Lamb

Just outside of West Des Moines, set back among the ash and oak and a dozen miles off the interstate, no neighbors but a filling station and a mom-and-pop burger joint where they cut the french fries themselves, there’s a little motel spread out in fourteen tiny green cabins like game pieces on a sloping grassy board. The parking lot is breaking apart, gradually elevated by a plain of grass rising up beneath it, lifting and bearing the asphalt away as a giant sea drains off the edges of a newborn world. Each cabin is neat and newly painted. Behind the desk in the little office, they rent you rolled-up bath towels and sell nickel bars of white soap. It is as though the hands of all the Midwestern clocks had done nothing for fifty years but spin on battery-powered bolts.

“This is the world’s most perfect motel.” Lamb drove the Ford onto the uneven lot. “Now we know we’re on our way.”

There were twin beds in cabin number four. The girl sat on one of them and kicked off her filthy Keds.

“You need some new shoes.”

“I know. My toes are popping out.”

“Didn’t your mother take you shopping for school shoes?”

“Not yet.”

“Let’s put it on the list of necessary supplies. Make a mental note.”

“Okay.” She leaned back into the pillows. “I’m pooped.”

“Aren’t you going to let me turn down the bed for you?”

“Turn down the bed?”

“You’re the kind of girl,” he said, walking between the beds, “who ought to have some poor old guy turn down the bed for you every night of your life.” She laughed, but he was very solemn and waited for her to stand. He lifted the pillow and folded the heavy striped bedspread down to the footboard, then turned back the corner of the white sheets and bright blue woolen blanket into a neat triangle.

“This is like my grandma’s.”

“Michigan?”

“Yes.”

“That’s where your mom is from?”

“Yep.”

“Are you missing home?”

“No. A little.”

“That’s good,” he said. “If we’re going to be partners, we have to be square with each other, right?”

“Sure.”

He hit his forehead with the heel of his hand. “Boy am I stupid.”

“What?”

“Pajamas. We forgot to get you pajamas. A girl can’t sleep in her blue jeans.”

“I slept in my clothes at the other hotel.”

“And you shouldn’t have. It was an inexcusable oversight, starting our trip that way.”

She put her hands on her jeans. “But these are brand-new. Spanking clean.”

“Spanking clean?”

“Yes.”

He shook his head. “I’ll step outside and wait two minutes, okay? I’ll count to sixty twice. Very slowly. I’ll honor each number fully: thirty-two, thirty-three—just like that. You take off your slacks and fold them on the back of the desk chair, and scrub your face in the sink. Use a washcloth. And soap. Then in bed. In the morning we’ll do it all backwards.”

“Slacks?”

“Look,” he said, “give me a break?”

She heard him outside the door counting. Sixty, fifty-nine, fifty-eight. And she did everything just as he said, washed her face with the little rectangle of perfumed soap, thirty-six, thirty-five, and a thin white washcloth, and combed her hair with her fingers, twenty-one, twenty, and checked her profile in the mirror this way, then that, and pulled back her T-shirt tight and checked for breasts, then got undressed, nine, eight, and stretched out her legs under the cold white sheets.

When Lamb stepped back into the room, he stopped short. He walked between the beds and reached for a lamp switch shaped like a small brass key. He looked at the girl’s jeans and T-shirt on the floor.

“There are your clothes.”

He bent over and retrieved them, one piece at a time, folded them, and placed them over the back of the chair, and gave her a look with his eyebrows arched.

“Got it.”

“You look so clean and fresh,” he said. “Belly full of pizza. Happy, yes?”

She nodded.

“Good,” he said. “That’s my job. Keep you happy. And you can help by telling me when you’re not. Or when you think you might not be. Right?”

“This is the life.”

“You’re sweet.” He picked up a paper sack and withdrew two plastic cups, one purple and one green, with cartoon characters dancing around the rim. “It’s all they had.”

“SpongeBob.”

“If you say so.”

He took out a red cardboard quart of whole milk and filled the cups, then took the pillow off his own bed and propped her up, touching her shoulders and the back of her head. Arranging her just so. Then he put one plastic cup of milk in her hand.

“Let me see you drink that,” he said. “God, you look good. You look just like the perfect… little person. Go on. It’s good for you.”

She smiled at him.

“Don’t you like milk?” he asked, alarmed.

“Sure.”

“But you think I’m treating you like a baby, don’t you? I’m not. A young woman like yourself needs milk for her bones.”

He raised his cup and she hers. They drank.

“I was really smart to get that milk.” He grinned. “It was just what you needed in that twin bed.”

She leaned back into the pillows and looked at him over the rim of the little cup, where he sat on the edge of his own bed.

“This is a good moment. Far from the city. In our neat little twin beds and the clean night air outside the window. It’s like camping. Or like we’re brother and sister, sharing a room.”

She snorted. “You’re the big brother, I guess.”

“No, I’m not. I’m the little brother. You’re the big sister. The tall one. The smart one. Right? And you’ll help me learn all the things about the world that I need to know.”

“Gary.”

“Yes, dear.”

“I think I maybe want to call my mom.”

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

“In the morning?”

“Sure.”

“What do you want to tell her?”

“Just that everything is okay, and I’m okay, and don’t worry.”

“Do you think she’ll probably worry anyway?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you think a phone call might make her worry more?”

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe we should think about that.”

He took the cup from her hands and set it on the nightstand and turned out the lights. He shifted his heavy body to his own bed, his head piled up in his arms, his voice a soft static.

