Signed, Skye Harper (9 page)

I reached toward the moon, going up on my tiptoes, then breathed deep and caught a whiff of Nanny’s cigarette. I walked toward the sound of the waves, where I was sure I’d find my family and the jailbait.

What I didn’t expect was the ocean to look like a movie ocean, made of dark blue and almost-white colors.

The group of them moved toward the shoreline, Denny hopping along on his leash, Thelma running ahead with Steve, who carried a surfboard (what?), Nanny’s cigarette glowing when she turned back to me and called out, “Come on, Winston. We don’t got all night.”
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82

The Gulf

The Gulf looked like a cake with shiny icing. Waves rolled in, but they weren’t huge. The water was calm enough to do some decent swimming in. This place was way more tranquil than New Smyrna Beach.

I turned and ran back into the motor home.

My bag! My bathing suit! A towel!

In moments I was changed, leaving all my clothes on the tiny bathroom floor. Then I ran out the door again, leaping to the parking lot pavement.

Mark Spitz,
I thought. I could almost see him from my dream. Mark Spitz and the 1976 Olympics for me, if I wasn’t doing time because of our unwise decision making in moments of severe stress.

By now, Nanny walked the shoreline, giving Denny plenty of time to hop this way and that. Steve was in the water. These nighttime waves in the Gulf of Mexico weren’t the same as what we got over on the East Coast.

“Winston,” Nanny said as I ran past her, “you be careful.”

Olympics. Here I come.

The water was warm, silky, and in a moment I was
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diving through a wave, swimming hard against the current, and popping up in time to ride a gentle swell up and down.

This was the life.
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83

Gulf Swimming

I swam till Nanny called me closer and my arms were tired.

“You two,” she said when Steve and me stood knee-deep in the waves. Water ran down my face, down my back, dripped off my fingertips. “This sound is putting me to sleep. Fifteen more minutes for the both of you, then you get back in and we leave. I’m going in to bed. Make sure you dry Thelma off good before you bring her in our little home away from home and don’t track any sand into that vehicle. We will never get all that out.”

“Yes ma’am, Miss Jimmie,” Steve said.

“A few more minutes than fifteen,” I said. “Please, Nanny.”

Nanny walked off like I hadn’t spoken, and I knew the answer was no the way she didn’t even look back.

“Dang it,” I said.

“Kiss me, Churchill,” Steve said.

Sure thing,
I thought, but I said nothing. Did snot run down my face? I swallowed. Why did I walk toward him? I should wait until I knew Nanny wouldn’t look back and see us. I needed to take this time to swim, while I could, I only had fifteen minutes.
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Fifteen minutes.

Enough time, Patty Bailey said, to have sex. I pushed Patty Bailey’s voice away.

My body walked toward Steve, who held on to his surfboard with one arm and reached toward me with the other. My mind worked. Mark Spitz. Olympics. A thousand miles to drive.

“Gotta swim while I can,” I said, as Steve’s hand closed around nothing but air.

I dove into the water to practice in the moonlit night my last few minutes of freedom.
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84

Copilot

The highway was deserted, only a few cars traveling against us, only a few that passed. The cypress grew up like giants out of the water to our right. When I squinted, staring at the trees, they seemed to change to slender ladies, with moss for hair, arms dipping or reaching for the heavens, all of them standing in tar.

I worked my way down the hall, pulled the shade down in the kitchen, and went to the front of the motor home. Nanny had climbed up on the bed above us. And I knew why. To keep an eye and ear out to whatever me and Steve thought to do while we drove. How embarrassing!

“Churchill,” Steve said when I sat in the passenger seat. He sounded pleased. “You’re back.”

We’d been driving down the highway for a while now. The swim, the warm water, had made me sleepy. I’d washed the Gulf and salt away. Thought, while I stood in the tiny shower, how a boy was driving toward Vegas. The cutest boy in all of New Smyrna Beach, Florida. I’d bit my lip.

Now my hair was still bound up by a towel.

“I’m back.” I pulled the towel loose and let my damp
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hair go. It sprung into corkscrew curls. In the moonlight it looked the color of good silverware.

