1

The Runaway Van

Erin Hovey

Gypsy, that’s what they call me. None of them know my real name and I won’t

ever tell. I like who I am here. I like being Gypsy.

I acquired the name a little over two years ago when I ran away from home. I

had just graduated high school and I had nothing to show for it. I was the only girl in

the class ’65 who failed home economics, didn’t have a prospective husband and didn’t

have the grades for college. It was over for me.

My dad was trying to marry me off to his widowed best friend who had dirty

fingernails and smelled like stale beer. To my dad, women were to be married. To my

mom, women did what my dad said. Fuck them. I could never see them again and it

would not bother me one bit.

I live in a van. A nice van. My van has carpet and drapes and a pretty groovy

radio. I bought it off my dad’s friend—the smelly fingernail guy—just before I left. He

was cool about it. I don’t think he wanted to marry me either.

This van is my life. This van ensures that I will never be alone. It’s an amazing

time to have a van. And, I love hitch hikers. I am a hitch hiker gatherer! Everyone I pick

up likes my van, too. They all agree that it is one of a kind.

On the outside, the van doesn’t look like much. It’s a rust lined VW with bald

tires and a broken headlight. Inside, there are beads and candles and a makeshift table

in the back.

2

Once I picked up a girl who said she would do anything for a van like mine. She

was a pretty blonde thing with bellbottoms and a mohair top. She was a sweetie. She

was running away from a creepy uncle. I told her, “You came to the right place, this is a

runaway van!” I call it that now, all the time.

One person, Carla, I picked up and she never left. She lives in the van with me.

She is the one who started calling me Gypsy. I wouldn’t tell her my name, because my

daddy is looking for me, I think. She liked my skirt; it was a flowy colorful thing I made

out of Mama’s old table cloth. Carla called it a gypsy skirt. The rest is history I guess.

Carla was running away. I picked her up outside of Mulberry, Wisconsin. She

was running away she said but never said from what. She is older than me, I think she

might be 26. I like her a lot. She’s super bubbly and is awesome at finding pot.

I am too nervous and awkward to ask strangers where Green Street is. But, with

her audacity and my van we always get the goods.

Today was like any other. We are cruisin’ and rollin’ a fatty when Carla sees a

man sitting on a suitcase up the road. He has his thumb out, old school style.

“Let’s pick him up.” Carla coughs.

“He looks weird.”

“He’s fine.” Carla is a good judge of character so I pull over.

“Need a lift?” Carla reaches back and swings the back door of the van open. The

man pulls himself off the suitcase and rubs his right knee. I detect a limp as he heaves

himself into the backseat.

3

He looks around interestedly but doesn’t seem afraid or uncomfortable. He leans

back and twiddles his thumbs.

Carla and I exchange glances. Usually, the people we pick up are nervous

chatterboxes. They always offer an explanation for themselves. He takes off an old

beaten hat to expose a tan, bald head.

There is a silence in the van. I can feel Carla beside me trying to make it

awkward. She hates silence.

“So…” Carla begins, “What do we call ya?”

“Lou.” The man’s voice is dusty. He ran a hand over his bald head and looked at

her with watery green eyes. “I need a ride to Soho if you ladies are headed that way, or

on down to Austin, if you’re going that far south.”

The man sounded nice and polite. I imagine him as the newspaper reading father

I never had.

“We can go wherever you want.” Carla said, “We aren’t goin’ nowhere special.

I’m Carla, by the way. This is Gypsy. I wave at him in the review mirror and he raises

and eyebrow at me.”

I try to watch Lou in review while keeping an eye on the road and taking a toke

off the joint. He catches my eye in the mirror and I try to hand him the roll. He waves it

away but doesn’t look offended.

“Where are you girls from?” He asks and I love how polite he sounds. I just

shrug my shoulders. I have forgotten where I am from.

“Mulberry, Wisconsin.” Carla says, “Where are you from?”

4

Lou chuckles softly and shrugs as well.

Carla and I finish the joint and listen to a mix tape I made with some friends I

met in Cali whose names I already forgot. Lou sits in the back, quiet, his eyes eating

away at the window.

I adjust my pink Lennon glasses, a gift from an amorous gas station attendant in

Little Rock. The Texas sun beats into the van and I roll the window down for air. I yank

at the bracelets that were making my wrists sticky and pull up my brown, unkempt hair

then let it drop down again.

I don’t know if it was the drugs or the heat but I find the courage to converse

with the stranger. “So, what are you running away from?”

Lou almost smiles. “Nothing. What are you running away from?”

“Nothing.”

“Are you sure?” Carla’s loud snore startles him. She is fast asleep with her face

pressed unattractively against the window.

“Well… I am kinda runnin’ from my dad. He wanted me to marry his gross

friend.”

“Your dad was forcing you to get married?” Lou leaned forward, looking

concerned. I notice he has been thumbing through the worn copy of The Catcher in the

Rye that my teacher gave me years ago.

“Well, no. He was pretty much making me though.” This guy is getting me

excited. A weird sort of excited. I feel like bugs are crawling around in my veins.

“So, you were not being forced to marry? Then what are you running from?”

5

“My dad…”

“But he wasn’t forcing you to do anything.”

“I know. But, he was disappointed in me.” I am surprised at what I said.

The man nods and leans back into the seat. I wipe my suddenly sweaty palms on

my skirt and he pulls the old hat over his eyes and I presume he is asleep. I am a tizzy

of high, heat and confusion. I wasn’t ever a disappointment, was I? Just because

daddy’s disappointed doesn’t mean I am a disappointment right?

