Desperation Road

by Michael Farris Smith

  In a mile or so he found them. The cars from the police department and the sheriff’s department and the ambulance and a huddle of men standing around in the headlights talking to one another. Whatever had happened appeared to be over. Russell stopped the truck and one of the deputies saw his truck and pointed and then the other men looked and Russell felt like he shouldn’t be there. He tried to back up and turn around but the road was too thin and it took a couple of tries and before he could get gone a deputy had called out for him to hold it right there. He carried a flashlight with him and he shined it into the truck cab and Russell didn’t move. A man in street clothes accompanied the deputy.

  “Get out of the truck and show your hands,” the deputy said.

  Russell did as he was told and the deputy told him to walk around to the front of the truck and put his hands on the hood. Russell obeyed. The deputy gave the light to the other man and he walked behind Russell and patted him down and asked him what he was doing out here.

  “Riding around,” Russell said.

  “Riding around where?”

  “Around here.”

  “Doing what?”

  “I told you. Riding.”

  “You got ID?”

  “In my wallet back there.”

  The deputy took Russell’s wallet from his back pocket and opened it. He pulled out Russell’s driver’s license which expired eight years earlier.

  “I’ll be damned,” the deputy said. “Stand up and turn around. Didn’t know you with that stuff on your face.”

  “Boyd Wilson,” Russell said and he broke into a smile and they shook hands.

  “Holy shit. You never know who you might find in the middle of the night.” Boyd was roundfaced and his forehead and hair seemed greasy slick in the flashing lights. His neck and cheeks had swollen with the years but Russell couldn’t miss those squinty eyes and the crooked nose that had been broken twice during their senior football season. Russell shook his head at Boyd.

  “When did you get home?” he asked.

  “About noon.”

  “Noon today?”

  “Noon today.”

  “Don’t guess it’s today no more but you know what I mean.”

  “I do.”

  “Well. Damn.”

  “Damn,” Russell said.

  “How was it?”

  “About like you’d think.”

  “Like in the movies?”

  Russell forced a smile. “Yeah. Except worse. In the movies somebody has a happy ending. I didn’t see many of them.”

  “You’re out. That’s a happy ending.”

  “We’ll see. How’s Lacey doing?”

  “Aw hell. Not bad.”

  “She still turning backflips?”

  “God no. She couldn’t put her right leg in that old cheerleader outfit now. Two kids later and Jesus H. if shit don’t change. Gotta love her, though.”

  “How old are them boys?”

  “Fifteen and thirteen. You wouldn’t believe how much they eat. Oldest starts varsity ball this year.”

  “He been running?”

  “Running. Lifting. Both of them. They ain’t like we used to be, running up and down the roads all summer and then getting ready a month ahead. They got them doing something year-round. Junior high and high school. Get pissed at them if they miss a workout in March, much less August.”

  “That’s good. They don’t need to be like we used to be anyway,” Russell said.

  “That’s what Lacey keeps telling me. I just ain’t sure they’re having much fun. But it don’t seem to bother them none.”

  “They got a daddy with the department. They could get away with damn near anything.”

  “They might figure that out before too much longer.”

  Boyd slapped the other man in the chest and then pointed at Russell. “This son of a bitch could fly back in the day. Couldn’t catch for shit but if you threw it up he’d outrun you to it.”

  “I caught a couple. You gotta catch it every now and then to get laid.”

  “Speaking of, Lacey’s sister split up with her husband not too long ago. She might be as hard up as you.”

  “Tell her to grab a twelve-pack and come on over.”

  The three men laughed and then Boyd gave Russell back the wallet. The other man walked back over to the scene.

  “Hurry and get that thing renewed,” Boyd said.

  “First thing.” Russell stuck it in his pocket and asked what happened.

  Boyd’s face went straight and he blew out a big breath. “Found a deputy out here shot dead. Shot a few times. Can’t find his pistol, either. It ain’t pretty.”

  “Anybody I know?”

  “Nah. Guy came down from Tupelo or somewhere a year or two back. He’s been on thin ice ever since he got here. Wonder if something didn’t catch up with him.”

  “What was he doing out here?”

  “That’s the ten-dollar question,” Boyd said and shook his head. “Don’t nobody seem to know right now. I hate for Lacey to find out about this one. She hates it enough already. It ain’t like it used to be when we were running the roads. Fighting in the parking lot or busting somebody’s mailbox was about as bad as we got. These days you walk up to somebody’s car and you might get your face blowed off. Any swinging dick can get a gun.”

  A man from the crowd called out to Boyd and Boyd told him just a minute.

  “I gotta run over there, Russell. Good to see you. Can’t believe it’s been that long.”

  Russell nodded and they shook hands again and Boyd walked away. Russell waited a minute, mesmerized by the swirling lights. He then turned to get in the truck and Boyd hustled back over to him.

  “Hold on,” he said. “Don’t get in yet. I’m told it don’t matter if you’re my momma I got to look in your truck. Stand over there.” Boyd pointed to a spot on the ground ten feet away from the truck and Russell stood on it. Boyd opened the glove compartment and looked under the seat and then he lifted the seat and found empty beer bottles and the shotgun and shells. He put the seat back and then he walked over to Russell and asked him if it was his.

