Mavis never learned what she planned to do or who meet in L. A. (well, San Diego). "To get it on," was her single answer to Mavis' inquiry. Nevertheless, somewhere between Topeka and Lawrence, Kansas, she disappeared along with Mavis' clear plastic raincoat and Sal's yellow boots. Odd, because Mavis' five-dollar bill was still attached to the gearshift with a rubber band. They had finished the barbecue and potato salad in a tacky restaurant named Hickey's. Bennie's "to go" order was wrapped and sitting on the table. "I'll take care of this," she said, nodding toward the check. "You go on to the toilet before we hit the road." When Mavis came out, Bennie and her ribsto-go were gone.
"How the hell I know?" was what the waitress answered. "She didn't leave even a penny tip."
Mavis fished out a quarter and placed it on the counter. She waited a few minutes in the car before trying to find her way back to sweet 70.
The quiet Bennie left in the Cadillac was unbearable. Mavis kept the radio on, and if one of Bennie's songs came on, she sang too, mourning the inferior rendition.
Panic struck in an Esso station.
Returning the rest room key, Mavis looked through the window.
Beyond, under the fluorescent lights sheltering the pump, Frank was leaning into the Cadillac window. Could he have grown that much hair in two weeks? And his clothes. Black leather jacket, shirt opened almost to his navel, gold chains. Mavis buckled and when the attendant stared at her she tried to make it look as though she'd stumbled. There was nowhere to run. She rummaged the Colorado maps in the rack. She looked again. He was gone. Parked close by, she thought, waiting for her to emerge.
I'll scream, she told herself, pretend I don't know him, fight him, call the police. The car was no longer mint green, but oh God-the license plate was the same. She had the reg. Suppose he brought the title papers. Was there a bulletin out? She could not stand still and there was no retreat. Mavis went forward. Not running. Not tripping. Head down, searching her purse for a twenty-dollar bill. Back in the car, waiting for the attendant to collect the money, she examined her surroundings in the rear- and side-view windows. Nothing. She paid and turned on the ignition. Right then the blackjacketed, open shirt torso appeared in the right-hand mirror. Gold links catching fluorescent light. Hard as she tried to control it, the Cadillac lurched out of the gas lane. Scared now, she forgot what to look for. Junction what? Turn right to go south. No, west. Enter 70 at what? But this was east. Exit ramp goes where? An hour later she was traveling a road already driven twice before. Exiting as soon as possible, she found herself on a narrow bridge and a street lined with warehouses. Secondary routes, she decided, would be better anyway. Fewer police, fewer streetlights. Trembling at every traffic light, she made it out of town. She was on route 18 when night came, and drove on and on until there was nothing but fumes to fuel the engine. The Cadillac neither sighed nor coughed. It simply stopped in a well of darkness, headlights picking out thirty feet of tarmac. Mavis switched off the lights and locked the doors. A little courage, she whispered. Like the girls running from, running toward. If they could roam around, jump in cars, hitchhike to burials, search strange neighborhoods for food, make their own way alone or with only each other for protection, certainly she could wait in darkness for morning to come. She had done it all her adult life, was able to sleep best in daylight. Besides and after all, she was not a teenager; she was a twenty-seven-year-old mother of…
Early Times didn't help. The tears wet her chin, crept down her neck anyway. What it did eventually was knock her out.
Mavis woke felt-mouthed, ugly, unfocused, and knew she was ravenous because the sun, watermelon red, looked edible. The screaming blue horizon that surrounded her was minus invitation or reproach and supported by a billion miles of not one thing. There was no choice. She relieved herself as Dusty had taught her, got back in the car to wait for another one to pass by. Bennie was smart; she never left anywhere without a dripping box of food. Mavis felt her stupidity close in on her head like a dry sack. A grown woman who could not cross the country. Could not make a plan that accommodated more than twenty minutes. Had to be taught how to dry herself in the weeds. Too rattle-minded to open a car's window so babies could breathe. She did not know now why she had run from the gold links coming toward her. Frank was right. From the very beginning he had been absolutely right about her: she was the dumbest bitch on the planet.
During the wait, in which no car or truck or bus approached, she dozed, woke to awful thoughts, dozed again. Suddenly she sat up, wide awake, and decided not to starve. Would the road girls just sit there? Would Dusty? Bennie? Mavis looked closely at the surroundings. The billion miles of not one thing had trees in the distance. Was this grass or a crop of some kind? Every road went somewhere, didn't it? Mavis collected her purse, looked for her raincoat and discovered it was gone. "Christ!" she shouted and slammed the door. The rest of the morning she stayed on the same road. When the sun was highest, she turned into a narrower one because it offered shade. Still tarmac, but not enough room for two automobiles to pass without using the shoulder. When the road ran out of trees, she saw ahead to the left a house. It looked small but close and it took a while for her to discover it was neither. She had to negotiate acres of corn to arrive. Either the house was backwards or it had no driveway. As she drew closer she saw it was stone-sandstone, maybe, but dark with age.
At first there seemed to be no windows, but then she made out the beginning of a porch and saw the reflection of huge windows on the ground floor. Circling to the right, she glimpsed a driveway leading not to the front door but around to the side. Mavis turned left. The grass near the porch was tended. Claws gripped the finials on either side of the stone steps. Mavis climbed the stairs and knocked on the door. No answer. She walked around to the driveway side and saw a woman sitting in a red wooden chair at the edge of a vegetable garden. "Excuse me," Mavis called, her hands funneling around her mouth.
The woman faced her, but Mavis couldn't tell where she was looking.
She was wearing sunglasses.
"Excuse me." Mavis moved closer. No need to shout now. "I broke down a ways back. Can anybody help? Is there someplace I can call?" The woman stood up, gathering the hem of her apron in both hands, and came forward. She wore a yellow cotton dress with tiny white flowers and fancy buttons under an apron of what looked like sailcloth. Her low-heeled shoes were unlaced. On her head a widebrimmed straw hat. The sun was beating hard; a hot wind kicked up, turning back the brim of her hat.
"No telephone out here," she said. "Come inside." Mavis followed her into the kitchen where the woman dumped pecans from her apron into a box by the stove and removed her hat. Two Hiawatha braids trailed down her shoulders. She slid out of her shoes, propped open the door with a brick and took off her sunglasses. The kitchen was big, full of fragrances and a woman's solitary mess.
Her back turned to Mavis, she asked her, "You a drinking woman?"
Mavis didn't know if a drink was being offered or solicited.
"No, I'm not."
"Lies not allowed in this place. In this place every true thing is okay."
Startled, Mavis breathed into her palm. "Oh. I drank some of my husband's liquor a while back, but I'm not what you'd call a drinking woman. I was just, well, wrung out. Driving so long and then running out of gas."