She giggles.
Come on. Be serious now.
Lightheaded, I know. That’s fatigue. But you can’t afford to blank out your brain. Not now. For Ellen’s sake …
She broods into the mirror. Holy Mother of God I look a fright.
I wish I had someone to pray to. I wish I believed.
She flashes on a long rainy high school afternoon: four girls earnestly reflecting why God, if he exists, should permit evil to prevail.
It all broke up over a rusty joke: “God isn’t dead. God exists-and She’s black.”
She washes her face with cold water, scrubbing at her skin. Must think. Must use my head.
If he’s called a cop or put in a call to Bert’s house …
She dries her face on paper towels and gently begins to wash the baby. “It’s not exactly the master bathroom, darling, but any port in a storm.”
There’s no more time for stalling. Got to make the decision. He’ll be coming outside any minute now and if he finds us gone he’s sure to raise the alarm.
What do you say, kid? Which way do we turn?
In a way it doesn’t matter. No matter what direction we choose, it’s a field mined with perils.
Listen: we’ve been taking ridiculous chances all day and all night. This is no time to stop.
Making the decision, she feels immediately lighter of foot. Ellen is no weight at all when she carries her out of the ladies’ room.
There’s a fat mustached cop just going into the men’s room. He glances at her, then goes inside without any evident show of interest. Eyes wide with shock she retreats quickly around behind the station and directly out across the dim asphalt to the rig.
By the time Doug Hershey returns to the truck with a take-out paper bag of hamburgers she’s back in the seat with the baby. She gives him as bright a smile as she can muster.
He settles down behind the wheel and hands her the bag. “You really worth twenty-five thousand dollars?”
“I’m not. She is.” The baby.
“You want to tell me about it?”
“Not now.” She’s found the warm milk. She’s feeding it carefully to Ellen. “Can we go now?”
He says, “You’re not heading for Baltimore, are you.”
“Not really, no.”
“Want to go west?”
“Salt Lake City? Portland?”
“Why not. I could use the company.” He’s switching things on, starting the engine. He hooks a thumb over his shoulder toward the bed behind him. “You get done eating, climb back there and get some sleep. Time you wake up we’ll be past Cleveland. Oh-be careful with the shotgun up there. It’s loaded. Once in a while we run into hijackers. You can pass it down to me if you want.”
As he hauls the rig out across the apron she leans forward against the window to look back at the station and she sees the fat cop come out of the men’s room. She’s isn’t sure whether he sees her in the cab but the brim of his trooper hat turns to indicate at least a casual interest in the departing truck and she pulls back away from the glass with a feeling of numb tired fear.
67
She wakes in strident alarm.
The baby is here-safe in the circle of her arm. But the truck isn’t moving. Where’s Doug?
When she sits up she bangs her head. She swears at the damn truck and ducks down to peer outside.
Turnpike service area. It’s hot and steamy. The ratty remains of her clothes are sticking to her.
He’s out there filling the tank, talking to another driver.
The baby wakes up and starts talking. Nobody else would be able to decipher it but she understands that Ellen is hungry. She finds the battered package and digs out one of the Gerber jars and feeds her.
She’s just finished changing the baby when Doug climbs into the cab. “Hi.”
“Where are we?”
“Near Rochester.”
“What time is it?”
“Two-thirty, something like that. Here.” He hands her the Thermos. “Fresh coffee.”
When they’re back on the road he says, “I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours.”
“What?”
“I’m twenty-seven,” he says. “I own a little piece of this rig. The bank owns the rest. I drive a truck because I’m restless and I like to be my own boss and also because I aim to be a country-western song writer and being alone on the road all day gives you plenty of time to write. I use that little cassette recorder there. If I get to know you better I’ll sing two or three of my songs for you. Born in Alabama and I’ve been married six years and we’ve got two boys, five and four, and considering I’m on the road half my life I think we’ve got a pretty good marriage but I guess I’ve been heartbroken enough times in my imagination and my memories to qualify me to write songs. I was a kid, I used to keep falling in love with women but then something’d happen. I’m working on a song now about how love is the bait they put in the trap at the beginning. It’s really a poem, sort of. I’m going to send it to the
“Why are you doing all this? Why didn’t you go for the twenty-five thousand dollars?”
“I don’t know. Impulse? My romantic illusions, maybe.”
But then he says, “That’s not true. Not altogether. The way you looked standing on the side of the road with the baby in your arm-Madonna and child. But I’m not a teen-ager any more. I don’t operate on sentiment. You know what it was? It was because you trusted me. I couldn’t let you down.”
“I was too tired not to.”
“Well I don’t care why you did it.”
Later at 65 mph on the Interstate she climbs down into the passenger seat and has a long conversation with Ellen after which she puts the baby to sleep in the bed. Then she says to the truck driver: “Last night I was going to outbid the opposition. I was going to offer you thirty thousand dollars to save me and my daughter.”
“Jesus. Why didn’t you?”
“I just forgot.”
“Maybe that’s because you had an instinct that you didn’t need to.”
“You’re coming on awfully strong as the good Samaritan.”
A quick glance at her out of the side of his eye. “You really don’t want to trust anybody, do you. It’s very hard for you.”
“The last man I trusted-”
There’s no need to finish it. She subsides and peers forward through the windshield: streams of cars on the highway; grey sky. He’s got the air conditioning on and she feels chilled.
Her mind drifts. They run on into the afternoon. Occasionally she risks a glance toward him. The truck-driving dreamer in daylight; after a while she decides that he seems to have a deep understanding of silences.
68
“Where are we now?”
