Hick - Andrea Portes [13]
Well, I took her bag and the only thing I regret is that I can’t give it back and take it again. And ten years down the line she’ll be begging me to be her country club guest and I’ll remind her I’m just the Twinkie-raised girl with the ripped-up knee-socks, no thanks. You can get a nose job while I fuck your husband in the back.
So long, suckers.
Now I’m down the stairs and out the gate.
I always knew I would fly off someday. I just never knew when, sitting in the barn, swinging my legs out, waiting for the starter pistol behind my eardrums to go pop. But it never came. It sidled up and pondered and wishy-washed itself around my skull, playing some kinda chorus of not yet. But the pop pop never came. Until now, this moment, here, where all my fears and doubts and misgivings have come to the dance to ask my dreams for a whirl. And just as I know that my daddy is probably deep into the panhandle by now, way past Alliance and not looking back, I know that now, this, this moment here, is the pop pop pop.
I wonder what they’ll say about me when I’m gone. I wonder how long it’ll take them to figure out I ain’t coming back. Just the thought of it makes me whistle and puts a zing in my shoe-step. I am not what they thought I was. No sir. I am bigger than this whole state put together and I have listened and I have waited and now I can hear it. Pop.
Here’s where I turn and start walking down the gravel road. I feel like there’s something coming up underneath my feet, something lifting me and moving me forward, something just waiting to throw me into the sun.
TWO
FIVE
Somewhere between Palmyra and Alliance, a beat-up green-and-white pick-up truck, with a gun rack in the back, pulls up behind me while I’m singing to myself. I look inside and there, in the driver’s seat, sits a skinny bug-eyed cowboy who looks like a turtle. He looks like he must have spent the last ten days straight chasing squealers in the rodeo and hasn’t changed since. He’s got on one of them old fashioned Western shirts with a pattern of little rose flowers faded dingy into gray, mother-of-pearl snaps gleaming creamy in a line from his chest down to his jeans, untucked. He’s got a look about him that you wouldn’t be surprised if he just busted out of the nervous hospital.
He rolls down the window and shouts over the wind,
“Where you headed?”
“Las Vegas.”
He looks me up and down.
“Aren’t you a little bit young and maybe, say, innocent to be traveling to Las Vegas all by your little self?”
He’s got this tone in his voice like he’s got three friends snickering, hunkering down in the cab, and this is all a little joke between them.
“No.” I straighten up a bit. “What about you, Mister? Where you headed?”
“Well, I don’t see how that’s any of your business . . . and my name’s not Mister, it’s Eddie. Eddie Kreezer.”
I smile and make a bashful act, bending over myself, trying to let him sneak a peek at my newfound bubbles, hoping for a free ride. I figure I can turn his none-of-your-business into Las Vegas with a little bit of sugar. My age makes him nervous and shamey, cause his eyes keep heading southwards and then back up, guilty. I can tell I can make his eyes swirl and that’s just about all I want to do.
“You some kinda runaway?”
“No. My dad ran away and left me.”
This is my new version of my life story.
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. I guess he thought I could fend for myself, but I sure could use a ride, Mister, Eddie, and I’m just worried sick that I won’t find a place to stay before dark and I guess I’m just plum scared and all cause—”
“What’s your dad look like? Maybe I seen him.” He takes off his hat and squints at the brim like he’s inspecting it.
“You.”
There is a silence as he looks me up and down. Then he just starts laughing, real hard and loud, like his make-believe friends just jumped out the back and the dashboard just turned into a bar.
“Oh my God, what in the world is in store for me here?” he says, shaking his head and smiling to himself. “Well, well, well . . .”
I don’t really get his little private joke, but I smile anyways,