The freezing fog stayed with us all the way on 117 and onto US 191 into Price. The drive had been slow but steady and I would have arrived in Price sooner if not for Annabelle. Highway 117 could have hosted the Stanley Cup Playoff. The temperature hovered at fifteen degrees. Keep the wheels turning on ice and you’ll keep moving. Stop and you’ll likely stay where you are while the tires spin trying to get enough traction to pull the trailer. With the dense fog and the icy road it was too dangerous to stop as often as she would have liked.
Most of the trip was spent listening to her cry, though I did manage to find safe places to pull over a few times and feed her. One wasn’t as safe as I thought. I needed to stretch my legs and figured I might as well feed her at the same time. I paced back and forth in front of my headlights holding the baby in my arms, a blanket covering her face and the bottle from the cold. The headlights began to drift toward the shoulder. My whole rig was slowly sliding off the road without me. There was nothing I could do but watch. After a foot or so, the tractor angled slightly away, pointing the headlight beams out into the desert. Cautiously, I opened the door and got Annabelle and myself safely inside just as it began to slide again. For the better part of a mile, balancing Annabelle and the steering wheel, I feathered the accelerator in second gear and gradually regained traction. Sweat was dripping off my forehead. Annabelle did her part. She slept through it all.
It was a few minutes after one o’clock when I parked my rig in front of the duplex. The Cadillac was gone and there was a light burning in Ginny’s living room. She appeared at my shoulder as I was lifting the car seat out of the cab.
“She needs changing,” I said. “If she doesn’t, then I predict she’ll explode like a water balloon any minute. We went through four bottles of formula in six hours.”
Ginny didn’t say a word. She put her face close and stared at Annabelle in the car seat. Annabelle stared back and then grinned up at her mother and reached out her little fingers for Ginny’s nose ring. It was a touching moment I supposed, and I was happy to have the two of them together. On the other hand, it also occurred to me that one day soon those little fingers would grab ahold of the nose ring and give it a tug. I kind of wanted to be there for that, though I knew I probably wouldn’t be. I hated piercings, especially that nose ring. I’d pay to be present for such a magical moment.
Ginny took the car seat and I carried the diaper bag and together we went into her duplex. She’d been packing. The front room had stacks of cardboard boxes already full and some open and partially filled. Annabelle began to cry and Ginny produced a bottle before the baby could get her back into it.
“You beat up Rod pretty bad, Ben. He seems like a good guy. Better than most my mother hooks up with. Jury is still out though. You want to tell me why?”
“You don’t know?”
“No. But I bet it had something to do with my mother.”
I was tired to the bone. I didn’t want to discuss Rod, or Nadine, and my guess was neither did Ginny. Bringing up Rod was a way to put off saying goodbye.
“That’s a safe bet,” I said. “I think he is a good guy. The problem is he is in love with your mother and the poor man doesn’t know who she is.”
“That’s why you beat him up?”
“No,” I said. “That’s why I didn’t kill him when he came after me. I hope he gets wise before it’s too late. I hope you get what you need and away from her before it’s too late for you and Annabelle. You’ll find out sooner or later why Rod and I tangled. But not from me.”
“They were arguing when they left for their hotel. Rod wanted to talk about what happened. My mother didn’t. Not in front of me. Don’t argue in front of the kid, or some shit like that. She wanted to call the police. He refused.”
“Good for him,” I said. “Did she call them?”
“No. Rod said if she did he wouldn’t file a complaint. What happened to your screen door?”
I ignored her question. “What time do you leave tomorrow? I’m hoping we might have another chance to say goodbye when we’re both conscious.”
“How many goodbyes do we need?”
Damn, I loved that young woman. There were moments when I was sure she was indeed my daughter. Who else could be so proud of her when she said something like that?
“Okay,” I said. “I’m sleeping in a little tomorrow. If we have another chance, then we will. If not, we won’t.” I kissed her on the forehead. “You need anything, anytime, you get in touch with me. Drop me a line once in a while, huh?”
Ginny gently pushed me out and closed the door softly behind me. I could hear her crying on the other side.
After checking for phone messages and finding there weren’t any, the last thing I remembered was brushing my teeth. Around four, my usual time to start the day, I was awakened by Annabelle’s crying. I lay in bed awhile savoring her cries, and then held on to them in the silence afterward. I went back to sleep and slept a deep, dreamless sleep until a bright desert sun shredded its way through my bedroom curtain.
My first thought was not of Ginny, but of George, the desert rat who had brought John in. My second thought was to phone Trooper Smith. My third thought was Ginny, and I decided she was right. We’d had enough goodbyes. No matter how many times we tried they were never going to be good.
For five seconds I stayed in bed ignoring the silence coming from Ginny’s side of the duplex. Then I ignored the silence while I took another shower and dressed, slathered antibiotic on my knuckles, and continued ignoring it all the way to my truck and then to Tractor and Farm Supply, where I bought two hundred-pound sacks of 9 percent textured equine sweet feed, the heaviest sacks available. I’d decided to postpone phoning Trooper Smith until I had thought through what I was going to say.
Maybe I’d only had five hours of sleep, but it was enough to renew my energy. It was a gorgeous high desert day in the sixties, only a light breeze and clear for miles in every direction. I’d spent two days doing absolutely nothing for which I would be paid. In the interest of survival, if not work ethic, I drove to the transfer station and surveyed the cargo stacked up and waiting for me on the loading dock. The late start wouldn’t hurt me too much, and in thirty minutes I had taken on a crated rebuilt John Deere tractor engine, two pallets of cinder block, ten sections of prefab vinyl fencing, and various cases of this and that. The heaviest cargo paid the best.
The loading and organizing might have taken me longer if not for the discovery that a change in schedule introduces you to a whole new world. Transfer-station workers I hardly knew would stop and say, “A little late, aren’t you, Jones?”
I’d say I was and it was a good story and then ask them to help me sort this or lift that. Some actually stayed and helped for a few minutes until they figured out I wasn’t going to tell them the story. I felt a little like Tom Sawyer getting his friends to whitewash Aunt Polly’s fence for him. By ten I was at the Stop ‘n’ Gone fueling. Ana was at the register. I stuck my head in the door and asked if Cecil had shown up. She shook her head and I was on US 191 by 10:20.