Chapter Four

Rusty’s Troubles

On Saturday mornings, me and Rusty always took our cars over to the Speedi-Quick Car Wash. We run them through the wash line, then we'd vacuum out the floors and clean off all the windows inside and outside. We'd take us some old rags and park in the sun at the end of the lot and wipe down the whole car, so the water drops wouldn't dry on and make streaks. Then we always would go to the Dairy Queen, the one more towards the A & P, not the one on Dyson Road. Dyson's too dusty for a car you just washed.

One Saturday, I got up and it was a perfect car-washing day. Sunny but not too hot, it hadn't rained for a long time and you could draw a picture in the dust on my Plymouth. I went in the kitchen and started the percolator going and then I took my shower. When I come back in the kitchen, Rusty wasn't up yet. She always got up when she smelled the coffee perking.

I stuck my head into Rusty's bedroom. Mary was gone, she worked on Saturdays, so the bed was empty except for Rusty. She was laying there smoking. "Hey," I said. "We going to wash cars? Coffee's done."

"I kind of don't feel like it," said Rusty. She got a cigarette out of the pack and lit it off the end of the one she just got done with.

"What's the matter?" I said. "You sick?"

"I just don't feel like it, okay?" she said, a little bit mean.

"Okay," I said. "Whatever. I'll go by myself."

Really, it was just as good she didn't go. The engine in my car was starting to miss out. Rusty might make fun of me because I didn't get a good car. But then, if she heard it running rough, she might help me fix it. She was good with fixing motors and hammering nails and all that stuff. Maybe next week she'd come to the car wash with me, and look at it then.

When I got back from the Speedi-Quick, I decided to check on her, even though she said she wasn't sick. When I come in the front door, she was all right, up running the vacuum cleaner. I had brought her back some onion rings from the Dairy Queen. When I give them to her, she turned off the sweeper and said, "Sorry to be such a creep this morning, I just felt weird."

"That's okay," I said. "I feel pretty weird some days."
But the weird days started getting closer together. Like the day she come home riding a motorcycle.

I was outside the trailer, seeing could I get the kitchen win­dow open. The handle was gone so you had to go outside and pry the window open with a screwdriver. A motorcycle come up the street, but I didn't pay attention till it turned in our driveway. I dropped my screwdriver when the person pulled off their white helmet and it was Rusty. She shut the engine off.

"Whoa," I said. "I didn't know you could ride one of those. Whose is it?"

"Mine," said Rusty.

She had bought it off some guy at work, it was just a little putt-putt tiring with a broke tail light but the gas tank was painted cherry red. It had mirrors and a shiny exhaust pipe and a major sissy bar.

Rusty had to take a special driver test and pay a bunch of money before she could ride it legal. Then she started leaving her car home and driving the cycle into town. Pretty strange for a woman but who cared. It went fast and Rusty was a fast type of person. She took me for a ride on it one time, around the trailer park. I was way bigger than her and I didn't know how to lean in or lean out or whatever. I was scared to death I was going to lean over wrong and tip us both over. After we pulled back in the driveway, I got off and I never got back on.

Rusty never bragged about the bike, her face was serious when she got on to ride. Usually when she was on a new project, I knew it, the neighbors knew it, the President knew it. But she acted like the motorcycle bored her or something. She didn't talk me to death about it, she just rode it. She didn't fool with the parts on it, she didn't polish the mirrors.

Then she had a wreck. Not out on the highway, just in the damn road that goes up to the trailer park. Rusty hit some gravel while she was coming home and the front tire slid on the wet road, it was raining, and she hit the gravel and down she went. Tore up her face and ruined the bike. The lady that owned the trailer park, Mrs. Kingshead, seen it and took Rusty to the emergency. Every doctor and every nurse in the whole hospital come down to stare at the woman who rode a motorcycle. They give her fourteen stitches from her right eyebrow going up and nine stitches on the other side from her cheekbone going down.

When it happened I was at work, I got home and Mrs. Kings­head was pulling her car out of our driveway. She was a little tiny lady who had a big, big old car. She had to sit on a phone book to see out. She leaned out the driver window and said, "Your friend's hurt. I just brought her home from the emer­gency."

"That stupid motorcycle," I said.

"She'll be all right," said Mrs. Kingshead. "The doctor said she'd be all right. Can you see after her?"

"Yeah," I said. "I always do."

Rusty was laying on the couch watching "Daniel Boone" out of one eye. The other eye was closed up from where it swelled. Her skin was green and purple and puffed up huge, she looked like a Frankenstein.

"Hi," I said. "What’d the doctor say?"

