"Son, what's taking so long?" Ray called through the closed bedroom door. "My feet are itchin' to leave."
"'kay, Dad."
The door opened and Ray tried his damnedest to keep from cracking up. Benny wore a god-awful orange, pink and green Hawaiian print shirt over his camouflage cargo shorts, the pockets bulging like saddlebags, and a pair of black and white checkered deck shoes with the sides blown out.
Why does he still have those? Ray wondered, staring at the shoes. Virginia bought them for their son...when? Two summers ago? How the hell did he manage to get his feet into them?
Ray looked up. An instamatic camera that hadn't worked in years hung around Benny's neck by a narrow strap, almost lost in the loose folds of the wild, over-sized shirt. A shirt Ray had never seen before. He would have remembered. What happened to the one I put on the bed for him?
He thought of all the reasons he shouldn't let his boy leave the house dressed like that, and settled for, "Change your shoes, son."
"Oh, man."
Ray had packed his son's clothes, then left the suitcase open for Benny to add whatever personal stuff he wanted to take. Apparently that included his custom orthopedic sneakers. It didn't surprise Ray that Benny managed to zip the case shut on his own and wrestle it out to the car. The boy was strong for his age.
Ray popped the trunk of his '69 Oldsmobile 442 Cutlass and reached under the two new sleeping bags for Benny's bulging suitcase. When he got it open, he found the shirt he'd laid out, now neatly folded around the 5 x 7 framed photograph of Virginia that Benny kept on his nightstand. She stood waist deep in tomato plants, the sleeves of her white blouse rolled to her elbows and a wide-brimmed straw hat shading her face. She loved that vegetable garden. She looked up when Ray called her name from the edge of the fence and the sun caught her face. Oh you, she said, but smiled, and he snapped the picture.
A surge of grief knocked the air from Ray's lungs. For long seconds, he leaned against the car's chrome bumper, his knees locked to keep from collapsing, and stared into his wife's eyes. She was too far away for the camera to pick it up, but he knew their pale green by heart. He remembered her laughter when he told her they reminded him of the ferns that grew wild in the forest. Are you getting poetic on me, Ray Colton? And then she gave herself to him for the first time.
Ray traced his finger down the image of her cheek, the glass cool to his touch. Like her skin had been that morning.
Why didn't I wake up?
"God damn it," he said, drawing his anger through him like a hot blade. He took care to rewrap the photo and put it back where he found it. He pulled Benny's shoes out, zipped the suitcase and shoved it under the sleeping bags.
He noticed the fishing gear pushed deep into the rear of the trunk. Benny must have hauled it from the garage. Just like Thelma in the movie, his son packed the gear even though he had never been fishing. Two collapsible trout rods, the lines rotted and tangled, the tackle box with a jar of roe that could be a science project, the fishing vest Ray's dad gave him years ago. Benny even managed to get the net down from its hook high on the garage wall.
Ray decided they would camp their way across the states. He and Benny set up the four-man dome tent in the back yard two days ago to let it air out and check for damage. It smelled musty, but otherwise looked in good shape. Karen must have been five or six years old when Ray bought it. The three of them used it twice as a family — a trip to Cumberland Gap and another to Mammoth Caves National Park. Virginia didn't care for sleeping on the ground, heating wash water, cooking from coolers. Said it was more work than relaxation. After that, Ray and Karen tented a handful of times, just the two of them, mostly overnight fishing trips. But then his daughter became more interested in boys than fish and the tent got packed away in the attic.
The tent stayed packed away after Benny came along. Whenever Ray suggested taking their son camping, Virginia rattled off a list of reasons not to. "You know how susceptible he is to respiratory infections." "You know how scared he is of crawly things. What if a spider walks across his face in the middle of the night?" "What if a bear wanders into camp?"
Ray gave up.
Not anymore, he vowed, closing the trunk lid. Maybe Gin was right, but he needed to find out for himself.
Karen had done her best to change is mind. She invited them over for a bon voyage dinner yesterday evening and asked, "Are you sure this is a good idea, Dad?" as she handed him the bowl of mashed potatoes. Her husband, Evan, sat at the other end of the table within reach of their two-year-old, blue-eyed twins, Jeffery and Jacob. Grandpa and Uncle Benny sat across from them. Karen had put a gob of potatoes and gravy on each boy's plate, and the duo already wore it in their hair and down the front of their Garanimals.
Ray would miss the little goobers.
