by Ann B. Ross
“As soon as she’s in, I’ll pull up right in front,” I told Hazel Marie. “We’ll keep the car door open, so all they’ll have to do is jump in.”
“Keep the motor running, too,” Hazel Marie said through clenched teeth. Those she had left, that is.
We watched as Lillian tried the door at the front of the building. Then she began pushing a buzzer, and for a long while I thought no one was going to answer. When the door finally opened, we could see her talking to someone for what seemed like several minutes. Finally, she held up the two bills and the door opened wider. She went in and it closed behind her.
“She’s in!” I eased the car up beside the front of the building, keeping the headlights off. I reached over and opened the passenger door wide.
My hands trembled on the wheel as I wondered what was going on inside. I slid my left foot onto the brake pedal so the other one could rest on the accelerator, ready for takeoff. Other than the rumble of thunder, Hazel Marie’s painful breathing, and the muted roar of traffic on the interstate, everything around us was quiet.
“I hope nothing goes wrong,” Hazel Marie said. “She’s been in there an awful long time. What if he wants to put her on TV? He does that sometimes, just picks somebody out to interview as the Lord leads him.”
Lightning flashed again, closer this time, and heavy raindrops began to spatter on the windshield. I looked out to my left, seeing the rows of cars on the interstate and dreading the moment of merging again.
“Lillian won’t go on TV in her work dress,” I said. Then to keep my mind off what was happening inside, I asked, “Where did Brother Vern go to seminary?”
“He didn’t. He was working for the World of Boots and Shoes when the Lord called him to preach. He got the call right between the Bass Weejuns and the Converse high-tops. He says fitting shoes on people’s feet gave him more training in misery than any seminary could.”
I left that alone, since Hazel Marie’s soft voice told it so matter-of-factly. Far be it from me to disturb anybody’s faith.
“Well,” I said, “I guess it takes all—Oh! here they come!”
The door of the building flew open and Little Lloyd ran out with Lillian right behind him. Several men and a pack of children, pushing, shoving, and yelling, ran after them.
“Get in! Get in!” I threw back the passenger seat and Little Lloyd practically flew over it to land in the back.
“Mama! Mama!” he cried, lunging for her. She reached for him and pulled him close.
“Sweetheart,” she said. “Oh, baby, are you all right?”
“Careful, Little Lloyd, your mother’s hurt. Hurry, Lillian!”
She was in and trying to get the door closed. Men, teenagers, and little children swarmed around the side of the car. One of the men held on to the door while Lillian tugged and strained to get it closed. She screamed as somebody reached in to pull her out of the car. I stomped the gas pedal so hard the tires spun on the asphalt. When I took my other foot off the brake, the little car practically leapt in the air. The momentum swung the door wider, then slammed it shut, flinging the man holding it to the ground.
The chain-link fence loomed before us, coming at us fast. I jerked at the wheel, spinning it around, feeling the car swerve and rock on its frame. Before I knew it we’d turned completely around. Practically in our tracks. I heard screams, but they were all coming from inside the car. People, some of them children, ran from one side of the lot to the other, arms waving, trying to get me to stop. They scattered as I came back at them.
“Miz Springer!” Hazel Marie yelled. “Watch out!”
“What you doin’?” Lillian cried. “Don’t run over them people!”
“I can’t find the gate!”
“Turn on the headlights!” Lillian yelled.
That helped. I found them and the gate and sped out onto the access road.
“Oh, my Lord,” I said, “how do I get over there on the interstate?” Bumper-to-bumper traffic moved along beside us, separated by a ditch of weeds and a metal railing.
Hazel Marie had her arms around Little Lloyd, but she sat up straighter to look out the windshield. “There’s a ramp right up there past the rise. You can get on there.”
My stomach dropped as we sailed over the rise and down the ramp to the interstate. One car after another, a continuous line of headlights and taillights, filled both lanes of southbound traffic. I didn’t let it bother me, though, since Hazel Marie had told me how to manage an entry. I zoomed toward the nearest lane, looking neither to the right nor the left.
