by Larry Brown
She had money in her purse. She could find a movie down there that looked like a good one, go in and get her some popcorn. Even if he was driving right now he still wouldn’t be here for a long time. And there wasn’t any need in going all the way back over to Pass Christian this early and sitting over there on the front porch all by herself.
There was a pizza sign down there in the mall. They probably had a place where you could sit down and eat it, too. Kill some time. Watch a movie. Have some popcorn. See if it really looked that good up on the big screen. She bet it would.
HE WENT THROUGH Carroll County and Holmes and Yazoo, past the towns like Vaiden and West and Durant, and Goodman and Pickens and Vaughan, always passing whatever it was, just having a sixth sense sometimes and knowing where to slow down because he was one of them and knew their times and a lot of their hiding places. He gassed up at a Texaco station in Canton and he didn’t get any beer, just two chicken legs and a pack of cigarettes and a tall fountain Pepsi that he sipped from a straw. The traffic was light in Jackson and he hit 49 at Pearl and split off to the east to angle toward the middle of the coast where Gulfport sat almost dead center. Her voice was still alive. There was still breath in her and now somehow he’d get her to someplace where she’d be safe until whatever was going to happen happened, didn’t matter if it was a Holiday Inn every night, by God he had enough money to pay for it. He might find somebody she could stay with until it was time for her to have the baby. He’d work it out, whatever it took. He could make up a name for her and tell it to David Hall, just a few short lies and nothing else. Keep her hid. Then what he didn’t know. Worry about all that shit later. Just get his hands on her.
He went past Piney Woods, past D’lo and Mendenhall and Weathersby and Magee. He’d gone fishing one time in Magee with Earl Boat-right, in a pond for crappie Earl had caught in Ross Barnett Reservoir and put in there. Three or four years ago and he hadn’t seen Earl since. He might have retired by now.
It started getting dark and he had to pull his headlights on. Already the gas gauge was starting its slow ride back to E. And he might not make it in on this tank. At this speed probably not. He wouldn’t be able to see the troopers as easily now. But that didn’t make him let off the gas any.
THE FIRST MOVIE she went into was a bunch of fake Hollywood bullshit where tires squealed on a gravel road or somebody could shoot a car and it would blow up and it looked like any dumbass would know better than that. She didn’t know how much it cost to make a movie but she figured it probably cost a good bit and it looked like if they were going to spend all that then they ought to try and make it not look and sound so fake. There was one place where some guy had a revolver and shot it about eleven times, she counted. Bunch of sirens, bunch of cars running up and down the road.
She got up twenty minutes into it and pushed open the padded door in the darkened back of the theater and went back up a dim hall and finally back into the bright lobby where somebody was vacuuming the carpeted floor and the kids who worked at the snack stand were talking to one another. One of them was sneaking a cigarette. The pizza had been pretty good but now she was kind of hungry again, so she wandered back out into the mall. Just killing time.
There were all kinds of shops. Shoe shops and clothing shops and toy stores. People in booths had all kinds of leather belts and they could put your name on one if you wanted one. She stopped and told the guy to put Sam on one and stood there and watched him make it. It took him about ten minutes and it cost her fifteen dollars but Aaron was still leaving money for her every day and she’d only been keeping it because she thought she might need it sometime. She had about three hundred dollars.
The man coiled the belt and put it in a bag for her and thanked her and then bent back to his bench.
She walked along, looking in the windows. People were sitting on benches here and there, and there were large plants in boxes or big vases. Somebody was sweeping the floor. Some old ladies in tennis shoes came by her walking fast and talking fast, flopping their hands back and forth to keep time with their strides and she wondered where they were going in such a hurry. She stopped to look at some jewelry and then she stopped to look at some stereos and they came by her again.
She sat on a bench and smoked a cigarette.
She bought a cone of strawberry ice cream and a cookie.
She talked to a little boy with white hair like in her dream.
Then she went back to the theater and paid again and started watching another movie, thinking, when that was done, when a few more hours had passed, she could get back over to Pass Christian and pack and wait for him to show up. She hoped he wouldn’t show up while Aaron was there. But that was why she’d told him there might be trouble. She didn’t figure Aaron was going to let her leave, not if he could help it. She thought he was probably in love with her.
HE DIDN’T STOP in Hattiesburg except for the lights that caught him and he went on, through Perry County and down into Stone. Beyond that lay Harrison County, Gulfport, Biloxi, the ocean and the boats that drifted on it. Every mile that went by was one closer. Every house he passed was one more house behind him.
SHE ASKED THE cabdriver to let her out on the side of the road so that she could walk up to the house. It looked dark up there. He pulled over into a driveway at an angle and turned on an overhead light. He was a black guy with an accent, long braided locks that hung down over his shoulders. And he was smoking something that smelled funny.
“Twenty dollas, please miss. All dark, you gettin out here?”
“I live here,” she said, and got the money out for him. Then remembered what Reena had said that time about tips and pulled out a five and gave it to him. His bright teeth gleamed when he smiled.
