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Authors: Barbara O'Connor

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BOOK: Greetings from Nowhere
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Aggie pushed her fork through her cold scrambled eggs.
Back and forth.
Around and around.
And back and forth again.
Then she sighed.
A great big shoulder-heaving sigh.
“Here, Ugly,” she said.
She scraped the eggs into Ugly's bowl and set her plate on top of the other dirty dishes in the sink. “I never did like eggs much, anyway,” she said.
She pulled back the faded yellow curtains and peered through the dusty window screen. The sun was already high
over the mountains. A smoky blue haze hovered in the air along the tops of the trees.
“Maybe I should call that man back and tell him I've changed my mind,” she said to Ugly. “Maybe I should talk to Arnie Becker over at the bank. He could lend me some money and I could …” Her voice trailed off.
The room grew quiet.
Ugly's tail twitched back and forth on the floor as he licked the last speck of egg out of his
Kitty
bowl.
He looked up at Aggie and blinked his eye.
“Yeah, I know,” Aggie said. “That bank idea probably isn't a good one.”
Aggie watched the birds hop around the small patch of grass out back. Every now and then, one of them fluttered up to the bird feeder, then back down to the grassy patch.
“That feeder's empty,” Aggie said. “I wonder when that happened.”
She shuffled along the worn carpet path from the kitchenette to the door and peered outside at the gravel parking lot. The weeds had gotten so tall, she could hardly see the swimming pool from her door anymore. Some of the weeds were blooming into colorful wildflowers, which Aggie kind of liked.
“Maybe I'll just leave it like that,” she said. “What do you think, Ugly?”
Ugly sat in a square of sunlight in the middle of the room, cleaning his patchy black fur.
“I guess I better get a room ready for that man.” Aggie looked at Ugly. “What was his name?”
Ugly jumped onto the back of Harold's old lounge chair and curled up on the crocheted afghan folded there.
Aggie went to the bedside table and squinted down at the notepad by the phone. She adjusted her glasses. “Dover,” she said. “Clyde Dover.”
At first, she had felt a big weight lifted when Clyde Dover had called to say he wanted to buy the motel. He had been so convincing, telling her how he didn't even need to see it. How he just knew he was gonna love it. How he was gonna do all kinds of things to attract the tourists who zipped by down there on the interstate. He had made her think she would be doing just the right thing by signing all those papers he was sending in the mail. Those papers that would make the sale of the motel go quicker.
“All we need is an inspection and—
bingo
. Done,” he'd said.
But now, well, now Aggie wasn't so sure.
Maybe she shouldn't have signed those papers, after all.
“Harold would have known what to do,” she said, taking the bucket off the hook on the wall of the kitchenette.
She checked to make sure all the cleaning supplies were inside it. Then she went in the office and got the key to Room 10.
“Come on, Ugly,” she said.
She hadn't been in that room since the Perrys from Ocala, Florida, had left. When she opened the door, a musty odor drifted out.
She opened the windows and fluffed the pillows and smoothed the bedspread. She dusted the dresser and cleaned the mirror and straightened the painting over the bed.
Waterfall in Summer.
Waterfall in Winter
was hanging in Room 4, but Aggie liked this one better.
She cleaned the bathroom sink and refolded the towels and made sure there was extra soap. Those tiny little bars of soap with the wrappers that had
Sleepy Time Motel
printed in shiny gold letters.
Then she went outside and sat in the chair by the door and wished her back didn't hurt so bad.
She listened to the echoey roar of the trucks down on the interstate behind the motel.
She watched Ugly cleaning himself out by the flagpole.
“I wonder where Harold put that flag,” she said out loud to nobody.
She buttoned Harold's old brown sweater and let her heavy eyelids close. Before long, her chin dropped against her chest and she slept.
She dreamed about Harold. He was young and strong and handsome, wearing his army uniform and dancing the jitterbug in her parents' front parlor.
Willow stared out the back window of the pickup truck,
watching her old life get smaller and smaller until it began to disappear.
The little brick house with the screened porch was gone.
The swing set was gone.
The clothesline was gone.
The weed-filled garden was gone.
She turned around and stared out the front window.
“What if I don't like our new life?” she said.
Her father sighed. That little vein on the side of his forehead twitched. “Willow,” he said in that voice Willow hated, “you'll like it, okay?”
“But what if I don't?”
Willow looked down at her shoes. The pink plastic sandals that Dorothy had bought. They were getting too small. They were starting to hurt her feet. But Willow didn't care. She loved wearing them anyway.
Her father turned the radio on. That little vein twitched again.
Willow watched more and more pieces of her old life disappear as she and her father headed out of town.
The Triangle Drugstore.
The Hailey Fire Department.
The Elks Lodge.
She mouthed “Goodbye” as they passed each one.
Before long, there was nothing left of her old life at all.
Every now and then, Willow looked down at her hands. Touched her arms. Felt her hair. Just to make sure she wasn't disappearing, too.
