Desperation Road

by Michael Farris Smith

  Larry stood up and grabbed the jail bars. “Walt, you son of a bitch! You son of a bitch! Take me to the telephone! Hey! Somebody take me back to the goddamn telephone!”

  Half an hour later the jailer opened the door and motioned for Larry and he followed him down the hallway and into an office where he signed some papers and was given back his keys and wallet. They took him out the door and down another hallway and then through another door and there stood Walt.

  Walt looked down at Larry’s feet. “Where the hell are your boots?”

  Larry walked past him and out the door. Walt followed and asked twice more about the boots but quit when they reached his truck and Larry still hadn’t answered.

  They left the station and drove through Kentwood and to the interstate. When Walt turned north Larry said my truck is at the ballpark you dumb shit.

  “Don’t call me a dumb shit,” Walt said. He didn’t wait for the next exit but cut across the median, the headlights bouncing across the night and Walt gunning it to beat an oncoming car. He turned onto the ramp and Larry said I’ll call you what I want. Neither made another sound until they stopped at the ballpark at Larry’s truck.

  When Larry reached for the door Walt said hold on. You gotta know something and I don’t want you to go flying off the handle when I say this. You and me both know Russell has got to pay for what he did but I’m drawing the line at shotguns and pistols. I ain’t looking to die and you shouldn’t be neither. And if we push that hard then that’s what is gonna happen and I ain’t ready to be buried. That wouldn’t do me or you or Jason no good. I’ll do whatever else.

  Larry opened the truck door and stepped out. Stared at Walt.

  “What?” Walt said.

  “So. You’re one of them,” Larry said.

  “One of them what?”

  He glared at Walt and felt his blood rising as if he were beginning to melt on the inside, his rage stoking the heat in his veins until he became nothing more than some torrid and molten puddle of flesh and bone. He glared and didn’t answer and then he slammed the door. Walt didn’t wait around for a convoy back to McComb and he stomped the gas and his back tires spun on the rough pavement. Larry walked around to the back of his truck and let down his tailgate and sat and stared at the empty ball fields. At the empty bleachers and walkways. He then walked barefoot along the walkway and he entered the gate at the first base dugout and he ran. He ran and slid headfirst into second base and then got up and went for third and slid headfirst again. Red dirt streaked down his shirt and jeans and arms and neck. Heart racing and breathing hard and he took off his shirt and ran and slid. Ran and slid. His chest and arms scraped and bleeding and the dirt in his nose and ears and under his fingernails and the raging eyes of hate.

  46

  THE NEXT MORNING RUSSELL AND MABEN STOOD BY THE POND AND talked it out. The last bus of the day would leave at ten o’clock that night. Nice and dark, he said. Kill the day out here and then I’ll take you to the station. Not much chance of running into anybody or of me and you being seen together. Even if Boyd comes this way we’ll see him coming along the highway and tuck you and her away. Bus heads north but Memphis is as far as you can go. Get off wherever looks good to you. Maben smoked and nodded, watched a cloud of gnats hovering above the surface of the pond.

  Annalee spent the day feeding the fish and then catching them. Tossing bread to the ducks. Climbing up on the tractor and pretending to drive. Throwing rocks into the pond or at trees or whatever.

  Maben was not so easy. Anxious. Jumpy. Ready to go. Overcome by her nomadic nature. She smoked a pack and asked for more. Russell fed them to her like they were french fries. Didn’t matter to him what she did as long as she stayed put and then got on that bus. Once the afternoon passed and the evening came on he figured they were safe. That ten o’clock was going to arrive and she would leave town under the cover of stars and in a few weeks or a month she would be back and then they could go from there. No need to try to figure it all out in one day.

  They finished eating a late dinner after it had been difficult to get Annalee to put away her fishing pole and Mitchell and Russell sat outside with coffee while the women sat in the living room watching television. Only the light from the window above the barn interrupted the dark.

  “She’s going tonight,” Russell said.

  “Going where?”

