Desperation Road

by Michael Farris Smith

  The band decided the break was over and they started out with Hank Junior and it took less than a verse for the mood to rise again. Dancing replaced sitting. Yelling replaced talking. Russell had finished off his pack of cigarettes and he noticed a pack sitting on the bar in front of the woman. He pointed to them and asked for one.

  She obliged and lit it for him with a lighter she pulled from a tiny purse that he hadn’t noticed in her lap. She put it away then she folded her arms across her healthy chest and squeezed like she had missed herself. Russell watched her breasts push together but looked away quickly when she turned to him.

  “You like to dance?” she asked.

  “Probably not the way you do,” he said. “I got a feeling you can shake it.”

  “Few more of those and you’ll be ready.”

  “Few more of these and I’ll be ready for anything,” he answered, surprising himself with how easily the remark came out.

  She cut her eyes at him and then held out her hand. “I’m Caroline.”

  “Russell,” he said and he held her fingers and shook them.

  He hadn’t noticed but she had turned on her seat and was now facing him with her legs uncrossed and almost touching his hip. He was a man who had not seen the legs or shoulders of a real live woman in too damn long so he thought what the hell and he started at her ankles and followed up her calves and over her knees and up to her thighs to where the dress began. And then he trailed up her stomach and stopped a moment at her breasts and those freckled shoulders and then he made it to her chin and unsmiling mouth and nose and eyes and she stared back.

  “So should I hike it up or pull it down?”

  He shook his head.

  “Want me to stand up and turn around?”

  “No. Maybe.”

  “Least you could do is dance with me first.”

  “You don’t want to see that.”

  “God knows you owe me a drink after giving me such a look.”

  “I can do that,” he said and he waved to the bartender.

  They got their beers and clinked bottles.

  “Damn it to hell. That was the best compliment I’ve had in about half a dozen years.”

  The interview began. She asked if he was married and he said no. She asked if he had kids and he said no again.

  “Are you sure?” she said.

  “I think I’d know.”

  “Shit. I heard that one before.”

  He didn’t think she believed him and he was right. He tried to sit up straight. Look at her when answering. He liked the way she leered at him with playful, suspicious eyes and when she asked what he did for a living he lied and said painted houses. He tried to keep his face forward so that she wouldn’t notice the beginnings of the scar at the edge of the beard. Because she would ask about it. There was no doubt she would ask about it and then he would have to lie and that might blow the whole thing. He kept waiting for some Armadillo regular to stick his head in and try to drag her away.

  He bought her another beer and she said don’t you want to ask me the same questions but he didn’t. He hadn’t even bothered to look at her ring finger though she made it a point to drink with that hand and to play with her necklace with that hand.

  The band kept on and Russell asked if they played here often.

  “Don’t know. I don’t come here much,” she said.

  You look like you own that bar stool, he thought to say. But he was hiding things so he let her lie. Russell then turned and watched the four rugged rockers, unable to decide if their better days were behind or ahead.

  “They’re not bad,” Caroline said. “For this place.”

  “Nope,” he answered, turning back. He waved for two more. He promised himself that he’d drink more slowly though he realized that it was a flimsy promise.

  “Let’s make a deal,” she said. “I go to the bathroom and you keep my seat. You go and I keep yours. That’s also the other’s chance to make a run for it. No questions asked.”

  “That’s a damn good deal,” he said.

  “Fine. Me first.”

  She left her cigarettes on the bar and took her tiny purse in her hand and went to the ladies’ room. Russell kept one hand on his drink and the other palm down on top of her bar stool. He wondered what kind of woman would make a deal like that. How often she played and how often she came back to find the man gone. She didn’t look like the kind of woman any man would run from. Not in the Armadillo. As he waited he watched the band and watched the bartenders and begged himself not to say or do anything stupid.

  13

  YOU SURE HEATHER IS IN THERE?” WALT ASKED. THEY SAT IN THE parked truck in the shadows of the parking lot on the other side of the railroad tracks. A clear view of the lighted door of the Armadillo. They had been sitting for an hour, first with the windows down but then the mosquitoes floated in and out and Larry had cranked the truck and rolled up the windows and turned on the air conditioner. The clock on the dash read half past midnight.

  “That’s what Jimmy said when he called.”

  “Want me to go in and look?”

  “Nah. I don’t want them to know we’re here. Want her and him to have a good damn time. Think the world is roses.”

  “Did he say if it’s the same guy?”

  “Same one. Little blond shit she’s been running down to New Orleans with.”

  Only a few people had left while they had been parked. They had both been in the Armadillo enough to know that it didn’t begin to break up until after one when the band stopped playing. Walt held a beer between his legs and he slapped his hand on his knee to the rhythm of the muffled drumbeat coming from the bar. Two more minutes passed. Larry sat motionless with his eyes fixed on the bar door with the stare of a dead man.

