David Fowler
Kaylee Throws a Honeymoon at the Gulf
Rachel and Jason didn’t get much ceremony at the Dallas courthouse: a free rose pulled from a bucket and a dollar Polaroid from a man with one arm. Afterwards, they headed down I-35 to Waco to tell her parents. Halfway in between was a town called Italy (pop. 1944), pronounced Itlee. A sign on the highway advertised an Italian festival.
“Let’s try it,” Jason said, flipping the blinker.
“Let’s just get to my folks and get it over with,” Rachel said. Her folks had met Jason. They didn’t think he was very smart because he worked at the Amazon warehouse. He’d gotten his GED because Rachel said she wouldn’t marry him otherwise. So he did it, by damn.
“Just for a minute. We’ll have a honeymoon in Itlee,” he said.
“Okay.”
He imagined red-checked tablecloths and people stirring pots of spaghetti over wood fires in the streets. Instead, he found a convenience store at the Gulf station and no festiveness whatsoever. Jason surely didn’t want to disappoint Rachel in this new life; he had done a fair amount of that in their old one.
He walked into the Gulf praying the festival was underway nearby, maybe one street over. A pony-tailed girl who looked like she might be in high school stood behind the counter in a Gulf shirt with Kaylee on the nametag.
“They having the Italian festival?” he said.
“No, they ain’t givin’ it anymore,” she said.
“Ain’t givin’ it?”
“Naw, they ain’t givin’ it this year. Too bad that sign out on the highway still says they’re givin’ it.”
“I know, we saw it. That’s how come we stopped. We just got married and wanted to honeymoon in Itlee.”
“Well, congratulations.” She looked out the window and waved to Rachel in the truck. Rachel waved back.
“I’m sure sorry,” Kaylee said. “They just ain’t givin’ it.”
Jason went to the cooler and got a six-pack and put it on the counter. He couldn’t come back empty-handed on a day like today. There were fried pies, too, but he waved them off. He had bought stupid shit before and best not chance it.
“No charge,” she said, sacking the beer up.
“No charge? How come?”
“Just no charge.”
“Don’t they have cameras in here?”
“They’re busted.”
He went back out to the truck.
“What did she say?” Rachel said.
“Ain’t givin’ it this year.”
“Ain’t giving it? Why not?”
“Don’t know. Just ain’t.”
“What’d you buy?” Rachel was suspicious. Money was tight.
“Six-pack. It was free.”
“How come?”
He reached into the sack and pulled two out. “That girl in there said she wanted us to have a honeymoon in Itlee.”
“No way.” Rachel held up her hands and made the heart sign to Kaylee. Kaylee made the heart sign back. Jason popped the tops. Rachel turned away, looking out her window. A chill ran down Jason’s neck. He’d fucked it up but he didn’t know what. Rachel was a kind girl, not hard on him. But he was sure he’d just stepped in it again. He handed her the beer.
“I can’t,” she said.
“But it’s our honeymoon.”
“I’m not supposed to,” she said, turning back to him. Her lip quivered and her brown eyes looked hard at him, right into him. His wheels started turning.
“You’re not.”
“I am.”
“No way.”
“Way. I peed on a stick this morning.”
He set the beers on top of the dashboard then reached over and wrapped Rachel up like a Christmas present.
“You are something else, girl.” He pulled back and wiped her cheeks then laid her head on his shoulder.
“I love you,” he said.
“I love you, too.”
He determined then and there to get more hours at Amazon. A lot more. He was going to get more hours and overtime and work like a dog.
“She’s wondering what’s going on,” Rachel said.
Jason turned his head. Kaylee had her elbows on the counter, her chin in her hands, watching them like a love show on TV.
Rachel rocked her arms back and forth like rocking a baby. Kaylee’s mouth fell open in a great big Whaaaa?
A truck pulled up beside them and an old man in overalls headed into the store. At the door, Kaylee blew right past him and made a beeline for Rachel’s side of the truck, knocking on the window, her mouth still wide open. Pow, pow pow. Rachel got out and they bear-hugged and launched a full-on cryfest. Total strangers in a gas station parking lot.
Jason rested his forehead on the steering wheel. “I’m gonna be a father,” he said to the floorboard. From the corner of his eye, he saw the old man still holding the door.
“I just need my Camels, Kaylee,” the old man called.
Kaylee, hugging Rachel, yelled over to him, “Just get ‘em and leave some money, Mr. Ray.”
Jason got out and put a hug around both of the girls. There they were, all three of them hugged up on the sidewalk in front of the ice machine and the Pennysaver rack.
The old man came back out. “What’s going on?”
“They’re gonna have a baby!” Kaylee said.
“Right now?”
“No, at some point in the future.”
“Well, good deal. I left some money.”
“Thank you.”
David Fowler has work in journals associated with numbers and rivers: The Threepenny Review, Five South, Fourth River, River Teeth and Naugatuck River Review. He attributes this not to a cosmic wrinkle but to blind luck because he is, in fact, legally blind. He writes slowly in Jackson, Mississippi (another river).
