When I turned around again, Joe was standing there with Ryback's gun in his hand, looking at me like I'd just jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge and lived to tell about it. Behind him, Ryback was in a heap on the floor, where Joe had apparently left him after disarming him. Cee was standing over him, asking him over and over again if he was all right, but he looked to be too busy shaking the cobwebs out of his head to answer her.
"I know you've got a reason for what you just did," Big Joe said as the police began to pour into the mini-mart, "but whatever it is, I don't want to hear it. All I want at this moment is a divorce. You understand? I want a divorce!"
He was only joking, of course, but it took him close to an hour to admit it.
* * * *
The Amarillo police officer who questioned me later was a redheaded, clean-shaven young pup named Bodine, and the first thing he said to me when we sat down to talk was, "You're a very lucky woman, Mrs. Loudemilk."
He told Joe and me that Lewis Daniel Ryback was a very dangerous man, an ex-con out of Arizona with a number of violent offenses to his credit, and that it was nothing short of a small miracle that our chance meeting with him had ended as peacefully as it had. Ryback had never actually shot anybody before, Bodine admitted, but he certainly had demonstrated the willingness to do so on more than a few occasions. Why he hadn't put a few rounds in me when I'd turned my back on him to summon the police, Bodine said he'd never understand. So he asked me to try and explain it to him, if I could.
And I could.
"His gun wasn't loaded," I said simply.
"How did you know that, ma'am?" Bodine asked.
"She doesn't," Big Joe said.
"Yes, I do," I said.
"You think you do."
"No, I know I do. You think I would have done what I did if I hadn't been absolutely certain that gun wasn't loaded?"
"And what made you 'certain,' ma'am?" Bodine cut in, trying to seize control of an interrogation that my husband seemed intent upon running himself. "Was it something Mr. Ryback said, or did?"
"It was when he pointed the gun at that baby."
"Yes?"
"He put the barrel of that gun right up against that child's head, with the hammer pulled back and everything."
"I see. You thought he had to be bluffing, pointing a gun at his own child like that."
"No. I—"
Bodine looked over at Joe and smiled. It was the smile men always put on their faces when they think a woman's done something so wrongheaded it's cute. "I got you. You figured if he was bluffing about that, he had to be bluffing about everything else."
"No. That's not what I figured," I said.
"It's not?"
"No. I never said I thought he was bluffing. I said I knew his gun wasn't loaded. There's a difference. For all I know, that man is perfectly capable of shooting his own child, he has a gun with some bullets in it. But he didn't. That's what I knew. Not that he was bluffing, but that his weapon wasn't loaded."
"And how did you know that, ma'am? You still haven't said how you knew."
"Because I'm a mother, that's how. A mother always knows these things."
"Excuse me?"
"That man put the nose of that gun up against that baby's head and the child's mother never flinched. I was looking right at her, and she didn't bat an eye! Right then I knew, no way that gun had a single bullet in it. No way. There's not a mother in this world who'd just stand still like that while a man pointed a gun at her child unless she knew for certain it wasn't loaded. Believe me."
"That was it? That's what made you take the chance you took? His wife's reaction to him pointing a gun at their baby?"
"Yes. She didn't have a reaction to it. Because that gun was empty and she knew it."
I smiled and waited for Bodine to congratulate me. Score another one for old folks with smarts.
When he started to laugh, I was surprised. And when he tried to stop laughing and couldn't, I began to worry.
"What?" Big Joe asked him, after training his patented What-Have-You-Done-Now glare on me for several interminable seconds.
Bodine wiped his eyes, tried to speak, and failed. Joe and I let him convulse without interruption for a little while longer, then he tried to speak again.
This time he made it.
"Like I said before, Mrs. Loudermilk, you're a very lucky woman," he said, looking at me through a veil of tears, his head cocked playfully to one side.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that that 'mother's intuition' of yours is some powerful stuff, all right, but I'd make tonight the last time I bet the farm on it, I was you."
He started laughing again.
