The Feather (the rest of the story)

Katy wearily undressed listening to the sound of the tub filling. It was good to be home again. Her mind wandered back over the dreaminess of the last month or more as she stepped out of her dress. The small iridescent tip of a peacock feather floated to the floor as she freed her breasts from her bra and dropped it to the floor. She smiled down at it, as she stepped into the tub. She felt her tired body slowly going limp as she laid back in the warm water and felt it caressing her. She closed her eyes.

The Mojave desert had been scorchingly hot as she had driven west. She had taken the advice of the old man at the gas station miles back and turned off her air conditioning. "The less you make your motor work, young lady, the better your chances of making it across." He had been skeptical in looking over her rusted out Ford. Who knows how long that odometer had stopped counting the miles? It was at 217,000 miles, whenever it had given out. Under the hood, he had shaken his head several times in looking over her belts and hoses. Nevertheless, he topped off her oil and coolant and had given her two gallons of water. If you don't need it, your car might." he said. She sat in her car as he disappeared into the weathered wooden shack to get the change for her twenty. The whole place looked like a kindling pile that would go up in flame if someone lit a match. He approached her window and leaned down to look at her as he handed her several oil stained bills. "Take this too." he said, handing her a roll of silver duct tape. "Your radiator hose ain't the best I've ever seen. If it blows, you can probably patch it together with this. If you lose your coolant, the water I gave you might help you make it to the next station. Where you headin', anyhow?" "San Diego, I guess." she replied. Truth is, she wasn't sure where she was going. "Looka here," he said, pulling a map from his back pocket. He traced her route with his finger. "Bull Head City is about a hundred miles down the road. There's a Texaco just as you're comin' into town. If you're needin' help, ask for Johnny. He's my nephew. From there you can go south to 95 west. That'll take you through the Joshua trees, and you'll hit California right along the Mexican border." She smiled at him as he handed her the map. She looked at him in her rear view mirror, standing there along the roadside waving at her with a dirty red grease rag as she pulled away.

The old man hadn't boosted her shaky confidence by any means. But she knew he was shooting straight. The desert looked beautiful and scary at the same time. Why she thought California might offer her anything more than any other place, she wasn't sure. In fact, she wasn't sure of anything.

Her mother's advice had been, 'Look, you just gotta do what you can, with whatever you've got, wherever you are." She fought back an impulse to cry. It would be a waste of precious water under the circumstance. She glanced at the water jugs on the floor board, and then to the map on the passenger seat. She picked it up and looked at it. From its folds, the twenty dollar bill she had given the old man fell to the floor between her legs. That's when the tears began to fall.

Katy didn't quite make it to Bull Head City. She could actually see it in the distance, shimmering like a mirage. She opened the hood and backed away from the thick smoke that suddenly came billowing up from her motor. She went to the trunk and rummaged through it, not really knowing what she was looking for. She opened one of the boxes she had packed and looked down at its cluttered contents. Memorabilia. She wondered why she had even packed it. Nothing all that memorable about any of it. She picked it up and threw it off to the side of the road, its contents spilling out on the dusty ground. "I am not going to feel sorry for myself, damn it!" she muttered. She walked over to the cardboard box, and angrily tore it apart and took one whole side of it back to the car. She, in fact, did feel quite sorry for herself at the moment. And that was pissing her off even more. She didn't want those feelings, but they were there. She got in behind the wheel and looked at herself in the rear view mirror. She brushed her wind-blown hair. She put on some lipstick, then smeared it across the cardboard, the word, 'HELP!' She laughed, from somewhere deep inside her, about how ridiculously murderous the dark red letters looked. As though drawn in blood.

It was a plan. Not much of a plan, but a plan. It wasn't the big plan about California. It was a little plan. She would just start walking, with her purse slung over her shoulder, a gallon jug of water in one hand, her "HELP!" sign in the other. She would wave it around to anyone passing by. After several weary miles, she began to realize the flaws in her plan. Only one car had passed her and it was going in the opposite direction. A state trooper, no less. He didn't even slow down, even though she flipped him off as he sped by. She tossed her cardboard sign off into the air watching it sail a few yards and land in a mesquite bush. It was another oddly funny moment. She tipped the gallon jug up and took several large gulps of the more than tepid water as she walked over to the bush. She poured the remainder out over its dusty drak green leaves.. It splashed onto the cardboard sign and stained the soil a darkish brown. "Here you go, you mindless thing. Just remember, my name is Katy, I gave you water when you didn't even ask."

