by Bret Lott
You turn where I say, she’d written. And we go NOW.
She was leaning into the corner of the cab, her mouth in what looked like a snarl, the way you look when you can’t believe how stupid someone could be.
Me.
I crumpled up the paper, let it drop to the floorboard. She was right, and this was new, all of this as new to me as the look of a headless man raising a gun to the sky, and I only nodded, put the stick into first, and eased out the clutch, somebody else’s world out there moving into motion, and we were gone.
She wrote more notes, handed them to me once I’d turned the headlights back on and while I drove all the surface streets I could in order to avoid the Mark Clark, hanging up above us and to my right, then to my left like some huge and well-lit concrete snake just above ground. Stoplights and stop signs, and neighborhoods and grocery stores and frontage roads and minimarts, all just to keep off the freeway.
And these notes. She peeled one off, expected me to read it while I drove, peeled off another, and another. I took each one, held it up to whatever light there was: intersection street lamps, gas-station lights, whatever.
If I were you, the first one read, I’d ease off the clutch going into second a little more slowly.
The next read, Thirty-five miles per hour means you cannot exceed 35 miles per hour.
And Keep an eye on the rearview mirror for anyone who might be following us.
Then, When you hit Dorchester Road, you’ll have to turn left at the Piggly Wiggly where—
I wadded every one up, dropped them to the floorboard, didn’t even bother to finish this last one. If she wanted to tell me where to go once we were to Hungry Neck, that was one thing. And I knew to work the clutch easy into second. But telling me where to turn here, where I lived. No.
I pulled up to a red light. My eyes on the empty intersection before us, I whispered, “For somebody who can’t talk, Dorcas, you sure talk a lot.”
The light went green, and I pulled through. Across from us, on the left, sat a Pantry market, a single car out at the gas pump. Its lights came on just as we passed, and I watched it for a second out my window. I eased into second, still watching the car, a big old green Plymouth, the white landau top of it peeled and ripped, like huge scabs on white skin.
I faced forward. Here was another of her notes, her holding it not an inch from my face so I couldn’t even see the road. I pushed her hand away, looked in the rearview a second. No headlights. I shoved it into third.
She went off on another fit with the pen and paper, and I held up the piece she’d given me, read it.
If you have something to say to me, you redneck peasant, say it to my face. I can read lips, even if they’re as white-boy thin as yours.
I looked from the paper to her. She had yet another one torn off, and pushed it to me again.
Call me Dorcas again, and I’ll knock you on your skinny white butt so hard you’ll be spitting up shit.
Acts 9:36: Now there was at Joppa a certain disciple named Tabitha, which by interpretation is called Dorcas: this woman was full of good works and almsdeeds which she did.
I wadded this one up, too, dropped it. “Okay, Tabitha,” I said, my eyes hard on her, hands tight on the wheel, “I said I think you’re a wonderful person, and a gifted Bible scholar.”
She leaned back into the corner of the cab again, the pen and pad still in her hands. She was facing me, and now I could see her a little more, one side of her face growing slowly into light: here was her cheek, her eyebrow, her nose. She was smiling, her face lit with light through the rear window.
Light.
I looked in the rearview again. Headlights, the scab car right up on us.
I hit the gas, took off and away, watching him the whole time. A second later his blinker came on. He pulled down one of the streets we’d passed.
Dorcas—Tabitha—tapped my shoulder, and I turned to her.
She was sitting up, and made a sharp move with her hand toward her chest. She held out her hand to me, and I could see her first two fingers were crossed. Then she made the move again, her fingers crossed brought quick to her chest.
She pointed at me, did it again, nodded: she wanted me to do it. So I crossed my fingers, made the move, smiled at her because she was smiling at me and nodding away, and I did it again.
She wrote, tore off the sheet, handed it to me.
That means “I am a liar.” You are. You said something about me talking a lot, not about my biblical acumen. That makes you a liar.
I shrugged.
