Desperation Road

by Michael Farris Smith

  “Got us some new entertainment,” he said. “Come on out and I’ll show you. Yeah, same spot. Yeah, y’all can both come. Ain’t nothing on the radio. Looks like we got all night. Same deal as always.”

  He turned off the phone and set it on the seat next to the gun belt. He looked around at Maben through the safety glass and said me and you about to have some company. I’d suggest you be on your best behavior.

  She held her shirt against her chest and he laughed at her modesty. She felt the wild, poisonous vine beginning to choke her. She looked at the door. Wide open. Wanting her to run or do something he could blame her for. She didn’t know if it would be a few minutes or half an hour but soon there would be three of them. At least. And she didn’t believe that she wasn’t going to jail when it was over. She didn’t believe that he thought she had a kid back there and even if he did he didn’t seem to care. At some point Annalee would be discovered by a maid or leave the room and wander around looking for somebody and then there would be a phone call and that would be the end of the only thing she had left that mattered. She looked across the quiet, flat countryside. No lights and no answers.

  “Want me to get out and wait for them?” she asked.

  He looked around as if he were waiting for someone else to answer. It’d be a good story he could tell one day if he had her sitting on the hood like some sexual ornament.

  “Might as well. You gonna have to get out anyway. Don’t put nothing on.”

  “It’s off already. Like you told me.”

  “Then come on.”

  She scooted across toward the open door, her skin sticking to the seat. He got out from behind the wheel and led her around to the front of the cruiser. She sat down on the hood and it was hot on her bare ass and she hopped up. She asked if she could get her shirt to sit on and he said okay and he turned and looked up the road and waited on their headlights. She noticed him looking away and she leaned across the front seat and unlatched the pistol from the belt and when he turned around she was standing there. Her naked body illuminated in the orange glow of the parking lights. Pointing his pistol at him.

  “You gotta be kidding me,” he said and he was getting ready to laugh again but he didn’t have the chance as she blew a hole in his throat. He went to his knees and she walked around to him and he squeezed his throat with both hands and the blood flowed black in the strange light and he lunged for her and she stepped back and he fell facedown. He rolled over, clutching at his throat. Tried to get back to his knees and she shot him twice more and he fell flat and still.

  She lowered the pistol and then dropped the pistol and put her suddenly shaking hands on top of her head but she didn’t have time for that so she grabbed her clothes and shoes from the backseat and hurried to get dressed, starting to cry in heaves but she stopped herself. You can’t start that now and she went back to the front of the cruiser and he hadn’t moved and wasn’t going to and she picked up the pistol. His phone rang in the cruiser and she knew it was them and she looked into the backseat once more to see if there was anything of hers and then she started running down the road. Away from the cruiser she could hardly see her next step but it didn’t slow her and she ran to the end of the road and she hoped she was turning the right way and she kept running as hard as she could run.

  A curve lay ahead and she noticed the headlights shining from around the bend and she dived off the side of the road into the high grass, lying flat and wishing she could lie flatter. The car passed without noticing and she waited until the taillights were specks and then she began running again. She didn’t know how far she had to go but she knew it was far. Her legs burned, the muscles already tired from walking in the heat for three days. But she ignored the pain and pushed and pushed. She ran with flailing arms and legs and she gasped for breath as the fear rose and came out of her in stuttered cries. Sweating and gasping and switching the pistol from hand to hand as if expecting one of them to know what to do with it. Her knee rose and knocked it from her grasp and the pistol bounced away in the dark. She screamed shit motherfucker and then dropped to her hands and knees. Feeling for it in the roadside gravel and calling out to it and then begging God to show it to her. The dust stirred and the rocks shuffled from her hurried hands and then she found it and she was up and running again. It was then that she heard the sirens.

  She ran on until she could see the lights from the truck stop and as she ran closer she tried to think if anyone had seen her in the parking lot. If anyone had seen her get in the car with the deputy. He hadn’t called it in. Hadn’t talked to anyone when he picked her up. Had only used his phone to call his buddies to tell them to come on out and have at her. The first siren was joined by more sirens and she imagined the lights flashing around the dead man because she had seen them before. She imagined his open and dead eyes and the blood draining into the bends of the rough road and the crimson streams that the men in uniform would be careful to step around. The body slumped and folded as if it did not have bones and the open sky that gave no answers.

  She stopped when she reached the edge of the truck stop parking lot. She didn’t know how long she had been gone. All she knew was that she had made it back and that no one had seen her on the road. She paused before she walked into the lot. Fought to catch her breath and then she stuck the pistol in the back of her pants and tugged her shirt down over it. She stopped at the end of the motel rooms and leaned against the brick wall. Looked for anyone moving around. Looked for anyone in the café staring out the window. Across the lot a man stood at the front of his rig smoking a cigarette. When he was done he walked over to the café and went inside and she watched him sit down at a bar stool with his back to the window.

