by Carolee Dean
“Lost. L-O-S-T, lost. It’s what happens when you take the wrong damn road and end up in the middle of some godforsaken place called Rankin .” He points out the window to the vast fields of dead grass and oil pumps.
“You said to get on 87 headin’ out of Lubbock.”
“I said to take 84, but it don’t matter, ’cause we ain’t on either one.”
We had wound through an endless maze of country back roads, passing through nowhere towns with nowhere names like Needmore, Welch, and Punkin Center before Wade finally admitted he didn’t have any idea where we were.
We’ve been driving around like that for two hours, and both of our tempers are flaring.
“Can’t you find Rankin on the map and then figure out what road we’re on?” I ask.
“There’s hundreds of little piss-ass towns on this map. Why don’t you try to find it?” he says, tossing the map on the dashboard. “I wanted to head for Colorado. Find some mountains where it was cool, but no, you insisted we had to go to Texas. Couldn’t even stop to see the damn Grand Canyon. I gotta be turnin’ yellow before you even stop to let me piss.”
“I told you, I need to find my father.”
“Why do you gotta find him now, after all these years, now that we’re on the run?”
“I got my reasons.”
“What reasons?”
My patience has reached its end. I am tired, angry, hungry, and shaking inside. I am dangling at the end of a frayed, worn rope, and I know I wouldn’t be running at all if it wasn’t for Wade, so who is he to question me?
“What reasons?” he says, as if I didn’t hear him the first time.
“Ask him stuff.”
“Like what?”
“Like how I ended up on this friggin’ road out in the middle of bumfuck nowhere with you, Wade. How I ended up lost in some Texas hellhole. How I ended up with you, goin’ nowhere, just when I thought I was goin’ somewhere. Just when I was getting my life together. Just when all the pieces were starting to fit.”
Wade stares at me for the longest time. He looks like he’s trying to hide the fact that I’ve hurt his feelings, but then I realize he’s suppressing a smile. “Well, shit, Dylan. If that’s all you wanted to know, you didn’t have to drive all the way to Texas. You could have just asked me. I can tell you the answer to that.”
“Really?” I say, white-knuckling the steering wheel so I don’t clock Wade. “Then please tell me. What’s the answer, Wade?”
“You can’t read.”
A slow panic starts settling over me. “What are you talking about?”
“It was sittin’ there, plain as day, when you were in the middle of blamin’ me for how sorry your life turned out.”
“What was sitting there?”
“The sign for San Angelo, you dumb shit. It’s comin’ up in about ninety miles.” He grabs the map from the dash and traces the highway with his finger. “From there we get back on 87. Take 87 to Fredericksburg, then 290 all the way through Austin until we hit Quincy, just north of Brenham.” He tosses the map back onto the dash. “You see, Dylan, that’s your problem. You’re so busy starin’ at the problem, you don’t see the solution. Look for trouble and you find trouble. Look for a solution and you find San Angelo.”
The irony is that signs are one of the few things I can read. I try to keep my hand from balling into a fist, afraid that if Wade tries to spout any more of his wisdom, I will kill him. I turn on the radio, hoping to drown him out, but all I get is static. I check my CD case, but all I have with me is Aerosmith and West Side Story , which I’m sick of.
“Want me to drive?” Wade asks. “I won’t take any detours.”
I slam on the brakes and come to a dead stop right in the middle of the road. “Sure. Why not? My life is one big fucking detour,” I yell. Then I bang my head on the steering wheel and I can’t help it. I start to cry.
“Dylan?”
I think of last Sunday, not even a week ago. I had woken up on the beanbag chair at Jess’s house. Found her and Baby Face curled up asleep on the futon. Put on her father’s clothes. I’ll never forget the look in her eyes, when she saw me cleaned up and respectable … like I was somebody. I made her breakfast and thought about how easy it would be to pretend I fit into her life. Then I told her I had to go home to get some things.
Saw a car parked out in front of my house with Texas dealer plates.
Went inside to find my uncle Mitch sitting with my mother, holding her hand as she stared blankly at the wall, all the life gone from her eyes. I asked what was wrong, and he told me he’d brought her some bad news.
About my father.
“Dylan, you okay?” asks Wade as a gas truck passes us, blaring its horn.
“They’re gonna kill my father.”
“Who?”
“The State of Texas.”
“What are you talkin’ about?”
“They’re gonna kill my father by lethal injection in less than two weeks.”
“How can they do that?”
“He’s on death row somewhere in Texas. I don’t even know where.”
Wade gets real quiet. Doesn’t even comment when two pickups pass us.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t know how.”
Wade nods as if this makes perfect sense. “Want me to drive?”
“Yeah, maybe you should.”
THE ROAD TO HUNTSVILLE
By D.J. Dawson
I injured my back during the UT homecoming game my sophomore year and lost my football scholarship, along with my dream of going pro. Then I found out my girlfriend Mollie was pregnant, and we both quit school to get married. I needed to support my new family, so I took a job driving an eighteen-wheeler, delivering cattle feed from Texas to California.
I became addicted to painkillers. Then I began self-medicating with illegal drugs.
Soon after I agreed to start transporting cocaine for a Colombian drug cartel. I was convinced I could do five or six runs, get the money I needed to buy my own rig, and be done with the whole business. I thought I could quit anytime I wanted, but I was wrong.
I asked an old friend to help me get out. One thing led to another, and before I knew what was happening, I found myself in the middle of a drug raid with a dead cop. I did not pull the trigger, though that’s what I’m here for, but I wasn’t innocent, either. I was running drugs and as a result, a good man is dead. A woman was left without a husband. Children were left without a father, including my own son.