“You know that old horse I was telling you about?” Her hair rustled against the pillows. “In this story, he’s red. Do you want to hear it?”

“Sure.”

“When our girl, the one in this story, found him, he was on the one thousand and eleventh floor of a tall glass building, in a cold and crowded city. All the people in the building had small glass offices, and everything was covered in mirrors. The ceilings were mirrors, the walls too. Every man in a pale shirt and a dark tie and every woman in a straight blue pencil skirt and each of them casting a trillion reflections of themselves deep into the walls and floors and ceilings about them. Can you picture that?”

“Mmm.”

She watched him talking, leaning sideways on the bed, propped up on one elbow, one boot stacked upon the other.

“It made the red horse dizzy and our girl could tell. He was stuck up there, staring down the long fractured silver hallway. Our girl was in a yellow dress, just exactly the color of fresh butter, and she led the red horse toward the mirror-faced elevator and rode him into the car and down they went. Down ten floors and her heart rose up in her chest and the pelt of the warm horse lifted against the palm of her hand and down faster, faster they went. Are you listening?”

“I’m sleepy.”

“Good. Down ten more floors. A hundred. Down, down, down. Her heart rising up into her throat from the speed of it. Her head pounding like birds’ wings and her limbs were heavy, heavier and heavier. Suddenly the doors opened on the seventy-seventh floor. Trillions of reflections, arms filled with papers and green file folders, and they all stared at the girl and the horse, but then the elevator doors winked shut and the car hurtled down again, the girl’s butter-colored dress rising up to her knees and up to her hips and up over her head and then suddenly it was over. The doors opened, and they stepped out.”

“Thank God,” the girl murmured from her sleep.

He laughed. “Yes. That’s right. But outside on the street was even worse. Steel cars and concrete and noise and the girl leaned over the horse and she promised to get him home. You don’t belong here, she whispered to him. And neither do I. Are you awake?”

“Sort of.”

“She led him between the rows of black and blue cars and out of the city. They rested behind a gas station, slept on the flat, hard dirt glittering with bits of broken glass and shreds of gum wrappers and foil. By the time they reached Iowa, they were both sleepy and famished.”

“They were so tired.”

“Yes. They were.” He reached across the space between them and pinched her arm. She yelped. He was surprised by how much it quickened him to do it. “Stay awake,” he said. “We’re almost there. The sun was going down in Iowa. Everything looked so soft. Stems of tall weedy flowers bending this way and that, the grass was green and leaves on the bur oaks were green, all of it darkening, green to blue to black as the sun went down. Shadows of narrow tree trunks fell across the ground, and way, way off the highway was a tiny house with square windows yellow in the growing dark. The girl slipped down off the horse’s soft damp back. Her yellow dress was dirty, her arms and cheeks sunburnt. The horse followed her through the high wet grass toward the house. She turned back to see that he was following, and he nuzzled her beneath the chin.”

“Hey.” The girl suddenly sat up a little. “What kind of messed-up story is this?”

“What? Messed up?” Lamb made a face like he’d been wounded and he held his hands over his heart. “Where would you get such an idea?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, I do. And out on the Old El Rancho Road there will be no TV. None.”

“I like TV.”

“No you don’t. You just think you do.”

“That’s not true.”

“Did you ever live in a house without one?”

“No.”

“Then what makes you think it wouldn’t be better?”

She was silent.

“Listen, Tommie. It’s a beautiful story, okay? It isn’t messed up at all. If you’re expecting it to be, I’ll just stop now. Maybe you don’t want to hear it.”

“Yes, I do.”

“Good. Are you comfortable?”

“Yes.”

“And you want to know what happens next?”

“Just tell it.”

“Our girl went up to the windows and looked into the dark kitchen. The horse helped her in over the sill. When she came out she was carrying a bag of soft white bread, and she and the horse crossed the field again, lumbering, crossed the highway, and settled beneath a maple tree all black and blue in the twilight. The girl leaned her body against the horse. He was warm. She opened the bag and one soft white pillow at a time fed herself, and then the horse, both of them chewing, happy because they’d escaped, but heavy and slow because they were so, so tired. The horse could hardly keep his beautiful red face up, and the girl could scarcely keep lifting the bread to his mouth. A breeze pulled the ends of her hair and all the trees turned into night trees. And there they slept, so soundly that the whole night passed in a single perfect moment.”

Tommie started out of sleep. “I still have both pillows.”

“I know.” He smiled. “You looked so good sleeping on them. You looked just like a sleepy freckled pig. I was watching you. I was watching your round belly rising under the blankets, and watching you hog all the pillows. You were snoring!”

“I wasn’t even asleep.”

“You were.”

“I’m sorry. Here.” She pushed one of the pillows at him, and the other. “Have both.”

“Uh-oh. She wanted to turn him into a pig too. But he wasn’t having any of that. Besides”—he pointed at the green curtains drawn across the little frame window—“it’ll be daylight soon. We got to get out and catch the morning. I’ll step outside while you get dressed.” He was up on his feet.

“Did we sleep?”

“What a question.”

“You slept with your boots on.”

“I guess I did.”

“What time is it?”

“Don’t you worry about the time. Don’t you worry about a thing, little miss piggy. I’ll watch the calendar for us both, okay? The Mondays and the Tuedays and the Wednesdays.” He looked at her bare arms and shoulders above the polyester edging on the wool blanket, then opened the door and stepped out into the dark.