And that was why I said nothing. When the Edsel finally stopped running on fumes, she would have to cough up some of her secret stash of cash to buy some. I might even get a glimpse of my silver dollar.
I wrote Florida on the manual and then under it, the first town name I saw: Prosperity. My daddy had told me “prosperity” meant livin’ high off the hog. Funny if we were to run out of gas in Prosperity. And then Prosperity was behind us, in every sense. We came to Ponce de Leon, and turned west toward the sun.
That sinking sun seemed to set fire to the tall pines on the west side of the highway. Except for that little bit of time outside of Banks and a little bit more in Elba, in that one day we had driven from sunrise to sunset. And now the gas gauge read one-quarter full. Something must be wrong with it.
“What’s Ponce de Leon?” I asked Mama.
She flicked a cigarette butt out the open window. “Some historical Spanish fairy. What do I look like, the Encyclopaedia Britannica?”
I tried to imagine how a Spanish fairy might be different from an American fairy. It had never crossed my mind that fairies might have nationalities.
Argyle. Defuniak Springs.
Argyle I knew: It was a pattern for a sweater or socks.
“What’s ‘Defuniak’ mean?” I asked Mama.
“Throwing a kid out the car window for asking too many questions,” she answered.
The gauge crept down toward empty again. As close as I watched it, Mama never looked down at it. The sun disappeared behind the jaggedy pines and then it set beyond the horizon that Mama and I could not see.
Mama turned on the headlights. The gas gauge tank showed just a little more than half full.
Crestview, Milligan, Galliver, Holt. Harold, Milton, Pace, Gull Pt.
I didn’t have any questions about those places. Crestview and Gull Pt. were names about the places themselves, where you could stand on a crest of land and see some kind of view, or someplace pointy where there were a lot of gulls. The others were places named after people and I did not know a one of them, though there was a kid at school named Jerry White, and I knew of a man called Milt who once worked for my daddy at the Montgomery dealership. He didn’t work out. By Gull Pt., the needle on the gauge had again dropped almost to E.
“Mama.”
She didn’t answer.
“Mama, do you know who Mamadee gave your sisters to?”
Mama shot a furious glare at me. Her jaw worked.
“I wish I did,” Mama lied. “I’d put you on the next train, plane or automobile, right to ’em. Mail you COD if I had an address.”
Having driven more than a hundred miles from Elba, we reached Pensacola a little past nine o’clock. I ached to pee again. Mama drove around downtown Pensacola, up and down its streets—Zaragoza, Palafox, Jefferson, Tarragona, Garden, Spring, Barrancas, Alcaniz—and back again. Some blocks looked a lot like the French Quarter. All the stores were closed and even at the hotels most of the lights were out. A clock outside a bank read nearly ten o’clock. Eventually we found our way to the waterfront.
Mama stopped.
“It’s a snipe hunt. To humiliate me, because I am your mother and your friend Fennie Verlow is jealous of the hold I have over you.”
I felt then what I could hardly have articulated at seven—that, if true, it would be the first time she would ever care enough to want a hold on me. I sat up and looked around, making a show of how far I turned my head and how long I hung out the window.
“You said Fennie said her sister’s place was at Pensacola Beach. This is all docks. I don’t see a beach nowhere.”
“Anywhere,” said Mama. She gunned the engine. “I’d forgotten—she did say Pensacola Beach.”
She made a U-turn right in front of a Pensacola police car.
“That damned beach better be close because we are almost out of gas,” she said.
The police car burped at us.
Mama moaned but pulled over immediately.
The police car parked in front of us, a policeman climbed out, and presently looked in the open window at Mama and me. He had a broad face, and when he removed his hat, he exposed a receding hairline. He beamed at Mama with a full-moon jolliness.
“Good evening, ladies,” he said. “I believe that you must be lost.”
Mama smiled the way she did at a man when she wanted something from him.
“We are,” I piped up. “We’re supposed to go to Pensacola Beach.”
“Hush,” Mama told me with none of her usual irritation. “My baby is so tired, Officer, she has forgotten her manners. She is correct, however. We seek Pensacola Beach.”
The policeman gave me an indulgent look. “I see she is a tired lil gal. You want to take the next right and then two lefts. That will take you back to the Scenic Highway—you’ve noticed the signs?”
Mama nodded.
“You turn right onto the Scenic Highway and it’ll take you straight across the Causeway to Gulf Breeze, and there’s no place else to go but straight ahead over one more itty-bitty bridge, and there you’ll be, Pensacola Beach.”
“Oh my,” Mama said. “It’s a different place than Pensacola. No wonder we couldn’t find it.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the policeman agreed. “Now you best go along and put that tired lil gal to bed. My sister Jolene’s got one like her. They sweet lil things, no trouble to nobody.”
Mama fluttered her eyelashes. The policeman grinned even wider as he stepped back.
“Good night, ladies,” he said, with a nod of his head.
He put his hat back on and stood by the side of the road and watched as we drove away.
“I thought he was gone give me a ticket for sure,” Mama said, as she glanced up at the rearview. “The end to a perfect day.”
We turned again onto the road—the Scenic Highway—that had brought us into Pensacola. We could see black water with a shiver of moonlight on it. The road brought us to a long bridge arcing over the water to another shoreline. The Causeway.
“Thank you, Mr. Policeman,” Mama said, and laughed.
As we crossed that Causeway bridge, the cipher of the moon hung over us, in the night sky.
If the moon was seeing me, it was by sneaky-peek, for the leak of its light was no more than that from a twitched drapery.
On the other side was a sign that said Gulf Breeze, and then quickly the second itty-bitty bridge the policeman had mentioned, on the far side of which huddled a few dark buildings of indiscernible purpose. This was Pensacola Beach. Straight ahead was black water. The fragile horns of the moon pointed right.
“Right!” I blurted to Mama. “This is where we turn right.”
This time Mama offered no argument. She made the turn and drove on. The pavement came to a quick end. The road became steadily narrower, the gravel looser, till on either side, there was black water that smelled of brine and bad shrimp. The unpaved road snaked between moon-pale sand and coarse, black high grass. The rind of moon was directly above. I could see it only when I pushed my whole body out the window and looked straight up into the sky. There was no sign of where we were, or of what was ahead.
And at last the Edsel chuffed and shuddered. Mama jerked me back inside. The Edsel gave another shudder, and then stood motionless in its tracks. Its lights quivered like a guttering candle flame.
“Out of gas on a dirt road in the middle of the night,” Mama said. “And who has brought us here except you and your friend Fennie?”