33
HE WOKE WITH THE FIRST LIGHT OF DAY, MOSQUITO-BITTEN AND barely able to stand straight from the few hours he had slept in the ridged bed of the truck. He walked around the campground, stretching his back and reaching toward the sky and twisting and trying to get himself right. The Volkswagen was gone and the old couple sat in the same chairs around the same circle of stones that they had been sitting around in the late hours of the night as if they had never moved. Russell waved to them and the elderly man raised his tin coffee cup in response. Maben and Annalee slept and he didn’t wake them. He lit a cigarette and walked around. The air seemed smoky in the earliest light and he came upon a springfed creek no wider than a doorway and he knelt and stuck his hand into the cold, trickling water. The honeysuckle climbed into a thatch of pines and he smelled its sweetness and it caused him to lick his lips with a morning thirst. He cupped his hands and took a drink.
So. What if it is her? So what?
That’s what he had been thinking all night. So what? I don’t owe her anything. I don’t owe Larry and Walt anything. I fucked up and I paid for it and that’s that. The only person I still owe is the dead boy and I’ll pay for that soon enough. It’ll come for me like it comes for everybody. And when it comes I’ll stand there and then I’ll be judged again and I’ll pay again if I still owe something. But I don’t owe nobody down here. Nobody.
It was easy to think of the brothers in that way. Not so much Maben and the child. There was something about her. The way she looked, like she’d been picked up and put down time and time again and like she held on to the girl and shot a man because she couldn’t take it anymore. At least that’s what she had said and he found himself believing the story. Hoped it was true so that he wouldn’t end up the dupe. But she had been shaky with the pistol, so shaky that he had been able to reach over and pick it from her hand like it was a straw. Didn’t hold it like someone who wanted to shoot. He thought he understood the way she felt and no I don’t owe her anything but goddamn it. She was right. They wouldn’t believe her. They would take the child. She would end up in the same type of place that he had just left. She was right.
He had told her he could help her but he was wrong. He didn’t see anything ahead that would be in her favor if that pistol was found. He didn’t see anything ahead that would be in her favor if someone didn’t hold out a hand to her and the child. He remembered himself in the first days and weeks of being put away, alone and scared and isolated and confused and waiting to be jumped on. He figured the look on his face was much like the look on her face now. By the time he stood up from the side of the creek and wiped his hands on his pants, he had resigned himself to the fact that he was going to play the fool and then he walked back toward the truck where he saw their heads in the window.
He tapped on the glass and opened the door. Each of them was sweaty on the side of the face that had been down. Annalee rubbed her eyes and said she had to go to the bathroom and she and Maben got out of the truck and walked into the woods. Russell sat down behind the wheel. The gas tank was close to full and would probably last until they could get back to McComb. All he had to do was get them rolling and if they wanted out they’d have to jump. He looked over at the man and woman and they had a fire going and the woman held a skillet. Russell walked over to them and said good morning and the old man tipped back the hat on his head. His neck was bumpy from a bad shave and he wore a long-sleeved shirt buttoned at the collar. The woman wore a sweatshirt and a hairnet held down her gray hair. She wore a work glove on the hand that held the skillet and she was cooking eggs over the fire.
“Smells good,” Russell said.
“I ain’t got no money,” the old man said.
“We ain’t got nothing,” the old woman said.
“I don’t want nothing you got.”
“My wife can shoot.”
“Shoot what?”
“Anything. She don’t miss.”
“If I wanted to do something to you don’t you think I would’ve come over here in the middle of the night?”
“I was watching,” the old woman said.
“So was I,” he said.
“All I want is some food. For that little girl over there. She’s gonna need something to eat before we start riding.”
“We ain’t got enough,” the woman snapped. A loaf of bread and a tub of butter sat on an aluminum table next to their truck. Russell looked over at it. A pan of some kind of meat sat next to it and a band of flies buzzed around the pan. Paper towels and paper plates and a quart of beer.
“How about a few slices of that bread?” Russell asked.
“We ain’t got enough,” she said again.
“You must be a kidnapper,” the old man said. “That’s what I told my wife last night. That must be a kidnapper. A woman and a girl and no food and no tent and no nothing. Kidnapping.”
“I’m not a kidnapper. I’m a man who wants a few pieces of buttered bread.”
“We ain’t got enough.”
Russell took a five-dollar bill out of his back pocket and reached over to the table and set it down. Then he opened the loaf of bread and took out five pieces and he buttered them with a plastic knife while the woman stood at the fire yelling and pointing at Russell and then yelling and pointing at the old man to get up and do something but the old man didn’t even turn around in his chair. Russell tore off a paper towel and wrapped the bread and then he told them that the meat smelled like shit and he walked back to the truck. Maben and Annalee were sitting in the cab again. Russell handed the buttered bread to Maben and she said what is that and he said breakfast. He cranked the truck and as they left the campground, the old woman shook a spatula and yelled at him in a gravelly, fading voice and Russell thought she might have a heart attack any second. The old man raised his tin coffee cup again and she smacked him in the back of the head.
