Drifters
a Short Story
by Charles Hubbard
It’s the ride that Andy likes
best. Better than working lousy under
the table jobs, better than sporadic schooling, better than half-formed
friendships like pauses between songs on an album or gas stations on a day-cruise. He likes it best when Ruth, his mom, lets him
drive even though he’s only fifteen and doesn’t have a license. On the road, cut loose, Andy and Ruth acquire
a granularity of experience that he has grown to love. The thrill of nighttime streaks through
invisible terrain, afternoon rainstorms in the
Andy’s father, James, left to go find himself five years ago in Alaska, and as soon as he found himself there, he found God while in the Alaskan plains and went immediately to Catholic seminary school in Vermont, which was a sort of convenient way to emphasize the thoroughness of his abandonment of son and Episcopalian wife. They both hate his memory and Ruth has vowed to never speak to him again, and has not. Strangely, though, she now pursues Episcopalian priests with an intense focus. “They can get married, and they are honorable men,” she says. This upsets Andy. He’s nowhere near forgiveness, thinks it was a chickenshit move by his dad, who is not honorable and is now a priest. Ruth calls James a bad apple, a wandering spirit or other labels. Andy just wishes he’d stayed. They’d been pretty close, although his dad never talked much. It seems to him like James just got afraid of life. He still has the book he gave him the night before he left: On the Road by Jack Kerouac. He’s read it more than any other book, keeps it with him. He doesn’t want to run away from life like he did, but at the same time he loves the road, feels born there somehow.
“This is the last move, Andy,” says Ruth for the tenth time or so. “It’s going to be different this time. I feel new already, you know?” He doesn’t answer. Having lived almost ten places since he was ten, he’s of the opinion that it’s pretty lousy everywhere except the place you imagine is coming next, which he has plenty of time to do when they are driving between here and there. When he gets his driver’s license next year, he wants to buy some old car and hit the road. Ruth says he’s too young to be taking off on his own and that she still needs him around.
She’s been cruising the internet
again at wired cafes; it is often the precursor to their next move. This time, it’s an attractive, fortysomething
Episcopalian priest, recently widowed, up in Colfax
They’ve been driving five days up from Baja through the long arid regions
of inland
“It’s all brown, Mom. Why do we always go to brown places?”
“There’s plenty of green, Andy. Look at that.” She points at a water silo, painted a frightening shade of mawkish green. “And anyways I think there’s some blue if we drive West a while.”
Andy grabs his mom’s shoulder with his free hand and shakes it with mock urgency. “Quick! Turn around!” And they both laugh; Baja will be missed.
The money she saved by working as a checkout clerk selling munchies to relaxed people on their way to the beach at her last job is nearly gone. Usually she works in grocery stores where free food is possible, and has already applied online for a position at the grocery in Colfax. In Baja, Andy enrolled in school as a freshman – she insisted – but he didn’t do well, the kids were either mean or distant. They’ve moved so many times in the last five years that his schooling has been fragmented into pieces devoid of meaning, separated from the whole.
As they near Colfax, she lets Andy drive. His window is open and it’s as hot as Baja, they’re going fifty and the wind hits him like an open oven door. Colfax, the county seat, is jammed into a sweltering clutch of hills relieved only by a somnolent river that trickles under the main street bridge for three weeks every spring. It’s just a smattering of dirt, rocks, and hardy weeds now, and Andy glares at it.
“Andy, those other places were just pit stops. This is the last move. I can feel the difference in the air around here,” Ruth says, looking out into the swirls of topsoil cycloning on the road in front of them.
“I don’t want to stop, mom. I like the road.”
“I’ve got it all lined up with Father Larry, he’s even going to get you a summer job at a sorority.”
“What’s a sorority?”
“It’s a place where rich college girls stay so they don’t have to live with the kids of poor people. They’re always cute though, so stay out of trouble.”
