The Traveling Death and Resurrection Show - Ariel Gore [31]
The old minister clears his throat. “Question is, kid, do you have any money?”
“About forty bucks,” I tell him. I left my duffel in the car but kept my wallet in the back pocket of my Levi’s.
He nods. “You’re prob’ly best off stayin’ here tonight, but come morning you oughtta head out. Know anybody ’round here?”
I shake my head.
He taps his leg, eyes unfocused. “I might know someone.” He stands up with a sigh. “Damned embarrassing time to be a Christian,” he mumbles as he shuffles off.
I dream of burning crosses that bleed wine.
The knock on the guest room door in the still-dark morning startles me back to the dense world: “Up and at ’em, kid!”
I dress quickly in the lamplight. Jeans and boots, Sesame Street T-shirt over the red camisole. How was I to know when I got dressed in the Super 8 Motel room in Red Bluff that this outfit would soon be all I had? I only wore the T-shirt to please Manny.
I thank the old minister for his help and the hot mug of black coffee he hands me when I walk into the kitchen.
“No bother at all,” he says. He’s wearing silk pajamas that make me wonder if there ever was a Mrs. Old Minister. He sets down his coffee, unfolds a ragged map of California. “Now,” he says, “I’ve got an old friend up here.” He points to a blotch of green to the east. “Know the area?”
I shake my head. I’m always amazed how many areas I still don’t know. A girl could travel for a lifetime, and still there’d be vast stretches of landscape and life far off the interstates, unknown.
The old minister leans over the table, draws a squiggling map on a ripped sheet of notebook paper. “You’re gonna get the bus right here.” He draws an X, then traces a long line out of the city. “It’s gonna let you out right here.” He draws another X. “Now, you might have to ask around, but if I recalls the place yer lookin’ for is right across from this bus stop here. Yer lookin’ for Dot.” He scratches his head.
I study the dubious Xs and twisting lines. “Is she expecting me?”
The old minister doesn’t answer. “You jus’ lay low ’til those fools’re onto somethin’ else. Ya hear me, kid? Lay low.”
Chapter 12
LYING LOW
Stepping out into the silky dawn, I feel alone and alive in a far-off, familiar kind of a way. Reminds me of college. Freshman year. Hiking in the dense redwood forest above campus, the morning sun angling through high branches, my grandmother ten months gone and not a single new friend on the horizon. My loneliness seemed daunting then, but now the soft morning air tastes like blackberry honey, my new fear still vague behind me, just a shadow under the streetlamps. Right turn at the corner, a row of weary porch lights. No footsteps.
A car slows at it approaches from behind. I quicken my pace. The old minister’s words echo in my head: Cops’re takin’ this pretty damn serious. But it doesn’t seem real. I seesaw between panic and faith. Oh, Martín, make them blind to me.
I glance back at the approaching car, an old silver Pinto, a “Y” in the license plate, a “729.” The kind of details the cops will ask me for later. A hand moves to fling something from the open passenger-side window, and I jump.
“Morning!” a voice calls as the newspaper alights on a manicured lawn.
Relax, Frankka.
At the bus stop there is:
A teenage girl arguing with her cell phone in Chinese.
An Arab guy wearing an “I (heart) Jesus” ski cap.
A fast-food-fat white lady with a shopping cart full of snot-nosed children.
I’m the only one who climbs onto the Amador Express when it stops.
Three seventy-five for a ticket, but the driver doesn’t have change.
The only other passenger on board, a wild-haired woman with a massive grocery bag of something on her lap, rustles through the pockets of her too-big wool cardigan, counting ones and quarters. “I got seventeen bucks,” she calls out as the bus door sighs closed behind me.
“Thanks.” I grab onto a seatback, trade her for my twenty, pay my fare, and sit down behind her.
“I know you,” she says, voice smooth as whiskey.
“I don’t think so.” I clear my throat, turn to