He was still pissed but he held it in check, keeping his voice low and firm when he continued speaking. “I don’t know what I’m doing, and I don’t know what the hell you’re doing either. But don’t get back in my ride if you’re going to play games. Don’t do it. Hide and seek is only fun if you’re ten, and everybody knows the rules. Just call your posse, turn yourself back over to your keepers, and leave me the hell alone.”
Bonnie nodded once, her eyes big, her lips bruised. “I got a little worried that you might be a bad man.”
“Well, it’s about damn time,” he said on a sigh.
“What does that even mean, Clyde?” she asked.
“More games, Bonnie?”
“No.” She shook her head emphatically.
“So say what you need to say.”
“What’s with the swastika?”
Finn felt his heart sink. Even though he had known what she was going to say, he had still hoped it was something else. He wasn’t ready to have this conversation with snow starting to fall around their heads and his toes growing numb from the slush that had seeped into his old boots.
“It’s a very long story. And I’ll tell it. But not right now. I will promise you it wasn’t about hate. It was never about hate. Does that make sense? I was a scared kid. That’s all. And it seemed like the only solution.”
Bonnie released her pent up breath, nodded slowly as if she understood, and then picked up her bags. “I can live with that. But I can’t live with wet clothes, and these bags are both wet on the bottom. For that matter, I’m a little wet on the bottom!” she called over her shoulder as she hurried to the Blazer. “Let’s go, Huckleberry.”
Finn rolled his eyes and immediately obeyed, but he couldn’t completely smother his grin. And just like that, Fisher strolled through his mind—blond, smirking, and way smarter than anyone gave him credit for being. He used to call Finn Huckleberry sometimes too. And Finn had hated it.
“YOU GONNA MAKE your move, Huckleberry?” Fish was suddenly by his side, and he hadn’t missed the back and forth looks going on between Finn and the lovely Jennifer.
Jennifer was pretty. And she kept staring at him. Finn studied her, wondering if he would still like her when they were done making out. He found he usually didn’t, which made him hesitant to approach her.
“Nah.” Finn sighed.
“Why not?” Fish was obviously perplexed.
“I’ll be bored as soon as I do. Plus, she’s more your type than mine.”
“Oh yeah?” Fish pursed his lips, as if considering whether this might be true. He shook his head as if he, too, was going to pass.
“What is your type, Finn? So far, I really don’t think you have one.”
“I don’t know. Tall, thin, smart. Quiet. Good with numbers.” Finn shrugged.
“You’re describing a ruler. Not a girl.”
“I’m describing myself,” Finn conceded with a laugh.
“Oh, and wouldn’t that be fun. Dating yourself. What happened to Libby? She was hot, she was into you, and she’s a damn good kisser.”
Yeah. She was hot, Finn thought to himself. And she was a very good kisser. She’d taught Finn a few things. Things he’d like to try . . . with another girl. Plus, he didn’t like being with girls Fish had already sampled. If you thought about transference, which he did, it was disgusting. But Libby had been talented, he had to agree with Fisher there.
“I liked the kissing. But that was all. Quit trying to set me up. I’ll choose my own girlfriends.” He shot his brother a warning look. As usual, Fish was not deterred.
“Not a good idea, Bro. None of us know what’s good for us. We think we know what our type is, but we have no clue. That’s why I burn through as many girls as I can. See, I’m tryin’ to find what’s good for me—’cause I just don’t know. And neither do you. You think you know because you’re a genius.”
“If I’m the genius, why are you the know-it-all in the family?”
“You think you’re the only one who studies? I study. But I study girls. I study music. I study life.” Fish took a swig of whatever was in the cup. It was probably beer, but it must be his first or second round because he was still his slick self, smiling and waving and working the crowd all the while giving his brother his unsolicited opinion.
“It’s my own theory. I may not think like you and Dad, but this is solid math, man. The girl you think is the perfect girl for you is never the perfect girl for you. One of these days, a girl is going to come along, and you won’t even see her comin.’ And she’ll rock your world.” Fisher said this like it was a done deal.
