Bonnie Nadzam - Lamb

“Ever heard the term road weary?”

“No.”

“Well. That’s what you are. Or no. I’ll tell you what it is. The gods getting back at you for being such a pig last night. Stealing both pillows and keeping me up with your snoring.”

“I do not snore.”

“How do you know? Ever share a room with someone before?”

“No.”

“Well then.”

“Last night was like a thousand years ago.”

“Well we’ve entered mountain time. Happened in Nebraska.”

“What’s that?”

“I’ll tell you what it is. It’s mysterious.”

They reached the next filling station by early afternoon, a mile north of the highway at the edge of a small town encroached upon in all directions by a shimmering flood of weeds. It was an old 76. The concrete foundation was tilted ten degrees, and once bright letters on a placard for soft-serve ice cream were drained of color. Inside he bought the girl a coffee and told her she was grown up enough for a full cup. Told her that the dire circumstances of her weak brain and laziness required it. They both laughed and she filled the cup with sugar and half a dozen little plastic cups of vanilla creamer.

Lamb went into the men’s room to order a round-trip plane ticket from Chicago to Denver—for Linnie—and when he came outside he found the girl crying quietly beside a greasy trash can spotted with rust. Snot glistening on her upper lip. On the far side of the parking lot a woman was helping a tiny girl into a bright blue windbreaker. Lamb stood beside Tommie and together they watched the mother buckle the child into the backseat of a white minivan. In a moment they were gone, a speck disappearing up the frontage road and turning onto the eastbound highway.

He put his arm around her shoulders and when she turned to look up at him he stooped beside the trash can and took her face in his hands and brushed the tears from her freckled cheeks with the edge of his sleeve, wiped the snot from her lip with his thumb and wiped it on his jeans. “Do you want to go home, Tommie? Shall I take you home to your mother?”

“Yes.” Her chest broke open now and she snorted and inhaled stuttering breath. “No.” She looked to him for help.

“Come,” he said. “Come get in the truck. Let’s talk.” He took her hand and walked her there. In the Ford he put the cell phone in the glove compartment and closed it. “We’ll turn around. We’ll drive straight through the night, okay? You can walk home from that pretty white hotel where we stayed, or I’ll give you taxi money. You can go back to the apartment and all your friends. Tell your mom you wandered off into the woods and fell asleep for days. Like a pretty little girl in a fable.”

She sat nodding and sniffling in the passenger seat.

“I’m sorry, Tom. This was a bad idea. I should have known better. People don’t do this, do they? This isn’t the way people behave. I’m older and I should have known better.”

The girl held her head in her hands. “I’ll get in so much trouble.”

“No you won’t. You won’t. Everyone will be so happy to see you. You need to just let me steer this now. I’m going to feed you really well and we’ll set you up in back so you can sleep and before you know it you’ll be waking up in your old neighborhood.”

“Okay.”

“And I’ll leave town so you have all the room you need to get over this. Nine hundred days and the whole city to yourself. Maybe I’ll drive back through Chicago in a few years, and you can sneak away from your boyfriends and girlfriends to give your poor old horse a little company. Come steal him away from his tall metal hotel downtown, right? Have a run through the open grass before we sneak you back in time for algebra. Right?”

“I want to stay. I want to stay.” She waved her hand at the windshield. “Go,” she said. “Drive.”

Our guy picked up her hand. “We’re just going to sit here a minute.” He waited until she stopped crying, then pulled away from the gas pump and parked beside a derelict pay phone. “We are not going to do anything unless I am absolutely certain it’s what you want to do.” She nodded and wiped her nose across her skinny bare forearm. “Oh no,” he said, “don’t do that.” He opened the glove compartment and withdrew a handkerchief. “Here,” he said. He dabbed her tears and held it to her nose. “Blow,” he said. “Go on.” She looked at him, red-eyed and ugly. “Harder,” he said. “Yes. Now that’s a nose-blow. That’s a girl with a little strength!” He dropped his hand into her lap. “My God,” he said, looking at her, “that’s the most extraordinary sound I’ve ever heard. You sound exactly like a goose, or a loon. Do it again.” He lifted the handkerchief, and they both laughed.

“Better?”

“Better.”

He rolled down both windows and turned off the engine. The sound of passing cars and birdsong filled the truck. “All right,” he said. “Let’s try to talk about this rationally. What are the facts?”

“I’m being a baby.”

“That’s not a fact. That’s an interpretation, and not one with which I particularly agree. Let me give you an example of a fact. We’re in north South Dakota. Fact.”

“Okay. It’s early evening.”

“Hey.” He raised an eyebrow. “That was a pretty little sentence, Tom.” She smiled.

“What else have you got?”

She paused and looked him in the eye. “I’m running away from home.”

Lamb widened his eyes. “You are?”

She looked down at the handkerchief, twisted in her hands. “Maybe.”

“Oh, Tommie.” He stared out the windshield. “I don’t know how that makes me feel.”

Nothing.

“You could have told me that was what you were doing. Did you think I wouldn’t let you come with me?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me the truth.”

“I thought you wouldn’t let me because I don’t want to go back.”

“But right now you do want to go back.”

“I feel bad!” Her voice rose to a thin, hysterical pitch and she was crying again.

“Ssh. I know. It’s okay. Listen. Listen, Tom. Do you remember our deal?”

“We spend a week, then you take me back.”

“Almost.”

“We spend a few days and you take me back.”

“That’s correct. And is that running away from home?”

She shook her head.

“That’s like a vacation, right?”

“But a secret vacation.”

“Well. I don’t know how I feel about the word secret. It’s more like the kind of thing a teenager would do, right? A teenager vacation.”

She wiped her nose with the handkerchief.

“And you agreed to this deal.”

“Yes.”

“No running away.”

“No.”

“Good,” he said. “I don’t know how it makes me feel, that you were keeping this from me.”

“I’m sorry!”

“Hey now, hey now.” He ran his hand from her forehead into her hair. “Take it easy. I was a teenager too, once. Ten thousand years ago. I know what it’s like. And I bet seeing that mom and her little girl gave you a little bruise right here, right?” He pressed her breast with his thumb, right where her heart would be.

She nodded.

“Well, let’s talk about this. Because if you feel bruised about something you didn’t even do—like run away—then our trip is off to a pretty shaky start. And we have to get it back on track together. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Tom, look at me. Good girl. Can you give me a smile? I love to see that. Good. Now tell me if you feel like you’re running away.”

She shook her head.

“Why not?”

“Because I’m going back in a few days.”

“You’re not abandoning your mother.”

She shook her head, lips pulled into her mouth and her eyes filling up again, and he put his hands around her face and drew in close, his breath warm and steady on her mouth and nose and chin.