"They said stay off work for a week," she said, "and put some kind of medicine on my face. I ain't got money for prescriptions and all that, I still owe fifty dollars on the motorcycle."

"I can get it for you," I said. "Just pay me back later. Where's the bike at?"

"I don't know," Rusty said. "We just left it when we went to the hospital. It wasn't there when I come back."

"Maybe somebody's saving it for you," I said.

"Oh, sure," said Rusty, "it's stripped down by now."

"Man," I said. 'That's a low blow. Taking somebody's wheels while they're in the emergency."

                                                                             * * *

After supper Mary Gold come over to sit with Rusty. Mary just stayed two hours and then she went out for some cigarettes. She was supposed to come back but she called and said her car had a flat. She would try and come back but she probably couldn't. I hung up the phone. She didn't have no flat, she was out with somebody else. "That was Mary on the phone," I said. "Her car had a flat. She doesn't know if she'll make it back or not."

Rusty just sat in front of the teevee, not watching it. The teevee just talked to itself and Rusty drunk beer and looked at old National Geographics, waiting on Mary.

Right from there was where everything started going to hell, and I mean it. Rusty started sleeping all the time. Usually we went to bed about three in the morning, when we got home from work, and got up about noon. But Rusty didn't get up till three-thirty or four in the afternoon, just barely in time to eat and make it to Redskin at five. She started taking naps on her dinner break, she'd go out to her car and lay down for an hour and not even eat.

Then her and Mary started arguing around all day. I was the one who needed a dinnertime nap after I listened to them fight, they kept me awake. I heard Mary crying almost every night, sob sob, that woman had a leak. Rusty should've got her a pres­ent from American Gasket Company. Mary drunk and carried on and about drove Rusty into tire crazy house. Then when Rusty got mad at her, she cried and made Rusty feel like a mean Dracula or something.

Mary was the one that was mean, and the way she acted at Rusty's birthday party proved it. I had a little party for Rusty at the trailer. Just six or seven people come over, Rusty's friends. There was a woman named Jane, a curly-headed blonde, she worked at the Harvester plant. Jane had been over two or three times before, she always talked to Mary more than she did to Rusty. During the birthday party Jane and Mary was talking in the corner by themselves. Talk, talk, laugh, laugh. Then Jane finally went home, and I drought good, go away. Leave Rusty's girlfriend alone. But then about ten minutes after that, me and Rusty was sitting on the couch and Mary come up and said Tm going to get me some cigarettes, I'll be back after while."

Rusty said, "Why don't you just smoke some of mine? I got a whole carton on top of the refrigerator."

"No, that's all right," Mary said. "I'm going to come back after while." And that was the last we seen of her that night. About midnight Rusty was drunk and wanted to go make trou­ble at Jane's, but I wouldn't let her.

In the morning, Mary come over to see Rusty, but Rusty wouldn't let her in. She yelled through the door, "Go find Jane, she's waiting on you," then she went in her bedroom and stayed there.

The next day while I was doing paper at Redskin, I thought, "Why is Rusty having all these problems?" I finished one rack of brooms, and started the next one. Should I try and get Rusty to go see the doctor?

"What’re you thinking about?" said Elsie Pelton. She was moving slow, stretching the work out till clock-out time.

"Oh," I said. "Not too much. Just how come people get tired."

"You work here but you don't know why you're tired?" said Elsie. "Don't this place wear you out? It does me."

I looked at Elsie. Her back was just as stiff as a board, her face was all pulled in, everyplace. If you sneaked up and touched her she'd fly out like a jack-in-the-box.

It's funny, I thought. Elsie got so wound up but I didn't. Being at work didn't bug me that much, I just thought about stuff and listened to the radio. Rusty slept all the time and hid from people.

Redskin was ruining Rusty. One night I told her. I wasn't going to say nothing, but it come out of my mouth before I knew it. "That factory is ruining you, I can tell," I said. I had to wake her up to tell her.

"A person's got to work," she said.

"A person's got to be alive," I said, "for work to do them any good. I give you about another month. That Mary did not improve the situation any, either."

"You shut up about her," said Rusty.

"Go ahead," I said. "Everything else is getting away from you. Might as well get rid of your best friend while you're at it. If you ever tell me to shut up again I will bust you in the mouth. I've took it off Marlene all these years and I ain't taking it off you, you hear me?"

I was sorry afterward for being so sharp with her. I wasn't taking it back or anything, but I should have been ready for her to blast out at me. Or I should of just stayed away from her, period. I felt like I was about to lose the only person I was ever friends with.

