Lucky Strikes (31 page)

“Just like that?”

“Why, sure. 'Cause once you start walking, you
know
you'll end up right back here. And we'll be waiting on you, same as always.”

I don't know if any of that took, but the sleep got easier after a time. One thing never changed, though, and that was Earle's feeling toward guns. Wouldn't go near 'em, not even on a bet. Shotguns, cap guns, air rifles—it didn't matter. Whenever his friends asked him to go squirreling, Earle'd shake his head just the once and tell them to come back when they wanted to catch trout.

*   *   *

Business kept strong through the winter. Dudley worked the store, when he weren't dreaming up next week's special or running the newest ad to the
Warren County Register
. Me, I did my best to keep the gas flowing and the engines lubricated, but the rush got so fierce sometimes I'd catch myself doing something I'd never done before—wishing for another mechanic. I even went and talked to a couple of Harley Blevins's old employees. Oh, they was decent enough fellers, knew their way round an engine, but when it come down to it, I couldn't find no one I trusted like I trust myself.

Guess that's something I'm still working on.

So here we was living on the cheap, making our bank payments, paying down our debts. Making the goddamn thing
work
. And the whole time I felt like we was in some rickety old Model T with four bald tires. All it'd take was one blowout to send us swerving off the road.

See, in the eyes of the law, me and Janey and Earle was still orphans. And orphans wasn't supposed to be running their own business, living in their own house. Orphans was supposed to be wards of the state. So what was gonna happen when the state decided to come for us?

By now I was pretty sure nobody in Walnut Ridge would rat us out—not so long as we kept their cars humming. As for Judge Barnswell of juvenile court … well, Chester kept him stocked up with Cream of Kentucky bourbon and took care to lose to him once or twice a week in seven-card stud.

When I thought on it, there was but one soul in the world who could kill the whole deal for us. And that just happened to be the same person who come bicycling past the station every Sunday, just a little after the Happy Creek United Methodist Church let out. Her hat was pinned to her head like a dead butterfly, but there weren't nothing could keep the frizzy locks of Miss Wand tied down for long. Strand after strand went whipping into the breeze, and what with the sleeves and the skirt of her dress flapping away, too, she looked like a parade's worth of flags.

But whenever she got to Brenda's Oasis, she slowed to a halt, and everything about her went quiet—her head quietest of all—and she stayed there for near a minute staring up at our sign.

And me staring at her the whole time, like she was a Model T tire about to give way. Sometimes I'd think I should just have it out with her, see which way she was tending. But looking back, I don't think she knew herself. That's why she come by every week, waiting for a sign. And the only sign she could find was ours.

So winter barreled into spring, and spring slipped away without a thought, and then June come round.

You'll get to know early June. Those first knuckles of heat come bowling up from the south and meet those cool soft bellies of mountain air, and the heat gives a punch, and the mountains punch back, and every barometer inside of ten miles gets drunk-dizzy, and the haze, before your eyes, turns from blue to gray to white and then back again. It's like the world's trying on summers in a store mirror.

Well, that's what it was like
that
morning. The morning a Studebaker Dictator, deep green, come driving down Strasburg Pike.

Moving as quiet as a car can move, I believe, and still be moving. I thought for sure it was lost, but once it turned into the station, it seemed to know where it was heading.

Earle was still at school, so I was working the pumps, and Dudley was painting his sixteen-year-old charms onto some old biddy'd come in for a candy bar. Even from thirty feet off, I could hear him. “You telling me you don't have the newest Rand McNally? Lordy, roads change round here near every day. You can get lost inside an
hour
without an up-to-the-minute map. Hey, now, is that husband of yours a fisherman? He
is
?…”

So there I was, waiting for that Studebaker to come my way, but it hung back.

By now, the glancingest of rains had started to fall. I went up to the car real slow, and I doffed my cap and peered through the tinted windows, and I said, “Can I help you, mister?”

The door opened, and a woman got out.

