“I heard you getting married,” he said.
She nodded.
“Think you really want to again?”
“You did.”
“That’s why I’m asking. Just cause it’s somebody new don’t mean it’s any good.”
“I’m gonna try anyway.”
“Can’t be no worse, huh?” he said.
“If that’s what you want to say.”
He swayed and had to catch himself from falling.
“I’m going inside and you need to go. Right now. Don’t take this no further.”
“Is he playing Little League this summer?”
“He’s too old for Little League now.”
“Already? Shit.”
Larry whispered something to himself. Made an X in the dirt with the heel of his boot.
“Can I go in and look? I won’t say nothing. Just go look at him for a second.”
“Hell no.”
“Is he getting tall?”
“You wouldn’t be able to tell it if he was. He lays down when he sleeps.”
“Goddamn it, Dana. I know that. Is he getting tall or not?”
She folded her arms tightly. “Yes. He’s tall. Now go home. I’m not saying it again. Go on home,” she said. She looked at him like she used to look at him when she wanted him to be better and then she went in the door. Locks clicked and the light went off over the door and then the light went off in her bedroom and he could feel her watching him. Waiting for him to go. That thing howled again. Sounded like it might be for the last time. He walked to his truck and backed out of the driveway and waited to turn on his headlights until he was out on the road.
He was often filled with a serenity as he drove alone on backcountry roads in the late recesses of the night, the empty roads and the feeling of being separated from the things that lived where the streetlights lived. But that serenity was just as often shattered and scattered into the darkest corners of the countryside as he was overpowered by the thoughts of the things that he hated—the wife that had been and the boy he couldn’t see and the wife he had now and the men who tasted her and the dead who were gone and the living who would return. And then he would rage against the most striking object of his hate and he would look into the rearview mirror and see that object staring back at him and it was easy to hate the other things but it was always the most crippling to hate himself and it was in the most vile and the drunkest moments of self-inspection that he knew that one day he was going to kill Russell Gaines for killing Jason. And as time went on, the morning light had done less and less to rid him of this revelation.
He drove back into Mississippi, drifting from lane to lane without realizing it but making it home. He went into the house and stumbled and fell in the hallway and then he got up and he found the bedroom door locked. Open this goddamn door. He knocked loudly once and then she opened the door. He grabbed her in the dark and pulled at whatever she had on and then he fell on top of her on the bed and he tried as hard as he could to disgust her.
29
MABEN PUSHED ON THE FRONT DOOR OF THE SHELTER, EXPECTING to find it locked and hoping that the woman didn’t ask for a password as nobody had given her one. But it was open and she walked in tired but satisfied with the fortysomething dollars she had made and more satisfied that Sims had said she could come back and do it again. No one was at the front counter and the light was on in the office but the office door was shut. There was a glass window on the door with a mostly closed blind but between the slivers Maben could see the young black woman from the night before sitting at a desk talking on the telephone. She walked to the back of the building where she found Annalee sitting on her cot with her legs crossed Indian-style. The Little Red Hen was open across her lap and she was doing her best to read it.
“Hey, baby,” Maben said and the child looked up and smiled at her.
Maben sat down next to her and asked her what she had been doing all night but before Annalee could answer Maben saw that the garbage bag was not under her cot where she had left it. She hopped up and looked under the child’s cot and it was not there and it was not under the dresser. A duffel bag was tucked at the foot of the cot and Maben snatched it and shook it at the girl.
“Where’s the bag, Annalee?” Maben asked.
“The woman said that one’s better.”
“Where’s the bag? I don’t care if this one’s better.”
The girl closed the book and walked over to the dresser and she began to open the drawers and show Maben that their clothes were nicely folded and put away. Maben took the child by the shoulders and said who told you to put those in there.
“I didn’t do it,” she said. “That woman did it.”
“What woman?”
“That woman that’s here.”
Maben stood up straight and looked around as if she were dizzy and then she told Annalee to put her shoes on.
“Why?”
“Just do it.”
Maben walked back toward the front of the building to the office. She walked slowly, silently. She bent down when she reached the office door and kept her head below the glass pane. The woman remained at the desk. She remained on the telephone. Maben listened. I don’t know what to do, she said. I found it unpacking her clothes. I told you. Should we call the cops? What do you think? I don’t know. Maben raised her head so that she could see inside and the pistol lay on the desk immediately in front of the woman. Maben sank down after she saw it and she snuck back to the child and told her to get whatever she could carry and let’s go.
“Why?” the child asked again and she started to cry. “I don’t wanna go no more.”
“Hush,” Maben said. “You got to listen to me and hush.”
“I don’t wanna go,” she yelled.
Maben yanked her and said I don’t care what you want. Get what you need to bring and shut the hell up, Annalee. I ain’t playing with you.
The girl quieted but whimpered as she grabbed a small stack of books off the dresser that the woman had given her. Maben opened the drawers and pulled out clothes and stuffed them into the duffel bag but the bag was small and half the clothes stayed. She then turned and knelt to the child.
