by Jack Ketchum
She was on her way home when the Taurus started shuddering and then died, cresting a hill on the dark slice of two-lane country road that was Route 605 northeast of Meville. She managed to pull over to the shoulder and tried to start it up again but the ignition only screeched at her like an angry cat. She stepped out onto black macadam and a warm still moonlit night. Below and far away across the valley she could see the lights from a single farmhouse. She walked to the front of the car and then the back and looked at emptiness in both directions.
She’d been meaning to get a new cell phone for nearly a week.
This could take a while, she thought.
It did.
Nearly twenty minutes passed with her standing there smoking Winston after Winston and listening to the frogs and crickets and she was seriously considering the trek down to the farmhouse before she at last saw a pair of headlights moving north in her direction. She was relieved but apprehensive too and wondered why in hell she hadn’t had the sense to take the tire iron out of the trunk when she had a chance to. It would be nice to have it on the car seat where she could reach it through the window in case of trouble.
Especially when the moonlight revealed the outline of a pickup with a wooden frame.
By then it was too damn late.
She thought of the old joke, What’s the difference between a good ol’ boy and a redneck? A good ol’ boy throws his empty beer bottles in the back of the pickup—a redneck heaves ’em out the window.
She was hoping for the former.
The headlights washed over her. A pickup wasn’t what she had in mind. Not at all. She waved anyhow.
And the truck rolled right on by.
“Jesus!” she said.
She couldn’t believe it. How the hell dare he?
She whirled and ran to the front of the Taurus. “You asshole!” she yelled.
The truck slowed.
Stopped.
Sat there idling thirty feet away.
Oh, shit, she thought. Now you did it. He fucking heard you.
You better get that goddamn tire iron after all, she thought, and started digging in her purse, watching the compartment of the cab, a man’s silhouette inside, waiting for the driver’s door to open and the light to come on, which would mean he was coming out to god knows what purpose and praying that he’d just start moving again, get moving and go the hell away and then she had the keys out and was headed toward the trunk fumbling for the right one. As the truck moved slowly into reverse and started rolling back, taillights stalking her like glowing eyes.
And then suddenly she was stabbed into bright light again and a horn blared long and loud behind her.
She turned to see a station wagon in the process of slowly passing, pulling up alongside the Taurus and stopping, and she glanced at the pickup and saw it start to roll again—this time forward, this time in the right direction. Inside the wagon the driver leaned over and pushed open the passenger-side door and she saw that the driver was a woman smiling at her and she damn near leapt inside.
“God! Thanks!”
“No problem. Car died on you, huh?”
She shut the door. “That truck. He was coming after me.”
“He was? The sonovabitch. You want to go after him?”
“God no.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“Okay. We’ll just drive.”
Janet looked at her. A woman of about her own age. Tight jeans and a tight pale yellow short-sleeve blouse, braless, her long hair pulled back in a lush dark pony-tail. Rings on every finger of her right hand and hooped costume-jewelry bracelets, at least half a dozen, dangling from each wrist. A good strong profile, a little too much mascara maybe but still, she thought, quite attractive in her way. And then the woman turned to her and smiled again as they pulled away, and she saw the slightly crooked left incisor.
“Marion? Marion Lane?”
It was the woman’s turn to stare now.
“I’ll be good-goddamned! It’s Janet, right? Janet . . . wait, don’t tell me. Don’t tell me. I can’t believe this . . . hold on a minute . . . Harris! Janet Harris!”
“Close. Morris.” She smiled.
“Morris! You lived . . . ?”
“Plainfield Street”
“That’s right, Plainfield Street! Up where the money was. Hell, where the money still is. God! I mean, look at you! Jesus, what’s it been?”
“Since high school? A long time. A very long time.”
“No, really . . . I guess it’s got to be, what . . .?”
“Seventeen years.”