At the interstate Russell turned south and Maben told him to let them out at the next town.
“I will,” Russell said. “At the next town when I stop.”
“We need to get on.”
“I know you do.”
The child ate the bread and wiped the butter from the corners of her mouth on her shirt. She offered a slice to her mother and Maben took it. She offered a slice to Russell and he told her to eat it. At the next town Russell ignored the exit. And he did the same at the next and the next and Maben said I mean it. Stop.
“You might as well sit tight,” he said.
“I can’t.”
“Yes you can.”
“No I can’t.”
“You’re gonna have to unless you want to drop and roll.”
Maben folded her arms like an unhappy child. Annalee asked if she could turn on the radio and Russell said yes. In an hour they were in Hattiesburg and he turned west on Highway 98 and in another hour they crossed the Pike County line.
“I can’t believe this shit,” Maben said.
Russell didn’t answer. He turned off the highway ten miles before town and took the back way to his dad’s place. Tractors moved across fields leaving dusty trails and cows stood in ponds. A graveyard at the top of a hill amid mosscovered trees. A dead armadillo in the middle of the road. He came up the highway and turned right and in a quarter of a mile he turned into the driveway and the front end spun in the loose gravel. Maben didn’t talk. Russell parked next to the house and the child pointed at the barn and said I thought barns were supposed to be red.
“Sit here a second,” Russell said, getting out and taking the keys with him. He walked around the house and found his father and Consuela sitting outside on the back porch eating tomato and bacon sandwiches.
“You want one?” Mitchell asked.
“I gotta talk to you.”
Mitchell put his sandwich down on the plate as if that would help him hear better. Then Russell said, “I need the barn. My room. Consuela’s room.”
“For you?”
“Not for me and I only need to hear yes or no. T
hat’s all. I can explain it later and if you don’t like it I can do something else but right now I need yes or no.”
Mitchell looked at Consuela. It wasn’t her room anymore.
“Boyd Wilson find you? He was out here looking this morning. You into something I need to know about?”
“I’ll tell you one day but not today. Yes or no,” Russell said. “That’s all I want to hear.”
“Whatever you got to do,” Mitchell said.
Russell nodded and he walked back to the truck and he waved for them to get out.
“Bring your bag,” he said to Maben and she draped the duffel bag over her shoulder. She helped Annalee down from the truck and she held the child’s hand as they walked toward Russell and he told them to follow him. They walked past the house and out across the backyard and to the barn. At the back of the barn was a door and then a flight of steps and at the top of the steps was one large room. In the room there was a double bed and a love seat and other odd bits of furniture. There was a refrigerator and a small cabinet and countertop and a sink. The floors were wide wooden planks and the ceiling was exposed and a ceiling fan hung in the middle of the room from a two-by-four that had been nailed across the beams. The room was hot and steamy and Russell began to sweat just standing there. He walked across the room and turned on the air conditioner that sat in the window and then he pulled the string on the ceiling fan. He pointed at a door in the corner and said that’s the bathroom. There was nothing in the room that belonged to Consuela and he wondered if she had ever been out there at all.
“It’s hot,” Annalee said.
“I’ll have to get you some towels and sheets,” Russell said. “It’ll cool off in a little while.”
“I ain’t staying here,” Maben said.
“Why not?”
She didn’t have an answer.
“I’ll be right back,” he said and he went down the stairs and to the house and Consuela met him halfway across the yard with a stack of towels and sheets and a bar of soap and shampoo. His dad remained in his chair on the porch and he watched Russell without expression. Russell returned to the room and the child was standing with her back against the air conditioner and it blew her hair across her face. Maben was sitting on the edge of the bed taking the clothes from the duffel bag and then she took out the pistol and she placed it on the mattress. Russell set the things on the bed next to her and he asked them if they wanted something to eat.
“I do,” the child said.
“I guess I do, too,” Maben said.
Russell returned to the house and he asked his father what they had to eat. Mitchell asked Consuela to make a plate of sandwiches and she went inside to the kitchen. Russell sat down on the porch steps and wiped the sweat from his forehead. He waited for what was coming but he didn’t have to wait long as his father got up and walked into the yard and stood in front of him and said I suppose you’re planning to tell me just what in God’s name is going on.
34
TO TELL YOU THE GOD’S HONEST TRUTH, I DON’T KNOW WHAT THE hell is going on,” Russell said. He rubbed the back of his neck. Looked out toward the barn and the pond. Shook his head. “Ever since I got off that bus feels like there’s something in the air around here. Something hanging around. Can’t see it. But I can feel it.”
Russell reached down and picked the tip of a grass blade and he tossed it aside. “You remember when I used to bring home a dog every now and then?”
