Look at Flower Page 11

  I’m thinking fast. “You think you might want a stinky hippie chick in your cab, keeping you company?”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Flower.”

  He nods to himself. “That is a hippie name, for sure.” He looks out the window. “It’s against regs to take passengers, though we do it all the time. Doesn’t look like this storm is breaking—you ever get hit by a hailstone the size of a baseball?”

  I involuntarily put my hands on my head, and Dan says, “That’s what I thought.” He gives me a swift nod. “O.K., just ’cuz I don’t want to see bodily harm come to you, even if you are a no-count hippie, I’ll give you a ride. You want to go all the way to New Mexico?”

  “I was just thinking that, Dan. I’d love nothing more.”

  He considers this a moment, then says, “You’re probably younger than my daughters. Maybe you should call me Mr. Dan.”

  I laugh, and that’s that. When Mr. Dan’s finished his coffee, and I’ve slurped down the last of the marshmallows, we each pay our bills and head out to his truck.

  The Balloon Farm

  Look at Flower, in this shiny truck cab nearly as big as my mom’s kitchen, all these dials and levers stretched around in front of me, and this quirky old guy, Mr. Craig, chomping on an unlit cigar as big as a banana and running us down the endlessly unspooling highway. Mr. Craig’s a road buddy of Mr. Dan, who was great, a total gentleman who turned me on to Buck Owens and Merle Haggard (who even if he hates hippies still has a kick to his tunes); but at a truck stop outside Dodge City, Mr. Dan got a call on his CB radio and had to peel east with his load of hog meat.

  Mr. Craig’s even older than Mr. Dan. He’s got funny hair, his head’s mostly balding, but he’s got a long shock that he’s wound out and back over his forehead; he also has a sunburned red face and two molars way bigger than his other teeth. Oh, and the stogie ’tween his lips, which, thank God, he keeps unlit. He seems pretty psyched to have me in the truck cab with him. He tries to get me to talk baseball, he’s a St. Louis Cardinals fan, but I’m not much use with sports, so finally we just whistle down the highway in silence. All along Mr. Craig drinks endless cups of coffee out of a white ceramic mug with fort lauderdale 1956 written on it, and then asks me to look out the window while he uses this bladdery thing between his legs to empty himself out. Oh, yeah, I oblige.

  The golden plains hurtle by. There’s nothing but these endless fields of I guess wheat, rows and rows of it, these . . . amber waves of grain. What a funny thought to pop into my head. Here we are, running down the middle of the country, and like that I see it . . . I see it all, that whole America the Beautiful thing. Amber waves of grain. Off in the distance mountains . . . purple mountain majesties. Fruited plains. It’s like I’m back in sixth grade with my hand over my heart and I’m mouthing these words that the teacher makes us all sing every morning, but back then those words meant nothing to me; and yet here we are, rolling down the road, and all of it’s coming to life around me . . . and it’s truly something. America, what a trip! The whole grand blooming exquisite hugeness of the place hits me. Oh, I love this country.

  Miles on we leave the wheat fields behind; everything here’s an endless carpet of grass. Mr. Craig and I still haven’t found anything to talk about when he reaches over and starts rooting through the mess of stuff on the ledge between the two seats. There’re greasy tool manuals, programs from old Cardinals games, yellowing newspapers from Chicago and Kansas City, grimy T-shirts, a pair of orange Bermuda shorts, empty cellophane cigar wrappers as well as greasy burger and fries wrappers. As Mr. Craig moves his hands through them, I worry a little that he’s not fully watching the road.

  “Can I help you find something?”

  “Looking for my tape to play, darlin’.”

  I start at the darlin’, but figure he’s just being friendly. I look closer and see a scatter of eight-track tapes. “I can do it,” I say, reaching over. The pile is about six inches high and pretty gross, but the black-plastic tape cartridges stand out. “Who’re we look—”

  Then I stop. Under a small, wadded-up stars-and-stripes flag I find a stack of magazines, covers hanging by only one staple, if that, pages tattered, some stuck together. Tattered magazines. I think back, and . . . my stomach lurches. I can’t help myself, hold up the whole pile under Mr. Craig’s nose.

  “Oh, my lovelies,” he says softly. “You found my lovelies.”