"You trying to tell us Ryback's gun was loaded?" Big Joe asked.
The Amarillo lawman nodded, once more struggling to compose himself.
"Jeez Loweez," Big Joe said. The shock made him sag like a slowly deflating party balloon.
Black people like myself can't turn white, per se, but we can change to a broad range of other sickly colors, something scares us enough. I think right about now I was something akin to chartreuse; it felt like chartreuse, anyway.
"But—"
"Oh, you were right about his wife, Mrs. Loudermilk," Bodine said, wiping tears from his eyes again. "She did think that gun was empty. Both she and Ryback agreed he hadn't had bullets in it for months. Hell, they were close to starving, who had money for bullets? But a couple days ago—"
"He bought some," Big Joe said.
"Yessir. Actually, he made a trade for some, is what he said. Gave somebody the spare tire out of his van for a box of shells down in Littlefield."
"Without telling his wife," I said.
"Yes, ma'am. Seems she's been on 'im to clean up his act lately, and he didn't want to upset her, so"—he shrugged—"he let her go on thinkin' the gun wasn't loaded. I'm sure she would have had somethin' to say to him otherwise, just like you said, when he pointed that thing at her baby. But she didn't know. She thought the gun was empty, same as you."
"Then why—"
"Why didn't Ryback shoot you? Because he was bluffing, I imagine. Like I said, his missus had been on 'im a while to turn over a new leaf. Maybe he's done just that, in his way." He grinned at me and closed his little notebook, marking an official end to my questioning. "'Course, there's no way any of us could've known that at the time. Some things, Mrs. Loudermilk, even a mother can't know. You take my word on that, okay?"
When he stood up and walked away, he was laughing all over again.
* * * *
The next day, out on Interstate 40, on our way to Memphis, Tennessee, Big Joe and I were still discussing the close call we'd had in Amarillo, and whether or not anyone else besides the two of us ever needed to know about it.
"Joe, please don't tell the children," I was saying.
"They have a right to know. They don't know you're crazy, you could maybe get one of them killed someday."
"Nobody got killed."
"Besides, I need witnesses. I ever decide to have you institutionalized, which is looking more and more likely every day, I'm going to need a few voices to back me up. The more the kids know about what I have to put up with out here on the road with you, the better off I'm gonna be when that day comes."
"It'll never happen," I said.
"You don't think so, huh?"
"No. I don't."
"You think I love you too much to ever put you away, is that it?"
"Exactly. That, and the fact you're just as crazy as I am. Or do you think every Airstream owner foams at the mouth whenever somebody refers to their trailer home as a Winnebago?"
"I do not foam at the mouth."
"Okay. I tell you what. You bring one of our kids to the competency hearing, and I'll bring a Winnebago owner. See if you aren't wearing a jacket you can't take off before I am."
It took a while, but he had to laugh at that.
I did, too.
Better Dead Than Wed
"You
see that?"
"I saw it."
"That has to make what? Three times in the last half-hour?"
"It makes four. But who's counting?"
"I am. He's gonna kill that woman at this rate!"
"No, he isn't. He isn't hurting her, he's just bullyin' her. But even if he wasn't—"
"Joe..."
"Close your eyes, Dottie. Try to get some sleep. That's a private matter, and you know it."
It was sound advice, I knew, but I couldn't take it. Tired as I was at 3:30 in the morning, the long-haired, Stetson-wearing cowboy in the blue Dodge pickup two car-lengths ahead of us had my blood boiling too vigorously for sleep. My husband Big Joe and I had been lagging behind him for a little over forty minutes, his truck and ours apparently locked on identical cruise control settings as we pushed north on Interstate 15 toward Salt Lake City, and four times now the big man had taken his right hand off the Dodge's wheel to reach over and slap at the face of the woman sitting in the cab beside him. The first time it happened I thought I'd imagined it, but then the hand went out a second time and I heard Joe mumble a curse under his breath, and I knew he'd seen it, too.
