Beth and her family were lucky. The springs of their station wagon had given out beside a natural shelter, a horseshoe of overhanging rock. A sandy crescent was perfect for a tent. The sand roughened with bristles as it spread toward blackbrush, sprouts of silvery winterfrost, and tough cheat grass. A tiny piñon tree sprang out of nowhere, as if from one of her play sets. Beth liked sleeping on the sand as long as a beach blanket was under her. She and Charlie had searched for waterholes and found only the drying, white-rimmed pond that they now called emergency alkaline thanks to Paul Morrison. She imagined them out there day after day searching for water, tricked by mirages, until they were crawling on their knees half dead, and when they finally fainted their bodies would roll down a dune into a waterhole. Saved at the last minute.
Her mother thought the water they had bought in town would see them through. Beth had never seen water sold before. The water was probably why the Rambler’s springs had given out. In case she thought otherwise, Charlie told her that a cubic foot of water weighed sixty-four pounds.
She woke up confused in Harry’s truck, her brain lost in the heat.
“Who’s that groggy little girl over there?” Harry asked.
“Almost there, sweetie.” A smack as her mother’s wet arm separated from hers. They were high enough so that they could see the town below them, the whole town, all of it, how it wasn’t round, circling out from a dense center, but went off like a Hershey bar between two ranges and then just stopped, one end of the town bitten off and irregular, the other end smooth. The road they were on was still a dirt road, but now there were ragged signs of life. Shacks and half-buried cars and squatter camps. Not a single person.
Closer to town the road was paved. Fences had been erected and the fields within were beaten with housing trailers. Monthly Rates, read one sign. Two children stood by the road, arms hanging dead, and stared at them as they drove by. The town had a big church, a bank, a post office, a bus station that was part of a restaurant. A banner strewn across the downtown street advertised a $14.99 bus ride to an A-bomb test site, barbecue included!
Harry turned down a side street and then into the empty parking lot. The motel’s sign, Stagecoach Oasis, was turned off. Beth could see a swimming pool. The door to the motel office was thrown open and held by a brick. Through the screen door Beth heard radio music. “Once I Had a Secret Love.” A sad song but leaping with happy static. Her grandmother loved that song and always said turn it up at the exact moment that her mother said turn it down.
“Hello there!” Harry called.
“Hello, Harry,” mumbled the lady in the motel office. She didn’t look up. She was bent over her desk with a bottle of glue. A red pipe cleaner, clenched like a rose between her teeth, explained her muzzled voice. She wore bib overalls and a pink sleeveless shirt with an upturned collar. Her naked arms were thickly freckled and were on that border between looking strong and looking heavy. The fan in her office was turned off. The thing she was working on was laid out on a cooking sheet, tiny white shells and colored mostly turquoise fishbowl stones and colored mostly fuchsia strings, all of which she was arranging Hawaii-like inside a picture frame.
“Got a couple of uraniumaires for you,” Harry said.
“Do you now.” The lady looked up and Beth could see the surprise on her face to be locking eyes with a little girl—a little girl of her talent and good looks, she might add, which would further the surprise. Right away Beth guessed this lady was the kind of person who liked protecting her deeper feelings. The lady suddenly aimed a big smile directly at Beth as if she had read Beth’s thoughts and was protecting her reaction with amusement. She plucked the pipe cleaner from her mouth and put it on the cooking sheet with the rest of the stuff and told Harry to turn on the fan. She let the fan rotate around the room, dodging with the cooking sheet the fan’s shifting aim until she found a spot where the wind wouldn’t disturb the pattern of colored stones and shells. “Are these your friends?” she asked. Her hair was long and extra thick and she grabbed it up in a ponytail to let the fan’s air hit her bared neck.
“They’re staying up near Swing Line Wash.”
“Good Lord,” the lady started to say before lifting her hand to alert them. That sad but happy song on the radio was nearing its end and it leaped into full static and the lady leaped with it: “Now I shouted from the highest hills! Even told the golden daffodils.” The radio’s crunching took over and she switched it off. She sighed with disgust. “If that radio was a Geiger counter, I’d be rich. And I’d have a better radio.” She looked at Beth’s mother. “You going to stay the night, honey?”
“Yes, Mom,” Beth said.
“I guess so,” her mother said. “You didn’t tell me this part,” she added to Harry.