* * *

They say it is dark before the dawn, and that is true because after Rusty was the worst, she started to improve back to her normal self. Sign Number One was I come home from the grocery store one night and Rusty was standing over a fire in the driveway. She had paper burning in the lid of a trash can, and she was dropping stuff down in the fire. She burned up all her letters from that stupid Mary Gold, pictures of her, all of it. Sign Number Two of Rusty's improvement showed up when we was watching teevee, some old cowboy movie where the good guys were riding up into the mountains. They was on their horses, going up this skinny dirt path where any second, Indians was going to pop out and start whooping around. I was sitting on the floor, leaning back on the couch and Rusty was up laying on the couch. I thought she had fell asleep but when the cowboys turned around to look behind them, and the valley was all spread out for miles and miles, Rusty said, "That's Colorado."

"Yeah?" I said.

"Yeah, I can tell. I seen some pictures, that's Colorado, you can tell by the valley."

That was the first time Rusty said anything about Colorado. Up till then she had never went any farther than the RS. #13 field trip to Hudson's Apple Orchard. But she must of started studying up on geography, because any time a nature show was on the teevee, or there was a magazine ad with people climbing mountains to smoke cigarettes at the top, Rusty would say, "That's Colorado," or "That ain't Colorado, it looks like it, but its Nevada." She was turning into a National Geographic on two feet.

Then I found the COLERADO folder under the couch. Colo­rado had turned into one of Rusty's projects. She hadn't got one of her projects going for a long time. Maybe this was going to end up like Spanish Made Easy, just something she was interested in for a while and then she'd forget it.

So one day we were sitting in Rusty's car at the Dairy Queen, eating Mister Misties, and she looked out the windshield and said, "I might be going somewhere in the spring. Colorado, I'm thinking." That's all she said, and then she took a big spoonful of Mister Misty and stuck it in her mouth.

I sucked up the slush out of my cup, kind of vacuuming around with the end of the straw. "Yeah, I know," I said. "I sneaked and looked at your folder that's under the couch."

"I didn't hide it very good," she said. "I don't care if you looked at it. I'm going to Colorado without...by myself. I got to go by myself."

"I know," I said.

This was about all we could stand to talk about it, so she give me her cup and I put it inside mine. I reached out the window to put them in the trash thing. It was full of cups and straws and about to spill over, with yellowjackets buzzing around, landing, looking for something sweet. When I turned around, I seen Mary Gold's black car. It was pulling into the parking space right across from us, on the other side of a little sidewalk.

So now our car was facing their car, headlights to headlights, which Mary didn't notice until she'd cut the engine. Jane, the woman from the birthday party, was in the passenger seat. I was looking Mary in the eye, and Jane was across from Rusty. Now there they was and here we was and nobody wanted to start up and go, because it would look like they even cared that the other one was at the D.Q. But Rusty couldn't stand it, so she started up the car and said, "If you're still hungry, we can get you a foot-long." She backed up the car, pulled over to the drive- up window, and pretty soon I had my lap full of foot-longs and french fries and I had just ate two cheeseburgers and a double onion ring.

After that we drove around, all over, till we could think of something to say, but we never did. So Rusty used up almost a whole tank of gas, then she drove us home. I went in my room and laid down, but I wasn't comfortable so I got up and took off my clothes and laid back down. I still wasn't comfortable. I went and started the shower and got under it so I could think.

It'd be better if Rusty would go away for a while. She needed to do something besides wreck motorcycles and watch teevee. We'd been fighting, and there was nothing in a fight worth doing it for. It was sad, but sometimes the sad thing was the right thing.

But how come it was Colorado that was going to fix every­thing? They had broom factories in Colorado too. I didn't even know where Colorado was, and I would have bet my Plymouth on Rusty not knowing either. Colorado was towards California, but not as far, in the middle of the U.S.A. map, down towards Mexico a little bit. Someplace out West anyway, maybe that was why she was going. I seen this old movie where this guy says Go West Young Man. Back in olden times, when stuff went wrong for you, you was supposed to go to the frontier and bother the Indians. Rusty must of thought you could still go West to fix up your life. Maybe you could of, if you didn't have to take yourself with you.

* * *

So Rusty started saving up some money to take her trip with. She got a peanut butter jar out of the cabinet, and ate up all the peanut butter. Peanut butter sandwiches for lunch, supper, snacks, even breakfast which would of made me gag, but I guess now she had a Colorado project she would do anything. When the peanut butter jar was empty, she got a screwdriver and a hammer and punched a crookedy-looking slot in the lid. She set the jar on her dresser, and any time she had pocket change she dropped it in there instead of getting her a Dr. Pepper.

