“You need to get rid of that thing,” he said.
She looked out her window and across the creek. Sunlight glared across the wet rocks and ripples. The banks were overgrown with heavy green brush and on down a little ways a tree had fallen across.
“I’m not throwing it out here,” she said. A tremble in her voice.
He got out of the truck and walked around to her side and opened the door. Get on out he said and he turned to look at the water. She took off the cap and set it on the seat. Dropped her head and when she raised it she wiped her eyes. And then she stepped onto the bridge. They stood at the rail, looking down into the water and across into the woods. The hole created by the crashing vehicles had long since been filled in with new growth.
“What made you think to come out here?” she asked.
“Nothing,” he said.
She looked him up and down.
“Am I supposed to know you?”
Russell pointed toward the hilltop and said a few years back or more than a few years back I didn’t have nothing else to do one night so I started riding around. Ended up drinking some. Met this girl in town and we messed around for a little while and that got me to feeling even better. So after I dropped her off at her car I kept on riding and kept on drinking. By myself. Killing a night. That was all. Somehow though I ended up pretty drunk. Ended up coming over that hill. Ended up in a bad wreck right here.
He pushed his hands into his pockets.
“You’re lying,” she said.
“No.”
“There ain’t no way.”
“That’s what I been telling myself since I found you.”
“You didn’t find me. I found you.”
She turned her back to the water and sat down on the rail. “Jesus. I wish I knew what made the world turn like it does. Spins strange sometimes. Spins stranger for some people anyhow.”
He picked up a rock and tossed it into the creek.
“I thought you was in jail,” she said.
“I was. Got home about three days ago. Right on time.”
“How long has it been?”
“Long time. Eleven years.”
“Russell. Is that right?”
“That’s right.”
She stood up from the rail and walked a lap around the truck. When she came back around she said I hated your guts. Used to pray every night that somebody was beating the shit out of you or holding you down. Used to pray for that. Dear God I’d say and then the rest with the bad words and everything. Bet He couldn’t wait every night to hear that one. She looked back across the water and into the woods. Then I got tired of it. Just like that. Woke up one morning and I was too tired to hate you anymore. Too tired to hate what happened. By then I was a long ways from home and running on fumes and you didn’t matter no more.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Don’t. Don’t start that up. Don’t come out here with that. That was eleven years ago. That shit don’t matter no more. Ain’t you listening?” She bent over and grabbed her hair with both hands. Mumbled and grunted. Raised up and pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes.
“I never said it then so I thought I’d say it now.”
“Why? Don’t change nothing,” she said and she slapped her hands by her sides. “Might make you feel better but it don’t change nothing.”
“Don’t really make me feel better.”
“Then shut the hell up.”
She took another lap. Let it go let it go she repeated as she walked. Rubbed her temples with her index fingers. She then stood in front of him. Took two deep breaths and nodded toward the creek.
“I ain’t throwing that gun in there.”
“You got to throw it somewhere. In about the next fifteen minutes. I’m not riding around with it anymore.”
“Shit. Guess not. You’re guilty as I am right now.”
“Not right. You pointed it at me and told me to drive. I did. Otherwise I ain’t seen it. Your word on mine.”
“That should make for some fine damn discussion seeing how upstanding we both are.”
“Just throw it.”
“And then what? Then you take me home. Wanna make it all right. Wanna pay for it all in one big splash.”
“I already paid for it. You can look at this however you want. The way I see it once that gun is gone that’s it. That’s it between you and what you did and between you and me and whatever I’m doing standing here. Thing is, I’ve ended up believing everything you said and if it’s true then I’m glad you shot that asshole. I don’t even know who he was but I can see him in my head. If you’re lying then I’m the dumbass. But many times I wish I would’ve had a gun to shoot whoever had ahold of me. Been many times God heard what you were praying and He damn sure answered. So you can believe He’s up there.”
“He heard me then. Not no other times.”
“I don’t care about when He heard you and when He didn’t. It didn’t exactly work out for nobody.”
Maben sat down in the road. “No. It didn’t,” she said. “But I don’t feel right throwing the gun here. It don’t work that way. Seems like something is going to creep up. And that creek ain’t deep enough. You knew that.”
He nodded.
“Then why’d you bring me out here?” she asked.
But he didn’t bother to answer and she didn’t ask again.
She leaned back her head and looked toward the pale and empty sky. She had wanted somebody to blame for a long time and now here he was but she couldn’t do it. Seemed like everything had paused. Like they would get in the truck and drive back into something different from what was waiting.
“Answer me something,” he said. “I always wondered why you weren’t in the truck with that boy. Why it was only him.”
With the question she stood. Russell sat on the bridge rail and waited to see if she would answer.
