The Roundabout Valentine

“Now Herman you just pull into that Stuckey’s and you can find out once and for all just where the road to Roundabout is. And you can pick me up a cherry cola in the bargain. Let’s just stop all this fussing and find out some facts. Land sakes, you’re as stubborn as a pickax stuck in briar wood!”

Ruby Droopkins waggled a bony finger at Mr. Droopkins while she spoke, the big white plastic disks on her mail-order “ivory” bracelet clacking. Her wispy bird-like frame, always jittering in one direction or another, was pitching itself about, seemingly autonomously, positioning itself toward the side window, then toward Herman’s stolid roost at the wheel, then pulling away towards the back window. Ruby Droopkins didn’t look as though she could run a marathon, but her body seem to be in constant training for one.

Herman pulled into the Stuckey’s lot, his face a wall of annoyance. At 20, he had resented unsolicited advice; at 73 its offering boiled his belly, particularly when it was offered as a seeming antidote for a circumstance of his own creation. They had left Excelsior seven hours earlier to visit Ruby’s sister in Roundabout, and Herman had missed the turn onto Highway 203. He had driven for an hour and a half before he noticed his error, and driven for two more before Ruby came out with a pronouncement that the territory “looked mighty peculiar.” 

Turning around and backtracking would’ve put capital letters on the fact that Herman had made a mistake; he had pressed on, sure that his finely honed directional sense would secure them the straight and narrow road to Roundabout.

“Ruby, the cherry cola is one thing. But I’ll be a gopher’s gonad if I’m going to ask some pipsqueak counter clerk how to drive in the state I was raised in. I know Nebraska like I knew my mother’s teat, and I ain’t going to prance in there like some greenhorn with both feet out of the saddle.”

Herman turned off the old Buick in the lot and sat stock still, the creases in his weathered face looking like ancient riverbeds forever damned to dryness. The leading cast of his features bespoke the awfulness of Ruby’s request: Herman Droopkins ask for help, from a stranger, in some devil’s pothole of a town, because of some minor misinterpretation of his original plan? Bah!

He gripped the steering wheel with knuckles whitened, looking straight ahead, never having looked back at his wife since parking. 

Ruby tugged at the tight gray bun on top of her head. She rarely answered one of Herman’s diatribes, knowing that he would usually resign himself to her request, though not without a quick brushfire or two.

They both sat, Herman with a fixed grimace of contempt, Ruby flipping through Good Housekeeping. Abruptly, and with a derisive snort, Herman got up and headed into the building. Ruby smiled and started rubbing a tiny spot on her blouse.

Herman soon emerged from the restaurant, his step jaunty for a gentleman his age. He got in the car and closed the door with a slam.

“Just as I figured it. That whelp has got all the sense of the newborn calf. He tells me the only way to get to Roundabout is to take this damnable highway three hours back the other direction. I won’t pay that polecat for cherry cola if I’ve been drinking sand for a week! I gave him a chunk of my mind as big as this goddamned Buick! We’re on the road again, Mrs. Droopkins, and we’re on the road I’m choosing!”

Herman jackrabbited the old machine back out onto the highway. He thought there was an arterial road that snaked back towards their original direction, but never having been one to carry maps of his own state in his car, he was going to use the waning hours of this Sunday afternoon to chart the course of his memory. It was a memory with more than one crooked alleyway, more than one broken boulevard, but it was Herman Droopkins’ memory, and he’d be a hogtied coyote before he’d use anyone else’s.

Ruby was lightly snoring when Herman pulled over in front of the Hungry Bunny café. It was long dark, and the last road sign indicated that they were about 10 miles south of Lincoln, approaching the Iowa border. That put them around 400 miles from Roundabout, and not closing the distance with anything approximating briskness.

“Ruby,” he said, giving her a shove, “it’s time for a sandwich and a cup of coffee or two. From my calculations I’m just a mile or two shy of my turnoff, but that still means we’re a piece aways from Flo’s house. Let’s grab a bite and hit the road.”

Ruby started, shivered, and looked owlishly about. She instantly intuited that Herman had piloted them a considerable distance from their destination. This troubled her very little; Herman mulishness was a tolerated, if trying, trait; 51 years of marriage had coaxed her to resign herself. Besides, it gave her a chance to enjoy her own liberal accommodation of Herman’s ways. However, the late fall evening was becoming quite cold; there was even a hint of a storm in the crisp air.

When they exited the restaurant, a light snow was falling. Ruby shook her head. Herman gave one of his characteristic snorts.

“Well, woman, this whole machine and this old body of mine have seen enough winter driving to know that this puny sprinkling of snow doesn’t mean doodly. We have business; business will be had. Let’s go.”

He swung sharply onto the old highway, pushed by purpose. In just a few minutes the lights from the little town were no longer visible. They rolled through the vast, flat Nebraska night with the thick instincts of Herman Droopkins as their only beacon.

The snow began falling with some intensity. Herman sat hunched at the wheel, a compacted mass of contrariness. Ruby picked at her nails, occasionally moving her small accumulation of belongings (her comb, purse, lap blanket, Bible and scarf) from her left side to her right. The wind was picking up enough to buffet the car gently from side to side. A great angling gust came up and nudged the car onto the shoulder, loudly throwing up some chunks of snow into the wheel wells.