"We have to do something, Joe," I said, fighting to keep my eyes open. I was only an hour relieved from a six-hour shift of driving, and my tired old bones were begging for sleep.
"Woman, be serious."
"I am being serious. Look at how he's treating that poor girl!"
"I don't have to look. I've been watching it, same as you. But you don't see that shotgun in 'back of that boy's window? What do you think would happen if I pulled up alongside 'im, tried to object to the way he treats his woman?"
It was a fair question to ask, and one I had no answer for. Obviously, were Joe to attempt such a thing, I'd likely be a widow—if not a corpse—before the next sunrise.
"If I thought she were in serious danger, I'd take the chance," Joe said, growling. "But she's not. That doesn't make what he's doin' to her right, but..."
"It isn't worth getting shot over. No. You're right, baby, it's not." I sighed. "I guess we'd better just stay out of it."
And with that, I closed my eyes. More to keep from witnessing any more mayhem in the Dodge than to try and drift off to sleep.
* * * *
About fifteen minutes later, I emerged from a restless doze to find our truck and Lucille, the Airstream trailerhome we keep hitched behind it, parked in the lot of a dimly lit public reststop.
"You need to go?" Joe asked, his door already open in his hand. Obviously, he did.
I gave the question a little thought and nodded, then pulled myself upright and got out of the truck to join him. One thing life on the road teaches you quickly is, more so than "when you gotta go you gotta go," given the opportunity, you had better go before you need to go. Otherwise...
The other thing the vagabond life of the roaming, sixty-something retiree teaches you is, highway reststops are rarely the most cheerful of places. The facilities they offer are often a godsend, but other than that, most of them are dreadful in broad daylight, and just downright terrifying in the wee hours of the morning. This one was a prime example.
Like most of them, it was fronted by highway, and had an undeveloped wasteland at its back. Behind the two small mortar block buildings in which the restrooms and ubiquitous soda machines resided, dry brush faded into pitch black night, giving not a clue to what perils might lay in the distance. Adding to the spooky ambiance of the place was an almost unearthly silence. I hadn't really paid much attention to the parking lot upon leaving the truck, but it hadn't been empty; there'd been at least two big rigs sitting there, and one, maybe two other passenger vehicles as well. Yet Joe and I seemed to be the only living creatures moving about the grounds.
It all made for a scene I wanted to put behind me as quickly as possible.
And I almost made a clean escape. I was hurrying out of the ladies' room, my business done in record time, when the cowboy's woman stumbled in, sniffling and wiping her nose on the back of one wrist. We met in the doorway and all but collided with each other. I hadn't seen the big woman's face before now but I recognized her all the same. Through the back window of the Dodge pickup, I'd caught glimpses of the checkered blouse she was wearing and the long, dirty blond hair that ran halfway down her back, just like her man's.
"Pardon me," I said.
The cowboy's woman just nodded, red-eyed, and stepped quickly past.
Now, here is where my story could have ended without incident. This was my opportunity to simply turn and walk away, leave the lives of two strangers to whatever God's plan was for them. But Dottie Loudermilk has never been one to miss a chance to meddle. As Joe has grown fond of saying, I boldly trample in where others fear to tread.
"You shouldn't let him treat you that way," I said. Regretting the words even as they were traveling the short distance between us.
She looked at me for a moment, not at all sure she'd heard me right, and said, "What?"
"We saw him hitting you. My husband and I. We couldn't help it, your truck's been right in front of ours for the past thirty minutes."
She didn't say anything.
"I don't know your situation, so maybe I have no right to speak, but if I were you—"
"Yeah, I know. You'd leave 'im." She almost laughed when she said it, the idea was so outlandish to her.
"Yes. I would."
"Well, then. It's a shame you aren't me, isn't it?"
"Please. I didn't mean—"
"Lady, if I had somewhere else to go, I'd be there. But I don't. Okay?"
"I'm sure you think you love him. And that he doesn't always treat you that badly. But even so—"
"You don't know what you're talkin' about. He does always treat me that badly. Sandy's a twenty-four-hour jackass, all jerk, all the time." She was angry now. "But there ain't nothin' I can do about that 'cept try and run away again and get myself killed. Is that what you want me to do?"