“Good, if they’re rich then maybe they’ll pay well and we can save up some money and leave in a few weeks.”
“No, we’re staying here. We’re settling down.”
Andy decides to try a different tack. “So did you flirt with him like always, mom, because he’s a priest?”
“Yes, I did, I flirted quite a bit, as much as one can by computer. Opportunities do not fall in your lap like this every day,” she says.
“Especially when your lap is a few thousand miles away.”
“You know, Father Larry said in his emails that he likes music, just like you,” she says, changing the subject.
“What kind?”
“Jazz. Every year he has a jazz mass –“
“Jazz sucks.” Ruth tightens her jaw.
“He’s single, and my age. We’ve got to go.”
Why does she always think she has to stay, thinks Andy. It’s not like it’s better when we do. He thinks about the cherry orchards and the asshole supervisors, the bossy people at the commune, the psychos at the truck stops. Just give me a car and some cash, he thinks. Now that’s something you can rely on.
The next day he is in the office of Father Larry Armond, parish priest
for Saint James Episcopal Church of Colfax,
“So, your mom tells me you like to drive.” I’ll bet he practices that warm smile in the mirror, Andy thinks. “Yeah, it’s better than sitting around in some crappy town.”
Father Larry doesn’t respond. Andy follows his gaze to the bookshelves that envelope the room in a wooden embrace. Hating long silences with adults, he eventually looks out the window into the white blast of August light.
“I don’t know you yet, but you’re mom seemed real nice on the phone.”
Andy doesn’t say anything.
“Where’s your father?” asks the priest.
“He’s training to be a priest, like you except Catholic.”
“How nice.”
“I hate him.” There is another awkward silence. Father Larry finally laughs as he stands up to say goodbye.
“I know the President of the Alpha Pi sorority just up the street and she needs some help this weekend with Rush. I’ve got some swing over there even if the old lady running the place thinks I’m a dog.” He pauses with a smile that seems to Andy to be very lurid. It gradually unfolds into a sort expression of paternal understanding.
“Look, if you guys end up staying in town, I’ve got an old Saab you can have. How’s that hit you?” Another winning smile.
Andy just keeps staring at the tabletop, hands clenched like gears, trying to understand why he hates this person so much.
“Well then, young man. Just show up at the sorority tomorrow morning for the interview, okay? And say hi to your mom.”
“You haven’t met her yet,” says Andy softly. He leaves then. When he gets home he folds his over-long legs into his rented by the week twin hotel bed for a two hour nap; something he has done quite a bit of this summer.
Andy walks to Alpha Pi for the interview in an unusually hot day in Colfax, nearly 100. He was too nervous to eat anything before he left, and his stomach rumbles as only a teenage boy’s can. He looks up at the long hill he must climb to reach Greek Row, nestled under the best lot of trees in the area, and swears. He doesn’t have any money for a bus. As he comes to the top, dry-mouthed, the street opens into the wide expansive lawns of Greek row. To his left is Alpha Pi. It is an immaculate white three-story colonial mansion, well restored.
A photographer has twenty or so young women posed on the steps. Each wears a white T-shirt that says “Alphi Pi Returning Sisters 2004.” Their gorgeous similarity, as prepared for film, is striking. Each girl has her hair pulled into a neat ponytail tied with ribbon and wears similar, but not identical, shorts of varying pastels. One of the girls flanks each side of the group by sitting horizontally on the wide stone balustrades, facing the group, their long hair dangling over the edge like sirens relaxing near a fountain.
Andy thinks they’re rich because they’re clothes are clean and they’re all smiling. Even the trees bespeak of wealth – elegant pines jutting up to the spotless sky. A neatly manicured lawn, perfectly edged by some gardener, bleached walkways and freshly painted trim. What a bunch of crap, he thinks.
A well kept older woman wearing a groomed white wig stands to one side of the picture. She waves to Andy, coming across the lawn.
“Come on up dear! We’re almost done!” It’s Miss White.
