Finally a car pulled over, interrupting his morbid reverie. He ran to get in. It was an old Chevy sedan with two guys in the front seat and fishing gear piled all over the back seat. Oats looked at the two men and noticed that they were about his dad’s age, then realized that he couldn’t think that way anymore because Greg wasn’t his dad and Bobby Lee wasn’t his dad either, not really.
The driver had pockmarked skin, blue eyes, stringy hair, and a large nose. The other one was huge and hairy with curly dark hair and a long wild beard, massive arms, and a paunch. He was the one who said “Where you headed?” and when Oats pointed vaguely down the road in the direction they were driving, said to hop in and push the fishing stuff out of the way if he needed to.
“They call me Major Booty, and this here’s Lonesome Al,” the man continued. “What’s your name?”
Oats didn’t know what made him say “Elmer.”
“Ha! Elmer, you mean like Elmer Fudd? Who would name a kid Elmer?” the one called Lonesome Al asked.
“Um…I guess my parents?” Complicated again. Thoughts he didn’t want to think.
“Don’t mind Ed,” said Major Booty. “He’s a couple light bulbs short of a chandelier, but he’s all right. Speaking of parents, you’re awful young to be out on your own, ain’t you? Where are your folks? You running away or something?”
Oats saw Lonesome Al staring at him in the rearview mirror the whole time without blinking. It occurred to him that these guys might report him to the cops if they knew the real story, so he had to come up with something.
“Nope.” A sudden memory of his last trip down this road came into his head, and Oats decided to use Melody’s band as a cover. “I’ve been touring on the California county fair circuit with my church’s youth marching band, and they left me behind at the rest stop back there. I went into the bathroom and I guess they forgot to count noses or something. Anyway, I have to catch up with them ’cause we have a gig over in Bakersfield this afternoon.” He’d pulled out the first city that came into his head.
“Don’t anyone have a cell phone or something?” Major Booty asked.
“Yeah, but no one was answering.”
“Well, young man, if you’re going to Bakersfield you’ve got a mighty long drive ahead.”
Oats suddenly realized he should probably be nervous about being alone in a car with two grown-up strangers, when Lonesome Al said that. What if he was implying that they were going to do something bad, that he might never get there? He started to sweat, realizing that it was crucial to keep his cool.
“Uh, why’s that?” Oats’ voice cracked a little.
“Cause Bakersfield is in the opposite direction. You sure that’s where your group was headed?”
“Yes, sir. I’m pretty sure.” What he was really sure of was that no one would come looking for him in Bakersfield, because Bobby Lee’s band had just been there. “I’m sorry,” Oats continued. “I guess I got kind of mixed up. Maybe you could let me off here and I’ll cross over the freeway and get a ride in the other direction.”
“You shittin’ me? We ain’t got nothin’ but time,” Major Booty shouted as he reached down and grabbed a can of beer out of a little cooler at his feet. “Al, turn this sucker around. We’re taking Elmer here to meet up with his people in Bakersfield. What do you think of that?”
“If you say so.” Al maneuvered the car into a U-turn and began barreling down the blacktop in the opposite direction. “Hold onto your hat, Junior. We’ll take you for a ride.”
Oats tried to buckle up his seatbelt but it seemed to be jammed into the crack between the seat and the backrest, and somehow he felt kind of lame for worrying about it, so he didn’t say anything. But truth be told, it was the only time he could remember being in a car without a seatbelt, except for one time when his family went to New York to visit his grandmother’s relatives and they rode in cabs. For some reason, no one ever put on their seatbelts in New York cabs and even though they are just the same as riding in a car, they just feel different somehow. There he was, thinking about his family again, the family he no longer had—this would be a hard habit to break.
Oats found his mind gnawing away at the seatbelt thing, until he realized that he had much more important stuff to worry about, like how he was going to replace an entire suitcase filled with harmonicas on the thirty-five dollars in his wallet, or where he was going to go to school, or sleep for that matter, or who was—in actual fact—his real father, or how to get his head around the fact that everyone he knew had been lying to him for his whole entire life, or the irony of the fact that he’d run away on the verge of the opportunity to spend several weeks sleeping in the same room with a woman he adored. Well, maybe school wasn’t such a big deal. So he’d start worrying about the seatbelt, then remind himself that was a silly worry because there were way bigger things to worry about anyway, and start going down the list in this sort of awful circular pattern. He finally decided that the seatbelt thing might actually solve all the other problems because if they had a crash and he died, then none of the rest would be an issue anymore.