She laughed. “Oh my god. Seventeen years. Seventeen goddamn years! You know how long that is? Hell, we were only what? eighteen when we graduated? I mean, that’s half a lifetime ago!” She laughed again. “Damn! I think I need a drink,” she said. “Maybe a few drinks.”
She gave Janet’s leg beneath the skirt a light slap. “Hey, it’s good to see you!”
“Good to see you too. You don’t know how good. That guy was starting to scare me.”
“Forget the bastard. Someday he’ll pick up the wrong lady, know what I mean? Where we headed?”
“You know Ellsworth Road? Just outside of town? I’m living over there now.”
“Sure I do. No problem.”
She watched the road ahead wash away beneath their wheels. The pause between them was only momentary but still a little awkward. She really hadn’t known Marion well in high school. They’d traveled in wholly different circles. Janet was definitely college-bound. Marion hadn’t been. She wondered whether or not she’d ultimately made it there anyway but decided that at least for now it would be wrong to ask.
“Listen. There really is half a bottle in there.” She pointed to the glove compartment. “That jerk give you the willies? Open it up and have a hit or two. Good for the nerves.”
“No, thanks.”
“Go on.”
“Honestly. I’m fine.”
“You sure?”
“Yes, really.”
“Well, dig it out for me then, okay?” She laughed again. “Seventeen years! Jesus!”
She really didn’t want to. Not only was it against the law but it was dangerous as hell. She’d seen the results of drinking and driving plenty of times. Enough to know what a fundamentally stupid thing it was to do. But Marion was saving her ass here, for all she knew in more ways than one. And she hadn’t smelled any liquor on her breath thus far so this one might well be her first. It was still illegal but she guessed it was safe enough so long as she kept it down to one or two. She pressed the button to the glove compartment and watched the door fall open and the light come on inside.
She saw the flat pint bottle of Kentucky Bourbon.
And behind it the .22 revolver.
When Ray Short leaned back in his chair and neatly lifted the wallet from the baggy jeans of the passing Saturday Night Cowboy, Emil Rothert was almost finished with his fifth beer and just drunk enough not to be seriously pissed at him for waving it around the table like some kind of goddamn trophy, smiling, looking for Emil’s approval, and Billy’s too, he guessed. Even though the barman could have seen him or any one of the five guys sitting at the bar or the four in back by the pool tables. Not seriously pissed but still pissed.
He had to give him his due, though. Ray was good with his hands.
“Put that goddamn thing away,” he said.
“Yeah. Jeez, Ray, you want to get us comprehended?”
Rothert sighed and shook his head. Sometimes Billy amused him and sometimes not. Sometimes he thought Billy Ripper was a spaceman only just learning how to appear human.
Ray’s smile faded. “You guys are no damn fun at all.”
“We’re drunk, Ray. What do you want from us?”
He finished his beer.
“I’ll have another, though. You’re buying.”
Rothert watched him walk to the bar. Sitting to his left was a guy in a rumpled gray suit drinking wh
at looked like whiskey neat. The guy was facing straight ahead into the rows of bottles but he still hoped Ray had sense enough not to pay out of the stolen wallet.
“Three more,” he heard him say to the bartender, and then the bartender said something back that must have been three more what? because Ray said beers and then the bartender must have asked him what kind of beers? because Ray turned around with a look of annoyed confusion just as the girl walked in. He saw her register on Ray’s face—one helluva looker—and he turned and she was a looker all right and too young he thought to be walking into a place like this alone, probably underage in fact, long blond hair and cutoffs and tank top straining across her tits. Yet here she was, alone, moving past his table toward the back like she owned the joint.
Willie Nelson stopped singing “Blue Hawaii” and the place went silent so that he could hear the bartender and Ray.
“. . . we got Bud, we got Schlitz, we got Miller, we got Miller Lite. We got Heineken, Heineken lite, we got Coors. We got Tuborg, Becks and I can piss in this bottle for you if any of this don’t interest you.”
