–Yuma, California 1994–
Thumper sits with her leg propped on a stack of almanacs. Saddled in the Tiago motorhome, she tries Mezcal for the first time. Sonrisa Tristé. Her mouth is a wet campfire of spit. She’s coughing, each gasp is a noticeable dagger in her knee. This is a summer of many firsts for her. She’s embarrassed to feel the most alive, after months of passiveness, in this moment while a woman is dying.
Her mother and new husband, Stan McKinnley, the GM of Sears in Maricopa County, left for an extended honeymoon now that it was July. No one needed to feel bad for taking off without Thumper anymore. The secondary infection and final rounds of antibiotics were finished and flushed out of her system. Perfect time for two weeks in Orlando and a drive through Key West.
The 10th grade was mostly a blur for Thumper, like it didn’t really happen. A torn ACL and back to back bacterial infections. No more softball and barely passing any of her classes. She has summer school to look forward to when she returns. Her father would be meeting her in Houston in another thirteen days.
Until then it was the RV life with her grandfather, an absentee eccentric her mom still just called Odell.
Thumper’s right leg, the good one, shakes as her foot bounces up and down on the linoleum floor. Couldn’t ever sit still, a twitchy rabbit. It feels wrong of her to turn on the radio or crack open a book, even glance at the crossword in the paper. The woman, someone’s Abuela, if not everyone’s on this street, clung to Odell as if he’d been the missing piece to her life.
He must remind her of someone—a friend, a brother, a lover. Thumper figured after their first chance encounter two days ago at the gas station taqueria. The woman’s spine curved downward so badly she couldn’t really have looked Odell straight in the eye. Maybe she did mistake him for someone else. So long as he didn’t let go of her rattan hand, it didn’t seem to matter anyway.
After all, Thumper didn’t plan on tearing her ACL when it happened. She isn’t sure that this woman, her Spanish a dithering pile of incomprehensible mutters, didn’t manifest Odell to be the chaperon to her final days. What with her rosary and the wooden crosses that hung in her tiny salmon-colored kitchen.
Though useless, Thumper had held the door open into the smaller still bedroom of the Abuela’s condo, while Odell guided her to the bed to rest. It was the direct eye contact from a carving of Jesus Christ and his bleeding crown adorned above the bed that sent Thumper back to the Tiago. She can’t imagine sleeping under that gruesome effigy night after night, let alone staring up at it one last time until the wooden hand of Christ reached down to claim your soul.
Two sips of Mezcal and regret later, Odell finally throws open the RV door. His entire body is weeping, from heat, exhaustion and remorse. His thinned and grayish hair is woolier than hers at this point. He holds a striped cat and is much whiter in the face than previously.
The cat’s name is Luz. He was the woman’s last friend.
*
San Diego card, Phoenix card, Baltimore card that somehow got in there. Thumper holds each one up to Luz. The cat, indeterminable in age, raises its dark nose to the postcards presented and sniffs curiously. There’s faint brown residue on the Baltimore card, which piques his interest. Thumper pushes Luz back until he graciously falls onto his side. She folds the postcard and shoves it into her shirt pocket.
Luz un-assumedly poses while Thumper takes her Polaroid and snatches another photograph of him. “You’re really weird,” she comments behind the lens. She wobbles the printed photograph and searches amongst her motel stationary splayed out on the picnic table. Somewhere in the mess was her unfinished letter to her best friend, Ro.
Ro went to Soccer Camp in June and is now taking surfing lessons in Maui.
Thumper has less and less to write to her about.
Odell’s snakeskin cowboy boots stumble through the gravel, hands full of burgers, fries and sodas. He barks out in his scratchy voice, “Come on, come on, get this shit off the table. Bad enough you brought the cat.”
She hasn’t seen Odell’s eyes all morning, he’s been hiding them under his black circular sunglasses. He pushes her postcards, stickers and polaroids to the side of the table as she tries to quickly scoop all of it back into her vintage Scooby-Doo lunchbox. Luz watches all of their motions until his bright eyes lazily discover the burgers and seasoned fries sitting within reach.
He looks stunned when Thumper presents him with a plain burger, no sauces or cheese.
“Comida.” She wiggles the bun in front of him.
It’s more than enough provocation. Luz slinks off the table with his prized burger patty and hides under their feet.
Three bites into her own burger, cheek full of the saltiest fries she’s ever tasted, she mumbles, “I saw a sign for a drive-in theater a while ago.”
“We’re not going that way.” Odell shrugs, stubble caked in mustard and relish.
Her clipped up mop hair sits heavy on her head as she sweats profusely. “What does it matter?”
He slurps his soda and then downs the rest of his lukewarm Pilsner can. “There’s a game tonight. Dodgers are on a hot streak. I got some good money sitting on it, you know that.”
“You’re not even from California, Grandpa. Who gives a crap?”
His wiry eyebrows raise, his smirk revealing a gold tooth in the corner of his mouth. “I think probably your mother. Paying off those goddamn medical bills. What with you living in the hospital like it’s the Ritz fucking Carlton.”
Thumper drops her burger back on to the plate. “Bullshit.”
“Call her, I dare you.” He mocks like a schoolboy.
That melon-sized pain in her knee starts to swell. She ignores it. “Oh yeah if you have so much money, why don’t you get a nicer RV? Or a real house instead of bumming around in these nowhere towns?”
