There are two things I vividly remember about our 5-hour ride to Charleston West Virginia: that we crossed the Kanawha River three times, and that I kept telling myself "I'll never do that again." No, not crossing the same river three times in an hour, but crossing a woman's heart with my boots on. I kept seeing Gwen's last look; not in the kitchen where she said goodbye, but looking out the living room window at us as I was backing the rat away from the porch. She was holding the envelope that Moira had left for her on the coffee table, with how much money in it I don't know. I never asked.
Moira sensed my depression. She kept trying to cheer me up on the ride by shouting things like, "Oh look at that!" when it was just so many trees, or an antique car all shined up, or the bend of the Ohio River when we were crossing a tributary bridge just before our second stop. It was that stop where she finally got a smile out of me, at a roadside eatery.
Maybe it was the distance I had put between there and the hillbilly house where Larry would be making himself at home by now, that helped relieve me of the cold weight in my chest; but more likely it was the amusing story she told about Joe coming down the stairs all dressed up as Josie, shocking his dad, Edgar, who was entertaining a prospective investor. Moira said she had talked Joe into it, meaning, I think, that she dared him.
What was funny about it was her choosing outfits for him to try on that she had brought over from her house next door, clothes too big for her now that she had lost x-number of pounds. He was as fussy as any girl in deciding what looked best on him. Added to that was her news that Josie had checked into a Super 8 motel off the 68 in Morgantown, in the direction of Cheat Lake. This puzzled her until Josie texted back with the explanation that Super 8 and Motel 6 were owned by the same company. But that was of no interest to me compared to the fact that Josie's motel wasn't far from Top's place. It was in the same general area, away from the college-town hustle and the quaint sprawl of the suburb.
At a park in Charleston I called Top. I had not talked to him since Salt Lake City. He was in Pittsburg but would be back in Morgantown by noon tomorrow. He chuckled all through the two-minute conversation. I asked him how the "game" was going. He said Whitey and Squaw were at the house keeping an eye on things, and were anxious to tool away to Columbus Ohio, just as soon as he got back. So that was settled. I'd see Top tomorrow afternoon, with Moira in tow if she didn't get cold feet; but tonight we would stay in Charleston. I didn't want Josie interfering with anything I might choose to do with Moira, and when I told her that she nodded, her face alight with anticipation.
We didn't bother with vouchers. We got a room for less than 50 bucks, double occupancy. We fell almost immediately into bed and talked ourselves to sleep before the afternoon was half over.
She was firing questions at me about my family ties in California and Texas, as if she had not heard anything of it before. I tried to grill her about Josie's dad, about what he might have let on concerning what he knew, or thought he knew, about his wife, the sinister Roberta. Moira, so voluminous in her questioning of me, had little to say when the subject was her relationship with Josie's family. She kept butting Hadley Colt into the increasingly drowsy conversation, until I just didn't care; until even her blowing into my ear couldn't keep me awake.
And now I need to digress a bit and bring up how it was that I met Top, and what his game was all about. It began in Laramie Wyoming, in 1995, in the dog days of summer, in the midst of a heat-wave that had the temp hovering between hades and hell.
The roads were soft and the air tasted like chalk. The rodeo had ended a few days before and every saloon seemed tired, as though every patron was a cowboy with rope-burned hands and a sunken chest from bull riding.
It was in Laramie, and by extension Cheyenne, where I joined the Roadents. My prospect status lasted the whole of one day and the initiation was anything but brutal. Even so I thought it was hardly worth the effort, being the fourth member of a club whose nature is to disperse in any and all directions individually, usually, without rhyme or reason, except that going nowhere in particular takes a determined will. But the upshot was meeting Top.
That made it all seem worth it.
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