She crossed the Utah state line and immediately saw a sign that said Salt Lake City was fifty-eight miles ahead. She looked for a dark blue Jeep wagon, spotted a vehicle that fit the description, but when she got up beside it she saw a Utah tag and a white-haired man at the wheel. The interstate took her into Salt Lake City, where she made a gas stop, then curved along the gray shore of the Great Salt Lake, straightened out, and shot her toward the sandy desert wastes. As Laura ate her lunch of two Snickers bars and a Coke, the clouds opened and the sun glared through. Patches of blue appeared in the sky, and little whirlwinds kicked up puffs of dust from the winter desert.
She passed Wendover, Utah, at two o’clock, and a big green sign with a roulette wheel on it welcomed her to Nevada. Desert land, jagged peaks, and scrub brush bordered I-80 all the way to the horizon. The carcasses of road kill were being plucked at by vultures with wingspans like Stealth bombers. Laura passed signs advertising “giant flea” markets, chicken ranches, Harrah’s Auto Museum in Reno, and a rodeo in Winnemucca. Several times she looked to her right, expecting to see Didi sitting on the seat beside her. If Didi was there, she was a quiet ghost. The tires hummed and the engine racketed, dark blooms of burning oil drifting out behind. Laura kept watching for Mary’s Jeep wagon; she saw a number of them, but none were the right color. On the long straight highway, cars were passing her doing eighty and ninety miles an hour. She got into the windbreak of a tractor-trailer truck and let the speed wind up to seventy-five. Nevada became a progression of signs, the names of desert towns blowing past: Oasis…Wells…Metropolis. . .Deeth, the second e of which someone had altered with spray paint to spell Death.
She was truly alone now, journeying into frightful country.
At the end of the road was Freestone, fifty miles north of San Francisco. What was she going to do when she found Jack Gardiner? What would she do if none of those three men was Jack Gardiner? What kind of man would he be now? Would he shun Mary Terror or embrace her? Surely he’d read about her in the papers or seen the story on TV. What if—and this thought sickened her—he was still a killer at heart, and he took David as an offering and he and Mary fled together? What if…what if…what if. Those questions were unanswerable. All she knew for sure was that this road led to Freestone, and Mary was on it.
The Cutlass shuddered.
She smelled something burning. She looked at the dashboard and saw the temperature gauge’s needle almost off the dial. Oh Jesus! she thought as panic chewed at her. “Don’t quit on me!” she shouted, looking for an exit. There wasn’t one in sight, and Deeth was two miles behind. The Cutlass’s engine was rumbling like a concrete mixer. “Don’t quit on me!” she repeated, her foot pressed down on the gas pedal. And then the hood burst upward, steam spewed out with a train-whistle shriek, and she knew the radiator was finished. The car, like her own body, had been pushed past its threshold of pain. The only difference was, she was stronger. “Keep going! Keep going!” she shouted, tears of frustration in her eyes. The Cutlass had given up. Its speed was falling, whips of steam flailing back from the overflowing radiator. The truck in front of her kept going; the world was short of shining knights. “Oh Christ!” Laura yelled. “Damn it to hell! Damn it!” But cursing would produce no cure. She guided the wounded car over off the interstate, and it rolled to a stop in gravel next to a vulture-picked jackrabbit.
Laura sat there as the radiator bubbled and moaned. She could feel Mary moving farther away from her with every passing second. She balled up her fist and slammed the wheel, and then she got out to survey the carnage. Whoever said the desert was hot had never visited it in February, because the chill pierced her bones. But the radiator was a little spout of hell, rusty water flooding out and the engine ticking like a time bomb. Laura looked right and left, saw desolation on both sides. A car flashed past, then another a few seconds later. She needed help, and fast. A third car was coming, and Laura lifted her right arm to flag it down. The car left grit stinging her face. Then the interstate was empty, just her, the busted Cutlass, and a jackrabbit chewed down to the rib cage and ears.
Deeth was too far to walk. What the next exit was, and where a service station might be, she had no idea. Mary was on her way to Freestone, and Laura wasn’t going to wait here all day for a Samaritan. She walked out into the interstate and faced east.
