Last Ride to Graceland by Kim Wright Read Free Book Online Page B

“8 oz. jar” scrawled in red ink, something that cost her $2.15. Then a little more west and a little more north and I’m in Memphis. Back to the place where she began.
    That road out there can’t tell you a single thing that you don’t already know . That’s what Leary said to me on the banks of Polawana, and he undoubtedly spoke the truth. But right now I don’t know anything, so it seems like this road stretched in front of me, long and flat and ugly as a runway, is gonna have to tell me something. I’m already in trouble with the money. Leary poured in a little gas from a can he had in his truck, just enough to get me going, and I stopped for more as soon as I was far enough out of Beaufort that I didn’t figure anybody would know me. It cost $24.50 to fill the Blackhawk tank, which was bad enough, but then the needle started dropping almost the second I was back on the road and if I’m figuring it right I’m only getting about ten miles a gallon. Maybe not even that much. Which means it’ll cost me twenty-five dollars to drive a hundred miles, and if I’m going as far south as Fairhope and then back up . . . The math is so depressing I have to stop.
    Why the hell did Mama take such an indirect route? Was she trying to hold to the back roads too? Was she afraid, even in 1977, that a car like this made her too obvious? But that only makes a certain kind of sense, since I’d imagine that copsin small towns are even more curious about unusual people passing through in unusual vehicles than troopers cruising the interstate. Would she have been so frightened that she would have deliberately chosen to go miles out of her way just to avoid detection, even when it was clear she was trying to hurry? I conclude she was trying to hurry because of all the trash in the car—she may have stopped to order, but apparently she ­always took the food with her, eating as she drove, and the ­passenger’s-side seat was reclined when I found it, lying damn near horizontal, suggesting she spent at least one night sleeping in the car.
    But when I consider the evidence in another light, it isn’t quite so surprising that all the napkins and wrappers in the trash bag Leary handed me are from local places, like this Juicy Lucy cup and bag from Macon. Mama hated fast-food chains. Hated Walmarts and Holiday Inns and big supermarkets too, anything that she thought stripped the individual flavor out of a place. She considered what she called “the homogenization of America” the great evil of our time. All right, then. She must have picked something up at a place called Juicy Lucy—likely a hamburger, if the perfectly round grease stain on the bag can be trusted—and that was evidently the last stop on her sojourn before coming home. I look deeper into the bag for a receipt, but there is none. Nor do I find any signs of gas receipts, so I guess she either didn’t have a credit card or didn’t choose to pay with one, which raises another interesting question. What had she used for money, in her flight from there to here?
    It’s a muddle. I sigh and lean back in the seat to ponder the limited charms of an I-95 rest area. The sun has almost fullydisappeared and I watch a dog, long-legged and clumsy, like a puppy just west of the cute stage, sniffing around a trash can. Somebody’s put him out. Turned tail and left him here, maybe a day ago or maybe a week, and he doesn’t understand they’re not coming back. My chest grows tighter as I watch him rise on his back legs, bringing his nose up to the top of the trash can. He’s not quite tall enough to reach it, even with a stretch, but whatever’s underneath that lid smells promising enough that he begins to wag his stubby tail, and there’s something in that gesture, that undying little nub of hope that still exists in the most hopeless of situations, that makes me feel