“Thank you ma’am, you a very kind lady. And a most scrumptious one if I may say so. You take good care of yourself now, you hear?”
“Yes. I will. Thank you,” she said, and she opened the door and got out. He sat there until she’d walked out of the path of his beams, going up the little drive, and then he pulled away.
The house looked spooky now, so dark upstairs. She watched the cab go down the road and turn around, the lights sweeping a circle in the road, then he pulled out fast and gunned it back toward Biloxi. The traffic was sparse.
Out there in the harbor the masts jutted, and the wind was still chiming in the nets. She hated to leave that. This would be a nice place if it wasn’t for him.
She had to get her suitcase packed and she went into the yard and down along the side of the house. The yard light wasn’t on.
The house wasn’t locked. The small light was on over the stove and it cast a dim glow over the stuff in the kitchen. She flipped some lights on and went up the hall and turned some on. The door to her room was open and somebody could have just walked in and taken whatever they wanted, and she was glad now that Arlene wasn’t back yet. She turned on the lamp and put her purse on the bed, then locked herself in the bathroom and used it. When she got through she went back up the hall and up the stairs. She flipped the light on for the bedroom and stood on the landing looking down at the floor. There was still a sore place on her head, and one on her arm.
She made a few trips up and down, getting the rest of her things. In fifteen minutes she had everything she owned packed back into the suitcase. She zipped it shut and put it on the floor.
At the door she stopped and looked around. There was nothing else she needed.
She checked in the bathroom. An almost empty shampoo bottle sat on the sink. A comb that wasn’t hers. Hairclips she’d found in the medicine cabinet. She told that room good-bye too.
She stopped in the hall and looked at the front door. She could make coffee and light the candles. Sit out front and watch for headlights to slow and turn in.
But just then she heard the low bellow of Aaron’s exhaust pipes and reached for the door to the room and pulled it shut to hide the suitcase.
She was in the kitchen rinsing out the pot when his st
eps sounded on the back porch. Fuck him. She hadn’t been talking to him. She didn’t have to now. But she didn’t know what she was going to do when Sam pulled up. If he pulled up. If he wasn’t gone from home for a couple of days or something and hadn’t gotten her message yet.
She was running clean water into it when he came in through the back door. She could feel him looking at her but she didn’t turn her head. She opened the coffee and started measuring some out.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hello.”
She didn’t have to mess with him. She’d sit out on the front porch and drink some coffee until Sam drove up or she got too sleepy to sit there any longer and then she could just go to bed in the front room where she’d be able to hear him when he pulled in. The headlights might shine in. And when he got here, she’d just get in the truck and go with him. She didn’t have to explain a damn thing to Aaron.
He closed the door and she heard it latch. He was making her nervous. Wondering what he was going to say. Hoping he’d just let her alone.
“You heard anything from Arlene?”
She put the coffee in the filter and put the little plastic thing that held it into the machine and then lifted the lid and poured in the water, put the pot under it and pushed the switch.
“No,” she said. Then she turned around. He was standing there with a bunch of flowers in his hand. She looked at them. They were nice flowers, blue ones and yellow ones with brown stripes across their petals. He stepped forward and held them out.
“Here,” he said. “I went over to the mall and picked these up. I thought they might cheer you up a little.”
But she turned away from him and headed past him.
“Find somebody else to give em to,” she said, and went back to the bedroom for her cigarettes from her purse. She was careful with the door and got her purse and just took it with her. She didn’t look back at him, just went out on the porch and set the purse in a chair.
She found her lighter and went to the candles and started lighting them. She glanced back in and saw him standing back there by the pool table. She didn’t owe him anything. Not a damn thing. He’d let her have a place to stay for a while and she’d fucked him for a while so they were square minus one baby. If she hadn’t been here she wouldn’t have fallen down the stairs. She might be somewhere else, but she might still have the baby too.
She almost burned her finger on one that was slow to light. She moved to the others, lighting them one by one, until they were all flickering little yellow tongues of flame. If he came tonight, this is what he would see. All these candles lit for him.
She sat down in the chair and got out a cigarette and lit it. It would take the coffee a few minutes. There wasn’t any need in him bringing her flowers. Not after all the shit he’d done.
He was walking around in there. She could hear his steps in the hall. She hoped maybe he’d just stay in there and not follow her out here.
The steps in the hall stopped. They sounded like they were close to her room. If he opened that door he was going to see her suitcase sitting there. She got up and went to the door and he was standing in the middle of the hall with his hands in his pockets. She went on in. When he looked up she knew what he knew.
“You’re leaving,” he said. “Ain’t you?”
She stopped next to him. Just for a moment she did.
“Yeah. That’s right. I am.”
He looked kind of bewildered and he turned in a little half circle, kind of swaying, his hands still jammed into his pockets. She could smell whiskey on him. His eyes were so red she knew he’d been smoking that dope again.
“I love you,” he said.
“I don’t want to hear that.”
