When Aunt Eleanor recovered enough to leave the hospital, Frank drove down to get us and take us back to Paradise. Sister Joan had put up a cot in Eleanor’s room so she could nurse her. They helped Aunt Eleanor into her bed.
I remembered my promise to God that I would be easy, helpful, and do everything on earth to make Aunt Eleanor happy. He’d kept his end of the deal—Eleanor lived, so I had to do my part.
All that day, I took up my familiar role of caring for my adult, asking her if she needed anything, sweeping the porch, smelling the milk to make sure it was fresh. But when I carried a hot water bottle into her room she frowned. “You need to go outside and play, Ruby Clyde. Sister Joan can do all this.”
“I like doing all this,” I said.
But she wouldn’t hear of it. “Scat!” she dismissed me with a wave of her hand. It was still bruised by the needle.
If that was what she really wanted, I could do it.
Bunny and I started walking down to the Red Eye each day to see Frank. We’d sit on the bench outside and visit with ranchers. Bunny was real good at making friends. Not a one came into the Red Eye without chucking Bunny under the chin.
“How you doing today, little fella?” they’d say, thinking I was a boy. “Nice weather.” They’d tip their cowboy hats and move on by me.
It was there that I hatched my plan to be helpful to Aunt Eleanor. She needed bail money to get Mother out of jail; I needed a job to help. And as much as I hated to admit that the Catfish was ever right, I couldn’t be a nurse, not yet. Being a nurse would take a lot of training and time.
About then, a cowboy in a dusty, dirty truck pulled up to a pump. When he stepped out to go inside, I jumped up and said, “Hey, mister, how about I wash your windshield?”
“Sure, buddy, have at it,” and he went inside to pay for his gas.
By the time the cowboy came back out, I had squeegeed the front windshield twice, and it only had a few muddy streaks. “Want the sides and back done too?” I asked.
“Have at it,” he said, running the gas and putting the nozzle back in the slot.
The glass was pretty clean considering I didn’t have fresh water. If I must say so myself, I did a good job and he knew it. That’s why he fished in his wallet and handed me a fistful of dollars.
“Send your friends,” I said as he pulled himself into the truck. “Tell them to ask for Clyde.”
“You got it, Clyde.” And he drove away.
After that I asked Frank if I could keep washing windshields for money, so that I could pay back Aunt Eleanor for all she had done.
“Oh, Sugar Foot! Yes. Why don’t you wash the whole truck for them? You’d make a lot more.”
When I asked her about the cost of soap and water, she said that I could give her a dollar for all the soap I wanted and that the water was free. “Right out of the artesian well out back,” she said. “Not going to drain that one dry, not with a couple of weeks of washing trucks. You use all the water you want, Sugar Foot.”
I set up with a big sign advertising my new washing service. CLYDE’S CLEANING INSIDE AND OUT. I even drew a bloodshot red eye just like the one that floated over the store.
Bunny and I sat on the bench out front with the bucket, soap, rags, and a mop waiting for customers. They came pretty steady. Word had spread about Clyde’s Cleaning. Best in the Hill Country. And the Hill Country was full of dirty trucks.
The fronts were easy, but I charged extra if the back bed was caked up with ranch goo. No telling what they hauled around in the back of those trucks, but sometimes it took elbow grease to make it let go. Not a one of them ever complained about the extra cost because I did good work. I always have.
It was a long way to $100,000 for bail, but Eleanor had Paradise Ranch so she must have had money. Still, I needed to help; I’m no moocher. And there was that promise to God.
The most amazing wash job I ever did was a really big truck, the kind that has a driving piece up front, and tows a huge box behind it. I’d seen them on the roads all my life but I never really inspected how they were put together. Cab and trailer. We didn’t have many of those on the back roads up in the Hill Country. But one day a big rig, they call it, pulled into the Red Eye and almost blocked the sun. The driver scrambled down and began to pump his gas.
When he saw my sign he asked, “You Clyde?”
“Yes, sir, I am indeed.”
“Think you can give this truck a Clyde Cleaning?”
“Yes, sir, I can.” My eyes got wide as I looked down the body of the trailer. “The whole thing?” I drew out the word whole, to match the size of the trailer.
“That might take you a few days, little guy. I have to get going.”
He handed me a wad of bills, which was about double what I charged for pickups, and said, “Get that cab spick-and-span.”
And the Catfish said that I could never get a job. What did he know? He was in jail, and I had an income.
Here’s the thing. Inside that truck, behind the front and only seat was a ledge with a bed. It had a television and a curtain he could close for privacy. I never knew people could live in trucks. That guy was like a turtle carrying his home with him, wherever he went.
If Paradise Ranch wasn’t such a good home, I might just be a truck driver, and live wherever I wandered.