“Oh yeah?” Finn already wanted to leave. But he wouldn’t. He would stick around until Fish was ready to go. And who knew when that would be.
“Yeah! And I guarantee she won’t be your type. And you’re going to strategize, and think, and make lists. And it’s not gonna add up.”
“That’s not your own theory, Fish. It’s chemistry. Opposites attract.”
“Yeah. But it’s more than that. You can have opposites that don’t attract. It has to be just the right kind of opposite. And you won’t know what you’ve got . . .”
“Til it’s gone?” Finn finished the tired cliché, not really listening, his eyes straying back to Jennifer, reconsidering.
“Til it’s gone, baby. And then you’re gonna wonder what the hell hit you, and I’m gonna laugh my ass off and say, ‘who’s the genius now?’”
“GRAN CLOSED HER credit card. My credit card, I should say. I tried to get another room back there at the motel, and the clerk told me it was declined. It kind of scared me. She knows I have it.” I shrugged. “Guess it’s her way of telling me she’s still in charge.”
“They can track credit card usage . . . you know that, don’t you? If you want to disappear, using your gran’s card was never a good idea in the first place.”
“I don’t want to disappear. I just want to be left alone. Just for a while,” I said.
“Have you tried to talk to her?”
“Not since Minnie died. No. I’ve been too angry . . . and tired. And sad. I haven’t been able to muster the energy to make her hear. And making Gran hear anything other than what she wants to hear has always been close to impossible.”
“So you were just going to get another motel room and wait for the cavalry to arrive? Screw you, Clyde?”
“Yep. Screw you, Mr. White Supremacist with a scary-ass tattoo on his chest.”
Clyde laughed. “No games. That’s good. Say it like it is.”
I laughed with him, but his laugh gave me that same drop and slide feeling in my stomach I had felt when he’d smiled at me in the motel room last night, before I’d seen his tattoo and bolted.
“Do you have a girlfriend, Clyde?” The words popped out before I had a chance to register that they were even on my tongue, but I didn’t regret them.
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m moving to Vegas.”
“So you had a girlfriend, but broke up with her because you’re leaving town?”
“No.”
“No, you didn’t have a girlfriend, or no, you didn’t break up with her because you’re leaving town?”
Clyde just lowered his eyebrows and shot me an irritated look. I shrugged.
“You’re probably smart to end it now—long distance relationships never work. There was a boy I liked back in Grassley, but after I won Nashville Forever, I didn’t ever go back to school. In fact, I didn’t even go home for almost a year. Minnie was the only one from home I kept up with. I talked to her almost every night. When I finally made it back to Grassley, the boyfriend, Matt, was dating another girl. I can’t really blame him. A year when you’re that age feels like ten dog years. It’s forever.”
Clyde just grunted, not participating in the conversation at all. Time to shake things up.
“When I was nineteen, I asked my bodyguard, Bear, if he would have sex with me.”
Finn swore
and swung on me, his eyes darting between me and the road. “You don’t have a filter, do you? You just say whatever the hell comes into your head!”
“You just told me no games. You just told me to say it like it is. That’s what I’m doing.”
“There’s a big difference between saying it like it is and telling all there is to tell!”
“You’re probably right.” I nodded. “I’ve always been . . . blunt, but something happened to me when I let go on the bridge,” I explained softly. “My give-a-damn broke. I don’t care anymore. I just don’t. I’m not afraid. I’m not feeling suicidal, but I don’t give a rat’s ass. Does that make any sense?”
Finn nodded. “Yeah. It does. I’ve been there myself. But I just fixed my give-a-damn, unfortunately. So you need to have a little respect and show a little restraint. Deal?”
“Okay.” I sighed. “Tell it like it is, but only in doses Clyde can handle. Got it.”
“Thank you,” he said sarcastically.