“I’ll pay,” Harry said.
“No. It’s not the money. It’s the work we have to do.”
“Oh,” Harry said.
“What work is that?” the lady asked.
“All the preparations Harry was so kind to explain to me.”
“That’s Harry,” the lady said. “Honey, I do have weekly rates. You’re just as likely to find uranium under one of my beds as in those hills. And it’s a good ways more pleasant.”
“Exactly what I was trying to explain. You’re more succinct,” Harry said.
“Of course I am, Harry.”
“I think one night will do fine.” Her mother shifted and her foot landed on the tail of a tabby cat. Both her mom and the cat jumped.
“Out, skedaddle,” the lady ordered. “Don’t mind him. He’s been run over twice.”
“Is he your kitty?” Beth asked.
“That one? No, darling. Wild as they come. Except the two cars have knocked it out of him a bit.”
“How does he eat?”
“I have some guests who take care of that.”
“And these folks are all the way from Ohio,” Harry said.
“Lordy,” the lady said, shivering her body.
“Can we go swimming?” Beth asked.
“Absolutely,” the lady said. “That’s the first thing I meant to say.”
Beth saw her mother hesitate.
“I have bathing suits they can borrow,” the lady said. “I keep a pile going. Some are pretty nice. Got one that would fit you, too.”
“That’s very kind of you.”
“I like kids.” She stopped for a moment and then she gave Charlie a big smile, probably because he had been silent and ignored all this time. She seemed like someone who wanted to make sure everyone was having a good time. “Mine are seventeen and eighteen.” She snapped her fingers, said, “Like that,” and shook her head. “And I can wash their clothes while they’re swimming.”
“I’ll be happy to do the washing if you show me where.”
“Your choice,” the lady said. But in the end she took all their clothes and gave them a good wash in her own personal machine. Beth put on the borrowed swimwear and jumped in the pool. Charlie quickly joined her. He was not one to give up the water. He did a racing dive in the deep end and stayed under and didn’t come up until he was in the shallow end, where three old ladies sat around a table in seashell metal chairs painted yellow, green, and blue. They had set aside a card game and were having their drinks. Snatches of their conversation came to Beth, Died of a stroke at what age? Here it’s Saturday and I thought it was Thursday. The tabby had returned and was hanging around the old ladies’ feet. Beth looked over at her mom, lounging nearby in a borrowed bathrobe, and she looked pretty content. Oh that reminds me of Betty. Someone should let him know.
The lady manager in the bib overalls came out with a net attached to a long pole and fished out the dead insects from the pool. “There,” she said with satisfaction. “So you kids can get a proper swim.” She returned with a tall drink for Beth’s mom, and popsicles for Beth and Charlie.
Beth stayed in the water until Harry came back from stocking up his truck with supplies. He asked if they wanted to go out to eat supper in a restaurant. “Let’s go out,” he said. “Do you want to go out?”
“Have you eaten at all today, Harry?” her mother asked. Her voice took on a concerned warning, but Beth knew she was avoiding an answer. Out here with no one she knew and no one to contradict her, her mother was building this new life and pretending to live it. Harry insisted about the dinner and her mother finally said they were all too tired, which Beth knew meant Charlie, but of course she wasn’t going to correct her and say, But I’m full of energy! Her mother had told her these things were private.