Odell crosses his arms, leans in close and pushes his sunglasses down. Eye to eye, his stare isn’t so impressed with her. “Okay, Thumps. Who says I have so much money? Between me, your daddy, your mother and what’s his fuck McKinnley, ain’t none of us really any better off than each other.”
Thumper bites down hard on the side of her cheek. Her nostrils flare as she says, “That’s why you’re all passing me around like a ragdoll.”
His face twitches. She’s stumped him.
Luz pops up from under the table once more, in hopes of another patty.
“I like having you around.” Odell stumbles over his words.
His insincerity somehow rang true to Thumper. He wasn’t much one for kind words, especially apologies. She figures this is the closest thing to one she’ll get out of him for the remainder of their voyage. If she pushes harder, he would surely compare her to her mother and go off about that for another uncomfortable ten minutes.
Instead, Thumper pushes her food away and takes a deep breath. She considers her next move carefully. Luz bats around at some crumpled burger wrappers. Odell takes a long sip from his soda when she speaks up.
“Was that the first time you’d seen someone die?” Thumper cocks her head.
She hopes he’ll squirm, just a little bit. But his subdued reaction simply disappoints her. Odell scratches his chin and his eyebrows furrow. The register in his voice drops slightly, possibly mournful. “S’been a while,” he admits.
“Was she sick?”
Odell shrugged. “Does it matter?”
“Did she have a name?”
He’s quieter now. “Didn’t come up.”
Thumper hates herself for wondering. “Should we have left her there by herself? I mean what’s gonna happen if no one comes looking for her?”
He doesn’t have an answer for her. The two sit in silence. Thumper recalls Abuela’s ancient mechanical movements and the layers of age baked into her paper thin skin. Somewhere in there was a full person who had a life and friends at some point. Now she had all but vanished and eventually Thumper and Odell would forget about her like everyone else had.
“You make it look so easy to walk away,” Thumper says, unsure of how much disgust she feels within herself or towards her grandfather. His lack of a response doesn’t ease her discomfort and rising sadness. She pushes her palm up to her right eye as soon as she feels the sting of a single tear.
Thumper stands—or tries to—awkwardly from the bench, nearly folding over in half as her knee gives way to her weight. She inhales, minding the pain. Odell looks up, confused more than concerned, and his attempt to offer a hand means nothing when the table is right there to stable her. She scoops up their trash in a sweeping motion and throws everything onto a soppy wet pile of cold fries and greasy paper bags.
She limps back to the burger stand. Luz tries to follow her, but Odell grabs him by the tail as soon as his legs land on the gravel. Luz lets out a surprised caterwaul as Odell hoists him up by his tail and tosses him back onto the table.
*
Thumper cries into the sink of the small public bathroom. She sniffles and rubs her eyes as hard as she can, pushing away her confusion. She wants to go home, not to Houston. She doesn’t like her dad’s new apartment and likes his new blondie girlfriend Terri even less. But since Stan moved into her and her mom’s duplex, she didn’t really feel at peace there anymore either. She wishes she was with Ro.
Her tears dry up and she wonders if hitchhiking is as easy as it looks in the movies.
Eventually she limps out of the bathroom and returns to the counter with the keys that are attached to a souvenir license plate that reads MOVEOVR. She taps the bell and waits for the waitress to return from the kitchen. Her eyes scan around the inside of the joint, the menu is handpainted on the glass windows, which are reversed for her on the inside.
It’s so hot in here, she wonders how the cooks don’t keel over.
“That’s not funny,” she chastises herself.
Her hair starts to fall in front of her face, thick heavy curls she can hardly contain. Thumper pushes her hair around and shoves as many pieces as she can back into the alligator clip on her head.
From behind the counter she hears a faceless voice, “You need something, babygirl?”
Her stomach lurches at the pet name. She backs up slowly and starts to head out. “Just leaving the bathroom keys! Thank you.”
Turning full force on her good leg, she steps outside incorrectly and nearly takes a tumble right into the dirt. A stranger walking by—trucker-like, jeans and a long sweat-stained tee—grabs her by the arm immediately. His face is obscured by heavy facial hair and the bill of his hat. He easily steadies her with just one hand. “Careful there.”
He indicates to the box beside her that she tripped over.
“That wasn’t there before,” she starts to tell him, only to see that the dusty trucker is on his way already having completed his good deed for the day. She stares at her unassuming assailant, unaccounted for and awkwardly placed in front of the storefront.
It isn’t any old box, it’s an entire trunk.
Bound by leather straps, bolts and a giant hook latch at the center, she stares in awe at its size. She could easily climb in there herself and stowaway, if she really wanted to. The brass bolts have chinks and the reddish wood has deep scratches, a wary traveler in its own right. On the side panel, in a fabulous bold font that takes up the upper half, reads,
“BIRCHWOOD & CARGO – EST. 1864”
It’s hideously abrasive in its size and presentation.
Nothing rural about it.
No one here to claim it.
As Thumper carries herself back to Odell’s Tiago, her head feels like a bobbing fishing line, ready to swing back to look at that trunk some more. A piece of rock flies into the back of her tennis shoe, which slows her down and gives her another excuse to check over her shoulder. Her foot rolls around in the canvas shoe, avoiding the pointed pebble, when she hears a series of chords playing to the west of the parking lot.
Sounds like fiddling.