  “Used to be. Guess it is again.”

  “Loaded?”

  “Yep.”

  Boyd scratched his chin. “How’s your daddy?”

  “Still going.”

  “Out there in the same spot?”

  “The same.”

  “You know you can’t have a gun. Shit, Russell. You ain’t even been home twenty-four hours.”

  “I know.”

  “Then why are you riding around with a loaded twenty-gauge?”

  “It just worked out that way.”

  “Not just a loaded shotgun but empty beer cans on the floorboard.”

  Russell gave a big exhale. Shrugged his shoulders.

  “Do me a favor and unload it,” Boyd said.

  “All right.”

  “And don’t drink no more right now.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Look, between you and me plenty of those boys over there drive around looking to stick it to somebody. Might be why one is shot up. And don’t none of them really give a shit about fellas who already been in once.”

  “I gotcha.”

  “Okay. Take off now. Go on home.”

  Russell nodded. He cranked the truck and backed away from the scene and then he was again alone in the dark. But he did not think of going home. Instead he opened another beer and drove slow, looking for a good side road. The shifting shades of dark as he put miles between him and the flashing lights. He found a road between two fence posts where a rusted metal gate was bent out of shape and wedged open. The truck just fit through the opening and he followed the bumpy road until it ended in the middle of a pasture. He shut the headlights and got out.

  But he didn’t let down the tailgate. Didn’t sit on the hood. Instead he paced around with the high grass brushing his legs. His arms folded and his lips pressed together. The beer can sweating in his hand.

&nbs
p; He appreciated what Boyd said but he wasn’t going to unload the shotgun.

  There was a simplicity to Boyd that he admired. A wife and kids and a job with benefits and he couldn’t help but think of Sarah. He had told himself that her picture wouldn’t make it out of the box but she had made it to the mantel already. There had been no reason to bring her home with him. The memories of what had been had helped to sustain him while confined amid concrete and steel but there was no reason to bring her home. But he had. He thought he knew where she lived. He had the address from the last letter she had sent him six years earlier. I have to move on, Russell. He’s a good man, Russell. Nobody can help the way things turned out.

  He wondered about the dead deputy. Wondered if his death had been merciful. Like the merciful death he had wished for so many nights as he lay awake, fearful of what might come the next day. To him or the man standing next to him.

  Go on home, Boyd had said.

  He shook his head. Figured Larry and Walt might be sitting on his front steps. Or the back steps. Or hiding in the closet. He kept pacing and drinking and thinking. Sometimes talked to the stars. Sometimes kicked at the grass.

  He knew that sooner or later he was going to go to that address and find out if she was there and right now seemed like as good a time as any. He cranked the truck and swung around. Passed through the gate and lit a cigarette. And then he turned south on Highway 48 and made his way toward Magnolia.

  18

  IT WAS ONE OF THOSE SMALL AND PICTURESQUE SOUTHERN TOWNS that should have and might have been in the movies. Tall, Victorian houses. Grand magnolias. Turn-of-the-century streetlamps. Churches with steeples that reached into the clouds. He passed a row of shotgun houses. One blue, the next yellow, the next pink, the next white. He followed the highway into downtown and turned left on Jefferson Street and passed city hall. The courthouse stood at the end of the block and then he turned right and drove three streets uphill to where the road reached back around behind city hall and from your front yard you could look out across the town. He had the address memorized and he drove slowly along Washington Avenue looking for 722. He found it on the corner, a fire hydrant painted like a jockey at the edge of the sidewalk. He stopped the truck on the opposite side of the street.

  It was a two-story blue house with a steep roof. There was an arched window on the second floor that looked like an upstairs balcony. Burgundy shutters. There were two chimneys and a porch that stretched the length of the front of the house and turned the corner and reached down the right side toward the backyard fence. A brick walkway from the sidewalk to the steps and then brick steps and terra cotta pots on each step. Yellow and white petals hung over the edges of the pots. At the foot of the steps a little red wagon was dumped over on its side. Wicker furniture on the porch and empty glasses on the table. Two cars were parked in the street along the side of the house. Something big and black with four doors and something sleek with round taillights. Alongside the house lay a soccer ball and a baseball bat. A plastic slide perfect for somebody small.

  All the appearances of happiness.

  He put the truck in drive and he drove into the night thinking about his life. With the effortlessness with which he had arrived at this moment. I got drunk and killed somebody with my car. That was it. He had marveled at the stories he had heard from other inmates. At the complications they had fallen into. At the opportunities they were given for things to go right but then they went wrong and it seemed like it was mostly the fault of others. He didn’t have that story. I got drunk and killed somebody with my car. It was as basic a story as you could tell. He thought of her now like he had thought of her so many times. Sleeping between soft sheets. Sleeping in a silent peace or sometimes turning and reaching for him. Maybe it had happened before but he couldn’t imagine it now. Not after seeing that house. Those toys in the yard. He saw her sleeping and her dreams filled with sand castles and birthday cakes and dinner parties while his dreams were filled with hand grenades. Filled with things he didn’t want to see any longer. Filled with things he wished he could forget.