"It's just a vacation," he said, taking the bowl from her. He tried to sound convincing as he plopped a mound of potatoes on his plate, then gave Benny some. Benny groaned in protest when Ray passed the bowl on to Evan. "Eat what's on your plate first," Ray told him. He'd learned the hard way not to let Benny serve himself. The boy's eyes were bigger than his stomach and he'd eat himself sick if given half a chance.
Karen handed him the gravy boat. "What if something happens?" she asked. "Benny's never been that far away from home. You don't even own a cell phone."
The cell phone again. He had no use for one. He figured that's what pay phones were for. "We'll be fine."
"I know, but it's just so soon after Mama's..."
Ray looked up and saw the unfinished sentence on his daughter's face. At that moment, with her shoulder-length brown hair pulled back in a ponytail, she looked more like his little girl than a twenty-three-year-old mother of two. He realized it wasn't that she didn't think he could manage Benny in an unfamiliar environment. She was afraid of losing her daddy on the heels of her mama's passing.
"Don't worry, pumpkin. We'll check in once we're down the road a ways."
"You better." She thrust a plate of fried chicken at him. "Eat up. Goodness knows when you'll get another home-cooked meal."
Benny covered his mouth to hide his giggle.
"And you, Mister Smarty Pants, you behave yourself and take care of our daddy."
"'kay, honey."
~~~
As Ray pulled out of the driveway, Benny riding shotgun in the front bucket seat, he glanced in the rearview mirror and said a silent goodbye to the yellow ranch-style house he and Virginia called home for twenty-five years. The home where they raised their two children. The home where she died. Regret and relief warred with his conscience. He wondered when he'd see the house again. Did he want to?
He didn't have a planned route, his only agenda to get out of Ohio as fast as legally possible. Once he made the decision three days ago to take his son to the Grand Canyon, leaving became his sole focus. He washed laundry, gave the Olds an oil change, put a hold on mail delivery, canceled the newspaper, and asked Karen to keep her mama's tomatoes watered. When she wanted to know why the big hurry, he told her "summer break's already half over," for lack of a better explanation.
He could have headed west on I-70, but flat, humid Indiana held about as much appeal as a boil on his ass. He pointed the Olds south, taking I-675 out of Beavercreek, and connected with I-75 through Cincinnati. He drove like a man with demons on his tail, windows down, oppressive heat blasting across the white vinyl interior of the car. The Olds didn't have air conditioning, a fact Virginia reminded him of, often. The Burgundy Mist 442 with white hood stripes and W-30 engine option was one of the few things he stood his ground on. He bought the muscle car new off a lot in Dayton, Ohio, after getting out of the Air Force, and drove it all the way to Oregon to see his folks.
His Smith & Wesson .357 magnum revolver with six-inch barrel — something else Virginia frowned on him having — was loaded and locked in the glove box.
Ray drove one-handed, his left elbow resting on the window frame, wind tugging at the sleeve of his white t-shirt. Benny mirrored the pose from the passenger's bucket seat, his short arm jutting up at what looked like an uncomfortable angle. His traffic-stopper shirt billowed around the weight of the camera strap like a colorful banner. He pulled a pair of Terminator sunglasses from a side pocket of his cargo shorts, said "Hasta la vista, baby," as he put them on. Or words to that effect. Ray had seen the movie enough times to know what the boy meant.
He glanced over at Benny and smiled. His son looked like any kid on vacation. It yanked at his heart. He drove with the single-minded purpose of making up for lost time. The 360-horsepower Ram Air V-8 gobbled miles and gas with the precision of a fine watch; the dual exhausts purred with authority.
They crossed the jagged Ohio River into Kentucky — home of Daniel Boone, Loretta Lynn and Colonel Harland Sanders, the founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken — when Benny said, "Dad?"
"What, son?"
"I gotta pee."
They'd been on the road for a little over an hour. "Didn't you go before we left the house?" Ray asked, unwilling to lose momentum.
"I forgot," Benny mumbled.
Ray took a deep breath, let it out slow. "Okay then."
They stopped at a rest area just outside Florence and hit the road again in less than five minutes. Ray pushed the Olds to the speed limit, bulleting through tree-lined corridors, trying to make up pee-break minutes. He stayed on I-75, headed south toward Lexington. The bluegrass region of Kentucky rolled out from the Interstate in a green, lush carpet of farmland behind long wooden fences. Transparent clouds popcorned a flat, blue sky. The air smelled washed.
Before reaching Lexington, they stopped at another rest area. Then in town, Ray pulled into a gas station, bought coffee and a road atlas while Benny went pee a third time.
When his son came out of the rest room, Ray asked, "Do you really have a squirrel bladder? Or are you just afraid there won't be another bathroom for hundreds of miles?"