Little Lloyd screamed. Lillian called on Jesus, but I just sped up and slid the car into the traffic. I’d never heard such blowing of horns and screeching of brakes. I paid no mind.
I breathed a sigh of relief as we moved along with the traffic. Lillian’s hand was practically white where she was gripping the armrest.
“Anybody following us?” I asked.
Lillian turned around and said, “Only ’bout two million cars, but I can’t see who’s in ’em.”
“Well, let’s hope for the best. Little Lloyd, are you all right? We’re glad to have you back.” The amenities done, I said to Lillian, “Help me look for the windshield wipers; that rain is peppering down now. I wish this car wasn’t so new so I’d know where things are.”
“You know where you goin’?” she asked as I finally turned the right knob and got the wipers going.
“No, Lillian, I don’t. I just know we’re going away from Brother Vern. Other than that, I’m just driving and doing the best I can.”
“We’ll go to Atlanta if you keep on this way,” Hazel Marie said. “Watch for a Greenville exit and come off on that. We can get back to Abbotsville that way.”
“My Lord!” I said as the roar of a heavy motor surrounded us and bright headlights behind us nearly blinded me. I reached up to adjust the rearview mirror. “What’s that truck doing so close to us?”
“I can’t see nothin’,” Lillian said, as she twisted in her seat and shielded her eyes with her hand. “He mighty close, but he don’t look like one of them trucks we had before.”
“Lemme look,” Hazel Marie said, and I heard the intake of her breath as she tried to turn around. “Pull out in the other lane, Miz Springer, if you can, and I’ll try to get a look at him from the side.”
I twitched the car over into the fast lane and got a horn blast from another car for my trouble. I had the turn indicator on, so it shouldn’t’ve been a surprise. I speeded up, though, and lost the glare of headlights through our rear window.
“I see him!” Hazel Marie yelled. “Oh, my goodness, that’s Jerome’s pickup. I know it is, see how high it’s jacked up.”
A jacked-up truck rang a bell that I didn’t want to hear.
“Look at them wheels,” Lillian said. She’d turned completely around to kneel in the seat. “What he doin’ with them big wheels on a pickup?”
“Truck pulls,” Hazel Marie said, as if that explained anything. “I didn’t see his truck back at the TV station. I don’t know what I’d of done if I had.”
“Maybe it was parked in the back,” I said. “But if it’s the same truck I’ve seen before, it has a habit of appearing out of nowhere. The question now is, how do we get away from him?”
“We got to think of something,” Hazel Marie said. “Miz Springer, we can’t let him catch up with us. He’s pulled into our lane now! Oh, God, don’t let him catch us.”
“Mama?” Little Lloyd said.
“Don’t worry, Little Lloyd,” I said, “he hasn’t caught us yet, and if this car lives up to the claims they make for it, he won’t.”
“What you gonna do?” Lillian asked. “Outrun him all the way to Atlanta, Gee-A?”
I said, “Think of something, somebody.”
“One good thing,” Hazel Marie said, “we can’t miss that pickup. It stands out even in the dark. Miz Springer, try and get back in the outside lane, but stay with some other cars so he can’t tailgate us again.�
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“I hope you have a plan,” I said.
“Don’t turn on your blinkers,” she said. “We don’t want to give him any warning. Just scoot on over whenever you can, and let’s hope he loses track of which car we’re in.”
I did, but nobody liked me doing it. People can be so rude about blowing their horns. I just blew mine back.
“All right,” I said, “I’m over here. Did he follow us?”
“You look, Miss Lillian,” Hazel Marie said. “Me and Junior’re gonna scrooch down so he’ll only see two heads in the car, and maybe he’ll think it’s not us.”
“He still in that other lane,” Lillian said, “and they’s a whole lot of cars around him an’ us.”
“Good,” Hazel Marie mumbled from the floorboard. “Miz Springer, take the first busy exit into Greenville, then turn into the first street you come to on the right. Park on that street and cut your lights. If he follows us off the exit, maybe he’ll keep on going.”
