Little Girl Gone (13 page)

The trail grew steeper and Madora would have turned back except that in the steepest sections of the trail, someone had dug shallow steps out of the rock and spikes of rebar stuck up here and there for handholds.

At the top she puffed and bent double from the waist, her thighs quivering with strain. She drank more water, and when she recovered herself, she looked around and decided that the godlike view was worth the effort of the climb and explained the effort someone had gone to, to make the trail passable. The jagged terrain of the Cleveland National Forest stretched to the south and east, nothing but rocks and scrub, most of it too rough and unfriendly
to explore. Far in the west she saw down the gentle seaward slope of the land to a line of blue that was just barely visible and which she knew to be the Pacific. North were more mountains and the six lanes of Interstate 8. If she could see far enough, she knew the ribbon of concrete stretched all the way to Tucson.

Not long before she met Willis, Madora and Kay-Kay had hitchhiked to Tucson to attend a concert for which Kay-Kay had won two tickets when she was the thirteenth person to call into the radio station managing the giveaway. The girls hitched in cutoff jeans and tank tops, carrying their concert clothes and makeup stuffed in backpacks: tiny, tight skirts and string-strapped T-shirts a size too small, high heels neither one of them could walk in comfortably.

Their first ride was with a middle-aged couple who took them a little beyond the Phoenix exit, the whole time telling them about the angel Moroni. The ride that deposited them in downtown Tucson was with a girl not much older than they were. She was heading to Austin, where she went to college. After she dropped them off, it had taken them two hours to find the house belonging to Kay-Kay’s grandmother. Most of the long walk they had talked about the college girl and made fun of her, calling her boring and a loser.

Kay-Kay’s grandmother was upset when she heard about the concert. When Kay-Kay called to make arrangements for them to sleep over, she had not understood that they would be spending most of their time away, listening
to seven bands in a college arena, nothing but noise and bright lights until after midnight. She had made them a dinner with all the food groups and was irritable when they were too excited to eat any of it. After the concert, it was close to dawn when they got back to the house. All the doors were locked, and Kay-Kay’s grandmother had put their things on the patio, where they slept on chaises until noon, rising only when the sun became too hot to bear. The house was empty, but the back door was unlocked. They took showers and ate cold cereal and drank beers from the refrigerator before making their way back to the highway to hitch home to Yuma.

Madora sat on a rock, remembering their adventure and how unafraid she had been.

In some ways, Madora’s life was very simple and straightforward. Medical school for Willis was the first priority. And then, when he had his degree, they would marry and have children and settle down in a house not much different from the one Kay-Kay’s grandmother lived in. But in order for any of this to happen, they needed money. They could earn it or borrow it, beg or steal, but without money they were headed nowhere.

Willis had an odd attitude toward money; even Madora could see that. Many months earlier, before Linda came into their lives, she had been putting away his folded laundry and found a blue plastic envelope crammed with papers she realized were bank statements. Knowing that Willis would be furious if he knew she had examined the contents,
she put the folder back exactly where she had found it. But for days she thought about the statements and wished she had risked taking a good look at them. A few days later she opened his drawer again, but the plastic envelope was gone. She had spent most of that afternoon hunting through the bedroom for it but without success.

Sometimes Willis talked as if it would be a long financial struggle to save enough for medical school. At other times she got the feeling that he had enough put away already. She had once or twice been tempted to point out the contradictions but thought better of it.

In the casino a few steps from the diner where she had worked before her car broke down, the women were sometimes so eager to get back to the tables or the slots that they left their purses behind in the toilet stalls. It would be easy to steal from them, but Madora would be ashamed to take advantage of the poor fools. The only person she could think of who might have access to serious money was Django, but even if half of what he said about Huck was true, there was no way the guy would loan Django thousands of dollars so Willis could go to medical school. Besides, Django hated Willis and would never do anything to help him.

