The Salvationists roared past me, honking and waving and chunking out beer bottles; then they topped the hill and were gone. Once again loneliness settled on my heart like the coming night. The sun had all but disappeared behind a long ridge to the west, and the shafts had subsided into an orange glow. The Gulf station was closed, and lightning bugs were winking in the field on the other side of the road. A whip-poor-will began calling out to punish poor Will though I still don’t know what he did that was so wrong. I yelled at the bird, “Just leave Will alone!” The bird, however, was relentless.
Whip-poor-Will! Whip-poor-Will! over and over.
I began walking down Highway 23. There was no shoulder to speak of—just a dark strip of gravel and cigarette butts. I was too close to the road, but I didn’t want to walk in the grass because the dew would soak my shoes, and I hate walking in wet shoes.
I was thinking about the party I was missing at Eden’s Mount and a hot supper and probably a bed to sleep in and the miserable fact that I wasn’t as cool as Sweet William thought I was. And what was worse, I wasn’t even making a noble moral choice by not going to the nudist camp. I was just too self-conscious about my body. I thought of long-legged, sun-kissed Alice sucking limes while her nipples got hard and thought, I could have seen Alice naked! and groaned aloud.
I was born with no coolness whatsoever.
I think I told you that I was fourteen when I bought my first girlie magazine at the camp store of the Huckleberry Finn RV Park and Campground. The girl on the cover was smiling because she had drawn a Playboy bunny around her bellybutton with lipstick, and she seemed damned proud of herself. I had never seen a girl smile like that, a smile like she couldn’t wait to shuck her swimsuit and do naughty things, like she might splash around naked in Capp’s Creek and lie down in the grass by the mill and take me in her arms. After I bought the magazine, I went outside and looked around, and it occurred to me how incongruous the whole scene was: On the one hand, there was the camp store with its fishing lures and motor oil and Coke machine by the door; across the grassy parking area stood the old mill with its slowly turning wheel; and not far from the mill, water curled over a low dam and splashed into the mill pond.
On the other hand, I was clutching a bit city magazines with a lewd girl on the cover, and she wearing a white bikini and leering at me with an “Aren’t I naughty” expression. I stood gawking at these antithetical worlds, and with all the passion of my stupid heart, I chose the lewd girl. I took the magazine into the woods and began thumbing through the pages. There I saw girls who showed their breasts, fleshy orbs pale from lack of sun but palpable with their coral nipples and perfect aureoles. I saw tantalizing side shots of naked derrieres. One girl looked into the camera as if she were gazing at a Latin lover who was playing Spanish guitar, and I had the illusion she was smiling at me, so that I grew tall and swarthy with jet black hair and white teeth. Then the law of diminishing returns kicked in, and I wanted to see the same girls with their panties off and their legs spread. I wanted more and more but got less and less and so began my descent into vanity.
(“Vanity,” by the way, is derived from the Latin vanus, which means “void,” “empty,” or “without substance.” You know, like pictures of girls you’ll never meet and fantasies you’ll never fulfill. “Without substance,” as in imagining that such girls would show an interest in you. “Empty” as in “empty.”)
I stupidly began comparing the girls in my class to the images in the magazine. The girls with bad skin or braces or small breasts I rejected as unworthy of my affection, as if I were an Arab sheik or Austrian prince or captain of the football team, which amounts to pretty much the same thing when you’re in high school. Of course, the girls I judged worthy didn’t even know I existed: I was a clarinet player with bad skin and uneven eyebrows, a beta declining into gamma-hood.
Thus was I absorbed with foolish regrets and sterile memories as I walked down Highway 23 in the deepening twilight. Around and around my thoughts swirled like Francesca and Paolo in Dante’s first level: naked Alice sucking limes; a leering girl in a white bikini; Mary Pinkney with a cleft palate and bulging eyes but who could play the hell out of the flute; Georgia Banks, a cheerleader with perfect curves and golden hair; Robbie Stark, the quarterback, beloved by all and destined for great things; and me—Otis Bulfinch, recently exorcised from East Norton High for disrespecting the Vietnam War.
“How long, oh, Lord, am I to wander moaning and weeping in this valley of tears?” I spoke aloud to the lightning bugs.
