She walked over to the bus station to see where she could get to with the money she had. Wherever she went, she’d get there after the stores were closed, and the rooming houses. To get out of the city would take all her money, and then she’d have no place to spend the night and no supper. She went outside to sit on a bench and think about it. A car pulled up to the curb, and the driver, a young woman, called to her to ask her where she was going. Lila said, “Iowa,” and the woman said, “Me, too!” as if she had been hoping to hear that very word. “Get in. I saw you sitting there with your suitcase and I thought, I’d sure appreciate some company. That’s really why I came by here. It’s not on my way.” Lila wasn’t sure what to think about sitting for hours beside someone who might expect her to talk or to give her more money than she had, but the woman said, “It’ll save you the price of a ticket. I’ll be driving all night, and I’d rather not do that alone.” She was a tidy, freckly little woman with her hair in a knot. She was wearing a starchy white blouse she must have spent an hour ironing, it was so perfect. At the movies you could find yourself sitting next to anybody at all, some man with polished shoes and creased pants, some woman with rings on her hands, hugging her purse. They might tip their bags of popcorn toward her, she would hear them breathe and sigh as if they were sharing a pillow with her. Sometimes she could feel them looking at her, but she never looked at their faces or said anything to them. She’d just wait until the show began and they could forget each other. Now she would probably be sitting beside this stranger for hours with no way to stop thinking about her, which meant there was no way she could stop thinking about herself. Still, it would make some things easier.
The woman said, “Where you going?”
Lila thought she might try to get to Tammany, but the woman had never heard of it, so when she asked if it was near Des Moines Lila said yes, thinking that must be where the woman was going herself. It turned out she was going to a town called Macedonia, off somewhere in the cornfields, so she left Lila at a gas station in Indianola, which wasn’t too far from Des Moines. Lila had no reason to be in Des Moines. In fact, she didn’t want to be in any town that was big enough for anybody to know where it was. She had in mind one of those no-name places along a county road. A store and a church and a grain elevator. There must be a thousand of them, all just alike, and farms spreading out beyond them. But that woman had brought her clear from St. Louis, so she was glad for twelve hours of riding in a car. It stalled as often as it slowed down. Going up a hill was a trial every time. The woman said she was glad to have someone to talk to because driving made her sleepy, but then she was too nervous to talk. Every now and then she would say she was scared the car was going to break down, and she sure didn’t want to be sitting there in the middle of nowhere all by herself. This was meant as a kindness to Lila, to make her feel welcome, but it was also true. She leaned into the steering wheel and peered out at the road as if that would help.
Lila was glad to be seeing the country again, the fields looking so green in the evening light. Knee-high by the Fourth of July. So it must be June. Every farmhouse in its cloud of trees. There is a way trees stir before a rain, as if they already felt the heaviness. It all just went on and on, the United States of America. It was so easy to forget that most of the world was cornfields.
The woman said, “My mama’s sick, and there’s nobody to help her out. I’ve got to get there fast.” It was the first time she had driven any distance to speak of. “I got a letter from her. She never mentions a problem, she never wants to worry me. She doesn’t have a telephone, so I thought I’d better bring a car in case I need to find a doctor. It might not even run after I get there. If I get there. I only bought it yesterday. Dang thief that sold it to me, I’d like to give him a piece of my mind.” It began to rain. She was afraid to stop the car for fear it wouldn’t start again, and they drove all night, except once when they needed gas. Then the man at the station had to push the car out onto the road. There was enough of a slope that the engine caught and they went on again, with no light at all but the headlights, and they didn’t show much but rain. The woman said, “I think I’d be scared if I were you, putting your life in my hands,” and Lila said, “I don’t much care what happens.” Then she could feel in the dark that for a minute the woman was wondering about her, about to ask her a question, then thinking better of it. Lila thought, Maybe she suspects I’m the kind of woman who might keep a knife in her garter. Might sleep in her clothes. The woman said, “Do you hear that?” There was a soft thumping sound. “Is that coming from the motor?”
“Don’t sound like nothing.”
“You know about cars?”
“A little.” She knew they had four wheels and a running board, and that she wasn’t used to riding in one. But there was no point worrying when they couldn’t even stop to see if there was a problem, and wouldn’t know what to look for if they did stop. In the dead of night, without so much as a paper match to see by. And the rain would have put that out.
“I don’t have a spare tire. There was one in the trunk, but I sold it for gas money.”
“There’s nothing the matter with your tires.” Lila thought the woman could use a little comforting. It was kind of her to pick her up, even if she had her own reasons. It could take days of hitching rides to come as far as they had come in one day. If the car broke down she’d be hitching again, and that was just what she expected to be doing in the first place.
The woman said, “You’re so quiet, sometimes I think you’re sleeping. Or praying.”
“Nope. I’m just sitting here wide awake.”
“Good. It wouldn’t matter, really, if you’re tired. But I do feel better—”
“Sure.” Then Lila said, just to say something, “You seen that movie Double Indemnity? Driving along in the dark like this reminds me of it.”
“I can’t go to the movies. It’s against my religion.”
“Oh.” One more thing she didn’t know about.
“I shouldn’t have called that man a thief. I shouldn’t have said dang.”
“Something wrong with saying dang?”
“Well, it’s practically swearing. Anybody knows what you really mean by it.”
Lila said, “I didn’t even know there was such a thing as practically swearing.”
“In my church there is. Nazarene. We’re pretty strict.”
This is exactly why Lila kept to herself. She thought, It’s a good thing I didn’t get a chance to take that child. I’d have nothing to tell it about getting along. Don’t lie more than you have to, don’t take what ain’t yours.
The woman said, “No drinking, no smoking, no dancing, no makeup, no jewelry. They’re not too pleased with women driving cars. No stealing or killing, either, but that’s not what they talk about most of the time. I don’t mind it. I grew up in it.”
“You give ’em your money?”
The woman laughed. “A dime on the dollar. That’s usually about what it amounts to. Tithing. One-tenth of nothing. But we have a nice potluck every now and then. We try to look out for each other. It’s cheaper than insurance. You have a church?”