"No, of course not. I just—"
"You just wish I had more respect for myself. Yeah, I know. That makes two of us."
She barely got this last out before she broke down completely, fled into the nearest stall and closed the door behind her before I could say anything more.
I thought about going after her, tapping on the stall door to further plead with her to save herself, but I knew that would only be compounding an already monumental mistake.
So I just said a hushed, "I'm sorry," and left.
* * * *
"What happened?" Joe asked me when I returned to our truck. I wasn't going to say anything but he hasn't needed to be told when there's something bothering me for a long, long time.
"Nothing. Let's go," I said. "Please."
Now I could see that Sandy the cowboy's truck had been parked under a dark lamppost several spaces away from us all along. And it was empty.
"Corrine! Hurry up in there, damnit, we gotta go!"
He was standing right outside the ladies room door, all but sticking his head inside to bellow at her. He sounded like he was furious, but then, I had the sense he always did, at least when he was talking to Corrine.
"Jeez Loweez," Joe said sadly, disgusted by this sorry display of boorish manhood.
"Please, Joe. Let's go," I said again.
Not wanting to be there when the cowboy's woman finally found the will to obey him.
* * * *
We weren't gone thirty minutes when I awoke to Big Joe shouting:
"Hey! What the—"
I looked up to see him struggling with the wheel, fighting to keep our truck and Lucille aimed in a straight line. His face was a study in pique and concentration.
"What happened?" I asked, working to sit up straight.
"The damn fool almost hit me, that's what! I hadn't seen 'im coming and pulled over..."
"Who?" I peered out the windshield at the dark highway ahead, trying to follow my husband's gaze.
"Our spousal abusing friend in the cowboy hat again
, that's who. Crazy sonofagun's gotta be doin' eighty-five at least!"
And sure enough, he was right. There the familiar Dodge pickup was, wobbling from side to side as it rapidly shrank into the distance before us.
"Oh, my God. I wonder what happened," I said, suddenly wide awake.
"I don't know. But..." He didn't complete the thought.
"But what?"
Joe glanced at me, wearing the face he usually reserves for only the most dire occasions. "It looked to me like he was alone. At least, if his woman was with 'im, I didn't see her."
"Oh, Lord, no. You don't think—"
"Get the binoculars out of my bag, Dottie. I'm gonna see if I can't catch 'im before he disappears completely."
While I retrieved his gym bag from behind our seats as instructed, Joe stepped on the gas, urged our Ford pickup to haul us and Lucille down the Interstate with even greater urgency. It was only a matter of time before the two-truck race we'd just started came upon more northbound traffic, after which the cowboy's Dodge would almost certainly lose us for good, so I knew we had only seconds to steal a look into its cab before it was too late.
"Now, Dottie, hurry!" Joe said. "He's just come up on somebody, he's gotta slow down!"
And it was true. The other truck's taillights glowed bright in the distance as the driver applied its brakes, and it was now only twenty or so car-lengths ahead of us. I took Joe's field glasses from his bag and brought them quickly up to my eyes, spinning the focus controls madly to bring the Dodge into some measure of sharp relief. It wasn't in view for more than fifteen seconds before it used the shoulder of the road to spin around the car ahead of it and, just as Joe and I had feared, escape our reach for good—but that was long enough. Long enough to see that the cowboy in the Stetson hat and fur-lined jacket was alone in the cab now, and that his woman Corrine wasn't the only thing his truck was missing.
The hunting rifle that had been mounted outside its rear window was gone now, too.
"Oh, my God, Joe, what have I done?" I asked.
"What do you mean? You didn't—" He stopped when he saw my face, understanding immediately that I'd done something inadvisable yet again. "Oh, no. Don't tell me. Back there at the reststop..."
Nowhere to Go and All Day to Get There (The Joe & Dottie Loudermilk Mystery Series) Page 2
