"Those melons come with you from California?" the cop asked Marilee.
"Near Bowie. Little road stand," said Enoch.
Marilee's body stiffened. The cop had to know Enoch was lying. There'd been nothing near Bowie— no road stand, and certainly not at night. Marilee wondered if they could be arrested for lying about fruit.
"Step out of the car," the cop ordered.
Enoch opened his door and lurched toward the rear of the automobile.
"You too, miss. Both of you stand over there," he said, aiming his flashlight into the space between the cars' bumpers.
Marilee did as she was asked, telling herself that none of this was happening.
"Put your hands on the trunk, spread your legs, and lean over. I'm going to search you."
The cop searched Enoch, then Marilee, patting them down from shoulders to feet. The patrol car's headlights shone up between their legs as they stood spread-eagled against the trunk of the Dart. "I'm going to search your car now."
For what? she wanted to ask him. On what grounds? For speeding? Was any of this legal? The cop climbed inside her car. "Is he going to find anything?" she whispered to Enoch.
"I'm not psychic."
"You shouldn't have said we bought the melons in Bowie. Don't you know it's against the law to take fruit across state borders? That's why they ask you about fruit. You lied. You told him we bought it here in New Mexico."
"Bowie's in Arizona. If he knew his geography, he still could've nailed you. But he doesn't know jack. Look at him. He's an asshole."
The cop sat in the backseat of the Dodge, rifling through the contents of Marilee's purse. He flipped open her compact, ran his finger over the powder, sniffed, then tasted it.
"What's he doing?" she asked. "Couple of lines," said Enoch.
What was it that had compelled her that afternoon to go back for the dwarf ? Her mother had taught her never to pick up hitchhikers, a lesson she hadn't needed to learn. Always shy, she'd never had the inclination to extend herself to strangers, especially to someone as different as Enoch. Perhaps it was the look on his face as she drove by him the first time, a look that said he'd been standing out on the road since dawn and hers was the first car that had slowed. Or perhaps it was the way he pulled his thumb in when he saw she was a woman alone. Or maybe it was nothing more than his obvious helplessness. Where he stood, alongside the interstate between Aztec and Sentinel, was nowhere; he'd been abandoned in the middle of the Arizona desert. As she passed him, the late-September sun reflected up off the asphalt so that his face seemed lit from all angles, open, devoid of shadow and threat. How dangerous, she asked herself, could a dwarf on crutches be?
At the first rest stop, Marilee turned the car around and drove west, back toward where she had seen the dwarf. She passed him again, on the other side of the highway. The dwarf followed her with his eyes. It would be crazy to pick him up, she knew, but now she felt obligated since he'd seen her drive by twice. She couldn't pass him a third time.
Marilee crossed over the unpaved median and again headed east. She slowed as she approached him, tensing at the crunch of pebbles under her tires. Closer now, she studied his features. He was a clean dwarf. His brown hair was tidy; his face, newly shaven. He stood about four feet tall and carried a backpack. He wore cowboy boots, a red shirt, and jeans.
Marilee reached over to open the door as he hobbled toward her car. He tossed his backpack and both crutches into the backseat. They landed on her suitcase with a thud.
"Obliged," he said in a normal voice as she pulled back into the slow lane. Was it just midgets who sounded like Munchkins?
"Been out here long?" she asked.
"Not too."
So, she hadn't saved him from near death. No matter. She liked his voice and she liked his face: a cleft chin and a nose cocked slightly to one side. His skin was tanned; his teeth clean; and when he raised his sunglasses to rub his eyes, she saw a glint of intelligence.
"I'm Marilee."
"Enoch," he said, holding out his hand. She shook his fingers. They felt like a handful of Vienna sausages.
"Enoch's an unusual name." How typical, she thought. Dwarfs always have oddball names, like Eylif or Egan. Or Bror. A band of motorcyclists passed them in the oncoming lane. Enoch squirmed and put his feet up on the dashboard; his stubby legs extended fully. Marilee fixed her eyes on the road and pretended not to have noticed, determined neither to stare nor to appear intrigued. "So," she asked, "where you headed?"
"Same place you are."
She didn't like the way he said that. It sounded ominous, as if he saw their destinies about to overlap.
"Where are you from?"
"Kingfield. Kingfield, Arizona. Couple hundred miles north. Big fire a few years back. That's when I split."
"Where you living now?"
"Here and there. In the desert."
Great, she thought. A weirdo.
"Take some melons," her mother had insisted, heaving three of them at her at once. "So in case the car breaks down, you'll have something to drink." It would never occur to her mother to send something direct, like a thermos. "And take this knife, too," she'd said. "You never know when you might need it." The kitchen knife lay hidden in the glove compartment of her car. Marilee wondered if she'd have the guts to use it, if neces sary, and whether she'd be able to reach for it in time. Enoch shifted in the seat next to her. The honeydews rolled toward his thigh.
"My mother's idea," said Marilee, gathering the melons back into the space between them on the seat. "So if the car breaks down, I won't die of thirst. My mother's kind of out there sometimes. Of course, if anything happened, I could always drink radiator water. I brought a knife, too, so if I had to, I could hack up a cactus."
"Or a camel," said Enoch.
Definitely weird.
"So, where are we off to?" he asked. Again, her insides jumped. The highway stretched before them, a colorless slab dissolving into a blurred horizon. Save for the sun, the sky was bare. No clouds floated by. No birds flew. In other cars, people looked half-sedated, as though hypnotized by the strobe of disappearing broken lines and the hum of tires on asphalt, the white noise of the open road. Marilee was glad to have gotten it in about the knife.
"Alamogordo," she replied. "To get married, but he doesn't know that yet. Well, he does and he doesn't. I mean, he asked me to marry him, but he doesn't know I'm on my way." Oh God, she thought, she shouldn't have told him that.
"Roll it down?" Enoch pointed to the window.
"Sure. It sticks sometimes. You have to really crank it."
The dwarf turned the handle, but the window didn't stick. He then stood on the seat and reached for his backpack on top of her suitcase. What was he reaching for? A knife? A gun? Why in God's name had she picked him up?
A small bag of granola materialized from his backpack's zippered pocket. "Have some," he offered.
Marilee considered her options. What if it were drugged? Was he going to eat some too? She took a small handful. It tasted like a clump of dried weeds.
"What's his name?" asked Enoch.
"Who?"
"Mr. Wonderful."
"Oh, Larry. He's this guy I've been going with a long time. Since high school, really. Funny how you can end up with someone you knew back in high school. I mean, I don't know anyone I knew back in high school. Except him, of course." She was babbling.
"Larry