Maybe a minute passed. And then sunlight glinted off glass and metal. The car—a station wagon, it looked to be—was coming fast. She put her hand up under her double sweaters and touched the automatic’s grip. If the car didn’t start to slow down in five seconds, she was going to pull the gun and do a Dirty Harry. “Stop,” she whispered, the wind raw in her face. “Stop. Stop.” Her hand tightened on the grip. “Stop, damn it!”
The station wagon began to slow down. There was a man at the wheel, a woman on the passenger side. They both looked less than eager to be helpful, and Laura saw a child’s face peering up over the front seat. The man was driving as if he still hadn’t decided whether to lend a hand or not, and the woman was jabbering at him. Probably think I look like a hard case, Laura thought. It occurred to her that they would be correct.
The man made his decision. He pulled the station wagon over behind the Cutlass and rolled down his window.
Their names were Joe and Cathy Sheffield, from Orem, Utah, on their way to visit her parents in Sacramento with their six-year-old son Gary. All this Laura learned on the way to the next exit, which was a place called Halleck four miles up the highway. She told them her name was Bedelia Morse, and she was trying to get to San Francisco to find an old friend. It seemed right. Gary asked why her hand was all bandaged up and why there was a boo-boo on the side of her face. She said she’d had a bad fall at home. She didn’t answer when he asked where her home was. Then, after another minute or two, Gary asked her with all innocence if she ever took a bath, and Cathy shushed him and laughed nervously but Laura said it was okay, she’d been on the road a long time.
Joe took the Halleck exit. It wasn’t much of a town, just a few cinderblock buildings, some weatherbeaten houses, a diner made from an old train car, and a stucco post office with an American flag snapping in the wind. But one of the cinderblock buildings bore a crudely painted sign that identified it as Marco’s Garage, with a row of gas pumps out front and a couple of cars sitting around that looked as if they’d been stripped by pack rats. Behind the garage was a dump of old car hulks and a mound of bald tires. There was a bright orange towtruck, though, and Joe Sheffield pulled his station wagon up beside it.
A man emerged from inside one of the two garage bays. He was short and stocky as a fireplug, and he wore grease-stained overalls and a T-shirt, his muscular arms covered with tattoos from wrists to shoulders. His hands were black with grime. He was also slick bald, and had on yellow-tinted goggles.
“Well!” Joe said cheerfully. “Here’s somebody!”
Laura had a moment of knowing what she should do. She should pull her gun, order the Sheffields out of the station wagon, and leave them there while she sped on after Mary. Marco’s Garage was an armpit, and getting her car fixed here was going to be a trial by frustration. She should pull the gun and take the station wagon, and she should do it right now.
But the moment passed. They were good people. There was no need to mark their lives with the barrel of a gun even though she never would dream of using it as anything but a bluff. Some hard case, she thought.
“Thanks for the lift,” she told them, and got out.
The station wagon pulled away. Gary waved at her through the rear window. And then Laura turned to face the bald-headed grease monkey who stood about three inches shorter than her and stared up at her through his yellow goggles like a bullfrog.
“You fix cars?” she asked stupidly.
“Naw.” He laughed like a snort. “I eat ’em!”
“My car’s broken down a couple of miles from Deeth. Can you tow it here?”
“How come you didn’t go to Deeth, then?”
> “I was heading west. I came here. Can you tow it?” She realized the tattoos on the man’s arms were interlocked figures of naked women.
“Busy right now. Got a car in both bays and two waitin’.”
“Okay. When can you tow it?”
“An hour, give or take.”
Laura shook her head. “No. I can’t wait that long.”
“Sorry, but that’s the breaks. See, I’m all alone here. I’m Marco, like the sign says.”
“I want you to go get my car right now.”
He frowned, deep lines furrowing across his broad forehead. “Got wax in your ears, babe? I said I—”
Laura had the gun in her hand. She placed it against his bald skull. “What did you say?”
Marco swallowed, his Adam’s apple bulging. “I…said…I’m ready when you are, babe.”
“Don’t call me babe.”
“Okay,” he said. “Whatever you say, chief.”
