Becoming Chloe (13 page)

We walk out into the light to tell Chloe.

She’s sitting on one of the pump islands with the little blueeyed dog half in her lap. The dog’s whole front end is sitting on Chloe’s lap, the little stump tail going.

“I’ll be damned,” Jim says.

They come roaring up at almost exactly the same time. Like they were racing each other in. One is riding on a big, chopped motorcycle.

He has a full beard and that kind of helmet that only covers the top of his head. No faceplate or anything. More for looks than safety. The other guy drives a really shiny, sweetlooking red El Camino. He wears a gold wedding ring and has neatly trimmed gray hair. I have a pretty good idea who thinks who stole parts from who.

Chloe and I stand off and listen while Jim talks to them in a foreign language. Something about the engine number matching the VIN number, and not a trace of Bondo. I don’t know what it means but he makes it sound like a compliment.

I look at Chloe and she looks sad.

“I know, Chlo,” I say, “but there really isn’t much else we can do.”

“Otis would be sad.”

“Otis was a practical guy. He’d understand.”

“Yeah, but he’d be sad.”

“Yeah, okay. We’re sad, too. But we have to just do our best here.”

“How will we get around?”

“I don’t know, but we’ll have more money. We can maybe hitchhike sometimes. Maybe we can afford a train or a bus if it’s cold.”

Just then I hear the motorcycle guy yell, “Bullshit! You know it ain’t worth that not running. You know I don’t have that.

You’re just doing it to spite me.”

We don’t hear any response. A minute later his big bike roars to life and off the lot and down the highway. The guy with the neat gray hair comes and stands over us.

“Son,” he says, “I’ll give you twenty-four hundred dollars for that truck.”

The guy who bought the truck gives us a lift to the main highway so we’ll have half a chance hitchhiking. Then a couple named Carlos and Elena stop for us, our first actual ride.

“You’ve got so much stuff,” Carlos says, looking at Otis’s old duffel bags and sleeping bags and backpacks. They’re young, maybe as young as Chloe and me. They’re clean. Inside and out clean. I can’t decide if it’s scary or nice. “We felt bad for you— you have so much stuff.”

“I know,” I say. “I’m sorry. Is there room?”

“There’s all that,” he says, pointing to the bed of his pickup.

It’s a tan-and-brown truck, not really old like Otis’s, but old enough. Maybe from the seventies. It has an extended cab, so Carlos and Elena and their new baby, Maria, and all their luggage—which isn’t much—fit up front. “You and your wife and your stuff can fit back there, you’re more than welcome to the ride,” he says. “Where are you going?”

“As far west as you can take us. Where are you going?”

“Lexington,” he says. “Home. We were just in West Virginia visiting Elena’s parents. We were there to show them our new baby. Their first grandchild.”

“A baby,” Chloe says. “You have a baby.” Her voice is full of wonderment and awe. To Chloe, a baby is nearly as splendid and exciting as an overweight geriatric Doberman pinscher. A close second, anyway.

Elena steps out to let us see the baby, who is sleeping in her arms. She’s a very new baby. Maybe a few weeks, tops. Chloe can’t stop looking.

Meanwhile, Carlos is throwing our stuff in the back, so I join him and throw stuff, too. “We appreciate this,” I say.

“Happy to help,” Carlos says. “Boy, that’s a nice coat. That’s a beautiful coat. That just might be the nicest one I ever saw.”

Then we’re out on the highway, and Chloe and I are on our backs looking at the sky. It seems like we’re racing one way under clouds that seem to race the other way.

Chloe is making notes in her book, but I don’t look over her shoulder and I don’t ask.

After a couple of hours we stop for lunch.

I’m looking at Carlos, thinking he’s attractive. Dark and lean, with a kind face. Reasonably handsome, but more than reasonably attractive. Actually, I’m trying not to think that. He’s a husband and a father, and anyway, it embarrasses me.

“You should let us help you with the gas money,” I say.

They’re sitting across the table from us, and the baby is a little fussy. So I’m thinking in a minute Elena will have to go someplace private to breast-feed.

Elena shakes her head no about the money.

“We wouldn’t hear of it,” Carlos says. “We had to make the trip anyway.”

“We can afford to help out a little.”

“Come on. Stop it. You guys don’t have much.”

