Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant - Anne Tyler [108]
Luke rubbed his palms on his jeans. The driver said, “Well, now. Listen to me! Just gabbing along; I guess you think I talk too much.” And for the rest of the trip he was quiet, only whistling through his teeth when the radio played a familiar song.
He said goodbye near Richmond, going out of his way to leave Luke at a ramp just past a rest center. “You wait right here and you’ll get a ride in no time,” he said. “Here they’re traveling slow anyhow, and won’t mind stopping.” Then he raised his hand stiffly and drove off. From a distance, his truck looked as bright and chunky as a toy.
But it seemed he took some purpose with him, some atmosphere of speed and assurance. All at once … what was Luke doing here? What could he be thinking of? He saw himself, alone in the fierce white glare of the sun, cocking his thumb at an amateurish angle on a road in the middle of nowhere. He couldn’t even visualize how far he had to go. (He’d never done well in geography.) Although it was hot—the peak of the afternoon, by now—he wished for a windbreaker: protection. He wished for his billfold, not so much for the small amount of money it held as for the i.d. card that had come with it when he bought it. If he were killed on this road, how would they know whom to notify? He wondered if—homeless, parentless—he would have to wear these braces on his teeth for the rest of his life. He pictured himself as an old man, still hiding a mouthful of metal whenever he smiled.
Then an out-of-date, fin-tailed car stopped next to him and the door swung open. “Need a lift?” the driver asked. In the back, a little tow-headed boy bounced up and down, calling, “Come on! Come on! Get in and have a ride. Come on in and ride with us!”
Luke got in. He found the driver smiling at him—a suntanned man in blue jeans, with deep lines around his eyes. “My name’s Dan Smollett,” he said. “That’s Sammy in the back seat.”
“I’m Luke.”
“We’re heading toward D.C. That do you any good?”
“It’s fine,” said Luke. “I guess,” he added, still unsure of his geography. “I’m on my way to Baltimore.”
“Baltimore!” said Sammy, still bouncing. “Daddy, can we go to Baltimore?”
“We have to go to Washington, Sammy.”
“Don’t we know someone in Baltimore too? Kitty? Susie? Betsy?”
“Now, Sammy, settle down, please.”
“We’re looking up Daddy’s old girlfriends,” Sammy told Luke.
“Oh,” said Luke.
“We just came from Raleigh and saw Carla.”
“No, no, Carla was in Durham,” his father told him. “It was DeeDee you saw in Raleigh.”
“Carla was nice,” said Sammy. “She was the best of the bunch. You would’ve liked her, Luke.”
“I would?”
“It’s too bad she was married.”
“Sammy, Luke doesn’t want to hear about our private lives.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” said Luke. He wasn’t sure what he was hearing, anyhow.
They were back on the freeway by now, staying in the slow lane—perhaps because of the grinding noise that came whenever Dan accelerated. Luke had never been in a car as old as this one. Its interior was a dusty gray felt, the floors awash in paper cups and Frito bags. The glove compartment—doorless—spilled out maps that were splitting at the seams, along with loose change, Lifesavers, and miniature tractors and dump trucks. In the rear, Sammy bounced among blankets and grayish pillows. “Settle down,” his father kept saying, but it didn’t do any good. “He gets a little restless, along about afternoon,” Dan told Luke.
“How long have you been traveling?” Luke asked.
“Oh, three weeks or so.”
“Three weeks!”
“We left just after summer school. I’m a high school English teacher; I had to teach this grammar course first.”
“Lookit here,” Sammy said, and on his next bounce upward he thrust a wad of paper into Luke’s face. Evidently, someone had been chewing on it. It was four sheets, mangled together, bearing typed columns