Finding Somewhere Read online

  “Mostly hay and pasture,” I said.

  “We have some feeds with some aspirin in it now. Might be good for his joints.”

  “We’ll keep that in mind,” Delores said.

  Julie pulled her hand out and stuck it into the back pocket of her pants. She smiled. One of her front teeth lay slightly across the other front tooth, leaning to the left. She had good lines around her eyes. Happy lines. She had the ghost of a long laugh in her face.

  “I know you’re thinking I’m a crazy, meddlesome woman, but there’s a stable out back here. And a pasture loaded with clover, all fenced. You’re more than welcome to turn him out on it for a while. Spend the night if you like. I’d hate to see him overtaxed by the trip.”

  I looked at Delores. She shrugged. We had one of those moments when we couldn’t quite read the other person. It was hard to know what to do. Maybe the woman was nuts, but she didn’t seem like it. And maybe she and the men out front would grab us and lock us in the cellar and make us eat chicken hearts. Delores and I could usually get around most things, but a straight-out offer proved trickier.

  “If you’re sure we wouldn’t be in the way,” I said, trying to read Delores and figuring we could change our minds later if we didn’t want to stay.

  “We had the stables for our horses, and they haven’t been used in a couple years. But we keep them up just in case. Those two old crows you saw sitting on the porch, they like a project now and then, so I send them back here to putz around. Water is hooked right there from that faucet. What’s the horse’s name, anyway?”

  “Speed,” I said.

  “If he’s as old as I think he is, you ought to give him a break. Tomorrow’s another day. He’ll be stronger for a rest. They sweat a lot of water in these trailers. Just no fires. Promise me that. Town’s not far away, so you can run in there for a pizza or something. No one will bother you. No one will even know you’re out here except for me and my husband, Jack. Our house is just an eighth of a mile down.”

  She examined us closely.

  “You’re not into drugs or any of that stuff, are you?”

  “No,” Delores said, stretching things like she does when she pretends to speak French, “we’re straight-edge.”

  “What in the world is that?”

  “We keep our senses pure. It’s kind of a way.”

  Julie shook her head.

  “What are your names, anyway?”

  We introduced ourselves.

  “I’d no more trust anyone who is straight-edge than I’d trust a born-again Christian,” Julie said. “Life’s more rounded than straight-edged. Just don’t do any drugs out here and don’t bring any boys out from town after you. That’s the deal.”

  I nodded. Delores shook hands with Julie.

  “Should be a good moon,” Julie said. “Mind if I help you off-load Speed? It’s been a while since I’ve handled a horse.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  Julie put her hand up to silence us.

  “Jack!” she yelled. “You got the store.”

  She waited.

  “Jack!” she yelled again. “You got the store.”

  A soft voice answered, “Okay.”

  “A man always hears the first time,” Julie said, smiling at us, “but he makes you tell him twice. Especially if he’s your husband. Men have their tricks. Don’t ever think they don’t. Now just bring your truck through and we can put Speed right in the middle of the pasture. He’ll have a nice night there, and you two can use a break, I bet. Wait till Jack hears we have a horse out back. He’ll flip.”

  WE SET UP THE TENT ON A FLAT PIECE OF MEADOW NOT FAR from the sheep fence that corralled the pasture. It was an L.L. Bean Eureka two-person tent, green, with good zippers and a tight fly. The grass folded down under it so that when we slid in to try it out, the sleeping bags felt fluffy and soft. I could have fallen asleep on the spot, but Delores dragged me out and made me promise we’d go into town.

  We had a moment then. It snuck in on us, because that part of Wisconsin was not anyone’s idea of a postcard. But the sun lay about two fingers off the horizon, and it cut down hard and soft at the same time, reminding you of summer and autumn both, and it picked up old Speed and turned him large and shadowy and pure. His silhouette stretched almost across the pasture, and he moved along eating, his tail flicking at late flies, and each step he took you heard through the ground. It was something old and pretty, back in the day of horses, and I had this romantic idea that someday I would have horses, and a house off a meadow, and we would have good, clean water for the animals and a wide porch where we could sit and watch them. It wasn’t this place. This was just the back lot of a store, but it had the suggestion of something better, kinder, and I knew we both sensed it, Delores and me. Speed looked beautiful and calm, and I was glad Julie talked us into stopping. And the tent waited, soft and sweet, and tonight we would sleep comfortably, and Speed would be free under a big moon to feel his heart leaning west.

