"Then you know why. I had to choose-help bury them or pay for a trip. I couldn't afford to do both. I told you all that. I asked you all straight out which thing would be the best, and you both said the money. Both of you said so, both."
"They're going to kill me, Ma."
"Are you going to hold that over my head for the rest of my life?
All I've done for you and those children?"
"They already tried but I got away."
"You're all I have, now your brothers gone and got themselves shot up like-" Birdie slapped the table.
"They got no right to kill me."
"What?"
"He's making the other children do it."
"What? Do what? Speak up so I can hear what you saying."
"I'm saying they are going to kill me."
"They? Who? Frank? What they?"
"All of them. The kids too."
"Kill you? Your children?"
Mavis nodded. Birdie Goodroe widened her eyes first, then looked into her lap as she held her forehead in the palm of her hand. They didn't talk anymore for a while, but later, at the sink, Birdie asked, "Were the twins trying to kill you too?"
Mavis stared at her mother. "No! Oh, no, Ma! Are you crazy?
They're babies!"
"All right. All right. Just asking. It's unusual, you know, to think little children…"
"Unusual? It's-it's evil! But they'll do what he says. And now they'll do anything. They already tried, Ma!"
"Tried how? What did they do?"
"Sal had a razor and they was laughing and watching me. Every minute watching me."
"What did Sal do with the razor?"
"She had it next to her plate and she was looking at me. They all was."
Neither woman spoke about it again, because Birdie told Mavis she could stay if and only if she never talked that way again. That she wouldn't tell Frank, if he called back, or anybody else that she was there, but if she said one more word about killing she would call him right away.
In a week Mavis was on the road, but this time she had a plan. Days before she heard her mother talking low into the mouthpiece of the telephone, saying, "You better get up here fast and I mean pronto," Mavis had walked around the house, while Birdie was at the Play-Skool, thinking: money, aspirin, paint, underwear; money, aspirin, paint, underwear. She took all she could find of the first two, the checks in two brown government envelopes propped against the photograph of one of her killed-in-action brothers, and both bottles of Bayer. She took a pair of rhinestone clips from Birdie's jewelry box and stole back the car keys her mother thought she had hidden so well; poured two gallons of lawn mower gasoline into the Cadillac's tank and drove away for more. In Newark she found an Earl Scheib paint shop and waited two days in the Y dormitory until it was sprayed magenta. The twenty-nine dollars advertised turned out to be for a standard-size car only. Sixty-nine dollars is what they made her pay for the Cadillac. The underwear and thong sandals she bought at Woolworth's. At a Goodwill she bought a light-blue pantsuit, drip dry, and a white cotton turtleneck. Just right, she thought, for California. Just right.
With a crisp new Mobil map beside her on the seat, she sped out of Newark heading for route 70. As more and more of the East was behind her, the happier she became. Only once had she felt this kind of happiness. On the Rocket ride she took as a kid. When the rocket zoomed on the downward swing, the rush made her giddy with pleasure; when it slowed just before turning her upside down through the high arc of its circle, the thrill was intense but calm. She squealed with the other passengers, but inside was the stable excitement of facing danger while safely strapped in strong metal. Sal hated it; so did the boys when, later on, she took them to the amusement park. Now, in flight to California, the memory of the Rocket ride and its rush were with her at will.
According to the map the way was straight. All she had to do was find 70, stay on it until Utah, make a left on down to Los Angeles. Later she remembered traveling like that-straight. One state, then the next, just as the map promised. When her funds dwindled to coins, she was forced to look for hitchhikers. But other than the first and the last, she could not remember the order of the girls. Picking up girls was easiest. They were safe company, she hoped, and they helped with gas and food and sometimes invited her to a place where they could crash. They graced primary routes, intersections, ramps to bridges, the verges of gas stations and motels, in jeans belted low on the hips and flared at the bottom. Flat hair swinging or hair picked out in Afros. The white ones were the friendliest; the colored girls slow to melt. But all of them told her about the world before California. Underneath the knowing talk, the bell-chime laughter, the pointed silences, the world they described was just like her own pre-California existence-sad, scary, all wrong. High schools were dumps, parents stupid, Johnson a creep, cops pigs, men rats, boys assholes.
The first girl was outside Zanesville. That's where sitting in a roadside diner, counting her money, the runaway appeared. Mavis had noticed her going into the ladies' room, then, quite a bit later, coming out dressed in different clothes: a long skirt this time, and a flowing blouse that touched her thighs. Outside in the parking lot, the girl ran to the Cadillac's passenger window and asked for a lift. Smiling happily, she jerked open the door when Mavis nodded. The girl said her name-Sandra but call me Dusty-and talked for thirty-two miles. Not interested in anything about Mavis, Dusty ate two Mallomars and chattered, mostly about the owners of the six dog tags that hung from her neck. Boys in her high school class or whom she had known in junior high. She'd got two from when they dated; the rest she begged from their families-souvenirs. All dead or missing. Mavis agreed to drive through Columbus and drop Dusty at her girlfriend's house. They arrived in a soft rain. Someone had done the last mowing of the season. Dusty's hair matted in brown licks; the glorified scent of newly cut grass in rain, the clink of dog tags, half a Mallo. That was Mavis' memory of her first detour with a hitchhiker. Except for the last, the others were out of sequence. Was it in Colorado that she saw a man sitting on a bench under pines in a rest area? He ate slowly, very slowly while he read a newspaper. Or before? It was sunny, cold. Anyway somewhere around that place she picked up the girl who stole her rhinestone clips. But earlier-near Saint Louis, was it? — she opened the passenger door to two girls shivering on route 70. Wind beaten, their army jackets closed tight around their chins, leather clogs, thick gray socks-they wiped their noses while their hands were still pocketed.
Not far, they said. A place just a few miles out, they said. The place, a sparkling green cemetery, was as peopled as a park. Lines of cars necklaced the entrance. Groups of people, solitary strollers, all patient in the wind, mixed with boys from a military school. The girls thanked Mavis and got out, running a little to join a set of graveside mourners. Mavis lingered, amazed by the unnatural brightness of the green. What she thought were military students turned out to be real soldiers-but young, so young, and as fresh-looking as the headstones they stood before.
It must have been after that when Mavis picked up Bennie-the last one and the one she liked best and who stole her raincoat and Sal's boots. Bennie was glad to know that, like her, Mavis was going all the way to L. A. She, Bennie, was heading for San Diego. Not a talker, small or big, Bennie sang. Songs of true love, false love, redemption; songs of unreasonable joy. Some drew tears, others were deliberately silly. Mavis sang along once in a while, but mostly she listened and in one hundred and seventy-two miles never got tired of hearing her. Mile after mile rolled by urged and eased by the gorgeous ache in Bennie's voice.
She didn't like to eat at highway stops. If they were there, because Mavis insisted on it, Bennie drank water while Mavis wolfed down cheese melts and fries. Twice Bennie directed them through towns, searching for colored neighborhoods, where they could eat "healthy," she said. At those places Bennie ate slowly, steadily, with repeat orders, side dishes and always something to go. She was careful with her money but didn't seem worried about it, and shared the cost at every gas pump.