Category: Holly

The milk of human kindness was running a little thin along Highway 34 this afternoon, Holly thought; one hour waiting in the same place.  She picked up her pack, scuffed out her name in the dust along the exit, and moved a few yards past the highway sign.

She’d had plenty of time to contemplate her rules of the road and come up with some others.  She was glad to be self-entertaining:  The current rules:  Always smile when your thumb is out.  But not like a maniac.  Look as if you’re not on drugs (pretty easy, when you’re not).  Keep your hair neat, or somewhere approaching neat.  Do not carry more than one large bag or two smaller ones.  Always remember that all people are not good, no matter how much you need to believe that.

After the move the first ride came in a short minute.  The Great American Ride:  a white man in his forties, looking for something to break the monotony of commuting, or work, or marriage, or something for which he had as few words as she did.  She’s been pretty lucky so far; no one’s tried anything.  She’s turned down the rides where the driver said “I don’t usually pick up hitchhikers, but you looked so lost”. Or “You know, you shouldn’t do this.  A girl alone.  There are lots of crazies out there”. Or “If my daughter ever did this, I don’t know what I’d do.”

Holly loves the people she’s met on the road.  No attachments, no past or future — only the odd sides that one only shows to strangers.  She’s gotten rides from house painters who were glider pilots, a much-tattooed Hell’s Angels couple, an old woman taking her non-Engish-speaking Central American house guest through a rainstorm to a Friends meeting; women who talk to ravens, young fathers with children in safety seats and apologetic smiles.

There was a school bus driver who picked her up at the end of his route in Utah. He talked of plans to buy a small farm and asked what she knew about solar heating (it sounded like a good idea, she thought).  He bemoaned his wife’s arthritis and said he wouldn’t trade her anyway, though he wasn’t sure she’d say the same for him. Holly promised to call if she came through again.  His wife would enjoy it, he said.

A boy picked Holly up on a Nevada freeway; looking tough in a cowboy hat and torn denims, working on an overly-large wad of tobacco.  He tried to be laconic but couldn’t stop talking:  running away from parents with college expectations for him and divorce plans for themselves, on the road in a birthday-present pickup with no destination and no experience.

Forty miles on, he asked if Holly would mind if he dropped her off.

“Forgot something back in town,” he said.

“No trouble,” said Holly.  In that state, the highways legally belonged to those with thumbs.

He drove away in the morning light.  His parents probably never even knew he had gone.

She’d had two rides with mothers and daughters, an unexpected treat.  She felt like the adventure in their lives.  Something they’ll chat about with their husbands, casually.  “Guess who I met today, Scott?  A girl who’s going around the world!”  Going from California to Omaha wasn’t quite the adventure they needed from her, she had thought.

The ability to lie at will was part of what she liked about hitchhiking.  She could remake her life into something interesting and unusual, something unbroken by anger and indifference.  Lying about where she was going and where she came from seemed sensible; just like creating someone over six feet who eagerly awaited her arrival was a small insurance policy.

The last ride of the day:  another boy in a pickup truck.  She was learning that in this state, a pickup truck without a gun rack and guns was like a cradle without a child.  He coaxed extra miles from a reluctant gas tank, as Holly held a partly-latched door tight against the freeway wind.  His last traveling was as a child, coming to Colorado with his parents from Mexico.  Travel.  He’d like to travel, but doesn’t feel allowed to say so; his eyes speak for him.

Holly got out at the town’s main intersection.  A young girl – six? eight? – rested in the back of a crowded station wagon; bored, tired.  She looked at Holly standing by the side of the road; tired, weary, smiling.  The girl smiles back.  That’s the right ending for my day, Holly thought.  She’s got everything before her.  I’ve got everything before me.

Another one!  That made 45 cents for the day. How people could walk by when there was money, actual money, on the ground was something she couldn’t understand. Why, she found enough in a week or two to buy a lottery ticket!  That was her budget:  only money found on the ground. That made for the best luck possible, and didn’t take anything away from the regular household.

That was one thing she never thought she’d have:  a household. A house and people to hold.

The bus stopped and Holly got on. That was one of the numbers they’d run one night:  would it be better to take the bus or to have two cars? The cars gave flexibility but then there was maintenance, insurance, gas; there were repairs and there was the daily commute that had her reaching work with teeth gritted and both hands clutching the wheel. As long as there was one car then one of them could deal with any home emergencies and Lord knows there’s always plenty to be had. She’d done her research and found the Employer Community Pass page; how lucky that she’d been able to talk Steve into buying a community pass for her and Sheila and Greg. Without that, taking the bus would be twenty times more expensive. Sometimes she and Sheila took the bus downtown to sit and people watch and eat their lunches.

And bus stops were lucky:  she almost always found some change, carelessly spilled, not worth the slight energy to pick up. It was worth it to her.  It’s not that there were careless people there were people who were careless about things.  She never wants others to judge her based on one action.  Or inaction.

She learned how to take action when she ran away from Mom and Dad.  Why would a woman lock a six-year old girl out of the house?  Why would a father tolerate that?  And when she got older the constant reminders in her ear:  you’re no good; no one will want you except to fuck and leave; you’re a moron who can’t even do the dishes right.  She did judge her dad, she guessed.  On his inaction.

At least with hitchhiking, there was the chance that someone might be nice to her.  And there again she was lucky.  She knew the odds were against her and she stopped once she got to Omaha.  That would be a good city, she thought; all midwestern and corn-fed.  She liked corn.  But Omaha had its share of bad boyfriends and abortions and drugs and alcohol.  She at least never drank or drugged:  she knew that would take away all self-respect and that was the one thing she owned outright with no debt to someone else.

One time she’d gone for two months without a job and they were the worst two months of her life:  worse than when Mom hit her and said she wished she’d never had a kid and why did that loser talk her out of an abortion, worse than when daddy looked at her without hope and pulled another beer out of the fridge.

Holly sat, knitting.  That was about the only thing Mom gave her, the knowledge to knit and purl and drop a stitch at exactly the right time. She liked picking out the colors at garage sales:  every Friday she’d check the garage sales lists for people who had let their houses and minds get cluttered with one-day-I’ll-do-it projects. Usually the yarn was acrylic, so unless she couldn’t resist the color she’d pass; but sometimes there’d be wool; and last weekend, treasure!  Skein after skein of silk in shimmering colors. She’d bought them all.

She looked down at the small hat she was knitting. It was acrylic; but then, babies didn’t need wool and silk on their heads.  How she was lucky enough to bear a child after what she’d put her ladyparts through she’ll never know.

Thank goodness John’s company provided health insurance.  Steve was a good employer and she’d learned everything she knew about accounting from his wife – now his ex-wife; now she was the full charge bookkeeper and had the pleasure of making things balance daily.  She didn’t know why only college counted as education.  She’d learned a hell of a lot when she was scared and homeless and now there was always the library if she wanted to know something, like What To Expect When You’re Expecting and The First Twelve Months of Life.

Steve said she could do the books from home once she was past the first month of momhood.  She was still thinking about it.

Holly got off the bus.  The store she bought tickets at was just down and on the left.  She chose the Powerball:  hey, it had been a good month for change.  As she walked out with a little bit of hope in her pocket she thought:  Maybe that’s what we’ll name the baby.  Hope.