“You’re Andy?”
“Yes.”
She takes him inside for the interview, walking him through a broad foyer lined with sisters in repose and study. One of them glances up and waves to Miss White brightly, and her eyes slide to Andy for a brief moment. She never makes eye contact and is back into her textbook before he can exhale. When they arrive in Miss White’s office, Andy seats himself on the other side of the room from her, expecting the usual mistrust. But, after a few basic questions, she stands up. “Alright then. Congratulations, sweetie,” she says in a light Southern lilt.
“I got the job?” he asks, surprised.
“Well, you sure did, but, it’s not because of that widower priest. To be honest, we can really use your help next weekend for Rush and Parents’ Night, which is a mess. We let him give mass to our girls every Friday after dinner and he’s something of a fixture around here but I tell you Andy, I don’t let him out of my sight.”
Fine, thinks Andy.
“Come on,” she says, “I’ll get you started on a few things, just to familiarize you with what we’re all about.”
Andy stands at the entrance of the long hall that bisects the third floor, where most of the returning sisters have their rooms. Miss White has sent him upstairs to vacuum. He pads softly past a girl brushing her long brown hair, sitting on a stool in her tan bra, gazing into her dresser mirror and talking to her friend, who is out of sight.
“But he’s like, so holy,” says the out of sight voice.
“That priest,” replies the girl, “is a creep. And I don’t care if he is a man of God or whatever.” Cool thinks Andy, and walks back downstairs.
Then Miss White shows him the kitchen where he will be spending much of the time. It is a gleaming colonial specimen; black and white tiles and shiny silver meat-cutters and graters and giant stainless steel sinks, hulking whirring freezers and fridges and metal cutting boards on wheels. Despite the obvious capacity of the room, for now it is eerily still and empty but for the two of them. She sends him home after that.
It is hotter going than it was coming, and Andy sloths into their hotel room feeling like a kitchen rag. Ruth is on the phone, but is wearing her blue “pastor-catcher” dress as Andy calls it, chatting energetically, even a little girlishly, thinks Andy. He goes into the kitchenette area and begins washing their cheap travel cooking pans loudly, scraping the dried chili off with a knife instead of using soap and water.
It becomes apparent that Father Larry is inviting her next weekend to Alpha Pi’s parents’ night and also, thinks Andy, when he will be working. She’s already said yes yet halfheartedly protests while curling a few strands of hair around her finger “But Father, I’m not a parent of one of the girls, -well, if you say so, I guess he is. Well, okay then, see you soon, oh, father, really…good night.”
Andy turns around and says “Mom, why don’t you just go back to dad if you want a priest so bad?”
Ruth is looking out the window. She doesn’t seem to notice Andy has spoken until she replies “Your father is a fool. I’ve told you I’m never going back to him. You need some good men around, Andy. You’re a young man now and we need to settle down. Here.”
“I heard some of the sorority girls call Father Larry a creep today,” Andy replies.
“Young people always think that about authority figures.”
“Mom, they’re in their twenties.”
“Don’t you think that about me?” she asks.
“No, mom. I think he’s weird, that’s all. I don’t know why, but he’s strange, and Miss White thinks so too.”
Ruth doesn’t respond so Andy goes back to the dishes for a minute or so. Finally, he can’t take it anymore. “I think this town is hot and creepy and we should leave mom” he says.
“Son, it’s beautiful. We just got here, I’m in love –“
“MOM, you haven’t even met him yet.”
“Can’t you have some patience with your poor mother? I’m serious this time. We have to stop drifting or you’ll never finish school, just like I never did. We’re staying no matter what. That’s that.”
