Boyd plopped down in a chair at the end of the sofa. Didn’t say anything. Looked at the television. Looked at Russell. Russell didn’t look at him. Sipped on his beer and waited for what was next.
“Rode out to your daddy’s a little bit ago. That woman’s quite the barracuda.”
“I don’t know nothing about that.”
“Well. She is.”
“Good for Mitchell.”
“Yep.”
“That it?”
“No. It ain’t. I talked to Caroline,” Boyd said. He leaned forward and dangled his hands between his knees.
Russell nodded. Remained fixed on the blank television.
“Said you was over there, all right.”
Russell picked up the remote from the sofa cushion and set it on his knee.
“Said it was Thursday night. Didn’t say nothing about the night you told me. Said you left out in the middle of the night when you were there.”
“How else do you think I could ride up on your little accident?”
Russell set his beer down on the floor between his feet. Turned and stared at Boyd, who stared back. He seemed to have become more serious. Less old buddy and more lawman.
“You’re not saying the right things.”
“You come over here to arrest me, Boyd? That it?”
“I came over here to tell you what she said.”
“So. You told me.”
“And now I’m gonna ask you again. Where were you Saturday night?”
“Don’t matter what I tell you. You got a big idea.”
Boyd shook his head. “I got a wife and a family and a house. And when I get back to the office I’m gonna tell the sheriff what Caroline told me. What you told me. How it don’t add up. That’s what I do and that’s what I’ve been doing and that’s how it’s gonna keep on being. Call it a big idea. Call it whatever. I’m trying to let you talk to me without talking to nobody else but you ain’t making it easy.”
“I was here. Asleep.”
“No. We already been there.”
“I told you I was around. That means I finally had to lay down somewhere. Just because you didn’t see me in my bed don’t mean I wasn’t in it.”
“Next morning you wasn’t here.”
“Read the paper, Boyd. Paper said you don’t have a gun. If you don’t have a gun I might as well have been sitting on the hood of the cruiser when you got there.”
“There’s ways of getting there.”
“Then take me down. Arrest me,” Russell said and he held out his wrists.
“I don’t know why you got to make this hard.”
“I’m not making it hard. I’m home and I didn’t do nothing and you and your buddies can move in here for all I care. Might as well blame it on Babe fucking Ruth if you’re gonna blame it on me cause neither one of us did it.”
Boyd sat back and slapped his hands on his thighs. “You remember that girl’s name who was out there the night of the wreck?”
“What?”
“The girl who was out there with Larry’s brother that night.”
“No, Boyd. I don’t. I didn’t get any love letters from her.”
Boyd propped his hands on his hips. He wanted to walk over to Russell and hit him on the side of the head but instead he said don’t lie to me no more on his way out the door.
Russell waited until Boyd disappeared and then he got in the truck and drove downtown to the station. He bought a bus ticket that would take her as far north as Memphis if she wanted. No ticket for the child.
He left the station and he walked a few blocks to the café and sat down at the counter with his back to the tables. He stuck the bus ticket in his back pocket and reached over and took an ashtray from a couple of seats away and he lit a cigarette. A woman with glasses on the end of her nose came out of the kitchen and over to him and asked what he wanted. Without looking at the menu he asked for whatever the special was and some coffee. He smoked and drank his coffee and listened to the clatter of the kitchen coming from behind the swinging door. Merle Haggard played on a clock radio sitting next to the cash register. The café door opened, followed by the voices of children and a father calling for them to slow down before they knocked something over. It was the voices of boys and then the shrill of a girl and then a threat from the father and Russell turned and looked over his shoulder and saw the twins climbing into a booth and their smaller sister following them. Then Sarah sat down facing them in the booth and her husband took a high chair from a stack of high chairs against the wall and he put the little girl in it as she protested that she was big enough to sit with the boys. Russell tried not to look too long but he couldn’t help it and before he could turn his head around Sarah looked over and noticed him there. Her eyes went from him down to the table and then over to the boys and her husband sat down on the seat beside her and again told the twins to settle down.
Russell dabbed out his cigarette and asked for a topper on his coffee.
There were few others in the café, so the noise of the family was easily the most notable sound and Russell sat with his shoulders hunched. Sipping and listening to them. Paying special attention when Sarah spoke. The tone she used with the boys more direct than the tone she used with the small girl but everything she said with the special sound of the voice of a mother. Her husband did most of the correcting. Sit up straight. Stop touching him when he says stop it. Don’t put your finger in there. Sarah asked the boys what they wanted to eat and if they would share and are you sure you like that and she talked to the little girl about the colors she saw on the wall or what was the shape of the bottom of the saltshaker.
It seemed as though his food would never come and when it finally did he ate with urgency and the mashed potatoes and butter beans and cornbread and chicken strips disappeared so quickly that the waitress asked him if he had dumped his plate in the garbage when she wasn’t looking.