  “Pretty here,” Delores said, seeing it all, too.

  “Sure is.”

  “She’s a crazy old lady.”

  “She likes horses, is all,” I said. “We’d be like that if we saw two girls going along. I mean, if we were old ladies and saw them.”

  “I guess so,” Delores agreed.

  “Women going west,” I said. “That’s what we are.”

  “She was funny about her husband. Come on, let’s go get a pizza.”

  It was no big deal to weave our way back out to the main highway and turn left. Delores switched on some country music, and we drove with the windows down. I liked that feeling right then. We felt good and tired and headed toward a decent meal. A sign told us town rested six miles away. We drove slow and easy. I held my hand out and let the wind tug it up and down.

  The phone rang. It surprised us both because we had figured we were out of range. I picked it up, looked at the caller ID, and mouthed to Delores it was from our friend Paulette. I showed the phone to Delores and raised my eyebrows to ask if I should answer it. Before Delores responded, the phone cut out. Then it rang again.

  “Do I answer it?” I asked.

  Delores shrugged. “Whatever.”

  “Hello,” I said.

  “Hattie? Is that you? Where in the world are you two?”

  It was Paulette.

  “Wisconsin,” I said.

  “You guys just took off!” she yelled, her voice going up on the last word. “I am soooooo jealous.”

  “We took Speed to give him a vacation,” I said.

  “I know! Your parents have been trying to find out where you are. They called the cops!”

  “Who did?”

  Delores looked at me. She slowed the truck.

  “I don’t know all the details, but Delores’s mom called over here. So did your dad—or, no, Delores’s dad. I didn’t even know she had a dad.”

  “Your dad called,” I whispered to Delores, covering the mouthpiece of the phone.

  “What?” Delores asked, her brows knitting. But Paulette went on talking.

  “I guess Delores’s mom called him and said you were heading west. He had a big tizz and threatened to call the police. Her cousin Richard, too, he wanted to call the police because you have some sort of van or trailer. I would have covered for you two, but I didn’t know!”

  “We didn’t want to get you involved,” I said. “We didn’t tell anyone. That way no one can be blamed.”

  “Okay, I won’t let it hurt my feelings, but I am jealous. Really jealous. It’s so dull here. You wouldn’t believe how dull.”

  “What did Delores’s dad say?” I asked.

  “He asked if I knew where you were. I said no, I didn’t even know about this. He called it a caper. Can you believe it? Someone actually called it a caper. I guess he’s up in arms. Delores’s mom called my mom, and your mom is in it, too, Hattie. I couldn’t sort it all out. I’ve been trying to call you for two days, but you don’t pick up.”

&nb
sp; “Sorry,” I said. “We’ve been turning the phone off. And we’ve been out of range a lot. We don’t check messages on purpose.”

  “I don’t blame you, now that I know what’s going on. You guys are crazy!”

  “What about the cops?”

  “I’m not sure. I don’t know if it was for real or not. Delores’s dad said she had taken a minor across a state line and that was against the law. He sounded like a dink. Don’t tell Delores I said that, though.”

  “She doesn’t really know him.”

  “I guess her mom is upset at his reaction. All heavy-handed and everything. She just called to let him know you might be heading out that way. Then he became all Mr. Parent and started wigging out on everyone. He called Delores’s mom irresponsible. Then Larry got involved and told him to stay off the phone if that was the way he was going to talk. You know, that chest-to-chest stuff.”

  “What?” Delores said. “Tell me.”

  She pulled over and I gave her the phone. We switched places. She made Paulette repeat everything. She held one finger in her left ear and kept the phone pressed close to her right. I more or less knew how the conversation went by the questions she asked. Paulette’s voice sounded like a high, excited insect on the other end.

