Hitchhikers by Kate Spofford

shoulders.
    After breakfast.
     
     

 
-18-
    It continues like this for weeks. I tell
myself I will leave after lunch, after dinner, tomorrow, next week.
But I like Bobby. I help him cook meals that aren’t straight out of
a box. We drive into town and I help him sell hot dogs. Sometimes I
walk to the grocery store and buy ingredients for dinner while he’s
working. Sometimes I sell hot dogs while he sleeps in the truck. He
sleeps a lot.
    Some days, if I’m restless with nightmares
and sleep too late, I only wake up when Bobby’s truck rumbles to
life. Usually he leaves a note, Didn’t want to wake you. Make
yourself at home. Or, See you for dinner, cook something
good! On these days I clean the trailer, vacuuming and dusting
and sweeping and scrubbing. One day I find a pair of hedge clippers
and trim the weeds around the trailer.
    I’ve got a flair for cooking. Maybe it’s just
Bobby being nice and the crap I’ve grown used to eating over the
past three years, the bruised fruit and pizza crusts from the
garbage, but what I make tastes good to me too. It’s surprising,
considering what I’m working with, but somehow I can tell by scent
what needs to be added. In the kitchen the warm smell of good food
cooking wraps around me like a blanket. I can almost hear my
mother’s voice, asking if I want to stir or crack the eggs or lick
the spoon, singing along with the radio. I can almost feel her hand
on my head, just resting there, like she could protect me this way,
keep me safe.
    We both knew that when my father got home it
wouldn’t be safe.
    A few times, like today, the memories of my
father and what he would do to ruin dinner made me think it was him
coming through the door and not Bobby. I found myself gripping the
knife I had used to cut up beef for a stir fry, backed into a
corner.
    “Easy there, Dan,” Bobby said as he entered
the trailer. He held out his hands. “It’s just me.”
    I couldn’t get my jaws apart to say anything,
my teeth were clenched so tight. But I did put the knife down and
look away, pretending to be busy washing the vegetables. My heart
is hammering in my chest.
    Bobby has learned not to call me Dannyboy. He
has learned to go to bed at night and not share the couch with me.
He leaves me alone after these incidents and lets me get myself
together. Except for that one time he found me curled up in a ball
on the floor
    (I don’t even remember how I got there)
    with Lila licking my face and hands. On that
day, he stroked my hair until I stopped shaking so much, talking to
me about his son, Little Bobby. I don’t remember the first part of
what he said, but once I was able to focus on his voice I listened
real hard, about how he taught Little Bobby how to throw a baseball
and how he went to all of Little Bobby’s baseball games, how Little
Bobby was going to play for the major leagues someday. When Bobby
lost his job during the recession, and found out his wife was
cheating on him, he funneled all of his energy into Little
Bobby.
    When he got to the part where his wife left
him and took Little Bobby with her, that was when Bobby asked me
how I was doing.
    “I’m okay,” I told him.
    “I bet you are,” he said, not sarcastic but
matter-of-fact. He never mentioned it again. Never yelled at me for
letting Lila hang out in the trailer with me, but considering that
the place seems so much bigger now that it’s clean, and I vacuum
her fur up on a daily basis, there’s not much reason to keep her
out.
    I cut the strips of beef in a slow,
methodical rhythm, keeping my movements as steady as possible and
my mind as blank as a new layer of snow. But it won’t go away.
Memories of my father keep punching through the blankness.
    “ Stop with the women’s work,
Dannyboy.”
    Flinching, feeling the tightness as he
grabbed my collar and pulled me away from the counter.
    “ Come on, let’s wrestle.”
    These were the good days, when we would
wrestle.
    “ Gotta learn how to be the leader