Just then I hear another sputtering noise, like the sound of fuel igniting. I don’t stop to think. I run as fast as I can away from the car, Hank Junior glued to my side, my guitar case and notebook clutched in my other hand.
I hear the car explode even as I’m still running flat out. I feel the heat on the backs of my arms. Hank Junior yelps, and we run faster. I trip and roll on the rough surface pavement, my guitar case skittering ahead of me, Hank Junior’s leash getting tangled between my legs.
I lie there for a moment, staring up at the blue Tennessee sky, trying to decide if I’m okay. In the next instant, I realize the flouncy cotton skirt Mama made me as a going away present is strangling my waist, and Hank Junior’s head is splayed across my belly, his leash wrapped tight around my left leg.
Brakes screech and tires squall near what sounds inches from my head. I rock forward, trying to get up, but Hank yips at the pinch of his collar.
“Are you all right?”
The voice is male and deep, Southern like mine with a little more drawl. I can’t see his face, locked up with Hank Junior as I am. Footsteps, running, and then a pair of enormous cowboy boots comes into my vision.
“Shit-fire, girl! Is that your car?”
“Was my car,” I say to the voice.
“Okay, then.” He’s standing over me now, a mountain of a guy wearing jeans, a t-shirt that blares Hit Me – I Can Take It and a Georgia Bulldogs cap. “Here, let me help you,” he says.
He hunkers down beside me and starts to untangle Hank Junior’s leash. Hank would usually do me the service of a bark if a stranger approached me, but not this time. He wags his tail in gratitude as the big guy unhooks the snap from his collar, tugs it free from under my leg and then re-hooks it.
Realizing my skirt is still snagged around my waist, my pink bikini underwear in full view, I sit up and yank it down, nothing remotely resembling dignity in my urgency.
“What’s going on, man?”
I glance over my shoulder and see another guy walking toward us, this one not nearly so big, but sounding grouchy and looking sleep-deprived. He’s also wearing cowboy boots and a Georgia Bulldogs cap, the bill pulled low over dark sunglasses. His brown hair is on the long side, curling out from under the hat.
He glances at the burning car, as if he’s just now getting around to noticing it and utters, “Whoa.”
Mountain Guy has me by the arm now and hauls me to my feet. “You okay?”
I swipe a hand across my skirt, dust poofing out. “I think so. Yes. Thank you.”
Hank Junior looks at the second guy and mutters a low growl. I’ve never once doubted his judgment so I back up a step.
“Aw, he’s all right,” Mountain Guy says to Hank Junior, patting him on the head. “He always wakes up looking mean like that.”
Grouchy Guy throws him a look. “What are we doing?”
“What does it look like we’re doing?” Mountain Guy says. “Helping a damsel in distress.”
“I’m not a damsel,” I say, my feathers ruffling even as I realize I could hardly be in much more distress than I am currently in.
Gertrude is now fully engulfed in flames, from her pointed front end to her rounded trunk. Cars are keeping to the far left lane. Surprisingly, no one else has bothered to stop, although I can see people grabbing their cell phones as they pass, a couple to take pictures, others more likely dialing 911.
“So what exactly happened?” Mountain Guy asks me.
“I just heard this loud noise and then smoke started coming out of the hood.”
“Good thing you got her pulled over fast,” he says.
“I didn’t know they let vehicles that old on the road,” Grouchy Guy says.
“She belonged to my Granny,” I fire back in instant outrage, as if everything that has just happened is all his fault.
Grouchy Guy starts to say something, presses his lips together, maybe thinking better of it.
“Don’t pay him no mind,” Mountain Guy advises. “You live near here?”
I laugh then, the sound popping up out of me under the sudden realization that with the exception of my dog, my guitar and my lyrics notebook, I now have no other earthly possessions to call my own. Even my purse has been incinerated inside Gertrude’s melted interior.