Andy envisions a twisting canyon
road and Father Larry’s car. He storms out of the hotel room. Outside he sees that the sun is still up
although it’s nearly
Their room is just off the main drag – the only drag – and Andy decides to check out the town, but there isn’t much to see. Colfax’s main street can be viewed in its entirety from one end to the other. Wheat fields surround the town in a tan colored pastiche of sky and crops, broken only by Alpha Pi and Greek Row, which gazes over Colfax from its cluster of pines like a Count over his fiefdom. A few of the locals make eye contact and look cockeyed at Andy’s grimy clothes, or so it seems to him. He’s not sure, but he is sure that the place is a hole in world where people fall. A farmer drives past in a beat-up pickup truck with two dogs in back. One of the dogs starts barking at Andy and jumps out of the back and hits the ground with a sickening cracking sound. It starts howling on impact. The owner stops his truck, gets out, and looks at Andy accusingly.
“You jeerin my dog boy?”
“No sir. He just jumped out by himself.”
“You new in town son?”
“Yes sir.”
“Keep it that way. My dog never jumped out for nothing in ten years.” With that, the surly man picks up his whimpering dog and lays him gently in the back of the truck, sets back in the cab and drives through the now red light.
When he gets back Ruth is gone. There’s a half bottle of red wine on the circular table next to the wall-mounted TV and a single sheet of stationary with only “Dear James” – his father’s name – written on it. He stares out the window into the street. I might have to leave her in a few years he thinks. I can’t drive fast enough from these assholes, and here she is trying to get tied down to one of them.
Ruth comes back a little after
midnight, opening the door quietly to find Andy pretending to be asleep face
down on his twin bed, still in his clothes.
She shuts the door quietly and gets ready for sleep while looking in the
mirror, toying with her long, naturally curled hair; she’s crying. Andy hears a car start up outside the window
and putter away. 
When
Andy walks 10 minutes late into the kitchen of Alpha Pi the next Sunday, the
three person staff are already a bustle of activity. Miss White stands at the fulcrum of the
storm, arms folded and a Southerner’s patience on display. She directs Andy, after a quick good morning,
to the head cook, a tall and rail thin Ethiopian woman named Bantu. Bantu directs him wordlessly to a pair of
enormous 60 gallon industrial sinks. One
of them is empty but the other holds hundreds of giant shrimp, heads and tails
and legs all intact. She shows him how
to, in three quick movements, eviscerate and bring to readiness for cooking the
shrimp. She is incredibly fast, as all
the staff seem to be, and in a matter of seconds she has done a dozen
shrimp. Andy looks at her warily.
"I'm not sure I can go
that fast" he says. She just
smiles, pats his shoulder, and says "Yes you can."
Finding himself wrapped up in Bantu's directives, Andy works up a considerable sweat throughout the afternoon, and when he finally looks up at the clock, it's nearly five. The girls are still coming in and out of the kitchen: some eating, some on their way to sunbathe on the roof, others to get downstairs. The kitchen is clearly a main traffic corridor for the building. He's saturated with blond ponytails, pink shorts and bikini tops over tanned torsos and shiny lipstick. He looks less and less willingly at each sister as the afternoon progresses; none of them really seem to notice him. Now it's five and his stomach is growling. Parents have begun arriving for the open house and are wandering about the building. He stops power washing the dishes, his second job, for a moment and walks quietly over to the steaming vat of newly cooked shrimp and eats a dozen as fast as Bantu eviscerated them.
Miss White sends him on another paranoid last cleaning detail of the dining room and upstairs. The vast hardwood dining area is large enough, and is often used, as a ballroom. White tapestries and linens adorn the walls and sills, and refined chandelier lighting drops low from the ceiling, giving an expansive yet intimate feel to the room, as if any person could cozy up to you if they wanted.
Andy's not sure why Miss White's told him to sweep it because everything's immaculate, so he skips it and goes straight to vacuuming the girls' hallway upstairs, where a whirlwind of female activity greets him. Two girls are having a vicious hair-pulling argument at the other end of the hall. Andy watches as the girls spill from their rooms to encircle the two, some cheering or talking loudly, others watching with crossed arms. One of the girls is talking on her cell phone while she watches with half her attention. No one steps in to stop it. Finally, the taller of the two, her face red from slaps, her shirt torn, and her hair a tangled jumble, breaks through the circle and rushes into her room, slamming the door behind her. Still unseen, he returns downstairs having not cleaned a single thing. These people are crazy he thinks.
