John Sayles - The Anarchist's Convention and Other Stories

Fort Scott, Wichita, Dodge City. Drunken cattlemen, crooked marshals, mannish whores. Kit Carson, Pueblo, Durango.

I am taking off and will send you postcards. Have enough money for now so don't worry.

Brian

He thought to mention he was heading west, but then where else was there for him to go? He thought to do his signature, the one he'd been working on, but then just printed it out like the rest of the message.

The light in the hall flicked on. He heard one of her sighs and pocketed the note.

Amarillo, Tucumcari -

"Oh, are you up?"

Her voice was moany with sleep. She squinted in the yellow kitchen-light and hugged herself with her arms. Thin blood, she always said, it ran in her family.

Santa Fe. Pony Express, stagecoaches, silver mines.

"You're reading the map?" It wasn't a question, she wasn't looking at him. She padded among the kitchen utensils as if she had come out searching for something lost, pushing at dishes and forks with one finger the way she always did.

"Would you like some hot cocoa? Help you sleep?"

"No thanks, Ma."

She got a pot and milk as if she hadn't heard. She never drank cocoa herself, it made her sick.

Your mama like a cup of coffee, he thought. Hot, black, and waitin for the cream. How safe the dozens had been for him to play, how far removed his mother was from cheatings and beatings. His mama never did anything. He watched her face over the stove and for an instant he felt bad.

"Think you could get some things at the market for me tomorrow?"

He had gone over every item, packing only what he couldn't survive without. The sleeping bag he'd bought cheap from a guy at school was out on the landing, along with the old man's boots. They had shared the same foot size.

"I don't think I'll be around tomorrow."

"You going somewhere?"

"I'm going away, sort of." He swiped cake crumbs off the map as he said it.

"Oh. Whereabouts?"

She stirred the milk a little. He could smell it now. Her spoon scraped gently against the sides of the saucepan and Brian held his head in his hands.

"I'm not really sure. I'll be gone awhile."

"You have enough money?" She frowned into the boiling milk.

"Yeah. Yeah, I've got plenty. No sweat for money."

"Will you be back before you're due at school?"

"I'm not going-back."

The Coach would be the most upset about that. He was building his backcourt.

"Oh," said his mother, then, "We ought to talk about it."

"Yeah. We should. But I'm not going back."

She was silent for a while but for her kitchen sounds.

El Paso, Tucson, Yuma. Copper-colored desert. Old men with brown-paper skin, baking like lizards on rocks.

She slid a cup of hot cocoa in front of him, covering New Orleans and most of the Gulf.

"Help you sleep."

She washed the pot out as he wondered where he would hit the Coast. Where else was there to go?

She yawned and stared into the dish-filled sink. He could hear her mind working, trying to think of something else to say, to ask. He wondered if he should say the words to her now. Say good-bye. He kept his eyes on the map, elbows propped wide on either side of the country. She poked at a few things in the sink as if testing them for signs of life. The cocoa smoked and grew a skin.

Sacramento. Eureka -

She started as if from a dream, stared for a moment at the cup of warm milk that lay between them, and began to shuffle toward her bedroom.

"Well. Have a nice trip, Brian."

The hall light flicked off.

"Good night, Ma."

"Night."

It was hard to believe, sometimes. But at one time they had been right there. Along the Hudson. Up and down the valley. Syracuse, Elmira, Binghamton were the western frontier. They had been right there.

Buffalo.

WO PUDDLES OF FLAB lifting and flopping down again. Feet. The toes were tiny and round, baby peas pushed into a mound of mashed potato. Mary Beth drove her old standard Chevy barefoot, shifting through the traffic flow on Interstate 8o. They were surrounded by miles of flat, after-harvest cornfield. Mary Beth's cat, a huge, white female named Justine, slept on top of Brian's duffel bag in the backseat. The sun was nearly straight overhead.

"Not much to see out here, is there?" said Brian.

"Nope. Not a hell of a lot."

Mary Beth had picked him up just outside of Iowa City, going west. He had tried sleeping out the night before but it was too cold, mid-October, and he had shivered in his bag. till daybreak. He hadn't eaten for two days, his stomach kept doing little fluttering things when he thought of it. He hadn't seen a mirror for a while and figured he must look pretty scruffy. He didn't get a single bite on the road till around ten o'clock when Mary Beth pulled up, two-hundredplus pounds of her packed into an apricot-colored shift. "Hop in, honey," she said, "I'm goin your way."

There wasn't all that much room in the front seat. Mary Beth had to spraddle her legs apart so her thighs didn't jam the steering wheel, and the squashed buttock closest to Brian spread out toward him, flowed against his hip. She felt like some thick, slow liquid sitting there, like warm molasses in a cloth sack. Brian got the impression, not so subtle, that she was coming on to him.

"Listen, honey," she said, "You're going to the West Coast, I can get you there in one ride." She had already told him she lived in San Francisco. "I got to stop down in Kansas City two-three days, then, to Denver a little bit, but the people I know there can put you up no trouble and I'll be. going straight on through to the Golden Gate. How bout it?"

He considered, then shrugged. "I think I'll take my chances on the road. You get back up on 8o, maybe I'll still be out there, you can give me another ride. Thanks for the offer though."

"Well you just watch out for those Nebraska staties. They'll have your ass, honey."

"You hitched out here?"

She had a pretty face, Mary Beth, kind of Indian-looking. A pretty face floating on three chins.

"Honey," she said, "I used to live here."

"You're kidding."

"Daddy had a little place up the road a ways. Corn and hogs."

"You don't seem like you're from the Midwest."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

They passed a panel truck with a red, dripping steak painted on it and Brian's stomach did a triple-gainer. He wished he was sitting down to lunch somewhere. Or in the back getting some sleep with Justine. But he liked Mary Beth all right, she was the first woman who'd ever picked him up hitching. In fact she was the first woman he'd said more than hold-the-pickles-hold-the-lettuce to since he started hitching in New York.

"I just meant that I thought you were brought up in San Francisco," he said.

"People who don't understand make fun of farmers." Mary Beth braked a little to let a semi pass, her foot-flab spreading on the pedal. "Farmers aren't stupid. People who make fun don't know what goes into the life. Farmers, they got a lot of strange ideas about the rest of the world and from a distance it looks like they're just small-minded and dull but it's not like that."

"I don't suppose it is."

"The farm belonged to my grandfather and his father before that. He handed down a debt with the farm and it got a little bigger every year. You don't live so bad and you've got good to eat and a lot of money goes through your hands every year but none sticks. Mostly small farmers never clear out of debt. There's this big hole of loans and mortgages and federal land deals that you fall into and never get out of. My daddy worked the fields six days a week. On the seventh he fixed machinery.