I drove us to a Hibernia and emptied my bank account, another six hundred dollars to add to the three large. She was pretty thrilled to hold the bills in her hands. Her hair had dried to a bouncy blond fluff, almost punk rock.
An easy beauty to her. It was consoling in a way. The way a pretty face can be calming, like.
West on I-10. She found a tape of Patsy Cline and started singing softly along, and I almost asked her to stop because of what it called to mind, but I didn’t. The land we passed split like a shattered clay tablet into grassy islands and all the dark, muddy water spread down to the Gulf in the southern distance. The sunlight glazed ripples and mud shallows with white fire.
We crossed Sulphur and the petroleum refineries, a kingdom of piping and concrete, noxious odors. She stopped singing and turned off the radio.
“Roy? Would you go ahead and take us to Orange? Like you said?”
“What? Why?” My voice almost cracked. “You want me to drop you off?”
She shook her head. “No. I meant what I told you this morning. Every word. But what I said about paying my own way. I can get some money.”
“In Orange, Texas?”
“I can.”
“How?”
She narrowed her eyes at the windshield and then turned to look at the broken cypress trees that passed like brown bones reaching out the mud. “Don’t worry about it. Somebody there owes me money. Go ahead and stop in Orange for a second.”
“Now you want to go to Orange.”
“We’re on I-10 anyway. It don’t make no difference.”
“Who you going to see?”
“This dude there owes me money. I just thought of it this morning.”
“You think he’s just gonna pay you?”
“He’ll pay me. I have no doubt about that.”
Her voice had dropped a note and her stare had deep focus. I thought for a minute. “You’re planning to have me talk to him, is that it? I’m supposed to get it for you. I’m like your muscle now?”
“No.”
“No?”
“Nope. I don’t need you to do anything except give me a ride.”
I rolled it over in my head. “All right, then.”
“Would you, if I asked?” she said. “If I’d asked you to get it for me, you think you would’ve?”
I squeezed the steering wheel, scowled at myself. “I might have.”
“That’s okay. I don’t need you to do that. Thanks, though.” The spindly shapes of bare, twisting trees were like brain stems, and the white herons roosting in one sprawled cypress seemed to follow the truck with their beaks. She kneaded the material of her purse. “I’m talking to him myself.”
“That’s safe?”
“Hell, yes, it’s safe.”
“You really want to take the chance? We got money. I mean, I didn’t mean what I said before. You don’t really need to be getting money right now. When we get where we’re going we’ll figure something out.”
“No. It’s okay. This is something I need to do. I made a promise.” She watched the windows with a cold, practical reserve I hadn’t yet seen on her.
“You want to tell me what the hell you’re talking about?”
She rolled her head over on her shoulder. “I’ll tell you if you ask, because I said I would. But I’d really rather you didn’t ask.”
A green sign said Orange was eight miles away. “All right,” I nodded. “I guess.”
She folded her fingers on her purse and sighed. All this rolling world of kudzu and bony trees and black water seemed to mean something to her, the way it meant things to me, and she watched out the window with a surrendering gaze. For both of us the landscape had a gravity that tugged us backward in time, possessed us with people we used to be.
We passed a small main street of shabby food joints, a gas station, credit union. High, wild grasses. She said, “The Tastee Freez. That’s where we used to all go.” But she wasn’t really talking to me.
The flat prairie stabbed outward to the sky, crowded at the fringes with bushy trees, whiffs of ammonia and wet wood. The very air in these parts is so bright, it actually collects light, and you have to squint even when looking at the ground.
She guided me through a couple turns, and the neighborhoods were slight and set far back off the road, the houses ramshackle and shaded behind drooping oaks and willows. In this climate all things seek shade, and so a basic quality of the Deep South is that everything here is partially hidden.
She took us southwest and eventually into vine-clotted dells, past trailers scabbed with rust. Another gas station was fronted by broken foundation stones where the pumps had been ripped out, glassless windows, almost entirely overtaken by weeds and kudzu. We passed the school football field, and leaving the town proper, a black billboard posted off the road read in white letters HELL IS REAL.