I resolved to freeze him out and didn’t say another word, staring out the window, composing song lyrics in my head so I wouldn’t go crazy.
Finn sighed again. “Why do you call him Bear?” he asked, all but admitting he had been thinking about what I’d said for the last twenty minutes.
“He says he got the nickname because he’s big, black, and cranky. His mama even calls him Bear. He’s a forty-five-year-old, divorced father of two. He’s actually a grandpa. But I love him, and I thought if I could have my first time be with someone I loved, someone I trusted, than I would be safe while getting it over with.”
“He didn’t take you up on it, I hope.”
“No. He didn’t. He said that was the most disgusting thing he’d ever heard, and he was going to wash my mouth out with soap, tell my Gran, and let her do her worst. And she would have too. He said I was like a daughter to him. A scrawny, white daughter to boot. His words, not mine. He said I shouldn’t feel bad, but he didn’t find me attractive. At all.”
“Nice.” Finn was smiling a little now.
“Yeah. Really boosted my ego. So, I was hurt and more confused than ever, and I managed to hook up with a rising star who’d had one decent hit and was looking for more air time and a little one-on-one time with someone who could boost his celebrity status. Enter Bonnie Rae Desperate. And it was awful. And humiliating. And I realized something then. I’d been lied to. I’d been singing, and dreaming, and writing songs about something that was a big, fat lie. So I convinced myself that surely it must get better, otherwise, why would everyone do it? So I endured it a few more times. It didn’t get any better.”
Finn was tense again, listening, probably wondering where I was going with this confession. He fiddled with the radio when I didn’t continue and then flipped it off with finality. I was waiting him out again. He was going to have to ask for the juicy tidbits after his lecture on saying it like it is versus telling it all.
“And the point to that very personal story was?” he prodded finally.
“When you kissed me, Clyde? I felt more in that one, pissed-off kiss than I felt in those three or four attempts at making love. And I realized it wasn’t a lie, after all. That was the best kiss I’ve ever had. By far. So tell me what I have to do to earn another one, because embarrassingly enough, I always seem to be the girl begging for affection, and even with a broken give-a-damn, I don’t know how much more humiliation I can take.”
“That kiss didn’t mean a damn thing, Bonnie Rae. I kissed you so I wouldn’t kill you. That’s all. There won’t be another one, because the next time I want to kill you, I’ll just drive away without you.”
I would have been hurt, but Finn Clyde was blushing and that just made me like him more. For someone so big, bad, long-haired, and tattooed, he was remarkably uptight. I put my boots up on his dashboard and started to laugh. I liked this new feeling. When you stopped caring, things got very interesting and a whole helluva lot easier. Finn flipped the radio back on, and I sang along loudly, feeling lighter than I’d felt in a very long time.
THE SNOW THAT had started falling that morning continued in fits and starts as we crossed into Ohio and beyond. We moved slowly through patches of rough into patches that seemed untouched by the storm. Not knowing what was coming was part of the adventure, and neither of us were particularly worried at that moment about the world outside of the vehicle. It definitely wasn’t blizzard conditions yet, and the old Blazer hummed along, windshield wipers flying. But as day descended into night, the snow that was on the ground was caught up in high winds, and it was almost impossible to tell what was coming down, what was going up, and which way was what in the dizzying swirl.
“Let’s get off at the next exit. I think we should stop for the night. It’s getting bad,” Finn said.
I tried to make out what services were available on the large green road sign, but it was covered in a fine layer of snow and what little was visible was obscured by the flakes sticking to the passenger side window.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“We’re somewhere between Cleveland and Columbus. I can’t tell you much more than that.” Clyde slowed to a crawl, not wanting to miss the exit. We inched along that way for several miles and had almost decided we’d missed it when I spotted the exit marker.
“There’s an exit!”
Even at the crawling speed, the fat, black tires on the Blazer were no match for freezing sleet and snow and roads that had not been cleared, and the Blazer fishtailed as we descended the off-ramp. I squeezed my eyes shut and crossed my fingers, a habit from childhood that I still fell back on when a situation required luck or divine intervention.