Elena is beaming at little Maria. Smiling and making faces and cooing and looking down lovingly. And, you know, tiny and new as this baby girl is, I swear she gets it. I swear she’s taking every bit of this in.

So is Chloe. She stares all through lunch. Carlos and Elena look up and smile. Then after a while I can see that Elena is not sure about the staring. It seems like too much, even to me. And I know Chloe. I know how intense she can be.

Finally Elena looks to Chloe questioningly. “What?” she asks.

“That’s so great,” Chloe says. “I never saw anything like it before in my life, but it’s great.”

“What is?”

“The way you’re looking at her. It’s so great. She knows, too.”

“All mothers look at their babies like this.”

“Oh, no they don’t,” Chloe says. She obviously considers herself an authority. “My mother never looked at me like that.

I’m not sure she even looked at me. Then she had six more babies and she never looked at any of them like that, either.”

“Oh,” Elena says, clearly not sure what to say. “Well, I wish all mothers looked at their babies like that.”

“You and me both,” Chloe says. She turns her attention to me. “What about you, Jordy? Did your mother ever look at you like that?”

“Are you kidding? You met my mother, Chlo.”

“Oh. That’s right. Never mind.”

Carlos wakes me up by shaking my shoulder.

“Sorry, buddy,” he says. “Sorry to disturb you. But I need your wife.” I open my eyes and see that we’re at a rest stop on the side of the highway. “I have to get some sleep,” he says. “I’m too tired to drive anymore. I’m going to sleep back here with you. Elena can drive if Chloe will sit up front and hold the baby. Her car seat’s broken. Or you can drive if you want.”

“I want to hold the baby,” Chloe says. She doesn’t sound sleepy. Maybe she was never asleep. Maybe only I was asleep.

Next thing I know we’re cruising down the road again and Carlos is lying beside me, which makes me happy and uncomfortable in ways I can’t quite sort out. I haven’t been with many men my own age lately. I’m looking up at the sky, and the stars are out in force. I mean, there are billions of them. I swear, I didn’t even know there were so many stars.

I know Carlos is not asleep yet. He’s looking at the stars with me.

“It’s almost enough to make you believe in God,” I say.

“You don’t believe in God?”

“Maybe I do,” I say. “I’m not sure.”

“Elena and I have been born again.”

“Oh,” I say.

Oh. I hate this moment. I hate it when this happens. I hate to have some warm feeling for someone, a feeling that seems almost wholesome to me, and then suddenly find out that if he could look inside me he’d see something that looks dirty or sick or shameful to him. And then that same nice feeling, I have to try it on through his eyes. Or maybe he would like me anyway. He’s a Christian, right? Christians are supposed to be good at that.

Only sometimes they’re not.

Dear Dr. Reynoso. It’s not always as easy as it was with you.

Chloe is standing beside the truck, saying goodbye to the baby.

Little Maria. She’s practicing that look. That loving-beaming thing. She still can’t get over that look.

Carlos pulls me aside and stuffs a piece of paper in my hand with their phone number.

“If you’re ever in Kentucky again,” he says, “give us a call.”

But I know we won’t be. And even if we were, we wouldn’t call. If we did, they’d learn more about us and we’d learn more about them. I’d start wanting to sleep with Carlos and they’d start wanting to study the Bible with us.

“Absolutely,” I say. “I will. Now please let me give you twenty for gas.”

“Nope. Don’t even try.”

“Hang on a minute,” I say. “What size are you? Stand back to back with me for a minute.”

He does. Our shoulders seem about the same height and width. So I take off the coat and give it to him.

“You’re kidding,” he says.

“Please take it, Carlos. I don’t even want it anymore.”

It’s a relief to watch it drive away. I don’t realize how much I don’t want it until I watch it drive away. I throw away the phone number, just to make sure I never get it back.

The next ride we get is from a lady wearing two big puffy ski parkas. One right over the other, even though it’s really not all that cold. But we climb in, because we figure she just chills easily or whatever.

But then I notice that she has about five Fleet enemas sitting on the dashboard. Right in their boxes. She also has three troll dolls pasted to the dash, way over in the corner near the passenger-side window. When I lean forward to get a closer look, I notice she has about twelve more Fleet enemas on the seat beside her. Some are the saline kind and others the mineral oil.

“Don’t get too close to the trolls,” she says.