Consumed by the boonies, having left even the sparsest trailer parks behind, she had me stop a few dozen yards down from a wooden cabin set beside a forest of tangled shrubs and grass that had been cooked the color of wheat by the sun. The cabin was about the size of a very old, poor hunting camp. A corroded water heater leaned against one wall, and one of those inflatable punching-bag clowns stood off in the high grass, its vinyl smeared with mildew. Brown vines overran the house, and one window had been stuffed with newspaper. A dead Chevrolet sat on blocks, overgrown as if the field were slowly digesting it, and a little tin shed bent sideways against the forest. The requisite torn screen door. The whole thing looked like the kind of place bikers keep to cook their meth.
We sat with the truck idling. The sun whitened the fields and all around was nothing but open, glowing air. She just squeezed the purse between her hands and stared at the little cabin as if she could crumble it with her eyes.
“You’re sure about this?” I said. “Why don’t I go in with you? I’ll just stand there. Believe me, that’s usually plenty.”
“No. Thanks. There’s nothing gonna hurt me in there.” But she seemed to be speaking to someone outside the window. “It’s better if it’s just me.”
“Suit yourself,” I said, but she didn’t move and we sat there another minute. The grass was so dry it crackled in the breeze. “Just holler if something happens,” I added. “I’ll come running.”
She opened the door and stepped down. “Just give me like ten minutes.”
“You sure this person’s home?”
“ ’Course he’s home. He don’t go nowhere. People come to him if they want.” She shut the door and walked carefully down the ditch with the purse under her arm, across the tousled yard, where flattened aluminum cans glittered in patches of lawn. The bright field made her look very small and alone, and her figure shrank as she neared the house. She followed the tree line and circled the cabin instead of using the front door, disappeared around the side. Animal twitters and a dry rustling scratched the silence.
I dug out the manila folder and opened it again. I guess Sienkiewicz thought all these papers were a safeguard or something. I pondered extortion angles. But it wouldn’t really matter, because I couldn’t blackmail or barter with what I had coming.
The house was still, no noise or sign of life, its wood bleached and weathered like the prairie around it.
A sharp, unmistakable pop echoed across space. A gunshot.
I looked around, and the dirt road was empty, rising into a hill behind me. It could have been somebody hunting squirrel or dove around here. Nothing moved from the house.
I jumped out the truck with my Colt in hand, vaulted the ditch, and jogged up the yard, but my boots slid in mud and I fell to my knees. Picked up the gun and ran wheezing, drenched with the heat. I was about halfway to the house when Rocky stepped out the front door. I tried to catch my breath, doubled over. When I rose up she was closer, and horror shot through me.
Rocky was leading a little girl toward the truck, a little blond girl.
I turned around and sprinted back to the Ford. She called behind me, �
��Roy! Roy, wait!”
“Wait yourself!” I yelled, pumping my legs, boots slipping on the slick grass. I slammed the truck door and the engine turned over a few times before starting, so I had to watch in panic as Rocky tried running through the field with a couple knapsacks, tugging the little girl behind her, shouting at me. They’d made it to the ditch when I hit the gas and sprayed pebbles and dirt fishtailing back on the road.
I overrevved and in the rearview the two of them were standing in the road, Rocky waving her hand as a mountain of brown dust swallowed them.
The road ahead was hard dirt and seemed to lead toward deeper woods, outright wilderness, possibly water. I tried to remember the last outpost of civilization we’d seen on the way to that house, how far they’d have to walk.
I started braking.
I told myself I’d ditch them. I’d cut them loose. But first I’d give her a ride, toss her some cash.
When I came back they were standing by the side of the road, the bags at their feet. Rocky’s hands were on her hips, a fine layer of khaki dust powdering them. Her jaw jutted in her pissed-off way, but also like she’d known I’d come back.
