Sweet land stories - E. L. Doctorow [16]
So after I get back with doughnuts and coffee, and a yogurt for Karen, and this and that from the drugstore, it starts to rain in Dopple City. Lightning and thunder, an unlikely spring torrent, and what does she do but take Baby Wilson outside behind the Days Inn, where she steps over the scraggly attempt at landscaping and walks out into the desert dirt, laughing and hugging the poor child and holding her head up to drink rainwater while not listening to what I am saying, and shaking me off when I try to hustle her back inside. And as suddenly as it came the rain passes, and Karen is standing there with her hair wet as if she’s just had a shower and she says, Look, my sweet baby, you see what God is doing? And to me she says, You too, Lester. Wait for the runoff, where the rivulets leave their traces, keep your eyes focused—it is the pure magic of the desert you are about to see.
And all she meant was those desert wildflowers that hurry to blossom from the least encouragement of rain, which they did—little settlements of blue and yellow and white spikes and petals and tiny cups in the declivities, clustered close to the land as if not wanting to take the chance of growing up too far away from it, flowers that you don’t actually see opening but just have the feeling that they were there all along only you didn’t happen to notice them before.
And that was pretty if you go for that sort of thing, but the child still couldn’t see, although he seemed to be peering out from under her hand, which she held over his head like an umbrella, and for a moment I had the ridiculous feeling of real communication between them, this mad girl and a stolen infant just two or three days old who were now poking about together under the sun out there in the flowering desert behind the Days Inn.
I LEFT THEM there and got the keys to the Durango and took it down the highway to a used-car place. I wanted to get out of Dopple City as soon as possible. My theory was to keep moving if nothing else. Besides which I did not want to have to pay another day’s rent on the motel room, the checkout time for which was twelve noon.
The Durango was registered in both our names, although in truth it was Karen’s savings that had bought it, but under my influence, I might add, since I had always held Durangos in high esteem.
It was already used when we bought it, though in reasonable condition, with just fifty thousand miles on the odometer, which I had since added twenty to, but the front tires were almost new, which is what I explained to the guy at the car lot, uselessly, since he would only give me seven-fifty for it, six if I wanted cash. I took the six hundred. He was a short, fat underhanded thief in a white shirt and string tie but then again did not ask too many questions as he unscrewed my plates and handed them to me.
His man gave me a ride a mile down the road to the Southwest Car Rental and I used my Amex Gold to secure a Windstar van, whose greatest if not only attribute was a Nevada license plate.
It was in this sad, shining new van that I wouldn’t ordinarily be caught in that I packed up my imitation wife and child and headed west back to California. I had no idea what to do. But we were well disguised in our domestic vehicle and a little baby boy adorably asleep in the new car chair I had gotten him. Karen stroked the upholstery. She marveled at the