Call Me a Cab

37

It was somewhere west of Castle Rock that we got lost. “I don’t want to say I told you so,” I said.

“Good,” said Katharine. “I’m glad you don’t. Something called Santa Maria is supposed to be down this way.”

“Now we’re looking for ghost ships.”

We were not in a good mood. I was pilot and Katharine was navigator, and the best you can say for us is that we managed not to go to Denver, though that was the only place mentioned with any consistency on the road signs we saw. We kept firmly turning the opposite way every time we came to one of those signs, and according to the sun peeking at us over the tops of the mountains we were managing to keep our nose pointed more or less westward.

The countryside had changed. Ever since western Kansas there had been a gradual rising trend in the landscape, but it wasn’t until about forty miles after we’d abandoned Route 70 that the distant blue mountains on the western horizon suddenly became green, huge, and present. Up we climbed, up and up, the cab curving up mountain roads it had never even dreamed of in the canyons of New York. The broken forested land was beautiful, had I been in a mood for beauty, but it wasn’t exactly rapid or easy going, and not for a second did I find myself getting bored at the steering wheel.

We never did find Santa Maria. We also failed to find Montezuma, Breckenridge, Como, Climax, and Leadville. Katharine even alleged at one point that we were about to come upon a placed called Fairplay. We didn’t, of course.

Tempers were fraying. A certain amount of bickering took place, each of us making unkind and unwelcome statements, of the sort it’s just as well not to dwell on afterward, and then at a given point we both simply stopped talking. We fumed side by side, enclosed in our separate senses of outrage, and I picked my way over through the mountains following the scanty hints and clues of the road signs.

It was in no town at all that I came around a curve and saw an old board sign up ahead reading Tourist Cabins. It was now about six-thirty, and most of the time we were driving in increasingly obtuse shade, since the sun was now definitely on the other side of the mountains. I said, “Katharine, I don’t care what you want, that’s where we’re staying. In the morning they can loan us some sled dogs to lead us back to civilization.”

“Good,” she said, tightlipped.

Behind the tourist-cabin sign was a small white clapboard structure, itself more a cabin than a real house. office, said a magic-marker notice on a shirt-cardboard thumbtacked to the front door. I stopped the cab and Katharine got out and slammed the door very hard.

She was in the office quite a long while, and when she came out she was accompanied by a gnarled skinny tall old man bent by arthritis but nevertheless spry. His white shirt and gray workpants were both far too large. He gestured to me to follow him down the gravel driveway beside the house; in his hand was a pair of big keys attached to big pieces of wood. Katharine didn’t look in my direction.

Behind the house were eight separate little tourist cabins spaced in a long crescent with the gravel drive running past them in front. We were apparently the only customers at the moment. The old man led the way — for no particular reason that I could see — to the third cabin from the right, and gestured to me to pull the cab in beside it, which I did. I got out and opened the trunk while he was unlocking the cabin. He pushed the door open, then came over to me and said, “Howdy do.”

“Hello.”

“That’s the young lady’s cabin,” he said, “and yours is this one.” Pointing to the cabin on the other side of the cab.

“Okay.”

“Here’s the key. The lock’s a little tricky, but just jiggle it. Can you carry your own bags?” He had clear very pale blue eyes and thin-looking parchment skin.

“Oh, I think so.”

“Which are the young lady’s bags?”

I gave them to him, got out my own, closed the trunk lid and went away to my cabin. I was still jiggling the key in the lock when he came over and said, “Having trouble?”

“Oh, no. Just with this door here.”

“Let me show you.” He did, then locked the door again and had me try it myself, using his method. It worked. “You’ll be all right now,” he said.

“I’m sure I will. Thank you.”

Inside the cabin was the smell of wood. The walls were unfinished rough lumber and the floor was pine planking. The double bed — brass headboard and footboard — had a scratchy-looking Indian-patterned wool blanket over it. The furnishings were a sagging gray mohair armchair, a dark brown metal bureau, a white-edged mirror hanging from a nail, a square maple bedside table with a drawer, a red-shaded table lamp upon this, an amber-shaded floor lamp over by the chair, and a huge sepia print of “The Return From Calvary” over the bed. No non-Utrillos.

