by Hugh Fraser
Lizzie sees us, gets out of the back door and says, ‘Where is he?’
‘Keeping him in.’
‘What did they say?’
‘They’re giving him treatment, they said.’
‘That’s good.’
She opens the back door. Bernard is pulling his trousers up.
She says, ‘Come on, look lively, you old trout. Time to get off back to the missus.’
He scrambles out of the back and gets behind the wheel of the car. ‘Most irregular,’ he mumbles.
‘You’ve saved yourself thirty bob, so stop moaning.’ We get into the car and the old boy drives off.
When we get back to ours, Georgie goes to bed and me and Lizzie have a cup of tea. We don’t say much, and when she goes upstairs, I go through to the bedroom and get undressed. Georgie’s reading so I make her put the book away and try to go to sleep. When I get in beside her I can see her tears coming as she stares at the ceiling.
11
I search frantically for the Chevrolet’s clutch pedal and nearly wrench the gear lever off the steering column until I remember that the car is American and equipped with an automatic gearbox. I move the gear lever into drive and ease the car towards the lights of Gatesville. As I reach the end of the street and turn onto a main road, I hear sirens wailing. There is a sudden flare in the rear view mirror as every light in the prison is switched on. Moments later, I am blinded by headlights as three police cars race past me towards the prison.
On the outskirts of Gatesville, I pull into a parking lot behind a warehouse and consult the map. I need to go south on Highway 36 to Temple and then pick up Interstate 35 to San Antonio and Nuevo Laredo. I drive on into town. A sign tells me I am on East Main Street and I reach an intersection with a sign to Temple. I turn onto Highway 36, wind the Chevrolet up to seventy miles an hour, roll down the window and let the warm wind blow the prison stink out of my hair.
After a few miles I pull over at a truck stop, find the ladies room and change into the jeans, T-shirt and All Stars. I tear Delores’s uniform to shreds, stuff it into the used sanitary towel bin and dump her shoes in the cistern. I steer the car back onto the highway and put my foot down.
Dawn breaks and the sun rises over distant rolling hills. I turn on the radio. Tammy Wynette tells me to stand by my man and the disc jockey forecasts another hot one. The Chevrolet rolls along, bouncing and sashaying sensuously when it meets a bump on the road. I relax back into the soft leather bench seat, savouring the sense of speed and solitude, and consider possible moves. Lee’s assurance that I’ll end up back at Heathrow with no problems after helping him to capture Manuel is about as reliable as any of his other promises. He’ll either throw me back in jail or hand me over to the Mexican police as soon as he’s got Manuel. If I dump the car and the clothes and somehow get free of the tracking device, it puts me on the run from the Texas police with a stolen passport and a murder charge. Once over the border, I am out of US jurisdiction, but still under the one eye of Guido. I reckon my best chance of getting home and out of this whole mess is to drive on to Manuel’s and try and work something out when I get there.
At Temple, I join the interstate and ride south through the gathering heat, with the flat expanse of Texas farmland on each side of me. I cross the Colorado River at Austin, and a couple of hours later the highway is scything through the urban sprawl of San Antonio. By midday I am parched and hungry. At a sign for Love’s Truck Stop, a few miles north of Laredo, I take the exit ramp and park between a white Cadillac spattered with mud and a Volkswagen Beetle. I walk past a line of very tall trucks with chrome chimneys rising proudly above their cabs like cheerleaders’ batons. I enter the diner and take a booth by the window. A couple of heavy-looking truck drivers at the far end of the counter turn and take in my hippy weeds. I study the menu and hope they haven’t seen Easy Rider.
A pretty, raven-haired waitress, about my age, with a fulsome figure and a broad smile, comes to the table, pours coffee and asks what she can get me. I order a hamburger and appreciate her rear view as she wiggles away on high heels and relays the order through a hatch behind the counter. A couple more drivers enter and mount stools at the counter, adding their cowboy boots to the row resting on the foot rail. The waitress greets them, pours coffee and takes orders. One of the drivers at the far end is still staring at me. He says something to the one next to him and they laugh. The other one turns, grins at me and runs his tongue obscenely over his upper lip. I give him a cold look and stare out of the window.
The waitress arrives with my hamburger and says, ‘Don’t you pay that mean bastard no mind, honey.’
I smile and shake my head.
‘He just some sad old trucker, ain’t got it up in years.’
‘Goes to bed with his gearstick.’
We laugh. The trucker turns away, snarling some remark to his friend. I pay attention to my hamburger and ignore the occasional glance from the counter where the truckers are discussing whether AM or FM is the best CB radio. An older woman with a stooped figure comes in and goes behind the counter and into the kitchen. As I finish the last of my hamburger, the waitress comes to the table and leans her hip against it.
‘You want some pie?’ she says.
‘Just the check, thank you,’ I reply.
She takes a pad from her shirt pocket, scribbles some figures on it, tears off the page and places it on the table. I give her a five-dollar bill and she gets change from a purse under her apron. She hands it to me with a broad smile.
‘You have a good trip now,’ she says.