  She waited until the man with glasses on his nose came over and handed him a menu and when the man walked away and into the kitchen Maben crossed hurriedly in front of the motel rooms. Room key in her hand. And when she got to number 6 she found Annalee standing in the window. Her eyes red and her hair tousled as if she had been trying to pull it out with her small hands. Maben unlocked the door and didn’t speak but only knelt and hugged the child who was sweating and panting and crazyeyed. As she hugged her, out the window Maben saw the black girl and the white girl across the way. Standing next to the garbage bin behind the café and counting their money.

  7

  IN THE SOUTHERN MISSISSIPPI SWAMP YOU CAN WATCH THE WORLD awaken as the pale yellow sun edges itself between the trees and moss and widewinged cranes. Dragonflies buzz and raccoons come out of their dens and crawl along fallen trees. Turtles situate themselves onto stumps that will later become sunsoaked and hidden things slide beneath black water with murderous patience and skill. Limbs too old to hold themselves up any longer bend and break like old men accepting their marshy graves. Reptiles slither and blackbirds cry as the early light slashes and relieves the deep and quiet night.

  This was the world that Russell thought of as he sat with his head leaning against the bus window. Getting up early and driving his daddy’s truck out Highway 98 and turning toward the Bogue Chitto River and then driving onto a gravel road that ran alongside the thin river until the road simply ended. Getting out of the truck and taking the .22 rifle from behind the seat and walking half a mile until the ground became soft and then soggy and then stepping high to keep from bogging down and making it to the one-man boat tied to a willow tree. Muddy to his knees and climbing in and paddling out into the swamp and listening and watching and feeling like a part of what was happening. Sitting through the break of dawn and the light gaining strength and burning through the early haze and the air alive with the calls of birds and the hungry things searching for food. The .22 across his lap. Shot less and less with each visit as he had come to feel like a violator. The unnatural ring of his shot, which scattered the small and unknowing things and added blood to the water and he eventually only carried it with him in case of an alligator or some other fantastic creature rising from the black and starving for skin and bone. This was the
world that filled his thoughts as the bus headed south on I-55. The world he remembered being part of as a younger man. As a boy.

  It was a straight shot eighty miles south down the interstate and there had been enough rain during this last week of June to keep the countryside green but light shades of brown appeared in patches and suggested a drying out was in store if there wasn’t some relief. Babies cried off and on and an old man snored in the seat behind him and the bus smelled of exhaust and he was taken away from thoughts of his youth and forced into thoughts of the man he had been when he was taken away. He had told himself he wasn’t going to do it. Wasn’t going to stare out the window and lament what he had lost, like some hapless guy in some hapless moment but he wasn’t able to resist. There she was. Brown hair and filling her young woman body in young woman ways, excited about a wedding, dancing with him late into the night, lying close against him in the dark. He listened to the babies cry several seats behind him and he wondered about the kids they might have. About the house they might live in. About the backyard that might be at that house and about them sitting in wrought-iron chairs and drinking bottled beer and watching those kids run around the yard chasing fireflies. The bus charged on, a great rectangular mass of metal and glass and he imagined himself returning from a long trip to that woman and those kids who would be waiting on the front porch of that house and then the old man who had been snoring snapped awake with a shout and startled Russell and freed him from these images. He arched his back and stretched. Looked down at his hands and rubbed his thumbs across the small scars that were scattered across his knuckles and the tops of his hands. Scars that hadn’t been there when he left.

  He had spent his first week of freedom in a mandatory seminar for ex-cons that attempted to reacquaint them with the real world. He and six others wore street clothes without shackles and were driven in a van from the gates of the Mississippi State Penitentiary in the Delta to a Motel 6 on the back end of a truck stop off I-55 on the south side of Jackson. He had been unable to sleep. The room too quiet. The air conditioner too cold. Concern that the guy he was sharing a room with might do something. Anything. After doughnuts and coffee in the mornings they would go into a big room at the end of the hallway on the first floor and sit around a sprawling wooden table and listen to Mildred Day. She referred to herself as a reentry counselor. Somebody you only want to see once. Somebody you want to forget. A no-frills middle-aged woman with thick wrists and thick ankles and a thick waist. She educated them on finding work and maintaining contact with parole officers. She explained the differences in the price of living. What a gallon of milk cost. What car insurance cost. How much you make at minimum wage.

  After three days of this, with the lure of the free world just outside their door and evidently too much to bear, two of the ex-cons skipped out around midnight and headed to Jimmy’s, a south Jackson strip club with pink neon women shining over the front door and highdollar drinks inside. Mildred Day had warned them and the next morning when they didn’t show up for breakfast she made a phone call and then went on about her business with her remaining students. At lunch she announced that the two stragglers had been picked up smoking cigarettes outside a convenience store and that they were currently on their way back to Parchman for another six months. She then said if any of you would like to join your buddies, Jimmy’s has no cover charge until nine o’clock and drinks are half price until ten. Russell looked around at the other four men and they all shook their heads though visions of naked girls danced in their thoughts and one of the cons remarked to Mildred that those must have been some damn fine titties if they was worth another six months.

  The remaining days passed with less excitement. She took them to the mall and the grocery store. She had them practice filling out job applications and identifying themselves as ex-cons. With certain eyes she stood in front of them and said out of the seven original members of the group, four of you will wind up back in prison. Two of you are already there. It’s up to you. When the week was up each man had gate money and a manila folder tucked under his arm filled with everything the Mississippi Department of Corrections believed he needed to become a functioning member of society.