She could see him there in the truck bed. Lying flat like she had asked him to. Lying still like she had asked him to. Young and strong and darkskinned from long summer days. She could see him there waiting for her. Waiting like she had asked him to once they had begun to feel one another under the full moon. Wait, she had said. Lay down. Sure it was what she wanted to do but unsure about the best way to go about it. She had told him to lay down and don’t look. Maben looked toward the grass at the end of the bridge. Where she had stood and taken off her shorts and T-shirt and bra and flip-flops and set them in a pile on the ground. Certain that if she were to go back to him this way she wouldn’t turn back. That she would do what she wanted to do and what he wanted to do. She stared at that spot at the end of the bridge where she had taken off her clothes, remembering how she had looked at herself in the moonlight and assured herself in the moonlight. Naked and young and that beautiful boy lying in the back of the truck waiting for her. She could see herself standing there and she wanted to see herself coming toward the truck. Wanted to see herself climb on top of the boy. Wanted to see the boy’s hands on her hips and across her back and shoulders and down her legs. Wanted to see what they were going to do but it had all ended with her standing naked in that spot, interrupted by the hum of an approaching car and the glow of headlights that had appeared over the hill, headlights that came on fast and exposed themselves in two bright bursts before she had time to call out to Jason. Before she had time to pick up her clothes and the car had never slowed down. What she saw now as she stared at the spot at the edge of the bridge was a young girl terrified and ducking with the roar of the crash and she looked back across to the other side of the bridge where his suntanned body disappeared into the dark.
“Maben?” Russell asked.
“I just wasn’t in it,” she said. Her eyes still in the trees. “That’s all. Don’t remember why.”
He wanted to push her. To get the real answer. But he didn’t. He wanted to make a crack about what the hell was she doing with one of them Tisdale boys anyway. But he didn’t. Recognized in her look that she had said all t
hat she was able to say. She then opened the truck door and sat down and she told him to take her to the lake. The gun will sink in the lake.
He put the truck in gear and they drove on. The fields were showing signs of drying out, being fed with only scattered rain instead of a soaking storm. A kid sat on a four-wheeler at the edge of the road and checked the mailbox though it was Sunday. More graffiti on bridge rails and on the road itself. Once they were back in town he told Maben to stick the gun under the seat and he stopped to use a pay phone at a gas station. He called his father and told him they would be back after dark. Feed Annalee. Mitchell said she wanted to try to fish if that was all right. He hung up the phone and he went in and bought beer and then they spent the afternoon riding and drinking, riding along roads and passing houses that triggered memories for each of them, things they thought they had forgotten. When they got hungry they bought chicken in a drive-through. Russell bought more beer and they rode around until it finally got dark and then they drove on out to the lake.
He had not set out for redemption. Not once thought about it in the years and months and weeks and days that led up to the moment he would be free. But he seemed to have stumbled upon its possibility in the thin cheeks of the woman and the sunburned scalp of the child and he kept saying and kept thinking that he had paid and paid some more and he was free and clear but there was something uncomfortable in his gut now that made that sentiment feel less and less like a conclusion. As they rode he set his mind on what he knew. His mother was gone and Sarah was gone. His dad had a different life and the town had taken on a different life. He was sitting next to someone he had no business sitting next to but here they were. He only thought about the things that he knew. The concrete. What he could put his hands on. And the things that he could put his hands on needed someone to put out those hands. To hold out those hands and pull. He thought again about the preacher and how the conversation had only enhanced his confusion about the here and now and the later on but as they drove on and the day became the night he began to understand that his concern lay with right now. His concern was with the woman and the child and what they had gotten themselves into and his role in it all and what the hell else am I waiting on and it was then that any doubts he harbored about helping her were carried away with the evening wind coming in the rolled-down windows.
Do what you want to do and don’t look back, he told himself.
Like everybody else.
37
HE TOOK HER TO THE SPOT WHERE HE HAD PARKED AND SLEPT two nights before. They got out of the truck. Both a little drunk now. Behind the seat of the truck he found a rag. He slid the pistol from the sock and wiped it down. Then he wrapped and tied the pistol with the rag and it sat on the hood of the truck in a small knotted bundle. They milled around looking at the sky and listening to the water slap against the bank. Drinking. And when it was time to get rid of it he asked her to let him do it. Because I can throw it out farther than you. They couldn’t see the splash but they heard it. Deep and certain. And she didn’t know why but it was at that moment of the splash that she wanted to tell him about her life. To talk to him and tell him how one day she had left the girl sitting on a bare twin mattress in a back room in a falling down house somewhere on the outskirts of some nameless town. To get cigarettes or chocolate milk or something and how when she came back a man had wandered in from another room and was going for the girl, her small wrists held together with his one hand and with his other hand unbuckling and unzipping and going after this small, helpless thing. This small thing who had a paralyzed look on her face. Maben wanted to tell him how she dropped the brown bag holding whatever it was she thought she had to fucking have and she climbed onto his back, clawing and scratching at his eyes and trying to stab her fingers into his brain, trying to bring blood, and then how he was able to spin her and slam her against the wall and then she was going for him again and he got her by the throat and slammed her again, the air going out of her and the child screaming huddled in the corner and how he had turned again toward the child while she lay breathless. A groaning sound coming from her but no air.