Every time she cashed a paycheck, she took a ten-dollar bill out and she put it in her sock. Not the one on her foot—she had an old stretched-out knee sock in her top dresser drawer. She rolled up all her ten-dollar bills and stuck them down in the toe of the money sock. How do I know? Well, all my life I had to keep an eye on things, let's put it that way.

Even though we already talked about it at the Dairy Queen, Rusty was still putting her Colorado folder underneath of the couch and I was still sneaking it out. Being sneaky was just our way. When the folder started getting fat, it split in between where the pockets was at. So I took it over to the kitchen table and took everything out of it, the magazine articles and pictures and all, and I put on Scotch tape. They call it invisible tape but I always have been able to see it. When I started putting all Rusty's junk back in the pockets, I found this new notebook. Well, it wasn't new, it was an old Practical Bookkeeping notebook from Tech. There was a few good pages left in the back, and Rusty was doing money-figuring on them. She had all these additions and subtractions and long divisions. With her horrible handwriting, it was hard to tell which one was which. But then a couple pages later she had lists going down the page, the first one started out "Gas, Oil, Trailer Rent." She was writing down how much it cost to have a new life in Colorado. It cost so much for gas and oil to drive there, and so much for trailer rent when she got there, and so much for peanut butter, and so much for bread and jelly. I could see she planned on just peanut-butter- and-jelly to eat, so that night at the supper table, I hinted around about rickets and scurvy. The next day I looked at her list, she had figured in enough for frozen lima beans. Lima beans was the only thing she liked to eat that grew off of a plant.

After I did Rusty's subtractions over for her, and put in for the stuff she forgot, like toothpaste and the light bill, it come out six hundred ninety-seven dollars for her to move there and live a little while on two dollars a day. I made it an even seven hundred dollars to give her a day and a half extra.

I did some more figuring in my head. I took Practical Bookkeeping too, but I passed. How long would it take her to save seven hundred dollars in that knee sock if she put in ten dollars every week, and filled up her peanut butter jar with mostly quarters and pennies? The cigarette machine would take her dimes and nickels. After I long-divided, the answer was a long time. I didn't say nothing to her, cause if she got discouraged again she might start sleeping all day. Even worse, she might make up with Mary Gold.

Rusty couldn't long-divide to save her butt, but even she could tell the difference between a little roll of tens that fit in a sock toe, and a roll big enough to be seven hundred dollars. So she cut down to smoking half a pack a day, and her change jar filled up faster. She cut out pop, and candy bars, everything that was fun.

When she got up to one hundred and sixty dollars, the transmission got stuck in her Ford. It would only run in second gear. Rusty kept on driving it to work anyway for a while, cause she couldn't make herself spend her sock money. But one day at Redskin she got parked in and couldn't back up. She didn't get home till after nine o'clock that night. So she took her car down the road to Paulie Barnes.

Paulie could have got him a job anywhere fixing cars, except he was always in jail for shooting somebody. Paulie had already shot his brother and his brother-in-law. He never was a good enough shot to kill anybody, but it wasn't cause he didn't try. He never shot his wife though—she was smart enough to leave him alone when he was drunk and thinking about Communists.

Paulie fixed Rusty's car temporary for thirty dollars. He said it would go forward and backward again, but only for maybe a week or two weeks if she was lucky. She was lucky cause the day after Paulie fixed the Ford, Rusty found somebody to give her three hundred dollars for it. So the car deal put her two hundred and seventy dollars ahead, but she had to take the bus to work or I had to drive her.

Once she had four hundred dollars, the other three hundred looked pretty easy. So she started selling stuff. She sold her empty aquarium, it had been sitting over in Vivian's spare room for years. The aquarium was one of Rusty's big projects when we was going to Tech. The summer before 10th grade, her and me washed cars for Al Randolph at Randolph Used Cars. When fall come around and school started, Rusty still had forty dollars of her money, cause I kept it for her. Mrs. Springer, the science teacher, had an aquarium in her room, Rusty really liked to look at the fish. She even liked the water snails that was stuck on the inside glass. Mrs. Springer had a old used aquarium tank at home, she brought it in to school and give it to Rusty. Rusty spent her forty dollars on the heater and the air thing and the gravel. All she had money left over for was three goldfish, that died off one-two-three and got flushed down the commode.

Now that she was saving up Colorado money, Rusty decided she would sell her aquarium. She put an ad up at the grocery store and got somebody to give her thirty dollars for it. She had to give Vivian five for keeping it at her house all these years. Which I don't see how having a empty fish tank in her spare room cost Viv nothing, it was clean and didn't stink up her house. But when I mentioned it Rusty just laughed. "Viv is better than a church," she said. "They always want ten percent."