• • •
A blast of afternoon heat hits me as I walk through the door and cross to the car. I get in and open all the windows. A truck is blocking my way forward, so I reverse out and then drive round the back of the diner. I brake as two figures come out of the back door of the diner and cross in front of the car. As they walk towards a grey van belonging to Texas Beef Incorporated, I recognise the two guys who stared at me from the counter. One of them sees me as they open the doors of the van and says something to the other one. They shut the doors, walk back towards the car and stand in front of it. One is short, bald and broad-shouldered with a large beer gut. The other is medium height, dark and lean, with a couple of days stubble on his lantern jaw.
I lean forward, as if I’m trying to get a look at them, and take the gun from the glove compartment. I slide it into the back of my waistband and step out of the car.
The bald one folds his arms, cocks his head and says, ‘You wanna suck on my dick, sweetheart?’
His friend finds this remark amusing and adds, ‘Or are you one of them lesbeens?’
Just as I’m deciding to pull out my gun and nip this sparkling repartee in the bud, the waitress comes out of the back door of the diner. She takes in what is happening and hurries towards us.
‘Carl, Duane, you get on out of here right now,’ she snaps.
‘Fuck you, Charlene, we gonna teach this here hippy bitch a lesson.’
‘You just get back in your old meat wagon and get going before I get Frank and Charlie out here.’
As she speaks, a large truck sputters into life somewhere nearby and hoots its horn as it grinds past the front of the diner.
Baldy looks at it and says, ‘Well now. Wouldn’t you know it? They just left. Who you gonna get now? Old mother Jackson and that spic midget you got in the kitchen?’
Charlene glares at him but says nothing as the lean one takes a hunting knife from behind his back. I grip my gun and contemplate shooting him, but I don’t want to land Charlene in trouble.
‘Hey look!’ I shout, pointing at the door of the diner.
As Baldy turns his head, I swing the butt of the gun at his jaw and knock him out. He falls heavily onto the gravel. Charlene is trying to wrestle the knife out of Carl’s hands. I pocket my gun, get behind him, take him round the neck, cut off his air supply and lower him to the ground.
As he turns purple, I lean into his face and sa
y, ‘Take your friend and get out of here. Now!’
Charlene holds the knife at his neck as he gets to his feet with his hands raised in surrender. Baldy is still out cold and Carl has difficulty lifting him. I open the back door of the van and between us we dump him on the greasy floor and slide him in among the hanging sides of beef and boxes of hamburger meat. Carl looks sheepishly at Charlene and seems about to say something, but thinks better of it and gets into the van.
As he starts the engine, Charlene walks to the window and says, ‘You don’t say nothing about this, Carl Mercer. You hear?’
Carl looks at her for a moment and then nods.
‘You and that fat gut hayseed in there.’
‘I hear you, Charlene.’
The van moves a few feet and then stops. Carl leans out of the window, looks balefully at Charlene and says, ‘Can I have my knife back?’
‘You get your skinny ass out of here!’
The van moves off and Charlene turns to me. ‘Where did you learn to punch like that?’ she asks.
I show her the gun and say, ‘I had a bit of help.’
‘Oh, right. I’m glad you didn’t shoot him.’
‘I reckon he is too.’
She laughs but I can see she’s been shaken by what’s happened. ‘Are you OK?’ I ask.
‘Just fine. Are you?’
I nod and say, ‘It was good of you to help me.’
‘Don’t mention it, honey. I’ve been waiting for a chance to whop them assholes for years.’
I notice that she’s not wearing her apron and ask, ‘Are you finished now?’
‘Yeah, that’s me done for the day. I’ll go on over and get the bus.’
‘Let me give you a lift.’
‘There’s no need.’
‘It’s really no trouble,’ I say, as I open the car door for her.
• • •
As we drive, she asks me where I’m from and where I’m headed and I tell her that I’ve been visiting my brother in Dallas and am on my way to meet friends in Acapulco, to celebrate a wedding anniversary. We leave the highway, wind along country roads for a few miles and pull into a trailer park in a wooded area bordered by farmland. Charlene points to a medium sized Winnebago trailer with a table and chairs in front under a dark red awning. I park beside it.
She turns to me and says, ‘You want to come in for a while?’
I’m not sure if her look is promising more than simple Southern hospitality, but I feel I want to find out.
‘Why not?’ I say.
She unlocks the door, shows me into the worn upholstered interior and switches on two fans, one at each end of the living area. I enjoy the cool breeze while she goes to the fridge, takes out two bottles of beer and offers me one. When I accept, she cracks them open against the work top, hands one to me and sits on the sofa. When I sit down beside her she leans back, crosses her legs and takes a long pull at the bottle.
‘That was kinda wild back there,’ she says.
‘It was.’
‘I ain’t never seen a woman take care of a situation the way you did.’
‘It’s lucky they were so stupid.’
‘You were so fast.’
I try to smile modestly.
She puts her arm on the back of the sofa, uncrosses her legs and takes another drink. After a pause she says, ‘You look so slim and pretty, like you couldn’t hurt a fly.’
She leans her head back and I sense her relaxing. I put my arm on the back of the sofa and move my hand towards hers. Our fingers touch and she is still for a moment. When I stroke the back of her hand, she moves it away, takes a deep breath and leans forward on the sofa. The silence is uncomfortable, but when I start to get up she puts a hand on my arm.