Country, but folksy. Bluegrass, she thinks.
The quickening string medley guides her towards the other end of the truck station. In the reflection of the station mart’s wide windows, the semi trucks rise and fall in shapes and heights, almost as if following the fiddler’s chords note for note.
A crowd gathers in the parkway outside the storefront. Thumper recognizes the waitress in the blue apron from the burger stand, amidst a sea of short, wide, and lanky truck drivers and a few passerby travelers. Whoever is conducting the string music hides at the front of the crowd. Thumper only sees bits and pieces of them, one hand on the neck of the violin, an elbow and bow sticking out, pieces of clothing and hair, but never a full picture.
The truckers are rowdy with excitement, especially when one steps forward with a banjo to accompany the player. The singular fiddling is lively and light. The music floats above the crowd and like a sprinkler, litters the entire lot with raining bluegrass melodies. The adjoining banjo does not take over, the fiddle is the maestro of this duet. However, both string instruments work in tandem, picking up a pace of excitement and freedom that possesses the small crowd with rhythm in their hands and feet.
In the fidelity, Thumper briefly sees the Fiddler.
Rosy dimpled cheeks and long hair, so black it’s nearly blue.
“They’re just a little kid?” She asks softly.
That’s when the Fiddler glanced up, a small mouth upturned in an innocent smile.
Her voice, deeper than a girl her age had any right to be, comes out firm and heavenly.
“I hope y’all like this one as much as I do.”
Thumper doesn’t move. She doesn’t belong in the rhythm.
Yet the Fiddler’s voice reaches her ears like a rope, gliding into one earhole and out the other, ready to string Thumper into a phonetic embrace. The innocence and warmth fills within Thumper like a tonic of pure affection she never knew before. A much better drunken exchange than drinking Odell’s Mezcal. She feels flighty, yet her feet are firmly planted.
She’s so alive.
Goosebumps prickles her arms as she lightly swings them back and forth.
There’s absolutely no pain in the Fiddler’s music.
The crowd is clapping and Thumper’s good foot starts to stomp along.
“Phoebe!”
Odell grabs her, hand brandishing her bicep like a lever, and pulling so hard she falls over herself. No one else really seems to notice though. Not when the music is so good. No one really cares that Thumper is smacking Odell with all her might as he pulls her away.
No one seems to hear her when she says she hates him.
The fiddling keeps on playing.
*
Pothole. The Discman player skips again, so Thumper replays the song.
Her hand cramps as she puts down her blue pen. She reviews her letter to Ro, folding back not one, not two, but six notebook pages worth of notes and doodles. She searches inside her tin lunchbox for those crafting scissors. Then she pulls out the Rolling Stone and Teen People magazines kept in her backpack. She flips through one, then the other, in search of the right photo to clip and tape to the end of her letter.
Luz, lounging on the dining table as the freeway passes them by out the window, watches as Thumper holds up the Stone magazine. She points to a handsome young man with deepset eyes, dressed in a stylish leather jacket sans a shirt underneath and some very pressed and black jeans. His light red hair is swept back and his smile is a bit crooked. He holds a Fender Jag-Stang over his head, as if he’s carrying all the weight of rock music on his shoulders.
She taps on the photo as if Luz can understand.
“Saltz. You like that name?” Thumper asks.
Jefferson Saltz. The lead singer of Glass Hand Joes, a grunge band.
Her favorite band.
Thumper sports the Joes’ band sweatshirt that Ro gave her before leaving for the summer, even though it’s hot in the Tiago. She’s replayed their 1991 album, Helltown, USA, six times already since leaving the truck stop. Drum solo’d the eighth song on the album, “Everything Must Go”, to perfection with just her pens and highlighters.
She lets her hair down and plays with it in the window reflection. Jefferson Saltz said in an interview last May that he had a crush on TV’s Alyssa Milano. Thumper wishes her hair wasn’t so large and frizzy. Ro’s hair was much straighter, but Thumper has dark eyes like Milano.
She sighs, feeling defeated by her expectations.
Luz licks his paws. She pokes him with one of her pens. “Saltz. Hey. Saltz?”
“You say something?” Odell calls from the front seat.
“Fuck off, old man,” Thumper says, unsure if he could hear her.
The song, “Serafina,” is next on the album. It’s slower, somber, acoustic.
Ro’s personal favorite.
*
The Fiddler girl wore knee-high socks and a blue floral dress with white trim.
Just how Odell remembered her.
How he left her.
He all but threw Thumper into the back of the motorhome and tore out of there the moment he started the engine. He’s stewed for three hours on the road, hearing the music, those particular chords and her lofty voice. The endless stretch of soil and dry weeds on the horizon feels as if he’s been traveling back in time. Should he pull over and take a good look in the back of the camper, would anyone even be there?
*
The sun dips into the horizon as Thumper shuffles herself into the passenger seat. Her leg is tired and stiff. She sits with two Advil in her hand and dry swallows, hoping she really won’t have to start the conversation first. Odell’s hands are at ten-and-two, his gait rigid, wide-eyed and staring at something far, far away. She leans across the way and touches his elbow.
“Hey kiddo,” he says too quickly.
She stares at him, waiting for the snap, for their unfinished argument to really begin.
He’s completely unbothered by her being there. It’s unnerving.
She twiddles her thumbs, hidden in her sleeves. “You know, I was thinking we should probably stop so the cat can go out. I know he’s not like a dog, but he hasn’t gone to the bathroom all day.”