“Listen to me. Listen good. We’re gonna go up here real quiet and go out real quiet. No talking. Go on out and wait for me on the sidewalk. You hear me?”
Annalee nodded. Looked away from her mother.
Maben grabbed her by the shoulders. “I said listen. This is important. You hear me? Do what I say. You hear me?”
“Yes. I said yes.”
“Come on.”
Maben tucked the duffel bag under her arm and took the child by the hand and they walked toward the front. At the end of the partitions Maben stopped and gave Annalee the shush sign and then she peeked around the corner. The office door still closed and the light still on. The mumble of a voice. Bend down, she told the child. They hunched over beneath the level of the glass and moved quietly to the exit door and Maben held it open just wide enough for Annalee to pass through. Wait out there, she whispered. And take this. She handed the duffel bag to the child and gave her a small push. Then Maben crawled over to the office door. The woman wasn’t talking much now but only saying yes ma’am or okay to the voice on the other end. Said I haven’t yet I wanted to call you first. And Maben knew instructions were being given. Knew there was no way you find a pistol at a women’s shelter and do nothing. Knew that as soon as she hung up the phone she would make another call.
She looked around. Then she crawled behind the counter and looked for something to throw. Looking for something she could throw far. Not a phone book and not a box of pens and not a paperback novel but on the middle shelf was a football and a baseball. She took the baseball and stood and she threw it toward the back of the building. It was a strong throw and it cleared the partitions and hit the wall above the bathroom doors. A solid whack. Maben ducked behind the counter and she heard the woman say hold on and the office door opened.
“Annalee?” she called out.
No answer. Footsteps past the front of the counter and then footsteps walking away and Maben got to her feet and she ran into the office and took the pistol from the desk and then she was out the front door and toward the child who was sitting on top of the duffel bag on the sidewalk. Get up get up get up and she lifted the child and grabbed the bag and then she set the child down and took off running. Come on I told you to come on and the girl ran behind her with the books held against her chest and calling out for her momma to slow down. Maben ran on, looking over her shoulder to make sure that the child was running behind her and when she got to the corner she stopped and waited for the child to catch up. She looked down the block toward the shelter and she thought she saw a figure standing on the sidewalk but she wasn’t sure and she told Annalee to run baby run. She grabbed the child’s hand and they started again and they raced up Main Street and at the end of the street a man came out of the bar and walked to his truck. She tucked the duffel bag under her arm. Squeezed the pistol with one hand and Annalee’s arm with the other. Do exactly what I do, she told her. You hear me? Annalee grunted and Maben pulled her and they slid along the sidewalk. Crouched and creeping closer as the man got in and cranked the truck and they slipped right up to his open window. Maben stuck the pistol to the side of his face and told him to sit still and she told the girl to get in the other side. Hurry goddamn it she told the girl and when Annalee was sitting in the cab Maben hustled around the front of the truck with the pistol on him and she hopped in and slammed the door. Drive right now. I said drive. He didn’t ask where. He only did what she said as the pistol shook nervously at the side of his head and he said he could drive a helluva lot better without that damn thing pointed at him.
She told him to go to the interstate. She kept the pistol down but pointed at him while they passed through the lights of Delaware Avenue. At the interstate he asked her which way and she looked left and then right and she said that way and pointed north. Russell turned north onto I-55 and she stayed turned on him with the child between them. No one spoke as they drove up past Brookhaven and he noticed the way she handled the pistol. Carelessly. A flimsy grip. And when he caught her looking away from him and out the window he reached over and snatched it out of her hand.
“Give that back,” Maben said.
“Sure thing,” he said and he held it in his left hand between his leg and the truck door.
She slumped back in her seat and then she leaned forward and put her head down on her arm on the dashboard.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll take you wherever within reason.”
“Where we going?” the girl asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “Where we going?”
Maben sat up and wiped at her eyes. “I don’t care,” she said.
“What the hell kind of trouble you in?”
She didn’t answer.
“Pretty big stretch from mopping the floor to holding a gun on a stranger in the parking lot. All in the same night.”
She still didn’t talk.
“Where we going, Momma?”
She didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know what to think. There had been years and years of this. Years of not knowing where she was going or what she was doing or the names of the people she was doing it with. Some of those years blacked out and some too fresh. The bruises and hungry days. The waking up naked in musty rooms with no lightbulb and no money and no idea of the name of the town. The man in Slidell with the convertible and the rehab in New Orleans where they strapped her to the bed for two days until the hallucinations were gone and the man in Mobile with the wad of cash and the strategy for beating blackjack. The man in Natchez with the cockfighting pit in the backyard and the good stuff from the guy with the piercings that led to the bad stuff from the guy with the piercings. Always believing the next step would be better. Always winding up in a tighter squeeze. And now the squeeze held two of them. She looked down at the child and she had opened a book across her lap though it was too dark to read.