  “She’s not sure.”

  “Just she?”

  “Yeah. Only the big one.”

  “What you gonna do with the little one?”

  “Watch her. Give her something to eat every now and then. Can you do that?”

  “For how long?”

  “Not long.”

  “And what are we going to say if someone asks about her?”

  “We’ll say she’s visiting Consuela. She’s her niece or something.”

  “That don’t sound so great.”

  “Well. That’s all I got right now.”

  The back door opened and Maben came outside to join the men. She sat down in a rocking chair next to Mitchell.

  “We’ll let it get a little darker and then I need to stop by the house before we go to the station,” Russell said to her. “Got some stuff you might need.”

  “Fine,” she said.

  “When I finish my coffee,” he said.

  “Anything you can get here?” Mitchell asked.

  Russell shook his head.

  The evening sky stretched out in lavenders and pinks. Wisps of bluegray clouds settled along the horizon and the weight of night began to drape the twilight. Mitchell stood and patted Maben’s shoulder and then he left them and took his worry out to the pond.

  “So what is it I need exactly?” Maben asked.

  “How much money you got?”

  “Don’t know. I’ve had less, though.”

  “Then that’s what you need. I got some at the house. Not much. Some.”

  “You don’t have to give me no money.”

  “I know I don’t have to.”

  “You don’t have to do none of this.”

  “I know,” he said again. “We better go.”

  Consuela had packed Maben a bag of clean clothes and a toothbrush and hairbrush. And at Russell’s instruction she had tucked away a pencil and paper and several stamped envelopes. A scrap of paper with Russell’s address paper-clipped to the top envelope. The bag sat at the edge of the porch and Maben rose from the rocker and slung it over her arm. Then she stood in the open door and stared inside at Annalee.

  “Do you want to tell her bye?” Russell asked.

  “I did. Before I came out here.”

  “Do you want to tell her again?”

  Maben watched her child. Took one step toward her and stopped. Then she turned and walked past Russell and across the yard to the truck.

  Driving through town they crossed the arching bridge that stretched over the railroad tracks and at the height of the bridge she took a quick look down the tracks. “There’s something pretty about that,” she said.

  “About what?”

  “About the railroad tracks at night. How they go on and on and you can’t see where. But they’re so straight and perfect. Like there’s no way to get lost.”

  “There ain’t no way to get lost on a train.”

  “You know what I mean,” she said. “Maybe pretty ain’t the word.”

  “Maybe.”

  “But what if you get on the wrong one?”

  “What about it?”

  “You’d be lost then.”

  “You got me there.”

  “Don’t go to your house yet. Let’s ride some,” she said. “We got time?”

  “Some.”

  She turned on the radio and she didn’t talk anymore. When they passed through town Russell told her to duck down and she kept her head below the dashboard until the lights of town were behind them. They moved along the winding, dark roads. Shades of black through the trees and across the pastures in a moonlit night and then he as
ked if that was enough and she said no. Keep riding some more.

  Later she said if you don’t have to then I don’t understand why you are doing all this. Nobody never helped me or her. They were deep in the country when she asked. Only able to see what the headlights would give them. He didn’t know how to answer. But she waited.

  “You’re the one who picked me,” he finally said. He looked at her. At the dim light on her face from the dashboard lights. Her tired face. Her old face. Not yet thirty but the face of the defeated. The face of holding on. “It’s like you got an invisible collar around your neck and so do I. And there’s an invisible rope pulling us together.”

  “That might be a fair way to put it. Like soul mates. But between bad souls.”

  “Bad?”

  “Maybe bad ain’t the right word. Sometimes I don’t know what word is right.”

  They drove on. The back roads like a shelter.

  “Even if they figure it out I won’t say nothing about you helping me.”

  He shifted in his seat. “You’ll do whatever you got to do.”

  “I mean it. I won’t say nothing.”

  “Okay.”

  “I won’t. I just wanted you to know.”

  “Okay.”