  Delores thanked Paulette and hung up as we entered the outskirts of town.

  “It’s official,” Delores said, “we’re criminals.”

  “Your dad?”

  “I can’t believe it.”

  “And now he’s the daddest of dads.”

  “I know. Superdad. It’s too freaking weird.”

  “Do you think the cops are actually after us?”

  “The cops? Who knows? We’re not hard to spot. A horse trailer and New Hampshire plates in Wisconsin. We’d better play it like they’re after us anyway.”

  “You think they’ll shoot us?”

  “It’s serious, Hattie.”

  “We’ll stay on back roads.”

  “We’re going to have to,” Delores said. “We don’t have a choice.”

  “We should have told Paulette to find out more information. She should be our spy.”

  “I’m still trying to get over the fact that my dad’s involved. Or even that my mom knew how to get in touch with him.”

  She suddenly got up on her knees and stuck her head out the window. She yelled into the wind coming past, letting out some noise she had inside her. A kid on a bike turned to look at us. He nodded. Delores slid back inside. She shook her head.

  “Pig spit,” she said.

  “We’re in it now.”

  “This is awkward,” Delores said.

  We both started laughing. I’m not sure why. But we kept laughing. Delores said something about Larry coming to get us in his El Camino, and that became an image, Larry roaring west, his mullet waving in the breeze, the vehicle, half truck, half car, Johnny Cash on the radio, only Johnny Cash, and Larry would be decked out in black and silver, with boots and spurs, and Delores’s dad would start from the other side of the country, and they would have a showdown, a square-off right in Wisconsin or Minnesota. We kept adding to the absurdity of it, and that made us laugh harder. Then we talked about how it must have sounded to her dad. He hadn’t heard word one about his kid in a decade and then he gets a phone call to tell him she’s heading across the country in his direction.

  By the time we finished with all that, I had parked outside of Frand’s Hardware & Paint store. We climbed out and stood for a second, stretching. A raised walk fronted the stores. A toy railroad town, I thought. A town that had climbed onto a train and left about fifty years ago, leaving bones behind.

  “I want to get some nail polish,” Delores said, spotting an open drugstore. “We can ask inside about pizza.”

  We crossed the street and went inside. The drugstore smelled like cotton swabs and hair spray. Delores wandered the aisles until she found a polish display. She selected a bottle called Ruby Red Party. She held it next to her face and squinted in the mirror. She said it picked up her skin tone.

  We paid and asked a young girl at the counter where we could get a pizza.

  “Down the block,” she said, pointing north.

  “Is it good?”

  The girl shrugged. As she did, Delores’s phone rang again.

  DELORES DIDN’T RECOGNIZE THE NUMBER, AND SHE refused to answer it.

  “It could be Larry,” she said. “Or my dad. Too freaky either way.”

  “Maybe we shouldn’t answer the phone anymore.”

  “Maybe.” She slipped the phone into her back pocket.

  “Let’s get pizza,” she said.

  We ordered a half pepperoni, half mushroom pie from a tall, greasy-looking boy who wore a white chef’s cap and a striped shirt. I could tell it made him nervous to have two girls talking to him. Delores grabbed two orange sodas and a bunch of napkins, and we sat at a white plastic table near the window. We were the only customers. We sat and watched the sun disappear. It cast a reflection on a window across the street and burned for an instant before dimming.

  “You know, it’s weird,” Delores said, twisting open the orange soda. “All the times you think about your dad getting in touch … you have these fantasies. You figure he’ll ride up one day and say what a mistake he made to ignore you all these years, then take you out and buy you beautiful clothes and a new car or something, and he’ll tell you he’s really rich and he wants you to come live with him, and he has no other kids, you know, all that stuff. And he’ll have some great explanation about why he wasn’t in touch, and it will make sense, and you will know, voila, that was the reason all along. Everything clicks into place, and just like that you can go forward.”

