Shiloh and Other Stories - Bobbie Ann Mason [67]
“This place ain’t big enough to cuss a cat in,” she said when they bumped into each other.
She opened a new jar of her squash pickles.
“Don’t expect this grub to last,” she said. “I can’t can on the road.”
“You won’t have to,” said Bill.
“You’ll be wanting some field peas and country ham,” said Imogene.
After eating, they lay down to rest, with the fan going and the traffic whizzing by. Bill studied the interior of the mobile home. He was not really familiar with it yet. He had bought the luxury model to please Imogene. He could live in a truckbed himself. He stretched out and shaded his eyes with his Worm-and-Germ cap from the feed mill.
A large family arrived at the rest area and noisily hauled out a picnic. They were laughing and talking and Bill couldn’t get comfortably into his snooze. He got up and watched a boy and his dog play Frisbee. The boy was about eighteen, Bill guessed, and wore cut-off jeans. Bill was afraid the dog was going to run out in the road. It made him nervous to watch. Once the Frisbee sailed near the road and Bill had to fight to keep himself from racing after the dog. The dog did wild leaps trying to catch the Frisbee. Bill had seen dogs play Frisbee on television. Bill had never played Frisbee. He missed having a dog.
They drove on. The scenery changed back and forth from hills to flatlands, from fields to woods. Bill couldn’t get over the fact that he was really going to see the ocean again. He just wanted to sit and look at it and memorize it. He drove along, singing. He liked the way they could sit up high in the camper, looking down on the other cars. He loved the way the camper handled, and the steady little noise of gasoline flowing through the carburetor.
Imogene sat with her hands in fists. When cars passed she grabbed the handle in front of her. Bill pointed out that with these wide highways she didn’t have to worry about meeting traffic head-on, but Imogene said the cars sneaking around you were worse.
“I always heard when you retired you could start all over again at the beginning,” said Imogene. “But my nerves is in too bad a shape.”
She had said that over and over. She had cried at the sale and cried when she gave away her belongings to Judy and Bob and Sissy. She said it was her nerves.
“You’re a lot of fun,” said Bill in an exasperated tone. “I oughtn’t to have brought you along.”
“I’ve got this hurtin’ in my side,” she said.
Bill passed Volkswagens and Pintos and even trucks. He felt exhilarated when he passed another camper. He had a queer feeling inside, as though his whole body might jolt apart.
“You’re going over fifty-five,” Imogene said after a while.
Bill was an expert driver. He knew every road and cow path and Indian trail in the Jackson Purchase. If he was late coming home, Imogene always thought he had had a wreck. But he had never even been in a ditch, except on the tractor.
Imogene said, “Gladys had a hurtin’ like this and come to find out she had kidney disease. She had to go to the bathroom every five minutes. At her husband’s funeral she had to set by the door.”
“Are you going to bellyache the whole way?”
Imogene laughed. “Listen to us! We’ll kill each other before we get there. I’ll be to bury. Or you’ll have to put me in a asylum, one.”
Bill laughed. A truck slowed him down, and he shifted gears. “You couldn’t do this in China!” he exclaimed suddenly.
“Do what?”
“Go taking off like this. In China you can’t go from one county to the next without a permit. And if you could, you’d have to go by bicycle.”
“I think we might be in China before long, at the rate we’re going. You’re over fifty-five again.”
“We’ll be just like the Chinese if our goofy President has his way!” said Bill, ignoring Imogene’s remark about the speed.
“What’s this business about China again?” Imogene never read the papers, but Bill read the Sun-Democrat every night and watched NBC.
Bill tried to explain. “Well, see, after the war, the Chinese government was forced