by Jane Bradley
“I do,” she said. “I love the easy pace. Yeah, I do like the land and lake and sky. I like to get away from the tourists. I like it where people know how to sit back, have a drink without sinning, look at the land and relax.”
“Is that what you want? A drink without sinning and relax? You’re just like all those other tourists.”
“No, I’m not,” she said. “You don’t know me.”
“Yeah, I do,” he said.
He looked at her, grinning. A guy with that kind of smile couldn’t be too mean, could he? No, he was just a little scary. “So you from here?” she asked.
He shook his head and stared out at the Datsun ahead of them.
“So where are you from?” she said again.
“Where am I from?” he said. “Let’s just call it burned bridges. You can understand that.”
Billy believed in burned bridges, said that was the only way you moved forward. He told her, “You’ve got to burn the past, leave it all behind.” He was talking about her daddy. But what he was really talking about was Frank. Billy was teaching her how to leave the past behind. If she could just choose him. Poor Billy didn’t have a clue about Randy. Billy didn’t have any idea he’d probably be one more burned bridge she left behind in time. “Billy,” she said. “My fiancé—I can tell you don’t like that word, but he likes to leave burning bridges behind too.”
He yelled, “I don’t give a damn about Billy, or Randy, or you, lady. I just want you to stay close behind that car and drive.”
She braked and pulled to the side of the road. “I’m not going any farther,” she said. “This doesn’t feel right. I’ve got other things to do.”
Jesse mashed the joint out on the dashboard. His eyes went dark. He turned, reached behind his back, then raised a gun between them. “Damn right you got things to do.” He poked the barrel of the gun into her ribs, but his face was casual, almost smiling. “We need your truck, you see. We need you to follow us to Whitwell. That’s all. You got that?”
She sat tight and trembling. Her body felt frozen. How could she move without cracking, without breaking to pieces all over the seat? She could feel the heat of his breath between them. She caught the scent of oil and metal. Katy sat back in her seat, tried to catch up with her breathing, which seemed to take off, running out ahead of her. She told herself to stay calm. “I don’t want to,” she said.
“You don’t have a choice.” He looked straight at her, and she saw a face she hadn’t seen back in the parking lot of the mall. His eyes, empty. She thought of the alligators that sunned themselves in swamps around Lake Waccamaw, still as logs on the water, dull eyes focused on the surface, patient, blending quietly into the landscape, certain what they wanted would come within reach in time. Billy had told her to be careful walking around Lake Waccamaw. More than one hunter had been taken down by a gator waiting in the reeds. Poor Billy; he thought she just drove out there for the lake. He didn’t know about the man named Randy, whom she’d met when she’d been bartender for a wedding at some rich man’s house out there. Randy was handing out coke to the wedding party. He slipped her a tiny bag for a tip. “Just a taste,” he said. “One little taste, and you won’t want to quit.” Then he grinned and said, “I’m not talking about the coke, darlin’. I’m talking about me.”
Jesse nudged her lightly, as if they were old friends and she’d just lost the conversation.
“Please,” he said. “How’s that? Please? I promise I’m not going to shoot you. That isn’t what this gun is about. Come on, we gotta stay behind Mike there. Get going and you can tell me all about your fiancé.”
“I don’t want to talk about my fiancé.”
He touched her arm lightly. “Look here. I apologize for my brutish behavior. All right? My momma, she brought me up better than that. She’s done a lot of work to teach me manners. I just slip now and then. You know how that is. Don’t tell me you’ve never slipped.” He gave her a smile again, as if they shared a secret. “Now, come on. We’re halfway there. Put me out and I’m taking back that hundred-dollar bill. I know you need the cash.”
Katy looked out and saw the Datsun stopped ahead. “I don’t like it, but I’ll do it,” she said.
“Well, neither do I,” he said. He sat back, more natural, relaxed. “You think I like having to take care of his ol’ granny? You think I don’t have better things do to with my day?”