The shrill whine of a fire engine echoes from down the Interstate, and a couple of seconds later it comes roaring into sight, lights flashing. It rolls to a heavy stop just behind Gertrude, brakes squealing. Men dressed in heavy tan uniforms grab hoses and run at the burning car.
The water gushes out with impressive force. The blazing fire is a joke against the onslaught, and in less than a minute, the flames slink into nothingness. The only thing left is the charred framework of Gertrude’s once sleek exterior.
As soon as the water hoses cut off, I start to cry, as if some sort of transference has turned on the flow inside of me. I cry because I’ve ruined Granny’s car, her most prized possession. I cry because I now have no money, no means of getting any closer to my dream than my own two feet will carry me. And I cry because everybody back home was exactly right. I was born with dreams way too big for somebody like me to ever make come true.
“Hey, now.” Mountain Guy pats me on the shoulder the same way he had patted Hank Junior on the head a few minutes before. “Everything’s gonna be all right.”
One of the firemen walks up to us. “This y’all’s car?”
Grouchy Guy points at me. “It was hers.”
“Sorry for your loss, ma’am,” the fireman says. “Guess you’ll be needing to call a tow truck.”
Even Mountain Guy can’t help laughing at this, and maybe if you were removed from the situation, it would be pretty funny. Me? I’m anything but removed, and I’m suddenly thankful for Mama’s faithful Triple A membership and the insurance she’s paid up for me through the end of the year.
“You can tell them the car is just short of Mile Marker 320.”
“Thank you,” I say. “And thank you for putting out the--”
“No problem, ma’am,” he says quickly, as if realizing I can’t bring myself to finish.
I glance at Mountain Guy. “Do you have a cell I could borrow?”
“Sure thing.” He pulls an iPhone from his shirt pocket and hands it to me.
“You mind if I get the number for Triple A?”
“’Course not.”
Hank Junior’s leash wrapped around my wrist, I walk a few steps away and tap 411. A bored-sounding operator gives me the 800 number and then connects me free of charge. The woman who takes my “case” doesn’t sound the least bit surprised that my car has burned to smithereens or that I need a tow truck to come and get us both. I wonder if she gets calls like this every day.
In between her questions, I can hear Mountain Guy and Grouchy Guy in a low rumble of discussion that sounds like it has disagreement at its edges. I know they’re talking about me, and while I want to swing around and scream at them both that I don’t need their help, I know the last thing I can afford to do is look a gift horse in the mouth.
The lady from Triple A tells me that Ray’s Towing from Cookeville will be coming out to get the car. She asks if I will also need a ride. I tell her both my dog and I will.
I return the phone to Mountain Guy.
“Get it all squared away?” he asks.
“I think so,” I say, not even sure in this context what that could possibly mean.
“How long before they get here?”
“Hour.”
“Well, you can’t wait by yourself. It’ll be dark by then,” Mountain Guy says.
“I’ll be fine,” I say. “But thanks for stopping. And for letting me use your phone.”
“Not a problem,” he says, glancing over at Grouchy Guy who is still wearing his sunglasses and has his arms folded across his chest in a stance of non-compliance.
I pick up my guitar case and give Hank Junior a little tug before backing away from them. “Thanks again,” I say and head for my charred car.
I’m halfway there when Mountain Guy calls out, “You going to Nashville?”
“What gave it away?” Grouchy Guy throws out, his voice heavy with sarcasm.
I pin him with a look, then turn my gaze to his friend. “Yeah. I am.”
“Well, so are we,” Mountain Guy says. “No point in you staying here when we’re going to the same place, now is there?”
Relief, unwelcome though it is, floods through me. I am feeling kind of sick at the thought of waiting with the car while dark sets in. Maybe I’ve watched too many episodes of Disappeared. My imagination has already started heading off in directions I’d just as soon it didn’t.
But then, on the other hand, I don’t know squat about the two I’m getting ready to ride off with. They could be serial murderers thinking it was their lucky day that my car caught on fire, and they happened by.
