“Babe, please tell me you didn’t buy pork rinds.”
She grinned at him then declared, “Barbeque flavored.”
He shook his head and faced forward, twisting the key in the ignition.
She transferred the cups into the cup holders while he pulled out, telling him, “I got you a Coke.”
“You gonna bitch when I toss it out the window?”
“Yes,” she replied instantly.
He sighed but only to stop himself from smiling.
“Everything cool on the phone?” she asked quietly.
“Yeah, good. Tate, a friend of mine in Carnal. You’ll meet him, good man.”
“Good,” she said, now her sweet voice was soft and, having dumped her bags to the floor, she nabbed the iPod.
Walker braced.
Five seconds later, 50 Cent’s “Disco Inferno” filled the car.
“Baby,” Walker whispered to the windshield through a smile.
And it was a smile that his wife caught, the first one she’d ever seen and he had no idea that seeing it meant that for the next two hours she gave him Outkast, Eminem, Jay-Z, House of Pain and Snoop Dogg somewhat losing her way playing some TLC, Beyoncé and Black Eyed Peas but he didn’t complain about the last.
At least none of them sang about a man called Amos Moses.
*
Lexie
I rode the high of the beauty of Ty’s smile for at least an hour then my mind reminded me of Ty calling me “Lex” in that casual but immensely sweet way, a name no one called me, a name that was all his so I rode that for the next half hour. After that, I rode the high of the last couple of days, a high so high it felt like I could coast it forever.
Even though these things filled my mind as I endeavored to find as much hip-hop and R&B for Ty as I could on my iPod (I liked it but I couldn’t say I was often in the mood for it so the selection wasn’t all that great, something I needed to rectify), I still managed to see the stunning beauty of Colorado most especially when we drove by the Colorado National Monument, something I decided we had to come back and take a closer look at. I also wanted to go back to Moab. Driving around in a car was one thing but, although I was nowhere near an outdoorsy type of gal, it was the kind of place you had to get out and walk around in order to see as much of it as you could pack in, something we didn’t have time to do.
I was riding so high on all things Ty; it came as a surprise when we passed the sign that said, “Welcome to Carnal”. When I saw it, my mind instantly cleared and I came alert, looking around Ty’s hometown.
It wasn’t what I expected. One long main street, starting with the tidy, flower-festooned Carnal Hotel (which, regardless if it was tidy and flower-festooned, it was more of a motel then a hotel) on the left and ending with a big mechanics garage on the right with residential areas leading off the main street which were compact rather than sprawl.
Ty was jeans and tees but he was also suits and cufflinks so I knew his hometown could be anything. Still, I didn’t expect it to be what it was. Small, seemingly quiet but obviously populated and not a single building had been built in this decade or the last or the one before that.
I liked that.
It was also surrounded by tall Colorado hills which were surrounded by taller Colorado mountains, neither of which I had seen except in pictures before that day and both of which I instantly loved.
The town was ordinary, settled, you’d drive through it and probably not pay much attention.
And I liked that too.
Ty drove us by the mechanics where the town and the residential area abruptly died away with only a few houses dotting the valley. About a half a mile out of town, he turned left and drove into the hills where, after a short while, we hit thick pine and aspen. Not too long after that, he turned right into a road I wouldn’t have noticed if he hadn’t turned there. Another short drive that was all pine and aspen on both sides broken intermittently by boulders, this suddenly opened up to a development that was far newer than the town we’d just driven through.