“Maybe if you told me what was going on I could figure out a way to help,” Russell said.
“Maybe Jesus will come down from His high horse and cook us supper.”
“Maybe.”
“But probably not.”
“But maybe.”
“I did something that anybody else would’ve done and it’s over and that’s that.”
“Would you do it again?”
“I don’t see why not.”
“Then stop worrying about it.”
“You and me both know it ain’t like that.”
He unloaded the bullets from the chamber and he handed the pistol back to her. He put the bullets in his shirt pocket.
“The thing is you don’t know what I can do and what I can’t. Either I can help or I cannot. That’s all there is. But you’re not gonna find out like this. Don’t seem like you got a whole lot to lose.”
The girl finished her candy bar and she hopped off the table and walked toward the truck. She looked at her feet and placed one foot in front of the other as if she were balancing on a high wire. Maben turned and looked at Russell. He was scratching at his beard.
“Where do you live?” she asked.
“About six blocks from where you stuck that thing in my ear.”
“I used to live in McComb.”
“I saw you mopping at the café. You must still live there.”
“We walked into town yesterday. Or the day before.”
“Walked?”
“Walked in. Ran out. Ain’t been back in years. Since long before her.”
“What’s your name?”
She leaned over and put the pistol in the duffel bag at her feet. “All I want you to do is drive us. If you don’t want to that’s fine. We’ll call it right here. But I’d appreciate it if you could take us on farther.”
Russell nodded. Annalee made it to the truck and Maben held her drink as she climbed over her mother and sat between them.
“I’m guilty of a lot of things, but leaving you and her out here ain’t going to be one of them,” he said and he cranked the truck. “I can go on a little farther.”
“Can I have that book back?” the girl asked. Maben handed it to her. Away from the lights of the rest area there was only dark ahead of them as the lightning from the coming storm flashed in the night sky behind.
30
THEY DROVE NORTH ON I-55. AROUND MIDNIGHT THEY PASSED through Jackson and he turned east on I-20. Once they were out of the city lights and back into empty miles of interstate the child put her head in her mother’s lap and went to sleep. Russell rolled the window down halfway and tossed out the bullets. After miles and miles of quiet and after she was sure the child wouldn’t be listening Maben said you have to promise you won’t tell nobody. Her voice was close to a whisper. Her eyes ahead on the headlights.
“Tell nobody what?”
“What I’m about to tell you.”
He had been thinking that he was glad she hadn’t told him. He had been thinking that he was better off that way. That soon he would put them out somewhere and drive on back and forget about it. I got enough to think about already. Don’t ask her anything else. Just drive. He had been thinking that he was glad he never had a kid. He looked at Annalee and wondered if she had ever been to school.
“There was a sheriff man killed,” she said.
Jesus Christ, he thought. Jesus Christ almighty. You were right, you son of a bitch. You could’ve shut her up but you let her keep talking and Jesus Christ almighty. Russell twisted the steering wheel in his hands as if to wrench what she had said back into her mouth but there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it now and still he wrenched harder and harder. She could have said anything. A crazyass boyfriend or money she owed or he would have even taken that she had kidnapped the little girl. Anything.
“I heard about it,” he said.
“This is his gun.”
She then stopped. More miles passed on.
“You can put us out wherever,” she said.
“I know.”
“It probably ain’t gonna matter anyway.”
“I imagine there’s a lot of people looking for that thing,” he said.
“Then I guess you see why I’m running off with it. I guess you see what somebody might think if they found me with it.”
“I can guess that.”
“And I bet you think you know something right now. But you don’t.”
“I didn’t say I knew anything. I’m driving.”
They came upon the exit for Forest and he said he had to get gas. He turned off and stopped at a gas station and filled up. Maben sat still and the girl didn’t wake. When he was done he paid inside and he came out with a new pack of cigarettes and beer. He drove back onto the interstate and he opened a beer and set it between his legs. Then he opened another and handed it to her.
“You don’t look like a killer to me,” he said.
