The Glory Bus

by Richard Laymon

  Couldn’t bear to say good-bye.

  So he’d emptied the deep freeze. Plonked her inside.

  Norman shivered despite the heat.

  The road ahead was clear of traffic and sunlit.

  Now all three of the amigos sat in the single row of seats in the front of the truck, Duke nonchalantly resting his elbow on the door frame with the window rolled down inside the shell. He chewed gum, wore shades, looked cool.

  Boots sat beside him, legs apart, dirty white footwear gleaming under the dash. She hummed. There was no tune. Could have been a crappy old refrigerator-motor sound for all Norman knew, or cared.

  Hmmm . . . hmmm . . . hmmm . . .

  Duke grinned. ‘Hey, that’s one of my favorite songs.’

  Favorite song? Christ. That noise is as flat and as tuneless as you can get!

  Duke started to sing the Elvis classic ‘Are You Lonesome Tonight?’

  Boots could change the words to sing ‘Are You LOATHSOME Tonight?’

  Yeah, that’s the woman’s own personal anthem for sure.

  Duke sang most of the song. He was pretty good. Maybe he could have made it as a bar singer with his cool bad-boy looks. He’d never be an Elvis impersonator, though. Norman was sure that Duke would figure that as being too cheesy, too uncool. Duke probably worshipped Elvis as a god. Though he probably wouldn’t admit that, either.

  ‘What we get?’ The breeze zithered Duke’s hair.

  Boots paused her hum. ‘Back at the old boy’s house?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Got some homemade jerky, cookies, soda—’

  ‘No, Bootsy-babe. The gold that folds.’

  ‘Uh . . . oh . . . six hundred . . . and eight dollars.’

  ‘Not bad.’

  Yeah, so we robbed the house, too.

  Add it to the charge sheet, why don’t you?

  In the light of me killing two cops that’s kid stuff. Bring it on, Joe Blow . . .

  Norman drove one-handed. His window was down. He could smell the grass in the fields as well as the asphalt of one hot road that rolled due south. Here the countryside was flatter. There were cows. Farms. Small, drowsy towns with diners, barbers’ shops, convenience stores.

  I’m turning into Duke, he thought. Here I am, driving with my elbow out the window, wearing shades, chewing gum. For the first time in my life a girl might look at me and think, ‘Hey, that guy’s cool.’

  Norman smiled.

  Yeah, what I’ve done in the last twenty-four hours has buried NORMAL NORMAN. Meet the new guy: Norm, prince of cool.

  ‘I got something else, too,’ Boots said. She was rooting something out of a brown paper grocery bag. ‘Normy, you think you could get these off for me?’

  Norman glanced down.

  The Prince of Cool saw a pale hand with slender fingers.

  Boots had short stubby fingers. Like thick pegs. Chewed nails.

  This hand had a speckled back. Thin fingers. Gold wedding band. A diamond ring on the middle finger.

  A fingertip touched Norman’s bare forearm.

  ‘Holy shit!’

  He braked so hard that the pickup screamed through three-sixty. A smell of burning rubber polluted an otherwise finely scented day.

  ‘Shit, shit, shit!’ He threw open the truck door. Jumped out.

  Danced.

  Shouted, ‘Shit, shit, shit!’ While wiping at that cold sensation on his arm where the finger had made contact.

  ‘I didn’t mean to startle you, Normy,’ Boots said, looking out through the door. Her eyes were all innocent-looking.

  ‘You broke off the old woman’s hand? You broke it off? You brought it with you!’ He was shouting the words. ‘I don’t believe you’d do such a—’

  He held his breath. Jesus Christ. That’s just it. I DO believe she’d do such a thing. Boots is capable of anything. She’d choke the Pope if she took a fancy to his robes.

  ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph.’ He had to remove his sunglasses as a fear-sweat ran down his face. ‘You could have waited until I’d stopped the car.’

  Duke laughed. ‘Just a little Boots joke. Ain’t that right, Boots?’

  ‘Yeah, I thought you’d see the funny side.’ She held up the hand so that she could see how the diamonds caught the light. ‘I like these sparklers, though.’

  ‘You keep it, Boots,’ Duke told her. ‘You’re worth a tub full of diamonds. Isn’t that right, Norman?’