In Madora’s thinking, her happiness and everything that mattered, her whole future, depended on getting money for medical school. Willis could call her stupid, but it wasn’t true. There were things she understood without being told. He was a good man, but he was growing dis
couraged and had begun to see the world as bent against him. It was no wonder he was short with her and sometimes unkind. Money would change his outlook on life.

She might be able to overcome her pride enough to stand on a street corner with her hand out, but she could do that for twenty years and not take in enough money. She could go to work, but the only skill she had was waiting tables. Working in a diner for minimum wage plus tips was not the way to get rich quick. It wasn’t fast money, but it was sure.

Back at the house she ignored the time. Linda would be fretting for her lunch, but Madora was in a so-what frame of mind where
she
was concerned. She tied Foo to the side of the carport, and when she had changed into her cleanest pair of jeans and a T-shirt out of the dryer, she walked fast down to the county road. Along the way, she looked neither right nor left to avoid seeing anything that might weaken her resolve.

After walking a couple of miles along the county road in the hot June sun, she reached the cluster of businesses near the on-ramp to Interstate 8. She stopped for a few minutes in the shade of a pepper tree, stuck out her lower lip, and blew breath up into her face. She was hot and sticky and wished she had money for a Coke. She was hungry too, and the smell of roasting chicken that emanated from the KFC a few yards away was hard to ignore. The cheesy smell of the pizza parlor across the parking lot was just as bad. She hurried to the on-ramp and stuck out her thumb before she could change her mind and go home.

Two women in a truck picked her up ten minutes later. Their names were Laurel and Candace and they were on their way to Phoenix to see Laurel’s grandbaby who’d been born just two days earlier.

“Where you going?” Laurel asked. She was a pretty, fat woman wearing huge sunglasses.

“There’s a casino up here about five miles,” Madora said.

“You a gambler, then? Lord, I hope not,” Candace fanned her face with her hand, and Madora admired her long shining fingernails. “I’m here to tell you, it’s a curse and a vice.”

Madora had never dropped a nickel in a slot machine and wasn’t sure why anyone would ever want to. Her need for money was imperative, but it had never occurred to her to gamble. “I work at the diner. Least I hope I will. I used to.”

Madora saw that the diner had a new sign. Eight feet high and thirty feet wide:
The All American Diner.
And on another sign just below it, a little smaller and flashing for attention:
Boys and Girls in Uniform Eat Free.
The signs were new and worrisome. She had never thought that the diner might have changed management. If she saw no one she knew serving or in the kitchen, she didn’t know if she would have the courage to apply for work.

Candace drove off the freeway and right up to the front of the All American Diner.

“Good luck to you, now,” she said.

T
he diner was air-conditioned down to somewhere just over freezing. If Madora worked there, she’d tell Murray (the boss, as far as she knew) that he could save a lot of money if he raised the thermostat. She had goose bumps at the top of her arms.

Nerves maybe.

The waitress behind the counter looked up. It was Connie, who had been at the diner when Madora worked there. “Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle!” she said and enveloped her in a hug smelling of fried foods and Chantilly. “Girl, I was thinking of you just the other day. Wondering where you got to. How come you never came to see us? It must be, what? Almost two years?”

“Something like that,” Madora said, flustered and pleased by the attention.

“Jorge!” Connie called out to the cook. “Look here what the cat dragged in.”

The cook poked his head through the pass-through.
Under his handlebar moustache he was grinning. And still missing a front incisor lost in a fistfight. Madora wiggled her fingers at him and he laughed and wiggled his fingers back.

“You haven’t changed a bit, Madora. Just got prettier’s all. Sit down here and I’ll get you something.” Connie looked over her shoulder at a man sitting in the booth farthest from the door. He had a pile of papers laid out in front of him and his fingers flew over the keys of a calculator. “That’s Vik; he’s the new boss.”

“What happened to Murray?” She had liked the fat old man who couldn’t resist a milkshake. “Did he eat too much ice cream?”

“You could say so. He had a heart attack. Fell over one day and didn’t get up again. We got the same owners, though. Vik’s been managing for about a year.”