  “Your—”

  “It’s O.K., little darlin’.” He’s looking at me now out of the corner of his eye. “They’s just my special friends.” A meaty shrug. “For the long trips.” He’s blushing a little, then he smiles, his huge molars sticking out. “No reason to—”

  I’m looking at the magazines. They’ve got smeary color covers and are printed on paper not much better than the Archie comics I devoured when I was ten, but these aren’t pictures of Betty and Veronica; these are girls not even my age now, naked as daybreak and holding silly things like big rubber balls, rolling pins, and what looks like everything else from my mother’s kitchen out in front of them. They’re smiling, every last one, but the grins are tight and hard like somebody’s been yelling at them for days.

  “What you’re looking for, darlin’, is Nancy Sinatra,” Mr. Craig says, like nothing’s happened. I’m still holding the pile of magazines, can’t put them down. Honestly, I’ve never seen pictures like this; I’m curious, fascinated, disgusted. . . . “You like that Nancy Sinatra?”

  What? Nancy Sin. . . . I shake my head; the name doesn’t ring a bell.

  “She’s in there somewhere, pumpkin. I’m sure you can—”

  I drop the magazines like they’re soiled, push them back under the Fourth of July flag, try to make them go away.

  Mr. Craig is looking at me like he really wants me to find that tape. “She’s Frankie’s daughter,” he says. His lips are thick, wet. “Some looker.”

  Oh, there it is. I see the word boots in white, then under it nancy sinatra in pea-green type over a picture of this glamorous honey-haired chick in a black-and-white striped sweater and leggings, a thin band of red skirt in between—and these wild red boots.

  Mr. Craig takes the tape from me, shoves it into his dashboard player, then punches a button, and this stomping song powers out of the speaker. “Listen to this!” he cries over the sound.

  Oh, yeah, I recognize the record, it’s that hit from last year, These Boots Are Made for Walking. As it booms through the cabin, Mr. Craig gets this goofy smile on his face; when the song winds down, he plays it again—then again and again. He throws the shift on the truck, gears grinding, then punches buttons, rewind then play, on the tape player.

  My head’s spinning. I’m flashing back to that night Kay got me thinking about, my mother brandishing the rolled-up magazine, my father looking sheepish—looking caught. Were the magazines pictures of my father’s “lovelies”? Was that what Kay understood?

  Right then I stop being angry at my dad; I just feel pity and sadness. Was that all that turned my mother against him, naked pictures? Pictures he probably turned to because of her?

  I look out the window to cool myself out; start counting the cows. Fortunately, there are a lot of ’em. One, two . . . ten . . . twenty. . . . But the low cloud of manure is too much like home, and my thoughts keep popping feverishly: That I’ll never be uptight and stern like my mother. That I’ll never, never start out loving someone then freeze up against him. That no man I adore will ever have to turn to magazines or anything else to replace my love. That I’ll always simply be Flower and glow petal-bright into the world.

  Something like four cups of coffee and ten plays of Boots later, Mr. Craig turns to me and asks sheepishly, “Flower, you ever think, you know, that you’d, um, like to walk all over a guy in, um, your leather boots?”

  What? Here I am thinking all my swarming, stabbing thoughts of being so lonely it makes a soul sicken and wither, its world-rattling toll, and how the only counter to loneliness has to be
true love and devotion; and here this creepy man has the audacity to ask me about walking over some guy’s back in a pair of leather boots? No way, José! I take a deep breath, then turn toward him slowly, waiting for just the right. . . .

  “Mr. Craig, if you really take a look at me—at Flower!—you’ll see that I’m wearing sandals.” I lift my feet. “I don’t even own a pair of—”

  “I mean—” Mr. Craig gulps, all wide eyes now “—if we, um, found you some big ol’ leather boots.” He winces a little. “Like walk all over me?”

  I face him straight on and give him a long look. What am I seeing? Not much. Just another small man, a lonely man; a man who has to go to tattered magazines to find even a hint of loveliness. No, I’m getting no whiff of real threat, just the vapors of a truck driver with a big cigar and a pretty hitchhiker in his truck. And pity, surging seas of pity. . . .

  “Mr. Craig,” I say, softer now, “I can honestly say I will never give that possibility a moment’s thought.”

