“There,” Turtle says, pointing at a billboard.
“That says to go buy snakeskin boots at Robby’s Western Wear Outlet. You think we should buy snakeskin boots?”
“No!” Turtle says, pulling her head back hard against the seat, tucking her chin down and shaking her whole body with the negative.
“Okay, look for something else.”
“There,” Turtle says after a minute, pointing at an envelope stuck under the windshield wiper.
“Shoot, how can they give you a ticket in the parking lot of a damn grocery store?” Taylor opens the door at a stop sign and reaches around to grab it. “I’m sorry to set a bad moral example for you, Turtle, but if this is a ticket I’m throwing it away. I didn’t do anything wrong, plus they’ll never find us anyway.” She hands it to Turtle and accelerates.
Turtle takes a very long time to tear open the envelope.
“What’s it say? ‘Citation’ starts with C-I-T, it means a ticket.”
“It says: Dear Cad Die…”
“Dear cad die?”
“C-A-D-D-I-E.”
“Caddie. Let me see that.”
“I can read it,” Turtle says. “It’s not too long.”
“Okay.” Taylor concentrates on being patient and not hitting pedestrians. People in Sand Dune don’t seem in tune with the concept of traffic lights.
“Dear Caddie. I am sorry I did-n’t see you at miggets…”
“Miggets?” Taylor glances over at Turtle, who is holding the paper very close to her face. “That’s okay, keep going.”
“At miggets like I pro, pro-my-sed.”
“Like I promised.”
“Like I promised. Here is the S 50.”
“S 50?” To Taylor it sounds like a fighter plane.
“The S is crossed out.”
“A line through it?” Taylor considers. “Here is the 50? Oh, a dollar sign, here is the fifty dollars? Look in the envelope, is there anything else in there?”
Turtle looks. “Yes.” She hands over two twenties and a ten.
“What else does it say? Is there a name at the bottom?”
Taylor can’t wait any longer, and reaches for the note: Dear Caddie, I’m sorry I didn’t see you at Midget’s like I promised. Here’s the $50. Now we’re even and I’ll beat the pants off you next time, right, Toots? Love, Hoops.
It reminds Taylor of the mysterious ads in the newspaper’s personal section: “Hoops, I’ll never forget the fried clams at B.B.O.G., Your Toots.” It stands to reason that the kind of person who would waste money on those ads would leave fifty dollars on the wrong car.
“Who’s Caddie?” Turtle wants to know.
“Somebody else with a big white car. Some guy named Hoops owed her money, and didn’t want to face her in person.”
“Why did he give it to us?”
“Because we’re lucky.”
“Was that the sign telling us where to go?” Turtle asks.
“I guess. It’s a sign our luck has turned. Money’s walking to us on its own two feet. I guess we ought to go to Las Vegas.”
“What’s Las Vegas?”
“A place where people go to try their luck.”
Turtle considers this. “Try to do what with it?”
“Try to get more money with it,” Taylor says.
“Do we want more money?”
“It’s not so much we want it. We just have to have it.”
“Why?”
“Why?” Taylor frowns and tilts the rearview mirror to get the setting sun out of her eyes. “Good question. Because nobody around here will give us anything, except by accident.
Food or gas or what all we need. We’ve got to buy it with money.”
“Even if we really need something, they won’t give it to us?”
“Nope. There’s no free lunch.”
“But they’ll give us money in Las Vegas?”
“That’s the tale they tell.”
Even a joke has some weight and takes up space, and when introduced into a vacuum, acquires its own gravity. Taylor is thinking about her high school physics teacher, Hughes Walter, and what he might say about her present situation.
To amuse herself on long drives she often puts together im-probable combinations of the people she’s met in her life, and imagines what they would say to each other: Her mother and Angie Buster. Lou Ann’s mean, prudish grandmother and Jax. Better yet: Jax and the woman looking for the horses.