He stared ahead, and they sat like two lovers worn out from a fight, caught in the lull of silence. A car rushed by on the highway, disappeared in the distance and left Katy behind. Tears ran from her eyes.
“Relax,” he said. “I’m really not gonna shoot you. All I’m asking is for you to follow my friend. Look at him up there. He’s waiting. We don’t have much farther to go. And then you can go see Randy.” He tucked the gun back in his waistband. “Now, please, this can be over in no time. And you get that hundred-dollar bill. Would you just put this truck in gear and go?”
He reached and relit the joint. “Just take a little hit and relax. There really is nothing going on here but you helping a couple guys out.” He offered her the joint. “I promise.”
He watched her put the joint to her lips, watched her take a hit, hold it. “All right,” he said with a laugh.
Up ahead Mike rolled down the window of his car and looked back at them. Jesse reached his hand out the window, gave a thumbs-up sign.
Katy asked. “Why don’t you ride with your friend in his car? Why do you need to be here with me?”
He shook his head. “You really need an answer to that question?”
“Yes.”
“All right, then. My friend up there, he farts a lot. I hate riding with that man.”
Katy laughed. “No, really,” she said. She handed back the joint; she didn’t want to get high, just needed to level her nerves.
He took a hit, nodded. “Really.” He exhaled. “And, well, truth is, I guess I did want to make sure you came along. Now, would you please put this thing in gear and go?”
“You won’t shoot me,” she said.
“I swear by all that’s holy and all that’s not, I will not shoot you.” He mashed the joint out, flicked the roach to the floor. “Can’t have us getting too buzzed for the ride.”
Katy drove, thinking, The Lord didn’t give us a spirit of fear. . . . But with each passing mile she felt she was sinking into some soft, wet pit. Nothing sudden as an earthquake but a slow, steady sinking like a million-dollar glass house in the Hollywood hills, shifting, slipping slowly, quietly, in a mudslide rising like a tide from the earth.
She scanned the horizon for a car. Her hands shook on the wheel.
“Relax. Just tell yourself you’re being a good little Girl Scout, doing the public some kind of good.”
“I never was a Girl Scout,” she said.
He shifted. “Nah, I know your type, one of those misfits. You could play the game, but I bet you never felt you really fit in. Probably always dreaming of some other life, some other place you’d rather be.”
Fear hummed like a nest of bees whirling in her head. She couldn’t breathe. “How do you know that?”
“I pay attention. That new-age bullshit on your tag. ‘Positive.’ Like you really believe thinking positive can change a thing. You believers, man. You make me laugh. And this truck of yours. It’s the kind of car a girl who likes to dream of going places can afford. I bet you’re saving money for trips all the time. And never go anywhere, right?”
She could feel his eyes. She blocked his view of her face with her hand. She knew he could see everything she was. “Are you a friend of Randy’s? Have you been spying on me?”
“God, no, I’m telling you I just notice things. Like your fake fingernails. Fake and shiny but got dirt all under ’em. You got this thing about looking good, but you still like to spend your time playing in the dirt.” He poked the back of her hand with his fingertip. “You probably grow all those herbs healthy people eat. Basil, rosemary, dill. My mom,
my legal mom, not the blood one, she grows that stuff.”
Katy looked at him. She had been transplanting seedlings to the garden that morning. Like his mother. He had mentioned his mother. She felt a little relief.
“I do grow basil. I keep meaning to make pesto.” She thought about the basil going to seed in her yard. She’d grown it last year too. Always talked about making pesto. Her mom made great pesto, but Katy never got around to it. She could never collect all those ingredients at the same time, so the basil kept growing until it went to seed and she’d tell herself she’d try it again with basil she could buy from the store.
“I look at you and figure, this is a woman believes in things.” He shook his head. “You were one of those little girls who set out cookies for Santa Claus, thought fairy things like Tinker Bell lived in the woods and the Easter Bunny really crept around your house hiding those eggs. You probably believe in things like guardian angels too.”
She looked out at the flat, empty highway. “I don’t know. I did believe in fairies when I was a girl.”
