Middleton.â She put her hand on the boyâshead and looked down at him. âTerrel wonât talk. Though if he did heâd tell you to use our phone. Heâs a sweet boy.â She opened the screen for me to come in.
The trailer was a big one with a new rug and a new couch and a living room that expanded to give the space of a real house. Something good and sweet was cooking in the kitchen, and the trailer felt like it was somebodyâs comfortable new home instead of just temporary. Iâve lived in trailers, but they were just snailbacks with one room and no toilet, and they always felt cramped and unhappyâthough Iâve thought maybe it mightâve been me that was unhappy in them.
There was a big Sony TV and a lot of kidsâ toys scattered on the floor. I recognized a Greyhound bus Iâd gotten for Cheryl. The phone was beside a new leather recliner, and the Negro woman pointed for me to sit down and call and gave me the phone book. Terrel began fingering his toys and the woman sat on the couch while I called, watching me and smiling.
There were three listings for cab companies, all with one number different. I called the numbers in order and didnât get an answer until the last one, which answered with the name of the second company. I said I was on the highway beyond the interstate and that my wife and family needed to be taken to town and I would arrange for a tow later. While I was giving the location, I looked up the name of a tow service to tell the driver in case he asked.
When I hung up, the Negro woman was sitting looking at me with the same look she had been staring with into the dark, a look that seemed to want truth. She was smiling, though. Something pleased her and I reminded her of it.
âThis is a very nice home,â I said, resting in the recliner, which felt like the driverâs seat of the Mercedes, and where Iâd have been happy to stay.
âThis isnât
our
house, Mr. Middleton,â the Negrowoman said. âThe company owns these. They give them to us for nothing. We have our own home in Rockford, Illinois.â
âThatâs wonderful,â I said.
âItâs never wonderful when you have to be away from home, Mr. Middleton, though weâre only here three months, and itâll be easier when Terrel Junior begins his special school. You see, our son was killed in the war, and his wife ran off without Terrel Junior. Though you shouldnât worry. He canât understand us. His little feelings canât be hurt.â The woman folded her hands in her lap and smiled in a satisfied way. She was an attractive woman, and had on a blue-and-pink floral dress that made her seem bigger than she couldâve been, just the right woman to sit on the couch she was sitting on. She was good natureâs picture, and I was glad she could be, with her little brain-damaged boy, living in a place where no one in his right mind would want to live a minute. âWhere do
you
live, Mr. Middleton?â she said politely, smiling in the same sympathetic way.
âMy family and I are in transit,â I said. âIâm an ophthalmologist, and weâre moving back to Florida, where Iâm from. Iâm setting up practice in some little town where itâs warm year-round. I havenât decided where.â
âFloridaâs a wonderful place,â the woman said. âI think Terrel would like it there.â
âCould I ask you something?â I said.
âYou certainly may,â the woman said. Terrel had begun pushing his Greyhound across the front of the TV screen, making a scratch that no one watching the set could miss. âStop that, Terrel Junior,â the woman said quiedy. But Terrel kept pushing his bus on the glass, and she smiled at me again as if we both understood something sad. Except I knew Cheryl would never damage a television set. She had respect for nice things, and I was sorry for the