Odell simply nods. “Sure thing. Next town. We can get some food.”
She pauses. Still waiting for the explosion. “Isn’t the game on?”
“The what?”
“The Dodgers. They’re playing the Cubs, right? Or is it the Blue Jays tonight?”
He stares at her, eyes a thousand yards away, hurrying to get back to here, in the Tiago. Odell lifts his wrist, checking his watch that has fallen under his hand. He makes a noise, possibly a laugh, and then places it firmly back on the wheel. “There’s time,” he sounds disinterested.
Thumper doesn’t hold back. “The hell is wrong with you, Grandpa? Why are you acting so weird?”
He stares at her. Then back to the blackening road. His eyes dart to the rearview mirror and her again in a cycle of confusion. His breath quickens and without thinking, his right arm drops, and the Tiago pivots into the shoulder. The stop is sudden, Saltz cries out in the back in protest as he skitters under the table in the kitchenette.
A car and its hollering horn whizz past.
Thumper braces herself. Tongue swallowed as she prepares to be flipped backwards or forwards or any which way except the right side up. She’s too stunned by Odell’s horrendous maneuver to make so much as a peep.
Apparently, so is he.
The left side of the motorhome vomits. Plates, cups, empty beer cans and crackers, a first aid kit, empty camera roll boxes, a luau girl themed calendar and tchotchkes that haven’t seen the light of day since 1973, are suddenly splayed across the right side of the vehicle. Saltz hisses and bats at the rolls of pennies and old jolly ranchers that rained upon him. Everything that holds the Tiago together shudders as the engine sputters on like a clogged heart in desperate need of a bypass.
Thumper’s knee reminds her of pain. Granted not the same pain as it was in the hospital, but an angry pissed off pain that was going to keep her awake for the rest of the night. Her arms askew, one above her head and the other squished into the passenger’s arm rest. Her breath catches up to her finally.
She never wondered if Odell might actually try to get her killed until just now.
Dead or alive, Mom is never going to hear about this.
She sits herself right as the visor overhead spits out loose papers and a folded photograph. Her deep breathing is to quiet her mind and the raging ache bubbling in her knee. She tosses some of these envelopes and old betting numbers to the floor.
The photo keeps her attention, momentarily. Until she hears the strange heaving from the driver’s side. Odell sits at the wheel, hands balled into a fist as he angrily pummels himself in the face, dragging tears and anger down into his lap.
“I’m sorry,” he manages. “I didn’t mean it. I didn’t know!”
Thumper leans forward, one hand reaching out, unsure of where to place it.
Her other hand unfolds the photo, finger tracing the crease that kept the photo in half for who knows how long. Weathered and grainy, a nighttime picture with blown-out exposure. She recognizes the centerpiece.
The trunk is open, the lettering the same.
Birchwood & Cargo.
Est. 1864.
Odell wipes his nose as he agonizes in the driver’s seat.
“Grandpa, where’d you take this? How old is this picture?” Thumper flips over the photo, searching for a name or date on the back, finding the worn-in crease by its lonesome. She studies it again, likening the trunk and each visible angle to her brief memory from earlier today. It wasn’t too hard to remember. Red wood, brass bolts, leather straps. Here again on film, trapped in the anonymity of time.
He’s so upset. She’s never seen Odell cry. Not over anything or anyone. She wonders what her mom might do to appease him, but then again, he probably never cried in front of her either. She glances nervously into the disaster of the motorhome, an idea brewing. She swallows and firmly places her hand on his shoulder.
He’s actually trembling.
“Grandpa?” She gives him one good shake. “Let’s have a drink.”
*
Saltz sits in her lap, chin resting on her shoulder like a baby, or possibly because he doesn’t really care for Odell and can’t stand the sight of him any longer. Thumper holds him tight against her as she mindlessly drinks the tumbler of mezcal and lime soda like she’s been doing it her entire life. Her body buzzes, but she’s only there to sit still and listen.
Odell rattles on.
It’s after his second tour of Vietnam, 1963. Mom is two years old. She’s only met him once before and is waiting for him back home in San Diego alongside Grandma Vera. Uncle Benji is six and starting Little League and Odell promises to be home for his first game. Odell is getting picked up at the airbase in San Clemente by his cousin Julie’s fiancé, some high ranking man and a buddy. Eugenio and Dale. Or the other way around.
Less than a hundred miles from the city limits.
They decide to go drinking to celebrate.
“One drink and then we had to get back. Julie and Vera were getting the house ready. Big barbeque on Saturday. Benji’s game was Sunday.” Odell stares into his glass. Thumper filled it too much with ice. She did need him to stay relatively sober though.
He talks about the bar, Summer Daze, and the layout and the brick floors. High ceilings and palm leaves everywhere. It’s too new and boutique for being so close to the rural airbase. The drinks in America are too sweet for him now. There’s a deer head on the wall. He thinks it’s cruel to shoot deers when boars are so meaner. And uglier.
The barkeep treats soldiers right. Tells his waitresses to keep their glasses full. Odell never felt so much like royalty before. The waitresses are young, but not as young as the ones in Saigon. Eugenio and Dale know all their names. They catch him up on politics and baseball. Odell wants to buy another Thunderbird motorcycle, just like the one he had before, until Vera made him sell it when they married.
