Chapter Eleven
“So where do we stay this week, then?” I asked abruptly. It was mostly for the sake of changing the subject, so I wouldn’t be thinking about home anymore.
“Texarkana. It’s close to where I work most of the time,” he said.
So we gathered up clothes and stuff for a week and piled in the truck. Justin locked up the house and headed down through Commerce and Cumby and got on the interstate and headed east.
“How long will it take to get to Texarkana?” I asked him not long after we left.
“Aw, just about two and a half hours,” he said.
Justin is one of those people who doesn’t like to talk much while he’s driving, so I didn’t try to make conversation with him anymore right then. I looked out the window at the woods and the cow pastures beside the freeway instead, and thought about how unreal it all seemed. The whole journey from Tennessee to Texas felt almost like it happened to somebody else, a long long time ago. I was glad it was over.
I did get one sharp reminder, though. When we went through Sulphur Springs, Justin stopped and got us something to eat at that Taco Bell by the interstate. I didn’t tell him it was the same one where I used to go and eat bean burritos because it was all I could afford.
He wouldn’t let anybody have food in his truck cause he said it made a mess. So we got out and ate inside the restaurant, and I didn’t let on how much I didn’t like the memories it brought back. Like I said, I’d just as soon forget about all that. But Justin didn’t know, and I kept it to myself. There was no reason to bum him out over something he couldn’t help.
There was one thing I wanted while I was in Sulphur Springs, though, if I could talk him into doing it.
“Hey Justin, can we do something real quick before we leave Sulphur Springs?” I asked him.
“Maybe so. We’re not in that big of a hurry. What’s on your mind, Zach?” he asked me.
“Well, if there was time and you didn’t mind doing it, I just wanted to get my bike while we’re here,” I said.
“Is it far?” he asked.
“No, not too far. I can show you how to get there,” I told him. Justin shrugged.
“Sure, if you want to, Zach. We’ll have to lay down a blanket or something in the truck bed so it doesn’t scratch the paint, though,” he said.
That was fine with me, so after we left Taco Bell I showed him where to drive until we came to that weedy vacant lot where I had my second home. When I counted up the days, I realized I’d only lived there for a little more than a week and a half, but it seemed like a whole lot longer than that in my memory.
We pushed our way through the vines and bushes until we got back there where the dog house was. It was just like I left it six days ago, with the little padlock still hung on the door.
“So this is where you stayed all that time, huh?” Justin asked me, looking at everything.
“Uh-huh,” I told him. While we were there I decided to get the rest of my stuff, so I pulled out my key and unlocked the door.
It smelled like hay and wild cherries inside, and for a second I had a powerful memory of crawling in there to sleep at night. Justin stuck his head inside after me.
“I’m amazed you made all this yourself, Zach. You’re a pretty smart cookie,” he told me, looking at the door and the hay and the lamp and everything else.
It felt good to hear him say that. I hadn’t been thinking anything except trying to stay alive when I was living there, but I was glad he thought I had done all right.
I gathered up my books and my oil lamp, and somehow the place seemed empty without them. I could have taken my padlock too, I guess, but for some reason I didn’t. I just snapped it back on the hasp and locked the place up. It seemed like the right thing to do. I’d probably never come back there again, but it was my place, in its own unique way, and I didn’t want to leave it in bad shape.
We dug The Beast out from under the burnt wood, and it seemed just as good as it always was, and just as ugly. Justin laughed when he saw it.
“You really want that old thing, Zach?” he asked me.
“Yeah, I really do,” I told him. I couldn’t have said why I wanted it, except maybe because it had a colorful story behind it now and that gave it some character. We’d been through a lot together, me and that bike, and I didn’t want to leave it behind. Justin was laid back enough that he didn’t much care, so we carried it out front to the road where the truck was parked. Then we laid my sleeping bag down over the truck bed and put The Beast on top of it.
“Need to get me a bed liner one of these days,” Justin told me while we loaded the bike.
That was about all there was to it. We drove down past the Southwest Dairy Museum and the carwash where I used to get my water, and then got back on the interstate. Not long after that we left Sulphur Springs behind.
It took about two more hours to get to Texarkana, maybe a little less. I had been asleep when I came through there on the bus two weeks ago, so everything was all new to me.