  The band slowed it down with a George Jones and the bodies piled onto the dance floor anxious to be against one another. As the song drained on hands fell lower and mouths opened and those left behind sat alone at their tables with dejected, anguished looks on their faces as they stared at the swaying crowd that seemed to grow together and form some drunken and sweaty mass. Midway through the song Caroline moved her hand onto Russell’s leg and she rubbed her fingers back and forth across the soft, worn denim. Rubbing in a way that let him know she was his. And it had been a long time but his instinct was not dead and he waved to the barebellied bartender for the tab and he was paid up before Caroline had the notion to move her hand away. He got off the bar stool and took her hand and she stood and moved her shoulders to the music. You want to drive or you want me to he asked and she pointed to him. Then they stepped around the deserted tables and out into the warm night.

  “I’ll be damned,” Walt said and he leaned toward the windshield. Russell and Caroline stood on the sidewalk holding hands.

  “Sit tight,” Larry said.

  “Are you serious?”

  “Sit tight.”

  “Son of a bitch. Our boy moves fast.”

  “Right now he does.”

  “First goddamn night home.”

  “He must be used to getting his ass kicked. Don’t look like it bothered him much.”

  “Don’t look like it,” Walt said and he slumped back against his seat. “Gonna have to hit him harder.”

  “We will. But not right now,” Larry said. “I got my mind on the other one about to come out.” He rolled down the windows again. The music stopped inside the bar. Russell and Caroline both looked up and down the street and then Russell pointed. Minutes passed and the music never started back and Walt said that must be it and Larry said it’s about damn time.

  14

  THE BLOND MAN HADN’T LIKED BEING THERE AND WAS ANXIOUS TO leave and as soon as the music stopped and the guitars were unplugged he said goodbye to Heather without ceremony and made his way for the door. He couldn’t understand what was wrong with the Gulf Coast or with New Orleans or with Hattiesburg or with any of the million other places that a man and a married woman could meet and do what they w
anted to do. But Heather had said don’t be a coward. Let’s keep it local tonight and let me show the girls what I got. This town was too small and he didn’t like it and he had wondered all night why the hell he had agreed to it.

  He walked out past a man and a woman holding hands. The man nodded to him and then the blond man put his hand into the pocket of his creased pants and took out his car keys. He turned the corner and walked a block to the parking lot that was next to the railroad tracks. It was darker there, no streetlight, only the faint glow floating over from the streets behind him. His shadow disappeared as he hurried to the car.

  The footsteps came in a hurry and when he turned and saw the two men rushing toward him he wondered where they had come from. He tried to speak but didn’t have time and they were on him like a storm. His nose broken with the first fist and he fell back across the hood of a car and they held him there and he took blow after blow to his head and face. He tried to cover up but they were stronger and relentless and they held his arms with ease and the pain from his nose like a sword shoved into his brain and he felt himself losing consciousness. When he was nearly gone one man pinned his arms to the hood of the car while the other spread his legs and punched him over and over and over in the dick as if to make sure it understood that you do not go into another man’s wife. The blood ran over his face and neck and the four fists that had been pounding him were covered in the same blood. He couldn’t move and he was at the edge of consciousness flat on the hood of a car.

  The brothers stepped back and looked around and a handful more people had left the bar and were walking toward the parking lot. Larry wiped his nose on the back of his hand and checked for his own blood where he had gotten in the way of the fist of his brother. Let’s go, Walt said. Here comes somebody.

  Larry reached into his back pocket and pulled out an envelope that held the photographs of the bleeding man having a good time with Heather. He shoved the envelope down the front of the man’s pants. Leaned close to his face and listened to him reaching for breath and he squeezed the man’s bloody cheeks into a pucker and said that’s what you get when you fuck with me.

  The men hurried away across the blackest end of the parking lot. They climbed in the truck and drove a block and a half and stopped. Watched. Two women going to their car saw the busted blond man and a faint scream came out of the dark. The women hurried back to the Armadillo and Larry and Walt waited until Heather came out to see what was going on. She was out first and her friends followed her to the corner and across the street and they turned into shadows as they passed between the parked cars. Larry imagined them gathering around the punished man and none of them knowing what to do and the errant look in her eyes as she found her toy broken across the hood of a car. He smirked at himself in the rearview mirror and then turned his eyes back toward the parking lot where he could not hear Heather telling her friends to help him up and get him in the car. Could not see them struggling with his limp body and asking if they should call the cops and Heather saying are you deaf I said just get him in the damn car. He could not see them or hear them but he knew that when she finally got him somewhere and wiped the blond man’s blood from her hands and from her dress and found the photographs down in the place she knew so well, she would then understand that it was her turn to crawl.

  15

  RUSSELL TURNED THE TRUCK RADIO TO AN OLDIES STATION AND the Temptations were playing and Caroline rolled her arms and clapped her hands like she’d seen them do on television. The windows were down and her hair spray wouldn’t hold in the wind but she didn’t complain. Russell enjoyed the show and considered clapping with her but didn’t think he should let go of the steering wheel. She swayed front and back and side to side and her dress clung to her like Saran wrap and she tried to sing but didn’t know the words so she stuck to the choreography. When the song was over she picked up a rubber band that she found on the floorboard and used it to pull her hair back in a ponytail. She kicked off her shoes and set them on the seat with her purse and cigarettes.

