I couldn't make this story up. It actually happened, exactly as I tell it, during our drive from Connecticut to Florida this past weekend. I could, I'll admit, have spent more time writing it. But I'm tired. You would be, too, if you had driven 1343 miles in two days.
It was nearly 11 when the heavens opened up and the downpour began. We had driven almost 700 miles. We weren’t going to make Savannah tonight.
“Let’s get a
room,” my wife suggested.
I readily
agreed.
We left the
interstate at the next exit, turned left at the top of the ramp, crossed the
overpass and turned into the driveway toward the familiar Holiday Inn® sign.
“No vacancy,” said a hand-lettered sign taped to the front door.
We crossed back over
the overpass and were preparing to turn south onto the interstate when we spied
the neon sign a block or so down the road. “Is that a hotel?” my wife asked
hopefully.
“Let’s find out,”
I said, turning off the car's directional signal, which I had flicked on out of habit,
even though nobody was following me. It was a lesson I had learned in Driver’s Ed,
the most valuable class I took during my high school years. A pity schools
don’t offer it any more.
“The (Name
Deleted In Case The Owner is Litigious) Motor Lodge,” proclaimed the sign alongside the sprawling one-story stone building with a Spanish tile roof. The edifice resembled a motel one would expect to find along Route 66 as it wends its way through
New Mexico and Arizona, but it was distinctly incongruous in the Low Country.
Stubby palm trees lined either side of the driveway. I turned in, and the
car rolled to a stop under the canopy in front of the lobby.
The moment I
stepped into the drab, barely lit room with the mismatched veneer furniture and
faded wing back chairs positioned on either side of the fireplace, every
instinct I possessed told me I should turn and run, not walk, back to the car.
Then I saw the
desk clerk, an ancient woman seated behind the desk. She smiled, revealing a
single tooth dangling from the left side of her upper gum. That was it. One tooth,
covered with yellow waxy build-up. Horrified yet fascinated at the same time, I continued toward her like a moth drawn to a flame.
“Whale cum to
the (Nime Delayted) Motor Lodge,” she said cheerily. “Ya lookin’ fer a
room?”
“Yes,” I replied, trying not to stare, as if encountering a snaggle-toothed hag
was something I was accustomed to doing every day.
“Whale, we got plenty
of ‘em. Jest for tea for dollars and nan tea five séance a knot for a kang
dubble.”
As I approached
the desk I realized she wasn’t sitting at all. She was standing. I was in the
presence of one of the little people. Not the little people hotel queen Leona
Helmsley once described derisively – the ones who are stupid enough to pay taxes. A little
person. Four feet, tops, wearing a grey, faded, child-sized South Carolina
Gamecocks sweatshirt.
A bolt of
lightening visible through the dirt-streaked picture window lit the sky outside
followed, a split second later, by the crash of thunder.
“Do you allow
dogs?” I asked after the cacophony subsided. “We’re traveling with two.”
It’s ten dollars
extree for each of ‘um, but fer yew all wive the fay. Yew look tarred.”
“I am,” I said. “Thank
you.”
I gave her my
credit card. A moment later, having run it through the machine, she reached up
and, standing on tippy toes, thrust the receipt across the counter into my
waiting right hand, along with the key to room 182.
“I jist mide it
up mah say elf a cupla ares ago. Yew end yer waif drive round to the bay-uk. Yew kin park
yer vay hickle rot in frunt of the room.”
"How do you know I'm traveling with my wife?" I asked, suddenly suspicious.
(To Be Continued)
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