  Back in McComb he drove along Delaware Avenue, serene and illuminated by streetlights. Two police cars sat parked next to one another in a pawn shop parking lot with the windows down, the cops talking to one another. He drove on past grocery stores and gas stations and he moved closer to downtown where the streets were lined with churches and he slowed when he came to the First Methodist Church with its high arches and brick steps and wooden steeple that made a wonderful shadow into the street in the afternoons. He hadn’t been a stranger to church or to God as he and his mother and father had gone every Sunday morning. His dad would drop him off at Sunday school and then he and Mom would sit on the seventh pew on the right side when his father joined them in the sanctuary for the service. Mom with her legs crossed and her Bible with LIZA GAINES inscribed on the bottom right of the front cover on her lap. Dad next to her in a black suit that matched all his ties and when Russell would get restless Mitchell would reach around his wife and pinch his ear and look down at him with serious eyes. Russell would then move and sit between his mother and father. His mom would pull a pen out of her purse and let him draw on the bulletin. That would keep him through the message and then they’d stand up and sing and the preacher would stand in front of the pulpit and ask for souls and sometimes one would come but most of the time not and then they’d walk out the front and Dad would shake hands with the preacher and the old men and then they’d go home and eat something with gravy.

  He slowed to a stop and parked on the street in front of those brick steps. Then he got out and walked around and leaned on the passenger-side door. He stared up at the steeple which lost its clarity against the backdrop of the night sky.

  He had tried again in the pen. The prison chapel was filled with rows of metal folding chairs and the pulpit held a podium and more chairs for the brighteyed young man from a local church who led the singing and the preacher and two guards. The preacher changed by the month, visiting speakers from area churches, sometimes a traveling evangelist, sometimes a budding theologian fresh out of the New Orleans seminary. But he could never get used to sitting next to men who sang the hymns of love and forgiveness knowing what they’d done and knowing they were getting their redemption. Taking advantage of grace while those they had done it to were probably up at night walking back and forth across worn carpet or fumbling in the medicine cabinet searching for the pills to help them sleep. He didn’t like the part of the service when these same men left their seats and stood at the pulpit and gave testimony. It was the same story over and over. Yes, I raped. Yes, I took another life. Yes, I stole. Yes, I raised a fist to my fellow man. But now I have found the love of God. Now I can see the light. Now I am found and on and on to a smattering of amens and hallelujahs and praise the Lords until Russell couldn’t take it anymore and so he gave up. He didn’t believe it worked that way and if it did then something didn’t seem right.

  Once he asked the preacher if he thought it was really possible that these men could inherit the kingdom if their repentance was legitimate.

  “If I didn’t think it was possible I wouldn’t be here,” the preacher had said. He was a retired Baptist minister. He walked with a limp and he wore a white beard and blackrimmed glasses and something in the gravelly tone of his voice had told Russell that he had heard it all from the mouths of sinners.

  “Do you think it’s fair?” Russell demanded. He had been ready with the second question because he already knew what the preacher’s answer would be to the first.

  The preacher took off his glasses and wiped them with his tie. Then he held them to the light and put them back on.

  “What do you mean by fair, son? What I think is fair or what you think is fair or what that prison guard over there thinks is fair?”

  “You know what I mean,” Russell said.

  “Yeah,” the preacher answered. “I know what you mean.” And then he folded his arms and stared at Russell.
Russell waited. The preacher took a deep breath.

  “I don’t think it’s fair, either,” Russell said.

  “But it doesn’t matter what I think is fair or what you think is fair,” the preacher answered. “The only thing that matters is what God thinks is fair. He leaves the door open. For everybody.”

  Russell pointed to an inmate who was leaving the chapel. “See that guy?” he said. The preacher turned and looked. “That guy beat his grandma to death because she wouldn’t tell him where the keys were to the car.”

  “I know,” the preacher said.

  Then Russell pointed at another guy. “That one molested his little brother for about five years.”

  The preacher nodded again.

  “His little brother,” Russell repeated.

  “I heard you.”

  Russell pointed at another but before he could begin the preacher held up his hand and stopped him.

  “And what did you do?”

  “I made a big fucking mistake,” he answered. “I didn’t mean to. They meant to.”

  “I’m not doubting you.”

  “There’s more gray than the way you make it sound.”

  “There’s gray to us. But only black and white where He’s concerned. Says it in Matthew. You follow or you don’t. I’ll know you or I won’t. It’s a pretty straight line.”

  “The way you put it there’s ladders over the line. Or tunnels under it.”

  “There’s grace. If you want to call it a ladder or a tunnel then I suppose you can. But I don’t know what you’re trying to do. Trying to justify yourself by condemning them or trying to get me to say you and them are different. But it don’t much matter what I say.”

  When the guard blew the whistle Russell turned and followed his fellow inmates out of the chapel. He had never gone back. Many nights he had thought about what the preacher had said. It’s there if you want it. Don’t matter what you’ve done. There was something odd about that. Seemed like there had to be a point of no return. Things you couldn’t take back. He had seen the worst of men and he wanted there to be punishment for that so that he could feel like he was different from them.