It took another hour to get to the outskirts of Bull Head. From a distance it appeared to be a big and busy city. But coming in on the East side, things looked rather shabby and run down. Windows on buildings seemed covered with a fine desert dust, as did the cars and trucks parked here and there. Looking ahead to the next block she could see a sign suspended over the sidewalk. It was the red Texico star. She felt weak and a bit light headed from walking almost three hours beneath the desert sun. She walked past an old rusty looking tow truck and saw the legs and boots of someone sticking out from under the front of a pick-up truck, and she could hear some muffled cursing. "Excuse me," she said, bending down to peer under the truck. "Is Johnny around?" "Johnny's busy right now.", was the reply amidst some more cursing and banging noises. She stepped back as the man began to slide out from under the truck. "How can I help you, ma'am?" he said as he stood and wiped a bloody knuckle with a grease rag. "I'm looking for Johnny.", she said. "Why? What's he done now?" "Oh, it's nothing like that." she said, " His uncle told me to ask for Johnny if I was needing help." The man squinted at her, shading his eyes from the sun with his hand. "You talkin' about that crazy old man way back down that road a good ways?" he said, gesturing off to the east with a nod of his head. "Umm, well, he didn't seem crazy to me.", she replied. Oh, he's crazy alright; harmless, but crazy as they come. What's the problem, ma'am?" "Well, my car broke down way back there." she said, pointing down the road. He tossed the grease rag onto the pavement behind him, and looked at his watch. "Will Johnny be back anytime soon?", she asked. "Look, lady", he replied, "How far down the road did you break down?" "I don't know", Katy shrugged. "It took me a couple of hours or more of walking to get here." "Come on", he said walking toward the tow truck. He opened the door, "Hop in. We'll go take a look at the situation." "You mean, right now?" she asked. "Yep, time's awastin' darlin', he replied glancing at his watch again. She climbed up into the dirty cab of the truck.

She glanced over at him as they drove down the highway. He was quite brown skinned. With black shaggy hair tied back with a bandana. She looked at his hand on the steering wheel. His knuckle, still bleeding in a red trickle down toward his wrist. "You need a band-aid for that cut." she said. He glanced down at it, then raised it to his mouth and licked it. "Look down there in that tool box," he said, pointing down to it on the floor board at her feet. "There might be a band-aid in there somewhere." She rummaged around through the greasy tools. "Oh, here's one. Hold out your hand." He glanced over at her as she gingerly applied the band-aid to his knuckle. "What's your name?" he asked. "Katy," she replied, glancing up at him. "What's yours?" "Johnny." he said, smiling at the surprised look on her face. "You mean, the crazy man is your uncle?" He nodded, chuckling. "It kinda runs in the family."

Johnny figured out the problem, he'd seen it before. "It's seized up." he said, turning to look at her. "What does that mean?", Katy asked. "It's a major melt down, so to speak. Your oil pump blew, and so the motor got so hot, the pistons got froze up in the block." Katy looked at him. "It got so hot, it froze?" "Something like that." Johnny said. Katy sat down by the side of the road, and began to cry. "It's not that bad." Johnny said, kneeling in front of her. "Not that bad?" Katy said with her hands over her face. "I am stuck in the middle of the desert, with a motor that just froze because it was so hot, and that's not bad? I am so fucked!" Johnny brushed her hair away from her face. "No, it's not that bad. I can drop another motor in for you in 48 hours. " She suddenly laughed hysterically. "Oh, and so, how can I afford that?!" "Hey, look, I got three motors sitting in the back of the garage with nothing to do. You can make it up to me one day. I can tell you are on your way somewhere, and I'd like to help you get there."

Katy spent the next two days at Johnny's mother's house. The old woman seemed constantly in the kitchen. Constantly putting more food in front of her. Both Johnny's mother and father agreed, she was way too skinny for a girl her age. She went up to Johnny's apartment in the attic, and slept with him at night. He was a sweet and gentle lover.

Katy stepped out of the tub and wrapped a towel around her. She walked barefooted through the boxes of all her stuff. Tomorrow she would head back to Bull Head City, and with a brand new motor. She tickled her nose with the peacock's feather Johnny had given her, then tucked it under her pillow. She faded into sleep thinking about Johnny, what kinds of jobs there were in Bull Head City, and how, of course, she would stop off to see Johnny's crazy uncle.