  Norman managed to grunt, ‘You betcha.’

  ‘Here’s your present, Boots.’

  ‘Oh! Thank you, Duke.’

  Norman watched the pair in the truck. She kissed Duke’s cheek. She was overjoyed. Tearful.

  ‘No one’s never given me a diamond ring before. I’m just so happy to hang out with you two. You’re the best.’

  ‘Don’t mention it, girl.’ Duke broke off the frozen finger. Threw the snapped digit out of the cab. Norman danced to avoid the white sticklike thing as it bounced on the road near his feet.

  ‘There you go, beautiful.’ The ring wouldn’t even make it over the first joint of Boots’s stubby middle finger. With some spit and shoving Duke got it onto her pinkie.

  Boots gushed with a mixture of tears and smiles. ‘Oh, thank you, guys. I’m never gonna take it off. Never ever.’

  ‘You deserve it. Ain’t that so, Norm?’

  ‘You sure do.’ Norman backed away as Duke broke off the third finger.

  Know what’s coming next.

  Duke slid off the wedding band. Then threw the severed finger out of the truck where it bounced onto the road-tar near Norman’s feet. In the hot sun the fluid content of the digit began to melt. Liquid blood began to ooze from veins that trailed like soggy noodles from the raw end of the finger. Duke hurled the rest of the hand. It sailed close by Norman’s ear.

  Thumped down into the long grass at the side of the road.

  ‘Something for the coyotes to snack on,’ Duke said. Then, ‘Hey, Norman, you gonna start driving?’

  An eighteen-wheeler swept by. The driver laid into the horn as their pickup still blocked half the road sideways on.

  Boots complained, ‘You don’t want to see us get killed out here, do you, Norman, honey?’

  Hold that beautiful thought.

  As Norman returned to the pickup a police cruiser glided to a halt beside it.

  The cop rolled down his window. ‘You guys in trouble?’

  Norman thought he’d crap his pants. But to his surprise his reply was cool as milk. ‘We just spun out there, officer.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘My fault,’ Norman said. ‘A bee flew into the cab. Tried to sting me.’

  ‘You don’t say.’

  ‘Guess I just panicked.’

  ‘Sorry, officer,’ Duke called from the pickup. ‘Our friend’s a bit of a wuss.’

  ‘Looks like that to me, too,’ the officer observed. ‘Y’know bees don’t bother you unless you bother them.’

  ‘I’ll remember that, officer,’ Norman said. ‘Sorry to trouble you.’

  ‘No trouble for me, son. You best be on your way before another big rig comes this way, otherwise your vehicle’s gonna end up tinfoil.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Norman smiled. Waved. Climbed into the driver’s seat.

  Just hope that the cop doesn’t glance down on the road and see those deep-frozen fingers melting there on the road-tar.

  Norman keyed the ignition. The engine clunked, rolled, whirred.

  Didn’t start.

  ‘Sure you’re not having any trouble?’ the cop called from his car.

  ‘No, sir. We’re fine.’

  Fine, fine, fine. Oh God, please don’t let him recognize us. We’ve ditched the red Jeep but surely every cop in the state has been radioed our descriptions.

  ‘Come on, truck,’ Norman muttered. ‘Start. In the name of God, please start.’

  He turned the key again.

  Click. Whirr. No go.

  ‘Take it easy,’ Duke s
aid coolly. ‘Just try a little more gas.’

  Norman tried again. The engine fired.

  He waved at the cop to say everything was okay.

  Yeah, as if . . .

  The cop nodded, his face impassive.

  Oh God, maybe he’s remembering the APB. Two guys and a girl in white boots. Cop-killers.

  The cop pulled a wad of gum from his mouth, rolled it between thumb and forefinger. Then flicked it through his car’s open window.

  Norman watched the gob of gray drop beside the old woman’s wedding finger sans its gold band.

  Oh, Christ on an ass.

  The cop stared impassively at Norman in the truck.

  Norman’s artificial smile took on huge proportions.

  Stop grinning, you ape, he told himself. That kind of grimace screams guilt.

  Any second the cop’s gonna pull his revolver. Maybe loose off a couple of rounds into my chest for good measure.

  Then the cop gave a nod, eased the cruiser past the pickup. Norman pressed the gas pedal. Not hard, so he pulled away in a smooth, law-abiding way.

