Chapter FIFTEEN
April didn’t mind waiting for her grandfather. Any amount of time behind the wheel was cool with her, even at rundown gas stations in the middle of nowhere. At the moment, nowhere was on some back road in Illinois, a few hours west of Chicago.
She made a vow to return someday to Chicago. They had only driven through it, but her grandfather had insisted she at least see it since they were so close. April was glad they did. She couldn’t decide what to look at: the long expanse of beach and blue waters of Lake Michigan to her right, or the forest of skyscrapers to her left. It dawned on her that she’d never seen real skyscrapers, at least not like this, all lined up against the ocean-lake, as if to say, “This isn’t just land, baby. This is Chicago.”
“This is so cool,” she’d said to him, but her grandfather, who had taken over the driving in Indiana, hadn’t responded. April saw that he was hunched over the steering wheel, gripping it as if he might otherwise be pulled up through the roof and tossed onto the congested highway. She’d never seen him so tense. Usually, he seemed more relaxed in the car than out of it, smoothly executing the handover- hand turn, demonstrating the proper way to check the rearview and side mirrors, checking the blind spot without moving into the next lane prematurely. But as she turned to try to find the Sears Tower, he seemed to be looking only at the car directly in front of them. April doubted he had even noticed he was driving practically on top of one of the Great Freakin’ Lakes. When she asked him if he was okay, he nearly bit her head off, telling her to zip it so he could concentrate on keeping them from getting killed.
They survived, although judging from her grandfather’s swearing, just barely. He drove another couple hours before turning into this gas station, telling her he needed to take a leak and for her to “take over.” So she’d gotten in the driver’s seat while he hit the bathroom.
April decided that she’d definitely need a signature look before they got to California. Riding around in a Chevy Impala wasn’t a great start, but whatever. She gripped the top of the steering wheel with her right hand and rested her left arm on the window so that her elbow stuck out. Too butch. She tried the ten-and-two grip. Too old lady. She tried the hand at the top again, but this time with her left elbow inside, resting on the leather enclosure for the door handle. She gripped the wheel with the top of her fingers, and extended her thumb along the inside part for easier steering. Bingo. People would see that she was driving, but the driving was secondary to whatever thoughts—lyrics—she had on her mind. That was the difference between the elbow in and elbow out. Elbow in: thoughtful, skilled, important. Elbow out: pretentious, amateurish, lame.
She belched. She and her grandfather were eating at too many greasy fast-food joints. Her mother would have a cow if she knew all the crap they were taking in: burgers, French fries, home fries, Pepsi with scrambled eggs. Wasn’t her fault, though; Grandpa chose all the restaurants. And he was a million years old, so this stuff couldn’t be all that bad for you. She felt a slight twinge in her stomach. She belched again—a nice, loud boomer—and felt better.
She looked into the rearview mirror to get another look at her sunglasses. She couldn’t decide if they said “driver” or “dweeb.” She had picked them up a few weeks earlier, bored to death while Heather shopped for shoes. April couldn’t understand her friend’s obsession with shoes. Boys never looked at a girl’s shoes. Not that April made fashion decisions based on what boys wanted. If she did that, she’d end up looking like Kelly Honaker. That slut.
Something caught her eye. She looked away from the mirror and saw that the man behind the cash register was staring at her. She squinted to see if he was really looking at her. Maybe he was just reading something, the book or magazine—porn, probably—at an angle that made it seem like he was looking at her.
No. He was staring at her. Definitely. And he didn’t turn away when he could obviously see that she had caught him staring.
Or had he? Maybe he couldn’t tell because of her sunglasses.
April caught her breath. He was definitely staring at her. She started to look away but then decided that wouldn’t be right. She wasn’t the one staring. She wasn’t the perv. And she wasn’t some kid. She was on her own. Pretty much. She was driving across the whole goddamned country. No skinny, probably toothless gas station attendant was going to stare her down.
Just as she set her jaw in anticipation of a stare-down battle, she won. She saw the attendant pick up the phone and turn away from her. She laughed quietly. He was faking it, she was sure. The phone probably hadn’t even rung. He had sensed something about her, something strong, and backed off.
Her victory was short-lived. The man hung up the phone and resumed his creepy staring.
Where was her grandfather? Normally, she didn’t mind that he took his time in public bathrooms. Better to take care of all possible business there than in their motel bathroom. But he’d been in there longer than usual and the freak was still staring. It looked like he was smiling: a gross, up-skirt kind of grin. April wished Keith Spinelli was with her. All she’d have to do was casually mention that the gas station guy was staring at her, and he’d go in and kick the crap of out him.
