by Muriel Gray
“What do you want, Josh.”
He let his free arm flop out on the mattress, and his hand played with the grimy corner of his comforter. “A family. Life.”
It was so slight that he might have imagined it, but he felt Griffin stiffen in his embrace. She was silent for a long time and then she rolled over and tucked into him like a spoon, still holding on to his hand.
He felt her body jerk slightly and then her breathing became regular and deep. Josh lay awake for a time, thinking about what he had said, and then closed his eyes and gave into sleep.
He saw it spinning in the wind. The children were licking at the ice cream cone, and the dust was blowing in miniature twisters around the base of the sign. But the noise. It was loud, piercing, like a scream of pain, and the combination of its volume and pitch of distress was unbearable. He put his hands to his ears, but the Tanner ice cream sign was revolving faster now, the tortured screeching approaching the level of white noise. Wheeea. Wheeea. Wheeea.
And worse. The picture was changing on that disc. As it spun in the infernal wind, the children’s faces were changing. Changing into one face. A mashed and ruined face. The face of baby that was no longer a baby.
Wheeea. Wheeea. WHEEEA!
Josh sat upright with a shout, and as he blinked, measuring his surroundings, he realized that the noise had not quite stopped with his waking. He blinked twice, slapped the heels of his palms to his eyes, and only then was there silence. Josh breathed out heavily and groaned. Bad dreams that persisted even seconds past the waking moment were very bad dreams indeed.
He straightened up and looked to his right. Griffin was gone. A thin line of yellow day light sliced through the windshield drapes. He leaned forward to read the digital clock on the dash, which told him in tiny green numerals that it was nine-thirty.
Josh lay back down on the bed and put one arm behind his head. Part of him wasn’t surprised she’d gone, but he remembered how freaked she’d been by the truck stop and he wondered how she would fare, a country girl trying to find transport in this decidedly seedy part of a large city.
Although there was relief in the neatness of her departure, the difficulty of facing their deed now avoided, Josh was disappointed. Even the guiltiest part of his mind had to admit that the sex had been exquisite. Just thinking about it now was making him hard again, making him want more. He closed his eyes and thought about her firm young body, her sweet pink tongue and those slim, brown, elegant hands. Somewhere inside, as his hand slid down to his crotch, some chastising puritanical brain cell slyly replaced those brown hands in his memory with Elizabeth’s, making him remember how they too could smooth away his pain, make him forget everything except her while they worked. But more, it made him remember that when Elizabeth caressed him it was with more than desire. It was with love. Trivial things, things a million light-years away from sex, started to nudge the lust from his head: the horrible socks she bought him constantly, the way she watched TV lying full length on the sofa with her knees hooked over the back, the way she looked out for Sim without the old man knowing she was doing it.
Josh’s eyes opened and started to moisten with remorse.
He lay for an age, wallowing in his sin, then sat up, sniffed back the unwelcome emotions and swung his legs over the edge of the small bed. He had a load to deliver and he was going to do it. It was already late. He dressed quickly and clumsily, started the truck up and, with only a small gesture to what had happened, a quick smoothing of the bed with a hesitant hand, left the warmth of the cab to go and take a leak.
15
The drive to Carris Arm was more ritual than necessity. But wasn’t that the case with most of it now? She knew they had done it properly, respectfully, the first time, one hundred and nineteen years ago, walking, robed and with the copper vessels ready to receive the sulphur. Why bother when you could just drive there and pick the stuff up? Or better, have them bring it to you? That would be going too far. She needed to make the short journey if only to remind herself of the ones who originally negotiated this mountain ridge, strangers in a new world, longing for their distant country, where their own people feared and despised them, determined as they walked that they would never be exiled again.
And they had come this way, they or their descendants, sixteen times before. This was the seventeenth, and it would not be the last. What would they think of her now, cruising along this narrow mountain road in a seven series BMW, her instruments lying beside her on a leather seat instead of tied with leather around her waist?
She smiled. They would think she was admirable. She had kept it going. Taken it to its logical and modern conclusion.
The morning was crisp and sunny, the warmth only beginning to get to work on the wet roads and dripping trees, and the dark metallic blue car made a thick swishing sound as it glided through the puddles on the road.
The next tight bend revealed an RV crawling ahead at fifteen or twenty miles an hour, an obstacle now impossible to pass for at least the next five miles of winding road. She braked and inched the car near enough to study the licence plate. New York. Nothing suspicious. Early-rising suburban nobodies taking their family on a mundane Appalachian adventure.
But since that camper van and its three nonvacationing occupants from Washington, DC, three years ago, she had every right to be wary. You never knew when they were on to you, and no one could afford to relax.
And she hadn’t.
Even now, she checked the site in the woods regularly to make sure the growth pattern of the new trees wouldn’t reveal the buried van from the air. Helicopters saw a lot more than the uninitiated imagined.
The memory gave her an idea. Did she still have enough power? Probably not, but it was worth a try, and it would be delicious to be able to get past this pile of junk.