After she got the thirty dollars off the aquarium, Rusty seen how much faster she could earn by selling than working. She decided to have a rummage sale, and sold her dresser. She put three pairs of slacks and three sweatshirts, and her underpants, in a cardboard box. Everything else got sold, and I chipped in most of my old Photoplays, except not the ones with Liz Taylor in them. I had all different magazines with Liz Taylor in them and newspaper stories about her and three pictures of her, two autographed. Not to me, I got the pictures off a girl in the service so they said "To Margaret." It was Liz's real autograph, though.

Even though she sold her clothes and my Photoplays and all the dishes except two plates and two cups, she only made eleven dollars at the rummage sale. But somebody seen the teevee through the screen door and said they'd give her forty dollars for it. I shook my head at Rusty, but she seen two twenties come sliding out of the lady's billfold.

We lasted three days. I liked to watch a good old movie once in a while, and Rusty missed "Bonanza." Rusty took twenty-five dollars of her money and twenty-five of mine and come back with a teevee set about like the one we had before, except there wasn't a vertical-hold knob on it. If the picture started flipping, we had to use tweezers to make it quit.

When Rusty run out of shit to sell, she went back to earning by the perspiration of her brow. She was still putting a ten-dollar bill in her money sock every week. That was all she could save on what she was making.

"Know what?" she asked me on a payday, while she was folding another ten around her little roll of money. "I'm going to get me a second job."

"I don't know," I said. "Sounds like too much work to me. When would you do it, anyway? Working night shift makes a funny schedule."

"I've got that part thought out already," Rusty said. "I just have to get my work shift at Redskin changed over to first shift. That way I'd get off at four in the afternoon."

Rusty didn't have the seniority for fixing her schedule, but Redskin didn't run on seniority anyway. She folded up a twenty-dollar bill and stuck it inside her Request for Schedule Change, and the next week when Vernon True come out of his office and put up the transfers and promotions, Rusty was on first shift. Vernon True had the nicest clothes of any of the bosses. His chihuahuas never even seen dog food, they had chopped steak. That's what I heard.

I was glad I didn't get promoted to first shift, cause to get off at four, you had to go in at seven-thirty in the morning. Seven o'clock if you wanted a whole hour for lunch. After Rusty paid off Vernon and started on first shift, she worked afternoons and evenings for Mrs. Kingshead, the lady that ran the trailer park. Rusty worked five-thirty to seven-thirty every weekday, raking dead pigeons off the trailer roofs, and scrubbing down patio concrete with Spic N Span and a wet broom. There was a little slab of concrete next to some of the trailers, usually with a big old black crack zig-zagging down the middle. Mrs. Kingshead called them patios and charged you extra if you had one.

Rusty got fifteen dollars a week doing that. Between that and saving ten-dollar bills from her paychecks, she was putting twenty-five dollars a week in her sock. But my Plymouth started needing more oil and more gas and then a front-end alignment from being drove back and forth to Redskin twice a day. Rusty drove in the morning and I drove in the afternoons. Rusty helped me pay for the alignment out of her sock fund, and her savings went down below five hundred dollars again.

Then about Halloween Rusty's bad tooth started hurting her. That tooth always had been rotten ever since I knew her, brown at the top and white at the bottom, like a girl's hair that's letting her peroxide grow out. But now it was hurting Rusty a lot, she was eating aspirin like they was Pez.

"Better get you a dentist appointment," I said.

She did, and cancelled it again when she found out the dental work was going to cost two hundred dollars. She needed a root canal, and a post, and a crown. And drill bits for the dentist, I thought to myself, but I never said it.

She said, "I might just pull this rotten tooth out myself, I got a pair of needle-nose pliers."

"Two hundred dollars is only two months," I told her. "What's two months? It's eight weeks, is all, eight weeks and four paychecks and you'll be back where you was, plus that tooth won't be hurting you either."

Rusty called the dentist back and got her tooth fixed. Besides the money, Rusty had another problem. When she first thought up her plan to go West, getting seven hundred dollars and all that, she still had her car. Now that she'd got some fool to buy the Ford, how was she getting to Colorado? She could of borrowed the Plymouth, I would of gave her the Plymouth, but it was dying at stop lights already. She wouldn't get out of the state with it. Anyway, she would of been too embarrassed to show up in Colorado driving my poor old ugly car.

All day at the broom factory while I was doing paper, I was thinking hard. How could Rusty get out West? Something drastic better happen, cause Rusty was throwing up every morning. She would shut the bathroom door and run the sink full blast, but I could hear her. Poor Rusty—no sleep and dead trailer birds and Novocaine and no way to get to Colorado. I put labels on broom handles, and thought about money and cars and how to get them.