Justin got off the interstate onto Summerhill Road and drove all the way downtown to Seventh Street. It didn’t look like a very nice neighborhood, and when he pulled into a cheap-looking motel I wasn’t surprised. That was the only kind I’d seen for a while. This one was painted-over brick, sorta old and run down, and it advertised weekly rates. Justin parked the truck in front of Number 3.
“Now this place ain’t much, Zach. I just use it as a place to sleep and clean up while I’m workin’, cause it’s cheap and it’s never been anybody but me. So don’t expect too much,” he warned me.
He didn’t need to tell me that. I already didn’t expect too much, just from looking at the outside of the place. I was good about keeping a poker face and not letting myself look disappointed, though. And I really wasn’t, not all that much. After you’ve lived in a dog house for a few days then a run-down motel is a piece of cake. Justin went to the office and got a key, then let us inside.
The place was just as run down and old inside as it was out. The walls were painted a dark brown to hide dirt, almost the same color as the carpet. The carpet had cigarette burns on it, and so did the blanket on the bed. It smelled dank and musty and when we turned the lights on I swear I saw a roach run under the bed out of the corner of my eye.
I didn’t say anything about it, but I was hoping we wouldn’t have to stay there very long. Justin looked sheepish, and I knew he’d seen the roach too.
“Like I said, it’s not much, but we only have to stay here till Thursday,” he told me. Well, that answered that question at least.
We took our clothes and stuff out of the truck and put them in the room, and then we watched a movie on TV for a while. I think it was Weird Science, but I can’t remember for sure. I wasn’t paying much attention.
Eileen called at eight, and after that Justin was occupied talking to her for the rest of the evening.
I didn’t mind. I watched the rest of the movie and then a couple more shows on TV and then I went to bed about eleven.
Justin woke me up the next morning while he was doing his shaving and singing thing, but I went right back to sleep before he walked out the door. It was still dark outside when he left.
I finally woke up about eight thirty, I guess. My bike was sitting in front of the TV, and Justin had left a key on the table by the door with a ten dollar bill and a note written on a page torn out of the back of the phone book.
Zach, there’s several stores not far from here when you get hungry, but don’t get lost. I’ll be back about six. Call me if you need me.
I noticed he’d also left a business card with the name and address and phone number of the motel, just in case I did get lost I guess, and he’d put my phone on the charger before he left. He always thought about little things like that.
I took a shower and put on some clean clothes, and stuck the money and my phone and the room key and the business card in my pocket, and then I pushed The Beast outside and lock
ed the door. I felt like it was high time for some breakfast.
I wasn’t sure which way to go, since I didn’t know where anything was. I headed west so the sun wouldn’t be shining in my face; it seemed like as good a way to go as any. I was on a fairly major street, so as long as I didn’t turn anywhere I probably wouldn’t get lost.
It wasn’t too cold that morning, but it was fairly cloudy and looked like it might rain later on. I rode The Beast for maybe ten or twelve blocks, and passed under a freeway overpass. I came to a McDonalds and had a sausage and cheese biscuit. I don’t especially like McDonald’s, but they’ll do in a pinch.
If I’d known where anything was, I might have gone somewhere else and found something to do. But that first day I didn’t, so I got a burger and a coke for later and then I rode back to the motel and stayed there the rest of the day till Justin got back.
There was nothing to do besides watch TV all day, and I was sick of that after just a few hours. My books were still in Justin’s truck.
That turned into my regular schedule the rest of the time we spent at the motel, and let me tell you, four days can seem like a long time when you’re bored. Justin got back to the motel about six o’clock every night and usually took me somewhere to eat and maybe to do something fun if he wasn’t too tired. I knew sometimes he was a lot more worn out than he pretended to be, but he always tried to take care of me the best he could. He was a good man.
We ended up staying Thursday night too, cause Justin wanted to get up early and have the whole day to get stuff done, he said. There was no reason to go to Wolfe City on Thursday night just to turn around and come right back to Texarkana the very next day. I could see the logic in that, but that didn’t mean I had to like it.
I endured it somehow, but I’ll tell you, I’ve never been so glad to see the last of a place as I was that nasty motel. Me and roaches don’t get along.