She took a breath and in a low voice began to recite the words that were so important and equally of no importance. Words so ancient and almost unpronounceable that they had ceased to have any meaning at all, other than the raw power of meaninglessness itself.
Yes. There was still some energy left in them. She was surprised, and her delight made her green eyes shine with pleasure. As her voice grew stronger, she felt her vision rise, her sight increase in that familiar giddy way as she started to see the car she drove from above. Higher, just a little higher and she would be able to see the road ahead from the air, see if it was clear to pass.
But she was bellowing now, the strain of retaining both her real vision and the aerial one starting to become intolerable. Veins stood out on the side of her neck and her brow began to moisten with sweat.
Not enough. She couldn’t get up enough height. She exhaled with a shout, letting the power go and tumbling back into her body with a jolt. A curse, ancient and guttural, left her lips and she pulled the car back a yard.
So she was stuck. No matter. In only a few days it would begin again. And maybe if her work could be completed soon, this time it would last longer than just those short, ever-diminishing seven years.
She settled down to her slow journey and contented herself as much as anyone could, faced with a back window full of swinging cuddly toys adhering to the glass with suckered feet.
Maybe he had adultery written all over his face, or maybe this truck stop had just gotten unfriendlier while he slept. Either way, Josh noticed something when he went to pay for a coffee and a mushy croissant he’d heated in the store’s microwave. He’d waited as the girl behind the counter serving two guys before him did so with a smile and a wisecrack. They’d passed on laughing, leaving her pointing at them with an outstretched arm and a grin that split her face.
And that grin had still been in place when he’d put his food on the counter and she’d turned to give him her full attention. Josh had returned the smile and then watched her face as a curious transformation came over it.
She looked, he thought, as though he’d sneaked up behind her and hollered “boo.” For a fraction of a second the girl appeared
startled, and as quickly that startled expression was replaced with one of mild confusion and distaste. Josh scrutinized her face to see if he could read his unwitting crime in her eyes.
“That all?” she said as he examined her, and she began to ring up the coffee and croissant, no longer looking at him.
“Yup. That’ll get me started.”
Josh’s attempt at standard truck-driving nicety was ignored and she mumbled the price, took the money and returned the change without a word or a glance in his direction. Josh gathered up his breakfast and, as he reached the swing doors out of the store, cast her a brief backward glance. She was staring at him, that expression of confusion still in place but being overridden by one of suspicion. Josh smiled and she looked away quickly. He shook his head, raised his eyebrows in mock-offended resignation, then pushed open the door with his hip and walked outside.
The rain had stopped and the warm southern sun was already drying things up. It made Josh feel good, the intermittent heat on his face as the sun darted behind the rows of trucks while he walked, like someone playing hide-and-seek. He found pleasure in the way the climate gradually changed as he drove around the country, enjoyed spotting new plants, animals and birds that started to appear as he crossed from one state to another. Already here, this morning, he was noticing the difference in the birds that were clinging to every radiator grille, working away at the dead and dying insects laid out for them like a buffet.
Some he recognized, but others, the smaller ones, brightly coloured and dainty as they fed, were alien southern birds and he watched them with interest, making a mental note to look them up and name them when he got home.
When he got home.
He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. When was he going home? He would have to face it soon. Decide what he was going to do. Would he just stay away until she’d done it? He could. He could easily drive for another week. Then he could come home and carry on, making no mention of it ever again. Or maybe he could deliver his load and drive straight back, take her in his arms and try to persuade her that they should have the child, that everything would be okay, that he loved her and cared for her and…
He blinked as the low sun hit the side of his face again from behind the long corridor of trailers, and this time it seemed harsh and too bright, hardening a crust around his heart. He’d had an accident. The worst accident in the whole world. So bad he’d thought in his feverish, sleepless brain that it had been no accident at all. He’d killed a child. And how had his life companion helped him through that? She hadn’t listened to him, hadn’t even given him the chance when he needed to talk, that’s how.
Well, fuck her. He wasn’t going home.
He walked past the last few trucks before Jezebel, then stopped in front of her shiny chrome nose. There were birds fluttering and pecking away on the grilles of the reefers on both sides of Jezebel, despite the engines vibrating noisily just like his. But on Jezebel’s grille, which boasted every kind of juicy moth, fly, bee and more, there was not one single bird.
He squinted at his empty radiator for a second before unlocking the door and climbing in. It seemed that neither he nor Jezebel were very popular this morning.
He drove over to the fuel pumps and filled up, drinking his coffee and stuffing the sad croissant down while the tank filled, the fumes of reeking diesel winning the battle of taste over the soggy pastry, then strolled to the pay window and handed the guy his card. It was dealt with swiftly and without conversation, but Josh had already decided he didn’t need small talk and was glad that the man hardly even looked at him. He pocketed his receipt and two free shower tickets they gave with diesel at this truck stop, then walked through the sunlit puddles of water and oil back to the security of his truck.