Elsie Pelton, the woman that did plastic, got bronchitis. She was off work four days. While she was gone, I done plastic part of the time and my job part of the time. Elsie come back still coughing, cause Redskin didn't have sick days. Being sick slowed her down, and her first day back she started getting behind on quota. Vernon True come down from his office and acted like he was worried for her health, but we knew he cared more about her quota. So I started helping Elsie out a little, hurrying up paper so I'd have a hour to do plastic before we clocked out. Nobody else would help her, even though she was wheezing and coughing and had a big frown crease between her eyebrows, deep as the Grand Canyon. Rusty couldn't help Elsie, she had too much to do already. Mildred and Rhea wanted Elsie to do bad so they could get her job. Doing plastic paid a quarter more on the hour. I thought about Rhea Dailey or Mildred Hatch getting Elsie's job and working in the same room with me all day, all day. I started helping Elsie on my morning break too.

She got better after while, her cough and everything went away except not the crease in her face. She tried to give me money out of her paycheck one week, she stuck a twenty-dollar bill in my pocket three or four times. I always gave it back, even though I thought about sneaking it into Rusty's money sock. But I couldn't take the money, Elsie had two girls at home. She said, "If you ever need anything off me, you tell me. You tell me."

* * *

In April, Marlene sent me a birthday card. It had a picture of Lana Turner on the front, and it said "You Ought to Be in Pictures." On the inside it said "You're the Star of My Show." Marlene had put in two five-dollar bills and wrote, 'Take your friend Rusty to supper and the movies with this. I miss you very much. Love, Your Mother.

There never was a new movie at the theater that I would pay five cents to see, so on my birthday, Rusty and I used some of Marlene's money to get a pizza and we stayed home. There was a real good movie on teevee, "Wuthering Heights." Merle Oberon was in it, it was great. Except I was waiting to find out what "wuthering" was, and they never said. After the movie went off, there was three pieces of pizza left. I took the box in the kitchen and tried to stick it in the refrigerator but it wouldn't fit. I had to put Saran Wrap on the pizza and throw the box away.

I went in the living room and called up Marlene.

"Hi," I said. "It's me."

"Happy birthday to you," Marlene sung over the phone. "Happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear Carol, happy birthday to you. And many mor-r-r-re." She must of been sober, she remembered the words.

"Thanks for the card," I said. "You doing all right?"

"Oh yeah, honey, I'm doing great," she said. "I found a new doctor, he said he could help me about my headaches. Alice Bird goes to him, she says he helped her arthritis. When are you coming home to see me? Pretty soon it'll be summer. I haven't even got to see you for weeks and weeks. Maybe you could come stay the night."

"I will," I said. "I will sometime. Listen, I got to go. I'll call you pretty soon."

"Sure you will," said Marlene. "You never call your poor mother. I lay here and worry, you don't know how I worry—"

"I ought to know," I said. "You tell me every chance you get."

Click, she hung up. Me and Marlene never could say bye like normal people. One of us had to hang up on the other one. Even when I was in the service and she called me long distance, we didn't use up our three minutes. I never knew which one of us was going to slam down the phone. Neither one of us was going to call the other one back, I knew that.

* * *

I went over to Viv's with Rusty for Memorial Day, to have a picnic in the backyard. Vivian acted pretty good, except for following Rusty in and out of the back door and telling her what to bring out to the picnic table. I would of told Viv if she was going to stand there and boss, then she could do it all herself. But Rusty just acted like Viv wasn't there. Viv quit bossing and went back in the kitchen to make the potato salad. It was only us three at the picnic table, there was ham slices and a little bowl of potato salad and three ears of corn. After we ate, me and Rusty helped Viv bring in stuff, and throw the paper plates away. She told us how to do everything. Me and Rusty got back to the trailer about eight-thirty or nine, and both of us went to bed.

In the middle of the night I woke up. At first I thought it was Viv's potato salad, but it turned out to be a good idea. I was laying on my bed, and up on the ceiling, like a movie, I seen a little square with gray dirty light inside it. I squinched up my eyes real tight, but when I looked again it was still there. The square light was about a foot tall, maybe two feet, it was hard to tell cause the trailer ceiling kind of sloped down in the middle. There was little dark things at the bottom edge of the square light. The little dark things was dried up flies, and the square was the window in the Redskin paper room. I never even knew there was a window in the paper room, till I seen it on the trailer ceiling. All day every day I had been standing in the finish room doing paper, and never even noticed I was looking out a little window. It was a real little window, and nobody had cleaned probably since back when the FBI was there.

