The next day we broke down.
Cal was driving and we had just filled the car up with gas. We had gone together to pay for the fuel and to pay as well for a couple of bags of peanuts and potato chips and a loaf of bread and things like that. We had stood at the checkout in the gas station and at first Cal’s card had been declined.
I stared at the card machine.
The woman said, “Let me just try that once more for you, sir.”
I could see her half looking at us and I knew what she was thinking.
She scanned it again. It beeped.
She said, “That’s accepted.”
I felt Cal slacken a little with relief beside me.
Neither of us said anything about it afterward but it hung there unspoken.
And then after we had been driving along and playing blues on the radio and singing to it loudly a cloud of steam rose up from the hood and I said, “Cal, look at that,” and he said, “No, it’s fine, I worked as a mechanic up in Costa Maria, that’s nothing to worry about,” and then the car engine had gone put-put-put and Cal said, “Ah, shit,” and we lost momentum and just cruised, just rolled while we gradually slowed down, until we finally stopped at the side of the road.
We both got out of the car.
The steam was thick and slightly black. There was a harsh smell.
Cal said, “Piece of shit.”
I said, “I thought you were a mechanic in Costa Maria. Can’t you fix it?”
“Don’t be smart.”
“I’m not.”
We waved down a truck driver and he got out and came over and bent down, looking hard at the hood, which steamed darkly.
He said, “That’s some heavy smoke you’ve got coming out of there.”
“Yeah.”
“How old is this thing? Looks like it’s been running around since the sixties.”
“Something like that.”
“Well, man, there’s not much I can do to help you. You need a mechanic. Maybe they can get it to limp a few more miles.”
“Christ.”
“Sorry.”
“You think you could give us a ride to the nearest town?”
“Yeah, man. I’m only going that far. There’s seats in front.”
We walked over to the car and stood beside it while the driver went back to his cab.
Cal said to me, “Let’s leave it here. Piece of junk, reckon it’d cost us an arm and a leg to get fixed up.”
“Just leave it on the road?”
“Yeah. You want to keep it?”
“No.”
“So there you go.”
“Then what? What after this town? We hitch?”
“Seems like it. It’s not so far from here. We’ll manage it.”
There wasn’t much to collect from the car because we had next to nothing with us. There were the two sleeping bags and the blanket and a little food.
I took the ugly porcelain elephant off the dashboard and put him in my backpack.
Cal said, “You should leave that here. Horrible thing. Better if it gets trashed with the car.”
I shrugged. I said, “I like it.”
“It’s got wonky eyes.”
“All the better to see you with.”
We got into the cab of the truck.
There was a string of purple prayer beads hanging from the rearview mirror and on the end of the string was a yellow tassel and the beads swung violently when the truck was moving and tapped on the front windshield, and there were plastic cups with red-striped straws on the dashboard, balled-up paper burger bags, grease-stained, and a banana skin.
Scotch-taped beside the air vent was a photograph of two kids, a boy and a girl.
The driver said, “If you want my advice you call your insurance. They’ll tow that away for you and get it off the roads.”
“Sure, man. When we get to the next town.”
“You make sure you do. That’s a problem, abandoned vehicles. That’s a real problem around here. I’ve been driving this road for years and I never saw anywhere like it for abandoned vehicles. Worse just these last few months, even. All sitting around on the side of the road rusting up.”
“Really?”
“Honest to God. All over the place.”
“Why here? Where do the people go?”
“Damned if I know.”
He was right. On that stretch into town we saw two other empty cars on the side of the road. They were starting to rust over. One of them had the side door standing slightly open.
They seemed to be waiting for something.
The local town wasn’t big, and it had that feel of a nearby border. The houses were low and flat and brick showed through falling uneven plaster.
The main street was quiet and people sat outside small cafes just staring. Walking sticks leaned against the legs of tables.
The driver said, “I’ll drop you here then. There’s a pizza place down at the end of the road. You can get a phone in there if yours won’t work. For the insurance call. And you can get good pizza.”
“Thanks.”
He looked hesitant.
Then he put a hand on my arm. He said, a little self-consciously and speaking to Cal not to me, “Eidon’s a long way to go tonight you know, man. A good long way. Especially if you’re catching a ride. You both all right for somewhere to sleep here tonight in case you need it? Got a bit of money for a room at an inn or something?”