That’s all he really wants to talk about at the bar.
Benji’s game is on Sunday too. Can’t forget about that.
There’s a stage on the west side of the bar. Hard to fully see from their booth and the large serving bar in between, but it’s there. Thick brown velvet curtains and gold trim. There’s no microphone set up and no spotlight. No mention of any singers or bands stopping by tonight, although it got pretty crazy on the weekends from what Eugenio and Dale say.
Odell doesn’t think much about it until he needs to pee.
He wanders the bar, the waitresses grin extra wide at him as he passes by, and stumbles into the men’s room on the west side of the bar. It’s not until he comes out piss-free that he sees it there cast to the side of the stage with all the other equipment.
A trunk. Birchwood & Cargo he reads, the big bold letters are hard to miss.
He finds it kinda funny. That trunk is too big and heavy to be made of birchwood.
Eugenio and Dale can be heard laughing back at the booth. His watchface reads a quarter to nine. Odell knows they’re going home late. But they are going home, come hell or high water if Julie and Vera have anything to do about it. He realizes he should probably call. His legs already feel like rubber.
But he couldn’t take the call inside the bar.
Vera wouldn’t like knowing he was out having fun without her when he was supposed to be home in thirty minutes.
One of the waitresses with shiny blonde hair directs him to a phone booth outside. Three of them lined the siding of Summer Daze. New steel and glass and bright crisp lights. He jostles the change in his pocket as he waits for someone to pick up.
Benji’s little voice answers on the third ring. Says exactly what he was told to say when answering the phone, “Lewis Residence. Benjamin Lewis speaking.”
Odell looks like he might start crying again at the thought.
“Oh, excuse me, Mr. Lewis, you must be the big man of the house.” He holds himself in the phone booth, drunken with pride.
The phone explodes in boyish glee. “Daddy?! Is that really you?!”
He can barely get three words in as Benji chirps on about every single thought going on in his head. What he had for dinner and the stars on his pajamas. Within seconds, Vera hoists the phone away and her tone shifts almost immediately as he says hello. “Jesus, you’re already drunk?”
He tries to explain. She asks him how many he actually had.
Come to think of it, three didn’t sound as bad as a number as he realized.
Vera disagrees.
That’s when he saw the girl in the road. Knee-high socks, a blue floral dress, and hair blacker than a midnight rain. She’s looking around, confused, eyes drawn only to the small radius around her. Odell tells Vera there’s a girl, but he isn’t clear enough for her to understand as he hangs up.
The moment he steps out of the phone booth, the temperature is soberingly cold.
He knows exactly how to talk to her. She’s no older than Benji.
“Are you looking for something?” Odell asks, squatting down to her level. The Summer Daze is a source of light and levity for both of them, while the rest of the road is cold and consumed in a summertime darkness. The girl stares at him with big wet eyes. In her hands he sees a fiddle.
A violin? He isn’t sure of the difference if not semantics.
She’s looking for the bow. What kind of fiddler plays without her bow?
Odell nods and stands up, now entranced in the search himself. He asks her if her parents are at the bar. His loafers sink into the mud and weeds by the roadside. She follows him simply with her eyes. “Is someone looking for me?” She asks in a sweet voice.
“I should hope so,” he smiles back at her.
He isn’t sure how much time has passed before Eugenio and Dale come outside, hooting and hollering for him. Just as he looks up, eyes readjusting to the neon lights of the Summer Daze sign, she pips up herself.
“Here it is!” She’s so happy.
The bow attached to her hand now like a missing limb, she thanks him. She thanks him with a toothy grin and bounces on her tippy-toes. She’s smaller than Benji, although something in her face, her eyes a pearlescent shine he can’t quite colorize, gives her a wizened maturity he’s never seen in another little girl before.
And then she started to play.
For him, he knows this is music never constructed before and never will be again.
So he sits down in the grass and weeds. It doesn’t matter if his suit is dirty. It doesn’t matter if anyone is looking for him or that he needs to get home to Vera, Benji and the baby. The music, layers of sweetness doled out in delicious strides and chords, she knows exactly how to perform for his heart.
Eugenio and Dale hoist him from the mud. They’ve come out of nowhere.
Odell is sobbing. He’s smiling but he’s crying for something deep inside that he didn’t realize was there. As the two men straighten him up and wipe away at his suit, he suddenly mourns for that same feeling as it dissipates. The two of them ask him repeatedly what the hell is he doing, why did he wander off? Their breaths are hot and the liquor is plentiful on their lips.
The Fiddler stands in wait.
“We can’t just leave her here!” Odell insists.
“Is your mommy in there waiting tables?” Dale asks.
“What about your daddy?” Eugenio follows.
The girl shakes her head. “I don’t know where they are.”
Odell goes to pick her up. She’s as heavy as a bag of dog food, a sack of potatoes, groceries in one arm and one gallon of milk in the other. She’s nothing in his arms. She has no hesitations. When he looks at her again, ever so cautious, he can feel something inside. Like hot dripping wax caught on the back of his hand, a sense of unease not yet felt this side of the oceans.
Children were misleading in Saigon too.
He shakes it off.
Eugenio or Dale mentions a police station on the way into town. The three of them return to their Chevy truck at the front of the Summer Daze parking lot. There isn’t room in the cab for all four of them. The girl and her fiddle need to be seated. Dale offers to sit in the bed. Odell seconds, it’ll only be a few miles downwind and his luggage is back there to hold onto. Eugenio keeps staring at her, as if he’s never seen a child before.