She was dressed right smart for Walnut Ridge. Silk-and-linen summer dress with a wide-brimmed straw hat and ivory heels. White gloves dangling from pink arms.

“Hello, Amelia.”

“We met?” I said.

She tilted her face toward the rain. “I think it's my hair,” she said. “It's not so long as it was.”

I stood there, utterly still.

Looking back, it weren't
just
the hair, it was her whole being. The only sign of the old Ida was the trace of nerves that clung to her as she kept cutting her eyes back to the car.

“Well, now,” I said. “I figured we'd seen the last of you.”

“I guess I did, too,” she said, soft as mist.

It come back to me in a beat. The sight of her flying through those hospital doors.

“It weren't right what you did,” I said. “Running off and leaving him like that.”

“I know,” she said. She give me a sheepish smile, then palmed some of the rain off her face. “If it makes you feel any less sore, it was his idea.”

“That so?”

She cut another glance back at the car. “Hiram always used to tell me I was—I was a
bird
. A wild bird that had never got around to using its wings. He'd say, ‘Ida, you've been in this nest too long. It's time you took flight.'”

“Then what you doing back here? You get tired of flying?”

“Oh, no,” she said.

And in that very moment, she looked clear gone. Like to the far side of Mongolia. Only something must've called her back because she said, “There's this one matter.”

She opened the passenger door of that car, and she reached in and brought out a wicker basket, lined in powder-blue cloth. In this basket was a baby. Fast asleep.

My hand went to my throat as I took a half step forward.

“Yours?” I whispered.

Ida hesitated, like she weren't even sure herself. Then she nodded.

“Yours and…” I started to say.

But I didn't need to finish the sentence.

“It's why I went away in the first place,” she said, smiling mournful. “I couldn't possibly have the baby in Walnut Ridge, not with all those wagging tongues. So I went and stayed with my cousin in Newport News.” She looked down at the basket. “And out she came.”

What a surprise to see Dudley ambling over to us. Wiping his hands on Hiram's old apron and flashing that professional smile. Soon as he saw that baby, though, the smile dropped right off his face.

“I can go,” he said.

“No,” I said. “Don't. I was just gonna ask Miss Ida what she thought she was doing here. With that there baby. Which she didn't want nobody to see till now.”

Her face fogged over. “Hiram…”

“Hiram ain't here. Hiram's gone.”

“But he always told me … if I got in a bind, there'd be a place here.”

“A place?” I said. “Here?”

I stared at Dudley. He stared back.

“Well, listen, Miss Ida,” he said. “There ain't much room here to spare. I mean, I sleep at the Gallaghers' most nights, and all that's left is the…” A glint of panic as he switched his eyes my way. “The bedroom over the store and that's—that's where…”

Where Hiram used to sleep.

Hotter than damnation in the summer. Colder than an Eskimo's ass in the winter. Tolerable nice in the spring, but you can't keep the window open too long or you'll get all fumey from the gas.…

Only it'd gotten a sight nicer since it was rebuilt. Had a real mattress now. Better ventilation. But I still couldn't bear for nobody to live up there.

“That might do nicely,” said Ida.

Then she did the most extraordinary thing. She took that baby out of its basket—still wrapped in its linen blankets—and set it in my arms. And my arms, without my knowing, folded themselves into a basket. So the baby never knew no difference.

Ida looked at the baby, then at me.

“She's been well cared for, Amelia. I promise you that. And she's very easy. Already weaned, drinks right out of the bottle. Sleeps till five in the morning—longer, if you hold her. She won't give us any trouble, I promise.”

Us …

“Now, it so happens,” she said, “my father isn't speaking to me anymore, so we—we can't look for much help in that direction. But I'm here to tell you I've got a little money left over from my aunt Adela. I don't know how much, exactly, but it's bound to be a help, isn't it? Oh, and this car!” With a cry of triumph, she swung back to the Studebaker. “Great Caesar, we could sell it. Sell it tomorrow. And get … oh…”

“Somewhere between nine hundred and nine fifty,” I said, numbly.