“That’s because I’m not.”
“I been around some. Killers, that is. And worse. Killers aren’t even the worst. But I know what they look like. They look like they mean it. You don’t look like you mean it.”
“I don’t see how you can mean or not mean something you didn’t do.”
“Yeah. I don’t reckon you can.”
“And I don’t see what’s worse than being a killer.”
He looked over at her. “You know what’s worse,” he said. “There’s plenty worse.”
She brushed the child’s hair away from her face. Stroked her pink cheek. She didn’t answer him. She didn’t have to. They drank their beers and drove on. They were close to Meridian when she began talking again. Explaining what had happened. How she and the girl had walked and walked to that truck stop and how they’d gotten a room and felt like people for a little while. How he’d found her in the parking lot and how he’d taken her off and what he’d made her do and that he’d called his buddies to come on and do it too and how it seemed like he was gonna make a few dollars from it and how he didn’t believe her when she said that her kid was back there and how she believed that was gonna be the end of it. That they were going to do things to her that she didn’t want them to do until dawn and then she was going to sit in jail and she didn’t have any money to get out and the girl would be found and gone and even though I said I wish I woulda never had her I don’t mean it. And how she didn’t think about it much she just saw the pistol and she did it and that it seemed like something that hadn’t really happened but that it had and she knew no matter what she explained to the people who mattered, no one would believe her over a dead man in a uniform. She kept her voice low while she talked but he could tell she wanted to scream.
“Bad shit happens to good people,” he said when she was done.
“Nah. I ain’t a good person. Bad shit happens to everybody,” she said. “I wish to God it’d take a break when you’re trying, though.”
The lights of Meridian glowed ahead in the night sky. But before they reached the city limits sign, Russell turned south on I-59.
“You got to tell me one thing,” he said. “Why are you holding on to that gun? That thing can bury you.”
She stared out into the faint highway light. “If there was one thing that could do you in wouldn’t you want to know where it is?”
He nodded. He understood her argument and thought to give the other side of it but decided to let her determine her own fate.
“You’re making a square,” she said.
“You didn’t tell me not to.”
“Don’t take us back there.”
“We’re still a long ways off. Sooner or later we got to stop.”
“I told you a while back you can let us out wherever.”
“You need a better plan than that.”
“You the one who said you could help. Now you know it ain’t so simple. I bet you thought I was running away from some asshole who smacked me around.”
“Hoping is more like it.”
<
br /> “No sense in that.”
“In what?”
“Hope.”
“I’d say where you and that girl are concerned that’s the only damn thing that matters.”
They continued on in quiet until they approached a sign for a campground off the next exit. Russell looked over to ask Maben if she wanted to stop for the night but she was asleep, slumped against the door and her head against the window. Russell took the exit and turned right and followed the highway for half a mile and he turned at the plywood sign for the campground. The campground was a couple of acres that had been thinned out and the camping spots were bare patches of dirt within a scattering of trees and a circle of stones sat in the middle of each spot for a fire. He drove along and the campground was mostly deserted. He passed an old Volkswagen van and then he passed a truck with a camper on the back and an old man and woman sat around a fire. When he was clear of others he picked a spot and parked the truck. He turned off the headlights and got out. The sky was covered with clouds and the only light was that of the fire, an orange speck fifty yards away.
He flicked his cigarette lighter and walked around to the passenger side. Then he reached into the cab and he tapped her on the shoulder. She lifted her head and looked at him and he whispered we stopped. In the middle of nowhere. Lay down for a while. She opened her door and slid out from under the child and she walked around and climbed back in on the other side and lay alongside the child with her feet hanging off the end of the seat. Russell followed her and when he pushed the door half shut and bumped her foot she raised up.
“Sorry,” he said.
“Maben,” she said.
“What?”
“Maben. That’s my name,” she said and she lay back down.
He came around to the back of the truck and climbed over into the bed. He had planned to lie down but instead he sat with his back against the tailgate. A faint breeze blew and he watched the fireflies blink across the woods. Watched the fire across the way. Watched the bodies sitting close to it. They looked gray.
