Where I'm Calling From

into the trees. Then I hear the pickup returning.
    I start the engine just as the truck pulls up behind me. I lock the doors and roll up the windows.
    Perspiration breaks on my face and arms as I put the car in gear, but there is no place to drive.
    “You all right?” the man says as he comes up to the car. “Hello. Hello in there.” He raps the glass. “You okay?” He leans his arms on the door and brings his face close to the window.
    I stare at him and can’t find any words.
    “After I passed I slowed up some,” he says. “But when I didn’t see you in the mirror I pulled off and waited a couple of minutes. When you still didn’t show I thought I’d better drive back and check. Is everything all right? How come you’re locked up in there?”
    I shake my head.
    “Come on, roll down your window. Hey, are you sure you’re okay? You know it’s not good for a woman to be batting around the country by herself.” He shakes his head and looks at the highway, then back at me. “Now come on, roll down the window, how about it? We can’t talk this way.”
    “Please, I have to go.”
    “Open the door, all right?” he says, as if he isn’t listening. “At least roll the window down. You’re going to smother in there.” He looks at my breasts and legs. The skirt has pulled up over my knees. His eyes linger on my legs, but I sit still, afraid to move.
    “I want to smother,” I say. “I am smothering, can’t you see?”
    “What in the hell?” he says and moves back from the door. He turns and walks back to his truck. Then, in the side mirror, I watch him returning, and I close my eyes.
    “You don’t want me to follow you toward Summit or anything? I don’t mind. I got some extra time this morning,” he says. I shake my head.
    He hesitates and then shrugs. “Okay, lady, have it your way then,” he says. “Okay.”
    I wait until he has reached the highway, and then I back out. He shifts gears and pulls away slowly, looking back at me in his rearview mirror. I stop the car on the shoulder and put my head on the wheel.
    The casket is closed and covered with floral sprays. The organ begins soon after I take a seat near the back of the chapel. People begin to file in and find chairs, some middle-aged and older people, but most of them in their early twenties or even younger. They are people who look uncomfortable in their suits and ties, sport coats and slacks, their dark dresses and leather gloves. One boy in flared pants and a yellow short-sleeved shirt takes the chair next to mine and begins to bite his lips. A door opens at one side of the chapel and I look up and for a minute the parking lot reminds me of a meadow. But then the sun flashes on car windows. The family enters in a group and moves into a curtained area off to the side.
    Chairs creak as they settle themselves. In a few minutes a slim, blond man in a dark suit stands and asks us to bow our heads. He speaks a brief prayer for us, the living, and when he finishes he asks us to pray in silence for the soul of Susan Miller, departed. I close my eyes and remember her picture in the newspaper and on television. I see her leaving the theater and getting into the green Chevrolet. Then I imagine her journey down the river, the nude body hitting rocks, caught at by branches, the body floating and turning, her hair streaming in the water. Then the hands and hair catching in the overhanging branches, holding, until four men come along to stare at her. I can see a man who is drunk (Stuart?) take her by the wrist. Does anyone here know about that? What if these people knew that? I look around at the other faces. There is a connection to be made of these things, these events, these faces, if I can find it. My head aches with the effort to find it.
    He talks about Susan Miller’s gifts: cheerfulness and beauty, grace and enthusiasm. From behind the closed curtain someone clears his throat, someone else sobs. The organ music begins. The service is over.
    Along with the others I file slowly past the casket. Then I move out onto the front steps and into the bright, hot afternoon light. A middle aged woman who limps as she goes down the stairs ahead of me reaches the sidewalk and looks around, her eyes falling on me. “Well, they got him,” she says. “If that’s any consolation. They arrested him this morning. I heard it on the radio before I came. A guy right here in town. A longhair, you might have guessed.” We move a few steps down the hot