On Growing Up in a Small Town
(continued)
It was bound to happen that sooner or later a journalist on his way to God knows where, writing up reviews for Triple A tour books or maybe just hungry, got off the freeway at our exit and poked his nose in. And so it did happen, two months after the grand opening, and as luck had it I met him first.
It was past lunchtime but well before dinner, and I was the only person working in the dining area of The Goat. I was wiping off the back counter, which served sandwiches and Kool Aid as well as beer, when he wandered in, still wearing his sunglasses in spite of the restaurant’s gloom, slick bleached jeans clinging to him. He said, so seriously that I could have gagged, “What’s a girl like you doing in a place like this?”
Thinking he meant that I looked well under age, I said, “It’s okay, I work here.”
“Exactly my point,” he said enigmatically, looking past me at the wall.
Behind me, I knew, hung a giant framed photograph of poor old Bud. I wondered what he thought of it, just as I wondered what all strangers who came to our town thought of my father’s ventures. I knew what the town folk thought, of course, but what about the people who purposely pulled off the freeway to follow the signs to these so-called attractions?
Two-Brain Billy as a restaurant was innocuous enough, really, but its name and décor betrayed it. Perhaps this man would dismiss the photograph as a piece of eclectic folk art, or a joke of trick photography, like the awful jackalope postcards that every gift shop in the western United States, including ours, sells. It seemed to me that anything would be better than for him to understand that Bud had been a reality, had been my family’s livelihood. My cheeks turning hot, I walked briskly to the stack of menus at the wall, retrieved one, and set it before the guest.
He didn’t say anything about the photograph, whatever he thought of it. He just nodded and absently picked up the menu. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.” I stood several feet down the counter, pretending to organize the packets of sugar and artificial sweetener, but I really kept my eyes on the man. He looked to be in his mid-twenties, with pale skin, short dark hair, bland features. He looked as if he spent too much time indoors. What kind of a person was he, to have used a line on me the moment he walked in? He didn’t look sleazy, though, and the way he had said the line hadn’t sounded exactly sleazy either. He had spoken in a tone that said he knew the line was dried up, meaningless, and that he didn’t expect me to fall for anything. It had just been something to say, a shade more interesting than “hello.” Maybe he thought it was funny.
He glanced up from the menu to me, and I felt my face go red again. Caught spying. “I’d just like a glass of milk. A large one.”
“Sure,” I nodded. I took the milk out of the cooler and poured it, thick and white, into a tall glass. Beads of sweat immediately broke on the outside surface, so quickly vulnerable to the summer heat trapped in the restaurant. I felt the same way. I set the glass before the man.
All out-of-towners held a sort of attraction for me, by virtue of the fact that they were from somewhere else, perhaps somewhere exotic. I envied them. This man was different, not because he was handsome, because he wasn’t particularly good-looking, and not because he was funny or smart, because he hadn’t demonstrated any such thing yet. I think my fluster had more to do with the notebook he had set down on the counter when I brought the milk over. It was bulky and dog-eared, and neon-colored note tags stuck out from nearly every page, in different directions, scribbled illegibly with heavy black ink.
“Are you a writer?” I asked in a moment of boldness, trying desperately to sound casual, not to sound like a small-town teenage girl with her eye on an older man. I furiously re-sorted the sugar packets as he took a long gulp of milk.
Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, then wiping his hand on his jeans, he said, “I sure am. What was your first clue?” It was the same tone he had used with the line, I realized: a mixture of sarcasm, boredom, and patronizing amusement. It was, it occurred to me, a tone of voice that told me no matter how smart and mature I acted, I was not going to be taken seriously.
"Oh,” I said dismissively, hoping it was obvious that I did not care if he were a writer.
“I’m writing a piece on small-town America,” he said. The title of the big name magazine he worked for rolled off his tongue nonchalantly. I pretended not to be impressed, but inside my stomach turned somersaults. “Basically,” he continued, “I’m driving a loop through Middle America, taking notes on just about everything I see. The more bizarre the better.”
“So you stopped here,” I said dryly. “If you want bizarre, you’ve come to the right place.”
“You think it’s weird, too, huh?” he said. “That’s encouraging to me. If you, living here, thought a tourist trap like Cow Chip Palace was normal — well then, I’d just have to question your sanity. I’d have to drag you away from this town and show you real life.”
In spite of myself, I felt my heart beat faster. “I wouldn’t need dragging,” I laughed a superficial laugh. “I’d come willingly.”
He looked curiously at me. “What’s stopping you from leaving? You’ve got your whole life ahead of you. You want to go, you can go.”
I remembered my conversation with Sarah and felt a little queasy. What was stopping me? But I dragged out my old story again and said, “Are you kidding? I’m stuck here. My family doesn’t have enough money to send me away, and, anyway, I’ve been blowing off school. My grades are shot.”
“College isn’t the only way, you know. You could get a job.”
I brushed this aside as well, somehow feeling that this was not enough. “My parents would never let me. And I’m not about to risk my life hitchhiking thousands of miles to get to civilization. Not to work at a fast food restaurant, anyway.”
He shrugged. “Have it your way.” Then, standing up and setting a couple of bills on the counter, he said, “I better go see that atrocity that I came to see before it gets too crowded.”
In spite of my hatred of Cow Chip Palace, I felt stung by the man’s joke. “Right,” I said.
“My name’s Roy Henderson,” he said.
“Jenny,” I replied with a faint wave as he exited The Goat.