He had only known one person named Maben. And he hadn’t really known her. He had known who she was. He had watched her at the sentencing, crying and shaking as if she had understood something about the boy who died that no one else could understand. He thought about the Maben who was sleeping in his truck and he started to do the math but it wasn’t necessary. She looked older than she probably was and that was about right. He laughed a little but not much. He had seen enough in his life to not be surprised by a damn thing.
31
IN HER DREAMS SHE STOOD ON A HILLSIDE AND LOOKED DOWN ACROSS the meadow. The child stood in the midst of the waisthigh wildflowers that swayed with the wind and seemed to move in circles, her hair being lifted and let go and lifted again by the cool air. She stood with her arms folded as she watched the child who held her arms out and her hands were open and she traced her palms over the tips of the flowers and smiled as they tickled the tender center of her hands. Pinks and blues streaked across the horizon and the clouds moved across the sky like a slow train.
She saw it coming off in the distance, crawling or maybe slithering, only its tail visible. Rising high and waving in an S, thick and reptilian like something ancient. As it crept closer the wind gained strength and began to howl, blowing sharply into her face and she began to call out to the child. Come this way. Right now come this way but the child didn’t hear her. The tail moved closer and she began to scream and when the child still didn’t hear her she screamed louder and louder and she tried to move but her feet were buried in the ground and that thing was within striking distance now and the child never saw it coming and as it raised the top of its head from the wildflowers Maben woke with a shriek and she fell off the seat and onto the floorboard. The child woke up and began to cry when she saw that there was only the dark and another strange place and her mother held on to her and said I am here. I am here.
32
BOYD HAD PUT IT OFF. WAITING TO BE TOLD YOU HAVE TO GO OVER there and talk to him about it. A dead deputy on a desolate road. The only vehicle to come upon the scene driven by a man who had been out of prison for about five minutes. A loaded shotgun in the vehicle. An expired driver’s license. When asked what he was doing out there he had said he was riding. It didn’t matter if he knew the man or not it was too much to ignore and they had nothing else and were looking for a road to follow. He couldn’t dance around Russell any longer.
So Boyd checked in at the office and drank his coffee. He made a couple of calls that weren’t answered and he realized it was Sunday morning. He then drank a second cup and he figured he might as well get it over with and he told the dispatcher he’d be back around lunch. It was an eight-mile drive from the department office in Magnolia to McComb and he didn’t take the interstate but instead went along the highway with its log trucks and flashing yellows at crossroads. Anything to slow him down.
The first thing he noticed when he came to the house was the blue tarp over the windows. Hard not to. The truck was gone. He got out and walked around to the backyard. High grass and weeds. Paint buckets and empty beer bottles filled with cigarette butts on the back porch. A dog barking from the neighbor’s yard behind the headhigh wooden fence. He walked around the side of the house and looked into the bedroom window which had no curtain. Clothes scattered on the floor. A sheet wadded on the bed. Boxes stacked in the corner. He moved around to the front and knocked on the door so he could say he’d done it and then he climbed back into the cruiser. He drove downtown to the café and he sat at the counter and ate biscuits and gravy and then he drove out toward the father’s place. That was the only other place he figured to look for him.
He walked to the back door and saw Mr. Gaines sitting at the kitchen table with Consuela. She was eating pancakes and he leaned back in his chair with the Sunday paper held open. Boyd knocked and they looked up together and Mitchell got up reluctantly and walked over and opened the door.
“How you doing, Mr. Gaines?” Boyd said.
It took Mitchell a moment but then he recognized Boyd and he held out his hand to him.
“Come on in here,” Mitchell said and Boyd followed him into the kitchen. Mitchell asked him if he wanted coffee and ignored him when he said no. He poured a cup for himself and for Boyd and he told him to sit down. Mitchell moved the newspaper aside as he sat across from Boyd.
