Hick - Andrea Portes [73]
The road gets icy and it starts to snow two miles outside a lonely little town called the River of Souls Lost in Purgatory and I throw that broken-down car back in the river and I wonder if Glenda is down in there, too.
FORTY–ONE
By the time we get to Denver, it seems like we’ve been driving for three hundred days past row after row of endless aspens spreading out into the horizon and past, on and on, into eternity.
We pull up to the station and it looks too classy for the likes of me. it’s got stone this and stone that and three arches you got to walk through, just to get in. Beau and I sit staring forward in the stopped truck, not knowing what to say. He reaches behind him into the cab and pulls out an envelope, crumpled and beige.
“Here, Luli, you might be needing this.”
I open it up and there it is, all that’s left of me and Glenda and our short-lived career as High-Plains criminals. Two grand. All that’s left from a million miles away before bacon and eggs in the piney woods for breakfast.
“I reckon that’s yours.”
And I look up at him and remember about all those people that put in a nightlight and read you a bedtime story and scruff you on the head before sleeping. I remember that there are people in this world who would hold your hand before crossing the street and pretend Santa was coming for Christmas. And I think about Glenda looking down from her bubble and I bet you anything, I bet you anything, she put this whole thing together.
“Thank you, Beau. Thank you.”
“C’mon, now. You think I’m gonna take your money?”
“Still.”
“Okay, well, here’s that number, in case you ever need it.”
He hands me a piece of paper with a number, a name and a map.
“Don’t lose it, kay?”
“Okay.”
I nod. I’ve got that two grand now, carrying it, wrapped up and sealed. I’ve got a new way out and I can put it in my pocket and keep it with me no matter how not-invited I get. I’ve got a new way out now and you just wait, you just wait and see how I can throw myself through the clouds.
“Bye, Beau. Thanks for being so nice and all.”
“Aw, well, no big shakes.”
Beau squints into the sun and I don’t look at him. I grab my bag and jump out the door in one move, cause I know if I break it up it’ll be impossible. If I break it up I won’t even make it out the cab. I’m halfway to the station when I hear his voice.
“Hey, Luli?”
“Yeah?”
“When you turn eighteen—”
“Yeah?” I say, expectant.
“Don’t forget to vote Libertarian.”
He winks and starts the engine. I watch as he turns down the road, back to Nevada, somewhere between Elko and Jackpot. Somewhere I saw a movie with slippery rocks and a rag doll, somewhere with a fly trapped up in the corner, looking down at nothing left.
I swallow hard and find my resolve, turning back to the station for a moment.
I stand paralyzed. But then I remember Glenda watching me from her bubble, my new way out, and, like a magnet, she pulls my head up. Like a magnet, she pulls my head up and tells me to forget about Elvis-style cowboys and getting swept off my feet and waiting for a hero on a palomino horse cause he’s not coming, no way, no how, it’s all on you now, kid, don’t forget it.
I walk up to the station and there’s too much hullabaloo to know your way round and you could just run right back out and run into the street and that’d be that. Everything here is gray and big and stone and crowded but I make my way through to the tickets and wait wait wait until there’s a big pink face in front of me talking.
“Where to?”
“Omaha.”
“What?”
“Lincoln?”
“Well, which is it?”
“Well, do you got a bus that goes to Lincoln?”
“There’s a three-fifteen to Omaha, drops you off in Lincoln seven a.m.”
“Leaves right now?”
“Three-fifteen.”
“Oh, okay. Well, okay. I’ll take that.”
She sighs and I feel like everybody heard me say Lincoln and now I’m just