Was I going to be able to stay awake long enough to help drive?

Swimming is the best thing to put you to sleep. And ocean swimming wears you out.

“You’re good at that water thing.” Steve drove with both hands, but he did his driving like he did his surfing. So natural it looked like maybe he was born to take this trip with us. “I can see you in the Olympics.”

I grinned. “Really?” I sounded pleased, and I couldn’t make myself do anything but show that emotion. “I sure hope so. I got things to do with my life.” I stepped over Thelma and settled myself in the seat.

Steve sort of looked at me. A passing car lit up his face, and when he smiled, my heart did that Grinch thing and grew a little bigger. “Swimming things?”

I nodded. “Swimming things,” I said.

“Nothing else?”

“Like what?” I said. I pulled at my hair, trying to comb through it with my fingers. I needed my pick. “Do you mean like college?”

He shrugged. “Sure. Or business.”

I pulled my feet into the seat. “You think I want to always bus tables at your daddy’s restaurant? The answer is
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no. Maybe start a different restaurant for me and Nanny ourselves. Maybe.”

Steve looked at me a long second.

“Watch the road,” I said.

“I can see it.”

“No you can’t. You’re looking at me.”

“I can drive with my eyes shut,” he said.

“Well, don’t.”

He stared at the road a minute then closed his eyes.

“What are you doing?” I straightened up in my seat. The towel fell to the floor.

“Showing you my talents.”

“Open your eyes!”

“I’m telling you, I can drive with my eyes closed. I have a sixth sense.”

“Stephen.”

“I like it when you say my name that way.”

The motor home never left the road, but stayed right between the white and yellow lines. He was pretty darn good at driving blind, but . . . “Open your eyes!” My voice was something of a whispered screech. “Nanny is gonna skin us both alive.”

Instead, Steve turned and glanced at me. His right eye was closed. The left, open.

“You jerk,” I said. Then laughed.
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85

Almost Night Driving

We drove with the late-night radio playing. Out of Orange, Texas. Into Beaumont, Texas. Another state down. Whew!

Jackson Browne, Cher, Dr. Hook. Donny Osmond, Carly Simon, Neil Diamond. Roberta Flack, the Jackson 5, and even a bit of
Jesus Christ Superstar
.

The sky was covered with clouds now. Lightning was blinding, even at this distance.

“Probably a twister coming,” Steve said.

“Probably,” I said. I slept sitting up. I fought to stay awake, but my body wasn’t having any of that. As I slipped off to sleep, Thelma came up to sit next to Steve and keep him company while he drove.

Then someone said, “Winston Churchill. You are something else.”

“What?” I said. My eyes snapped open. Electricity sliced the sky in half. Pecan pie sounded great.

“You’re dreaming,” Thelma said.

“Yes, I am,” I said.
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86

Sleeping on the Road

I woke up on the sofa, Nanny pulling into a Phillips gas station.

“Guess where we’re headed?” she said.

I blinked. Cleared my throat.

“That’s right. San Antonio. You know what’s there?”

I tried to speak.

“The Alamo.”

“Oh.” There it was. I had my voice back.

“You know what happened at that historic site?”

I opened my mouth.

“Your great-great-uncle twice removed fought against the Mexicans and was shot in the neck.”

“Huh? I didn’t know,” I said. “You never told me that story.”

“I forgot about this particular relative.” Nanny nodded once like the nod might cement the telling in her brain.

“How far have we gone?”

“Since Houston—which you slept through—almost two hundred miles. I got lost only once. Stevie helped me get back on track. Thank goodness Leon Simmons is armed with a road atlas.” Nanny gestured at the book of maps on the dashboard.
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“Who’s Stevie?” I sat up. Yes sirree, I could get used to sleeping in a moving vehicle. Seeing there was a refrigerator less than three feet from my sleeping spot. And a place to potty. This was the life! Not including the illegal stuff, but I could put that all out of my head. I went to look through the fridge for something to eat. I came back with a big container of yogurt and an apple.

“I wonder how the hens are,” Nanny said. “And how Doris is doing as front-end manger. Think the restaurant is doing okay without me?”