Harry said he would get something and bring it back. He got in an old DeSoto, brown with a cream-colored top. The lady manager was driving; she stuck her head out the window and yelled, “Last call for stragglers!” and Beth said, “Please Mom, can I?” and her mom said, “Go ahead.” Beth jumped in and waved from the backseat. They went to the Atomic Café, and Harry and the lady talked a lot to the man who owned the place. His name was Dewey Durnford. Beth still didn’t know what the lady’s name was. Dewey Durnford complained about not getting reception for the TV. He talked about missing the Rocky Marciano fight. He talked about one of the guys who’d gotten uranium rich going up above the clouds in his private plane so he could get the fight’s reception on his TV. Dewey Durnford said, “I’ve given that guy so many free meals in his sourdough days he could have invited me along to see it.” Beth ate french fries. No one seemed to care she wore a sweater over a bathing suit. Dewey had dewy hair, that kind that chicks had, and his small teeth razored inward, the opposite of buck. Toward the end of her french fries (and she hoping someone would suggest more), Beth heard Dewey call the lady manager Miss Dazzle. Miss Dazzle said she didn’t like fights, heavyweight championship or not, and she reached out and squeezed Dewey’s hand and said, “But I’m sorry for you.” She sipped on a Coke and Dewey said, “You want that I should add something to that,” and she said, “Why, absolutely.” Dewey took out a bottle with a missing label, as if that was going to fool someone, and let the last of its contents drip into Miss Dazzle’s Coke. He slapped the bottle as if it were ketchup to get a final drop. Miss Dazzle’s body sagged peacefully. Another plate of french fries appeared before Beth and she just couldn’t hold back a smile and everyone laughed. She felt happy, boundlessly happy; she wanted to throw her french fries in the air. Then Dewey Durnford reached down below the counter and brought up a record album and presented it to a stunned Miss Dazzle. “The new one?” Miss Dazzle stuttered. “Does it have it on there?” Miss Dazzle’s voice was anxious as she scanned the cover photo—a picture of Calamity Jane with a Civil War scout cap perked over her blond curls. Beth’s grandmother had the very same album with that song she listened to six times in a row. “Oh, you’re a sweetheart!” Miss Dazzle cried. “Oh Lord! You’re a sweetheart!” She stood up and grabbed the sides of Dewey’s face and planted a big kiss on the bridge of his nose. Harry said he agreed about not liking fights. Dewey fixed up milk shakes and hamburgers and more french fries and they took them back to the motel. On the ride back to the motel Miss Dazzle talked about her boys being seventeen and eighteen—she snapped her fingers again—and how they were hitchhiking to California for the summer. They had a cousin who lived there and thought they had a used car coming to them simply because they were old enough to drive and cars just happened to appear out of nowhere once you were old enough to drive, right, Harry? Look at her car why don’t you. She was sure she could afford another one for their summer outing, like heck. But why complain? She touched the record album. Right now she was about as happy as a person could be.
Harry and Miss Dazzle ate with them in their motel room. The skin on Charlie’s face had that shiny blushed look so Beth knew her mother had pounded him and he had hacked out the visitor for another night, which was how they referred to Charlie’s situation. Miss Dazzle thought Charlie had taken a nap because he looked “refreshed.” They all went to bed late. From time to time Miss Dazzle would look around at all of them and a big grin would spread across her face. Harry finally stood up and said good-night. Miss Dazzle had no choice but to follow him out though it seemed to Beth she was just getting started. She was a people person, Miss Dazzle was, sort of the opposite of her mother. Harry went to his truck. “Harry, just take a room for free,” Miss Dazzle told him. Beth overheard them. She went to the window above the bed and watched as they stood together in the parking lot. “I couldn’t do that,” Harry said. “Besides I need to guard my wares.” He disappeared into his truck and Beth saw the shadow of Miss Dazzle shaking its head.
“What’s going on now?” her mother asked. Her mother was sitting at the tiny desk in the motel room while Beth did the spying. “He needs to guard his wares,” Beth told her. Her mother shook her head just as Miss Dazzle had done. They heard the engine churn over. Beth looked out again. “I guess he’s leaving.” The red brake lights of Harry’s truck lit up Miss Dazzle’s face. “For goodness’ sake,” Miss Dazzle was saying, “don’t be silly, park here overnight, Harry.” She was aflame from the red brake lights shining on her. Magicians’ scarves appeared to fly out of her hands. Her sweeping gestures left a neon trail of red in the sky. “You can help guard the motel,” Miss Dazzle told him. The engine switched off. “Is this place dangerous?” Beth asked her mother. Her mother laughed. “Why does Harry need to guard us?” Charlie said, “She’s just trying to make him feel good.” Her mother laughed again. Beth turned back to the window and saw Miss Dazzle disappear into the office. She heard the screen door bounce shut. The phonograph came on. The music was turned low but it was that song again and Beth heard a big whoop that belonged to Miss Dazzle’s voice. “Why do you hate that song?” Beth asked her mother. “What song?” her mother said. “I don’t hate any song.” Beth jumped down on her soft mattress. It felt so unusual to sleep in a bed again, as if her adventure had lasted months rather than a few days. She wondered where the wild tabby went during the night.