Liz had whispered, “Yes, Mama, I want it.”
“Then pack your bags, girl. You’re leavin’ in the morning. If you decide you want to come back to the carnival, you’re always welcome, and the people next door to Haskell’s have already said they are interested in buying the acres and the house. Me, I hope that you hate the damn place in a week or even a day. I don’t want you to go, but Haskell and Poppa are right. You are twenty-five. It’s time for you to make your decision about being a carnie forever or quitting the business.”
“And so here I am,” Liz said to herself aloud as she poured the soup into a bowl. “I guess Raylen is the one Mama was talkin’ about buying my property. Well, ain’t that a mess! I’ve wanted to see his pretty blue eyes again for eleven years, and he just wants my house and land. I got what I wanted, but he doesn’t get my house or my land, no matter what he offers me.”
After she’d eaten two bowls of soup and a chunk of cheese, she washed up her dishes, a habit her mother had instilled in her from childhood. “In a trailer this size, there’s no room for clutter,” she’d said so many times that Liz couldn’t count them.
She went back to the living room, found the light switch and flipped it on, then brought in the first load of her things. Four doors opened off the hallway. Haskell’s bedroom was the first on the right, across the hall from the bathroom, and swept clean. Not even a lonesome old dust bunny scampered into the corner. The next two offered up two more bedrooms. One very small one was completely empty. She vaguely remembered a desk being in the room. She swung open the fourth door to find another bedroom with a four-poster bed, a dresser with a big round mirror above it, and one of those old-time vanities with a velvet bench that pulled up to a three-sided mirror. The bed looked like it covered an acre and made her feel small when she kicked off her shoes and stretched out on it.
The wind brushed a tree limb across the window screen and Hooter set up a long, low, lonesome howl right under the window. It sounded as if he were mourning the loss of his master, which sent chill bumps dancing up and down Liz’s arms. She threw her legs over the side of the bed and hurried back down the hall, through the kitchen, and slung open the back door.
“What is it, old boy?” she asked.
If dogs could grin, Hooter did. He lowered his head and marched into the house, across the kitchen floor, and past the recliner in the living room. He smelled the cowhide rug, turned around three times before snuggling down for a nap. Liz had been so busy watching the process that she hadn’t realized Blister had snuck in with Hooter until the cat brushed past her leg. She jumped straight up and let out a screech, her heart pounding so hard that she threw a hand on her chest to keep it from jumping out on the floor and shooting past her so fast that it would rival the cat.
Blister slowed down before she reached the recliner and touched noses with Hooter before settling down on the back of the chair like a fur collar on a fancy winter coat.
They both looked up at her mournfully as if asking why she didn’t join them, but she shook her head. “I’ve got to haul suitcases and boxes into the house. I don’t have time to sit around and watch television but thank you for the invitation. After I unpack, maybe I’ll take you up on it later this evening.”
Put them outside. Do not pet them or let them stay in the house. You’ll get attached and it will make leaving even harder. You know what happened that time I was gone for two days, and you hid that kitten in the trailer, her mother’s voice argued with her.
“I’m not leaving. I told Mama I wasn’t teasing when I said I wanted a house and a cowboy for Christmas. Every time we go into a new town, I wonder what it would be like to live in one of the houses we pass on the streets. Now, I get to find out.”
Hooter rolled his big, soulful eyes up at her as if asking what she was talking about. She reached down and scratched the dog’s ears as she walked past him and out into the night. She had two more suitcases, a worn old fiddle case, and two boxes to unload. It wasn’t much to show for twenty-five years, but when two people share a small travel trailer, there’s not room to collect junk. Only the very precious items could be saved, and they were in the boxes. She carried in the suitcases and set them inside the door and went back for the boxes.
She looked north but couldn’t see anything but the moon and one star hanging in the sky. Raylen lived over there. She’d never seen the house, but Uncle Haskell said that his nearest neighbor lived a mile to the north. Was he over there with his wife and a house full of kids? Were they loading up in his truck or van or whatever his wife drove to go to town for fast food and a movie? Would Liz get bored by the end of the winter season and be ready to go back on the road with the carnival?
She sighed and carried her fiddle case inside, then the two small boxes. She was now officially moved in, and it was exhilarating. The dog and cat looked up with soulful eyes and she told them, “Work first. Play later.”
When she’d finished putting her crystal ball on the vanity, a snapshot of her mother and Tressa in full costume on the dresser, and her deck of worn Tarot cards on the bedside table, she felt more at home in the big room. She popped open the suitcases and hung jeans, flowing skirts, a few shirts, and a denim jacket in the closet, arranged underwear, pajamas, and three bright-colored costumes in dresser drawers, and set several pairs of high-heeled shoes, a pair of Nikes, and a pair of scuffed-up cowboy boots on the closet floor.
Work is done. Now I can play, she thought.
She headed up the hallway. Blister opened one eye but didn’t budge from the recliner. Hooter raised his head and looked toward the door.
“Already wanting to go back outside, are you?” The words were barely out of her mouth when someone knocked hard on the door.
She hadn’t heard a vehicle and the dog hadn’t stirred. Some watchdog Hooter was. She opened the door to find Raylen leaning on the jamb.
“Evenin’,” he said in a deep Texas drawl.
“Good evenin’,” she said.
“You goin’ to invite me in?” he asked.
In carnival life, few people came inside the trailer. When they knocked on the door, it usually came with an invitation to come outside, to eat supper at the community potluck, to take a walk around the grounds, or to pet the horses. It had to be serious between two people for them to spend time inside a trailer together. Her mother had never brought a man, carnival worker or any other, inside the trailer. Tressa was the only person Liz could remember ever sitting at the small kitchen table with them.
“Well?” Raylen asked.
She stepped aside. If she was going to embrace a normal life she’d have to get used to the rules. “Come in. I’m sorry. I just got unpacked and my mind was off in la-la land.”
Raylen grinned. “Been there.”
He went straight for the recliner where Blister had taken up residence on the back and sank into it. Hooter raised his head and wagged his tail. Raylen scratched the dog’s ears and then turned his attention to Blister.