“No ma’am,” I said. I opened the yogurt. “Business has slowed since we left. But don’t you worry. It’ll pick up once you get back to arm wrestle it into shape.” I bit into the apple and wished, right away, that I had chosen an orange instead.

“Smart alecks never prosper,” Nanny said.

“Are you sure?” I flopped onto the sofa.

Outside, storm clouds swirled. The Texas sky looked like a Florida sky right before the heavens open and angels dumps truckloads of water on us. The attendant washed down the windows. Didn’t he see it was gonna rain? And it sure was taking a long time for the tank to fill. Again. I let out a morning sigh, fanning at my gross morning yogurt breath.

“Wish you’d put that in a bowl,” Nanny said. “One of these days I am sending a request to yogurt companies
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around the world asking them to make individual containers of yogurt so you—” She pointed at me. There was an unlit cigarette between her fingers. “—stop contaminating breakfast.”

“I know,” I said.

Nanny paid for gas after the tank was full and started out of the station just as the rain fell. The drops were light, sometimes disappearing before they hit the ground, then falling heavier.

“Where’s Steve?”

“Sleeping.”

I moved to the front of the motor home.

“Nanny,” I said, after I had crunched the last of the meat off the apple, “tell me about you and Steve’s daddy.”
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87

The Telling

Nanny looked at me side eyed. She puffed at the unlit cigarette. “Making this last,” she said, saluting me with it.

“I mean, I know you loved him. That he was your only true love . . .”

“I loved your grandfather, God rest his soul.”

Nanny says that anytime she mentions Mike who ran off right after Nanny got pregnant. Kinda like my momma, except Momma was six months till seventeen when I was born. Nanny was seventeen her own self, when she got my momma as her baby. As you can see, this is a pattern. A pattern I plan to break. Maybe I will never have babies, but for sure I will do it with a husband. Or when I am super old, like twenty-five.

“I am sure you loved him,” I said.

Now the rain came down harder.

“We’re headed straight into the storm,” Nanny said. “I hope to goodness we drive through this baby so I can see the Alamo.”

“Tell me the truth,” I said.

Like God was involved, a sign came up on the side of the road. We had a good ways to go till the Alamo (hey, a
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rhyme!) and with Steve asleep in the back, this was a perfect chance for Nanny to spill her guts. “We got forty-eight miles more till you can see where your cousin twice removed got shot in the neck.”

Nanny let out a long sigh. She looked at me then sighed again.

“You know sighing isn’t allowed in the Fletcher home,” I said.

Nanny ignored me. “Put on your seat belt,” she said. She took a drag on her cigarette. Then she started talking.
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88

Texas Rain

“Leon and I went to school together.”

I nodded. Rolled down the window and threw the apple core onto the side of the road, watching it bounce away. Rain splattered in on my arm. “I know that part. I know about you loving each other and all that. And how he broke your heart. I guess I want to know how Steve’s mom got into the act.”

“Let me tell the story the way I want to.”

“Fine.”

“You know we dated right up until your grandfather came into my life.” Nanny tsked. “Now he was a looker.”

“And a runner,” I said. Lightning split the sky wide open. I shivered.

“Tornado weather,” Nanny said. “So, as you know, your granddaddy and I got pregnant and he took off and—”

“Why didn’t you go back to Leon?”

“Here.” Nanny handed me her cigarette. “Put this away.”

I slid the cigarette, with red lipstick on the filter, into the Winston Salem package.

“He didn’t want me then and I didn’t blame him. In fact, I didn’t even try to get back with him.”
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No!

“What?”

“I was pregnant with your momma, Judith Lee. His momma, Miss Dorothy, never approved of me. Then she died—from meanness, I think—and me and Leon started the restaurant. You know, a few years later. But we never dated again.”

It was hard to see out the window. The sky was the color of an avocado.

“I’ve loved him from afar ever since. I’d never tell him of course, but that’s the God’s honest truth.” Nanny glanced at me, quick, then back at the road.

“That is the saddest story I ever did hear,” I said. I’d eaten a good fourth of the yogurt. Maybe I should save some for later. Or for Steve.