Cal said, “We thought we’d just push it and make it down to the city.”
“I’m telling you that’s a long way. Little peanut here looks dead.”
I said, “I’m fine.”
The driver looked at me and blew out his cheeks and after a moment he said, “Look. I live here. I’m going to write down my address for you, there’s a spare room at my place for the night if you need. It’s not a big town here and it won’t be easy to find somewhere last minute like this.”
Cal and I looked at each other and I felt all of a sudden and inexplicably a little tearful.
It was because I was tired.
I said, “That’s very kind.”
“Welcome. I’m going now to drop the truck at the station. You both go and get yourselves some food and you can meet me at my address later if you need to. There’ll be a bed for you there. Or a sofa anyway.”
He got back in the front cab of the truck and drove off and left us standing in the middle of the street.
Cal looked at me. He said, “Do you want to do that?”
“We could sleep in a bed. I could have a shower.”
“Not scared he’s a serial killer?”
“I just want a shower.”
“I guess after what we’ve been through, you can take care of yourself,” he joked.
I stared. “Jesus, Cal. That’s not funny.”
“Sorry.” After a moment he shrugged. “If you want to I’m happy to do it. I’m never going to complain about a bed.”
Then he said, “You want to go and get something to eat before we meet him? I’ll pay, my treat. Last leg of the voyage tomorrow.”
I paused a moment.
I said, “OK. Yeah. Let’s get something to eat.”
We wandered down the street.
The late afternoon was hot and bright and the buildings seemed very white, white with dust, and there were small scrubby trees growing in special holes in the pavement and half of each trunk was painted white and the white paint had been made dirty and scummy, and each tree had an iron circle of fencing around it. At the end of the street a dog wandered slowly with its nose against the ground. It was long and lanky and dun-colored.
He said, “Look at this place.”
“Somewhere from another time.”
“Yeah.”
There was a pizza restaurant opposite a supermarket which looked like it was the supermarket for the whole local area. It had old automatic doors in the front and they were slow-moving and every so often they jammed. We saw a big glass window with a display of old shop mannequins wearing swimming trunks and behind the mannequins there were cardboard palm trees even though the town here was far away from the ocean. A few people stood around in the parking lot talking with bags of shopping at their sides. A red-striped awning stuck out in front of the pizza restaurant with clustered zinc tables and chairs outside the front door, and there were two machines which dispensed plastic toys for a few coins, and laminated menus standing on the tables and old vinegar bottles and full ashtrays propping them up.
Inside a fan turned slowly and loudly.
The walls were covered with crucifixes and little signs with carefully hand-painted Bible quotes full of spelling errors.
I read one. It said:
I KNOW THE PLANS I HAVE FOR YOU, PLANS TO PROSPER AND NOT TO HAM YOU
Cal and I looked at each other.
I said, “Let’s sit outside.”
“At least he doesn’t want to ham us.”
We ordered orange juice and beans with cheese and chili peppers and garlic bread. At the table two cats wound slyly around the table legs searching for scraps.
I said, “Do you remember the tin can phones?”
He laughed. “What made you think of that?”
“I don’t know.”
It was something in the hot dry air, something about that baking white bright street and sitting away from it in the stippled shade of the awning and the orange juice and the cold metal tables and the lazy muted sounds of music on a stereo somewhere.
The tin can phones had been a stupid game we once played in our old apartment in San Padua just after we were married. There were these two kids playing up and down the hallway outside the door all afternoon and they had these food cans connected with string like two phones with a phone wire and they were running about up and down the corridor saying hello, hello, and Cal and I had opened the front door of the apartment to see what they were doing and found them reeling with laughter from whatever it was one of them had said to the other, and then that evening when I went out into the corridor again there had been the tin can phones lying on the floor.
The kids had gone and forgotten all about them.
And so I picked them up and took them inside to show Cal and we went down out of the apartment and walked onto the beach at night and stood under the streetlights and palm trees beside the sand in the hot damp, held in the sound of the ocean’s rushing pump, talking in the tin can phones, stupid whispers, deep hot air, smell of sweat.
I have no idea what brought that back.
I had completely forgotten about it.