“He’s intimidated by pretty little girls,” Dale pinches her cheek.
Odell leans over and messes with the radio.
“You can play with this can’t you?” He asks her.
She only has eyes for him. Hopefulness and a need to please. She raises her bow and adjusts the fiddle against the crook of her shoulder, a rifleman of strings. She nods her head as the truck starts up and the radio crackles.
From the back of the truckbed Odell gives her a thumbs up.
She smiles once more, joyful if ever a girl could be, and begins to challenge the radio.
“What did the police say when you brought her in?” Thumper interrupts.
Saltz kneads into her shoulder, out of fear possibly, maybe because she wants him to be scared like her.
Odell takes the handle of the Sonrisa Tristé mezcal and contemplates it in his hands for a long time.
Finally, he takes a swig. “We didn’t make it that far.”
*
A film of asphalt and blood coats his teeth like overcooked pudding.
Face down on the road, his hands are trembling out before him. He can hear the screams. He can smell the smoke. He wonders if he can stand up, if he can face whatever is behind him. One of his shoes is missing. His ankle might be broken. He hobbles up to his hands and knees and slowly turns his head in the direction of all the noise.
It’s there, on the road. Opened up like a gaping trout mouth.
Birchwood & Cargo. Unlatched. Immovable.
Across the way, guided by the burning trail of rubber, the Chevy is overturned in a ditch. The cab compressed into the trunk of a pine tree. Flames engulfing the engine. A mechanical nightmare of glass, metal, and debris lay dormant like body parts across this road.
The Summer Daze is out of sight, oblivious to the fire.
One foot in front of the other, Odell trips over himself into some kind of walk. He heads towards the Chevy on fire. He has no sense of what to do. He can’t even think straight. His mind is weathered by the docile strings from the fiddle, as if clouding any other thought. He can’t remember the crash. He can’t remember flipping out of the back and landing face-first into the asphalt.
He can’t remember Dale falling under as the Chevy turned.
He can only see the aftermath of where the bed crushed him.
Dale’s portion of body crushed into the earth, returned to nature by way of smashed bones and an abundance of blood. His hand, in one piece, rigor-mortised into a grip, as if hoping God might provide him a last moment revival, a chance to slip out from under the weight of the truck as it rolled over.
This road remains completely Godless.
Something blows in the engine, the fire is spreading to the pine tree and dry grass.
Odell runs up to the truck bed, cursing at his mobility as he hoists himself up. He can break the glass on the back window and pull out the others. This is the plan. He’s done something of the sort already. Someone is coming, he promises himself, someone who can do the right thing better than him.
But for now he has to start the work.
The closer he reaches the back window, the louder the screaming is.
Eugenio.
Maybe the impact crushed his legs, broke his arm, his nose, gave him something really hard to think about for a moment as the fire began to spread inside the hub. That isn’t what he is screaming about.
She’s on him like a leech.
Odell kneels down and can see even as the flames radiate around them, everything dyed in Lucifer’s blush, the parts of Eugenio’s skin torn from his face. The pulling of muscles and tendons like taffy in her small hands. The glistening of his severed eyeball popping in her mouth like a gumball. The sharp features of her nails and teeth, muted by the massive pools of blood that gush from Eugenio’s face.
A demon. A goblin. An animal.
It’s all food to her.
*
Odell sits quietly.
Thumper starts gulping her mezcal, numb to the burn now.
Saltz’s little heart beats against her chest.
He doesn’t know what’s going on. But she thinks maybe he really does.
“The passenger’s door was smashed. Driver’s couldn’t open. So I just stood there and waited for her to burn.”
“Did she notice you?”
He nodded. “Beat on the window as soon as she did. I backed away. She got louder. So I just kept backing away until I couldn’t hear her anymore.”
“How’d you make it back home?”
“Don’t remember.”
The two of them sit. She stares at him, and him at her.
“I never told her my name though. But once she started screaming, she said it like she’d said it a thousand times. Almost sounded like Benij once I got far enough away.”
“Did you ever tell Uncle Benji or Mom about any of this?”
He tilted his head. “And what fucking good would that have done?”
*
The motel is called Six Roses. All Access Cable and air conditioned.
Outside the California and Arizona border. Right off the freeway.
Didn’t feel right to sleep in the Tiago tonight.
Saltz didn’t drink from the cup of water given to him. He licks from the sink faucet in the tight bathroom before returning to bed. He curls up beside Thumper, purring contently before placing himself in the space of her arm. She sits with one hand holding her head up and the other mindlessly petting him.
The highlight reel for the Dodgers game is on for a few more minutes. Then more news, then a talk show or something. It didn’t matter, neither she nor Odell were watching. The gas station snacks and cigarette pack remained untouched. She has her headphones on, but hasn’t touched the discman since laying down. Her mind is too loud for any music right now.
Odell sits on the other twin bed, tightlipped and lost again.
She never understood what her mother thought about him. It wasn’t hatred, but something was surely missing between them. It couldn’t have been that bad though. It couldn’t have gotten any worse. But maybe if Mom knew. Maybe if she sat down with him and Uncle Benji, the three of them hashing this out, it would be better than never knowing at all.