He went again for the child but the rhythm of her breathing came back as if God had put His mouth to hers and then she stripped off her belt and jumped on his back again, the belt tight around his neck and she held on as he swung her around and pulled at her hair and then he was on his knees and then he was out. A red face and a white liquid running down the corners of his mouth and she grabbed the child and they were down the street going who the hell knows where but they weren’t there anymore and they wouldn’t be there when he woke up or if he did. She didn’t know why this was the memory that came with the splash of the pistol into the lake. She didn’t know why this is what she almost told him about or why she wanted to talk about such things. He turned and said I can tell you one damn thing. They’ll kill me before I go back to prison. Kill me. You understand? And I’ll do the same to keep from going. You understand? She said yes and she understood. The dropdead tone in his voice and she understood the look that she imagined on his face that was hidden with the dark and she wanted to tell him about her life but she let it go and instead she closed her eyes and imagined herself floating down with the pistol. Settling on a soft, muddy bottom. The cool at the bottom of the lake holding her in a way that she had never been held before.
38
AT HIS FATHER’S PLACE THEY WENT IN THE BACK DOOR. THEY found the girl asleep on the couch halfcovered by a blanket. Consuela was stretched out on the recliner with her mouth open. The television was on but turned down low. Mitchell had gone to bed. Russell reached down and put one arm under the child’s legs and the other under her neck and he lifted her. Maben softly shook Consuela’s arm to wake her and then she pointed at Russell holding Annalee. Consuela nodded and closed her eyes again. Maben turned off the television with the remote and then she opened the door for Russell. He stepped through with the child, careful not to knock her head, and then Maben walked with him across the yard and to the barn. They went up the stairs and Russell took the child to the bed and laid her head on the pillow and she turned and mumbled something but she never woke. Maben covered her legs with the blanket and then when she turned around to say something to Russell he was already out of the room and heading down the stairs. From the window she watched him walk to his truck. He paused when he was there and looked at the barn and she stepped out of view. When she looked back again he was heading down the driveway.
As he drove toward the house his body told him to lie down and sleep. He turned onto his street and drove in front of the house. No lights on. Blue tarp still there. Nothing moving inside or out. Seemingly. He drove around the block and when he returned all appeared the same so he pulled under the carport and turned off the truck. Then he walked to the front door and he went inside and turned on lights as he moved from room to room. He moved hesitantly. Thought he was alone but couldn’t let himself believe it fully.
Once he had turned on all the lights and checked behind every door and inside every closet he sat down on the sofa. Satisfied. He kicked off his boots and unbuckled his belt. He turned on the television and watched baseball highlights but the sleep came on him and he couldn’t put it off any longer. He took off his socks and he walked into the bedroom and then he took off his shirt. He was unzipping his pants when he stopped. Thought for a second. Then he walked back out of the house and to the truck, where he lifted the seat and he grabbed the shotgun and then he went back inside and locked the door behind him. He left the light on in the kitchen and the living room and he closed his bedroom door. He set the shotgun on the floor, parallel with the edge of the bed. And then he turned off the bedroom light and there was plenty of light on the other side. Plenty enough to see footsteps if they were there.
Maben opened the curtains and the moonlight fell through the window. She paced back and forth across the room barefoot so not to wake Annalee. The red tip of her cigarette floated in the dark like a fairy.
She paused at the window and looked out across the quiet land and up into the starred sky. The chirping and croaking and a distant howl.
I gotta get the fuck out of here, she thought. And she paced again.
It was too much. The clean, air-conditioned room for them to sleep in. The Mexican woman bringing them food from a kitchen. The old man’s way with Annalee and the worry drained from Annalee’s face. The man who seemed to be doing whatever he could to help them for nothing in return. It wasn’t the way she had been accustomed to doing things. Something for nothing. Not in her world. And in this still and hollow night she was deciding to beat it out of there before the tide shifted. No matter what they feed you and how sweet they smile and no matter how many times he sticks his neck out to help you it ain’t gonna last and you know it. Don’t sit here like a dumbass and wait for the bottom to fall out.
She turned from the window and walked across the room and grabbed a cigarette and lighter from the bedside table. She then walked out the door and down the steps. The dew wet her feet as she walked out into the yard and she smoked down her cigarette and tossed the butt. After she had lit the new one she bent down and picked up the butt and stabbed it out and stuck it in her pocket.
She tilted back her head and gazed at the vast night sky. The white moon and a panorama of stars and she found the Big Dipper and maybe the Little Dipper but there were so damn many tiny lights that the clusters ran together and seemed to wash out the constellations. It seemed to her almost false. Like the heavens were only pretending to be this striking and the curtain would be pulled back and unveil a deeper and dulled shade of black.
She turned and looked at the window of the room above the barn. Annalee was so clean. So fed. So asleep. Maben then looked around and there was the Virgin, standing tall and basking in the moonlight. She walked over to her.
Desperation Road Page 17
