Before He Finds Her Read online

  Frank looked out the window again. “The Kenworth?”

  “The very one.”

  “What year is it?”

  “Seventy-four.”

  “How many miles?”

  “Million two.”

  “You bought it with how many?”

  “About five hundred thousand.”

  He nodded. “Runs good?”

  “Real good.”

  “You trading in for a newer one?”

  “Nope.”

  “Then why do you want to sell?”

  “That’s my business.”

  The kid looked unsure whether to be courteous or a brat. He wasn’t a bad-looking kid if you ignored the oversized shirt and that spiky haircut of his. But girls his age probably liked his hair that way. And he had an okay job, which was more than Ramsey had at his age.

  “Bob’ll be in tomorrow at seven,” Frank said. “He can—”

  “No, I need to sell it now.”

  “I can’t just buy your truck, man.”

  “Name’s Ramsey, son.”

  “Bob’ll want to run diagnostics on it, test drive it—”

  “I want fifteen thousand for the whole thing. Cab and trailer.”

  The kid looked confused. Ramsey suspected it wasn’t a new look. “If it runs like you say, it’s worth three times that.”

  “I don’t want three times that.”

  “Well, like I said, Bob’ll be in first thing tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow’s no good.”

  The kid looked at Ramsey like he was drowning. He hadn’t learned yet that sometimes you just needed to do a thing. Like how Ramsey had left that fellow, Ed, at the rest stop earlier that morning. Ramsey was grateful to him for driving all those miles, but it was important to be alone for the last leg of his last drive in his truck. That’s how he always imagined it. So when the two of them went into the rest stop for breakfast, Ramsey handed Ed a twenty and said to order something for the two of them. I forgot something in my truck, he said, and that was that.

  “Tell you what,” Ramsey said now. “Is Ralph over in the shop?”

  “He and Andy, yeah.”

  “Give Ralphie a call. He knows me. He knows I shoot straight.”

  “He ain’t sales.”

  “I know he ain’t sales—just get him on the phone for me.”

  Frank looked relieved, having something to do. He pressed some buttons on the phone. Seconds later: “...and he says he’s got to sell it today.” He held the receiver to his ear, then said, “Yeah, okay,” and handed the receiver to Ramsey.

  “What the hell you doing?” Ralph said over the phone.

  “I’m selling you my truck is what I’m doing,” Ramsey said.

  “You gotta let me look it over,” he said. “Leave it here, come back tomorrow. We’ll get you hooked up. Bob’ll give you a fair price.”

  “It’s got to be now, Ralph. Fifteen thousand in cash. You know I take care of my truck. You know it’s a steal.”

  “Ain’t my call—boss is fishing, man.”

  “Oh, he ain’t catching nothing. Do him a favor. You know I’m on the up-and-up.”

  Ralph wheezed into the phone and said, “Put Frankie back on the phone.”

  Ramsey handed back the receiver.

  “You sure about that?” the kid said. “But you ain’t—” He grimaced. “All right, man, I’m just saying. Yeah, okay.” He hung up the phone. “Looks like you got yourself a deal.”

  “That’s good to hear,” Ramsey said. “I appreciate you calling up Ralph like that.” He nodded in the direction of the shop. “He lay into you a little bit there?”

  “If shit goes down, it’s on him, not me.”

  “Trust me,” Ramsey said, “the truck’s good.” He glanced out the window. “Wind’s gonna calm down over the weekend. That’s when you want to be out in the ocean, not today. Saturday will be ideal. Sunday, too.”

  “Like I said, I don’t fish.”

  “No, I suppose you don’t,” Ramsey said. “Well, find some other way to enjoy your weekend. You got a girl?”

  The kid actually smiled. He had alarmingly bad teeth. “Yeah.”

  “Treat her right. Show her a good time.”

  “I always do.” He leered some.

  “Nah, I don’t mean that. I mean buy her something nice, take her out, cause you never know.”

  “Never know what?”

  Ramsey didn’t want to start freaking the kid out. He needed that truck sold. “I’m just talking. Title’s in the cab—I’ll go get it.”