That’s when I heard a whimper up ahead in the dark. I jogged a few steps forward and set my duffle bag and guitar on the bank of the shallow ditch. I could barely make him out in the tall grass: a beagle lying on his side and breathing hard. When I knelt beside him, he raised his head.
“Hey, fella. What happened to you?” I stroked his ears. They were silky soft, and he made a licking sound. “Who do you belong to?” I turned his collar in my direction but it was too dark to read. “Looks like I’m going to have to carry you to the light. Is it okay if I pick you up?” He raised his head again and tried to lick my hand. “It’s all right, boy.” I wrapped my arms around him, and he yelped. “Shh. I’m doing the best I can, okay?” With his legs dangling in front of me, I carried him back to the Gulf station. There was a mercury light above the gas pump, so I laid him on the gravel and looked at again at his collar.
“556 Rock Road, Forum, Arkansas. 479-266-8701. Okay, fella, you lie here, and I’ll see what I can do.”
A pay phone hung by the door of the store, so I dropped in a dime and made the call.
“Hello? Stone residence.” The voice belonged to a girl.
“Hi. Uh, my name is Otis, and I think I found your dog by the side of the road. He appears to have been hit by a car.”
“Oh, no! Is he, is he . . .?”
“He’s still alive, but he needs some tending to.”
She held the phone away and said, “Daddy, somebody found Onyx. He was hit by a car.”
A man’s voice in the background asked, “Where is he?”
“Where are you?” she asked.
“At the Gulf station on 23. Do you live far from here?”
“No. We’ll be there in fifteen minutes.” She sounded as if she was afraid I would abscond with her wounded dog.
“Okay. We’ll be here.”
“See you soon.” Still uncertain and trying to convince me not to leave.
“Okay. We’ll be right here.”
I went back to the dog, sat in the gravel, and lifted him onto my lap. I said, “Well, little buddy, this is one strange coincidence. I was told by a ghost witch in a Missouri campground to go to Onyx, Arkansas, and now here you are, Onyx the beagle. Weird name for a dog, though.”
He whimpered and started panting hard.
“Shh,” I said again. “Hang in there. You’ll be okay.”
The road was empty, and the light from the mercury lamp made the darkness beyond as black as road tar. My butt was getting sore from sitting in the gravel when a pair of headlights topped the hill and slowed down, and then a green International pickup pulled between me and the station. A big man with a cap and sleeveless flannel shirt was driving, and he didn’t even bother to look at me. I heard the door slam on the passenger side, and a girl came running around the front of the truck. She was young, maybe thirteen or fourteen, and she was wearing a white tee shirt and pajama pants. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and she had a sweet face. She said, “How is he?”
“I don’t know. But he’ll be better off at home than lying by the road.”
She knelt in the gravel and rubbed the dog’s muzzle, and he licked her hand. “Good boy,” she said. “You’ll be okay.” Then she asked, “Are you by yourself out here?”
“Yeah. It’s a long story.”
“Where are you going to sleep?”
“I’ve got a tarp and a sleeping bag. My duffel bag and guitar are up there by the side of the road.”
“You were going to sleep on a tarp? Have you had supper?”
“No.”
“Aren’t you hungry?”
“Now that you mention it, I reckon I am.” In fact, I was ravenous. My Mama Mazzola’s spaghetti had burned off a long time ago.
“You’re coming with us. One good turn deserves another. By the way, I’m Jade.” She held out her hand, and we shook. Her hand felt delicate in mine, almost like I was holding a hummingbird. She stood and said, “But I have to talk to Pa first.” She walked to the window of the truck and started talking to her father in a low voice, whereupon he glared at me and spat. He growled and she coaxed, and he finally relented. Soon enough I found myself riding in the back of the pickup with my duffle bag and guitar at my feet and the warm May air whipping around me. Jade sat in the front seat with the beagle in her lap.
And that’s when I remembered from history class that oracles never mean what you think they do.
“You will destroy a great empire.” Your own.
“A wall will save you.” A fleet of wooden ships.
“Go to Onyx, Arkansas.” A beagle pup.
I never would have guessed. How could I?