We got up early Friday morning and left the motel about seven or so. For once I didn’t mind getting up early, because Justin said we needed to go looking for a house that day, among other things.
He stopped at an Exxon station and got a newspaper, then fished a blue pen out of the glove box and started reading the sale ads to see if there was anything that looked interesting. He also made some phone calls to several real estate agents and stopped by a couple of offices. He wouldn’t let me go inside when he did that, so I don’t know what he said or what happened. He usually came out with a few sheets of paper that had pictures of houses and information about them.
After that, we started driving around to look at places. Justin had worked there long enough that he was able to get around pretty much without a map most of the time.
Texarkana is sorta strange. Half of it is in Texas and the other half is in Arkansas, so I was never completely sure what state I was in. When we went past the post office downtown, he stopped and took a picture of me with one foot on each side of the border. I knew we didn’t have a whole lot of time to dawdle, but he was never in such a hurry that he didn’t have time for fun stuff like that. I still have that picture somewhere, I think.
The first house we looked at was on Buchanan Road, and it was okay I thought. It was a brick one with three acres of pine woods behind it. But Justin vetoed that one until we looked at all the others first. He said it was better to know what all your choices were before you made up your mind about something like that. I’m sure he was right.
We looked at a lot of houses that day; I don’t remember exactly how many. At least ten or twelve. As laid back and easygoing as he usually was, I can honestly say I’ve never seen Justin as picky and demanding as he was with those houses. There always seemed to be something he didn’t like about every one we saw. Some were too old, some were not big enough, and some didn’t have enough land with them. There was always something missing. He was a lot more particular than I would have been. But he was the one spending the money, so I guess he had a right to be as choosy as he wanted to be.
Finally, when I had just about decided he’d never be satisfied with anything, we found a place he liked.
It was east of town, where there were some hills covered in woods. There was a place out there up on the side of a hill where you could look out over Coca Cola Lake. It came with ten acres, and a wooden dock down on the lake shore, and a fenced in pasture, and a bunch of oak and hickory trees all around.
The house itself was just one story, white, with a deep porch and four square columns across the front. It had three bedrooms, one for me, one for Justin, and one for extra space. There was a built-on shed for all of Justin’s tools, and it was way out in the country with no close neighbors. It seemed like it had everything a boy could ever want, and I fell in love with it right away.
“I think this is the best place we saw all day,” I told him after we had walked around and looked at it.
We were standing on the porch looking out across the lake when I said that. I’ve never been sure why they call it Coca Cola Lake, unless maybe it’s because the water is sorta dark. But it didn’t look dark that day. It looked blue as a marble that some really big giant kid had dropped in the valley.
“Yeah, I think maybe this is the one we want, Zach,” Justin agreed.
He went to the real estate agent that very afternoon and shook hands on the deal. I never knew things could get done that fast. They just signed some papers, and the agent handed Justin the keys, and that was that.
“Well, Zach, we got a choice, you and me. We can go back to the motel for one more night, or we can stay at the house tonight instead. Which would you rather do?” he asked me when we got back outside. As if there was any doubt!
“I think we should definitely stay at the house tonight,” I told him. If I never saw that nasty roach motel again in my life it would be way too soon.
So we went to the store and got an air mattress and some blankets and pillows and candles. There was no furniture in the house, and no water or electricity either, but neither one of us minded roughing it for one night. Justin called the power company and they said it would be Monday before they could come turn the electricity on. He didn’t have to worry about water, because there was a well with an electric pump, so as soon as the power came on then the water would too.
We ordered a pizza and some boneless hot wings and went back to the house not long before it started getting dark. We lit the candles and I lit my oil lamp from Sulphur Springs, and we blew up the air mattress and laid it against the wall. Then we sat there crosslegged and ate our pizza and drank some coke.
It can be really quiet in a house at night when there’s no electricity to run anything. There are none of those little background noises from the refrigerator humming or a heater running or anything like that. You never notice those things till they aren’t there anymore.
“Tomorrow I guess we need to go back to Wolfe City and start loading things up. That may take awhile,” Justin said.
“It didn’t seem like there was a lot of stuff to me,” I said.