Actually, no: Keith was too nice a guy. Too mature. He’d tell her to ignore him. She tried to take the imagined advice, but the perv’s eyes were starting to freak her out.
Where the hell was her grandfather? She thought for a split second that he wasn’t in the bathroom, after all. That this was some sort of setup. Her mother liked to say that he always had something up his sleeve, a hidden agenda. Was he setting her up in some way? Was her mother about to appear from around the corner of the gas station?
“Ridiculous,” April said out loud. She decided he was just having the kind of trouble described in disgusting detail on those TV commercials for stuff to help old men piss better.
She considered moving the car. Her heart was beating faster now. Her hands were sweaty. What if they slipped on the steering wheel as she started to move the car and she drove into one of the gas pumps? Explosion. Yellow and red and orange shooting toward the sky.
I should write that down, April thought. Sweaty hands, balls of fire. As soon as the perv stops staring.
Her grandfather finally appeared from around the corner of the gas station. He was squinting even though he was in the shade, looking as if he were trying to locate the car. Strange. But, as she was learning, old people did a lot of strange things. She took a breath. Her hands were steadier now. She was about to turn the key and drive over to him when he walked to the car.
“Took you long enough,” she said, annoyed but hugely relieved. She glanced over to see if the perv was still staring. Her grandfather was sweating profusely.
“Grandpa, what’s wrong?”
“Little warm,” he said, out of breath.
“It’s not that hot,” she said, not wanting to argue but needing to talk. “Especially for June. It’s usually way hotter.”
“Well, it is for me,” her grandfather said, sharply.
Maybe it was another old-person thing, April thought, although she had always assumed that old people preferred the heat. Otherwise, why did they all haul ass down to Florida?
“Whatever,” she said. She turned the key in the ignition. The car, thank god, started.
“Do me a favor, willya, Clare?” Bill said. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a bill, and handed it to her. “Get me some water. Poland Spring or whatever they got.”
“It’s April,” she said, correcting him for about the hundredth time. She wasn’t really angry about his mixing up her name with her grandmother’s or maybe her first cousin’s. She just wanted to get the hell away from that gas station. “What happened to ‘good old tap water’?” she asked. When they had first started out, her grandfather made fun of her frequent requests to buy bottled water, saying that he’d been drinking good old tap water all his life and it hadn’t hurt him—or his wallet. “Why didn’t you have some good old tap water when you were in the john?”
“Came out rusty,” he answered, still huffing a bit. “I’m a little thirsty, is all. Get one for yourself, too.”
From the way he seemed to be having trouble catching his breath, April saw that her grandfather was more than a little thirsty. Not a good sign. They hadn’t been on the road that long, and already her worst fear was coming true: The old man would have a stroke or die or something and the ambulance and the cops would come and ask all sorts of questions and find out about her and suddenly she’d be back home, getting nagged to death when her mother wasn’t laughing hysterically at one of Hank Johnson’s embarrassingly corny jokes. Hank and his jokes were making a slow but steady climb up her TITS list.
“Before I pass out?” her grandfather said.
April switched off the ignition.
The air inside was cool but clammy. A radio was blaring a ball game.
“Hi there,” the attendant said.
April decided she needed to pay close attention in case she would later have to describe the scene to the cops. He was old—probably in his thirties. Skinny, black hair. No glasses. She would check for eye color when she paid for the waters.
She grabbed two bottles from the cooler. Heart pounding, she tried to appear nonchalant as she put them on the counter. The attendant didn’t move. He didn’t even look up from the newspaper spread out before him. This gave April the opportunity to take in more details. She forgot to check his eyes, as she was distracted by the tattoo on the right side of his neck of a heavily fanged dragon whose tail disappeared beneath his dirty blue work shirt. No name patch, officer.
He turned the page with a snap and looked up suddenly, acting all surprised. “Oh, I’m sorry. You’re still here?”
April wasn’t sure if she should smile or what.
“Um, yeah,” she said. A nervous little laugh forced its way out of her.
“See, I’m surprised because when I said hi to you a few seconds ago, you didn’t say anything. I assumed you left.”
April felt her face start to burn. “Oh,” she said. “Hi.”
“There! That wasn’t so hard, now, was it?”
No missing teeth that April could see. Actually, a nice-looking man, she had to admit, if you were into tats. His smile seemed warm, genuine. She pushed the bottles toward him.
“Anything else I can do for you?” he asked. He sat with his arms crossed. He didn’t move in his chair. He was, suddenly, no longer smiling. He was staring.