He looked out his window. “Me, I was always playing pirate. Eye patch, scarf on my head, stole this big ol’ kitchen knife.” He laughed. “I scared the shit out of some of those kids. ‘Shiver me timbers,’ man.” He laughed and propped his foot on the dash.
She didn’t want to hear about pirates and kitchen knives. She stared at his running shoes. “You an athlete?”
He laughed. “Yeah, breaking and entering—that’s my sport.” He lit another one of her cigarettes. “Nah, girl, I’m funning you. Football,” he said. “I play football.” He lifted his chin, exhaled. “Love it when the defense crumbles and you’re out there, man, just running.”
She looked him over, wouldn’t have guessed him for football. He was too little, too lean; she figured him for a wrestler, a runner, or some skinny guy who just buffed up with weights.
He turned to her. “I know what you’re thinking. I’m too little for football, right? But I can run like a mother, and I’m stronger than you think.”
Up ahead the right blinker of the Datsun flashed. “Here,” he said. “Get off and follow him.”
“This isn’t the way to Whitwell. Lake Waccamaw is just up there.”
“Shortcut,” he said. “This is farm country. His granny, she lives on a farm outside Whitwell.”
She followed the car, could hear her little-girl self crying inside, but she kept going. She followed his instructions, did what she was told, and the roads grew smaller, the land more empty with each passing mile. “I don’t want to do this.”
“But you’re doing it,” he said.
She trembled, wishing she had paid attention to the exit number, the route number, something. She looked out, saw some kind of abandoned factory. A power station maybe. Lots of electrical towers and power lines that seemed dead now. She’d remember this. If she just paid close attention to where she was going and could get back to this, she could get back to the highway. Lake Waccamaw wasn’t too far. Randy’s house was just south of the lake. If she focused, stayed steady, she’d get there. And Randy, he’d make it all right. He’d make her forget this whole stupid mess. She drove in deeper darkness and realized she’d forgotten to pay attention. While she was thinking about what she’d do later, she’d lost the sense of where she was. A dark wave rolled up from inside her, as if she’d been snatched by a current. The Cape Fear River. She had felt it then. She might have gotten help if she’d done something to get attention, but now she’d been carried too far out for anyone to hear her call.
Katy kept her eyes on the Datsun. Maybe they’d just rob her, maybe rape her, leave her to find her way home. But she was lost; she had no idea where she was. She looked out at the fields going red in the sunset and saw herself rising in the air, like Dorothy in that little house lifted by a storm. She’d get through this, like Dorothy, and she’d wake up, find herself settled in a bright new land.
Jesse flipped through her billfold. “Man, you’ve got no cash here. Not a dollar here.”
She slapped at his hands. “Stop it. Stop going through my things like I’m not here.”
He smacked her arm hard enough to make her bite her lip, grip the wheel. “Now, don’t you start pissing me off.”
“All right,” she said, “I’ll pull over. Go ahead and shoot me. I’m not scared.”
He laughed, yanked the gun out and waved it in the air. “Damn gun doesn’t work. It’s just a prop, man.” He pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. It was jammed. “Scared you, didn’t I? See, I told you I wouldn’t shoot you. Look here, now. It’s almost over. He’s turning down that dirt road.”
She looked to where the Datsun was turning, west where the sky hung in purple and pink waves. The gun doesn’t work, she thought; she’d driven all those miles for a cute guy with a smile and a gun that didn’t work.
The Datsun slowed, took another turn, and Katy thought to just plow straight ahead to get to anywhere but where they were going. Jesse was shaking with quiet laughter. “All you got to do is raise a gun to somebody’s face. They put the bullets in it. They see their heads blown off. All you got to do is raise the gun. Devil works likes a magician, man, half the game is sleight of hand. Most people. You believers. You do all the rest.” He waved the gun in the air. “This is what you get for believing in things.”
She kept driving down the narrow gravel road, saw a field of fallen trees as if a great wind had leveled the land. She remembered she was in hurricane country. Every year the coastal towns prepared for the seasonal storms that spiraled out at sea, gathering up strength like a fist rising to slam the coast.