  He stayed out among the stars for a little longer and then he drove back into town. She didn’t talk anymore. And neither did he.

  47

  WHEN LARRY TURNED ONTO RUSSELL’S STREET HE DIDN’T SEE THE Ford and that was what he wanted. He parked a block away and then he walked to the house with a beer in one hand and a crowbar in the other. He stumbled with the uneven sidewalk. Stumbled off the curb and dropped the beer and he kicked it across the street. But then he gathered himself and he walked on carefully. When he reached Russell’s house he went around to the back door and turned the knob. It was locked and then he pushed at the bedroom window and it seemed to give. He wedged the end of the crowbar underneath and he lifted and the window raised. One leg in the window and then the rest of him and he sat down on the bed. He didn’t turn on any lights and he sat still with the crowbar across his lap. If he would have slid the heel of his new boots back six inches he would have bumped the barrel of the shotgun.

  The longer he sat still the more he realized he was alone. For whatever reason he was alone and he didn’t envision a future that would be any different and then the booze and the emptiness bled together and he began to cry. And as he cried his thoughts weren’t filled with faces or voices or any of the memories of a life but with the image of sitting at the bottom of an empty well and looking up at the circle of light. Reaching for a rope that was out of reach. He cried like a man who was out of faith and he didn’t try to stop himself and he was glad that there was no one to see him or to hear him. He laid the crowbar on the bed and he walked around in the dark bedroom, pulling at his hair and crying like the forsaken and stomping in a circle and kicking at anything that interrupted his pacing and in the streaks that ran from his face and down his neck he began to feel a cleansing, a release, an answer, a promise and he raged on and on, crying and wailing and stomping. Forcing it out of his body as if there were a holiness to be achieved. He stomped around the room and heaved and then he clenched his jaw and growled and raised both fists and shook them at the God he didn’t want to know.

  He then opened his hands. Touched his fingertips to his damp cheeks and his damp neck. He bent over and felt as if he might vomit and thought how good that might feel but he raised back up and he extended his arms and palms toward the ceiling and screamed a muffled scream with his teeth clenched as if not quite ready to fully release the hell burning inside.

  He walked back over to the bed and picked up the crowbar and sat down. A loaded Beretta was underneath the passenger seat of his truck but he did not want the power of the clean and the crisp. He stared at the wall and his blood surged and in the shadows he felt it all. His young brother Jason ripped away from him and the son he could not see and his ex-wife dismissing him with a wave of a hand. The joke he had become to Heather and everyone who knew the shit that she did and even now Walt turning his back on him. The final betrayal. And that motherfucker Russell free and clear. His hands sweating around the iron bar and his jaw clamped tight and then he heard the Ford pull into the driveway and he knew that he was ready and he was going to make it hurt and hurt and hurt.

  He stood and moved into the small hallway and then slid into the bathroom doorway as he heard the front door unlocking. The door opened and a light came on in the living room and he couldn’t tell if they were the steps of one or the steps of two but he heard something coming his way and he squeezed the crowbar and he imagined right where Russell’s forehead would be. And when the steps made it to the edge of the bathroom he was already beginning to swing and he saw that it wasn’t what he was after but it was too late and he hit a woman in the side of the head and she dropped.

  He paused drunk and confused and Russell flew at him as Larry stood over the fallen body. Russell tackled him back toward the bedroom and the crowbar clanged on the floor as the two men went flying. Russell got his hands around his throat but Larry was able to pry them away and Russell took a head butt to the nose and then another and they rolled across the room, hands clawing at the eyes and mouth and throat of the other and Larry was able to get to his knees first and he got Russell by the hair and thrust his head back against the wall in three quick knocks but Russell sent a sharp elbow into his stomach and pulled away from him and they hurried to their feet. Larry went for the crowbar and expected to be grabbed or pulled but he made it to the hallway and picked it up and then turned around to see Russell lying on the floor next to the bed. Reaching underneath and snatching out the shotgun and Larry had only half a second to be surprised before he heard the blast and felt the sting and the searing hot pain in his chest. He stumbled back, falling over the motionless woman and dropping the crowbar and then getting to his knees and crawling for the door as another blast sounded and splintered his hand reaching to open the door.