"Yeah, Dad."
"That's what I thought."
~~~
Benny was glad his dad didn't get mad about all the bathroom stops. He was glad he didn't have to worry because "the world is full of places to go pee." Daddy was good at explaining things.
They would head west for awhile, Daddy said, to Elizabethtown, then go south some more. Benny pretended to be interested, but he didn't really care as long as they got to the Grand Canyon. He liked the feel of the hot air blowing his shirt off his skin when they drove fast. His Terminator sunglasses made everything dark and cool. The trees and horses and big white barns looked neat, and the air smelled green. But mostly he watched his dad's color halo get brighter. He peeked over the top of his sunglasses to be sure, then smiled inside.
He couldn't always see the colors, and sometimes he saw them when he didn't want to. Like when Mama got sick. Her color halo got dark and muddy. Benny knew something was wrong but he didn't know what to do about it. And then Mama died. She died because he was stupid and didn't know how to help her.
When he saw Daddy's color halo get dark, it worried him. It worried him a lot. He didn't like the way his dad sat on the couch every day and stared at the TV without seeing it. Benny knew that look. Strangers looked at him that way, like he wasn't even there. That's how his dad watched TV.
Except it was different with Thelma and Louise. When their car flew like an eagle over the Grand Canyon at the end of the movie, Daddy had a wanting look in his eyes. It gave Benny an idea. His ideas mostly turned out to be dumb, but this one was good. It had to be. He wasn't going to let Daddy die.
Benny's stomach rumbled and he checked his scuba-diver watch, the one Mama bought him for his birthday because he kept getting his other watch wet and it stopped working. "Dad?"
"What, son?"
"Time for lunch."
~~~
Ray spotted a Wendy's in Elizabethtown and they stopped for bacon cheeseburgers and fries. Benny ordered root beer and Ray chugged the largest coffee they had. One more pee call – "Squirrel bladder," Ray teased, making Benny giggle – and they got back on the road. Ray picked up I-65 and headed south for the Kentucky-Tennessee border. Two hours later, the caffeine wore off. Fatigue fogged his concentration, and getting through Nashville took all the steam out of him. A lot of years had passed since he'd driven any kind of stretch at one time. He could feel the miles in every bone of his body. An hour west of Nashville, on I-40, he saw a KOA campground and pulled in.
"What'd'ya say we call this home for the night?" he asked, parking in front of the main lodge.
Benny slid his sunglasses down his nose and looked around. "Nice."
Ray paid for a site — a shaded, level spot among evergreens and sheltering shrubs. Benny helped him set up the tent. They spread out their sleeping bags and the boy flopped on his back in the middle of them. "C'mon, Dad. It's good."
It did look good. Comfortable. Ray dared to hope it might be enough to break his spell of sleeplessness. "Don't be going to bed on me yet," he said. "We haven't had dinner."
"Oh yeah!" Benny shot up and scrambled for the door. The side pocket of his cargo shorts caught the edge of the tent opening and yanked the frame askew. Ray held his breath, expecting the whole thing to pull free of its stakes. Then the cargo pocket let go and Benny barreled toward him head first, arms flailing.
Ray caught and steadied him. "Slow down there. You goin' to a fire?"
"No, dinner."
"I saw a restaurant over that way." Ray put an arm around his son's shoulders and pointed through the trees. "Let's take us a little walk, go see if they have anything good on the menu."
Benny patted his stomach. "Fried chicken?"
"I wouldn't be surprised."
~~~
The flicker of campfires and the smell of wood smoke greeted them when they returned to their site, their bellies full of fried chicken and mashed potatoes. Crickets tuned up for an evening chorus and the low murmuring of other campers filtered through the shrubs. Ray got the battery-operated lantern from the trunk. He and Benny made a final trip to the restroom, then dragged their suitcases inside the tent and zipped the door. The close confines and remaining heat of the day pressed in on them. Ray opened the flaps over the screened windows for cross ventilation. He removed his Dr. Scholl's slip-ons and set them at the end of his sleeping bag. Benny watched, did the same with his sneakers. Ray squirmed out of his jeans like a caterpillar on its back. Benny tried a different approach and stuck his butt in Ray's face.
"Whoa! Watch where you point that thing."
Benny giggled. "Sorry."
"Yeah, well, just make sure it don't go off."
"'kay, Dad." Benny sat and gave his cargo shorts a final yank, freeing them of his squat legs.
Ray rolled his jeans and put them at the head of his sleeping bag.