She lifted the little girl up first, and the child had bold brownish green eyes that stared into mine longer than any adult’s would be comfortable doing. She settled in the middle of the seat, watching me. “Um,” I said.
“Who’re you?” she asked.
“John.”
The girl furrowed her brow. “No, you’re not,” she said.
“Tiff! Be nice.” Rocky shut the door and brushed some dirty hair off her forehead. “This is Tiffany.” The knapsacks sat on the floor between her legs and she held the purse with one hand, put her other arm around Tiffany, drawing her close. She turned up the A/C while the little girl appraised me. The girl smelled like a wet dog.
“It’s going to be fine, Tiffy. We’re going on a trip. Tiffinanny.” She tickled the girl, and Tiffany giggled, but kept staring at me. Rocky looked between her and the windshield while I drove us back to the interstate.
I said, “Let me see your purse, Rocky.”
“Why?”
“Hand it over now. Or I’ll take it.”
She blew bangs off her forehead, snapped up the purse, and tossed it on my lap. It was heavy.
I opened it and the pistol sat on top. It had belonged to one of the men with masks in Sienkiewicz’s house. The silencer had been removed and lay on the bottom of the purse, under tissues and makeup. I guess I’d finally thought to wonder what she had taken off those men when she’d rifled their stuff. The gun was still warm.
I took all this as a massive betrayal. “What the hell, Rocky?”
“Watch your language, man.”
“My—?” I pulled onto the shoulder. “You’re playing a dangerous game with me, girl.”
The little one glared up at both of us. Her cheeks were plump and soft, streaked with old dirt, and they trembled enough for me to modify my tone. She seemed too thin, and her hair was so blond it looked nearly white. Rocky just petted the girl’s head and stared out the window. A sheriff’s car passed us.
“This is my sister. She’s coming with me. You can drop us off somewhere if you don’t want her around, but she’s coming with me.”
The girl’s nightie was the color of thunderclouds, and her skin had a luster of downy hair all over, and it made my skin look like adobe brick. “What’s her daddy think about that?” I said. “What’d you do with that gun? What was that shot I heard?”
She snorted. “He’s fine. I just scared him. So he’d know I could do it.”
I put the truck in gear and moved back to the interstate. It began to fill with more cars. When she didn’t say anything else, I said, “You shot at your stepfather.”
“I shot at the wall. He got off lucky.”
“Christ hell. You don’t think he might be calling the cops?”
“He ain’t calling the cops. He don’t want the cops anywhere near that place.”
“Jesus, what a stupid thing to do.”
“I might rather you curse than the way you keep Christing this and Jesusing that. What’re you so into Jesus for that you got to use His name like that?”
Another patrol car perched on an overpass and it seemed to observe us with the indifferent appetite of an owl.
“You don’t think maybe you should of told me about this? That you were going to do this? What’s that word we used—straight?”
“I’d of told you if you asked.”
“You told me not to ask.”
“And I really appreciate that you didn’t.”
“This is kidnapping. They’re gonna be all over us.” I’d put an absurd whisper into my voice.
Tiffany looked back and forth between us, but she didn’t seem frightened anymore or especially put out to be here. Rocky said, “It’s not kidnapping. He ain’t gonna say nothing to anybody. He’ll be glad. He’ll still get the checks when they come.”
I shook my head and kept checking the road and rearview for smokeys. Vans and cars and trucks and lots of eighteen-wheelers crowded the mirror; chrome trims glistened, tinted windows stared. “What do you imagine we’re going to do with this?” I said. “I don’t know what the play is here, Rocky. It doesn’t make sense.”
“Well, me and her are going to settle somewhere awhile. I’m going to get a job or something. I’m going to take care of her now. She’ll almost be starting school soon.”
“School ? Are you—Christ.”
She turned to me, stroking the girl’s white hair. “You remember what I told you last night? About Vonda.” Rocky nodded at her sister. “She’s going to get a better deal.” The little girl considered me too, and with such unmistakable suspicion that I took her to be fairly bright. Then the girl yawned and buried her face in Rocky’s side.