And a truck shot out from a side street, stopped dead in front of us. I hit the brakes hard, sent Tabitha forward, her shoulder rolling into the dashboard, the big yellow Ford pickup not two feet from the hood.
Two men sat in the cab, the one closest to me, on the passenger side, with a hand up to block the shine from my headlights. He had a beer in the other, and waved it in a sort of salute. He had his baseball cap on backward, a face that needed a shave a few days ago. The driver had his cap on straight, faced forward. He was grinning and chewing on something at the same time, his mouth working away.
“Sorry, y’all!” the one with the beer hollered out, then, “Happy Thanksgiving!” and the truck slowly moved on across the street, back into the neighborhood.
We sat there a few seconds, Tabitha with a hand to the dash and breathing hard, her mouth open wide. She looked at me, then at the taillights of the truck.
We were only one more block from Dorchester, where we’d turn left. Then we’d finally be on the Mark Clark, headed over the Ashley River, then on to 17 South, the Savannah Highway. And maybe, if we were lucky, Hungry Neck, sometime tonight.
I pulled up to the intersection with Dorchester, the street we were on dead-ending into it. Across from us was the Piggly Wiggly, and a Phar-Mor Drugs, and a Piece Goods store, a video store, a dry cleaner’s. Everything was dark but for the Piggly Wiggly. It was a twenty-four-hour job, the inside still lit up and sparkling, a couple cars in the parking lot.
And there at the curb right in front of the automatic doors, its lights off, was the Plymouth with the scab roof.
I took in a breath. Maybe he knew a shortcut to the Pig. Or maybe it just looked like the same car from here. Maybe it meant nothing at all.
Tabitha tapped me hard on the leg, and I turned to her and in the same second felt the hard crack and lurch of the truck, us bumped from behind.
She was turned in her seat, looking out the back, and I turned, too, saw the yellow Ford, the headlights right up against the bed of the Luv, above and behind the lights those two shits.
They backed up a few inches, hit the bed again, that same crack and lurch.
She looked at me, her breath going faster. They hit us again, only this time kept going, pushed us three or four feet into the crosswalk.
They were pushing us out into the intersection, wanted us broad-sided all on our own.
They pushed, and I jammed on the brake hard as I could, put it in neutral so I could let off the clutch, then mashed down on the emergency brake. If they were going to push on us, I’d make them work for it.
I heard their engine going harder behind us, and now my tires were sliding, and that was it: the light, still red, didn’t matter, nor the few cars out on Dorchester, headed toward us from both directions. None of it mattered. I sat with my foot on the brake one last second, watched for these cars coming, watched, watched—there were three of them, two on the right, one on the left—and then, when it seemed all things might work together for us in the next second, I reached down and released the emergency brake, popped it into first, and stomped on the gas.
We shot out between the oncoming cars, and I turned left hard. The Luv went sideways, hit the curb across the street, and the cars coming at us all screeched at once, all three squirming to stay straight and stop, even though we were already through.
And of course the pickup behind us shot out, too, his gas gunned for trying to push us.
The two cars on our side of the intersection hit him, one at the rear panel, the other at the front fender, and the truck jumped up off the pavement a good foot or so, landed hard on its left two wheels, sort of hung there a second, balanced like it had an idea to just go right on over. But it didn’t, and with a slow pitch fell back onto all four tires.
It was a good sound, loud and stiff, metal bitten and chewed and spit out all in a half second, and there was the sound, too, of scattered glass from one of the truck’s front headlights and all the headlights on those two cars. It was a good sound.
Then people jumped from the driver’s side of both cars, already shouting, waving fists. Next somebody climbed out of the car that’d been headed the other way, and now that guy was running toward us, and I realized only then we hadn’t gone anywhere, just sat here against the curb, watching it all.
I pulled away, headed for the Mark Clark on-ramp only a quarter mile or so ahead, hoped whoever it was running along behind us and yelling wouldn’t be able to see my tags.
I watched in the rearview, saw the man finally give up, stop right there in the middle of Dorchester Road.