Hank Junior seems to think they’re all right though. He’s no longer low-growling at Grouchy Guy. And besides, what choice do I really have? I have no money, no credit card, no clothes.
Panic starts to clutch at me, and all of a sudden, I hear my Granny’s voice telling me, as she had so many times when I was growing up, that we take this life one moment, one day at a time. I’m not going to look any farther ahead than that because if I do, I think I might just dissolve into a puddle of failure right here on the side of I-40.
“Let’s get this show on the road,” Mountain Guy says, taking my guitar case from me and placing it in the bed of the pickup.
Grouchy Guy looks at me. “He riding in the back?”
“You mean Hank Junior?” I ask.
“That his name?”
“It is.”
“Yeah, Hank Junior.”
“Not unless I am,” I answer.
Grouchy Guy looks at Mountain Guy. “That’s fine with me.”
Mountain Guy laughs. “Man, you got up on the wrong side of the truck.” Then to me, “He ain’t always this nasty. Y’all hop on in.”
Without looking at Grouchy Guy, I scoot Hank Junior up onto the floorboard, and climb in behind him, sliding to the middle. He hops onto my lap and curls up in a ball, as if he knows he needs to be as inconspicuous as possible.
It’s a full truck with the four of us. My shoulders are pressed up against both guys, and I try to make myself smaller by hunching over.
Mountain Guy throws the truck in gear, checks the side mirror and guns onto the highway. “Reckon we oughta know your name,” he says.
“CeCe,” I answer. “CeCe MacKenzie.”
“CeCe MacKenzie,” he sings back with a country twang. “Got a nice little rhyme to it.”
“What’s yours?” I ask, aware that I will now have to quit calling him Mountain Guy.
“Thomas Franklin.”
“You don’t look like a Thomas,” I say.
“I get that a lot.”
“I’m sorry,” I start to apologize.
“Hey, no problem. My folks wanted the world to take me seriously, so they never gave in on the Tom, Tommy thing.”
“Oh. Makes sense.”
“Attitude over there is Holden Ashford.”
“Hey,” Holden says without looking at me. He’s still wearing the dark glasses, and I wonder if his eyes are as unfriendly as his voice.
“Hey,” I reply, matching my tone to his.
“Where you from, CeCe?” Thomas asks, shooting a glance my way.
“Virginia.”
“Georgia,” he says, waving a hand at himself and then Holden.
“Let me guess,” Holden says. “You wanna be a singer?”
“I am a singer,” I shoot back.
I can’t be sure because of the glasses, but I’d swear he rolled his eyes. “What about the two of you? You headed to Nashville to be plumbers or something?”
Thomas laughs a deep laugh that fills up the truck. “Heck, no. I sing. He writes and plays guitar.”
“That’s why he takes himself so seriously.” The words are out before I can think to stop them.
“Matter of fact, it is,” Thomas says, another laugh rolling from his big chest.
“Up yours,” Holden says without looking at either of us. I’m not sure if he’s talking to Thomas or to me.
“What do you sing, CeCe?” Thomas asks.
“Country. What else is there?”
“Heck, yeah!” Thomas slaps the steering wheel. “Although with a dog named Hank Junior I reckon I could’ve assumed that.”
At the sound of his name, Hank Junior raises his head, blinks at Thomas and then continues his snooze.
“What about you?” I ask. “Who’re your favorites?”
“Chesney, Twitty, Haggard, Flatts. If it’s got country on it, I sing it. Holden there says I have a sound of my own. I figure it’s just what’s managed to stick together from all my years of tryin’ to sound as good as the greats.”
The sun has dropped on the horizon, fading fast. The sky has a pinkish glow to it, and cars have started to flip on their headlights. A sign on the right says Cookeville - 5 miles.
Holden pulls a phone out of his pocket, taps the screen and says, “Starbucks off exit 288. I could use a coffee.”
“I’ll second that,” Thomas agrees, and then looking at me, “We’ve got a gig tonight. Nine o’clock at the Bluebird.”