“You know we’re—what I’m saying. The things that might happen, from the people looking for us. Now you’re making her part of that. Did you think about that?”
She didn’t flinch from my eyes. “You’re going to have to take my word for it when I tell you this’s better than where she’s coming from. And how’s anybody going to find us? Cut your hair. I’ll dye mine or something. And now we’re three people. Who’s looking for three people?”
My balls clenched when a patrol car crawled off the median. He got in front, though, and I let him move far ahead. “I’m giving you a ride. But you two are on your own. This isn’t what we talked about.”
“We can do anything we were going to do before. Only now I’ll take care of Tiffany.”
“You’re making this sound real easy considering the way you were taking care of yourself up till today. Like you don’t really know what you’re talking about. Like you’re just hoping and hoping that’s what’ll happen. And when it doesn’t, the pavement’s going to rush up and smack you.”
Tiffany reached out and brushed the bristle ends of my beard. She looked at Rocky and said, “Like Santa?”
“Yes, baby. That’s right, Tiffy. It’s like Santa’s.”
The girl turned back to me. “You’re not Santa.”
This frustrated me more. “Did you even get any money?”
She frowned. “Not much. Gary had about eighty bucks on him and I took that. There was nothing left to even sell, really.”
“Who’s going to watch your sister while you work this supposed job?”
She licked her fingers and used the spit to wipe a smudge of dirt off one of her sister’s cheeks. “Maybe I’ll work somewhere that lets me bring her. Sometimes she’ll be in school. Damn, man, the biggest morons in the world can raise kids.”
I wrung my hands on the steering wheel. “Not well.”
“You know,” she said, “the more I think about it, the more I don’t understand your complaint here.”
I wanted to shout, but it dawned on me that all my objections involved the future, and I didn’t really have one.
She said, “Remember what you said? Well, we’re g
iving you an opportunity, man. You don’t need us now. I know. But you just might need us in your time to come.”
Tiffany made a soft noise and nuzzled in to nap under Rocky’s arm.
“I’m leaving you both.”
“Fine,” she said.
We were silent for a long stretch then with the wind shushing outside in the rhythm of a skier. A cloud-riddled heaven sealed the horizon, and I felt like we were bugs crawling along the edge of the world. Which we were, in a way.
I kept us westward, the sun at our backs, the girls’ faces turning sleepy. That old rule came back. You do your own time, not someone else’s. But what about after your own time is done, I wondered. I looked down at the little girl sleeping, one fist curled under her chin.
“Why’d you take the silencer off?” I asked.
Rocky shrugged and followed something out the window. “I thought it looked meaner without it.”
I said, “You ever been to Galveston?”
She shook her head.
TWO
Certain experiences you can’t survive, and afterward you don’t fully exist, even if you failed to die. Everything that happened in May of 1987 is still happening, only now it’s twenty years later, and what happened is just a story. In 2008, I’m walking my dog on the beach. Trying to. I can’t walk fast or well.
I got a note this morning. Cecil wrote that a man is looking for me. Cecil owns the motel where I lease an efficiency unit and work as a handyman.
Right here and to the south the bronze fog in the morning appears endless, and the dusky color of it makes me think of sandstorms blowing in from far out in the Gulf waters, as if a desert sat beyond the horizon, and to watch the shrimp boats and jack-ups and supertankers materialize from it, you think you must be seeing another plane of existence breaking through to this one, and all of it freighted with history.
And the lesson of history, I think, is that until you die, you’re basically inauthentic.
But I am still alive.
Sage runs circles around me, barking, but I don’t move fast enough for her so I toss the stuffed giraffe out into the breaks and watch her leap after it. She bounces and plunges through the shallows, and I’m alone on the sand. The dawn ignites the fog and the soft sounds of birds honking and the low moan of ship horns mobilize the world. September, middle of hurricane season, the skies are coiled, lead-colored clouds that resemble spun sugar.
Galveston Page 5