One bright square of sunlight fell across the wooden floor as the door swung open to the day outside. Then it shrank smaller and smaller until the door shut with a click.
As was usual, I left work at five, when the dinner staff arrived. I walked the half-block to the grocery store, where Sarah worked that summer. Her shift ended at five-thirty, and we made a habit of walking around town for an hour or so with an ice cream cone, before we were expected home for dinner — which was invariably somewhat spoiled by the ice cream.
Outside the restaurant, I stalled for a moment. My curiosity about the journalist had done anything but shrink over the past two hours. I could hardly believe the idea of getting paid to drive all around and visit new places and write about it. If that were my job, I’d never feel trapped again. I wouldn’t be expected to stay in any one place for long, be it dinky town or booming metropolis. I wouldn’t be forced to see the same 732 other people day after day. I envied Roy Henderson. And I could not forget his joking offer to take me away from Francis.
I stood on Main Street, outside The Goat, actually tempted to skip the ice cream and visit Cow Chip Palace instead. Maybe I could talk to Roy Henderson once more before he left, ask him what his job was like, ask him how he got started, ask him where he’d lived before making his break in New York. Or maybe he had taken one whiff of the potpourri-scented cow dung and hightailed it back to the freeway. But no, his car — it could have been no one else’s, a trim little Toyota, very clean, with New York plates — was still parked on the block. I turned my sights toward home and the Palace.
A group of my school mates walked by then, and briefly we said hello to each other, and I lost my nerve. I’d keep my ice cream date. I’d stay away from Cow Chip Palace. So long as I scorned my father’s creation, they wouldn’t think I was a total joke, too. I couldn’t have them thinking I hung out at the dung heap. Better to wander aimlessly until Sarah left work. I did so for the next half hour, up and down the gravel-sprayed asphalt of Main Street, reading the signs of businesses I’d known all my life: Met Hardware, Molly’s Confections, Rosebud Grocery, Singer’s Feed Store, the post office, a beat-up derivative of a Sinclair station.
“He sounds like a total sleaze,” Sarah told me, her eyes frank, as we discussed Roy Henderson over our ice cream cones. We sat on a bench outside of Molly’s, under the awning. The air was still hot. I had told Sarah everything, except for Roy’s wish to “drag” me away. “I mean, he actually used that line?”
“I don’t think he meant it,” I explained, shifting uncomfortably on the bench. “He seemed sort of a joking guy.” I hid my red cheeks behind my chocolate ice cream.
“He’s way too old for you, you know,” Sarah said.
“Sarah!” I said, shocked. “I’m not interested in him like that! Never.”
“Okay, okay,” she said, a mischievous smile touching the corners of her mouth. “Just making sure.”
“He wasn’t even good looking,” I said. “His jeans were way too tight.”
“Yuck,” Sarah agreed. “Definitely a loser.”
“Well, he’s on the road a lot,” I said, finding myself suddenly defending Roy once more. “He’s a journalist. He probably doesn’t have a lot of time to go shopping or even sleep in his own bed.”
“One minute you rag on him, the next you think he’s a poor little thing,” Sarah laughed. Then she became sober. “Come on, Jenny, what’s the big deal? Strangers come and go. What’s got you so wound up about this guy?”
I gave in. “He said he wished he could take me away from here.”
“He what?” Sarah squealed.
I felt myself flush even darker. “I told you he was a joking sort of guy. He probably just said it to be funny.”
“Jenny,” she practically shouted, “You absolutely cannot run off with this guy. He totally sounds like bad news.”
“I told you I’m not interested in him,” I protested.
“You sure seem like you’re interested,” Sarah retorted. “You’re practically hopping for me to get out of work — I saw you out the window, don’t deny it — and then when I’m done, you pounce on me and start talking about this guy.” She sighed. “Look, I don’t mean to get on your case. I just — I mean, I know you really want to get away from here.”
“Don’t worry about me, okay?” I said.
But I wondered if maybe she should worry. Roy’s offer, had it actually been genuine, had he actually taken me seriously, would have been so tempting. And though I knew it had been a farce, I was tempted yet. What would it take to convince him to take me on the road with him? I had some money from working at The Goat. I could help pay for his gas, though maybe the magazine paid for it. I could tell him all sorts of things about growing up in small-town America that he could include in his piece. I’d be an invaluable source.
He could teach me about journalism. English was my best subject, after all; I could learn a lot from him. Once in New York, I could finish high school, apply for college scholarships, get a job if I really had to. I’d find somewhere cheap to live. It wouldn’t be that hard. It was breaking free that was the hardest. It was getting away and going to somewhere else that was the whole problem.
Maybe. Maybe. Could a job and a place to live really be enough?
“He was just kidding,” I repeated, as much to myself as to Sarah.
“Okay,” she said in an I-don’t-believe-you kind of voice.
“Sarah?” I said. She looked at me. She swallowed the last of her cone, hard. “I’m not — never mind.”
“Okay,” she said again. I could tell she was hurt, and an ache knotted itself in my chest. But there wasn’t anything more I could say.
We sat there not speaking for a time. The last several crunching bites of my cone sounded, to my ears at least, deafening.
“I’d better head home,” she said finally.
“Me, too,” I said.
“Well, see you.”
“Bye.”
I watched her walk away from me, down Main Street in the direction of her home. The fancy that this might be the last time I ever saw her twinged faintly inside me. It didn’t feel terrible, even though I’d never see her again, even though she’d be stuck here without me. And it didn’t feel good, even though finally I’d be leaving, on to new and better things. It just twinged.