mind to another misunderstanding earlier in die evening. A small illumination follows, and Curtis desperately seizes upon his sudden insight to try to change the direction of the conversation and to reestablish the far-friendlier tone that existed between them such a short while ago.
According to the movies, most Americans strive always to better their lives and to improve themselves, and because movies provide reliable information, Curtis interrupts Gabby’s blustering with the intention of offering a vocabulary lesson for which the caretaker will no doubt be grateful. “Sir, the reason I was confused is you weren’t pronouncing it properly. You meant testicles!”
Every look of surprise that heretofore made such dramatic use of the caretaker’s highly expressive face is as nothing to the brow-corrugating, eyebrow-steepling, eye-popping, wrinkle-stretching, beard-frizzling astonishment that now possesses his features.
Gabby’s expression is such an obvious precursor to another rant that Curtis hurries on, frantic to explain himself: “Sir, you said ‘co-jones,’ when what you meant to say was ‘kah-ho-nays.’ Cojones. That’s the English pronunciation, which is slightly different from the way you would say it in Spanish. If you—“
“Blast all the devils from Hell to Abilene!” Gabby bellows, and he looks away from Curtis with obvious disgust, which is good in one way and bad in another. Good because he’s at last staring at the salt flats ahead of them. Bad because sooner or later, trembling from the offense that he’s taken, he’s going to look at Curtis again, and that look will peel the wet off water.
Like wet on water.
Another small enlightenment blossoms in Curtis, but he resists sharing it with the fuming caretaker. He has lost all confidence in his ability to socialize. Shaken, he is convinced that anything he says, even a wordless grunt delivered in the most inoffensive tone, will be misinterpreted and will trigger another furious oath from Gabby that will be loud enough to shatter all the windows in the Mountaineer.
The boy’s failure even to attempt to hold up his end of the conversation results in only a brief silence. The caretaker splutters in exasperation after saying “Abilene,” inhales with a rattling snort worthy of a horse, and blows out another gust of words: “You sassy-assed, spit-in-the-eye, ungrateful, snot-nosed little punk! Maybe I ain’t been to no Harvard College, an’ maybe I ain’t had the better advantages of some what was born with silver spoons in their mouths, but from the time I worn diapers, I knowed it was pure bad manners criticizin’ your elders. You don’t got no call tellin’ me how to say co-jones when the pathetic pair of co-jones you have ain’t no bigger than two chickpeas!”
As Gabby continues to rave, he finally eases up on the gas pedal and lets the Mountaineer’s speed fall. Maybe he’s considering pulling to a stop and ordering Curtis to get out and fend for himself.
Right now, if they were in a boat in the middle of a stormy sea, the boy would go overboard without a protest; therefore, he won’t argue about being left afoot on these salt flats. In fact, he’ll welcome it. The stress of being a desperate fugitive, maintaining a credible false identity, resisting the urge to go a little dog wild, and socializing in a challenging dialect is more than he’s able to handle. He feels as though his head is going to explode or that something even worse and more embarrassing will occur.
Apparently having vented enough anger to look at his snot-nosed passenger without risking cardiac infarction, Gabby at last turns his attention away from the flats. Maybe the old man is surprised that Curtis hasn’t already thrown himself out of the Mountaineer or maybe he’s surprised by the boy’s tears, or maybe he’s just surprised that this sassy-assed punk dares to look him in the eye. Whatever the reason, instead of the withering display of scorn and contempt that Curtis expects, the caretaker inflates his face into an expression of astonishment that so exceeds his previous look of astonishment that it seems more suitable to a cartoon character than to a human being. And he stomps on the brake pedal. Fortunately, their speed has fallen from in excess of a hundred miles an hour to under fifty. Shrieking brakes and screaming tires sound pretty much the same on hard-packed salt as on blacktop, though the combined odors of hot rubber and churning salt produce a smell that is unique to these conditions and strangely like ham sizzling in a skillet.