“Not so much at the house, no. But a lot of stuff I already packed up in boxes and put in a storage building, Zach. We have to get all that, too,” he told me. I hadn’t known that before, but it made sense. I always did think the downstairs part of the house looked awfully sparse.
“It might be a bigger job than you think it will, but I hope we can get it all done over the weekend if we give it all we’ve got,” he went on. I thought he was probably right.
There wasn’t much to do with no electricity, so we went to bed not long after that, intending to get up early and head for Wolfe City.
I have to say, it was doggone cold in that house with no heat after the sun went down. It reminded me of that first night when I ran away from home and had to sleep inside the septic tank. It wasn’t quite that bad, but cold enough. I slept next to Justin on the air mattress and we put all the blankets on top of us. It wasn’t too bad like that, except his feet were like blocks of ice every time one of them touc
hed me.
I couldn’t go to sleep for a long time that night, partly from Justin’s icicle toes and partly because it was so quiet and still. I’m used to at least a little bit of noise at night, and now all I could hear was Justin breathing.
He must have thought I was asleep though, because after a while he put his hand on top of my head and started talking real soft and low so I could barely hear him. I don’t know what all he said, but I heard something about asking God to remember me and bless me. When he was done he smoothed my hair down and pulled his arm back under the covers, and before long he was asleep.
I never had anybody pray over me like that before, at least not that I know of. I wondered if he’d ever done it before when I really was asleep, and what he might have said. He could still surprise me sometimes with things like that, no matter how well I thought I knew him.
I hope I can be like that someday.
We spent that whole weekend going back to Wolfe City and renting a U-Haul and loading it up with all the stuff from the house and the storage building over there. Justin wasn’t a pack rat, but it seems like there’s always more to load up than you think there will be. It took three trips to move everything.
The old house looked empty and lonesome with all the stuff gone, and Justin seemed a little sad. I guess it’s always hard to walk away from where you grew up and everything you remember after so many years. I know the feeling.
“Well, there it is,” he said to himself when we loaded up the last two boxes. Before we left, he cut some branches from the rose bush on the trellis and put them in a Ziploc bag with a little water.
“Gran always loved these roses,” he told me. They were red ones, with white and pink streaks in the middle. Later on, he planted them all along the front porch at the new house, and they took hold real well.
We finished moving everything by Sunday afternoon, and Justin didn’t have to work the whole next week cause it was Christmas.
We spent all day Monday working our tails off getting stuff unloaded and put away in the right places. It seems like that took even longer than packing everything.
We didn’t quite finish. The extra bedroom was still stacked full of cardboard boxes, but at least all the major big stuff was put where it belonged. Justin said we’d worry about the rest of it after Christmas.
Early the next morning, which was Christmas Eve, we took the truck out in the woods on a dirt road and chopped down a big cedar tree and set it up in the living room in a five gallon bucket filled with water and rocks. Most of the ornaments were still stashed in one of those boxes in the extra room, so that called for a trip to town to buy some more.
While we were out shopping for ornaments, Justin took me to a flea market and got me a bunk bed for my room. I was sorta surprised the place was still open on Christmas Eve, but on second thought maybe it’s not that surprising. They were probably trying to sell as much as they could at the last minute.
While we were at the flea market I waited till Justin wasn’t looking, and I spent ten bucks to get him a coffee mug with a wolf on it, full of butterscotch candy. That was his high school mascot in Wolfe City. The wolf, that is, not the butterscotch. I knew it wasn’t much, and I knew I was buying it for him with his own money that he gave me, but it was something I really wanted to do. The old lady who ran the mug booth wrapped it up for me and put it in a bag before he got back. He never noticed I bought it.
We spent maybe another hour or two at the flea market after that, getting some other things we needed. I got all new stuff for my bedroom to finish it out; a bean bag chair and a wooden desk and some green blankets and a couple of posters and pennants and such. The only things I ended up having in there from Tennessee were my Robinson Crusoe book, my backpack, and the few clothes I brought with me. I got rid of those old ones from Sulphur Springs, but I kept my oil lamp and a couple of the books I got while I was there. Of course I still had The Beast too, but it was outside in the shed.
When it was finished it didn’t look anything at all like my old room, but like I said before, that was probably a good thing. The less I was reminded of that, the better.