Now while I was at the trailer, laying on my bed, I was all sleepy and stretched out and I could see out the little window. I seen everything that was outside. There was the American Gas­ket sign, and the wire fence that had old yellow newspaper comers and flat rusty pop cans all along the bottom of it. And the parking lot, with just one car in it, Elsie Pelton's station wagon with the wood on the side. It just had wood on one side, the side you could see from the window. Somebody had run it along a bridge rail or something, and peeled the whole wood side off. So if you went around to the passenger door, there was just the metal side with primer patches and a few holes where the wood got ripped away.

While I was staring at the station wagon, I had a good idea. Why didn't I borrow somebody's car and drive Rusty out to Colorado? Well, cause everybody at work, their car run about as bad as mine, and anyway they needed theirs to get to work. But Elsie's station wagon run better than everybody else's car, she never had to leave her car in the Redskin parking lot and get a ride home. Elsie's husband Ralph had a car too, so he could take her in to work maybe, if she'd loan out her wagon to Rusty and me.

After I thought about all that, I could hear birds blabbing and fighting and landing on the trailer roof. I only had a hour before the alarm clock went off in Rusty's room and she whacked on the wall with her shoe to wake me up. I turned over on my side, but that finish room window was still in front of me, sideways on the paneling. I put the blanket over my head but I couldn't get rid of the American Gasket sign and the dried up newspapers stuck in the fence. So I pretended like my brain was teevee, and turned the channel to "Face the Nation" which was so bor­ing I fell asleep.

I didn't hear Rusty's shoe at all, but I heard the bathroom door shut and I heard her throwing up while the sink water was running. I got up and decided I would ask Elsie about borrow­ing her car as soon as I got in the factory door.

I got in the door, and I did paper for two hours, and I went on morning break, and I still had never asked Elsie yet. A cou­ple times I got ready to, but then she said something or it didn't seem like a good time yet. So we got back from break, and I said to myself, "Okay, I am going to count one-two-three then I'll ask." But when I got to three, I just couldn't. I never asked nobody for nothing up until then, not that I could think of. I gave up. Maybe I could get Rusty to ask her. No, Rusty never would either. Shit.

"Your roommate still going out to Colorado?" said Elsie while I was cussing myself.

"Far as I know," I said.

"How's she getting there?" said Elsie. "Going to get her another little motorcycle, is she?"

"No, she's done with motorcycles," I said.

"I was just funning," said Elsie. "You going to drive her out?"

"Well, I would," I said, "but my hunk of junk don't run half the time."

"Why don't you borrow the station wagon off me, then?" said Elsie. "I could take Ralph's car and drop him off, and then go get him at night. That'd keep him out of the tavern for a little while. No, it wouldn't. He'd ride one of the kids's tricycles."

"That'd be great," I said, "if we could use your car."

It was all working out so good, I took it for a sign. If I just figured out one thing at a time, maybe the plan would go smooth. Or at least I would just have one problem at a time.

* * *

The next afternoon I went and did laundry. I brought home the wet clothes and towels and everything and hung them over the chairs and the shower rod to get dry. The trailer park laundrymat had dryers, but they was turned down so low you had to put in about four quarters to get one sock halfway dry. After I hung everything up, I went and put on a pot of water for Kraft noodles. Usually when Rusty got back from the factory at four-fifteen, me and her ate dinner together. Then she went to work for Mrs. Kingshead and I went to Redskin.

After I started the pot of water boiling, I turned the teevee on for noise. I had to come back and put a lid on the pot, I forgot when I started the water boiling. Rusty come in while I was getting down a can of tuna fish. She walked into a pair of wet blue jeans that was hanging down over the doorway and slung the jeans down on the floor. Didn't say a word, just threw the wet jeans on the floor and went in the bathroom. I heard the sink water start.

I went up to the bathroom door. "Give your notice," I said, loud so she could hear me over the running water.

She said something, but I couldn't hear.

"Open up the door," I said.

"In a minute."

"I seen people throw up before," I said. "Open up the door."

"I only got four hundred!" she yelled. "I got to stay at Redskin! I only got four hundred and no car."

"You got a car," I said. "Open up the door."

She opened it up.

"You got a car," I said. "And a chauffeur. Elsie Pelton's letting us use her station wagon. I'll drive you out to Colorado. Give your notice."

Rusty shut the bathroom door again. "I only got four hun­dred," she said through the wood.

"Tough," I said. "It'll have to do, won't it? Give your notice." Nothing. "Don't you start that sink water," I said. "You call this afternoon and tell Vernon."

