"You're gonna see that little needle go all the way off the dial," Dad said.
I could see his leg move as he stepped on the gas. We'd rolled down the windows, and maps and art paper and cigarette ashes were whipping around our heads. The speedometer needle crept past one hundred, the last number on the dial, and pushed into the empty space beyond. The car started shuddering, but Dad didn't let up on the accelerator. Mom covered her head with her arms and told Dad to slow down, but that only made him press on the gas even harder.
Suddenly, there was a clattering noise under the car. I looked back to make sure no important part had fallen off, and saw a cone of gray smoke billowing behind us. Just then white steam that smelled like iron started pouring out from the sides of the hood and blowing past the windows. The shuddering increased, and with a terrible coughing, clunking noise, the car began to slow. Soon it was going at no more than a crawl. Then the engine died altogether. We coasted for a few yards in silence before the car stopped.
"Now you've done it," Mom said.
We kids and Dad got out and pushed the car to the side of the road while Mom steered. Dad lifted the hood. I watched while he and Brian studied the smoking, grease-encrusted engine and discussed the parts by name. Then I went to sit in the car with Mom, Lori, and Maureen.
Lori gave me a disgusted look, as if she thought it was my fault that the car had broken down. "Why do you always encourage him?" she asked.
"Don't worry," I said. "Dad will fix it."
We sat there for a long time. I could see buzzards circling high in the distance, which reminded me of that ingrate Buster. Maybe I should have cut him some slack. With his broken wing and lifetime of eating roadkill, he probably had a lot to be ungrateful about. Too much hard luck can create a permanent meanness of spirit in any creature.
Finally, Dad shut the hood.
"You can fix it, can't you?" I asked.
"Of course," he said. "If I had the proper tools."
We'd have to temporarily postpone our expedition to the Grand Canyon, he told us. Our first priority now was to head back to Phoenix so he could get his hands on the right tools.
"How?" Lori asked.
Hitchhiking was one option, Dad said. But it might be hard finding a car with enough room to accommodate four kids and two adults. Since we were all so athletic, and since none of us were whiners, walking home would be no problem.
"It's almost eighty miles," Lori said.
"That's right," Dad said. If we covered three miles an hour for eight hours a day, we could make it in three days. We had to leave everything behind except Maureen's lavender blanket and the canteens. That included Mom's fruitwood archery set. Since Mom was attached to that archery set, which her father had given her, Dad had Brian and me hide it in an irrigation ditch. We could come back and retrieve it later.
Dad carried Maureen. To keep our spirits up, he called out hup, two, three, four, but Mom and Lori refused to march along in step. Eventually, Dad gave up, and it was quiet except for the sound of our feet crunching on the sand and rocks and the wind whipping off the desert. After walking for what seemed like a couple of hours, we reached a motel billboard that we had passed only a minute or so before the car broke down. The occasional car whizzed by, and Dad stuck out his thumb, but none of them stopped. Around midday, a big blue Buick with gleaming chrome bumpers slowed down and pulled onto the shoulder in front of us. A lady with a beauty-parlor hairdo rolled down the window.
"You poor people!" she exclaimed. "Are you okay?"
She asked us where we were going, and when we told her Phoenix, she offered us a ride. The air-conditioning in the Buick was so cold that goose bumps popped up on my arms and legs. The lady had Lori and me pass around Coca-Colas and sandwiches from a cooler in the foot well. Dad said he wasn't hungry.
The lady kept talking about how her daughter had been driving down the highway and had seen us and, when she got to the lady's house, had told her about this poor family walking along the side of the road. "And I said to her, I said to my daughter, 'Why, I can't leave those poor people out there.' I told my daughter, 'Those poor kids must be dying of thirst, poor things.'"
"We're not poor," I said. She had used that word one too many times.
"Of course you're not," the lady quickly replied. "I didn't mean it that way."
But I could tell that she had. The lady grew quiet, and for the rest of the trip, no one said much. As soon as she dropped us off, Dad disappeared. I waited on the front steps until bedtime, but he didn't come home.
THREE DAYS LATER, while Lori and I were sitting at Grandma's old upright piano trying to teach each other to play, we heard heavy, uneven footsteps at the front door. We turned and saw Dad. He tripped on the coffee table. When we tried to help him, he cursed and lurched at us, swinging his fist. He wanted to know where that goddamn sorry-assed mother of ours was, and he got so mad when we didn't tell him that he pulled over Grandma's china closet, sending her fine bone china crashing to the floor. Brian came running in. He tried to grab Dad's leg, but Dad kicked him off.
Dad yanked out the silverware drawer and hurled the forks and spoons and knives across the room, then picked up one of the chairs and smashed it on Grandma's table. "Rose Mary, where the goddamn hell are you, you stinking bitch?" he yelled. "Where is that whore hiding?"
He found Mom in the bathroom, crouched in the tub. As she darted past him, he grabbed her dress, and she started flailing. They fought their way into the dining room, and he knocked her to the floor. She reached into the pile of kitchen utensils that Dad had thrown there, grabbed a butcher knife, and slashed it through the air in front of him.
Dad leaned back. "A knife fight, eh?" He grinned. "Okay, if that's what you want." He picked up a knife, too, tossing it from hand to hand. Then he knocked the knife out of Mom's hand, dropped his own knife, and wrestled her to the floor. We kids pounded on Dad's back and begged him to stop, but he ignored us. At last, he pinned Mom's hands behind her head.
"Rose Mary, you're one hell of a woman," Dad said. Mom told him he was a stinking rotten drunk. "Yeah, but you love this old drunk, don't you?" Dad said. Mom at first said no, she didn't, but Dad kept asking her again and again, and when she finally said yes, the fight disappeared from both of them. Vanished as if it had never existed. Dad started laughing and hugging Mom, who was laughing and hugging him. It was as if they were so happy they hadn't killed each other that they had fallen in love all over again.
I didn't feel like celebrating. After all he'd put himself through, I couldn't believe Dad had gone back to the booze.
*