Desperation Road

by Michael Farris Smith

  Her mother and the children were on the front porch. The boys tugged at each other and argued as they walked toward the car. The girl stood next to her grandmother with her arms up and ready to go. She said thanks for watching them and got them all to the car and got them all buckled in and she drove away quickly and knew she had to return. That having them in the car would give her an excuse to keep it running. Just get out and tell him it was a mistake and apologize and ask if he’ll give it to you and you know he will. Only make it quick. The boys would ask who he was and later on they might bring it up with their father in the room. Mommy stopped at some man’s house, one of them would say. And the other would say who was that man, Mommy? And then he might ask the same and she would say I stopped by so-and-so’s house to see if she wanted to go to a movie this weekend but she wasn’t there and so-and-so’s husband was pulling in and stopped and said hello before we drove off and so what are we going to do about supper tonight? She processed her answer and it felt fine so she drove toward Russell thinking of the best way to say it. She was nervous when she turned onto his street and defeated when she noticed that he wasn’t on the steps any longer. She slowed in front of the house and she noticed that the truck wasn’t under the carport. What are we doing? one of the boys asked and she didn’t answer him. Then the other boy asked the same question. What are we doing?

  She was quiet as she stared at the steps where he had been sitting. Where she had been sitting with him. Where he had held her hand.

  Momma? What are we doing?

  27

  RUSSELL PUT THE SHOTGUN BEHIND THE TRUCK SEAT AND HE DROVE downtown to the café. He sat at the counter and drank coffee as the Saturday evening crowd grew with each jingle of the bell on the door. The waitress kept topping off his coffee and he tore a napkin into tiny pieces and formed a tiny white hill.

  At the table behind him a young girl knocked over her glass of tea and it caused her sister to jump and she knocked her glass and both fell to the floor and broke. The mother frowned at the guilty girl and the girl said it was an accident. Sims came over with a towel but it wasn’t enough so he hurried back to the kitchen and then a woman returned with him. She held a busing tray and her hair was in a ragged ponytail. The family stood back as she knelt and picked up the broken glass and then she cleared away the plates that had been covered in the spilled tea. Sims helped the family move to another table and the woman took the tray and set it on the counter and then she went into the kitchen and returned with a mop and bucket and cleaned the spill underneath the table and chairs.

  Russell paid for the coffee and went outside. Lit a cigarette and looked up at the early moon and then he walked to the Armadillo and sat down at the bar. Two young men with greasy shirts and black under their fingernails sat at the other end. The bartender leaned on the bar and talked with them. No one else was in the bar and the music was off. Russell called out for a beer and the bartender took one from the cooler and brought it down and left it without a word and returned to his friends.

  A group of women came in and sat at a table and two boys came in and left when the bartender asked for their IDs but other than that the place remained tranquil. Russell watched the clock over the bar move past eight and close to nine and he couldn’t figure out why the place jumped on Thursday night but not Saturday. The group of women laughed big about something and Russell turned to look at them and then he noticed another woman standing in the doorway. She stepped inside and looked around with timidity. Scraped knees and bony shoulders. The group of women scanned her up and down and whispered as she walked over to the bar and sat down three stools away and she held a twenty-dollar bill tightly in her hand. She turned toward Russell and caught him looking and he recognized her from mopping the floor in the café. She asked how much a beer costs and the bartender said a dollar fifty and she thought about it a second and then said she’d take one. The back of her shirt was wet with sweat from the evening’s work. The bartender gave her the beer and when she lifted it to her lips her hand shook slightly.

  The place was different without the band and without the crowd and he wished now that he would have gotten a phone number from Caroline the night before last. That he wouldn’t have snuck away in the middle of the night. He imagined how good it would feel to crawl into the bed with her now with the air conditioner turned low and the covers around his neck. He looked at the skinny woman and he noticed her squeezing the change the bartender had given her as if the bills were capable of taking flight. She no longer sat on the bar stool but stood next to it. When she finished the bottle she wiped her mouth on the back of her hand. Cut her eyes around the room and then walked out.

  Russell motioned to the bartender and said one more.

  28

  LARRY CALLED WALT AND SAID HE WAS GOING TO BUDDY’S AND Walt said he’d meet him there. Buddy’s sat on a wide curve along Delaware. A boxlike brick building with neon beer signs in the front window and it had once been a pet store and then a record store and then other things but the red brick had been painted a dark purple and the drunks staggered and shoved until the doors shut at 3:00 a.m. Larry walked inside and scanned the place. A bar lined the wall on the left and tables made from old wooden doors filled the front room. Televisions hung on the wall behind the bar and in the corners and the brick walls were decorated with photographs of football players in Ole Miss and Mississippi State and Saints jerseys. Something bluesy played over the speakers and two ceiling fans circulated the cigarette smoke and he didn’t see anyone he knew.