“Herman, I know that you have in mind the surefire means of getting to Flo’s house, and that we are certainly on our way, but considering how the weather is puttin’ a bit of a damper on things, what’s say we stop a stretch in the next town until this blows over?”

Herman accelerated sharply; the snow was falling so heavily that he could barely see. He was a statue at the wheel–fixed, immobile, impassive. When the car hit a huge pothole and wrenched towards the left side of the road, his position and expression didn’t change.

The car skidded off the road, careened through a low ditch, and plowed into a high wall of snow on what was a farmer’s field. The snow was up to the middle of the car’s windows—there was no way to open the doors. It was nearly one a.m., and the storm was becoming a blizzard. Unhurt, neither one of them spoke for some time.

Herman stirred. “Ruby, darling, I think we got a touch of a problem. No way in tarnation I can push the door open, and I don’t think I could get much more than my head through this window. I think we’re about to spend the night in the Snow Hotel. Can’t say the accommodations are particularly nice, but the company’s swell.”

Ruby settled a lap blanket on her knees and gave a dignified little sniff. She looked at Herman, looked out the side window, out the front window, and then back at Herman.

“Herman Droopkins, I’ll be a stinky goatherd before I go traveling with you again! ‘Just a bit further darling,’ and ‘We’re on our way now, sweetness’—hah! If that wasn’t the biggest tub of goose grease disguised as custard I’ve ever had the displeasure of tasting. As soon as the sun touches the roof of this vehicle, this Nebraska flower is finding some new dirt to put some roots into. Holy Moses—you know this state about as well as you know Don Ameche! Wait till Flo hears about this one.”

Herman sat, stroking his chin with his fingers. The snow had completely covered the car and muffled all outside noise. A rich silence blanketed the car’s interior, which was illuminated only by the dim overhead bulb. Herman turned to Ruby with a conclusive movement. He had an odd expression on his face, much like the one he’d had the time Sarah, the main milk cow, birthed the two-headed calf.

“You know Ruby, we’ve been married a piece of time, a whopping piece of time. And in that time, I never took a drink when you were within shoutin’ distance, because you always said it was the abomination of Jesus, or some such. In fact, you had me promise not to do any drinking at all, and I did—promise, that is. But a man’s got to have some secrets, even from a wife he’s kept around for 51 years. My secret’s right here.”

He reached under the seat and withdrew a big flask. He unscrewed the top and took a large swallow. The pungent odor of whiskey filled the close air of the car. Ruby started, wrinkling her nose, and then she backed against her door. She raised her right hand, pointing her long, spindly index finger at Herman.

“Herman Droopkins, as sure as we’ve been husband-and-wife for 51 years, you are going to taste the flames of eternal damnation! That liquor is Lucifer’s poison, and your soul is on its way to the gates of Hell. And my sister Flo’s on her way to getting an addition to her family, because I won’t stay in a home stained with Satan’s brew!”

Herman looked at her, a mild smile on his face. He tilted the flask back again, and then wiped his mouth. He settled back into the seat with a long sigh.

“Well sugar cakes, I think the immediate problem is more or less gettin’ through this cold night, and not some horned, pointy-tailed old fellow down yonder. And to my way of thinking, the best way to get through a cold night is a bottle or a woman, and it’s been close to four years since a woman was my first choice.”

Ruby issued a suppressed yelp, and then threw her Bible at Herman, clapping him soundly on the head. He shrugged and settled in, flask clasped to his breast. With the car engine running to keep the heater on, they both fell into a fitful sleep.

About 4 a.m., the car choked to a stop, waking both Ruby and Herman. They were out of gas, the heater was off, and it was as dark as a cave. The fierceness of the cold outside was sharp. Herman took a vigorous tug on his flask and shifted to a more comfortable position. Ruby sat, breathing shallow breaths, her eyes wide and watchful.

“Herman, how can you just sit there? Aren’t you freezing? What are we going to do?”

“Honey, we got each other, and I got this juice, so I think we’ll sit pretty till morning. Maybe a little nip of this will put a coat on you.”

“Herman Droopkins, perish the thought—a Christian I was born at a Christian I’ll die! I’ll shiver to death before that foul liquid passes these lips.”

They sat in silence. Herman dozed off again, while Ruby shivered and clutched her arms around her chest. She looked his way, barely making out his outline in the darkness. She moved closer to him, and closer still, until they were hip to hip. Still, she shivered.

“Herman, do you think God would understand if I just took the tiniest sip of that whiskey? Being as how we’re stuck out here in the cold and all, and He’s knowing how good I’ve been, and how He made the grain that whiskey is made from, and darn! It is cold!”

Herman passed her the flask. She tilted it slowly, tentatively, and put a few droplets in her mouth. She made a sour face, but immediately noticed a bit of warming in her tummy. She took a slightly bigger drink, and then another. She snuggled close to Herman and put her hand on his thigh. A feeling she hadn’t had for several years came over her.

“Herman, I have an idea how we can stay warm.”

*****

The highway patrolman almost missed the car. In passing, he’d barely seen the glinting radio antenna in the soft dawn light. It took four patrolman two-and-a-half hours to dig out the door of the vehicle. Inside Ruby and Herman sat, bleary-eyed but smiling.

“Well, officers,” said Ruby, “we were just getting to know one another, but I suppose we’re glad to see you. My husband could use some breakfast, and I wouldn’t mind a mirror so I could comb my hair. By the way, is there a liquor store nearby?”