But she wasn't. She stayed right there in the front seat of her father's red pickup truck, speeding along the highway toward the mountains. The back of the truck was piled high with boxes and covered with a bright blue tarp. One of the boxes had
Willow
written on the side in black marker. Inside the box were Willow's clothes, her china horses, some books, and the calendar with Dorothy's writing in the little squares of April.
They stopped for lunch at the Waffle House off Interstate 40. Willow's father studied a map while Willow ate waffles
with butter. No syrup. The same way Dorothy ate waffles. Willow wondered if her father noticed.
Probably not.
“What if we don't like that motel?” she asked him.
He didn't look up from the map. “We'll like it,” he said.
“But what if we don't?”
Her father traced along the roads on the map with a pen. “Then we'll look for another motel,” he said.
“Oh.” Willow's shoulders slumped.
She was going to hate living in a motel. She was sure about that. Who ever heard of a kid living in a motel? How could you say to your best friend, “Come over to my motel to play”?
But then, she probably wouldn't have a best friend. She probably wouldn't have
any
friends. She definitely wouldn't have a friend like Maggie.
Late that afternoon, they turned off the interstate onto a narrow mountain road that twisted back and forth and around and around the mountain. Every now and then, there was a clearing and Willow could look out at the gray-green treetops below. Once in a while, they passed a store. Brightly colored signs announced the things inside.
BOILED PEANUTS.
INDIAN BLANKETS.
PEACH PRESERVES.
Before long, there were no more stores, no more signs, no
more cars. Just a few lonely-looking houses with sleeping dogs in the yards and old men on the porches. A few trailers, nestled in among the trees at the end of dirt driveways.
Willow stared glumly out the window.
She was a long, long way from her little brick house in Hailey.
From the winding driveway where she and Maggie played jump rope.
From the bedroom with her china horse collection lined up on the white shelf over the bed.
From the vine-covered mailbox that never had letters from Dorothy.
Willow's old life was history.
“Smell that air,” Loretta's mother said, closing her eyes
and taking a deep breath. “I just love the Smoky Mountains.”
“Me too,” Loretta said.
She had never been to the Smoky Mountains before. She had known they were there, of course, starting way over on the other side of Tennessee from where she lived and stretching clear on into North Carolina. She had made a model of them one time for school, mixing up a goopy clay out of flour and salt and water and patting it into mounds on cardboard. She had painted the mountains green and brown.
Now here she was in the
real
Smoky Mountains, sitting in
the backseat of their big white van with
Murphy's Heating and Plumbing
painted on the side. Her father's tools slid back and forth across the metal floor of the van as they followed the winding road up the mountain.
Every few minutes, Loretta wiggled her hand, making the silver charm bracelet jingle on her wrist. She had looked at each charm about a million times, imagining the place it had come from.
The cowboy boot from Texas.
The starfish from Florida.
The cactus from Arizona.
She felt a tingle of excitement as she looked out the window at the sights along the roadside. Souvenir shops and country stores. Vegetable stands and flea markets.
When they crossed the state line, they stopped to take pictures, posing beside the WELCOME TO NORTH CAROLINA sign, their arms around each other, smiling and saying “Cheese.”
They ate sandwiches at a picnic table on the side of the road.
“Listen how quiet it is,” Loretta's mother said. They all three sat still, cocking their heads and looking skyward, taking in the silence that was interrupted only by the bees buzzing around the tops of their soda cans.
Every once in a while, a car went by. Luggage piled on the top. Bicycles hanging on racks off the back.
Loretta's mother took a folded piece of paper out of her back pocket and opened it up on the picnic table.
“Maybe tonight we can decide where we wanna go first,” she said.
They had made a list of the places they wanted to visit in the Smoky Mountains.
Maggie Valley
Cherokee
Santa's Land Theme Park
Cades Cove
Tuckaleechee Caverns
Clingmans Dome
Dollywood
Loretta's father had said they probably couldn't get to all those places on this trip, but maybe they could come back some other time.
Maybe this time Loretta would have to choose between Santa's Land and Dollywood, he said.
Loretta wished she knew exactly where her other mother had gone when
she
was in the Smoky Mountains.
When they packed up their picnic stuff and loaded the cooler back into the van, Loretta's father took his cap off and stretched. “I'm just about ready to call it a day,” he said.
So they kept their eyes open for a motel.
Loretta wondered where her other mother had stayed when
she
was in the Smoky Mountains.
As they got higher and higher into the mountains, the sun got lower and lower in the sky. They passed more souvenir shops and vegetable stands, but not a single motel.
“We might have to go back down to the interstate if we don't find something soon,” Loretta's father said.
“We'll find something,” Loretta's mother said. “Keep your peepers peeped, Lulu.”
So Loretta rolled down the window and leaned out, letting the cool mountain air blow her bangs off her forehead, and kept her peepers peeped.
BOOK: Greetings from Nowhere
3.08Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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