I dig into the glove box for the weed we bought just yesterday. It is still ripe and

sticky. I try to break it up in my lap to roll a joint and end up spilling it on the floor.

“Carla!” She wakes up with a grunt but the man stays asleep. “Roll me one, will

ya?”

“We just smoked!”

“I want to again. It’s who I am!” Wow, I hadn’t given the its-who-I-am excuse

since I lived at home.

She rolls me another one and takes a hit or two before falling back asleep. I suck

down the sweet, sour smoke. I fall in love with the burning orange tip, the burn brown

edges, the twisting, spiraling smoke that lingers in fading sunlight.

I let my brain bake. The long country road seems to me like an endless gray

ribbon, my own inexhaustible silver lining. I keep averting my thoughts from Daddy.

This old man has gotten under my skin.

I keep thinking about this one Christmas, when I was eight. I wanted a dolly so

bad. I wanted the dolly with a china face and long eyelashes that closed over her glassy

6

blue eyes when you lay her down in your lap. A blonde haired, blue eyed baby, like my

parents never got. My daddy didn’t make much, he worked in a glass shop. I knew,

even at such a young age, that my request was too much to hope for.

Christmas Eve came and I waited by the tree and prayed. I heard Daddy pull

into the driveway and cut the engine. I heard his thick boots stomp up the steps and

through the front room. My legs felt like jelly and I pressed my sweaty palms into my

red Christmas dress.

When he came into the backroom I leapt out of my skin. He held something

behind his back. I crashed into his arms and tried to steal a peek. He smelled like sweat

and bourbon but his eyes glimmered.

“Alright, Beany!” I sat down next to the tree and let my daddy torture me for five

more minutes before he pulled from behind his back a doll; a rag tag doll with buttons

for eyes and a red stitched smile. The doll had straight brown hair made from yarn and

wore a dress that matched the one Mama made me for Christmas.

I remember being ashamed that I was disappointed. My daddy smiled wide and

laughed when he showed me the little doll that looked so much like myself. So, I

hugged him tight and ran to my bed with the dolly. I never thought of a name for her so

I just called her Doll.

“So what’s your father’s name?” Lou nearly scares me out of my skin.

“Oh, Paul.”

Lou nods and I see he is still poking through The Catcher in the Rye. “He loves

you a lot.”

7

This startled me, too. Who the fuck was this guy anyway? I start to scare myself

into believing he is some sort of detective or prophet or something.

“Why do you say that?”

“Well, I was thinking, if he wants you to marry his friend so bad, it’s probably

because he wants you to be taken care of. Tell me, what did his friend do? The one he

was trying to marry you to?”

“Oh, he was a lawyer or something.” Lou nods at me in the mirror. He is starting

to piss me off. “You know, I’m pretty sure that men who are trying to marry their

daughters off to complete strangers do not have their best interests in mind.

Lou reaches his hand out toward the joint smoldering in my fingers, “May I?” I

hand him the roll and he smokes it expertly. “He wasn’t a stranger. He was your dad’s

friend.”

“Well, he was a stranger to me.”

“I am a stranger to you and you seem pretty comfortable driving me half way

across the state and even going as far to offer me drugs.” I try to give him my best evil

eye, but all I look is stoned. “I’m not chiding you for running away, trust me, I have

been doing it all my life. I just want to make sure you know what it is you’re running

away from.”

“What are you running away from?”

Lou chuckles and puts out the joint, “Coincidentally, my daughter.” I want to

hug the old man. “She deserves better and I could never think of a way to give it to her.

I can’t tell you how many birthdays and Christmases I came home from work empty

8

handed. I can’t count how many tears I caused for being so pathetic.” Lou says all of

this matter-of-factly. “I faked my own death seven years ago so she could have the

insurance money.”

“How?”

“Pushed my car into a lake after drinking all night with my co-workers. I

supposed everyone chalked it up to a drunk driving accident.” He fiddles with the

spent joint, “I still kick myself for giving up on her, but what now?”

I wanted to cry but the weed made me as dry as a seven year drought. “Can’t

you secretly go see her or something? I bet she really wants to see you!”

“Do you really want to see your daddy?” Lou leans forward and stares at me

intensely. The silence between us stretches on and on.

“Of course she wants to see you, Lou. She’s your baby and you’re her daddy.” I

whisper.

We drive the next hours of road in silence. We near Austin and I ask where Lou

would like to be dropped off.

“Anywhere is fine.”

I pull into a gas station and stare down a payphone while Lou shuffles into his

jacket and collects his suitcase. He opens the cover of The Catcher in the Rye and points

at a name printed in the top corner. “Is this you?”

I smile sheepishly at the name that hadn’t passed my lips in years. “Yeah.”

Lou chuckles and gives me a knowing look. “Yeah, he loves you alright.”

9

Lou shuffles out of the van and makes his way down the road in a definite

direction. I watch him until he is gone and make walk on jelly legs to the payphone.

I drop a dime in and dial the number, each cool spin of the dial makes my

stomach turn. My heart hammers against my ribs and my ears burn. It rings once, twice,

three times…

A man’s voice comes over the phone, “Peet residence.” My mouth feels like

cotton. “Hello?”

“Daddy?”

There is silence and then a strangled sob.

“Daddy, it’s me… Pauline.”