I had a chicken sandwich and some war talk at the Elite Roadside Diner. The war talk was depressing, the chicken sandwich decent when washed down with the Elite’s homemade orange drink.
The overtoothed guy who gave me the orange drink asked about my head, and I told him I’d got drunk and tried to ram down a door. This seemed reasonable to him.
Back on the road, the Bible belter deserted me. His voice had begun to give out, and he turned the microphone over to a woman who began to confess her sins to accompanying organ music. Her list was amazingly long and lacking in detail. After twenty miles, somewhere near Selma, the station began to fade, and my head began to crackle with static, which worried me, since I had turned off the radio. The sun was still up, bouncing out towards the ocean beyond the hills. I decided to stop for the night and tackle Winning in the morning. The problem was that I couldn’t find an auto court for another ten miles, and the one I did spot was a series of gray wooden outhouses with a sign saying FREE RADIO. I pulled into the sandy driveway of Rose’s Rodeo Auto Hotel, got out, stretched my legs, and went in to see if there were any vacancies. I expected to have my choice.
Rose herself, a smiling balloon of a woman, sat perched on a little stool in front of the counter.
“Room, beer, information, or gas?” she asked.
“All of them,” I answered. She eased herself off the stool, waddled behind the counter, reached down, and came up with a cold Falstaff. She popped the cap and handed it to me, and I held it away while the foam eased down. It tasted fine.
“You can have cabin four,” she said. “Or one, two, three, or six. Believe it or not, someone’s already in five. Whatever business we get will be coming in later tonight. Going north or south?”
“Up near Clovis,” I said. “Place called the Winning Institute. Heard of it?”
“Think so,” said Rosie, opening her own bottle, which dripped foam over her fat wrist. “Big ugly fella of a place with teeth.”
“Sounds like the fella,” I said, downing some beer, which made my head throb.
“You got a relative up there?” she said.
“No, just some business.”
“Something wrong with your head?” she tried, pointing at my head with her bottle in case I didn’t know where my head was.
“Yeah, but nothing I need a headshrinker for. Had a little accident. I’m a salesman. Sell tongue depressors, bandages, stuff like that. Hard to get the products. Military takes most of it.”
“I can imagine,” said Rose, finishing her beer. “You got luggage?”
“Sure,” I said, finishing off the beer and putting the empty on her desk. “I’ll get it out of the trunk later, and I’ll get my gas in the morning.”
“Cash up front,” she said, holding out the registration book, which she turned toward me. “Nothing personal.”
“Good business,” I said, picking up the pen and signing in as Cornel Wilde.
She looked at the signature upside down.
“You ain’t Cornel Wilde,” she said, stifling a burp.
“Not the actor,” I chuckled. “That’s my real name. Quite a burden for a tongue depressor salesman. People let me in, expecting to see a movie star. I’ve thought of changing my name, but what the hell, I had it first.”
“I get your point. Three bucks cash plus twenty cents for the beer. You want another just to keep me company, it’s free.”
I pulled out my wallet, tried not to look at my dwindling cash supply, and gave her three bucks. I pulled the change out of my pocket and asked her where a good place might be for dinner.
“Not within twenty miles of here, but you’re welcome to eat with me in back about eight, or go four miles down the road to Ed Don’s. He runs a beanery attached to his gas station.”
I gave her a soft look and she laughed.
“There’s no lechery in my heart, son,” she said. “I’m just an old wreck who likes to have someone to talk to on lonely nights. I’ll tell you tales of the logging days up in the hills, or we can listen to the radio, or you can scat back to the cabin. No strings. Hell, I couldn’t pull ’em even if I had them.”
“Rosie, you got a date at eight,” I said. I took the key and went through the screen door. I found cabin four with no trouble. It was right between three and five. I opened the little pop lock and went back to move my car in front of the door. I also wanted my gun and the toothbrush I’d shoved in the glove compartment.
Through the screen door I could see Rosie with a fresh bottle of Falstaff, staring at the desk as if it were a crystal ball that would tell her sad secrets.
The cabin wasn’t bad, not the worst I had seen. It was clean and small. A bed with a green blanket and two pillows. A small dresser painted brown. A shower stall and a night-stand with a little radio. I turned on the radio, pulled the shades on the two windows, locked the door, and watched the road through a thin crack in the shade for whoever had followed me from the second I left Los Olvidados. He or she hadn’t been too good at it, but even if they had been, it would have been a tough job. The car was big and dark and probably a Packard, but I wasn’t sure. It hadn’t come close enough for that.
I put the gun on my lap and kept watching. The car didn’t show up for the first hour. Maybe it had lost me, but I doubted it. After “The Lone Ranger,” I propped a chair in front of the door and under the knob, got undressed with the.38 within reach, and took a shower.
After the shower I checked out the window again. Another car was there, but it was a small Olds. A young couple and a kid were standing next to it, and the kid was crying loud enough so I could hear him. I got on the bed, let the radio keep playing softly, turned on my side, and closed my eyes. I slept. I think I dreamed about Cincinnati. Maybe I didn’t. There was just a flicker of the dream left when I woke up. The sun was down and the room dark except for the glowing face of the radio, which informed me that it was time for Fred Waring.
I threw my pants on, shoved the gun into my jacket, turned off the radio, and went out. A few more cars but no Packard.
Rosie was waiting for me. She had changed her flour-sack dress for another flour-sack dress and put a kid’s barrette in her hair.
“Thought you changed your mind,” she said.
“Slept,” I explained. “Hope I’m not late.”
“Hell, you could have come at midnight and not been late,” she chuckled and led the way beyond the counter into her back room. I followed and found a card table set up with a tablecloth and two place settings. There were two bowls on the table, both big, and a plate of dark bread. While Rosie got a pair of beers, I saw that the bowls were filled with tuna and potato salad.
“Looks great,” I said and meant it.
“Dig in,” she said, and we did.
“How’s business tonight?” I asked innocently.
“Pretty good, still a few left. Might pick up a late one or even two before midnight. Happens sometimes.”
Silence and I tried again.
“Mostly families, I suppose.”
“Mostly, a few loners like you,” she said, filling her fork with tuna. “Why don’t you just come out with it? Who are you expecting?”
I drank some beer, let the burp come, and told her the whole tale. She kept eating through it, her eyes open wide.
“This is better than ‘I Love a Mystery,’” she said. “Beats my logging stories all to hell. Tell the truth, I can’t tell if you’re a crazy or just the kind of guy who gets his rear in a wringer. I think you’re a wringer guy.”
“That’s a fact.” I toasted her and told her some more tales while we drank and ate. Then I listened to her tell me about logging in the old days while we had some chocolate ice cream.
“I better get some sleep,” I said. “This has been great. You have my gratitude.” I leaned over and gave her a kiss on the forehead. She did a three hundred-pound blush.
“Cornel Wilde,” she chuckled as I walked into the front office. “I’ll keep an eye out for your fella in the Packard.”
“Just call me if he shows up,” I said and let myself out. The screen door banged closed, sending the mosquitoes on it scurrying for a second before they returned. In the darkness, crickets chirped, and far down the
