Keepers

Cary C. Holladay photo by ¡im Rollins Cary C. Holladay has been writing fiction since the age of six. After earning her B.A. from the College of William and Mary, she was awarded a teaching assistantship at thePennsylvania State University, State College. She is currently enrolled in the graduate English program, with a concentration on fiction writing. Anotherofherstories appeared in theFall, 1980, issueofWest Branch. Keepers WITH A NAME like Emory he should never have left the South. Growing up in Mobile had almost been enough. The summer he was seventeen he decided to see it all before he left it. He drove all over the states and slept in the car. Some mornings he woke at sunrise not knowing where he was, with his arms flung over his head and crossed at the wrists as if bound. Then his mind would say Carolina or Georgia or Kentucky, and he'd turn back onto the highway a little east or a little west, but always north. He was running out of money by the time he got to Virginia, and then outside of a bar in Roanoke two black boys fought him and took his wallet and his watch and the cheap ring that they thought was gold. He still had a little money hidden in the glove compartment of the car. The bruised jaw hurt him, but he laughed when he thought of the black boys trying to sell the old tin alloy ring for gold. Somewhere between Culpeper and Manassas, his carbroke down, the radiatorboiling over, the engine hissing into the cricket-filled twilight. Red-clay farmland stretched round him. He knew the car and knew there was nothing to be done, and he pulled his sack of belongings out of the back seat and flung the pale hair out of his eyes and put out his thumb. He'd hitchhiked before, but he'd always been picked up by singles—usually men, once a woman. A horse-trailer and a pickup truck spun past him. Then a sports car pulled over, and he leaned down to the window and the driver asked where he was headed and he just said north. The woman in the passenger seat climbed out so he could fold his thin six-foot frame into the back. Then they were back on the highway and Emory saw that the man was Chinese, with his hair grown out long, and an unironed white shirt with the cuffs rolled back, and a pair of aviator sunglasses on top of his head, and the woman was beautiful in an odd kind of way, very high cheekbones like a Slav, and hair like wet bark. The man drove very fast and once the woman warned him about the radar speed-checking but he didn't answer her. Instead he lit a cigarette. Emory stared at the backs of their necks. They told him they were going to New York, and he thought they meant New York City, and he said that was fine, and after they'd gone a hundred miles the woman said something about the Catskills, so he knew it wasn't the city, but that was fine too. They stopped at a pancake house for supper. Emory counted out his money slowly in his hand. The woman saw him and said something to the man and the man said he would pay for Emory's meal too. Emory hadn't eaten for a day and a half. He ordered a stack of pancakes andbacon and a Cory C. Holladay The Missouri Review ¦ 227 plate of fried potatoes. The man and his wife ordered ribeye steaks and then the man excused himself and went to a telephone. He pushed some coins through the slot and then dialed, turning away while he talked. The woman smiled across her steak and coffee at Emory and said her name was Sloane, and her husband was Marty Chung, you know, whose pictures maybe he'd seen in the national weekly news magazines. Emory had seen cameras on the back seat of the car. But he didn't know the name. He told her he hadn't been able to...