“Them old strays. I remember. Your momma hated that.”
“Why’d she hate it?”
“She hated it cause they always run off after some days and you’d get all pissed off about it.”
“That’s my point. The one I’m about to make. Those two out there are like that. Like those strays. Don’t matter what hell they’ve been through. Don’t matter how hungry. Give them food and a soft bed and they still got to run off sooner or later. That’s what she’s gonna do so just let them stay out there and I guarantee you she’ll be gone one morning dragging that girl with her. And that’s why I’m not gonna tell you nothing more other than I found them and they need somewhere and you know why they can’t stay at the house with me.”
Mitchell stepped back onto the porch and sat down again. Consuela came out of the kitchen with a tray of ham and cheese sandwiches and crackers and Cokes. She walked out to the barn and disappeared up the stairs. In a minute she came out and returned to the house and passed the men as if they weren’t there. Russell thought of telling his father who the woman was but decided to keep it to himself. Then he stood up and went across the yard and up the stairs and he found them sitting on the bed together. Shoes off, mouths chewing.
“When you get done with that, I want you to wrap that thing up and come with me. Annalee can go in the house and watch TV.”
Maben nodded. Swallowed hard from a full mouth. Russell looked around the room. He and his dad had put it together when he turned seventeen against his mother’s wishes. His own place out of the house but within reach. He thought of the girls he had snuck across the backyard in the middle of the night. He thought of shooting at deer across the pasture from the window. He thought of sitting and drinking with his buddies until they passed out. He thought of how he had joked with Sarah that this would be where they would live once they were married and no it wasn’t Sarah and no he wasn’t married but he had accidentally been right as here he was with a woman and a child to try to take care of. At least for now. Annalee coughed and the sound shook him free and he again told Maben to come down when she was done. With that, he said and pointed. She stopped chewing and said I know it’s a gun and she knows it’s a gun so why don’t you call it a gun.
35
WHEN THE SUNDAY NEWSPAPER CAME OUT WITH THE DETAILS IT was all anyone could talk about. Deputy murdered sometime in the middle of Thursday night. With his own pistol, which was not at the scene. No witnesses. No trace of evidence. No idea what he was doing where they found him. Nothing certain but that he was dead. They talked about it over coffee and they talked about it in the grocery store aisles and they talked about it in the waiting room in the hospital and they talked about it while they pumped gasoline. During the morning church services the Baptists and the Methodists and the Catholics and the Episcopalians and everyone in between had moments of silence. Said prayers for the fallen deputy. Prayed for his soul. Prayed for his family. Prayed for justice and for mercy on the wandering evil that was capable of such godless violence. Women in dresses cried that there were such monsters alive in their community and men in suits shook their heads that there seemed to be no clue as to what had actually happened. When the amens were said across the town and the congregations poured out and onto the front steps some people said that they were amazed that something like this could happen around here. And some people said they weren’t.
36
ANNALEE FOLLOWED CONSUELA INTO THE HOUSE AND RUSSELL AND Maben got in the truck with Maben carrying the pistol wrapped in a pair of socks. Mitchell stood in the yard and watched them drive away but he didn’t wave back when Russell waved to him.
“He don’t want us out here either,” Maben said when they hit the highway.
“He don’t care.”
“Looks like he does.”
“He doesn’t.”
She held the pistol between her legs and she kept her legs closed. Russell drove through town and passed over the interstate and in a few miles he left the highway and turned onto a road that was something between asphalt and gravel. The windows were down and Maben’s hair was wild in the wind and Russell reached behind the seat and grabbed a Peterbilt cap and handed it to her. She put it on and pushed her hair behind her ears. Away from town and away from other cars she took the pistol from underneath her legs and set it on the seat between them. At a stop sign he looked over the weeds growing headhigh along the fence line on each side of the road and turned left. Maben rode along without talking, tapping her fingers on her leg to the song in her head. There were m
ore twists and turns and then the road wasn’t much more than a sidewalk and the trees thickened and reached over the road to one another and it seemed as if they had driven into a tunnel. The air was cooler beneath the trees and flowery vines of something purple grew thick in the shade and ran along with the road. The road turned left into a wide and looping curve and then it straightened and went uphill and Russell slowed down as he got closer to the top of the hill. Maben sat up and leaned toward the dashboard. When the truck reached the top Russell stopped. At the bottom of the hill sat Walker’s Bridge.
The truck idled roughly. An afternoon breeze gave a rustle through the trees. She stared. Russell stared. Waited to see if she would say something.
She pushed back the bill of the cap. Her lips parted.
But she didn’t say anything.
He eased on. Rolled down the hill. Stopped in the middle of the bridge. Metal rails had replaced the rotted wooden rails. Initials and hearts and a smiley face and a pentagram had been spray-painted on the rails.
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