The skin on the back of April’s neck prickled. “That’s it,” she said. She tried to sound cool, in control. She slid the bill that her grandfather had given her onto the counter.
The attendant glanced down at it, barely moving his head. Maybe, April thought hopefully, he’s a paraplegic.
“Can’t change that,” he said.
April saw now that it was a hundred-dollar bill. Shit. She’d have to go back out to the car, ask her grandfather for something smaller, and then come back in and deal with this creep again. But then she knew, somehow—beyond all shadow of a doubt, as her mother liked to say—that there was plenty of money in the register.
“Sorry,” April said. “That’s all we’ve got.” She emphasized the “we.”
The attendant snorted. “You and Gramps, eh?”
He stood and took a step to his right so that he was standing in front of her, the counter and the waters and the hundred-dollar bill between them.
“Well, I’m sorry that’s all you got. But I still can’t change it.” He looked at the bill. “We don’t usually get people in here flashing a lot of money around.” He leaned forward. “Unfriendly people.”
“I’m not flashing anything around.” Something about what she’d just said didn’t sound quite right to her.
The attendant smirked.
That did it for April. There had to be another gas station or 7-Eleven down the road, even though this one was the first one they had come across for miles. Her grandfather would just have to wait. It was his own freakin’ fault. He’d wanted to take the back roads, for some reason. Stare out the window at passing trees. She was sorry he was thirsty, but there was no way she wanted to spend another second sharing space with this weirdo.
“I just wanted to buy some water. But . . . whatever.”
She reached for the bill. As she touched it, the attendant slammed his hand on half of it. The tips of his fingers touched hers. April pulled back.
“Maybe we can work something out,” he said.
The coolness on the back of April’s neck zoomed down her back.
“I mean, we have several options here,” he said. “I could pretend that I thought you handed me a ten-dollar bill. Didn’t see that third zero. You’d get water, and a few bucks’ change to boot. I mean, if your grandpa got this kind of money, he probably wouldn’t even miss it.”
“Can I please just have my money back?” April said, her voice small.
“Of course you can.” But the attendant didn’t move his hand. “Nobody here saying you can’t. Still a free country. But then you wouldn’t have your water, and you ain’t gonna find another station or store or nothing on this road for miles and miles.”
She knew that he was telling her something, with that “miles and miles.” She just couldn’t process it at the moment.
“In fact, you’re the first ones to stop by since about six o’clock,” he said. “Sometimes I go through the whole shift and nobody comes in here.”
“That’s okay,” she said. What was okay? “I guess we’ll just have to go without.” Another of her mother’s sayings: go without.
“Well, now, hold on,” the attendant said. “Like I said, we got options.”
He leaned back to look out the window at their car. April did the same. Her grandfather was sitting with his head against the window, the way he did when he dozed off while she was driving. The attendant smiled again. He leaned closer. April smelled tobacco. Her stomach felt funny again.
“You do something for me,” he said, slowly, his eyes wandering, “and I’ll let you have those waters for free.”
Leave, April heard in her head. Turn around and get out. But she couldn’t. Even as she knew she should, she couldn’t. She would never again make fun of a horror movie where the victim stood immobile while the knife or hatchet or whatever was about to kill came closer and closer.
The attendant smiled again. “What do you say?”
Things were starting to spin. The attendant, his left hand still on the bill, moved his right hand to beneath the counter. April heard a zipping sound.
“Check it out,” he said. “You want your water, don’t you?”
When she and Heather were both about nine years old, Heather found a stash of porn in her older brother’s closet. Among the lurid magazines was a videotape. She showed it to April one afternoon after school. April still remembered the title: Back Door Booty. And she remembered getting sick to her stomach when the camera zoomed in on the eponymous action.
“What’s the matter with you?” the attendant asked, his face red. “Look!”
April lurched forward, grabbing onto the counter. It was a vomit projectile of Exorcist proportions. The attendant yelped and jumped back. He looked down at the dark, wet Rorschach-type pattern that had suddenly soiled his shirt. But what April saw—as the attendant jumped about, looking for something to wipe himself with—was a fantastically ugly thing, a swollen veiny worm made uglier still by splotches of sickly brown and green.
The dragon on his neck strained to get at her. The attendant opened his mouth to yell again but another spasm seized April and she let loose with the second liquid missile. It wasn’t as powerful a stream as the first, but, because he was standing away from the counter, it hit him lower, a direct hit. He jumped back farther and hit his back against the rear counter where he kept coffee and cigarettes. April saw the coffeepot jiggle and splash. He screamed in pain.