"You think I can make it on four hundred?" she said, opening up the door.

"Yeah," I said. 'Just cut something off your budget."

"Goodbye lima beans," said Rusty.

I give her the tuna-fish can. "Take this in the kitchen and open it up," I said, "so I can put it in the Kraft noodles."

After we had our lunch, Rusty called up Vernon and I acted like I was doing the dishes but I was listening. It sounded like Vernon wasn't in his office cause before Rusty hung up, she said, "Thanks, Betty."

Betty Lamb cleaned all the offices, she was probably in Vernon's office to empty the ashtray. Vernon wouldn't dump his own ashtray. Betty Lamb had to come to his office four times a day and dump Vernon's ashtray and wipe it out with a rag.

After Rusty hung up, she went to scrub concrete for Mrs. Kingshead and I got ready for work. I got to Redskin nice and early, I had time to go down to the lounge. I put my lunch sack in the frigidaire and went to clock in. If I hurried up, I could get me a cup of nasty machine coffee. I started walking fast down the hall, trying to get a dime and a nickel out of my pocket, when I noticed Vernon's office door was open. I walked by quick and sneaked a look.

Vernon was in his office, dirtying up his ashtray. I went in and said, "I need time off."

"No can do," said Vernon.

"Well, I need it anyway," I said. "I've got to take—"

"I know," said Vernon. "Why don't you let Monica Stone take care of Monica Stone's business and you take care of yours?"

"If you want me to give my notice, I'll do it," I said. "I want my time anyway."

"If you want to let Monica lose your job for you, go ahead," said Vernon. "She ain't going to be here to get you another one."

"My two weeks starts today," I said. "When you have the termination form for me to sign, let me know." I went on out to the line and started doing paper.

About a hour after that, Betty Lamb come out to the finish room and said, "Vernon wants you back in the office."

I went with Betty, and Vernon's door was still open. I seen a Coke can on Vernon's desk.

"Uh-oh," I thought.

When Vernon was upset, you could tell cause he bought a Coke and poured half of it out in the trash. He needed to make room for whiskey. Then after while, he'd be kind of red in the face, especially his nose, and if you got near to him you could smell Wild Turkey. I tried to never get that close. When I seen that Coke can on his desk, I whispered to Betty, "Maybe I'll come back after while."

"No," Betty whispered back. "Then he'll be mad you didn't come when he told you. Go on, he won't bite you."

When I stepped inside his office door Vernon was already a little bit pink around the nose. I figured he wasn't going to let me work out my notice. He was probably going to let me go right then.

But he didn't say a thing. There was a yellow time-off slip next to his Coke can, and he just pushed it out toward the edge of his desk. He looked at me like "are you going to give me trouble" and I looked at him like "No, I just want my time." I signed the yellow sheet, top and bottom, and his hands shook while he tore off my half. I had to put it in my front pants pocket, cause my back pockets was stuffed full of broom labels. I waited to look happy till I went back on the line.

* * *

All we had to do now was get to Colorado. We went to the library to find out where Colorado was at. They wouldn't lend Rusty nothing out of their library because they was still mad over Spanish Made Easy. I didn't have a yellow library card, so we went down to Central Drugstore. Rusty bought a Rand McNally, with all different maps and the highways and all that shit we needed to know.

Rusty took a Flair pen and marked out how we would get to Colorado. I swear every inch of it was twisting and zigzags and back-arounds. I said, "Why did you mark it out that way?"

"That^’s the scenic route," she said. She really did it that way cause she never used a map before. Which I never had either. I had went to Germany, but the army had their own map, believe me. They never asked me how to get there.

"A person has got to use a little sense," I told Rusty. "If we go your way, it'll take us two weeks. I got to be back to work the 22nd."

"There won't be no country to see that way," said Rusty. "Nothing to look at but truck drivers."

"It'll be pretty when you get there," I said. "I've got to be back to punch the clock on the 22nd."

She quit arguing with me. Me and her was going to be in the car for days and even a station wagon can get to feel real little with two pissed-off people in it. I picked up a paper and a pencil and calculated it would take thirty-one hours to drive to Denver if we went the speed limit, twenty-six hours the way Rusty drove. I picked Denver because it was the biggest city dot on the map. I would have three days off from Redskin, plus the regular two days for the weekend. If we stopped to pee every once in a while, it would take me and Rusty two and a half days to get to Denver. So when we got to Colorado, I'd have to open up the car door, throw Rusty out on the street, slam the door and drive straight back to Redskin.

I marked the big day on the kitchen calendar, so we could X-off each day. June 16 was the day to start driving our wagon West.