  “But it’s not like that,” I said. “It’s never like that. Whenever I see my dad, it’s just this guy who’s supposed to be more to me than he is. It’s never what you think it will be.”

  She shook her head.

  “No, it isn’t,” she said.

  She started to get gloomy, which can go a long way inside her, so I changed the subject. I started talking about horses. It usually made us feel better. Delores loved Arabs, horses ridden by Bedouins on the Arabian peninsula that are prized for their endurance and elegant posture. I loved paints, the pinto horses bred from crossing quarter horses or Thoroughbreds. We talked about what we liked about each breed, their virtues and shortcomings, and we talked about one day getting two horses and riding them deep into the mountains. Probably in Wyoming, we said, but maybe California. Delores had once run into a fisherman who had taken a horse trip up into the California’s Sierra Madres after trout, and for some reason that had stuck with us both.

  We talked about riding an Arab and a paint along a trail up a mountain. Maybe, we said, we would spend all summer just drifting and horse camping. We could do that. Cowboys used to do that all the time, which changed the subject a little, because Delores claimed you could still get work as a cowboy. She said they still collected cattle on open range on horseback, and if you were willing to be in a saddle twelve hours a day, and sleep out, you could get work. She wondered what it would be like being a woman doing that kind of work, if the men would leave you alone.

  “Here’s your pizza,” the boy said when he brought it over. “If you want anything like hot peppers or extra cheese, it’s up on the condiment table.”

  “Merci,” Delores said, then rattled off something else in her fake French.

  “Excuse me?” the boy said, blushing.

  Delores whacked some French at him again, and even knowing what she was doing, I couldn’t quite tell if she was speaking French. She grinned when she finished, charming as anything, and the boy nodded as if he understood.

  “So, you’re not from around here?” the boy said.

  “We’re from Montreal,” I said in slow English. “We’re French Canadian. My friend doesn’t speak much English.”

  “Ohhhhh,” the boy said, as if he had just figured out gravity.

  “Can you tell me,
please,” Delores said in exaggerated English, as she pulled a slice of pizza onto her plate, “whether it’s true that Pluto is no longer a planet in the United States?”

  “What?” the boy asked.

  “Pluto. Is it a planet here?”

  The boy cocked his head.

  “Oh, you mean, were they from here? In history, you mean?” he asked, which didn’t make any sense.

  “Are they?” she said, which didn’t mean anything either.

  The boy mumbled something and excused himself, saying he had to get a pizza out of the oven. Delores watched him go and took a big bite out of her slice. A fleck of tomato sauce touched her cheek and left a shadow there. She grinned.

  WE PASSED A COP ON THE WAY OUT OF TOWN. I DROVE. THE pizza box sat between us with four leftover slices for breakfast. The cop car took up a slanted spot, pointed toward us, near an Exxon station at the edge of town. We didn’t look left or right. We kept our eyes ahead. I drove two miles per hour below the speed limit. The cop had no reason to stop us unless a taillight had gone out or he happened to be bored.

  “Is he coming after us?” Delores whispered.

  “No,” I said, glancing in the mirror. “I don’t think so.”

  “We’re going to have to figure something out,” she said.

  “What if we changed license plates?”

  “That’s what I was thinking,” Delores said. “That would change our profile.”

  “You think your dad actually called the police?”

  “Hard saying, not knowing,” she said, which was a New Hampshire phrase we always used.

  I almost missed the turn for the feed store. It looked different at night. When I pulled around the store, I saw another pickup parked near the tent. My lights picked up Julie, who raised her hand to wave. I parked the truck and we slid out.

  “Came down to check on you all,” Julie said, walking toward us. “Fact is, I was bored at home. Nothing on the TV, and Jack’s already asleep. I thought I’d come down and say good night to Speed. I guess I still have that horse bug I can’t quite scratch.”

  “You could have a horse out here,” I said. “You’ve got the land.”

  “Oh, I suppose,” she said. “But Jack said he’s tired of the chores and the upkeep. Vet bills, you know. A horse just eats money, but I bet you two know that.”