  In the van on the way to the bus stop where the five men would go their separate ways three of them threw the folders out the window, a cloud of letter-size paper scattering across I-55. Busy people in their busy cars swerving and giving them the bird as they passed the laughing ex-cons. An hour later he was sitting on the bus. A free man. Staring out the window. Closing in on the place and people he hadn’t seen in eleven years.

  They arrived at the McComb exit and it didn’t take long for him to see what he had missed. A cluster of new restaurants and hotels gathered just off the interstate and past those was a straight line of got-it-all superstores that stretched to the edges of the once sleepy neighborhoods where he had picked up a prom date or two. He noticed the parking lots filled with cars and women with children and strollers and he wondered where they had all come from. The bus moved past the slick part of town and wound through the place he had known—the rows of houses with porch swings, the elementary school with the rusted playground equipment, the magnolia trees on the lawn of the Methodist church. The quiet downtown and its brick buildings and bumpy streets. The bus rolled through downtown and stopped at the railroad tracks where the Greyhound and Amtrak stations shared the same square building. He stood up from his seat and threw his duffel bag over his shoulder and walked to the front of the bus. The driver opened the door and Russell looked out and twenty yards away two men leaned on the front of a white truck with their arms folded. Russell froze. Stared at the asphalt at the bottom of the steps.

  “This is it,” the driver said.

  Russell nodded. Moved down a step and paused again.

  “I got a long road, buddy,” the driver said.

  He took a deep breath and adjusted the bag and then he climbed down out of the bus. The door closed behind him and Russell stood still, the bus backing up and pulling away with a trail of blue smoke and the gears grinding as the driver shifted ahead. The two men began walking toward Russell and he didn’t move. They stopped a few steps in front of him. The man on the left was taller and his shirt was untucked and the man on the right wore a white T-shirt that was a size too small. They shared the same sharp eyes and serious brow and they held their hands to their sides with their fingers wiggling in anticipation as if ready to draw.

  “Welcome home, shithead,” the tall one said and they went for him. He hurried to get the bag off his shoulder but it was caught around his arm and it gave them time to get on him. The tall one hit him twice on the side of the head while the other man went low, grabbing Russell around the waist, pinning one of his hands and lifting him off his feet. He drove Russell to the ground, his back hitting the pavement with a whump that made him lose his breath and the tall one kicked Russell in the ribs while the other man punched at his face and stuck his knee into his groin. Finally Russell was able to roll his weight to the side but the man got to his feet and joined the other in kicking and then swinging at Russell as he struggled to get up. He made it to his knees when he was hit squarely in the eye by one of the four wild fists and he fell back, being kicked sharply in the ribs with the heel of a boot as he went limp. He lay there. Out of breath. Doubled over. The men paused and watched him crumble and the tall one spit and they were about to hurt him like they wanted to when a man in a red tie ran out of the station yelling, “Hey! Hey!”

  The men stopped and stood over Russell, panting like dogs.

  The man in the tie hurried over and straddled Russell and threatened to call the cops and the two men backed away.

  “Been waiting for that shit for a long time,” the tall one said.

  “Hell yeah,” said the other.

  “I mean it. Get the hell outta here. I saw it all.”

  “You didn’t see nothing.”

  “Swear to God I did.”

  “Don’t worry. We’ll see
you again soon, Russell,” the tall one said. “You hear me? Soon.”

  The two men nodded in satisfaction and backed toward the truck. They climbed in and drove away, their heads turning and eyes locked on the fallen man like strangers staring at a car wreck.

  The man extended his hand to Russell and said, “Damn it to hell. Welcome to town.” He wore a short-sleeved shirt and his red tie was loosened. Russell took his hand and got to his feet with a grunt. He felt his eye and the place on his head where he figured there would be a knot. He bent over gingerly to pick up the duffel bag.

  “I’m the station manager. You all right?”

  He nodded. Wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Felt his nose. Nothing broken. He put the bag on his shoulder and nodded to the station manager and started walking across the parking lot.

  “You need a ride somewhere? I’m done here. Just got to lock up.”

  Russell turned around and said that’d be fine.

  “Ain’t far, is it?”

  “Over there,” he said and pointed with his elbow tucked to his throbbing side.

  “Then hold on. Won’t take a second.”

  The man hurried back into the building and Russell got down on one knee and took a cigarette from the duffel bag. He looked around. Up and down the tracks. At the sagging facade of a hardware store. At the empty parking spaces on the downtown streets. A few minutes later the door to the station opened again and the man came out and pointed at a two-door Toyota parked around the side of the building.

  “Well. Come on,” he said.

  Russell walked to the car. “You mind the smoke?”

  “Not if you got one for me. Been one of them damn days. I don’t guess I’m telling you nothing.”

  They got in the car and Russell gave him a cigarette. The man turned a vent toward Russell, the straight burst of air causing him to bat his eyes. He pushed the vent toward the ceiling and he rolled down his window. He sat with the bag in his lap and his knees bunched up in the compact space of the compact car.