  “Yeah, okay.” Kid still looked a little puzzled. “I’ll start on the paperwork. There’s a lot of it.”

  Ramsey checked the clock on the wall. “Think you can have me out of here in a half hour?”

  “You’re selling your truck,” Frank said. “You got someplace more important to be?”

  “Yeah, I do,” Ramsey said. “I got band practice.”

  He returned to his truck for the title and a last look around. Before coming to the Monmouth Truck Lot, he’d cleaned the trailer, scrubbing his own existence away. Ramsey always kept the cab neat—but there was the bedding, tape collection, towels, sleeping bag, old fleeces, survival kit, road atlas, fire extinguisher, alarm clock, laundry detergent, rolls of toilet paper, paper towels. The cab was like the smallest apartment he’d ever lived in, and by far the most comfortable. He’d spent well over a thousand nights in it. So it wasn’t a truck he was selling, but a second home. Or maybe a first home.

  Too many truckers were slobs, their cabs ankle deep in dirty clothes, fast food wrappers, soda cans, cigarette butts, old tubs of chew, spit cans, piss bottles, porno mags, balled-up paper towels full of snot or cum, petrified French fries... you name it. That’s your home, man, he’d reminded a rookie driver some years back who’d been generous with his pill supply. You gotta smell that when you drive and when you sleep. Ramsey was hardly some blowhard always handing out free advice, but he had an instinct for when a kid could land either way, and he considered it his duty to tip him in the right direction if he thought it might make a difference.

  And the truth was, a cab was a decent place if you let it be. More than decent. That’s what Ramsey had discovered early on, then taken for granted but rediscovered these past few months. Rolling along some hot highway on the way from who-cares to doesn’t-matter, the temperature just right, the music just right, you have your own kingdom.

  But that was over now. He opened the storage compartment between the seats, where he kept the few items of special importance: couple of photos of Allie and Meg, a notebook where he sometimes jotted down stuff that occurred to him on the road, a song lyric, whatever. A few mementos collected over the years: small cow skull whittled by a dude in Amarillo; necklace of green Mardi Gras beads; smooth blue stone that he found one silent, foggy dawn on a beach in Trinidad, California; pinecone from Colorado, where on a whim one windy summer afternoon he pulled to the side of the road at the wide point of a pass cutting through the Rockies and ate his lunch at a picnic table. All of it, he put into the black trash bag.

  He picked up his copy of The Orbital Axis, its cover creased and spine worn, and nearly decided to keep it before changing his mind. From moving apartment to apartment over the years, he’d gotten into the habit of keeping a thing only as long as it was useful. The book had led him to sell the truck. Well, here he was, selling it. He added the book to the black trash bag, which he spun around a few times and knotted at the top.

  The cab looked and smelled fresh, but it wasn’t his kingdom any longer. Before hooking up with Allie, he’d moved apartments all the time, eviction coming about as frequently as a head cold. He’d forgotten all about that sad feeling of leaving a place, knowing you’ll never smell that particular smell ever again. Even a place you don’t like. Even if you only lived there for three or four months before getting chased away by some prick landlord. It had to do with mortality. Leave a place, and you’ve finished a chapter, moved closer to the
end.

  Now, keys in pocket, title of ownership in one hand, trash bag in the other, he gave the truck one last look and shut the door.

  He didn’t need to come by fifteen thousand dollars this way. He wasn’t poor. There was money in savings, enough or close to it. But symbolic actions mattered. Filling out a withdrawal slip at the bank didn’t mean squat, whereas selling your truck showed commitment. Finality. He’d promised Allie back in June that he wouldn’t sell, and he’d kept his word. He kept working right through today. She’d been right, as she almost always was. Working was the best thing. He lifted the trash bag higher and tossed it onto a pile of other trash bags inside the green dumpster behind the sales office.

  But now he was done with work. Time to cash out. And this, he knew, walking into the sales office again carrying the title of ownership, was the proper way to do it.

  The kid was no wiz at simple math and kept hitting the wrong buttons on his calculator. Nearly an hour passed before Ramsey’s business with Frank was done. But okay, the title was signed over, the keys placed on the counter. In Frank’s shirt pocket were two hundred-dollar bills, courtesy of Ramsey.