  No wheel spin.

  No fugitive dash.

  ‘That’s it,’ Duke purred. ‘Drive away nice and slow. Don’t give Mister Police Officer any cause for suspicion.’

  ‘Norman’s turning into one cool customer.’ Boots rubbed his inner thigh. ‘I like Normy more with every hour that passes. I’m gonna treat him to somethin’ nice tonight.’

  Norman gently accelerated along the road. He glanced back in the mirror.

  The police cruiser was pulling away too, in the opposite direction. Norman expected at any second that its lights would start whirling and the cop would pull a tight U in the road and chase them.

  But the cop had other things on his mind.

  He eased his big black-and-white along the highway, receding all the time.

  Norman let out a sigh and a half. ‘Phew-ee. I did okay, didn’t I?’

  ‘You did just fine, Norman, old bud. Just fine.’

  As the sun started to set Norman was figuring that they’d done six hundred miles in the pickup.

  Still aiming the Ford’s nose due south.

  Duke said, ‘We need to eat. We need to sleep.’

  ‘I’m thirsty, too,’ said a drowsy Boots.

  ‘We’ve plenty of cash so we’ll stop at the next motel.’

  ‘Ooh-ee,’ Boots sighed. ‘My skin’s itchy. Could use a shower, then a big, big soft bed.’

  ‘You’ve got it, babe.’

  Boots ran her fingers up Norman’s thigh. ‘Could you use a nice clean motel room?’

  In a laid-back way, Norman shrugged. ‘Yeah, cool.’

  Inside, his heart lurched.

  Oh, my God. A motel room. Here we go all over again.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Pamela’s life had been exploded.

  Demolished.

  Torn asunder, as the old phrase goes, she thought. Marriage was the foundation I’d built my life on. Rodney was a murderer who killed my husband and made me a widow. Now I’ve learned that Jim was still married when he went through the wedding ceremony with me. He’s a bigamist.

  A dead bigamist.

  Rodney killed him. Burned him.

  But who’s the bigger rat? Rodney or Jim?

  Pamela had walked out into the desert to be alone. She’d climbed into the rocky hills that seemed to glow like fire beneath the afternoon sun. Now she stood on the edge of a rock that ended in a fifty-foot drop. Below her and quarter of a mile away was Pits. She could see the diner, the old house, the line of trailers, vehicles. Even Sharpe as he crossed the road to climb into his bus full of mannequins.

  Sharpe saves, she told herself. Saves people who are so down on their luck that even the bottom of a well would be a long way up for them. And then some . . .

  I could end it here. Just requires one step forward. Then a fall of a few seconds through hot dry air to even hotter rocks at the bottom of this cliff.

  No more hurt. No more misery.

  Just the perfect forgetfulness of oblivion.

  Takes one step, Pamela . . . that’s all . . .

  Pamela’s head spun. Heat rising up from the white rock had the intensity of a furnace. In the desert stood saguaro cacti. Like a whole army of people stood watching her. Waiting for her to fall.

  Waiting for the crunch of her flesh and bone on rocks. The hiss of her blood leaking onto stones that were thirsty after a hundred years of drought. Above. Clear blue sky. Vultures whirled.

  Yup. They knew what she was gonna do.

  Seen suicide before. Knew the signs.

  Knew the sweet taste of self-killed flesh.

  Pamela’s knees turned watery. She leaned forward. When she looked down now it was all the waaaayyy down . . .

  ‘There’s a better way than that, miss.’

  ‘Sharpe?’

  Pamela squinted into the brilliant sunlight. There was Sharpe in silhouette. Easy to make out his flat-top haircut, the glint of his shades reflecting two perfect images of her face with the cluster of buildings that was Pits behind her.

  ‘This is only a fifty-foot drop,’ he said. ‘If you go across yonder you can drop into the mine pits themselves. Don’t know how deep they are.’

  ‘How’d you know I was gonna—’

  ‘Kill yourself? Know the signs. When someone has that defeated look in their eyes that’s so deeply rooted it goes all the way through into their soul. That’s when I know.’

  ‘You know what my husband did?’

  ‘Bigamy? Sure.’

  ‘I could face being a widow. Not this.’