I couldn’t argue with the plan. It sounded like something that’d worked for her before, and it did again. We came off the interstate with several other cars, and as we left the ramp, Lillian said the pickup was still trying to get in the exit lane.
I parked the car on a dimly lit side street, turned off the lights, and kept the motor running. We sat there in the dark, listening to each other breathe and Little Lloyd sniffing.
“There it is!” Lillian pointed as the monster truck, black as the devil, passed at the end of the street. Jerome didn’t slow down, apparently trying to catch up to where he thought we’d be. The roar of the truck’s motor reverberated down the side street. I shuddered at the sight and sound of it, for it had to be the same truck I’d seen twice before. Now, thanks to Hazel Marie, I knew who was in it and, as she would’ve said, it scared the…well, pee-pee out of me.
“Lord,” I said under my breath, “that thing could run us off the mountain and nobody’d ever know.”
“What we gonna do if it come back at us?” Lillian asked. Her hands twisted in her lap, and I felt a twinge of guilt for putting her in this dangerous situation.
“We’re gonna be gone,” Hazel Marie said. “Miz Springer, ease on out now and get back on the interstate. We’ll go back the way we came, now that he thinks we’ve gone this way.”
I pulled out slowly, easing out of the side street and heading across the overpass to enter the interstate on the opposite side. More heavy traffic, but there was safety in numbers so I didn’t mind it so much.
“This is not going to fool him long,” I said.
“Yes’m,” Hazel Marie said, “but by the time he figures it out, we ought to be far enough ahead to make it home all right.”
“Well, an’ that’s another thing,” Lillian said. “What we gonna do when we get home? If he really after us, ain’t no being home gonna stop him.”
“We can get help there,” I said, trying to reassure her. And me. “If we have to, we’ll sic Deputy Bates and Lieutenant Peavey and Binkie Enloe on him. We’ll be all right once we get there. I just don’t want to be driving alone on that mountain with him right behind us.”
“Look, there’s that TV station ’cross yonder.” Lillian pointed past my face, but I was too busy to look. “They’s still some people out in the parking lot. Talkin’ ’bout us, I ’spect.”
I heard some whispering between Little Lloyd and his mother, then he stuck his head up between the front seats. “Miss Lillian, I want to thank you for coming to get me. And you, too, Miz Springer. Me and my mama really ’preciate it.”
“You so welcome, honey,” Lillian said, patting his hand.
“Some things are just right to do,” I said, then fearing that I’d sounded ungracious, changed the subject. “Lillian, tell us what happened when you went in there.”
“Well, first thing, I didn’t think I was gonna get in. They didn’t like somebody knockin’ on they door that time a night. But them big bills you give me changed they minds, like it would anybody’s. That first man what come to the door, he wanted me to give ’em to him, but I say, ‘No, I got my ’structions an’ they got to go dreckly to Brother Vern and Brother Stedman.’ He keep tellin’ me they on the air an’ can’t be ’sturbed an’ I keep tellin’ him I wait for ’em. Finally, he let me go in the studio, but he tell me to stay over in the corner outta the way till Miss Rubynell sing again an’ then I can hand over the donations. That suited me, ’cause everybody so busy they forget about me, an’ I stood there lookin’ ’round for our little boy an’ wonderin’ how can I get him to see me.”
“I saw you, Miss Lillian!” Little Lloyd said, so excited that his glasses almost fell off. “I couldn’t believe it was you over in that corner. I didn’t even see you come in.”
“Well, the next thing I had to worry ’bout was you sayin’ somethin’. You know, out loud, that’d let everybody know what was up.”
“But I knew better, didn’t I? I didn’t say a thing, did I?” He was bouncing on the seat and I almost said something to him, but thought better of it with his mother there. I declare, I didn’t know the child had that much life in him, which is just as well. I can’t stand a nervous, talkative child, can you?
“You sho’ didn’t, honey. You did it just right. I jus’ put my finger on my lips to shush you an’ then motion you to come on to me.”
“And you know what else I did, Mama? Miz Springer, guess what I did then? I whispered to one of the big kids that was on the show that I had to go to the bathroom and he said okay. And I just got up and left and Miss Lillian followed me. And then we ran, didn’t we, Miss Lillian!”