  He screamed and dropped to his elbows but he kept on, getting the door open and falling out and then looking over his shoulder anticipating the next blast but it never came as Russell was bending over the woman with his hands waving in confusion. Larry crawled across the yard and then got to his feet at the sidewalk. He made his way toward his truck like some broken puppet and as he opened the truck door with his good hand he heard the sirens. He fumbled with his keys and screamed again at the heat shooting through his chest. He got the keys in the ignition and the sound of the sirens grew louder and he was able to get the truck cranked and he put it into drive. As he moved away he noticed lights coming on in the houses that lined the street and he squeezed his mangled hand between his legs and he wondered whose head he had cracked as he cried out in pain and fury and raced into the night.

  48

  THEY FIRST SPOTTED HIM TEN MILES DOWN INTO LOUISIANA DRIVING a hundred miles an hour. Passing cars on the left or the right and running down into the median and back up again like a maniac off the leash. He held his busted hand under his armpit to try to stop the throbbing and the bleeding but there was nothing he could do about his chest except pretend there wasn’t a hole in it. The blood was down his stomach and into his lap. He was sweating and had somehow managed to get a lit cigarette into his mouth and he ignored the flashing lights of first one and then two and then three Louisiana highway patrol cars. He charged on, driving hard and driving fast and he was nearly to Hammond when he saw them up ahead. Highway patrol cars lined across the road with their lights circling into the trees and he stomped the gas pedal to the floor and as he got closer he saw them standing in front of their vehicles with their rifles ready and he laughed at the thought of this. At how fucking stupid they must be to think that he gave a damn and they scattered like roaches as the truck laid on its horn and if they could have seen the man behind the wheel they would have seen him laughing at them as he jettisoned himself into their wall.

  49

>   HE STOOD OUTSIDE THE EMERGENCY ROOM DOORS SMOKING A cigarette. Pacing. Talking to himself. Russell wondered where that son of a bitch had gone and if he had bled to death yet and he hated that he hadn’t fired on him until Larry had to be carried out of the house in pieces. He smoked the cigarette down and tossed it and lit another. There was blood on the shoulder of his shirt where he had picked Maben up and carried her, a trickle coming from her ear as her head fell against him. He had laid her across the seat of the truck and driven like hell, nearly causing pileups as he ignored the red lights of at least three intersections. Two young men in scrubs had come through the automatic glass doors and taken her from the truck and laid her on a stretcher and he told them she got hit in the head as they wheeled her out of sight. He couldn’t take it in there so he went back out and he had been pacing and smoking and waiting. A woman behind the desk kept waving to him from inside and shaking a clipboard at him, wanting him to come in and tell her what he knew. But he shook his cigarette back at her and ignored her.

  It was about that time when the cruiser pulled into the emergency room driveway. Boyd saw Russell and so he looped around and parked and then he met Russell on the sidewalk.

  “Heard it over the wire,” Boyd said. “Heard your address. You okay?”

  “Do I look okay?”

  Boyd tapped the tip of his index finger on the blood on Russell’s shoulder. “Who does that belong to?”

  Russell flicked away his cigarette. Stood up straight and looked out across the parking lot. He felt Boyd’s eyes on him. Knew that he was running out of things to say to him. Running out of alleys to hide in. Running out of excuses to make. Knew that the next thing Boyd would do was to go inside and find out what happened. Find out it was Maben in there. Then he’d wait until she could make a sentence. Whether it was an hour or a day or a week he would be the first person she’d see when she opened her eyes and then she’d have to answer and there was no way to know how she’d answer after the whack she’d taken on the side of the head. Or if she would be able to answer at all. Maybe she’d forget everything. Maybe she’d forget just enough. No telling what was going to come out of her mouth if she ever started talking again. No telling what might be left in her head.