Then the voice of Mr. Volstadt, a teacher at school, came into Oats’ head unbidden, talking about the dangers of not wearing seatbelts, and other life-threatening circumstances for California youth.
If you’re not buckled in when involved in a collision, your chances of serious injury or death increase dramatically, as does your chance of injuring or killing others in the vehicle. Without your seatbelt on, you can become a human missile in a collision. It felt as though Mr. Volstadt was reading a health and safety pamphlet from inside his head, but it was too late to make him stop.
Oats was circling past worrying about the lies and rolling into the missed opportunity to spend more quality time with Arizona, when Major Booty leaned one beefy arm over the back of his seat and turned his huge, hairy head around to look him square in the eye.
“Hey, squirt,” he said. “Do you like tequila?”
That was pretty much the last question he was expecting. He looked up. Al was still staring at him, unblinking, in the rearview mirror.
“Um,” he managed.
“He’s just a kid,” Lonesome Al hissed from the driver’s seat. “He don’t know yet if he likes tequila or not.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” Major Booty agreed. “Best just to give him a brew, then.” He reached down between the front seats, opened his cooler, and pulled out three frosty Budweisers, handing them around.
Drivers with high blood alcohol content or concentration, otherwise known as BAC, are at greatly increased risk of car accidents, highway injuries, and vehicular deaths. There was Mr. Volstadt again. Oats knew, like every school kid in California, that it’s against the law to drink and drive—and he also knew (not the least from being raised over a roadhouse honky-tonk bar) that it’s against the law to give alcoholic beverages to minors. He knew all that stuff, but given his current frame of mind all he could think was
fuck it
.
Oats managed a thank-you and took a long swallow. It tasted bitter, but it was nice and cold and he chugged it like he’d seen Dickie do a million times at gigs. His face felt a little hot and he wondered what all the fuss was about. In fact, after a few minutes he started to feel pretty good. The hell with Mr. Volstadt, who was thirty-five and still lived with his mother. Lonesome Al and Major Booty were OK, after all. He took another deep swallow and stared silently out the window as they sped down the highway toward Bakersfield.
*
Sarah Jean was heartsick about Charlotte and furious at Bobby Lee—for what, she wasn’t quite sure. She, after all, had been the original chicken-shit. She’d given up looking for him the second she realized he’d gotten married, and then when Oats was little they’d met by accident and had that intense affair. She and Bobby Lee had both been guilty of casual selfishness that she’d regretted after meeting Charlotte and liking her so very much. So what did that make her? Certain words came to mind: home-wrecker, asshole, arrogant man-stealing bitch were a few obvious ones.
Sarah Jean tried to remember how she had justified her actions, what she had felt and told herself during that time. What it all came down to was that she and Bobby Lee somehow thought they were exempt from the rules. And there was Bobby Lee whispering in her ear, telling her that his marriage was all but over and that he wanted to take his rightful place beside her as the father of her child. He’d described Charlotte as a secure and independent woman with a secret or two of her own.
Sarah Jean had taken comfort in the fact that this was not unusual behavior for those in her line of work, or maybe any line of work—she didn’t know how school teachers or accountants dealt with their passions. At the time, she’d felt that their careers as performing artists gave them some extra license, and that the rest of the world would just have to be OK with it.
There was something else, too. Sarah Jean could be as jealous and insecure as anyone, but she truly believed that people could do a lot worse things to each other than indulge in an occasional sexual indiscretion. Chalk it up to hippie parents or life on the road; she’d always tried to mind her own business (to quote the great barroom bard Hank Williams—though come to think of it, you wouldn’t want to model your life after his). She’d just given advice along those lines to Arizona. Though she realized that not everyone agreed, she’d always felt that cutting folks a little slack in the passion/temptation area might save a lot of pain and heartache.