As he finished the family’s food arrived and that lowered the energy level of the table as the boys paused to eat and the little girl paused to eat and their dad paused to eat but Sarah only paused and moved the food around on her plate with the tip of her fork. Her husband stopped chewing and asked her if she felt all right and she nodded. Said I’m fine. Russell turned on his bar stool and faced them, holding his coffee cup with both hands.
Decent looking guy, he thought. About what I expected.
She said she had to go to the bathroom and she nudged him with her elbow and he scooted off the seat and let her out. She moved between the tables, turning toward Russell one instant and in the next turning away and then she moved into the small hallway at the back of the café where the restrooms were located. Russell looked back at her husband and he had paid no attention to the notice Russell was giving his wife as one of the boys was trying to stick a french fry into the other boy’s ear.
So Russell set down his coffee cup and walked to the bathroom. The door to the men’s room was on the left and the door to the women’s room was on the right and he turned to make sure he was out of view of her husband and everyone else and he quickly opened the door to the women’s room and stepped inside and locked it behind him. She was leaning over the sink washing her face and she looked up and saw him in the mirror and she was surprised and not surprised. She took a paper towel from the dispenser and wiped her hands and face and then she turned and faced him. Barely a step separating them in the small space. And then they began to whisper.
“You’re in the wrong one,” she said.
“Forgot how to read.”
“Didn’t forget how to chase.”
“Don’t know if I’m chasing or running away.”
This seemed to hurt her and she looked down.
“It was a joke,” he said.
“I know.”
“I have to tell you something.”
She looked back up at him. Inched closer. He put his hand on her arm and held it lightly as if it were something fragile.
“If something else
happens,” he said whispering lower. He squeezed her arm then. Looked at the top of her head as he kept on. “If something else happens I want you to know that I didn’t do anything wrong. A bunch of people might think it after where I’ve been. But just know.”
She touched his chin and brought his eyes down to hers. “What are you talking about?”
“That’s all.”
“Stay here.”
“What?”
“Stay here. Can we stay here with the door locked? Let everybody go home and turn out the lights and lock the doors? Stay here with me.”
“I’m not the one who can’t, Sarah.”
“Stay. We’ll stay here,” she said and she put her arms around his waist and her mouth was close to his but she paused there. He felt her breath on his lips as she whispered. Stay. Stay.
“Tomorrow is here,” he said.
“I know. It came so fast. I didn’t know it would come so fast.”
“It came slow,” he said. “It came so slow. Slower than anything.”
“I need it back, Russell.” She leaned her head against him. “I need it back.”
“Need what back?” he asked and he wanted her to say it. Wanted her to explain and wanted her to say I need you back and I need us back and the years back and there has to be a way there has to be a way. I need it all back. All of it. He waited for her to say it. Had always waited for her to say it and he hoped it would come out the way he had imagined it so many times as he stood in the yard or lay on the thin and musty mattress or as he forced down food he couldn’t stand to force down any longer. He had imagined it so many times even after she stopped coming and even after he had gotten the last letter and even though he had known that she led another life. He waited for her to say it and he felt the impulse of hope.
“Need what back?” he asked again. His hand now underneath her hair and across her neck.
She leaned her head off him and looked up. “The ring. Can I have it back? I just want it back.”
After she said it he began to hear everything again. Everything that had been blocked out by their whispers and her body close to him and the swarm of illusions that had joined them in the small space. He heard the voices of the husband and the twins and the sliding of chairs and the clang of silverware being dropped and the opening and closing of the men’s room door on the other side of the hallway. He moved his hand from her neck and touched his fingers to the outside of the front pocket of his jeans. Felt it there. Remembered what he had planned for it and weighed those plans against the voice that had asked for it. Against the voice and the one with the voice and where they had been together and how she smelled against him and what was waiting for her on the other side of the door. He weighed what he had planned for the ring against the moment and then he weighed it against more than the moment. Against tomorrow and the next day and the day after and there was Maben with her shallow cheeks and her thin hands and there was Annalee with her pink forehead and eyes of wonder and there they both were, drifting along on the edge of nothingness. He felt it in his pocket. Realized the possibilities of the ring. Realized that she had not said what he had imagined her saying and realized that she never would. Even if she wanted to.
“I don’t have it anymore,” he said. And he eased back away from her and her arms fell at her side.
He could see in her eyes that she didn’t believe him but she didn’t ask again and she didn’t accuse. There was a shriek from the smallest child and Sarah snapped to as if she had been released from a spell. She turned from Russell and took another paper towel and dabbed at her eyes. Dabbed at her nose. She breathed fragmented breaths and then she turned to him again. Managed to pull it together. And then she touched her hand to his chest and she unlocked the door and stepped out.
He locked the door again. Leaned on the sink with his back to the mirror. He hoped that no one would knock on the door and they didn’t as he listened and waited until the family was gone. And when they were gone he came out of the bathroom and paid his check and he walked out of the café.