“Huh?” Ray still had his eye on the girl.
“Forget it.”
The bartender started to move away and Ray finally got it together.
“Buds. Make it Buds.”
“Three Buds.”
And then it was Elvis singing “Blue Hawaii” good god as the bartender opened the beers and put them on the bar and sure enough, Ray pulled out the stolen wallet and started counting out the bills. I got me a reckless fool on one side of me, Emil thought, and a complete fool on the other.
Ray handed them their beers and sat.
“See that?”
“I’m still seeing it,” Emil said.
“I think you should go over,” said Billy. “Buy her a drink. Talk to her. I think she looks like someone who’d appreciate to talk to you.”
“I’m thinking about it.” He drank from the bottle.
Billy smiled. It wasn’t a nice thing to see.
“I’ve always liked a girl like that. Y’know? Somebody who can exist themselves to a function where they can manipulate.”
Emil and Ray just looked at him.
Emil thought that sometimes this boy just plain scared him.
The pint bottle rested between Marion’s legs and she’d only had two sips, but Janet still wished she’d put the thing away. She was driving slowly though, and carefully. She had no real reason to complain.
“Your parents still live in town?” Marion asked her.
“No. Florida. My dad retired, sold the house. My mother says she’s a golf widow now. Yours?”
“Passed away.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Thanks. It’s okay. They were never much with us anyhow. So who do you still see? Anybody?”
“Nobody. I used to call Lydia Hill once in a while.”
“Lydia Hill?”
‘Tall? Blond? Always wore long-sleeved white cotton blouses and minis? You know, the kind with the button-on suspenders.”
Marion laughed. “Sure, I remember them. Ran along the sides of your boobs and made ’em look bigger. And I remember Lydia Hill too, I think. Wasn’t she a cheerleader or something? Prom committee or something?”
“Lydia? No, she was more debating team. We both were.”
She drank from the bottle. “You were popular though. You weren’t just some damn egghead.”
Janet shrugged and smiled. “I guess.”
“Sure you were. You dated that guy Wilder for a while, and Kenny Whatsisname, big Irish preppie. What was his name?”
“Coughlin.”
“Coughlin. Kenny Coughlin. Right. Real sonovabitch that guy was to me. You know that?”
“No. I didn’t even know you’d gone out with him.”
Kenny and Marion? Before or after us? she wondered. Kenny was about as straight arrow as they come.
“See, you and me didn’t hang out with the same crowd. Guys I hung with, they expected you to put out, and maybe at first you didn’t and maybe later you did. And that was seriously fucked because as soon as you did their friends would know, so from then on you pretty much always did, and by the time a guy like Kenny comes along your cunt’s Grand Central Station and everybody knows it. So what’s Kenny do? He comes on like he’s going to save me. You believe that?”
Marion drank again. Not good, she thought. It was starting to worry her. That and the fact that she was accelerating now, just a bit over the speed limit. But the woman would be in trouble if some cop pulled her over.
Then she thought, what cop? We’re out here in the middle of nowhere.
“At least with one of those other guys it’s right out front, know what I mean? At least he doesn’t do the movie-and-dinner routine so he can excuse his own sorry butt for wanting to screw you in the backseat later on. And then never calling you again. At least with those other guys, they call again. Kenny Coughlin. What a bastard.”
She’s using the present tense, Janet thought. Like she’s still there. Back in high school. She knew that some of them got stuck in time—she’d seen it before. The same old town, the same jobs, the same old friends growing older. Some simply got trapped there and it looked as though probably Marion was one of them. She was starting to get very unhappy about the whole conversation and it didn’t help at all when Marion pounded at the steering wheel.
“Who the fuck is Kenny Coughlin not to call me?”
She watched her take a deep breath and hold it and expel it slowly, and then she seemed to calm again.
“I mean, you dated that guy?”
Janet nodded.
“How’d he treat you?”
