is about as smart as the canary she resembles. “Anyway, I'll get a lift to Calgary, if you don't mind.”

“I don't think so,” Terry says.

“Terry,” Janice says. “The kid's on his way to Bible school.” She turns to Shiloh. “Just ignore him,” she says. She pauses for a minute, then asks, “So, how many brothers and sisters do you have? What's your mom like? Do you have any pets?”

Shiloh doesn't answer her. Instead he says, “This radio station is so lame.”

A woman is on the radio trying to sell living room furniture. “I have a sofa,” she is saying, “harvest gold, a little old-fashioned but in good condition. And a recliner, slightly worn. And two wingbacks, and a set of drapes, harvest gold also.”

“What are wingbacks?” the announcer asks. “Sounds like ducks. Wingback ducks.”

“Chairs,” the woman says. “They match the sofa set.”

“How come you're selling all your furniture?” the announcer asks.

“I've had the good fortune of winning a little money on the lottery,” the woman says. “My daughter thinks I should give it away to charity. She's born-again, and she doesn't believe in gambling and says the only way it's okay is if I give away the money, but I've ordered new furniture. I think I deserve that, even if my daughter doesn't think so.”

“Maybe that daughter will be at your summer Bible school,” Terry says. Then he says to Janice, “The kid's right. Change the station.”

“Just let me hear how much she's asking,” Janice says.

“I'd like eight hundred dollars for the works,” the woman says. “It all matches.”

“Way too much,” Janice says. “She'll never get that for used furniture, especially not if it's harvest gold.”

She fiddles with the dial but doesn't find anything to her liking and finally shuts the radio off. “I think it's great that you're going to Bible school,” she says. “What do you do at Bible school, anyway?”

“Bible things,” Shiloh says. Then he adds, “We sing. Hymns and junk like that.”

“He's not going to Bible school, Janice,” Terry says.

“Is that true?” she asks Shiloh.

He doesn't answer.

“Oh,” says Janice. “Well, I guess that doesn't surprise me. Probably a good thing. Those Bible girls are all so dowdy. They don't wear makeup, you know. God, I just hate to think. You should see me with no makeup.”

Shiloh listens to Janice and thinks she's like a hard rubber ball bouncing around on a piece of concrete, veering off in whatever direction the surface sends her. He wonders what they're running away from. The only thing he can think of is the law.

As though she can read his mind, she says, “We're really in love, you know, me and Terry. His wife and the whole town hate us, but they don't understand.”

“Janice,” Terry says. “He's a kid. Stop telling him stuff, for Christ's sake.”

There's a box of Kleenex on the floor at Shiloh's feet and Janice reaches down for it, then sits with it on her lap.

“I'm not a kid,” Shiloh says.

“Yes, you are,” Terry says, “and this is as far as your ride goes.” Terry pulls over onto the shoulder and reaches across Janice to open the passenger side door. “Out you go,” he says. “Running away is serious business. Believe me, you're not nearly old enough. Wait until you're our age and then maybe give it a try.”