  Larry walked past the tables and through a hallway that opened onto a spacious back deck. There was another bar and plank floors and a couple more televisions. Mardi Gras beads hung from the exposed ceiling beams and a cigar store Indian stood at the end of the bar. The deck was screened and white Christmas lights hung around the top edges of the screen, all the way around. Two blondes sat at the bar with lipstick on their drink glasses but the tables were empty. Larry turned around and walked back and sat down at the bar in the front room.

  A man with a shaved head and wearing an apron appeared from a door behind the bar and nodded at Larry. Sweat ran down his forehead and he looked irritated. He wiped his head on the back of his arm.

  “Hey, Earl,” Larry said.

  Earl shook his head. “Damn help ain’t nowhere to be found tonight. I never understand that shit. Guy walks in. Wants a job and I give it to him and then he don’t show up for it. You know what I’m talking about?”

  “Yep. About August they’ll start dropping like flies on me.”

  “What you want?”

  “Beer. In a bottle. You seen Walt?”

  “He ran in and out of here a minute ago. Said he had to go get smokes.”

  Earl gave him a beer then one of the tables called him and he left. Larry drank the beer and looked at the front door as the day began to fade and night less than an hour away. The hour between dog and wolf.

  Walt returned and sat down next to his brother and they nodded at each other. The Braves were on the television on the wall at the end of the bar and they watched the game mindlessly and moved only to look when the door opened or when they needed another drink. An hour passed and it was dark now and Earl ran back and forth between the tables and the bar and the kitchen and it was going to be a long night.

  “You seen Heather yet?” Walt asked.

  “Nope. I guess she waited around last night until somebody finally carted that son of a bitch away. I heard her go in another room when she got to the house. This morning I left out early and—big surprise—she wasn’t there when I got home.”

  “What you gonna say?”

  “You mean what’s she gonna say. I ain’t saying shit.”

  “I bet you won’t have to wait long to find out,” Walt said.

  “Why’s that?”

  “Cause she just walked in.”

  She came their way and Walt grabbed his beer and headed for the back deck.

  Heather propped her elbows on the bar.
A strapless dress and fresh makeup and cleaned and shined. Larry shook his head and figured he should have expected her to be dolled up. It was the only way she worked.

  “Buy me a drink?” she asked.

  “You got money.”

  “I left my purse in the car.”

  “Then go get it.”

  Earl stopped at the cash register and he waved to Heather.

  “You got any white wine back there?”

  Larry shook his head and huffed.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Nobody drinks wine in Buddy’s.”

  “Okay. What do you want me to drink?”

  “I don’t give a shit what you drink but you goddamn sure ain’t sitting next to me with a wineglass.”

  Earl waited and she asked for a beer. “Happy now?” she asked and she nudged him but Larry didn’t smile. And he didn’t talk. She crossed her legs toward him, brushing his calf with her foot. He didn’t take notice.

  “Who’s winning?” she asked.

  “Winning what?” Larry said.

  “That game up there.”

  Larry raised his eyes to the television. “The score is on the bottom of the screen.”

  “I can’t see that far.”

  “Then get the hell up and go look.”

  She had promised herself that she’d be more careful. That was three years ago and she had only become more reckless. Telling the blond man they didn’t need to go out of town. Larry’s head is up his ass. It’ll be fun to go down to the Armadillo. But she had underestimated Larry and made him look like a fool and the blond man had paid for it. She needed to calm him down before she didn’t have a place to sleep. Or a checking account. She wrapped a cocktail napkin around her beer and turned the bottle in her hands, her fingernails the same crimson as her lipstick.

  “Are you gonna pout all night or talk to me?” she said.

  He turned on the bar stool and faced her. He let his anger slide enough so that he could speak without yelling. “I don’t have anything to say to you, Heather. And you know why. How long you want us to sit here and play stupid?”

  Larry had turned away again and she snuck a look at him in between the liquor bottles in the mirror.

  “I’m sorry, Larry,” she said.

  “Good for you.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “I know you are. That’s why it’s so pathetic.”

  “Why is it pathetic?” Her face had changed now, losing its playfulness and becoming more aggressive.

  “Why is it pathetic?” she asked again when he didn’t answer.

  “It’s pathetic because you think you can walk in here all perfumed and shit and sit down next to me and I’ll fall for it.”

  “I’m not pretending. I screwed up. Okay?”

  “No damn shit.”

  “And I’m sorry.”

  “The only reason you’re sorry is cause you got caught which don’t do much for your bullshit confession.”

  “I swear to God, Larry. I’m sorry,” she said and she put her hand on his leg. He pushed it away and asked Earl for another beer. She stopped and let him mill for a minute. Thought that maybe she’d fake cry but she wasn’t there yet.

  She wrapped her hand around the inside of his thigh again and half smiled. “I swear I’m sorry. And I’m done, Larry.”

  “Done with what?”

  “You know what.”

  “I want you to say it.”

  “Fine. I’m done messing around.”