“Okay I guess. It didn’t last that long, not really.”
In her look Janet seemed to read a barely concealed hostility. And not toward Kenny, but inexplicably, toward her. As though this whole business with Kenny Coughlin were somehow Janet’s fault. And she held that look too long—considering she was the one doing the driving. And then she reached suddenly for the glove compartment and Janet couldn’t help it, she jumped.
She glanced down and saw the gun in there and then she saw her slide the bottle in and slam it shut.
Her heart was pounding. She wondered if Marion had noticed the overreaction.
For a moment I thought . . . my god . . .
But no, Marion had done the right thing—not the crazy thing. She’d put away the bottle. And maybe it was the bottle that had been talking all along. Maybe there was nothing to worry about here at all.
“Not too long, huh?” she said. “Well, good. Good for you. Myself, I could have killed the little prick.”
She laughed. “Don’t mind me,” she said. “I was always too serious. Y’know?”
Emil watched the girl take her beer back into the poolroom, stand and watch one of the games. From what he could see the game wasn’t much. The players were just a couple of skinny kids in their twenties who thought that if you didn’t hit the fucker hard you didn’t hit good. He got more interested when he saw her reach into the pocket of her cutoffs and pull out a quarter and set it down by the left corner pocket.
The girl was a player. Or wanted to be.
He was surprised the bartender hadn’t carded her. She was just a kid.
“How’s your game these days, Bill?” he said.
“Oh, imperative, Emil. Imperative.”
“Fine.”
“So I guess you got married, huh?”
“No,” Janet said.
They were about twenty minutes from home now. Still in farmland, all gentle rolling hills and dark two-lane blacktop. They’d be coming up at a Kaltzas’s service station soon though, in about ten minutes or so. She wondered if she should tell Marion to stop there instead of taking her home. It was probably a good idea. If Dean was on, he’d give her a lift the rest of the way, drop her off and then go deal with her car. Dean had a massive crush on her that she didn’t exactly discourage. It helped if your local service-station
guy happened to like you.
Besides, there was the matter of that gun.
“You got a boyfriend?” Marion said.
“Yes.”
“Fiancé, right?”
“That’s right.”
“Been together a while?”
“Almost eight years, believe it or not.”
“What is he? Doctor? Lawyer? You got a congressman tucked away somewhere?”
“Lawyer, actually.”
Interesting, she thought She hasn’t asked me what / do for a living.
“Lawyer. Actually. “ She nodded. “Well, I guess you really made something of yourself then, didn’t you.”
And the hostility in that little zinger was loud and clear. Jesus! It was definitely going to be the service station now, even forgetting about the gun. She didn’t want this woman in her life any longer than she needed her to be.
“So how come you don’t marry the guy? What is he? Lousy in bed?”
“Marion . . . listen . . .”
“What? I can’t ask a question, now?”
“I’m not up to having a personal discussion right now, that’s all. My car’s dead, I’m exhausted, I’ve got work to do. You know what I mean?”
She laughed. “You’re not up to it. Having a hard night, are we?”
“Now that you mention it, yes. I didn’t need a broken-down car right now, that’s for sure, and . . .”
“And you don’t need me asking personal, friendly questions of an old girlfriend, right? Well, pardon me!”
“God, Marion. I only said . . . look, there’s a gas station coming up on your right. Why don’t you just . . .”
“You want out? Is that it? You fucking want out? You want out of the car right now?”
Where the hell is all this coming from? she thought What in god’s name did I do?
“Okay, yes. I think I do.”
“You think you do?”
“I think that’d be best.”
“Right here.”
“You’re angry and . . . yes. I think that’d be best.”
“It would, huh?” She looked at her, lips pressed tight together. “Yeah, maybe it would at that.”
Her foot went to the brake and the car slowed and Janet could finally breathe again. Then she hit the accelerator. Tires screeched beneath her and jolted her back in her seat Marion was grinning.