  She’s older out here, Russell thought. Thirty-five, maybe less in the bar. Forty or more in the streetlight. At a red light he noticed the same freckles across her nose and under her eyes that were scattered across her shoulders. Some of the freckles were lost in the creases at the edges of her eyes. But her curves hadn’t changed in the light and that was all he cared about.

  She had asked to go to Russell’s place but he said no and they were on the way to her house. They drove along Delaware Avenue. There was little traffic but for the fast food joints and the night air was lighter after a brief evening rain. They drove on until Delaware reached the interstate and then they passed over the bridge and made their way out of town, passing car dealerships and then wooded lots decorated with oversize FOR SALE signs. Caroline calmed and watched out the window and Russell watched her as if she might disappear, unsure if God was actually going to let him be this lucky. In another half mile the house lights appeared back off the highway. Long driveways separating the houses from the bother of the passersby. Caroline pointed and said right up there and the truck slowed and turned right. Four small identical houses sat together at the corners of a flat square of new black asphalt. Each had the same white vinyl siding, the same green shutters, the same red front door, the same chimney sticking up from the same side of the roof. He stopped in the middle.

  “Guess which one.”

  Russell looked around. “That one. With the pink flamingo.”

  “Jackass,” she said.

  “You look like a woman who would have a pink flamingo.”

  “You ain’t exactly home free, cowboy. Don’t get smart.”

  “It was a compliment.”

  “Shit. I hate that thing. This one over here.”

  He parked in front of the house in the back right corner. They got out and she stopped at the front door. She bent over and took a key from under the mat and when she bent Russell ran his hand across her ass knowing he could blame it on being drunk if it didn’t come off the right way. But she straightened and turned and smiled and she grabbed him and kissed him. Then she pulled back and said I better get you inside.

  She opened the door and Russell grabbed her again and she moved them to the middle of the room and Russell didn’t know anything else to do but to go for it. He pushed the straps from her shoulders and thought please God and then he pushed her dress down to her waist and there was another please God and when she wiggled he knelt and pulled it to her ankles and she stepped out and then there was a thank you God. In another minute they were naked on the carpet and he forgot about God and he was on his back and she rocked on top of him holding his shoulders with her hands and then as she leaned forward on him and he held her waist and felt her breasts against his bare chest he bit his lip to keep from crying and the thought crossed his mind that if there was another man alive on the face of the earth who at that present moment was happier than he was then he didn’t know how the son of a bitch could stand it.

  16

  THEY LAY NEXT TO ONE ANOTHER IN THE SAME SPOT IN THE MIDDLE of the floor where they had finished. Caroline had taken pillows and a blanket from a hall closet and covered them once they were done. Russell lay on his back with his eyes on the ceiling and Caroline slept with her head across his chest. Russell had tried to move her once but she had grunted and risen and then flopped back across him and so he had decided to ride it out. Go to sleep and face the music the next morning and see what she was really like. But the sleep part wouldn’t come and he worked to build the courage to move her again and find his pants and leave. The night had been a gift and he wanted to remember things the way they had been—in low light, blurred by drink, happily irresponsible. The morning light would wipe that away. The beer had worn off and he could feel the headache coming on and he needed to get up and smoke the cigarette that would keep the pain away for a while.

  He shifted some to his left and she made no sound. With his free hand he took the pillow from behind h
is head and stacked it on top of hers to keep her head from too much of a flop. Then as much as he could, he turned on his side and eased her off and onto her back and her head made an easy roll from his shoulder to the pillow. She made a mumble then tugged at the blanket and she turned on her side and faced him. He sat and looked at her, imagining her naked body beneath the blanket and the ways in which he knew her now.

  He carefully picked himself up from the floor and he began to feel around in the dark for his clothes. He was relieved to find his pants first and he put them on and then he found his shirt and shoes and one sock. He held them in one arm while he crawled around and felt for the other sock and his underwear but when she sniffed and rolled over he thought the hell with it and he put on what he had. His wallet had stuck in the back pocket of his jeans and he remembered leaving the keys in the truck. He felt like there was something he should do. Leave a note. Kiss her cheek. Something. But the only thing he did was take another look at her shoulders. He then tiptoed to the front door and turned the handle with the care of a thief. He opened the door just enough to slide through, unaware that in the dark her eyes were wide open.

  17

  HE HAD STAYED OUT RIDING. WIDE-ASS AWAKE WITH THE ADRENALINE of the first day of freedom and he wanted it to go on and on. Three in the morning. Bought some more beer after he left her house. No reason to call it a night. Her smell on him and if he tried hard he could feel her on top of him as if she were straddling him now with her dress over her hips and her knees burying into his sides. He drove down to Fernwood and to the truck stop and he sat down with a roast beef poboy and when he was done he drove out onto Highway 48 and toward the lake. He heard the sirens and saw the flashes coming up behind him and he slowed and eased onto the side of the road and the cruisers roared past and he knew it had to be something bad. The highway ran straight and he saw them hit their brakes and turn off at a road about half a mile before the lake road and before he could get there an ambulance approached from the other direction and turned in behind the cruisers. Russell stopped and he didn’t see what they were after but he saw the barrage of lights circling in the night sky so he followed after them.