If Curtis hadn’t been jammed down firmly in his seat, pinching the upholstery with his tailbone, and pressing his feet into the floorboard nearly hard enough to buckle it, he and Old Yeller might indeed have splattered like bugs on the wrong side of the windshield. Instead, the poor dog’s life flashes through her mind, from whelping to puppy- hood to the frankfurters in the motor home, and Curtis’s life flashes through his mind, too, which leaves both him and the mutt a little confused. But when the Mountaineer slides to a full stop, rocking on its springs, neither boy nor dog is hurt.
By surviving the sudden stop unscathed, Gabby, too, has proved that the miserable scaly-assed, wart-necked, fly-eatin’, toad-brained politicians don’t know everything. You might think that this small triumph of rugged individualism over the government and the laws of physics would inspire a mood change for the better. On the contrary, with an astounding rush of words referring to biological waste and sexual relations, the caretaker rams the gearshift into park, throws open his door, and exits the SUV in a state of such high agitation that he tangles in his own legs and falls out of sight.
“Criminy!” Curtis exclaims.
He slides out from under Old Yeller and across the console, leaving the dog in the passenger’s seat, slipping behind the wheel.
Beyond the open door, in the fall of pale light from the SUV’s ceiling lamp, Gabby lies on his back, on the ground. His rumpled and sweat-stained cowboy hat rests upside down next to him, as though he will produce that banjo at last and play for quarters. His white hair bristles as it might if he’d been the conduit for a lightning bolt, and grains of salt glitter in this postelectrocution coiffure. He looks dazed, perhaps having tested the firmness of the salt bed with a rap or two of his head.
“Holy howlin’ saints alive!” Curtis declares. “Sir, are you all right?”
This question so alarms the caretaker that you would think he had just been threatened with decapitation, lie scoots backward, away from the Mountaineer, thoroughly salting the seat of his pants, and he takes the time to scramble to his feel only after he has put some distance between himself and the vehicle.
To this point, Curtis has assumed that much of what seems odd about this man’s behavior is not in fact peculiar, but is simply a matter of poor communication, resulting in a series of unfortunate misunderstandings. Now he isn’t so sure about that. Maybe Gabby is not cranky-but-lovable, not cranky-but-tender-hearted, not cranky-but- well-meaning, but just plain cranky. Maybe he’s even somewhat unbalanced. Maybe he’s been chewing on locoweed. He’s probably not a serial killer, like the tooth fetishists in the motor home, unless serial killers are even a greater percentage of the population than the movies imply, which is a scary thought.
On the ground between Gabby and the Mountaineer are two objects: the hat and the 9-mm pistol. Frantically scuttling backward a moment ago, he now reverses course and tentatively approaches. Although Curtis would like to believe Gabby is a genuine amigo, cantankerous but compassionate, the caretaker’s attention is not focused on the hat.
The handgun is close to Curtis. He hops out of the SUV to get the weapon.
The unpredictable caretaker doesn’t try to beat him to the gun. He doesn’t just halt or back off, either, but turns away and runs across the salt flats in his singular hitching gait, as fast as he can go.
Bewildered, Curtis watches the receding figure until it’s clear the man won’t attempt to sneak back. Gabby doesn’t once look over his shoulder, but lights out for the eastern side of the valley as though he believes that all the devils between Hell and Abilene, which he had previously cursed, are now in vengeful pursuit of him. He fades into the darkness and the eerie fluorescence until he appears to be the mere mirage of a man.
How strange. The entire encounter with Gabby will require a lot of thoughtful analysis later, when Curtis has outlasted his enemies and can afford the leisure for contemplation.
When he has outlasted them, not if. Now that the obligation to socialize has been lilted from him for a while, Curtis feels his confidence returning.
A few miles to the north, where hard-bitten gunfighters once faced off in the.dusty street, a fierier and noisier confrontation is still underway, and while it doesn’t look like Armageddon or the War of the Worlds, the level of combat remains impressive. Curtis expected the conflict to be over long ago; and he doesn’t anticipate that these mismatched forces will be dueling much longer.
Besides, sooner rather than later, they may begin to suspect that the boy over whom they’re battling has slipped out of town during the uproar and is riding the range once more. Then the two armies will disengage, rather than fight to the finish, and both the scalawags and the worse scalawags will return to the urgent boy-dog search that brought them into the same town at the same time in the first place.