  “Messing around ain’t what you do. Tell me what you’re done doing. Gimme some detail.” His voice was louder now and several people from the tables took notice. Heather moved uncomfortably on her stool.

  “I’m done sleeping around.”

  “You ain’t been sleeping, either. I want you to say it. Tell me what you’re done doing or first thing Monday morning I’m going to take the same pictures I shoved down your boyfriend’s pants to my lawyer and then I’m gonna come home and throw your shit out in the yard.”

  She took a deep breath. He had her.

  “I’m done having sex with other men,” she said.

  “What else?”

  “I’m done putting my mouth on them. I’m done bending over for anybody but you. I’m done, baby. I swear.”

  She folded her hands in her lap and waited and she swore to herself that she’d never be careless again. That she’d make sure she kept it out of town. She wouldn’t let him make her bow down again.

  He pressed his lips together. Nodded. And then he told Earl he wanted two bourbons.

  “On top of each other?” Earl asked.

  “No, jackass. One for me and one for her.”

  After Earl set down the drinks Larry slid her a glass.

  “Here,” he said.

  They drank in the strange silence that lingers around people who have gone through the motions but aren’t sure if anything has been truly reconciled. Heather looked around the bar and ran her finger around the corners of her mouth to smooth her lipstick. There was one more thing to do to help him get over it.

  “Let’s run home for a while,” she said.

  “I’m drinking,” he said.

  “Come on, Larry. Let me make it up to you.”

  He finished the bourbon and told Earl he wanted another. Then he said you go on home and I’ll be there in a little while.

  “Promise?”

  “Just go on.”

  She stood and kissed him on the cheek and then she walked toward the door. She glanced over her shoulder to see if he was watching her walk but he wasn’t.

  Walt waited until Larry was done with his drink and then he took her vacated seat and said I’m guessing you let her slide.

  “Don’t goddamn talk to me.”

  “She’s a broken record.”

  “No shit.”

  “She makes you look stupid.”

  It was a hard right that Walt never saw coming but Larry was nice enough to give it to the side of his head and not his nose and once the two brothers got up off the floor and Earl pulled them apart they sat right back down to drink again.

  For hours they drank and stared at the television and neither moved except to go to the bathroom and finally Larry left Walt with the tab and he drove to the end of Delaware Avenue where it ran into the interstate. He stopped at a gas station and bought a six-pack and then he turned onto the interstate toward Louisiana. A full breadth of stars stretched across the summer sky and he smoked with the windows cracked and the warm wind whipped around him. He set his cruise control knowing that if anyone stopped him he’d go straight to jail. He leaned back in his seat with a beer between his legs. Swerving some. A strip of interstate that projected loneliness. He was two beers down when he reached the state line and the exit for Kentwood was less than a mile after that. He took the exit and turned to the right, away from the lights of the fast food joints and gas stations.

  He drove a few miles until there was nothing but fences and the occasional mailbox and in this part of the country the night seemed to open its mouth and swallow the land and whatever moved across it. He came to a crossroads and turned left and the road thinned and led from the open pastures into the trees and it was darker then. He slowed down and watched for the turn. Around the second bend he turned up a driveway that was marked by a mailbox covered in a flowery vine and he turned off his headlights as he moved toward the house. He stopped the truck twenty yards away and he looked out the open window at the house. The red brick that she had wanted and the white columns that she had wanted and the two chimneys that he had wanted. There wasn’t an inch of the house that he hadn’t put his hands on while it was going up. The light was on over the front door and there were no other lights on in the house. He set his beer aside and got out of the truck and when he closed the door, a light came on in the window of her bedroom and her shadow appeared behind the curtain and she peeked out to see who it was.

  He walked toward the front door and stopped. Don’t scare her.
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  She opened the door and stepped out under the light, a kneehigh robe wrapped around her and her hair longer than the last time he had seen her. Down past her shoulders and a shade lighter. He put his hands in his pockets and tried to appear as harmless as possible.

  “You’re not supposed to be here,” she said.

  “I know,” he said and he took a slow step toward her.

  “I mean it, Larry. You need to go on.”

  “I just thought I’d see how you were doing.”

  “It’s late.”

  “He here?”

  She looked around him and out into the dark as if something or someone else might be out there.

  “Course he’s here. He’s sleeping. Like I was,” she said.

  Off in the woods surrounding the house something howled as if it were hurt. His head turned and followed the sound.

  “What do you want, Larry?” she said.

  “You think I could just go in there and talk to him a minute?”

  “No, Larry. God no.”

  “Only a minute, Dana. I swear.”

  “You been drinking?”

  “Some.”

  “You need to go on.”

  He knew that every cop and court in Kentwood agreed with her and he knew that he had earned it. Even standing there drunk he knew it. He couldn’t see his boy and he wasn’t supposed to be within so many feet of her and he didn’t argue that it was his own doing. It had been a long time since that had been decided and he hadn’t forgotten. But he had driven down ignoring it and hoped she might do the same but he saw that she was as strong as ever.