And then saw the pickup swerve out of the whole thing, one headlight busted out, his tires squealing. The back end wagged one way and the other, the driver trying to get hold of a straight line, one that would deliver him right to us, headed up the ramp and onto a freeway that wouldn’t let us off until we were over the Ashley River, a good couple of miles from here.
Here came Tabitha’s hard breaths, a high-pitched shard of sound, and I looked at her. She had both hands to the dash, looked forward and behind us and forward again, and I could only push harder on the gas, push harder and harder, and forget easing anything into any gear.
The freeway was a freeway: big and wide and empty this time of night. The first thing I did was cut across for the fast lane, the little yellow reflectors set down in the concrete skipping past beneath us, and I looked down, saw we were doing seventy, just like that. I’d never gotten it going this fast, only drove the speed limit. I still had only my learner’s permit, and then I felt something small in my throat, thought it might be a laugh too scared to get out: here I was, with only my learner’s permit, doing seventy in the middle of the night and being chased by who knew who, me not even old enough to be at the wheel after sunset by South Carolina law.
I looked to Tabitha, tried hard to get a smile out, and said, “Did your brother juice this baby up? Because neither me nor Unc has.”
She stared at me a second, then quick moved her hands on the seat, the dash, the floorboard, and came up with the pen and paper.
I held the note to the window, caught the words in the light from a passing freeway lamp: He worked on it, we went places. That’s all I know. The letters were shaky now, like they were under water.
“Let’s hope he did,” I said, and looked in the rearview, saw a single headlight back there, rolling up the on-ramp.
The pedal was flat on the floor now, and I glanced down again, saw we were up to seventy-nine, and still the needle moved up, the sound of the engine big and loud and ready to burst, the steering wheel trembling in my hands. We were on the way up the bridge over the Ashley now, to our left the marina and boat ramp, rows of lit-up boats anchored out there and going by too fast. Then I looked back to the freeway, gray concrete and tall lamps lining it, ahead of me the lit-up green highway sign: HWY 61 1¼. I looked in the rearview, the pickup gaining on us now. We were up to eighty-five, still on the rise up the bridge.
I edged to the middle lane so I could take the off-ramp. I didn’t know this area over here, West Ashley, like I did North Charleston; knew only that 61 North headed to Summerville, a good twenty or so miles away, the road a two-lane hung over with live oak. And if I went south, there was a street off 61 that went over to the back end of Citadel Mall, the big place with Sears and Dillards and Belk and the movieplex.
I glanced in the rearview. They were still gaining, and now we were doing eighty-nine, that wheel trembling even harder in my hands. But it felt, too, like we were above the ground, the tires trying hard to hold us down on the concrete, like we were just gliding along here, and I knew this feeling was a dangerous one and a good one at once: we were doing near ninety, gliding along, but if I turned the wheel we’d flip, lose it all.
We crested the bridge, the road making a smooth twist down and to the left, beneath us now that marsh. Tabitha’s fingers tapped hard on the dash, her mouth open, teeth clenched. Still she took in quick breaths I could hear even over the engine screaming.
We hit ninety-one on the downhill, then fell back to eighty-nine. Then the engine shuddered, a kind of quiver that made the wheel jump. Tabitha turned to me: she’d felt it, too.
I looked down at the speedometer. There, next to it and to the left, was the gas gauge.
Empty, the little white needle down past the E, not even touching it.
I looked at her. She did nothing, only stared at me.
The engine flinched again, and now we were doing seventy-eight, up ahead another green highway sign: HWY 61 NORTH with an arrow to the right.
I moved to the right lane, saw them coming up behind us, that single headlight growing in the thin strip of sight the rearview gave me. We were doing sixty-four now, the off-ramp just ahead, right there the yellow speed-limit sign, 35 MPH, and the big curved arrow showing where to go.
And now they were behind us, right on our ass, like they’d been at that intersection, and they bumped us, the steering wheel wild in my hands, and I pulled hard on it to keep it straight. We were only fifty yards or so from the ramp now, doing fifty, and I tried for the exit, leaned the wheel to the right.
