Miss Julia to the Rescue by Ann B. Ross Page B

place as near the bathrooms as I could find. I locked the car, then hurried with Etta Mae to tend to what had become an urgent necessity. Remembering what Lloyd had said about praying for travel mercies, I gave thanks for the mercy of rest areas along the interstates.
    “Want me to drive for a while?” Etta Mae asked when we returned to the car.
    “Yes, if you’d like to. I want to study the map a little and see how far we have to go. But let’s watch for a place to get off and eat. No telling what will be available in West Virginia.”
    It was a good thing that we found a fast-food place not far from our connection to the next interstate because the countryside became more sparsely settled along I-77. But the big trucks kept rolling along—behind, in front and alongside us.
    Thankful that Etta Mae was driving, I clasped the armrest and closed my eyes when we went through a long,
long
tunnel. Then, almost before I could breathe easily again, we headed into another one.
    Then we were on the West Virginia Turnpike, for which we had to pay to drive on. I’d thought that Virginia had rolling hills, but the ones now on each side of us were really rolling—knobby little hills, one after the other. Feeling comfortable with EttaMae’s steady driving, I whiled away the afternoon by reading the signs along the way, astounded at the names of towns hidden away, off the beaten path—Kegler, Pipestem, Odd, Flat Top—and wondered at the stories behind them.
    “You getting tired, Etta Mae?”
    “Not too bad,” she said. “We’ll be in Beckley in about an hour, I think. We turn off there, don’t we?”
    I consulted the map again. “No, we turn off on 64 East before Beckley, but Beckley’s not far from the turnoff. Let’s stop there if we find a decent place and really look at this map. We’ll start twisting and turning on back roads then, and I don’t want to get lost.”
    So we made another stop off the interstate, had a soft drink and stretched our legs for a few minutes, then drove on into Beckley to a gas station to fill up again. While Etta Mae filled the tank, I glanced up at the sky, where clouds were rolling in from the west, covering the sun and threatening rain. That didn’t bode well for traveling on unfamiliar roads, but I kept my disquiet to myself. Etta Mae was her usual perky little self, suggesting with a laugh that we ask for the key to the station’s restroom because it might be our last chance.
    She laughed again when we were back in the car, turning at the instructions of the robotic voice of the GPS onto a two-lane road that took us deeper and higher into dark wooded areas. “I hope we don’t have to stop again. From the looks of this lonesome road, we’ll have to find bushes to get behind.”
    One thing you could say for Etta Mae, she was the perfect travel companion as far as I was concerned because we were on the same wavelength. There’s nothing worse than accompanying someone with a large capacity.
    I smiled at the thought of tromping through the bushes, but I was uneasy at being where we were, with pine trees edging the ditches on both sides of the road, very little traffic and rain spattering on the windshield. The sky was overcast, at least what we could see of it through the trees and the mountain rearing straightup above the ledge we were riding on. And even though night was a few hours away by the clock, it seemed to be creeping nearer. To cap it off, wisps of fog slipped past us, an omen of more to come.
    “Lord, Etta Mae, I’m feeling kind of lonely way up here. It’s as if we’re a million miles from home and we don’t know a soul.”
    “Yeah, we do. We know J.D. Keep your mind on him and we’ll make it.”
    That was comforting advice, which Etta Mae was good at giving, bolstering me enough to keep my mind on the prize. Excepting Sam, Coleman and Mr. Pickens himself, I couldn’t think of another person I’d rather have with me than Etta Mae Wiggins.

Chapter 13

    The rain