She started on by him and his hand lashed out like a snake and clamped on her arm, hard, right on the bruise that was still sore, and when she almost cried out and did close her eyes against the pain, he turned loose quick.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t …I forgot your…Fuck.”
“Why don’t you just let me alone?” she said, and she went on by him, back down the hall, and he was following her.
“I didn’t mean to hurt your arm,” he said.
She was rubbing on it as she went. She’d just be quiet. She didn’t have to talk to his ass.
She went back into the kitchen but the coffee still wasn’t ready. She turned around and he was right behind her. He reached out as if he were going to put his arms around her, and she watched what his face did when she pulled back from his touch. She remembered how she’d locked her legs around his freckled back and called out for him to give it to her harder. And shook and bounced on the bed and shoved it against him as hard and as fast as she could, and her hair wet with sweat at her temples, and her fingers clawing at him.
“I guess you’ve been in love before,” she said.
He wagged his chin and leaned against the wall.
“Not me.” He raised his eyes and looked at her. “I guess I never did meet the right one.”
“But some of them loved you. Didn’t they?”
“Yeah. So they said.”
“I know Reena did. She never did say it but I know she did.”
He turned his head. “Your coffee’s ready.” The flowers were lying on the pool table and he nodded to them. “Don’t you want your flowers?”
“You’re crazy,” she said. “You think you can just do whatever you want to. You won’t even take care of your own kids. You think I’d stay with you, after what you did to Reena? What’d you do, run her off?”
She reached for the coffee and poured a cup and set it back on the warmer. He got down a cup.
“What do you mean run her off? Is she gone?”
“You know damn good and well she’s gone,” she said, and she fixed her cup and dropped the spoon on the counter and walked out of the kitchen, and then she could hear him following her out to the porch.
She stopped and turned.
“Why don’t you just stay in here?” she said. “I don’t want to talk to you no more.”
That was funny to him.
“My house,” he said.
“Your mama’s house.”
“My mama.” And he smiled.
She turned her back on him and went out on the porch. She got her purse from the chair and sat down in it and set her cup on the arm.
He came out the door and walked past her to the edge of the steps and stood there holding the cup to his lips. The water was shining and rippling far out, a light burning at dockside.
“You got nowhere to go,” he said.
She leaned toward him for a moment.
“You don’t know nothin. I do have somewhere to go.”
He turned around and gave her a hard look.
“Oh yeah. I hope you don’t think you’re gonna go back to where you came from. Because whatever shit you were in when you came down here, you’re still in it up there. What’d you do, anyway? You might as well go on and tell me.”
There had only been that one time he’d asked about it. And she’d been glad of it. As many times as she’d wanted to tell somebody about it, she never had. Sam would be the only one who’d know that. And it was going to be hard to tell him.
“It just ain’t none of your business,” she said. She picked up her coffee and tried to take a drink of it and it was still too hot.
A car came from the east, slowly, and it slowed even more as it got closer to the house. She followed it with her eyes, thought it was maybe going to turn in, and her heart almost started up to beat faster, and then the car sped up and went on.
When she looked at him he was watching her.
“What the hell?” he said. “You expecting company?”
“No,” she said, but she didn’t look at him when she said it, and he walked a little closer.
“How you planning on getting out of here?” he said. “You gonna catch a ride out like you did in?”
“I don’t know. I might.”
He leaned o
ver and put his face right into hers, his eyes streaked with red blood vessels and his breath smelling sweet now like a peppermint boozehound’s.
“Well I just wondered. You look just like somebody who’s sitting here waiting on a ride. Is that what you’re doing? You waiting on a ride?”
She had to lean away from him and her arm hit her coffee and knocked it to the porch, broke the cup, spattered her feet and his. He had his hand on her again, on her shoulder this time, and she tried to pull free, but he clamped down with the same force she’d seen him use to break that man’s hand, and she had to freeze. She had to freeze or he would have made her hurt. It hit her: This is how he does it.
“Now don’t you tell me something,” he said, and he leaned in and talked low into her ear. She was afraid he was going to hit her but he was still holding on to his coffee. Some of it sloshed on her leg and burned it. “Don’t you tell me you’re sitting here on my front porch. Waiting for the son of a bitch that knocked you up in the first place to come down here and get you. At my house. You not gonna tell me that. Are you?”
She didn’t answer. She couldn’t believe that some person across the road wasn’t seeing this or some neighbor down the street who was out on her porch. She knew better than to scream. He might kill her if she screamed. Break her neck with his hands.
“You will tell me the fucking truth,” he said, and he dropped his cup which also shattered and pulled her up out of the chair. It was punishment to fight. Two tries she found that out. As long as she walked straight toward the door where he was sending her, the pain stayed away. The second he felt her balk or try to get away from him, he clamped down. And the pain shot down into her legs and almost to her feet. He had ahold of something back there that hurt so bad when he mashed on it that she wouldn’t have been able to stand it, she would have had to pass out. So it was a lot better to just go on in the door. Where none of the neighbors would see in case they’d been looking. She thought of the gun.