On the subject of baths, Marco had a lot to learn. Laura knew she didn’t smell like roses, but Marco exuded an odor of stale sweat and dirty underwear that made one wish for a whiff of Limburger cheese. At the Cutlass, Marco peered into the radiator and whistled. “Hey, chief! You ever heard of puttin’ coolant in this thing? You got enough rust in here to sink a battleship!”
“Can you fix it?”
“You can shoot it and put it out of its misery.” He looked at the gun Laura held by her side. “Why don’t you put that away now, Annie Oakley? Have I got a target on my ass?”
“I have to get back on the road. Can you fix it or not?” The towtruck was starting to look attractive, but trying to steer that damned thing with one hand and an elbow would be beastly.
“You want honest or bullshit?” he asked her. “Bullshit says yeah, sure, no sweat. Honest says you’ll need a new radiator, bottom line. Got some rotten hoses in there and belts that are about to go. Oil lines look like a rat’s been chewin’ on ’em. You still with me?”
“Yes.”
“Major labor,” he went on, and he scratched his pate with black fingers. “Have to find a radiator that’ll fit this clunker. Probably have to drive to the parts shop in Elko to get one. We’re talkin’ two big bills, and I’m not gonna be able to even get started good before closin’ time.”
“I can spend four hundred dollars,” Laura said. In her pocket was five hundred and thirty-four dollars, what remained of the cash from her engagement diamond. “Can I buy a used car around here anywhere?”
“Yeah, I can find you somethin’.” He cocked his head at her, his hands on his bulbous hips. “It’ll have an engine, but it might not have a floorboard in it. Four bills ain’t gonna buy you much, unless…” He grinned, showing a silver tooth. “You got somethin’ to trade?”
She pretended not to have heard that, because he was real close to becoming a soprano. She needed his hands, not his dubious equipment. “How about your car, then?”
“Sorry, chief. I’m a Harley man.”
“I’ll pay you four hundred and fifty dollars to fix my car,” she said. “Except I want you to keep working on it until it’s finished.”
The lines furrowed deep again. “What’s the rush? You kill somebody?”
“No. I’m in a hurry to get where I’m going.”
He prodded at the right front tire with a boot that had been scrubbed with steel wool. “Let’s see your money,” he said.
Laura returned the pistol to her waistband, reached into her pocket, and showed him the cash. “Can you do it in three hours?”
Marco paused, thinking about it. He looked up at the sun in the cloud-dappled sky, back to the radiator, and sucked air across his lower lip. “I can put a radiator in and do a patch job. Got a retarded kid who helps me sometimes, if he ain’t readin’ his Batman funnies. Have to close down the pumps and shut up shop except for the one job. Elko’s about twenty miles there and back. Four hours, minimum.”
It was approaching three o’clock. That would get her out of there by seven. San Francisco was still over five hundred miles away, and Freestone another fifty miles north, according to the maps. If she drove all night she could make Freestone before dawn. But when would Mary get there? Sometime after midnight if she kept going straight through. Laura felt tears pressing to burst free. God had turned a blind eye. Mary was going to get to Freestone at least four hours before she would. “That’s the best I can do, chief,” Marco said. “Honest.” Laura drew a deep breath. They were wasting time talking. “Get it done,” she said.
7
Little Black Snakes
“HOW MANY NIGHTS?” THE desk clerk asked, glasses perched on the end of his nose.
“Just one,” she said.
He gave her a piece of paper on which to fill out her name and address. She put down Mrs. Jack Morrison, 1972 Linden Avenue, Richmond, Virginia. Across the top of the paper was Lux-More Motel, Santa Rosa, California.
“Sweet little baby, yes she is!” The clerk reached over the registration desk to tickle Drummer under the chin. Drummer didn’t like it; he was tired and hungry, and he squirmed restlessly in Mary’s arms.
“My son,” Mary said. She drew away, and the clerk offered a chilly smile and got her room key. “I’ll need a wake-up call,” she decided. “Five o’clock.”
“Five o’clock. Wake-up call for Room Twenty-six. Got it, Mrs.—” He checked the paper. “Mrs. Morrison.” He pushed his glasses off his nose. “Ah…cash in advance, please.”