  And to prove it, I wiggle my naked, daisy-painted toes.

  “Oh,” he goes, and the way the word bubbles from his mouth, it’s one of the saddest things I’ve ever heard; but that’s all it is—simply lonely and sad. I hear myself sigh: for Mr. Craig, for Eleanor Rigby, surely for my own father, and even for me without Run . . . all the lonely, lonely people.

  The creepy scene aside, it’s a pretty decent ride. Mr. Craig stops playing Nancy Sinatra and goes on to a whistling-only version of Winchester Cathedral, which he also plays over and over, the tootling repetitions making me kind of crazy; but at least it gets him focused back on the road, taking us bead-straight through Kansas, then cutting west through the Oklahoma panhandle—not at all like my old hangout in Frisco; and surely not a Deadhead in sight—and then a quick slice through Texas and on to New Mexico, which I immediately dig. Now the cab is nothing but silence, and I’m taking in everything around me: the mountains, the red and gold rocks, the sprawling blue sky. Mr. Craig perks up as he chomps his cigar, swills his coffee, powers his engine, keeps stealing slant-eyed glances at my fine-golden-haired legs . . . then with no warning he’s slowing down.

  “I’m gonna leave you here, little darlin’,” he says, shuttling the truck through gear after gear as it loses speed. We’re in a parking lot in front of a restaurant that reads pollyann’s rest and reload, a shiny metal building wrapped around with reflective glass like one big oasisy jewel, glowing like crazy in the endless sunlight.

  “Where are we?” I say, reaching back for my bag.

  “Calls itself Romeroville. Not far from Santa Fe.” He points through the window to our right. “That way. Santa Fe’s a nice town—perfect for a girl like you, Flower.”

  “You think?”

  “Oh, yeah, definitely.” He smirks. “Lots of places you could buy yourself a purty pair a boots.”

  I give him a scowling look but thank him anyway, then grab my duffel (actually Run’s, though now full with my own stuff), and scoot in my sandals across the skillet-hot ground, my sunburned nose, tussles of blonde hair, my slim tanned legs under the flowing white skirt reflected in the mirror glass through the shimmery air.

  - - - - -

  Look at Flower, sitting in Pollyann’s Rest and Reload and sipping a beaded glass of iced tea—pretty much all I can afford—when the door opens and a troupe of longhairs comes bounding in. Pollyann’s, like that last joint, Puck’s, is a pretty straight place, most of the customers dressed even more Sears & Roebucky than my folks back in Bend, so these kids in their rough-cut blouses and handsewn jeans definitely cause all eyes to follow ’em. There’s one guy and two chicks, all with straight hair past their shoulders; really clean hair, it strikes me, brushed so bright each strand appears to float free.

  They take the booth across the aisle in front of me, pull the heavy burgundy menus from the metal rack underneath the mini jukebox, and laugh and giggle as they read off menu items: Bonus Burger, Patty Melt, Bacon Cheese, Polish Dog. . . .

  Everyone in Pollyann’s is still watching the kids. A waitress, cloris on her lapel, saunters over and asks what they’d like.

  And they order just as polite as can be.

  While they’re waiting for the food, the girl facing me, sort of plump with frizzy copper hair, looks over at me and says, “You look cool. What’s your name?”

  “Flower,” I say.

  The girl nods, then lifts herself up a bit and looks over the back of the booth. “You hungry?” she asks. “I mean, you’re just drinking that iced tea—”

  I was trying to tell myself I wasn’t hungry, but truth is, I’m famished. (Mr. Craig shared a couple of Mrs. Smith’s fruit pies with me, but that was it.) So I give her a big nod, and she says, “Well, Flower, come on over.” They look like fun, why not? I carry my iced tea to them and join their party.

  “I’m Butter,” the girl says. I see she has a couple rows of tiny mirrors glued onto her rough-cotton blouse. “That’s Billy over there, and Grace. She’s his old lady.”

  They both give me a little head tip, Hi.

  “Like I said, I’m Flower.”

  “So where you heading?” Billy, across from me, asks right off. He’s got the kind of bright blue eyes that look like they’re popping from his head. They’re way more intense than mine.

  “I had a ride to Albuquerque, but—well, Santa Fe, I guess.”

  “You guess?”