‘Don’t go,’ she says.
I sit back and she looks at me and smiles.
‘I like you being here but … that ain’t me, you know?’
‘I’m sorry.’
She looks as if she’s on the edge of tears and I know she wants to tell me something. The sassy waitress with the smart lines has become a lost girl. I look around the trailer and see a photograph of a man in military uniform on top of the TV that I wish I’d noticed before. He has a kind open face and a warm smile. She sees me looking at the picture.
‘Is that your husband?’ I ask.
‘He was killed.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Vietnam.’
‘When did it happen?’
‘Six months ago.’
‘How did he …?’
‘He was injured. The field hospital he was in up country got bombed by our guys.’
‘American bombs?’
‘Right.’
‘That’s terrible.’
‘It happens a lot.’
‘I didn’t know.’
‘It isn’t reported.’
‘Have many died like that?
‘No one really knows, but they think maybe a third of US casualties in ’Nam have been from friendly fire.’
‘That’s awful.’
‘They think it’s near twenty thousand.’
We sit in silence for a time and I think about the stupidity of wars and the people who make them, and wish they could feel the misery of this heartbroken girl.
‘Did you live here together?’ I ask. Charlene sits back and dries her eyes.
‘We was living with his folks on their farm. I never really got on with his mother and after Joey was killed, she turned real sour towards me, like it was my fault or something, so I moved here.’
A truck drives past outside and a dog barks. I look at the tired condition of the furniture and the limp curtains filtering the setting sun, and I feel the loneliness of her grief.
‘You have someone back home?’ she asks.
I think how long it’s been since I saw Lizzie and say, ‘Not really.’
Sitting next to Charlene, feeling her sadness and hearing the odd sounds outside of dogs and people coming and going and living their lives, the thought of finally resting somewhere and living a simple life of plain love and ordinary concerns tugs at me for a moment.
I notice the time on the clock next to the husband’s picture and realise that I should get back on the road. I stand up and take the car keys out of my pocket.
Charlene says, ‘You have to go now?’
‘I really should.’
‘You can stay over, if you want.’
She stands, moves towards me and then hesitates. I can see that she doesn’t want to be alone and I am tempted to stay with her, but then I think of Lee alerting the Texas Police if I don’t cross that border on schedule.
‘My friends are expecting me so I ought to get going,’ I say.
She nods and as I turn towards the door, she leans forward, gives me a brief kiss on the cheek and giggles. I kiss her back and we laugh together as she opens the door for me.
I step down onto the grass, turn and say, ‘Will those meat boys give you any trouble?
‘Nah. They’d never admit to being beaten on by a woman.’
I get into the car, start the engine and return Charlene’s wave as I drive towards the road.
12
I’m at the hospital before twelve and Georgie’s with me. Neither of us has slept much. I’ve tried to make her go to school but she wouldn’t, so I’ve said she can come. We go in the main entrance and a black woman sitting behind a glass partition tells us how to get to the children’s ward. We climb two flights of stairs and go along a corridor with green walls and a shiny floor. Nurses and people in white coats go in and out of doors, and look at us as if we shouldn’t be there.
The ward is at the far end. I can hear children coughing and crying as we get near the door. There are rows of beds on each side with children in every one. Some are sitting up talking to visitors that have come and others are lying down alone. Some have their arms or legs in plaster, strung up above the bed on pulleys. I move out of the way of a little lad in a wheelchair who’s lost on
e of his legs, and go to a nurse who’s standing at the end of one of the beds talking to a smart-looking old couple.
‘Excuse me,’ I say.
She turns and gives me a sour look. ‘Yes?’ she says.
‘Can you tell me where Jack Walker is please?’
‘Is he a patient?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you relatives?’
‘We’re his sisters,’ I say.
She sighs, turns to the smart couple and says, ‘Would you excuse me a moment?’
The man nods and smiles. The nurse walks towards a desk at the end of the ward and signals us to follow her. As we get to the desk, she looks at me crossly and says, ‘Those are trustees, you know.’ She takes a book off the desk. ‘What was the name?’
‘Jack Walker.’
She turns a page and runs her finger down it.
‘He’s in isolation. Go through that door and wait for someone.’
She snaps the book shut and marches back to her trustees, whatever they are. We go through the door she showed us into a narrow, dimly lit hallway with two doors leading off it. We sit on a bench against one wall and wait. After a bit, a tall man in a white coat, with dark hair that falls over his forehead, comes out of one of the doors.
He sees us and says, ‘Are you waiting to see someone?’
‘Jack Walker,’ I say.
He looks at us a moment as if he’s not sure about something. Then he opens the door he’s just come out of.
‘Come in.’
We go in through the door. There’s one bed in there, and Jack’s lying in it with a plastic mask on his face and a needle in his arm that’s on the end of a tube that’s hooked over a stand at the side of the bed. His eyes are shut and he looks as if he’s asleep. I can see that he’s breathing, so I know he’s alive. I turn to the doctor, who’s leaning against the wall with his hands in the pocket of his coat.
