Highway 10 To Anywhere

I wrote this story for my writers' club in March of 2004.


HIGHWAY 10 TO ANYWHERE

“I’m hot-headed, check it and see, I got a reefer of a hundred and three!” Joey’s raspy voice filled the car, singing along very badly to the radio.

“You idiot,” I said sharply, glancing over at him as I drove. “It’s hot blooded. I got a fever of a hundred and three. Geez, sing it right, will you?”

Joey was unperturbed. “Ah, whatever,” he answered dismissively. “I errored. Big deal.”

I sighed. “Err, Joe. The word is err. You erred. You did not error.”

“What are you?” he asked. “Are you my sister or the damn English teacher?”

“Maybe with a little luck, some day I really will be a teacher. And watch your mouth.”

“Yeah, well. Where were you when I needed help with my oral report on the norwhale in Mrs. Schiffling’s class last year?”

“Narwhal, Joey.”

“Yeah. Whatever.”

Joey fell silent, and I drove along steadily at seventy miles per hour, not much more than instinct to guide me. I wasn’t sure where we were going, just that we were leaving Wisconsin. We were headed west on Highway 10 to anywhere.

I was twenty that summer. Joey was sixteen. He was my only brother, and I felt responsible for him. When Mama died, Joey was only nine. I was just thirteen, but I took over caring for the house and looking after Joey. Daddy wasn’t much help. He provided for us, but his work took him away often. When he was at home, he moped around, drinking, crying, and mostly ignoring Joey and me. I guess he never really got over Mama’s death. He used to tell me Joey and I were too much like Mama, that looking at us hurt. He hung on for a few years until I finished school, but eventually life proved to be too much for my Daddy. I came home one afternoon to find him on the floor, dead from a gunshot, the injury self-inflicted.

I don’t know how I got through those next few days. The police came, the ambulance, the paramedics – they all came. There was nothing they could do. The coroner came, and my Daddy was gone. The ladies from church came, all of them bringing food and tut-tutting about my brother Joey and what would happen to him. There was a funeral and there were lawyers. There were child welfare people.

Daddy had some insurance, but there wasn’t much payout for taking his own life, and so they put the house up for sale. After the debts were paid and the lawyers were paid, there was precious little left for Joey and me. The child welfare people didn’t seem to care much what happened to Joey, and so when they let me become his guardian, I decided it was time for us to leave. We had no home and no family. There was nothing to keep us in Wisconsin and every reason to start a new life somewhere else. We loaded what we had into Dad’s old Ford and took off with one thousand dollars and no real plan at all.

I looked over at Joey again. He had dozed off, his head leaned back against the seat. With his mouth open and his face softened, he looked like a little boy as he slept. I hoped I was doing right by him. I was all he had. Maybe we could go to Minneapolis. Maybe I could find a job there and Joey could finish high school. Maybe someday I could go to college. That would be something.

I heard the echo of my mother’s long ago words, words spoken softly to me as she lay dying in a darkened room, her anguish at leaving her children naked on her face.

“Take care of Joey, now, Sharon,” she had said. “He looks up to you. Be good to him. Take care of him. He’s my angel.”

“I will, Mama,” I had said then, and I said it again now. “I’ll take care of Joey, Mama.”

I pulled into a gas station in Marshfield. Joey stirred, sitting up and rubbing his sleepy eyes.

“Where are we?”

“Marshfield. You want something to drink?” It was July, hot and muggy, and the old Ford didn’t have air conditioning.

“Yeah. Get me a beer.” Joey’s eyes were mischievous.

“Yeah, I won’t. A root beer, maybe.” I had forty dollars in my wallet, the rest of our money carefully hidden in a sealed envelope in the bottom of my suitcase in the trunk. I counted out twenty dollars for the gas and another dollar for a drink. I handed the bills to Joey.

“You go on in and pay, will you? And bring me back a root beer too.”