“He’s got the air-conditioning too cold.”

“He says it makes people eat more.”

Madora and Connie went on talking as if they had seen each other only a week before. Once or twice Madora heard her chatterboxing voice and it was hard to recognize herself as the same girl who got tongue-tied so easily. After about fifteen minutes her cheeks hurt from smiling.

A man came into the diner and sat down in a booth. His cowlicky hair was bright red.

“Lemme take his order.” Madora had been away from the job for a little more than a year. “See if I can still do it.”

“Honey, go ahead and be my guest. His name’s Walt. He
comes in here a couple times a day. Works at the casino. Nice guy.” She took an apron out from under the counter and tied it on Madora. “You’ve filled out, girl. You used to be skinny like a stick.”

“Willis says I’m fat.”

“Willis needs to get a pair of glasses.” Connie patted her back. “Go on, now. We’re running a business here.”

Waitressing was like a pair of broken-in shoes Madora stepped right back into, feeling perfectly comfortable. She bantered and laughed with the customer named Walt, and when a couple of discouraged gamblers walked in, she cheered them up and said what they needed was some of Jorge’s meatloaf.

“Comfort food,” she told them.

The diner got busy for a while, and Madora enjoyed herself. First chance she got, she poured an iced tea flavored with lemon and pretend sugar and set it under the counter like she used to. At the top of her stomach, behind her ribs, butterflies fluttered the cha-cha-cha.

“I sure would like to work again,” she told Connie. “Do you think Vik’d give me a job?”

“Go ask him. Tell him I’m your reference. I’ll keep an eye on your customers.”

Vik had been watching her at work, looking up from his calculator from time to time, chewing on his yellow pencil.

“What’s your name?” he asked her.

“Madora Welles.” If she had taken a minute to step outside herself, she would have been surprised by how relaxed
she felt and how strong her voice sounded. She wished Willis could see her. She thought he would be proud of her. “Can I sit down?” It did not occur to her that Vik would say no.

He was a tall, narrow-faced man with blue-black hair combed straight back from a high forehead and skin the same golden-brown color as Foo’s eyes. Madora had the feeling he was studying her, but she didn’t mind this. It was his restaurant, after all, and she had stepped in and started working without even saying hello to him. He had a right to be curious about her.

“I’m not going to pay you for this last hour. You may be sure of that.” He had an accent, sort of English. It was a nice voice, she decided. In charge but not mean. “You may keep your tips.”

“I’ll put them in the kitty; that’s okay.” Madora had been having so much fun, she would have paid for a chance to stay another hour; but time had passed quickly and if she didn’t leave soon it would be a rush to make it home before Willis. “I used to work here.”

“So I gathered.”

“I’d like a job. Connie says some days she’s beat off her feet, running around. She and I work good together.”

“I also see that. But unfortunately, I have no money to pay another server for this shift.” He put his hand on the pile of papers beside the calculator. “As you can see, there are many bills to pay. And never enough money.”

“I’m good at waitressing,” she said, surprised by her bra
vado. Right then, at that minute, she felt happier than she had in a long time. “And I’m a good worker.”

“I have no doubt of that. But nothing changes the fact that I have no money for this shift.”

She was uncommonly happy even as her hopes sank. It had been a good day no matter what happened, and her only regret was that she would not be able to tell Willis how much fun she’d had.

Vik patted the eraser end of his pencil against his lower lip. “There are such crowds. These gamblers never sleep. I will need an experienced server on the graveyard shift starting next month. Weekends only.”

She felt like saying that gamblers were her specialty. She cheered up the losers and made them believe their losses would turn to wins the next time they threw the dice. The winners liked her too because she let them repeat their victory tales and never looked bored. But she could not work graveyard or weekends. Willis would be angry if she so much as brought up Vik’s offer. She glanced at the big black-and-white clock over the pass-through.

“My boyfriend…”

“I understand, but I’m sorry. I believe you would have done a good job. Leave your phone number—”

“That’s okay.”