Russell lit a cigarette and cracked his window. He offered Maben one and she took it.
“You want one?” he asked the girl but she turned up her nose. Then he asked her what her name was but the woman told her not to answer.
“Don’t nobody need names,” she said.
“No names. No direction,” he said.
“We got a direction. We’re going north.”
“No destination then.”
“You can let us out whenever you want,” she said. “But you got to give me that pistol back. I didn’t mean nothing. Just needed a ride right then. I can pay you for it.”
“How much?”
“Not much.”
“What you running from?”
“Yeah,” said Annalee. “I liked it there.”
Maben took the book from Annalee’s lap and closed it. The girl moaned and reached for it but Maben told her to wait a minute.
“You got to tell me something first,” she said.
“What?” the girl answered.
“When that woman put our clothes away what’d she say when she found the gun?”
“I don’t know.”
“You got to think. Were you sitting there?”
“Yes’m.”
“Then think. What’d she say?”
The child put her finger to her chin and looked out the windshield. She bent her mouth.
“She said what the hell.”
“And what else?”
“Nothing. She asked where we got it and I said it was my momma’s. But I ain’t never seen it before.”
“You told her that?”
“I said I ain’t never seen it before.”
“Then what?”
“Then she took it and went on. She looked funny.”
Russell listened. It wasn’t difficult to figure out that something had come upon them that they hadn’t been expecting. The woman had the look of someone who might have been used to it but there was concern in her voice. He had heard the sound from men who knew what tomorrow would bring and knew there was nothing they could do about it.
They came upon a rest area and Russell pulled off without asking and Maben didn’t oppose. White streetlights lit the parking lot. A brick building of restrooms to the right. A pavilion and picnic tables to the left. A woman walked her dog in the grass around the pavilion and a group of motorcycles were parked in front of the restrooms and men and women in leather stood around the bikes smoking. Vending machines lined against the wall of the bathroom building and above the vending machines a round clock that read 10:05.
Russell parked close to the bikes. Killed the engine. Touched the cut on his forehead.
“I’m hungry,” the child said.
Maben opened her door and got out and the child climbed down after her. Maben gave her two dollars and told her to go get something. Then she sat back down in the truck with her leg swinging out.
Russell picked up the pistol and turned it in his hands. “This is a nice piece,” he said.
“I didn’t mean to have a kid,” she said. She stared at Annalee who stood in front of the vending machines trying to decide.
He started to tell her that she shouldn’t say stuff like that but she rested her head back against the glass of the back window and continued.
“Can’t feed her. Can’t give her a place to sleep. I don’t even know when it happened. Somebody just popped it in me. I was sitting around one day feeling like shit and I started throwing up and kept on until I figured it out. Then I wanted to do something but it’d get night and I couldn’t bring myself to it the next day. Even sat in the clinic a couple of times. Sat there looking at some stupid magazine. Sweating. I’d sit there ’til they called me and I’d leave out. Then it’d get night again and I finally figured I’d keep it and see what happened.”
“Night always gets me,” he said. “Makes me do stuff I shouldn’t.”
“Something about it,” she agree
d.
“You in some trouble?”
She nodded and watched the child.
“I’m gonna guess it’s big trouble,” he said.
“Is there some other kind?” she said and she turned and looked at him. Her eyes seemed to be shrinking back into her head. She knew that telephone conversations were being had about her right now.
“This isn’t your gun,” he said.
“No.”
There was a crack of lightning and then thunder and the men and women around the bikes put out their cigarettes and put on their helmets and jackets. The bikes fired up and roared and snapped and each woman found her man and sat behind him. Maben looked at Annalee and the child held a drink can against one ear and a candy bar against the other. A man riding alone pulled ahead and the others followed him, the roar growing with the acceleration and then dying away as the bikes moved down the ramp and away into the night. When the bikes were gone the girl walked back toward the truck but Maben called out for her to go and sit down at a picnic table. For a minute. I got to talk to the man.
“What you supposed to do when you can’t let nobody find you?” she asked and she tossed her cigarette onto the asphalt.
“That’s a good one,” he said.
“And what you supposed to do when you got somebody you love and you know if they find you they’re gonna take that somebody away with them?”
Russell shifted in his seat. Let out a breath. “That’s a better one,” he said.
Annalee sat on top of a wooden picnic table with her legs swinging over the edge. She ate the candy bar carefully as if she were wearing her best dress.
“She’d be better off anyhow.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Yeah. I know it. Didn’t know it ’til now. But I know it. Two hours ago I had some work and we had a safe place to sleep. Even if it was only gonna be a few days. Didn’t know it then. If I knew it I didn’t say it to myself. But I know it now.”
Russell lit another cigarette off the one that was dying. A car pulled into the rest area and a small boy got out of the backseat and raced toward the restrooms and his father got out and ran after him, telling him to hold it hold it.
Desperation Road Page 14