She scanned the horizon for any sign of something she could know. Then she saw it. The radio tower, just a few miles away maybe. If she could get to that tower, she’d know where she was, and Randy’s house was only a few miles from that. She sighed. She’d be all right. The tower, there it was back there, a sign that she wasn’t as lost as she had thought. She followed the car down another gravel road, but it curved as if it might go someplace. She kept watching the land for a sign of a house, a tractor, a powerline, anything that looked like someone could be around. The road kept curving, surrounded by nothing but thickets and brambles and trees.
“Where the fuck is he going?” Jesse leaned forward in his seat.
Katy said, “I thought we were going to his grandmother’s house.” But she didn’t believe the words any more than she believed in that hundred-dollar bill, which was probably a fake. She looked out at the land, thought the trees looked familiar. Then she saw a house. A little brick house. Once they stopped the truck, she could run to that. Driving on, she saw an old tire on the ground, thought maybe she’d seen that before, but in the country people were always just leaving their old stuff scattered in the fields: tires. washing machines, old cars. At least with all this junk, people couldn’t be too far away. And she could run. She’d been a real good runner back in school.
Jesse leaned out the window, looked around. He yelled, “You’re driving in fucking circles, man. I thought you knew where you were going.” He sat back in his seat, kept his eyes on the Datsun. “The fucker is stoned,” he said. “That’s another reason I hate riding with him. When’s he’s stoned, he doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing.” He gave her that smile. “Don’t you worry. He’ll get us there. It’ll be all right.”
The Datsun eased to a stop, then made a quick turn down a little road she could hardly see for the trees.
“See,” Jesse said. “We’re getting there.” The rutted road led them through thickets and overhanging branches so thick she was sure there would be nothing but more trees and dirt and rocks where they were going. And the crying, that stinging ache, rose behind her eyes. The sky was shrinking to a thin patch above. She looked left, right. All she could see was trees. She wished she’d paid attention to where the sun was when she’d seen that house. She hoped the guys would do what they wanted and leave. She knew they’d take her truck. Billy had warned her to kee
p the doors locked. She glanced at the man sitting in her truck. He might rape her. But he might be too stoned for that. If he did, she’d go still so he wouldn’t hurt her. And when she got her chance, her first chance, she’d run. She’d take whatever he did, play along, but at the first chance, she’d run. She might have to run a while. But she’d live. She’d been through worse than this. She’d live. She’d get to Randy. Maybe the whole point of this was to get to Randy, who’d give her the nerve to leave Billy behind. If she could be with Randy, she could get over Frank. There was always a reason for things. It just took time to understand. She’d never really wanted the safe guy. Poor Billy. He loved her. She wished she could want the safe guy. If she’d wanted the safe guy, she wouldn’t be stuck in a truck with a guy who’d do God knew what if he got the chance. But she was stronger than he could guess. She was. And smart and fast, and she would do whatever it took to get out of this mess alive.
Sacramental Things
Livy Baines used her ring finger to dab night cream on the tissue-thin skin of her eyelids; they were bluish, sunken a little, but not as bad as they were for most women her age. She worked gently around to the crow’s feet, then touched at the lines beginning to form underneath her eyes. She stepped back from the mirror and saw a face that was growing to look more like her own mother, who was buried down in Suck Creek, than like her daughter, Katy. Livy glanced at the clock. It was going on midnight. She imagined Katy tending bar now, pressing cold beers into the hands of men who smiled at the simple sight of her girl. Yes, she was a pretty girl. Everyone said so. Livy tried to remember when she’d crossed the line to looking more like her mother than her daughter, who was tall and lean with thick, curly dark hair, sapphire eyes, and a smile that made every other man who met her fall in love. She could have been a model with that face and that long, slender frame. People used to say the same thing about Livy. She looked at herself in the mirror. Not bad for her age, just an older, more filled-out version of Katy. But the last time she’d had a facial, the woman had asked if she’d considered getting rid of her “eleven.”