“Ain’t seen you in quite a while,” Mitchell said. “Looks like somebody’s been feeding you.”
“Got that right,” Boyd said. “Married a woman who don’t cook very good but she cooks a lot of whatever it is.”
“There’s worse.”
“Sure is. Got two boys who’ll beat me to it if I don’t watch it.”
Boyd looked at the woman and she listened as they talked and he waited on Mitchell to introduce her but he didn’t so he got on with it.
“I don’t guess you’ve seen Russell this morning,” he said.
Mitchell shook his head. “Not this morning.”
“You wouldn’t know where he is would you?”
“At the house would be my guess. You been by there?”
“Yes sir. Before I came out here.”
Mitchell sat up and rested his elbows on the table. “He done something wrong?”
“No sir. Just need to talk to him for a minute.” Boyd pushed his coffee cup around. Took a sip.
“Sorry about your man. Went to get some catfish food yesterday down at the co-op and heard it mentioned,” Mitchell said. “Crying damn shame.”
“Yeah. Wives don’t like hearing about stuff like that.”
“I don’t reckon they do.”
“Kids, neither. Even big ugly ones.”
“Your boys ballplayers?”
“Every chance they get. The oldest started summer workouts this year.”
“I bet he don’t mind.”
“Hell no. He loves it. Probably gonna start him out at linebacker. He moves pretty good.”
Consu
ela finished her pancakes and she stood and rinsed her plate in the sink. Then she took the coffeepot and added to their cups though little had been sipped. She set down the pot and then she walked out of the kitchen and then there was the sound of a choir singing coming from the television.
“You ain’t here cause of her are you?” Mitchell asked.
“No sir. Not at all.”
“Cause she don’t do no harm.”
“You don’t have nothing to worry about, Mr. Gaines.”
“Then what do I have to worry about?”
Boyd pushed his cup away. “I got to talk to Russell about the other night. After we found our man out there, Russell came driving up. Way out there. Him and nobody else all night. So I got to talk to him about it. That’s all.”
“That’s all?”
“Swear it.”
“You know him better than that.”
“I know.”
“He wouldn’t do nothing like that, Boyd.”
“I know that. Maybe he saw something. A car or truck or whatever. That’s all. Just tell him I need to talk to him. Tell him to call me and only me. Soon as he can.”
“I will.”
“Thanks for the coffee,” Boyd said and he stood up.
“I tell you what you might do as long as you’re talking about Russell.”
“What’s that?”
“Watch them boys. Tisdale. Especially that tall one. He already broke out all the windows over at Russell’s house. And Russell’s got a mark on the side of his head where they met him down at the bus station.”
“He call the police?”
“For what?”
Boyd reached across the table and shook Mitchell’s hand again. “I’ll keep my ears up,” he said. Mitchell didn’t get up and he nodded at Boyd as he left. He then sipped at his coffee and he sat still and stared at the refrigerator door. From the other room Consuela clapped her hands to the gospel rhythm.
Boyd drove back to the office and when he walked in the door the dispatcher told him to call the sheriff. Boyd went to his desk and sat down and dialed. Yeah I went to see him. No I didn’t cause I don’t know where he is. His house and his dad’s. Dad don’t know either. Yeah it might mean something. I don’t know. Yes sir, I’ll keep on ’til I talk to him. He hung up the phone and he turned his chair around and looked out the window. Across the street a teenager in an orange jumpsuit and chains was being put into the back of a van and being taken to a place where he would stay for a long time. He didn’t like that Russell wasn’t at home and wasn’t at his dad’s place. Didn’t like that Mr. Gaines hadn’t seen him. Didn’t like that Larry was behind the corner waiting to jump out with guns blazing. He didn’t like that back in high school all they had to do was play ball and drink tallboys in the summer nights and chase skirts and now they lived different lives, different from what any of them probably imagined. How could you imagine the complexities of what might come? The one thing Boyd did understand was that it was his job to catch the bad guys and he hoped like hell that Russell wasn’t one of them.
Desperation Road Page 15