When I dropped my bag on the bed the springs squeaked, loudly. So I sat on it and, as expected, it was as lumpy as bad mashed potatoes. Also as soft. I stood again and pulled open the narrow unpainted door in the rear wall and looked in at the smallest bathroom in the Western Hemisphere. The toilet wasn’t quite under the sink, which was crammed in next to the free-standing white metal shower. Linoleum on the floor, linoleum in a fake tile pattern on the walls. The narrow window over the sink was covered by a dark red curtain; when I pushed it to one side to look out I saw a close-up view of a lot of pine trees.

The worst thing about a fight is the difficulty in backing out of it. I would have liked to chat with Katharine about this place, comparing it with our usual Holiday Inn, and I suppose she would have liked to discuss it with me as well, but we couldn’t talk about anything pleasant because we weren’t talking to one another at all; having talked a bit too much at one another when we were angry. Nobody wants to be the first to extend the olive branch, in case the other guy is still in a chainsaw mood.

I unpacked some things from my bag, then sat on the lumpy scratchy uncomfortable mohair chair for about ten minutes, trying to read my saga, but finally gave up and went outside, just for something to do. Also I’d had this vague hope that Katharine might coincidentally be outside at the same moment; conversation could ensue, we could get back on the old footing, and I could say my one or two funny things about the cabin. I was absolutely choking with my undelivered funny remarks about the cabin.

She wasn’t outside.

I went over to look at the cab, but there wasn’t a heck of a lot there to occupy my attention. Then I noticed a narrow dirt path winding away into the woods from behind the cabins, and I strolled in that direction, feeling the slightly cool dampness of the forest air, smelling that nice acrid aroma of pine tree. It really was beautiful country; no place to be in a bad mood.

I walked on through the trees, diagonally down a gradual slope, surrounded by the hushed chatter of woods creatures. Brown pine needles made a blanket/carpet/layer in which all sounds were muted. When I looked back, the white tourist cabins were no longer visible through the trees.

The path bifurcated, and I took the fork to the right, the one that went more steeply downhill. I felt the need for exercise, for some use of my body that would counteract all that time in the cab. Walking in the woods was clearing my head of everything; road fatigue, bad temper, uneasiness of spirit.

There was something ahead. A road? A building? It seemed to me I could faintly hear the struggling roar of a big truck climbing a hill. I kept walking, and saw a clearing ahead, and abruptly stepped out at the top of a cleared grassy hillside; and there was the road. A major road, in fact, Route 70 or some other Interstate, making a broad gray double-scar slice across the haunch of a mountain.

And a Holiday Inn! On the far side of the road, there it was, two stories high and red brick and sprawled out in all directions, the biggest Holiday Inn in the world. By God, we could be there in five minutes!

I stood looking at it, thinking about the air-conditioning and the perfect double bed and the expansive bathroom and the perfectly acceptable restaurant, and also thinking about the tourist cabin’s lumpy bed and awful mohair armchair and tiny tin shower — and the smell of wood and the proprietor’s very pale clear eyes — and I didn’t know what to do. When I finally turned away I was still a mass of confusion, in which only one thing was clear; I could certainly talk to Katharine about this.

I walked quickly back through the woods, this time paying no attention to my surroundings, and when I got back to the cabins I saw that Katharine’s door was standing open. Was that a peace sign? I stood outside and said, “Knock knock.”

Her voice came from within: “Who’s there?”

“Albee.”

“Albee who?”

“Albee down to getcha in a taxi, honey.”

She came to the door and grimaced. “Did you just make that up?” She wasn’t angry anymore.

Neither was I. “I think so,” I said.

“Are there going to be any more like that?”

“Not right away.”

“Then you can come in.”

“Thank you.” And I knew I wasn’t going to tell her about the Holiday Inn. I wanted to stay here, lumpy bed and all. It was better that she not know we had an alternative.

Her cabin was completely different from mine, but exactly the same, if you know what I mean. It had been furnished out of the same attic. “Ah,” I said. “You have the Grover Cleveland suite.”

“Mr. Hilyerd says John Dillinger stayed here one time.”

“He’s probably still in Cabin Six.”

“About food,” Katharine said, and my heart sank: we would drive around looking for a restaurant, we would discover the Holiday Inn. I said, “Yes?”

“If we want supper around seven-thirty, Mrs. Hilyerd will be happy to make it for us. Do we like steak, corn on the cob, baked potato, green beans, and apple pie?”

I said, “Would you repeat the question?”