Then the headlight in the rearview disappeared, and here they were on the right shoulder, the big yellow hood pulling up beside us.
The truck slammed us to the left, the steering wheel flying of its own, and Tabitha’s window exploded into a shower of glass pieces all over us, cold air flying in after it. She jumped over to me, pushed herself into my shoulder, her hands to her face, that sound she kept coughing out the back of her throat lost to the roar of the truck pushing us to the left, and to the cold air shouting in on us, and now we were past the exit, in the middle lane again, and we had only the chance of the next one, 61 South, not two hundred yards ahead.
Here was that yellow hood still riding right up against us, edging up, both of us slowing down and slowing down, and now here was the cab, higher than ours, so that the first thing I saw as they pulled up even with us was the pistol, thick and shiny, in the driver’s hand, his arm just hanging down out his window like he had hold of a beer bottle, then the driver himself with his baseball cap on straight, still grinning, his mouth moving fast, chewing away. He wasn’t looking at me but at the road, his other hand at the top of the wheel, holding on. The one with the cap on backward was leaned over and looking at us. He held that beer up, made that salute again, but he wasn’t smiling anymore, their faces all moving shadows and angled light for the freeway lamp passing above us.
The driver gave out a little laugh, then lifted the gun, held it right there inside the Luv’s cab, pointed at us.
I tried to think what Unc would do.
I looked down: forty, thirty-eight.
“Best just to stop altogether,” the driver shouted, his voice loud and low. “You need to talk to us. About your uncle.” He glanced over at us, lost the grin. Still he chewed.
There went the exit for 61 South, the off-ramp on the other side of the pickup. Gone. Next stop, the end of the freeway, where it hit Savannah Highway. Only a mile ahead, but what might as well have been twelve light-years away.
I thought of Yandle, his finger pointed at me, shooting it at me, and of a hanged woman, and of a dead man at Hungry Neck, and of Unc hidden away somewhere.
And I thought of the paperweight.
The driver held the gun at us, his hand still to the wheel, thirty-five now, thirty.
Maybe it wasn’t what Unc would do at all
. Maybe it was a coward’s way out. But it was a way.
I shouldered Tabitha away so I could get at my pocket, pulled out the paperweight.
“Is this what you want?” I yelled at him, and held it up. “Is this what you want?” I paused. “I don’t even know where Unc is!”
Tabitha pushed herself into me again, hands to her face.
The driver looked at the paperweight. He quit chewing, his eyebrows up, then turned to the other guy.
I thought the gun went off then, that he’d fired at us without even looking, and I shouted for the sound, jumped, felt Tabitha do the same.
But it wasn’t a gunshot at all, only the sound of his truck hit from behind, and in that moment his arm, there inside my cab, jolted forward, caught against the blown-out window frame, twisted back and upside down, and I heard a hard pop: his shoulder torn from the socket, just like that.
The gun flipped up, fell to the seat.
The scabby green Plymouth cruised past us fast, pushing the truck along from behind, behind the wheel somebody with his sleeves rolled up, a cowboy hat and a pair of heavy sunglasses on.
They were out in front of us now, the truck and Plymouth in my headlights and flying away. The Ford driver’s arm just hung there out his window, flapping and turning, and then the Plymouth cut sharp to the left, pulled up alongside the truck, and turned into it, just like the truck had done to us, slammed it hard to the right.
The truck held its own for a second, then slipped to the right, slipped again, and all I could think of was that dead arm, pinned between the truck and the Plymouth, and then the Plymouth finished the job, edged the truck over onto the shoulder, where it disappeared down the embankment.
The Plymouth stopped, maybe a hundred yards ahead of us, his brake lights flaring up, him there on the shoulder.
Then the Luv shuddered all over, and I knew we only had a few yards left before we’d be stopped dead, and I turned to the right, edged over to the shoulder.
