Gone South

by Robert R. McCammon

  The answering machine — a Radio Shack special — clicked on after three rings. Dan heard his own voice asking the caller to leave a message.

  “I’m callin’ about your ad in the paper,” a man said. “I need my backyard fenced in, and I was wonderin’ —”

  Dan might have laughed if he didn’t feel the rage of the law bearing down on him.

  “— if you could do the job and what you’d charge. If you’d call me back sometime today I’d appreciate it. My number’s …”

  Too late. Much, much too late.

  He zipped the bag shut, picked it up, and got out.

  There were no sounds yet of sirens in the air. Dan threw the bag into the back of his truck, next to the toolbox, and he got behind the wheel and tore out of the parking lot. He crossed the railroad tracks, drove six blocks east, and saw the signs for Interstate 49 ahead. He swung the pickup onto the ramp that had a sign saying I-49 SOUTHBOUND. Then he steadily gave the truck more gas, and he merged with the afternoon traffic, leaving the industrial haze of Shreveport at their backs.

  Killer, he thought. The image of blood spurting from Blanchard’s throat and the man’s waxen face was in his brain, unshakable as gospel. It had all happened so fast, he felt still in a strange, dreamlike trance. They would lock him away forever for this crime; he would die behind prison walls.

  But first they had to catch him, because he sure as hell wasn’t giving himself up.

  He switched on his radio and turned the dial, searching Shreveport’s stations for the news. There was country music, rock ‘n’ roll, rap, and advertisements but no bulletin yet about a shooting at the First Commercial Bank. But he knew it wouldn’t take long; soon his description and the description of his truck would be all over the airwaves. Not many men bore the tattoo of a snake on their right forearms. He realized that what he’d worn as a badge of pride and courage in ’Nam now was akin to the mark of Cain.

  Tears were scorching his eyes again. He blinked them away. The time of weeping was over. He had committed the most stupid, insane act of his life; he had gone south in a way he would never have thought possible. His gaze kept ticking to the rearview mirror, and he expected to see flashing lights coming after him. They weren’t there yet, but they were hunting for him by now. The first place they’d go would be the apartment. They would’ve gotten all the information about him from the bank’s computer records. How long would it take for the state troopers to get his license number and be on the lookout for a metallic-mist Chevrolet pickup truck with a killer at the wheel?

  A desperate thought hit him: maybe Blanchard hadn’t died.

  Maybe an ambulance had gotten there in time. Maybe the paramedics had somehow been able to stop the bleeding and get Blanchard to the hospital. Then the charge wouldn’t be murder, would it? In a couple of weeks Blanchard could leave the hospital and go home to his wife and children. Dan could plead temporary insanity, because that’s surely what it had been. He would spend some time in jail, yes, but there’d be a light at the end of the tunnel. Maybe. May—

  A horn blew, jarring him back to reality. He’d been drifting into the next lane, and a cream-colored Buick swept past him with a furious whoosh.

  He passed the intersection of the Industrial Loop Expressway, and was moving through the outskirts of Shreveport. Subdivisions of blocky tract houses, strip malls, and apartment complexes stood near warehouses and factories with vast parking lots. The land was flat, its summer green bleached to a grayish hue by the merciless sun. Ahead of him, the long, straight highway shimmered and crows circled over small animals that had been mangled by heavy wheels.

  It came to Dan that he didn’t know where he was going.

  He knew the direction, yes, but not the destination. Does it matter? he asked himself. All he knew is, he had to get as far from Shreveport as he could. A glance at the gas gauge showed him the tank was a little over a quarter full. The Chevy got good gas mileage for a pickup truck; that was one of the reasons he’d bought it. But how far could he get with thirty-eight dollars and some change in his pocket?