  (Two hundred bucks? What for?)

  (For helping me out today, Frank.)

  (Jesus.)

  (Like I said, do something nice for your girl.)

  In Ramsey’s front pants pocket were the other 147 hundred-dollar bills and five twenties. One of the twenties was for the taxi ride back to Boater’s World, where his car was parked. For years, the store manager let him park his truck there when he wasn’t on the road, and his car there when he was. After driving the truck, the Volkswagen always felt to Ramsey like a toy.

  At 1:45 p.m. he arrived at the Methodist church and walked through the side door labeled “Kid Care.” He wished his daughter’s day care wasn’t at a church. But Allie had done the research and said this place had the best reputation.

  “I’m here for Meg Miller,” he said to the woman sitting in a black swivel chair. “Didn’t see no one in the Ladybug Room.” He knew this woman by sight and found her distasteful.

  That was why—the scowl. On her desk were stacks of paper, a typewriter, and a huge white mug with lipstick smears on the brim. She held up an index finger as if the form she was reading were vitally important before looking up. “Mrs. Miller said you wouldn’t be here until three.”

  “Well, I’m here at two.”

  The woman sighed. “They’re in the Little Gym. Do you know where that is?”

  He didn’t.

  She braced her palms against the desk to help herself stand up.

  “Let me ask you something,” Ramsey said, following her into the hallway. “Is Meg the best kid you ever had here?”

  Along the walls, between classrooms, were hooks with names above them. On the hooks hung jackets and knapsacks.

  “She’s a well-behaved child.”

  “And sweet, too,” he said.

  “Yes,” the woman conceded, “she is.”

  “Goddamn right she is.” Ramsey smiled, watching the woman flinch.

  Meg: three months shy of three years. Preferred running to walking. Hair, wavy with funny-as-hell cowlicks when she woke up in the morning. Best laugh in the whole fucking world. Loved the color orange. Amazing with numbers and letters, except for the tricky patch between U and X.

  She spotted Ramsey in the entrance to the gym and came running, all teeth and flailing arms, shouting, “It’s Daddy!” over and over. She was never shy around him, even when he came home from a long haul. He knew to give Allie credit for all the photographs of them—of him—stuck on the refrigerator, in albums, the daily reminders of Daddy while he was away, no different from what military spouses did. There was no bigger dread than your kid not knowing who you were.

  Ramsey stepped into the gym. “Hey, baby,” he said. He’d seen other dads glance around self-consciously when their kids delivered a blast of full-on affection. Men were always glancing around. That was their problem.

  When Meg reached him, he rocketed her into the air and swung her around a couple of times. He kissed her cheek, she honked his nose, he carried her outside to the parking lot, and they were on their way.

  Or they would’ve been if he could secure the car seat’s straps around Meg’s shoulders. When he took too long, she started to fuss. He tried to remember the words to some kid’s song, any song at all. “Oh, I love trash,” he sang. “Anything trashy or smashy or grungy—”

  “I want Daddy to sing Barney!” she shouted, still squirming, the one arm that’d been secured now free again. The tears were real.

  Not liking Barney and not knowing what he (she? it?) sang, he ignored the request. “Come on, Meg.” he said. “Baby, let me just—”

  Not a chance.

  By the time she was secured in the seat—crying, miserable—Ramsey’s whole face was sweating. He started the car and turned up the radio, which helped. Thank you, John Cougar Mellencamp. He told Meg they were going to the playground, and her face brightened at once, and he cursed himself for not thinking to mention that before trying to put her in the car seat.

  The afternoon’s itinerary was simple: playground, home, band practice. All week, Ramsey had looked forward to this hour alone with the kid. Back when Meg was a baby and couldn’t sit up or play with toys or do hardly anything, time spent alone with her slowed practically to a stop. But now she did everything: ran, threw a football (usually into the shrubs, but still), climbed on him like a monkey. And whenever he returned from being away, she was ready with new words and fresh techniques for getting him to obey her.