It would take him two hours at least from here to reach the drop-off point for his load, and he had to get his paperwork done. Josh was late, but for once in his driving life, it was the very least of his worries. He rolled slowly out of the fuel stop, drove a few hundred yards on and pulled to the side. This was not a time to leave his logbook until later. He didn’t put it past the county deputy in Furnace to send out some kind of alert to the state bears. In fact, he was surprised he hadn’t been pulled over last night. But even if he was just being paranoid and no one was going to single him out, Josh didn’t relish the thought of explaining his movements over the last forty-eight hours to anyone. And failure to fill in a log would mean just that.
He got up and leaned across to the black folder pushed beneath the passenger dash, manoeuvred it out and sat back heavily in his chair with a sigh.
Gazing dreamily out the windshield, he snapped the elastic bands off, thinking involuntarily for a moment of Griffin, wondering where she was, remembering her mouth on his body and unconsciously moistening his lips as, without his permission, his mind gave that memory all the air time it needed.
He wrapped the elastic band around his wrist as he always did, and opened the folder over the wheel as he continued to gaze into space. It was the noise that made him look down. The noise of shredded paper fluttering onto the floor with a dry rustle.
On his lap was a pile of blue confetti—confetti that used to be his log sheets. He stared at it, uncomprehending for a moment, then cautiously put out a hand and touched the tiny bits of paper.
There had been a month’s worth of log sheets in the folder, stuck together in pad form, and now most of them had been torn and ripped into ragged paper shrapnel. Most, but not all. There were three surviving sheets.
Josh picked them up and stared at them, as though by their survival he somehow held them responsible for the violent destruction of the rest. The last one had the corner neatly turned over, the way someone might mark a half-read book. He lifted the two top sheets cautiously and peered at the third.
Written across the space headed “Remarks” was a scrawl so deeply embedded in the paper it has broken through in two places, revealing that it had been written on the cushion of the other sheets before they were so savagely torn off. Josh’s mouth opened slightly, trying to make sense of it, mouthing it silently to himself as though that would make it clearer.
In black ink it read, “Three days alive permitted.”
He closed his fist around the mess of paper and squeezed it. His heart was racing and he licked his lips again, though this time it was not through the memory of sexual excitement, but because they were dry with a mounting panic.
The panic was that Josh quite simply could not understand what he was looking at. He recognized it. Not the bizarre, threatening sentence or what it meant. No. Not that. That was completely and utterly baffling to him. What he recognized, even in the terrifyingly manic state in which it had been scrawled, was the handwriting.
It was his own.
16
Elizabeth had dreamed again last night. It had been a dreadful dream, full of fire and screams, and when she woke it had been like almost every morning these days, with her hands clutched across her belly as though to protect her unborn child from whatever hot and terrible thing had been pursuing her through the darkness. She took a moment to understand it was morning in her own bed, then she wept like a child, not caring that Sim would hear. Her emotions were her master since she’d become pregnant, and she grieved now that she hadn’t kept them in check when she’d first told Josh her news. But how could she? She didn’t know how she felt from one moment to the next. All she really needed from Josh was…
What? What did she need? A husband? A business? A last-minute reason to let her baby live? What, in God’s name? Maybe just a phone call from him. That would be a start. Another chance to try to put things right. She thought that he might call last night, but he hadn’t. She’d stared at the silent phone again most of the evening like some heartbroken teenager, trying to imagine where he might be, what he might be feeling, and somehow, for no logical reason, she’d hoped that wherever he was, he was all right.
The hideous foreboding, the overwhelming feeling th
at the person you loved was in terrible danger, it was all a natural part of pregnancy. Her mother had once told her that. She’d laughed about her own time, when she’d carried Elizabeth. Her memory was that whenever Elizabeth’s father went out the door her mother was sure it was the last time she’d see him.
The story had been rounded off with a roll of the eyes and “if only,” but Elizabeth knew that at the time it had been real and miserable for her. Now she understood. She was scared for Josh. Irrationally scared, but scared for sure. She pulled her hands up to her face and covered it. Right now, all she really wanted was to go to sleep again and never wake up.
Tennessee had turned into Alabama before he had calmed sufficiently to work it out. She must have done it. Of course she must. But how? He couldn’t recall leaving Griffin alone in the cab for even a minute. Had she performed the bizarre act while he slept this morning? Josh didn’t think so. To sleep through someone gently getting their belongings together, silently dressing and leaving with a quiet click of a door was one thing. To sleep through a frenzy of paper being shredded was quite another.
The only way Josh believed she could have pulled it off would have been to take the folder with her into the truck stop restaurant and do the damage while she was out of sight in the women’s rest room. He thought back to what she was carrying. Nothing. She’d left her only luggage, that big knapsack, back in the rig. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t have hidden it under her sweatshirt. It was baggy enough to conceal the book if she’d stuck it down the back of her jeans. The handwriting she must have copied from any one of the numerous documents in the folder that Josh had scribbled on over the course of his last long trip. But hell, she was one brilliant forger.
When he’d first looked at that scrawl his heart had just about stopped. It was so damned accurate, the way the T’s were crossed and the backward slant of all the uprights of the letters. And it was genius to make it recognizable as his while scrawling it in such a demented fury. How long must she have practised to get it so right? But if that was how she did it, the worst question was still hanging there waiting to be answered.