Miss White starts Andy pouring glasses of champagne for the parents and sparkling cider for the girls, but only the champagne glasses show any movement out to the dining room where parents have begun arriving and the girls are now mostly gathered. There are over two hundred of glasses lined up and full on the vast wheeled metal carts for the one hundred guests. Andy bolts a few while no one is looking. Not that anyone gives a shit, he thinks. Adults are so into themselves. We’re getting out of here no matter what.
Miss White lets Andy go sit with his mom and Father Larry at seven-thirty, and Bantu orders the release of the shrimp to the one hundred and fifty mothers, fathers, newly pledged and returning sisters of Alpha Pi, several of whom Andy recognizes from the portrait on the steps. The unseasoned, boiled shrimp are served in a large ceramic bowl, one for each table. Each person is given a small dish of red cocktail sauce for dipping. Andy poured several of these dishes until Bantu put him onto a less urgent task.
Ruth has had three glasses already, and Father Larry is keeping up. Andy is pretty sure her hand is on his leg under the table. The priest devours the shrimp, 25 or so of them, going through several dishes of cocktail sauce and frequently wiping his lips with his napkin. Red cocktail sauce is everywhere. Priests are slobs, thinks Andy, and he can see that Ruth thinks it’s disgusting too. We may be poor, she often says, but at least we have manners when we eat. Andy considers this faux pas by Father Larry progress.
After dinner, Andy helps the staff move the tables and chairs to prepare for dancing as a fifteen piece swing band sets up. He looks around the room and sees that everyone is trying not to stare quixotically at the three of them. He gets the feeling that Father Larry is a sort of known quantity in the community, barely tolerated. As the band starts into an up-tempo Glen Miller, Father Larry ushers Ruth into the middle of the quickly filling dance floor. Andy heads back into the kitchen, feeling out of place in his dirty kitchen smock.
He grabs a bag of garbage and wanders out to the dumpster at the end of the glistening red brick drive of Alpha Pi. There is a black BMW car parked in front of the dumpster, blocking his path. He sees two slowly thrusting forms, one with her hands on the roof of the car, silhouetted by a distant streetlight. Her ball gown is hitched up past her thighs and her earrings dangle and sparkle. Aren’t they worried about getting caught? He thinks. Still, he lingers, fascinated. They finally notice, though, and he hears the man whisper something to the girl, something like “don’t worry about it…just a kid.” The girl pushes her dress down and they get in the car and glide away, becoming slight forms behind heavy tinting. Andy clanks the garbage into the dumpster and shuffles back in.
As he enters the kitchen, a slow motion film begins as he sees the priest coming up the stairs from the basement and following him, holding his hand, is Ruth. She looks troubled; her face is pale and her naturally curly hair seems to cling to her skull, and her “pastor-catcher” looks like it is on the wrong woman. The priest’s shoes are untied, and Andy feels a wave of absurdity at this realization. He forgot to tie his damn shoes, he thinks. Nice fucking shoes and he forgot to tie them.
“Well, look at this!” The priest booms. Andy looks at Ruth.
“Mom, are you okay?” he asks.
“She’s fine,” says the priest.
A rock and roll song blasts through his head. “I asked her, Father.”
Ruth looks at him with new love. “You were right.” Then, she smiles like Andy has never seen her smile. It is beautiful to see her eyes gleam. Suddenly he feels really great, like he hasn’t felt in a long time.
Father Larry looks bewildered, red-faced.
“You know that car?” Andy says to him, “Well, you can shove it up your ass.”
The priest looks at Ruth, but she is smiling only at her son.
“I
think my brother down in
* * *