He walked on down the street to a pawn shop and he showed them the ring and he got about a third of what he remembered paying for it and then he walked a couple of blocks to the Armadillo and he sat down and asked for a beer. When he was done he drove back to his house and he put the money from the ring between two plates in the kitchen cabinet and then he drove out to his dad’s place. Maben remained sleeping and the rest of them remained fishing though there was not much light left. He sat down on the back porch and lit a cigarette and looked across the place. Wishing for rain. Wishing for something. Trying to believe there’d be an end.
43
HE STOOD IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD AT THE PRECISE SPOT where only four days ago they had found Clint lying facedown in front of his cruiser in a maroon pool of his own blood. Boyd’s hands rested on his gun belt as he looked down at the spot and then he looked up and down the road. Across the fields. Into the trees.
Nothing. Which is exactly what he had gotten from the woman at the shelter about Maben. A skinny white girl with a little kid. A girl. But hell we get those in and out of here regularly.
His stomach growled and he patted his belly and shook his head at the girth that kept adding up while he kept swearing to take it off and then he looked at his badge. He unpinned the silver star and he held it out in front of him and examined it as if he were thinking about buying it. The sun was hidden behind a cloud and there was no shine on the badge and he held it to his mouth and breathed hot air onto it and rubbed it on his shirt. Then he pinned it back above his name tag on the left side of his chest and he let out a sigh.
It was a small department and Boyd had heard things. Couldn’t help but hear things. Couldn’t much tell what was fact and what was fiction and he figured most of it fell somewhere in between but he had heard a lot more about the new guy than he had wanted to hear. Heard he likes the liberty of the badge if you know what I mean. Heard he likes to cross down into Louisiana from time to time to some old house back in some old hills and give his money to halfdressed, halfdrunk women who give him what he’s paid for. Heard he likes the late shifts because you can get away with more if you know what I mean. He’d heard it. Nothing that put an X on him for anything in particular. But enough to make Boyd stand there now and ask the question. What the hell was he doing out here in the middle of the night?
And then he applied the same question to Russell.
Boyd knelt down and picked up a pebble from the patchy pavement and he tossed it into the brush off the road. He wondered if their guy had asked for it. Wondered if this was the first or tenth or fiftieth time he’d ended up in this spot. This spot away from everything and everyone and nothing but the sky to see what you’re doing.
Don’t matter what he was doing, he thought. He’s dead and he’s one of us. It was hard to get past that one. Hard for Boyd not to imagine himself making the news in the same way someday. Deputy shot and killed. For apparently no good reason. Funeral to be held on Friday. Survived by a wife and two sons.
He walked back to his cruiser and thought about his boys. Thought about Lacey. He got in and called the office. Said he was done for the day. He then took a phone from his shirt pocket and he called Lacey and asked her if she was hungry and when she said yes he told her he’d swing by and pick her up. We’re going out.
They lived a couple of streets from the high school and he drove by the football field. His boys were there doing the same summer workouts he had once dreaded. Boyd parked but kept it running and he looked for his boys in the wave of shirtless bodies going up and down and up and down the aluminum bleachers, the clanging of a hundred feet echoing like steel drums. The oldest one had to be there and the youngest one didn’t. But he wouldn’t be outdone and no coach was going to tell him not to work out if he wanted. Boyd picked them out. Their bodies and heads slick with sweat. All of them slick with sweat. A different set of bodies from the year before and the year before but yet somehow the same. So
mehow the same boys running the same bleachers and sweating the same sweat and breathing the same heavy air. It was easy for Boyd to imagine himself running with them. Up and down and up and down until you didn’t think you had anything left and then you went up and down again. Feeling the hurt and the exuberance and the strength and the weakness all in the same moment wound together like the spirals of a rope. He sat and watched and it could have been twenty years ago. It could have been twenty years from now. He rubbed at the muscles in his thighs. Could almost feel the burning. Wanted to get out and drop his gun belt and rip off his shirt and head across the field and go up and down and up and down with them. Wanted to but couldn’t.
Damn it, Russell, he thought.
He drove on from the football field and he stopped in front of his house and Lacey was outside watering the flowers in her window boxes with the garden hose. Jesus H. if shit don’t change, he thought as he looked at her. She turned and smiled and waved and it filled him in such a way that for a moment he felt born again and it made it more difficult to stop thinking about how it would read in the newspaper. Deputy shot and killed. For apparently no good reason. Survived by a wife and two sons.
44
THE WAY LARRY REMEMBERED IT THEY PLAYED BALL JUST ABOUT every night of the week, so he figured he had a decent chance of seeing him. He hung around at a job site until around five and then he drove over to Buddy’s and ate a shrimp poboy and had a few beers. He watched a couple of innings of the ball game and at the end of the fifth inning he left Buddy’s and stopped by the liquor store and bought bourbon and then he stopped at a gas station and filled a cup with Coke and ice. He drove down to Kentwood with the stiff drink between his legs and the night falling earlier than usual because of a settling of clouds. He listened to Mötley Crüe as he drove. Turned up loud. The drink and the music getting him going in the direction he liked to go.
Desperation Road Page 20