“Ain’t that something?” he asked. In the truck body Mike and June were jumping up and down and yelling.
But Vera Mae didn’t seem to care much about antelopes. She had put on that faraway look again and was staring out at the cloud of dust into which the pronghorns had disappeared, but they didn’t seem to pleasure her. Finally, still looking dreamy, she said, “Lonnie?”
His hands were wet on the wheel. “Yeah?”
“Lonnie—that’s where you found Mulemouth, isn’t it? He nodded, and she went on, “And tracked him down, after your jerky’d given out, and on alkali water?”
He didn’t know what all this meant. “Sure. Picked his tracks up just about this far south and stayed with him to the north rim.”
“What a guy,” Vera Mae said. Then she sat up, and her eyes focused on where she was. “Jesus Christ, what a guy you are!”
He felt fine. He stepped on the gas, and the old bus found another two, three miles of speed from some place. He felt wonderful. All the time she’d been daydreaming, she’d been thinking about him.
CHAPTER VI
SHE’D SEEN plenty of deserts in her life, this one wasn’t as bad as the Mohave or the Colorado, or the Coachella where she and Kenny had taken first money for team-roping once. It wasn’t as big, and she’d like to bet it didn’t ever get as hot. But it was real, honest-to-God lonely. There weren’t even signboards put up to tell you about air-conditioned motels and restaurants ahead. There wasn’t a damn thing, after you passed that state highway place, except for a little board shack with a coke sign and a single gas pump. Probably these hicks hadn’t even heard of ethyl gas . . .
Ahead, the tree-covered mountains came right down to the floor of the desert, and ten miles before you were in the town you could see it, on a little green shelf just above the desert, with mountains running right up on either side. Ten miles wasn’t long, even in this heap; they bumped into town over the railroad that must have used some other part of the desert to get across, and here they were.
Later on, maybe, she’d see something in this place where she planned to spend the rest of her life, but now it looked like any other hick town. Lonnie stopped the car in front of a chain store and went on in, telling her he had a couple of things to get. She didn’t go along because the big lug had a grin that meant he was getting a surprise for her.
When he crossed the pavement no less than three lady shoppers turned to look after him. But he’d never know it. Not because he was a hick, but because he was that kind of guy.
He came back, put a cardboard box in the back with the kids, and climbed in, grinning. “Always get a few groceries here,” he said. “The store up at Salal Flats is higher, and there’s a lot they don’t have.” But he wouldn’t tell her what he’d bought for her.
They ground on up out of town, most of the time having to go into second on the curves, and now it was all that thin-brushed red-bark pine that Lon had called—she couldn’t remember, some kind of pine tree. Some of them had the lines on the bark running straight up and down instead of in blotches. She pointed. “That’s a big pine, Lonnie.”
“Doggone, sister, you’re ignorant. That’s a incense cedar. The ponderosas are the ones got that shaggy bark.”
“Guess I’m just plain dumb, Lonnie. Only—does it make much difference? I mean, I don’t need another merit badge.”
He said, “Well—you make a fence post out of pine, and it’ll rot. Or, say, you want to make a bridge, and your stringers are cedar, a truck’d break through.”
Lonnie looked so solemn giving her this advice, she couldn’t keep from laughing. Then, when he gave her the solemn owlish look he used sometimes—like a professor finding a new kind of bug—she laughed all the louder. Then he said one of those things that always made her end up feeling better inside than she had ever felt with anyone else.
“Well, Vera Mae, they’s so damned many things you know I don’t, I gotta show off once in a while, so you won’t be ashamed of me.”
She had promised herself she was going to be completely honest with this guy and see how it felt. She couldn’t remember ever being that in her life before. “Ashamed of you? Brother! Lonnie, do you know when you went into the Safeway, three dames gave you the eye?”
“Aw, cut it out, Vera Mae, or I’ll be gettin’ red in the face. Never did meet such a gal for putting it on a fellow!” He raised a hand and pointed. “We’re almost home.”
Alongside the road was a big wooden sign, shield-shaped, and fancifully carved. It said, “Entering Bearclaw National Forest,” and some more stuff too small for her to read in time. “Salal Flats is the first ranger district,” he said. “Red Rock starts about five miles past our place.”
Coming back from Fresno one time, she and Duke and Kenny and some of the gang had gone through Yosemite. She couldn’t remember anybody living there; in fact they’d talked about good pasture going to waste . . .
“You mean we live in a park, Lonnie? How’d you work that?”
“Not a park,” he said. “A national forest. It’s different . . . ”
She put on her party voice. “I know. Like pine and cedars.”
He rewarded her with a laugh. “I’ll get Tommy to tell you about it. He’s the district ranger. We’ll eat lunch at his house.”
“Oh. Did you call him up from the store?”
Lon said, “Don’t have to call him up. Old Tommy and I are real friends.”
“Well, stop some place so I can fix up a little. I don’t want your friends to think you married something you found in a junk yard.”
“Just the way you are,” he said, “you’re about as pretty as has ever come over the ridge. Maybe a little prettier.”
The nice feeling came again, but there was a little fear. “Tommy married?”
“Sure,” Lon said. “Married a gal named Dot, for Dorothy. They met in college, been married ever since. Fine gal. There ain’t many college girls would put up with living up here; the last ranger we had, his wife ran away on him.”
But it’s good enough for me, all right. I’m not a college girl like Mrs. Dot for Dorothy. Who no doubt runs the local branch of the Ladies’ Aid and Feminine Hygiene Society and—from the way Lonnie is shifting around on the seat—can decide once and for all if Lonnie can go on being married to me, or whether he has to throw me back like a fish. I sure hope I make out.
They topped a little ridge and slid down into a valley, and then Lon stopped the car where another sign like the first said, “Salal Flats Public Camp, Bearclaw National Forest.” There was a big “U.S.” in the center of the shield, and “Forest Service” under it. Back in the trees were some tables and rock stoves, it was real pretty.
“You can fix up here,” Lonnie said. “There’s a ladies’ room and running water and all.”
She heard herself saying, “So you think I better do something to myself before I’m good enough for your college friends!”
Then she was ashamed because he was drawling, “It was your idea, Vera Mae.”
She reached over and kissed him, and said, “Why, honey, how wonderful, we’ve gotten past our first fight already.” When he smiled, she felt all right again, but even so she combed her hair and washed the kids’ faces and put on a new face and retied June’s hair ribbon before she loaded back into the truck. This time she made June sit between them on the seat and Mike ride alone in the back. Somehow she figured it wasn’t so important if Dot for Dorothy saw him after his new maw had let his face get dirty . . .
It