“We made us some tracks, all right!” Lillian said, laughing.
I have to confess that I admired Little Lloyd’s quick thinking, in spite of having to hear about it at full volume. Not many nine-year-olds would have their heads on so straight.
“I’m real proud of you, baby,” Hazel Marie said, “and so glad to have you back.”
We were all quiet as I maneuvered the car through the loop to put us back on I-26. The traffic thinned out as we began the climb toward Abbotsville. Nobody spoke, thinking either about our close calls or about Jerome, one.
There were no bright-beamed headlights behind us, so I leaned back and began to relax, keeping my hands lightly on the steering wheel. In spite of everything that’d happened and in spite of the fact that we were safely on the way home, not a one complimented me on my driving. Even though I really had the hang of it by then.
“Uh, speaking of going to the bathroom,” Hazel Marie said.
“Just hold your water,” I said. “I’m not about to stop on the side of the road with that Jerome after us. I’ll come off on the next exit and we’ll look for a cornfield.”
I don’t know why they thought that was so funny, but they laughed about it all the way home.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
WE ALL HAD a slow start the next morning, except for Lillian, who was up before seven getting breakfast for Deputy Bates. We didn’t want him guessing we’d been tooling around two states in the middle of the night. I’d cautioned her before we’d gone to bed, saying we all needed to get our stories straight before telling anybody about our nighttime activities.
“Lieutenant Peavey told me not to leave town,” I reminded her. “But what he don’t know won’t hurt him.”
I got up about eight and checked on Hazel Marie and Little Lloyd in his room.
“I think I pulled something loose, Miz Springer,” Hazel Marie said as she tried to sit up. “I’m awful sorry to be so much trouble. But I got my baby back, thanks to you and Miss Lillian, and I’ll be all right.”
“You stay right there in bed,” I told her. “Here’s some Tylenol, and if that doesn’t help I’m taking you to the doctor today. Little Lloyd, run down and let Lillian give you some breakfast, but don’t wake up Deputy Bates.”
“Yes’m,” he said, a brighter, happier child than I’d seen before. Not much improved in looks, though, I’ll have to say, sin
ce he inherited so much from Wesley Lloyd.
“DID BROTHER VERN treat you all right?” I sat at the kitchen table with Little Lloyd while Lillian puttered around the sink. I noticed that so far he’d not retrieved his Winn-Dixie sack; at least it wasn’t in his lap or by his chair.
“Yes’m, it was all right,” he said, giving me quick glances like he was still afraid to look me in the eye. “I thought he was taking me to my mama.”
“I thought so, too, or I’d’ve never let you leave with him. I want you to know that. But he didn’t hurt you, did he?”
“No’m.”
“What did he want with you? Did he ever say?”
“He said my mama wouldn’t let him have something my daddy gave her. He thought I knew where it was, but I don’t even know what it is.”
Lillian said, “That man up to no good, if you ast me.”
“Amen to that,” I said. “Little Lloyd, I want you to stay inside today, either with me or Lillian. Your mother’s not feeling well, so she needs to stay in bed.
“Lillian, I don’t want to scare this child, but Brother Vern and Jerome Puckett may not be through with us. If you see that truck, or hear it, let me know. I want us all to stay close until we see what they’re up to.”
“This baby’s not gonna be outta my sight,” Lillian said. “Come on over here, honey, le’s us make some biscuits for when Deputy Bates have his supper.”
He got out of the chair, smiling, and went to her. For the first time since I’d known the child, and for just the briefest time, he didn’t resemble Wesley Lloyd in the least.
THE FRONT DOORBELL rang as I started to leave them to it. Lillian and I looked at each other, then at Little Lloyd, whose face had gone white.
“It’s nobody; don’t worry,” I said. “Jerome’s not going to come to this house and announce himself. Lillian, you and Little Lloyd stay in here. I’ll see who it is, and get rid of them as soon as I can.” Unless it’s Sam, I amended to myself.