I sit back as fast as I can. She tells us that the trolls ward off evil spirits, but as a by-product of cleansing the evil as it comes into the car, the evil gets stuck in the trolls, and if you get too close it can jump into your body and take over.

“Okay,” I say. “Good to know. Thanks for the warning.”

We ride for about twenty miles in silence. Then she sees a gas station out in the middle of nowhere. “I gotta take a whiz,”

she says.

We off-load all our stuff while she does. We hide out around behind the station, waiting for her to drive away.

She calls for us a couple times first. “You coming or not?” she yells. “Huh? What’s it gonna be?” Then, “Okay. Don’t say I didn’t warn ya.”

“Okay,” I say quietly, for only Chloe to hear. “Thanks for the warning.”

Chloe and I are standing out on the highway, waiting for a car to go by. So we can stick our thumbs out. We have so much stuff.

I didn’t realize how much stuff we had until there was no truck to carry it all. Two duffel bags, a backpack, and a sleeping bag each.

We’ve gotten two good, long rides so far, and all it’s gotten us is out in the middle of nowhere again. I’m pretty sure we’re still in Kentucky. The air is cool but the sun is hot, and we’ve been waiting for an hour and haven’t seen a single car. Finally we see a van off in the distance. I stick out my thumb and think how awful it will be if this van doesn’t stop. What if it’s an hour between each car and nobody stops? We’re going to have to change this pretty-back-road pattern now that we’re hitchhiking.

We’re going to have to stay on the big roads.

The van stops for us.

The driver is a guy in his late forties, with the best chest and arm development I think I’ve ever seen, at least in person. He’s wearing a T-shirt, and his biceps are actually stretching out the sleeves. He doesn’t get out or even reach over to let us in. He just indicates to us that we should open the side door of the van.

We do, and we pile in all our stuff and climb in. There’s nothing in the back except three beat-up-looking old bicycles. No seats.

No seats at all except the driver’s seat. Not even a passenger seat.

Where the passenger seat should be, there’s a half-folded wheelchair.

I look at the driver again. His legs look like they belong on a ten-year-old.

“Randy Banyan,” he says, and thrusts one hand out, which I shake. “Where can I take you folks? First of all, where you been and where you going? If you don’t mind my asking. I love hearing where people are going.”

“We came all the way from Connecticut,” Chloe says. “By way of Niagara Falls.”

“That’s a strange route.”

“Well,” I say, “the idea is not to get where we’re going fast.

More to see the country.”

“Seeing the country. Boy. Can’t say I don’t envy you that.

Not that I don’t get around. I still speed-race twenty miles every morning after my workout. But cross-country, that’s another thing altogether. I may still someday. So, you’re headed where?”

“The ocean,” Chloe says. “Somewhere we can ride horses on the beach.”

“Big Sur, California,” Randy says.

“You can ride horses on the beach there?”

“I’m not saying it’s the only place, but I know you can. My son just went on a vacation with his wife and my two-year-old grandson, and they sent me pictures of themselves riding horses on the beach at Big Sur. And you know, if you’re going to see the ocean, you really ought to see Big Sur, California. One of the prettiest spots on God’s earth. Ever been there?”

“No, we never saw that,” Chloe says. “And I really like seeing things I’ve never seen before. Beautiful things.”

“Then you definitely have to go to Big Sur.”

“We’re just not really sure how to get places anymore,”

Chloe says. “Our truck broke down and we had to sell it.”

“Bicycle,” Randy says.

“Bicycle?” we both say at once.

“Bicycle,” he says. “Can’t beat it. Great exercise, cheapest travel there is. Let you see the country in a way you never would zipping through it in a car. I own a bike shop about thirty miles up the road. That’s all I do. Bikes. I go all around and pick up old bikes that people throw out. Oh, I sell new bikes and bike parts, too. But I really like fixing up the old ones. It’s like bringing something back to life. Sometimes I sell them and sometimes I give them away to the sheriff’s department and they give them to kids that can’t afford bikes.” While he’s talking I’m watching him drive and realizing he does it all with his hands. The gas and the brake are both levers he can control with his hands. “If you wanted a couple of bikes, I’d let you have them for just what it costs me to fix them up. Just the cost of the new tires, mostly.

Bearings and brake cables and such only cost a couple dollars. It really doesn’t cost much to fix up a bike if you know what you’re doing.”