Thumper glances at the envelope with Ro’s letter, ready to be mailed off in the morning.
Maybe Ro wasn’t going to know everything about her either.
*
Odell gets up around 1am to get some ice. He doesn’t need to.
He just wants to.
He’s seen the commercial for the new outlet mall in Scottsdale at least twelve times and has the Sears’, Macy’s, McDonald’s and Checkers addresses and phone numbers committed to memory. If he sat through another infomercial for a goddamn kitchen appliance he might chuck the entire TV out the window. Which would do a whole lot of nothing considering they were sleeping on the ground floor.
The outdoor hall lights are muted, but the pink and red hues of the Six Roses’ neon sign cast everything in a violet hue. He stands at the ice machine and considers the Pepsi machine beside it. There isn’t a need for anything, he’s not thirsty and he’s not even that hot. He just needs to be moving. He’s always needed to keep moving away from those silent spells.
For almost thirty years, sitting still for too long allowed the music to come right back to him. A pair of soft hands cupping his ears, the music would grab him, take his head and turn all other noise and sound inside out.
Hell, he could hear the Fiddler playing even now.
The ice machine chokes out the last pieces of ice into the bucket. Once exhausted from the task the machine settles. The vending machine follows, stalling out momentarily. Odell lifts his head, present once again and grounded in his stance, and he realizes the music hasn’t stopped.
It’s quiet, but not because he was thinking about it.
He can hear the fiddling, a beckoning from nearby.
His snake boots turn toward the sound as a voice from within begins to rise.
It’s telling him to run.
Each step he defies the instinct, his heart aches. His eyes begin watering, a feat he finds impossible after having expelled years of sorrow and remorse into his hands earlier that day. He didn’t think he had any tears left to shed. Yet he remembers this tune, the Fiddler’s Song, his song, and his heart feels full in a way he didn’t expect to ever feel again.
Indescribable love.
The kind priests wax on about in chapels when someone has died or someone has wed. The kind that monks stoically meditate on for a lifetime. The kind that Odell often promised to the bar harpies who were already half undressed and needing that final motivation to take off their threadbare bras. An impossible promise of fulfillment and serenity, encapsulated by four strings and a bow.
He wonders if the Fiddler’s Song—the Fiddler’s Euphoria—is really meant to be heard more than once in a lifetime.
He stands outside the glass box lobby, cascaded in the violet hues of the motel sign, where the fiddling reaches a crescendo of volume. Like a porcelain ballerina entrapped in a snowglobe, the Fiddler sits on the desk. Head cradling her violin, hands placed so meticulously on the neck and strings, eyes closed. Her music, Bluegrass inspired, melodically all her own.
The Fiddler’s Exhibit.
Odell places his hand on the glass window.
His other hand grips on the flat metal handle.
The warning voice inside is all but screaming at him now—Look at the floor—He recognizes the tone now, female for sure. It isn’t warm and welcoming like the Fiddler’s, but still young just the same. He’d gotten so accustomed to tuning out Vera, maybe he should have been listening to her all this time.
The Fiddler raises her head. Black hair parting and revealing her red-smeared face.
—Look at the floor…Look at the goddamn floor—
Her eyes feral, the color of moonshine. Her irises are missing.
—Jesus fucking Christ, Grandpa! Just look down!—
The Fiddler’s feet kick against the desk, splashing blood on the panel. Like she skipped around in a puddle of red and paraded her way into the motel lobby. The viscera her paints and the linoleum her canvas. Wherever the body of the motel clerk was, Odell knew they would be carrying him out in buckets instead of a body bag.
The Fiddler smiles at him. She can still smile like a little girl.
“Hello, my old friend.”
*
Helltown, USA, track four plays, “One-Trick Pony”.
Thumper is blushing. Jefferson Saltz tells her that she asks the best interview questions. Better than anyone on MTV. He coyly plays with his microphone, spinning it around in his tattooed hand, and admits he was wondering something about her—when the door slams open and Odell is on top of her, violently shaking her awake.
“We gotta go!” He repeats, wildly brandishing a tire iron.
She searches around for Saltz, remembering the dark motel room interior and the kink in her neck from the rough pillows. She fell asleep in her clothes and shoes. The headphones now tangled in her hair. Groggily, but worried, she juts out of the bed.
“What’s going on?!”
“She’s here.” Odell declares.
“What? Who’s here?”
He’s shoving the Tiago keys into her hands and dragging her toward the bathroom.
“It’s her. She found us.”
This time, it registers. Her blood thickens as if her body has frozen in time.
“What do you mean? What are we gonna do?” She stares at the tire iron.
Saltz skitters by, Odell shoves him with the heel of the boot, kicking him into the bathroom. The cat hisses. He pushes her inside the bathroom too. She nearly collides into the sink fixture before she catches herself.
Odell grabs the door handle. His face is unreadable.
There’s bits of gummy blood on his boots.
“Out the window. Go around to the camper and get it started.”
She looks over her shoulder and sees a sliding frosted window next to the shower. She’ll need to climb the toilet to get on the same level. Her knee reminds her of her instability. Saltz is pacing at her feet, very uneasy. She picks him up and strokes his head, trying to appease both of their discomfort.
“You have your permit don’t you?”
She points to her knee. “When would I have done that?”
“It’s your left knee, you’ll be fine.”
She wants to shake him. “What are you talking about? You’re not coming with me?”