  ‘Ashamed?’

  ‘Wouldn’t you be?’

  ‘It’s your fault?’

  ‘I was gullible. I should have—’

  ‘Gullible don’t make you guilty. Anyways, I don’t see how you could have known. Married men don’t come with the word tattooed on their chests.’

  Pamela looked up at Sharpe’s face but could see no expression on it because the dazzling presence of the sun was directly behind him. ‘This is just so not fair.’

  ‘Not fair isn’t a self-execution offence, is it?’

  A tear squeezed onto her cheek where the fierce sun stole the moisture in a second. ‘I just want to stop thinking about what Jim did . . . hell, what Rodney did, too. It hurts, Sharpe.’

  ‘Sure it does. And if you want to stop the hurt there’s the pit.’

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘Back that way. It’s a long drop but it’ll do the job.’

  ‘Show me, will you?’

  ‘So long that you might fall all the way to China.’

  Despite her misery, Pamela laughed. ‘China. Yeah, China’s just about far enough away.’ A smile had found its way to her face. She raised her head to show Sharpe that maybe she wasn’t as deeply depressed as she’d first seemed.

  There was no Sharpe.

  She looked down at Pits again. Sharpe was stowing cartons into the hold of the bus.

  Hey, Sharpe . . . how come you got back down there so quick?

  That’s impossible.

  Can’t be two places at once. Not even Sharpe.

  But then he found me just as Rodney was going to shoot me. Right time, right place.

  ‘Gee, Sharpe, you’ve gotta be an angel in disguise.’

  Just for a moment, the shadows falling on Sharpe from the bus’s luggage-compartment doors fell across his shoulders. Dizzy, her vision blurred, Pamela saw the shadows as wings unfurling from Sharpe’s back. He straightened after stowing a box.

  Even from this distance he seemed to be looking at her.

  Looking directly at her through those shades of his.

  Impossible.

  Can’t see me way up here. Not properly, anyway.

  But Sharpe is special. ‘Sharpe, you are an angel,’ she whispered.

  Light-headed from the heat Pamela tottered forward. Below, the rocks at the bottom of the cliff seemed to leap at her. Quickly, sh
e stumbled back to safer ground.

  She shouted: ‘NO!’

  I’m not going to kill myself. Rodney was a murdering rat. Jim was a lying rat.

  Both rats are now dead.

  And there’s no reason why you, Pamela, need join them.

  ‘I’m going to live,’ she told herself, her head held high. ‘I’m going to make my home in Pits. And I’m not going to let Rodney or Jim, and what they did to me, ruin my life.’ She called out to the sky. ‘This is Pamela Wright. This is my declaration of independence. From this moment on I am a free woman. And I am going to live my life exactly how I please. And do exactly what I want! Whenever I want!’

  The echoes died away. At that moment Sharpe looked in her direction again. She fancied that she saw him nod in agreement with her statement, even though he couldn’t possibly have heard from this distance.

  Angel Sharpe.

  Then he climbed on the bus, started the motor, and drove away along the desert road.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  ‘Motel Ha-Ha.’ Boots read the sign as Norman stopped the truck fifty yards from the motel’s reception office.

  From the truck’s cab Norman scanned the place. It consisted of individual pine cabins standing on a gravel track that ran out into a field before looping back to the parking lot. Beyond the motel the landscape consisted of cornfields.

  Not much else.

  Seems like a quiet place. No cops . . .

  Duke said, ‘You planning on us walking everywhere, Norm?’

  ‘Uh?’

  Boots slid her fingers inside the top of her tank top to pluck it away from her breasts. ‘It’s too warm to walk.’

  The duo sat beside him. Their faces were flushed with heat. That and too many miles on the road.

  Norman was doubtful. ‘Yeah, but . . .’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘The cops are going to be looking for two guys and a girl with short bl—’ He was going to say bleached hair but you didn’t mess with Boots; he neatly morphed the words into ‘Blonde hair.’

  Duke shrugged. ‘We’re not in a red Jeep Cherokee. All the clerk will see are three ordinary folk in a truck.’

  ‘Yeah, going to visit our white-haired grandmother.’ Boots snickered.

  ‘Drive us in, Norm.’ Duke slid him a tough-guy look. ‘Don’t make me ask twice.’