“Try clicking your heels together in those boots, too,” Clyde teased, but his eyes were clinging to the barely visible road in front of him, and both of his hands were on the wheel as the tires finally found purchase, and the slide down the off-ramp was halted.
In those few, nervous moments, when our attention was on the ice and the snow, maybe we missed a sign or a landmark, or maybe we should have gone left off the exit instead of right, but regardless, as we inched along the road, heading with hope and little else, we definitely missed a vital piece of information that would have saved us from what came next.
The blinding white was relentless, and we may as well have been in outer Siberia for all the luck we were having finding signs of life. There weren’t even any other cars traversing the road in either direction.
“I’m going to turn around. There’s nothing here.” Finn eased the Chevy around and headed back in the direction we had come, retracing the path we’d just created.
“We’ll just get back on the freeway and drive until we hit the next town. We can’t be too far from Columbus.” Clyde said. But as we neared the point where the on-ramp should be, the visibility was so poor we ended up missing it and turning around for a re-attempt. I even rolled down my window and stuck my head out, getting a face full of frosty flakes, as I searched for the freeway entrance.
“Is that it?” I peered doubtfully at the looming underpass, and Finn tried to take the right onto the on-ramp a half second too late. The Blazer swung in a complete circle, moving sideways as it spun, sending us hurtling in the opposite direction, snow flying into the cab through my still-open window. Without warning, we were off the road, back tires wedged into a snow bank, front tires spinning uselessly against the ice and the steadily falling snow. Clyde jumped out and tried to push us free, rocking the vehicle as I matched his motion on the gas pedal.
But we were stuck.
The back wheels, all the way up to the bumper, were buried, the snow several feet deep where we’d come to a stop. We couldn’t get the traction we needed to get back on the road. I climbed into the passenger seat as Clyde tumbled back into the Blazer, his boots soaked, his pants wet to above his knees, and his hands red and raw. He pulled out his old cell phone and, with frozen fingers, called his insurance company to send out some roadside assistance. An automated voice told Cl
yde it was “very sorry, but could he please hold?” Clyde held on for fifteen minutes until his phone started bleeping pathetically and died in his palm, at which point I started apologizing for acting like a spoiled baby and throwing Gran’s phone out the window when we really could have used it.
“I’ve got a charger. We’ll just sit tight, I’ll get warm, and I’ll try again in a few minutes.”
The problem was, when he tried again and finally got through to a real, live operator, he couldn’t tell them where we were. He did the best he could, giving them the last sign he’d seen off I-71, but I didn’t think it would help much, especially in the whiteout conditions. The operator promised to get a tow truck sent out in our general direction, promising that they would find us, which, comforting as the words were to hear, was a lie.
We waited for two hours, heat blazing in the marooned Chevy before I had to vacate the warmth of the cab for an embarrassing bathroom break behind the bumper, where my bare butt got an icy bath, and I accidentally peed on my red boots. I made sure to bury the yellow snow, mortified at the thought of Finn seeing where I’d marked my territory. Clyde took his turn next, and then we were both back in the Blazer with nothing to do, nowhere to go, and no hope for rescue, at least until the snow stopped falling or morning came, when we could walk a ways and get a better idea of our location so help could be sent.
Clyde worried about the amount of gas we had left, just in case we had to make it through the night before someone found us.
“It’s midnight. I figure it will get light about six or seven, right? We can’t just run the Blazer all night.” He paused as if he didn’t quite know what to say next. He ran his hand down his face, and I suddenly felt like laughing from sheer helplessness. I bit my lip hard, the inappropriate giggle perched at the back of my throat just waiting to jump out. I really was crazy.
"I have a sleeping bag and two pillows, plus those three old blankets. It’s going to get cold when we turn off the Blazer.” Finn stopped again, as if he were uncomfortable, and the giggle escaped through my clenched lips.