Lucky Strike. Nancy Zafris
He fled backward, staring at the truck in horror, the awful thumps and hacking. Beth didn’t seem to be bothered. She followed him as he stumbled backward down the black road. He coughed out something about her book reports. In the darkness she couldn’t see the expression on his face. He hoped she couldn’t hear the shaking in his voice. He asked her to recite one of her reports for him. Somehow he wasn’t surprised that she could. He grasped at the words and held on tight, Strawberry Girl by Lois Lenski. A book I like is Strawberry Girl by Lois Lenski. Strawberry Girl by Lois Lenski is the story of a girl who picks strawberries for a living. She lives with her mom and dad who pick strawberries for a living, too. He held on. The hacks rose higher, like screams. The colors of red strawberries can change from orange to clay to yellowish. Sometimes there isn’t anything red about a red strawberry but it’s still a red strawberry. He knew the child wasn’t showing off, she was helping him get through this. He concentrated on the words, I like Strawberry Girl by Lois Lenski because it tells you a lot about strawberries, but his grip was giving way. He couldn’t hold on any longer, but the noises stopped, he caught his breath, and they went back to camp.
NINE
Jean found a place outside the tent and lay down. Each time she turned her head she had a surreal moment when the big silver bullet came into view. The light from the moon bounced off it. The man and woman were inside. It was quiet. She could almost pretend they weren’t there. She wondered if she owed Harry an explanation of some kind about Charlie’s lung disorder. The name of it had stayed back in Dayton and everyone, even Charlie, felt better for it. Charlie looked healthier and stronger, and he was certainly happier.
She went inside the tent and stretched beside her children. It was a big tent with sturdy framing. It had taken up a big part of the widow’s walk-in closet. She could use Harry’s help breaking it down. She remembered how the widow had almost balked after going to the trouble to advertise it. The widow had acted as if she were putting the tent up for adoption. Her eyes narrowed at Jean after each question and Jean had felt herself grow nervous, as if there were right and wrong answers about one’s intentions concerning a tent.
The canvas sucked in, then flared out. A wind had kicked up, and with it blew in the sudden hint of perfume. The same perfume she had smelled in the widow’s house, in the dead husband’s closet. So now she saw it. The other woman had been here in the tent with the husband. She had always thought it odd the way the widow had sat her down and interviewed her. How strangely covetous of the tent the widow had been. Perhaps she was reluctant to let go of the symbol of her widowhood. Perhaps she liked kicking the tent, booting the other woman each night before she went to bed. Perhaps, growing older and ignored, she was reluctant to let go of this minor power she had over another’s desire. “What exactly are you going to do with it?” the widow asked Jean suspiciously. What exactly, as if there were so many wicked things one could do with a tent.
The wind outside reminded her of Ohio. She heard a train in the distance and waited for its whistle. The train bore down and she jolted up and scrambled outside. For a second she twirled helplessly in a circle. “Get up, get up!” she whispered frantically to her children, dropping to her knees and pulling them from the tent until their limp arms sprang to life. They ran to the Rambler and she shoved them in. She tripped toward the road and found Harry there and she was shaking. “It’s all right,” he told her. “We’re up high, we’re not in a pour-in. Do you think I’d let you stay in a spot that would flood?” For a moment she was sorry she didn’t treat him better. The rain twisted through and they sat in the Rambler and watched it. Water poured out in two spouts from the back of the red pickup. The rain beat against the aluminum trailer, its smooth silver like wet skin in the moonlight. She thought of the widow’s husband and the other woman, in the rain somewhere, in their tent, far away, their skins wet. They would have been safe in the rain. They would have been far away. No one would ever know.
TEN
In the morning she and the man, this Leonard Dawson, had a talk.
“All my claims are staked and registered,” Jean said. “I don’t need to tell you that claim jumping is a crime.” Jean said this, but all the while her mind was going through pictures of breaking down the tent, folding it up, and tying it to the Rambler’s roof. Charlie’s fifth grade teacher had helped her tie it securely to the roof, the perfect excuse for him to be there when she left. She could get Harry to help her with it for the ride back. She was imagining her mother’s face when she saw them again.
Leonard Dawson laughed.
“I don’t know what’s so funny,” Jean said.
“I’m going up high anyway,” the man said. “I seen a plane been circling that rimrock.” He tapped his forehead. Smart.
She remembered a photograph she had showed her mother and the screech of hysteria it had caused. A biplane was circling low into the canyons, its wings inches away from scraping the rock. The caption said, Rimflyers are the daredevils of the uranium business, flying their planes low into canyons and scouting ledges for uranium beds. Dangerous business, but it can pay off.
Leonard Dawson threw a pack into the bed of his pickup. “Wouldn’t be circling if there wasn’t something there.” A blackened forefinger congratulated his noggin again. His wife, Josephine Dawson—Jo, she insisted— appeared in the trailer’s doorway with a satchel of groceries. She was wearing a yellow party frock whose skirt she was pushing down like Marilyn Monroe in that famous photograph. She hopped down from the trailer with a girlishness Jean instantly noticed and considered fraudulent. Josephine smiled at her, brightly but timidly. Jean decided to ignore it.
In the distance came some blasts, not too loud, just little pops. She heard their minor key with some relief.
“What’s that?” the man asked.
It was Harry out there building a toilet, but she didn’t think she owed the man any kind of explanation.
“Is there a name for that rimrock?” the man asked.
“You’d have to ask Charlie,” Jean said.
“Who’s Charlie?”
Charlie and Beth had gone off with Harry. They had shovels and planks of wood, and the powder charges Harry had bought at the hardware store. All the while Jean pictured packing up the tent.
Leonard Dawson had climbed into his pickup and started it up. The truck lurched dramatically. He was giving it too much gas, afraid to stall out in front of her. She smirked, in case he was checking her in his rearview mirror. The pickup heaved down the escarpment and was gone.
The two women were left alone. Josephine Dawson stood, obediently lost, as if mislaid at her end of the campsite. The Marilyn Monroe imitation was over, but this new lost-little-lamb act irked Jean just as much. If Josephine Dawson expected help in the form of concrete orders that she could obey (Why don’t you help me with this tent? Why don’t we make sandwiches for the kids? Why don’t you quit smiling at me?), she was sadly mistaken.
“So what do we do now?” Josephine Dawson said. Half a joke, but half not.
Jean shrugged. She threw a couple of canteens in a backpack, put on the Mexican field hat she had bought at a trading-post filling station in Colorado (Beth had begged to stop at every single one), and set off toward the place where a new toilet should be waiting. She hoped the children had stayed at a safe distance while Harry lit his charges. She was sure Harry had good intentions but they might not go together with competence. Josephine Dawson was sitting on the trailer step, looking defeated. She rolled the ends of her hair around a brush curler. She could wield a brush curler with an Oscar-winning deflation. Jean was sure this lost soul had hoped for a friend. She couldn’t blame her for that.
She found the kids and made them drink more water even though they claimed they had just had some, but she didn’t trust Harry on that score. Beth had learned a new word, detonation, and seemed anxious to use it in every possible sentence. They were completing the toilet, laying down the planks of wood. At