I leaned against the door of the Ford, watching Joey run into the station. He was so eager and sweet, and I loved him. He didn’t talk much about Daddy dying. He never said the word suicide. He never ever mentioned Mama. I wondered what secrets my little brother held inside of him. I wondered if those secrets would ever come out.

My heart gave a little tug when Joey came out of the station, waving two bottles of root beer and a Clark bar at me.

“I gotcha a candy bar,” he said lazily. “But you have to share, ‘cause I didn’t have enough money for two.”

That was Joey’s way of saying he loved me too. If Mama’s death had been a solder for us, Daddy dying had strengthened it. I gave Joey a little punch on the arm as he handed me my root beer and half the Clark bar. He punched me back before getting into his side of the car.

“Put that seatbelt on,” I admonished him as he lounged in the seat, his gangly long legs looking folded up in a space too small.

“Yeah, yeah. Whatever,” Joey said, flashing me another grin.

“You’re a curse on me, Joey. Just fasten the seatbelt, will you?”

Back on the road, Joey sang again.

“Well, it’s eight o’clock in Boise, Idaho, I’ll find my lame-o driver, mister, take us to the show….”

“It’s limo driver, Joe. Limo driver.”

“I know it,” Joey said. “I just like to yank on your chain a little.” He sat up straight, taking a slug out of his root beer. “D’you think we could go to Boise, Idaho? How far is that anyway?”

“I don’t know. Couple thousand miles, I guess. I thought maybe we’d go to Minneapolis.”

“Okay,” Joey said, readily agreeing with me. “What’s in Minneapolis?”

“I don’t know. It’s a big city. Someplace I can find a job and we can get an apartment, and I can enroll you in school.”

“I don’t want to go to school. I’m sixteen. I don’t have to go to school anymore.”

“Joe, I know you don’t have to go to school, but how are you going to get a good job if you don’t finish school?”

“Why do I care?” Joey gulped down the last of his root beer. “Daddy finished school. He got a good job. Look where it got him. He’s dead. He didn’t care if it left us with nothing. He’s dead, and what good did school do him?”

I was quiet. It was the first time Joey talked about Daddy’s death. I was disheartened and didn’t know what to say.

We drove in silence for a few more miles. We came to Osseo, time to leave Highway 10 and turn onto Interstate 94. Joey suddenly spoke just as I entered the on ramp.

“Did Mama wear lavender?” he asked.

I was startled.

“Yeah, she did. Did you remember that?”

“Yeah,” Joey admitted. “I remember she smelled like lavender.” He turned to me, tears brimming over in his blue, blue eyes.

“Sharon, I don’t remember much of Mama,” he continued. “Does that mean I didn’t love her enough? All I remember is her pretty hair and the smell of lavender.”

“Oh, God, Joe! Don’t say that!” I gripped the steering wheel with my left hand, reaching for Joey with my right. I felt his hand slip into mine, and I gave it a squeeze.

“You loved her, Joey. Don’t think otherwise. You loved her, and she adored you. You were her angel.”

“I didn’t want her to die, Sharon.” Joey’s voice was broken now with sobs, big heaving cries I couldn’t stop even if I wanted to. All the pent up despair and anger was coming out of Joey, and he clung to my hand as if it were life support.

I drove on, listening to him cry, my heart breaking a little with every sob. I had to take care of him. He didn’t have anybody else. I stroked the palm of his hand with my thumb.

“It’s okay, Joey. I won’t leave you.”

I saw the big brown sign shaped like Minnesota up ahead. “Minnesota Welcomes You!” it said. I was glad to leave Wisconsin behind. For Joey and me, Wisconsin had been nothing but loss and heartache.

“Minnesota,” I said to him, lifting his hand with mine to gesture at the sign. He nodded, his tears dried but his eyes still red and swollen.

“Sharon?”

“Yeah, Joe?”

“I’ll go to school. And when I’m done, I’m gonna put you through college and you’re gonna be a teacher.”

I looked over at Joey and smiled, giving another squeeze to the fingers laced with mine.

I felt the burden on my heart lift just a little when he spoke those words, and the first tall buildings of Minneapolis came into view.