  His heart jumped. A state trooper’s car was approaching, heading north on the other side of the median. He watched it come nearer, all the spit drying up in his mouth. Then the car was passing him, doing a steady fifty-five. Had the trooper behind the wheel looked at him? Dan kept watching the rearview mirror, but the trooper car’s brake lights didn’t flare. But what if the trooper had recognized the pickup truck and radioed to another highway patrol car waiting farther south? On this interstate the troopers could be massing in a roadblock just through the next heat shimmer. He was going to have to get off I-49 and take a lesser-traveled parish road. Another four miles rolled under the tires before he saw the exit of Highway 175, heading south toward the town of Mansfield. Dan slowed his speed and eased onto the ramp, which turned into a two-lane road bordered by thick stands of pines and palmettos. As he’d figured, this route was all but deserted, just a couple of cars visible far ahead and none at his back. Still, he drove the speed limit and watched warily for the highway patrol.

  Now he was going to have to decide where to go. The Texas line was about twenty miles to the west. He could be in Mexico in fifteen hours or so. If he continued on this road, he would reach the bayous and swampland on the edge of the Gulf in a little over three hours. He could get to the Gulf and head either west to Port Arthur or east to New Orleans. And what then? Go into hiding? Find a job? Make up a new identity, shave off his beard, bleach out the tattoo?

  He could go to Alexandria, he thought. That city was less than a hundred miles away, just below the heart of Louisiana.

  He’d lived there for nine years, when he’d been working with Fordham Construction. His ex-wife and son lived there still, in the house on Jackson Avenue.

  Right. His mouth settled into a grim line. The police would have that address too, from the bank’s records. Dan had faithfully made his child support payments every month. If he went to that house, the police would swarm all over him. And besides, Susan was so afraid of him anyway that she wouldn’t let him in the door even if he came as a choirboy instead of a killer. He hadn’t seen his ex-wife and seventeen-year-old son in over six years. It had been better that way, because his divorce was still an open wound.

  He wondered what the other Snake Handlers would think of a father who had attacked his own little boy in the middle of the night. Did it matter that in those days Dan had been half crazy and suffered nightmarish flashbacks? Did it matter that when he’d put his hands around the boy’s throat he’d believed he was trying to choke to death a Viet Cong sniper in the silver-puddled mud?

  No, it didn’t. He remembered coming out of the flashback to Susan’s scream; he remembered the stark terror on Chad’s tear-streaked face. Ten seconds more — just ten — and he might have killed his own son. He couldn’t blame Susan for wanting to be rid of him, and so he hadn’t contested the divorce.

  He caught himself; the truck was drifting toward the center-line again as his attention wandered. He saw some dried blood between his fingers that he’d missed with the soap and rag, and the image of Blanchard’s bleached face stabbed him.

  A glance in the rearview mirror almost stopped his heart entirely. Speeding after him was a vehicle with its lights flashing. Dan hesitated between jamming the accelerator and hitting the brake, but before he could decide to do either, a cherry-red pickup truck with two grinning teenagers in the cab roared past him and the boy on the passenger side stuck a hand out with the middle finger pointed skyward.

  Dan started trembling. He couldn’t stop it. Sickness roiled in his stomach, a maniacal drumbeat trapped in his skull. He thought for a few seconds that he was going to pass out as dark motes spun before his eyes like flecks of ash. Around the next bend he saw a narrow dirt road going off into the woods on his right. He turned onto it and followed it fifty yards into the sheltering forest, his rear tires throwing up plumes of yellow dust.

  Then he stopped the truck, cut the en
gine, and sat there under the pines with beads of cold sweat on his face.

  His stomach lurched. As the fire rose up his throat, Dan scrambled out of the truck and was able to reach the weeds before he threw up. He retched and retched until there was nothing left, and then he sat on his knees, breathing sour steam as birds sang in the trees above him.

  He pulled the tail of his T-shirt out and blotted the sweat from his cheeks and forehead. Dust hung in the air, the sunlight lying in shards amid the trees. He tried to clear his mind enough to grapple with the problem of where to go. To Texas and Mexico? To the Gulf and New Orleans? Or should he turn the truck around, return to Shreveport, and give himself up?

  That was the sensible thing, wasn’t it? Go back to Shreveport and try to explain to the police that he’d thought Blanchard was about to kill him, that he hadn’t meant to lose his temper, that he was so very, very sorry.

  Stone walls, he thought. Stone walls waiting.