Sarah Jean ducked into the ladies’ room, eager for a few minutes to herself. She turned on the cold-water tap and washed her face, then sat down in one of the stalls with the door locked, to think for a minute.
The real issue had nothing to do with Bobby Lee or even Charlotte. It was about facing up to having lied to her son about crucial information. Never mind that Greg had adopted Oats when they got married, or had been the only adult male in Oats’ life from birth. He’d had a right to know, of course, and she’d planned to tell him when he was “old enough” or when Bobby Lee was able to come clean to Charlotte, whichever came first.
She’d never wanted her child to have to live with a secret—to have to participate in keeping a secret from people they knew, but really Oats was right when he’d said she’d only been protecting herself.
Meanwhile, she had one kid who was hurting, another who was awfully confused, and someone else’s kid in tow. Not to mention a sick man counting on her, an ex-lover who looked like he was about ready to jump off a cliff, and a woman friend who had been betrayed big-time.
Otis Ray was the most important, but had to be handled so delicately. She couldn’t stay in the bathroom forever. First things first: she had to take care of her kids.
She found Arizona, Eddie, and Hank Wilson in the entryway to the bar off the gift shop, where there were some rarely used electronic video games and pinball machines. Arizona looked up.
“Thank God you’re here,” she said with a smile. “I was about to run out of quarters, and Mr. K. revoked my Johnny Cashregister access when I gave notice. What’s up? How’s the weather out there?”
“Overcast, storm coming in,” Sarah Jean answered as Hank Wilson ran to the window.
“No, Mom,” he shouted. “It looks clear out there. I think it’s sunny today.”
“OK, sweetheart,” Sarah Jean said softly. “Thanks.” And then she put her head on Arizona’s shoulder. “I feel like a class-A shit,” she moaned. “You have no idea.”
“Do you think it would help if I talked to Oats?”
“He adores you. I think it would be great if you could at least talk to him. I don’t expect any of this to be resolved quickly. But if you could…I’ll stay here with the boys.”
“Don’t move till I get back, promise?” Arizona gave Sarah Jean a hug and walked out of the room, hoping she looked capable enough for the job at hand.
Sarah Jean tried to pay attention to Hank Wilson and Eddie as they played games, but as time rolled by she became more and more concerned. Finally, she wandered over to the front door of the restaurant. The parking lot connecting Murphy’s to the motel was deserted; the blacktop shimmered in the blazing afternoon heat, and the familiar smell of cow dung hung in the air. Something didn’t feel right. She dug into her purse for her cell phone and sent Arizona a text message that read, simply, “OK?”
A few minutes later, Arizona rounded the bend behind the motel, face pale. She walked briskly up to Sarah Jean.
“I don’t exactly know how to tell you this,” she began.
*
No one had seen a red-headed boy walking up the highway; none of the employees at any of the restaurants or rest stops in the surrounding area had reported a lost kid or noticed a child wandering around alone. Calls to Oats’ cell phone rang, this time in Hank Wilson’s pocket, where it had somehow ended up after the boys’ rip-roarin’ game of Pictionary.
Once again, Bobby Lee had to call the highway patrol to report a missing child—and once again the same group stood around in the parking lot, waiting for the patrol car to show up.
It didn’t help that this was the second time in as many days that Officers Densmore and Bernal had been called because the same boy had gone missing. They approached this encounter with a bit less intensity than they had the day before.
“OK, let me get this straight,” Officer Densmore said. “You’re missing a kid, you say?”
“Yes sir,” Bobby Lee answered politely. “Otis Ray Pixlie. The same kid we called you about yesterday.”
“The same one who it turned out had just gone for a walk and run into some friends, then, that’s the one?”
“I know it seems silly, but this is different.”
“I see, and how is that?”
Bobby Lee didn’t know exactly how to explain, and neither did anyone else. The officers took some notes and promised they’d be in touch if they heard anything. As they turned to go, Bernal asked Densmore what they should do next.
“Hey, man, why should this incident be any different? We’ll call it in, but I wouldn’t get your panties in a knot. He’s just a restless teenager.”
“Dewdrop Inn,” Greg’s calm, familiar voice answered the office phone at the club.