and don’t say anything about it or laugh at it because I like it.”
“Okay, I won’t,” he said. “Virgin Mary Duck,” he repeated. “Is that what they call you? The whole thing?”
“Don’t nobody ever call me anything, cept sweet Daddy under there, and he calls me V. M.”
“All right,” he said, “V. M. How old are you?”
“Old enough to know better,” she said. She cut her blanched-looking eyes at him again. “I’m fifteen,” she said, “sweet fifteen.” She smiled at him. About a quarter-inch of pink gum showed when she smiled.
They sat there for a while, listening to the metallic sound of Lyman tinkering underneath the car. Then Lester Ray asked, “Where do y’all live? You and your sweet daddy, as you call him.”
“In a tent, out in the Flatwoods,” she said.
“A tent?”
“Hell yes. Ain’t you ever heard of a tent before?”
“Yeah, I’ve heard of a tent,” he said.
“Well, what of it?”
“Nothin. You can live wherever the hell you want to live,” he said. “I was just wonderin.”
“Why?” she said, batting her eyes at him, “you think you might want to come see me sometime?”
Not likely, he thought. For one thing, the garage was close and hot, and he could smell her strong. For another, she was about the ugliest girl he’d ever seen.
“I might have some beer for you,” she said, “and somethin else, too, if you know what I mean.”
Maybe you could put a paper sack over your head, he thought, but then how would he get by the stink of her? He was amazed that such a little body could smell that rank. “I ain’t got time to go visitin,” he said.
“Where you and that ol lady goin in this thing, when Daddy gets it fixed?” she asked.
“Well,” he said, “she just wants me to drive her around, you know, of a Sunday afternoon.”
“Shit,” she said. “You ain’t got no driving license. You ain’t old enough.”
“How the hell do you know how old I am?” he said.
“Cause I’m older’n you. You ain’t even old as I am.”
“How old I am ain’t got a thing to do with anything,” he said, “so shut up about it.”
“I bet I could teach you a thing or two,” she said. She winked at him.
He laughed. “I doubt it,” he said.
Lyman Duck came out from under the car and got in under the steering wheel. The hood was still up, like the car had its mouth wide open. He pressed the starter button with his thumb. The motor sounded at first like somebody rubbing two sheets of sandpaper together, then it sputtered. The car shook. The motor roared into life. Lester Ray felt lifted into the air, liberated. He could hardly believe what this would finally mean. He stood up and jabbed his fist into the air. Virgin Mary Duck jumped up, too, and started dancing around. She tried to hug Lester Ray, but he pushed her away. “Quit it,” he said. “Git away from me.” He went around to the driver’s side. It was difficult for Lester Ray to believe the car was actually running. He realized he had doubted all along that Lyman would ever fix it, and now he was as surprised as he was thrilled.
“You ever drove a car before?” Lyman shouted over the rumbling of the engine.
“No,” Lester Ray said.
“Well, look here now. This here is the accelerator pedal, see? You give her the gas with this. This here is the choke. You got to choke her some at first, to get the juices flowin. Same as you got to do to a woman, you know?” He laughed, and Lester Ray recoiled from his yellowed, rotting teeth. “You press this here button. This is the starter, and give it some gas at the same time. Once she gets to idlin good, you can let off on the choke. Oh, and you got to have the clutch down while you doin all that, I forgot to tell you.” He leaned down. There were three pedals, and Lyman had the left one pressed to the floor. “The other pedal is the brake. You use that to stop, all right? And this here is the gear shift.” He jammed it around here and there, “reverse, low, second gear, third. Got to have the clutch down when you doin that, too. Got it?” He shoved it into reverse. “Slam that hood down and get out the way,” he said. Lester Ray went around and closed the hood.
“Look out, now,” Lyman shouted. The car jerked and bucked, then slowly began to back out of the garage. Lyman backed out into the street and drove off down to the end of the block, the car backfiring a couple of times like cherry bombs going off, and turned right.
“Where’s he goin?” Lester Ray asked.
“Around the block,” V. M. said. “He’ll be back, don’t worry.”
Lester Ray stood with a stupid grin on his face, shaking his head back and forth. “Well, I’ll be fucked,” he said.
“I will if you want me to,” V. M. said.
“We can go anytime you’re ready,” Lester Ray said to Mrs. McCrory.
“Go where?” she asked.
“We got that old car fixed,” he said. “We can hit the road.”
“What old car?”
She was looking at him as though she didn’t know who he was, much less remember anything about their plans. “We got to get that alligator out of the house,” she said, “the one that was in the front hall this morning.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, “I’ll take care of it.” He was not alarmed. He knew she snapped back and forth, in and out. It was Orville he was worried about; they had two weeks left, according to what he had told his mother, but there was nothing fixed about it, nothing guaranteed. He might show up anytime ready to cart her off to the old folks’ home. As far as Lester Ray was concerned, he was not going to let that happen to her.
He had a plan, but they needed a running start. The West Florida State Fair was going on in Pensacola, and there would be a carnival with rides there, and Lester Ray knew that Gypsies usually traveled with carnivals, even ran them, he’d seen that himself with the smaller carnivals that came to Piper, and he planned to get a job with them and travel with them, wherever they were going, travel with them for the rest of his life if he had to, until he eventually met up with his mother. Who knew? His mother might even be traveling with that carnival. He knew that Mrs. McCrory didn’t care, as long as he kept her away from Orville and out of the nursing home. He had spent a little over two hundred and fifty dollars on the car out of the box in the pantry (the car had a 1944 Florida tag on it, and they were going to be conspicuous enough without being stopped for an expired tag; he’d had to give Lyman Duck ten dollars extra for a new tag, and V. M. had come back with a current 1964 Rhode Island tag, wherever it came from Lester Ray did not know or care and well knew better than to inquire) and that left them enough—roughly forty seven hundred dollars—for a good long while of wandering, even a longer while if he got a good-paying job with the carnival. He was not afraid of hard work, and