  At last he stood up and walked unsteadily back to his truck. He got in, started the engine, and turned on the radio. He began to move the dial through the stations; they were weaker now, diminished by distance. Seven or eight minutes passed, and then Dan came upon a woman’s cool, matter-of-fact voice.

  “… shooting at the First Commercial Bank of Shreveport just after three-thirty this afternoon …”

  Dan turned it up.

  “… according to police, a disturbed Vietnam veteran entered the bank with a gun and shot Emory Blanchard, the bank’s loan manager. Blanchard was pronounced dead on arrival at All Saints Hospital. We’ll have more details as this story develops.

  In other news, the city council and the waterworks board found themselves at odds again today when …”

  Dan stared at nothing, his mouth opening to release a soft, agonized gasp.

  Dead on arrival.

  It was official now. He was a murderer.

  But what was that about entering the bank with a gun? “That’s wrong,” he said thickly. “It’s wrong.” The way it sounded, he’d gone to the bank intent on killing somebody. Of course they had to put the “disturbed Vietnam veteran” in there, too. Might as well make him sound like a psycho while they were at it.

  But he knew what the bank was doing. What would their customers think if they knew Blanchard had been killed with a security guard’s gun? Wasn’t it better, then, to say that the crazy Vietnam veteran had come in packing a gun and hunting a victim? He kept searching the stations, and in another couple of minutes he found a snippet: “… rushed to All Saints Hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival. Police caution that Lambert should be considered armed and dangerous …”

  “Bullshit!” Dan said. “I didn’t go there to kill anybody!”

  He saw what would happen if he gave himself up. They wouldn’t listen to him. They’d put him in a hole and drop a rock on it for the rest of his life. Maybe he might live only three more years, but he wasn’t planning to die in prison and be buried in a pauper’s grave.

  He engaged the gears. Head to the bayou country, he decided. From there he could go either to New Orleans or Port Arthur. Maybe he could find a freighter captain who needed cheap labor and didn’t care to ask questions. He turned the truck around and then he drove back to Highway 175. He took a right, southbound again.

  The truck’s cab was a sweat box, even with both windows down. The heat was weighing on him, wearing him out. He thought about Susan and Chad. If the news was on the radio, it wouldn’t be long before it hit the local TV stations. Susan might already have gotten a call from the police. He didn’t particularly care what she thought of him; it was Chad’s opinion that mattered. The boy was going to think his father was a cold-blooded killer, and this fact pained Dan’s soul.

  The question was: what could be done about it?

  He heard an engine gunning behind him.

  He looked in the rearview mirror.

  And there was a state trooper’s car right on his tail, its blue bubble lights spinning.

  Dan had known true terror before, in the jungles of Vietnam and when he’d seen Blanchard’s gun leveling to take aim. This instant, though, froze his blood and stiffened him up like a dime-store dummy.

  The siren yowled.

  He was caught.

  He jerked the wheel to the right, panic sputtering through his nerves.

  The trooper whipped past him and was gone around the next curve in a matter of seconds.

  Before he could think to stop and turn around, Dan was into the curve and saw the trooper pulling off onto the road’s shoulder. A cherry-red pickup truck was down in a ditch, and one of the teenage boys was standing on the black scrawl the tires had left when he’d lost control of the wheel. The other boy was sitting in the weeds, his head lowered and his left arm clasped against his chest. As Dan glided past the accident scene, he saw the trooper get out of the car and shake his head as if he knew the boys were lucky they weren’t scattered like bloody rags amid the pines.

  When the trooper’s car was well behind, Dan picked up his speed again. Dark motes were still drifting in and out of his vision, the sun’s glare still fierce even as the afternoon shadows lengthened. He’d had not a bite of food since breakfast, and he’d lost the meager contents of his stomach. He considered stopping at a gas station to buy a candy bar and a soft drink, but the thought of pulling off while a state trooper was so close behind him put an end to that idea. He kept going, following the sun-baked road as it twisted like the serpent on his forearm.