Mary paid him the thirty dollars. She left the motel office, limping into the cool, damp air of northern California. It was just after two-thirty in the morning. Mist drifted around the halogen lights on I-101, which cut through Santa Rosa and headed north toward the redwood ranges. A fifth of a mile from the Lux-More, County Highway 116 cut across the verdant, rolling hills toward the Pacific Ocean, and eleven miles away down that road was the town of Freestone.
She got into the Cherokee, drove it along the motel lot to Room 26, and parked it in the designated space. She was too weary to care if the night clerk noticed that a woman who said she was from Virginia had an Iowa tag. The revolver in the bag over her shoulder, she unlocked the door of Room 26 and took Drummer in, then closed the door and bolted it.
She was trembling.
She laid Drummer down on the single bed. The curtains were decorated with faded blue roses, and stains marred the gray carpet. A red sticker on the television set cautioned that the X-rated closed-circuit channel should be viewed only by mature adults. The bathroom had a shower and a tub and two cigarette butts floating in the toilet. She didn’t look at herself in the mirror. That chore would be for later. She sat down on the bed, and springs groaned. The ceiling was riddled with earthquake cracks. That was California for you, she mused. Thirty dollars for a ten-dollar room.
God, her body hurt. Her mind was tired; it craved a blank slate. But there was still much to be done before she could sleep.
She lay on her back next to Drummer, and stared up at the cracks. There was a design to them if you really noticed. Like Chinese quill strokes. Shouldn’t have spent that hour in Berkeley, she thought. That was dumb, walking the streets. She’d planned only on driving through, but there was something so ripe, so haunting about Berkeley that she couldn’t leave it without seeing the old places. The Golden Sun coffee shop, where she had first met Jack, the Truck On Down head shop, where she and the other Storm Fronters bought their roach clips and bong pipes, Cody’s Bookstore, where political discussions of the Mindfuck State had made Lord Jack rage with care for the downtrodden masses, the Mad Italian pizzeria, where CinCin Omara used to be the night manager and slip her brothers and sisters free pizzas: all those were still there, aged maybe, wearing new paint, but still there, a vision of the world that used to be.
A young world, Mary thought. A world full of brave dreamers. Where were they now?
She’d have to get up in a minute. Have to take a hot shower, wash her hair, and squeeze the watery yellow pus from her oozing thig
h wound. Have to get herself ready for Jack.
But she was so tired, and all she wanted to do was crash. It wouldn’t be right to let Jack see her like this, grimy with road dirt, her teeth unbrushed and her armpits foul. That was why she’d stopped at the 7 Eleven just before the Oakland Bay Bridge; there was a sack in the Cherokee that she had to go get.
Drummer began to cry louder. Hungry cry. With an effort she roused herself, got his formula ready, and stuck the bottle’s nipple into his mouth. As he sucked on it, he stared at her with eyes that were every bit as blue as Jack’s. Karma, she thought. Jack was going to look at Drummer and see himself.
“You’re scared.”
God was standing in the corner, next to a lamp with a crooked shade. “You’re scared shitless, Mary my girl. Aren’t you?”
“No,” she answered, and the lie made God grin. Two heartbeats and he was gone. “I’m not scared!” Mary said stridently. She concentrated on feeding her baby. Her stomach was a tight bag of nerves. Her right hand twitched around the baby’s bottle.
The thought crept in again, as it had several times today, like a little black snake at a picnic: what if Jack weren’t one of those three men?
“He is, though,” she said to Drummer. His eyes were searching the room, his mouth clamped tightly on the nipple. “It’s him in the picture. Didi knew it was him.” She frowned. Her head hurt when Didi’s face came to mind; it was like holding a metal photograph with saw-toothed edges. And another little black snake crawled into her realm of summer: where was the bitch?
The bitch knew all about Lord Jack and Freestone. Benedict Bedelia had told her. So where was the bitch right now, as the clock ticked toward three?
When she found Jack, they would go away somewhere safe. A place where they could have a farm, maybe grow some weed on an acre or two, kick back in the lamplight and look at the stars. It would be a mellow place, that farm where the three of them would live in a triad of love and harmony.
She wanted that so very very badly.
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