"Uh?" Benny's eyes went wide. "Pillows?"
"I had to forget something, didn't I?"
Benny released a dramatic sigh, a trait he picked up from his mama. "Yeah." He set about emptying the pockets of his cargo shorts. Sunglasses. Lip balm. Wallet. A wad of keys, most of which didn't go to anything. A small box of crayons and a pocket-size packet of tissues. He took off his waterproof watch and removed the camera from around his neck, added them to the collection, then methodically arranged everything in a neat row next to his sleeping bag.
Ray rolled the boy's cargo shorts into a makeshift pillow for him. "Don't sleep in that shirt, son. It'll give me nightmares."
"'kay."
Benny tugged his suitcase onto the foot of his sleeping bag and almost bopped Ray in the eye with his elbow. "Sorry," he mumbled. He pulled out his Terminator t-shirt. "This?"
"That one's fine."
Benny closed his suitcase and pushed it off to the side. He changed out of his Hawaiian shirt, then waved it around as though not sure what to do with it.
Ray felt like telling him to toss it out the door. "Lay it on top of your suitcase," he said, and slid into his sleeping bag.
"'kay, Dad."
Benny climbed into his own sleeping bag and Ray finally asked, "Son, where'd you get that shirt?"
"Aunt Georgie."
Virginia's sister Georgia. Crazy as a loon, as far as Ray was concerned. Probably on her way to her third afternoon cocktail when she bought the ugly thing. Which would explain why Virginia kept it hidden from him. "You ready to have the light off?" he asked.
"Yeah."
Ray reached for the lantern switch.
"Dad?"
"What is it?"
"If I need to go pee..."
"Wake me and I'll go with you."
"'kay."
"Good night then."
"Night, Dad."
Ray turned off the light.
~~~
Darth Vader is chasing Princess Leia and she's screaming for help! I grab my lightsaber. Darth Vader stops and turns. He has his lightsaber and tries to hit me with it. I swing mine at him but I miss. I swing again and hit something. I hear a crash and see the broken pieces of Mama's favorite vase, the tall blue and white one that her daddy bought for her in Germany. She calls it Dresden. Mama yells, "What was that?" I can't move. I did a bad thing and my body is frozen. Mama comes into the room and sees what I did. "No! How many times have I told you not to swing that broom handle in the house?" She starts to cry. "Look what you've done."
"I'll fix it," I tell her. I start to cry too because I know there's too many pieces.
Mama gets an angry look on her face. "You can't fix it!" she shouts and goes to her bedroom and shuts the door.
I can't fix it because I'm a stupid boy. I pick up one of the pieces but it cuts my finger and I drop it. Stupid boy! I hate being stupid! Slap. I can't do anything right. Slap.
Somebody is shaking me. "Wake up, son." Daddy's voice. "Stop hitting yourself. Son, wake up."
Benny opened his eyes.
Daddy had the light turned on. "Bad dream?"
It wasn't a dream. He broke Mama's Dresden vase and she got really mad and then she cried and her color halo got bad and he didn't say anything because he was a stupid boy and she died. Benny tried to tell his dad but the words came too fast and he couldn't make them sound right.
"Slow down, son. You're getting yourself all worked up."
Benny tried again but the words wouldn't come. His face hurt. Frustrated, he started to cry for real.
Daddy hugged him close. "Just relax."
It felt good to have Daddy hug him, but it wasn't the same as Mama's hugs. Mama had soft places and she smelled like flowers. Benny knew he would never feel her hugs again and it made him cry more.
~~~
Ray knew about the vase and Virginia's anger. She'd gotten angry with their son before, of course. It always blew over. But after the vase incident, Ray would catch Benny watching his mama with an odd look, almost like he saw something the rest of them didn't.
Three weeks later, Virginia died and the boy's nightmares began. Ray thought they had something to do with the vase but he hadn't been able to piece together enough of the boy's rants to be sure. The slapping concerned him. Benny often resorted to slapping his face when he got frustrated and couldn't make people understand. But in his nightmares the slapping became violent.
Ray felt helpless to comfort his son. The boy needed his mama to tell him things were okay; but things weren't okay because Virginia passed away in her sleep, leaving Benny and him to go on without her. Ray cursed her for that, knowing it didn't make sense because it wasn't something she had any control over. He cursed her and he cursed himself for not realizing there was anything wrong as she slept beside him.
Benny drifted back to sleep, his hot skin damp against Ray's shoulder. The soft nasal sounds he made as he breathed with his mouth open chorused the crickets outside the tent. Silent tears slid hot down Ray's face.