The facade breaks. The motions in which he was operating on pause. He stares at her. Her throat starts to dry and her stomach curdles. She wonders if this is a new part of her dream. If they go back into the room and lay down on the lumpy twin beds, Odell’s tire iron will turn into a rain stick and Jefferson Saltz will come waltzing inside dressed in a maid’s uniform.
Anywhere but here, the one-trick pony left in town.
“Thumper, sweetheart.” Odell says to her. His hand touches her cheek, briefly.
“You’ll catch up.” She insists.
He lets out a small sigh. Then he takes her headphones and places them properly on her ears again. He presses the discman into her chest. Even Saltz is staring at the two of them now. He says one more thing to her as the music settles into another loud guitar heavy section.
She can’t read his lips.
He closes the door behind him.
*
She keeps the lights off in the Tiago. She crouches as she gets into the driver’s side and gets the keys ready for the engine. Saltz stays nearby, hiding in the foot space of the passenger’s seat. His eyes are neon lime green in the darkness. He’s watching her, taking his cues from her, as if she has any idea of what to do or how long they should even wait.
God, her knee is killing her.
Dread hangs over her like a frayed wool blanket. She feels too hot, too nervous, too achy to really consider what might be waiting beyond the hood of the motorhome. Hiding low in the seat, eyes peering over the steering wheel, she scans the parking lot. The Six Roses motel didn’t host many visitors tonight. She didn’t notice when they pulled in but it’s certainly why Odell chose it over any other spot on the road.
The vacancy neon below the sign blares in the rearview mirror.
(Yes), Vacancy.
Her hands went to her headphones, wondering if she needed to hear for a signal.
She would need to be fast, ready to pull out whenever Odell needed her to.
The headphones fell to her neck as she readjusted.
She turns the engine on and allows herself to get comfortable with the wheel at her hands. Saltz watches her, his purring matches the tremor of the Tiago. A light mist runs across the hood as the headlights come on. She checks the mirrors again, waiting for any sign from Odell. She readies her hand on the lock mechanism. Should she keep all of the doors locked?
How long should she sit here in wait?
How exactly was she supposed to know when he was ready?
If he was going to be ready at all.
Or ever again.
Tears hit her cheeks and chin like a burst of rainfall.
She wipes them away, uncertain if they were even necessary, and checks the mirrors again. The tail lights were on now, casting red into the parking lot. In the rearview mirror she reviewed each sign.
Six Roses Motel. Vacancy.
Birchwood & Cargo. Est. 1864.
She whips her head around. Unable to see perfectly into the rear of the motorhome, she shakily stands up. The camper hums as she keeps the discman at her side, lingering slowly toward the back. The red lights illuminated the tail of the Tiago like a flood light. Her eyes fixate on the trunk. Parked only a few feet behind the motorhome. Blocking them in so to speak if she didn’t want to drive over gravel and cement blockers lining the row.
The beginning chorus of “Small Town Crimes” blared in her headphones.
This one got the most airplay on the rock stations. Jefferson Saltz wrote it with his songwriting partner and bassist Wayne Holcomb, about their time breaking parking meters around Michigan State to get money for weed when they were broke and truant teenagers. It played great at parties. Even the preppies and jocks liked the song enough to play it at the homecoming game.
It got banned once the parents heard the lyrics.
I said damn girl, take the money and run!
There’s no stopping now ‘til you empty the gun!
Thumper stares at the trunk, opened and ready to claim her. She places the headphones back on her head and turns the volume up as she shuffles back to the front of the camper. The music ramps up as does her breathing. She stares ahead at the desolate parking lot. No one is coming to help them.
The Fiddler has full reign of the castle.
The music eggs her on, aggressive and rambunctious.
She looks again at Saltz. Stalwart in his presence, he knows just as well as she does.
No one is left to help them.
She throws the gear shift, hoisting it into a lower position. The engine revs, an old dinosaur revived on pure rock and roll. She looks behind her once more, guided by the dragon-red glare of the taillights.
Take the money and run! Take the money and run!
She slams her foot into the pedal. The entire motorhome lurches as the wheels burst into motion and wind back. Thumper doesn’t hesitate on the speed, she presses her foot down as low as the pedal allows. She holds her breath, tears streaming down her face, as the rear end of the Tiago makes contact.
The sound is its own small disaster.
She does not relent.
With her feet planted, she forces the camper, dragging it until the trunk collapses into the undercarriage of the wheels. She throws the gears back into drive and lurches the vehicle forward. The screeches from underneath barely register in her ears as Glass Hand Joes holler into the microphone and their guitars go wild in a furious passion. She’s singing now, top of her lungs. Not quite screaming, but loud enough to shake the camper.
One more time, she backs up.
The carcass of the trunk unfolds in front of the hood.
Birchwood & Cargo, scattered across the parking lot.
She circles around, hand over hand as the Tiago achingly curves around the lot. She reaches the front of the motel until she spots someone in the glass windowed lobby. With musical anger coursing through her veins, Thumper rolls down the window. She makes direct eye contact with the silent Fiddler, standing all of three feet in a pool of blood.
“You take my home, I take yours you vampire fuck!”
She steers the Tiago off the lot, barreling towards the freeway.
Saltz perches himself on the passenger’s seat.
Thumper is singing. Thumper is crying. Thumper is screaming.
But the cat doesn’t mind her taste in music.
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