  Mile after mile passed. The traffic was sparse, both in front and behind, but the strain of watching in either direction began to take its toll. The shooting replayed itself over and over in his mind. He thought of Blanchard’s wife — widow, that is — and the two children, and what they must be going through right now. He began to fear what might be lying in wait for him around the curves. His headache returned with a vengeance, as did his tremors. The heat was sapping his last reserves of strength, and soon it became clear to him that he had to stop somewhere to rest. Another few miles passed, the highway leading between pine forest broken by an occasional dusty field, and then Dan saw a gravel road on his right. As he slowed down, prepared to turn into the woods and sleep in his truck, he saw that the road widened into a parking lot. There was a small whitewashed church standing beneath a pair of huge weeping willow trees. A little wooden sign in need of repainting said: VICTORY IN THE BLOOD BAPTIST.

  It was as good a place as any. Dan pulled into the gravel lot, which was deserted, and he drove the truck around to the back of the church. When he was hidden from the road, he cut the engine and slid the key out. He pulled his wet shirt away from the backrest and lay down on the seat. He closed his eyes, but Blanchard’s death leapt at him to keep him from finding sleep.

  He’d been lying down for only a few minutes when someone rapped twice against the side of his truck. Dan bolted upright, blinking dazedly. Standing there beside his open window was a slim black man with a long-jawed face and a tight cap of white hair. Over the man’s deep-set ebony eyes, the thick white brows had merged together. “You okay, mister?” he asked.

  “Yeah.” Dan nodded, still a little disoriented. “Just needed to rest.”

  “Heard you pull up. Looked out the winda and there you were.”

  “I didn’t know anybody was around.”

  “Well,” the man said, and when he smiled he showed alabaster teeth that looked as long as piano keys, “just me and God sittin’ inside talkin’.”

  Dan started to slide the key back into the ignition. “I’d better head on.”

  “Now, hold on a minute, I ain’t runnin’ you off. You don’t mind me sayin’, you don’t appear to be up to snuff. You travelin’ far?”

  “Yes.”

  “Seems to me that if a fella wants to rest, he oughta rest. If you’d like to come in, you’re welcome.”

  “I’m … not a religious man,” Dan said.

  “Well, I didn’t say I was gonna preach to you. ’
Course, some would say listenin’ to my sermons is a surefire way to catch up on your sleep. Name’s Nathan Gwinn.” He thrust a hand toward Dan, who took it.

  “Dan …” His mind skipped tracks for a few seconds. A name came to him. “Farrow,” he said.

  “Pleased to meet you. Come on in, there’s room to stretch out on a pew if you’d like.”

  Dan looked at the church. It had been years since he’d set foot in one. Some of the things he’d seen, both in Vietnam and afterward, had convinced him that if any supernatural force was the master of this world, it smelled of brimstone and devoured innocent flesh as its sacrament.

  “Cooler inside,” Gwinn told him. “The fans are workin’ this week.”

  After a moment of deliberation, Dan opened the door and got out. “I’m obliged,” he said, and he followed Gwinn — who wore black trousers and a plain light blue short-sleeve shirt — through the church’s back door. The interior of the church was Spartan, with an unvarnished wooden floor that had felt the Sunday shoes of several generations. “I was writin’ my sermon when I heard you,” Gwinn said, and he motioned into a cubicle of an office whose open window overlooked the rear lot. Two chairs, a desk and lamp, a file cabinet, and a couple of peach crates full of religious books had been squeezed into the little room. On the desk was a pad of paper and a cup containing a number of ballpoint pens. “Not havin’ much luck, I’m a’feared,” he confided. “Sometimes you dig deep and just wind up scrapin’ the bottom. But I ain’t worried, somethin’ll come to me. Always does. You want some water, there’s a fountain this way.”

  Gwinn led him through a corridor lined with other small rooms, the floor creaking underfoot. A ceiling fan stirred the heat. There was a water fountain, and Dan went to work satisfying his thirst. “You a regular camel, ain’t you?” Gwinn asked. “Come on in here, you can stretch yourself out.” Dan followed him through another doorway, into the chapel. A dozen pews faced the preacher’s podium, and the sunlight that entered was cut to an underwater haze by the pale green glass of the stained windows. Overhead, two fans muttered like elderly ladies as they turned, fighting a lost cause. Dan sat down on a pew toward the middle of the church, and he pressed his palms against his eyes to ease the pain throbbing in his skull.