“Get outta here!” he screamed. He hadn’t been able to stuff himself back inside his pants, and April was surprised at how suddenly vulnerable he was, how powerless he looked. She knew without actually forming the thought that he couldn’t come after her, couldn’t make a call, couldn’t do anything until he took care of his goddamned penis. “Get the f*ck out!”
April wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. She saw that she had leaned far enough forward to avoid soiling her clothes. She also saw that the hundred-dollar bill had largely escaped, but the two water bottles had taken a severe hit. She grabbed the bill.
The attendant was still hopping about, screaming, trying to zip up.
April shoved the bill in her pocket and started toward the door. Before she reached it, though, she stopped, turned, walked to the cooler, and took two clean bottles of water. Then she walked out.
It took all her willpower not to run. It seemed important not to do so, although April wouldn’t have been able to say why.
“Nice and easy,” she said softly, using the words her grandfather used when first teaching her to drive. “Smooth and steady.”
Her grandfather was apparently asleep, his head against the passenger-side window, mouth forming a small O. April wondered how he had slept through all that, as if what had happened a few moments ago had raised a ruckus that could be heard for miles.
“Grandpa,” she called. He didn’t respond. She called his name again, but he didn’t move. She tried to see the rise and fall of his chest, to make sure he was breathing, but her own breathing was so heavy that she didn’t trust her initial impression that he was completely still. Dead still.
Her hands were shaking, but she managed to get the key in the ignition. Swallowing the bile that rose up in her, she forced herself to think only of the immediate task at hand. Foot on brake. Turn the ignition. Shift into drive. Ease up on the brake—nice and easy. Check mirrors. Check ’em again. Press down on the gas pedal, smooth and steady.
She turned left—hoping that she was now driving in the same direction she and her grandfather had been traveling before they stopped. It had to be. She remembered turning left into the gas station. So she should turn left to get back on the road in the same direction.
“Grandpa, is this right?” she asked. “Am I going in the right direction?”
Her grandfather didn’t move.
Keeping her eye on the road, she reached over and, hesitating at first, fearful of what her action might confirm, poked her grandfather.
“Is this the right way?” she asked again. Again, no response.
She gripped the steering wheel tighter and forced herself to take a few deep breaths. She tried to deny what she knew to be true: God or someone somewhere hated her and everything was crashing down around her. Her grandfather was dead—dead!—and she had not a clue about what to do. She was in the boonies filled with pervs. Her dreams of singing, of San Francisco, of escape from Woodlake, Ohio . . . all gone. And what had she been thinking, anyway?
She tried to focus on staying to the right of the white lines, tried to empty her mind. They—she!—had a full tank of gas; she was bound to end up somewhere before the tank ran dry. But then what?
Maybe she should count, out loud, the divider lines in the middle of the road, the way she did as a little girl at the start of a road trip with her parents. She knew it drove her parents, especially her father, crazy. Out of the corner of her eye she could see, as she counted, the turn of their heads toward each other, the palms-down motion that her mother made to signal her father to keep calm. But at about number 50, he’d ask that April not count so loud; it was hard for him and her mother to talk—as if they ever did. At around 150, he’d “suggest” that she count to herself. But April would protest that she couldn’t keep track that way. Her father grunted and let her continue for a while, but she never made it past 223 before he ordered her to sit back in the seat and be quiet, and let others enjoy the ride, too.
Now April couldn’t count at all. The numbers got jumbled. She bit her lip to stop the tears. She told herself to be strong. Can’t pull over and cry like a little girl. She wasn’t in the back of her parents’ car anymore. She needed to take care of things herself, handle things. She tried to form a plan. But what could she do? She didn’t know where they were, where a hospital was, nothing. She sure as hell couldn’t turn around and go back to the gas station for help.
The thought of that gas station almost knocked her off the road.
And then, suddenly, her grandfather sat up. He looked ahead, as if trying to spot a landmark, then turned to April.
“Did you see that? Did you see him hit that ball?” he asked. He was smiling, his eyes wide with wonder. “Maybe he’s not a fruit, after all.” He sat back and stared ahead, his eyes fixed on something far away. “Wasn’t that great, Clare?”
A few minutes later, April heard him breathing deeply and knew that he had fallen back asleep. Or had never awakened. She kept her eyes on the road, which seemed to stretch out before her forever.
Sweaty hands, balls of fire.
Balls on fire.
April started laughing so hard she thought she might have to pull off to the side. That sobered her up. She had no intention of stopping until the tank was dry.