  “The guy who drove me here, Mr. Craig, said it was nice, but, really, I’m just sorta—” And I lift my hand and let it float up, then flutter down slowly like a rose petal.

  Butter’s brown eyes light up. “I can dig that,” she says, then hands me a menu. “Here, pick whatever you want. We got dough.”

  I order a grilled cheese; Billy insists I get it with jalapeños, like they do in the Southwest, so I say I’ll try that, though I tell them I’m not that used to spicy food. “Is it really hot?”

  “You’ll like it,” Billy says. He gives me an eye-lifting wink with his amazing eyes. “I know you will.”

  Billy has the thickest brown hair I’ve ever seen. It’s center parted, falls to his shoulders, where the ends do a little flip (the way I used to wish my stringier blonde hair would). He’s got the perfect-oval blue eyes, and they glow in contrast with his olivey skin and hair. Next to him Grace, with her duller brown hair and narrower eyes, doesn’t look half as beautiful.

  “So you’re just out hitching around?” Butter says.

  I shrug. “Today.”

  Butter has mushroom-colored eyes that get bigger the longer you look at them; they swell and even glow a little. “Where you been?”

  “All over.” I look up. My grilled cheese is here; look, there are round slices of yellow-green pepper all through the orangey melted cheese. The thing smells hot and oozy and righteously good, and I take a big bite. Wow! The hot peppers chute up the back of my throat right to my nose. It burns, but . . . yeah, not so bad. I dig in with relish.

  “We live outside of Albuquerque,” Billy says. The rest of them have finished eating, and he’s gotten the check and left a $10 bill atop it on the table. It’s a big tip on a total that only came to $6.50. “Have a commune there.”

  Another commune? Hmmmm. I feel my brow purse.

  “It’s a new thing,” Butter says, “a bunch of far-out people living together off the land. We make everything. Share everything. Live totally as free as we can—”

  I nod between bites. That doesn’t sound like Big Star. “Any politics?” I say.

  “Not much.” Butter shakes her head. The quarter-inch mirrors sewn over her bodice sparkle.

  “That’s good.”

  Another glance around the table, then Butter says, “We think so.”

  I’m most of the way through the last half of my sandwich, my mouth all puckered up nice by the jalapeños, when a tall man in a big white cowboy hat clunks up to our table. He’s got the longest face, it’s striking, kind of like a shovel—wide at the top and pointed at the bottom. His te
eth don’t look clean.

  The way he’s standing, he’s just right there above us, glowering. I can see each of us at the table take a glance at him, then try to ignore him.

  But we can’t.

  “You think you’re Jesus,” he says. His voice is sharp, big enough to resound through the café, but weirdly hollow, too, like he carries his own echo. He points right at Billy. “Why you doing that?”

  Billy looks upward, a wide-open, sweet smile on his face. “I’m not being nothing,” he says, light as a feather. “I’m just me.”

  “It’s blasphemeee, is what we think it is.” The man’s eyes light up. “You looking like Jesus.”

  “We’re just trying to have our lunch,” Butter says gently. Reflections from her blouse mirrors sweep like little lights over the man’s dusky face.

  “It don’t matter none.” The cowboy guy turns to another man standing there, bareheaded. “Jackson? What does the Bible say about this?”

  “It’s taking the Lord in vain, Siler.”

  This man, Siler—what kind of name is that?—stoops so he’s at our level, gazing straight at us. It’s like he has a candle burning in each of his eyes, focused points of furious flame.

  “That’s right,” Siler says. “You there lookin’ like Jesus is taking the Lord in vain.” His words get louder and rounder the closer he moves.

  I’m feelin’ spooked now, like with some of the scary Pentecostal folk back home who used to try to pray over me.

  “And we don’t take that here.” Siler’s voice echoes again. He looks around. “Right, everyone?”

  I hear a general agreement noise around us, people grunting under their breaths.

  Then Siler pulls out a knife.

  It’s long, at least seven inches, with a hand-tooled horn handle and a dagger-curved blade. The overhead fluorescent lights gleam dazzling white along its silvery edge, the reflection overwhelming Butter’s mirrors. It’s like I’m suddenly seeing only the knife—we all are. What’s he going to do? I can’t—

  “Hippie trash!” Siler hisses. “Jackson, get him—”