“Well, then! That's something.” Her eyes was mad with purpose now, ranging the whole circuit of Brenda's Oasis. “And in the meantime, there must be something I could do. To help pay our way…”

She stood for some while in the lightly falling rain, like she'd forgotten where she was. And me, I kept waiting for Dudley to say something. Something like
Just 'cause your hair's all normal don't mean you ain't as loco as ever
. Something like
We can't afford two more mouths to feed … even with the Studebaker and Aunt Adela's money.…

Not five minutes before, I'd been pumping diesel into a bunch of eastward-bound trucks—wondering somewhere in the back of my head where I could get my hands on lederhosen. Cars was whistling past. The air was silvery with summer.

Now I had this warm bundle pressed against me and Ida's pale stricken face before me, and all I could think to do was look at the baby she'd left in my arms.

*   *   *

That's when I gazed on
you
.

*   *   *

Your eyelids had just fluttered open, and they was still a-tremble, trying to decide if they wanted to close again. Maybe it was the rain that woke you for good.

I saw one blue eye staring at me. Another blue eye skedaddling away. I knew for true that you were his.

Well, here's the thing. If a body has bottled up every last one of its tears for five or six years … when those tears finally burst loose, it can be a scarifying thing. Looking back, I'm astounded I didn't drown you.

Funny part is the harder I cried, the happier you got. I reckon you thought I was playing some kind of game with you. So, even with my tears outrunning the rain, I was smiling, too. And when Dudley's hand landed on my shoulder, that felt like a smile, too.

“She got a name?” I heard him ask.

Ida hesitated. “Elizabeth. But if you don't—”

“Elizabeth,” I said.

It come out so easy. Sweet and clean, like I'd been saving it up my whole life.

“Now, listen here,” I said, running my free arm across my face. “Ain't nobody gonna shorten this girl's name by one letter. Ain't gonna be Lizzie. Nor Liza nor Beth.
Elizabeth
, you hear?”

They was too scared to answer.

“And another thing,” I said. “If you're gonna stay here, Ida, it's on one condition. You gotta adopt us.”

I believe her face lost a gallon of blood.

“There ain't nothing to be feared of,” I said. “All you gotta do is sign your name to a piece of paper, and it's done. I ain't gonna look to you for nothing, and Earle and Janey pretty much take care of themselves. And then, soon as I'm of age, I'll take 'em back from you, I promise. You won't even notice.”

I couldn't look at Ida, so I watched the rain, dripping like sweat, from the Brenda's Oasis sign. Then I heard her say, “If you don't mind adopting me, too.”

*   *   *

Which is just how it come to be seen by the folks of Walnut Ridge. Every time they looked at Ida, they saw a gal with barely enough sense to—well, come in out of the rain. But thanks to Mina, she's gotten mighty quick with the broom, and she always has a fresh pitcher of tea for the customers. She can't cook like Hiram, but soon as we showed her how to do chop suey, she took to it right off, and it was chop suey for breakfast, lunch, and supper till we had to beg her to stop.

She cuts her own hair, once a month, using the rearview mirror of our truck.

And every morning, when you wake up, hers is the first face you see. You may have noticed she don't lay on the hands like the rest of us do, but I think that's 'cause she still don't trust herself. She never knew her own mama, and her daddy weren't but half a daddy, so she's feeling her way there.

It weren't so long ago, her and me had just got you down for your afternoon nap, and your hands was doing that little clutching motion they do when you fall asleep. Like they're squeezing an india rubber ball. Then they went still, and we could hear your easeful breathing. Ida stared out the window and, in a soft wondering voice, said, “I should've gotten adopted a long time ago.”

*   *   *

Miss Wand no longer bicycles past Brenda's Oasis. But every Sunday, Dudley and me go to our rock, regular as church folk. We lay there, side by side, for as long as the weather allows. Holding hands, mostly, but now and then he'll hook one of his legs over mine or curl his hand real soft round my neck, and some part of me'll turn to water and the other part to ice, and there ain't no way to make the two sides meet.