  In the park was a shallow pond where kids threw balled-up bread to the turtles. He had forgotten to bring bread, but Meg was happy dropping woodchips and pebbles into the water. Then she ran over to the playground and tried the slides. Ramsey sat on the green metal bench at one of the picnic tables bordering the play area and watched. On this sunny afternoon, he found himself wanting time to slow just as it was picking up speed. His daughter was the result of Allie and himself, but she was neither of them. She was becoming herself, entirely.

  When he looked at his watch, more than a half hour had passed. “Okay, Meg,” he said, “time to go.”

  “No, Daddy!” she called, and raced toward the twisty yellow slide.

  Another man was coming his way with two kids, boy and a girl, both a little older than Meg. The man’s hands were stuffed into the pockets of his khaki pants. He had on a loosened tie and sports coat. Seeing Ramsey, the man saluted. Nothing in the world was more depressing than other men at a playground, with their sad salutes and their “Mr. Mom” remarks and that look on their faces of having been snookered—like they’d thought they were headed to a Jets game with their buddies but somehow ended up here.

  “We’re about to leave,” Ramsey said to this other man. “You have yourself a good weekend.”

  The man shot Ramsey with an imaginary pistol and called over to his boy, Tino, to leave the baseball cap ON like he’d been told a thousand times.

  “They’re all deaf at this age,” the man said to Ramsey, heading over to where his kid had flung his cap to the ground.

  Ramsey was working on a plan to leave the playground without tears when Meg ran over to him, took his hand, and said, “Want to go home.” There was no figuring her out.

  They were halfway to the car when, out of nowhere, she looked up at him and said, “Meg feed the turtles.”

  “We did, baby,” Ramsey said. “We already—”

  “Meg feed turtles now!” She yanked her hand away and repeated the demand, hysteria entering her voice.

  So they walked over to the bridge and threw more woodchips into the water, until Meg said, “Want to see Mommy.” She walked cheerfully to the car and, amazingly, climbed into the seat without a fuss.

  When they arrived home, Eric’s pickup and Paul’s El Camino were both facing the wrong way on the street. The pickup’s body was caked in dried mud. The El Camino was rusted and dented, with
a black trash bag duct-taped into place where a rear window should have been. Ramsey imagined the neighbors looking out their front windows and shaking their heads.

  He and Allie had moved to the Sandy Oaks neighborhood from across town back when they decided that Allie would go off the pill. The people living here worked in offices with secretaries of their own. If asked, they’d call themselves “comfortable,” which was horseshit. In the scheme of things, they were rich. He was rich. Anyone who didn’t go to bed fretting about money and wake up fretting about it all over again? Rich. And damn lucky to be living someplace where you were never woken up at 3 a.m. to drunken obscenities shouted down the street, to police sirens, to glass shattering in the road.

  More than three years since they’d moved in, and whenever he drove up to his home he still felt, for an instant, as if he were visiting someone else—someone wealthy and temperate and respectable. Then he reminded himself that he had all those qualities now, more or less, and had worked damn hard for them.

  “Down, Daddy!”

  Meg insisted on walking to the door rather than be carried. On the way, she petted a hedge, got down on her hands and knees to examine an ant, and asked Ramsey repeatedly where the sorties (stories? shores?) were. The closer they got to the house, the more Ramsey could hear the low tones of the bass guitar. He felt it in his chest, vibrations like the engine in his truck before putting it into gear and driving off someplace. But he wasn’t going anywhere, not anymore.

  “Can you feel that?” he asked.

  Meg knocked on the red front door. “Home.”

  “That’s right, sweetie pie.” He stroked her hair. “We’re home.”

  4

  September 22, 2006

  Uncle Wayne and Aunt Kendra had never hidden from Melanie the fact that they were raising her because her mother and father could not. When she was five, they explained that her mother had died and her father had gone far away but that they, Kendra and Wayne, loved her very much and thought of her as their own daughter. This was one of her earliest memories, and what she remembered most clearly about it was that to stop her from crying, they had all climbed into bed and watched The Little Mermaid, her favorite movie, on videotape, and shared a large bowl of buttery popcorn.