One day they will come for me, bind me in iron shackles, lock me in a white prison van, and set me on the road to Huntsville. It is a journey of forty miles down a country highway that weaves through the Sam Houston National Forest. A road lined with pine trees and wildflowers. A road paved with desperation, hopelessness, and fear.
I know what’s at the end. It’s a redbrick fortress called the Walls. And one day soon that is where the prison van will take me to die.
I won’t offer you a tired admonition to avoid my path. I won’t advise you to stay on the straight and narrow. I won’t suggest that you make good choices. I won’t even tell you to do the right thing. You can get that kind of advice from teachers and parents and TV evangelists, and if you are like me, you wouldn’t listen anyway. I just make one suggestion.
Know what path you’re on.
20
MY UNCLE MITCH TOOK ME OUT TO A LOW-RENT bAR THAT didn’t check for IDs.
“Tuesday, July seventeenth. That’s the date set for the execution,” he told me, downing a tall glass of Budweiser. He was already on his third and didn’t even notice I hadn’t touched mine. If there was ever a good time to start drinking again, I was pretty sure this was it, but I’d promised Jess I’d come back that night, and I wasn’t about to show up at her house drunk.
“I want to see my father,” I told him.
“Bartender, get me a double,” my uncle yelled to the man behind the counter.
“I need to see my father.”
“I’ve always respected your mother’s wishes on that matter,” Mitch said, tapping the table, the diamond ring on his middle finger flashing. Mitch is a man who likes finery. Tailored suits and expensive shoes. Lots of gold.
“Where is he?”
“Like I said, I’ve always respected—”
“I got a right to know some things!” I yelled, pounding my fist on the table.
Mitch looked at me coolly, his eyes narrowing. “You’re on probation. You can’t just pick up and go to Texas.”
“Work it out so I can.” I knew my uncle was used to pulling strings when it came to getting what he wanted. He could at least try to help me. “You owe me.”
“Excuse me?”
“Your friend Jake Farmer, he’s the one who had me and Wade choppin’ cars. I served eight months in juvie because of him.”
“You tell anybody?” he asked me.
“No.”
“That’s good,” he said, and that’s when I realized Mitch had known all along what Jake Farmer was up to.
“I gotta get out of here,” I said, and I ran out of the darkened bar into the glaring daylight. It was so bright it took a full minute for my eyes to adjust before I could make out where I’d left my car. Light is funny that way. Too much of it can blind you.
TIME
Time
goes round and round
the spinning clock,
until the fateful day
time
folds its tired hands
and
stops.
21
IT’S ALREADY SEVEN O’CLOCK WHEN WADE AND I PASS A sign that says QUINCY: POPULATION 700.
“Damn,” Wade says. “There was more people than that in our freshman class.”
The heat of this place is ten times worse than California, because it’s wet and sticks to every pore in your body. There’s a sound outside like a pulsing electric hum, and I remember the insects that used to come out on summer nights. My grandmother called them Sick Katies.
“Main Street,” Wade says, reading the sign. “Want me to turn here?”
“Yeah,” I say, thinking there should be more to the town but realizing this is it. I thought after eleven years they might have put in a Dairy Queen or a Super Wal-Mart, but the place looks just like it did when I left. It’s like a time warp.
Wade turns, and the Mustang hobbles down a brick paved street. There’s the Baptist church and the post office, the Ford dealership, the drugstore, and the grocery store no bigger than Gomez’s garage.
“Pull over here,” I tell him, pointing to the drugstore.
“Why?”
“I need to ask for directions.” All of a sudden the idea of visiting my grandmother is making my stomach do flip-flops. The familiarity of this place is unsettling. Memories tug at me, and I can almost see my mother walking out of the grocer’s with bread and eggs.
“Why do you need directions? I thought you used to live with the old lady,” Wade says as he parks in front of the drugstore.
“It was a long time ago.” I get out of the car. “We’ll be right back,” I inform Baby Face.
Bells hanging off the door handle jingle as we walk in. The entire right side of the store is filled with over-the-counter drugs. On the left is an old-fashioned soda fountain with red vinyl bar stools permanently attached to the ground. A group of old men, farmers by the look of them, sit at a table playing cards.
Three teenage boys wearing coveralls, with sunburns from the eyebrows down and hair flattened from grimy baseball hats sitting on the counter, share a basket of tortilla chips and drink out of huge red plastic cups. They are covered in dirt and sweat and look like they’ve just finished a long day’s work. A red-haired boy puts about fourteen packets of sugar into his drink and stirs.
Wade and I sit next to them on a couple of stools as a plump girl with blond curls and a red apron hands us menus. She smiles at Wade. “You boys from out of town?”
“Downey, Cal—”
“Arizona,” I say.
The timer on a toaster oven dings, and the girl goes to retrieve a boxed pizza, which she slices and puts in front of the boys sitting next to us. “Thanks, Dorie,” says the redhead.
“Don’t tell people where we’re from,” I whisper to Wade. “What if someone comes lookin’ for us?”
“Ain’t nobody comin’ lookin’ for us in this town. I guaran-damn-tee you that.”
“What can I get you fellas?” Dorie asks us.
“A couple of Cokes,” I reply. “And can you tell me how to get to Levida Dawson’s place?”
“Levida. Don’t think I know anybody named Levida.”
I can’t believe it. With only seven hundred people in the town, she’s got to know my grandmother, unless … is it possible she’s moved away? Maybe she wasn’t the woman on the phone.
“Oh, sure you know her, Dorie,” says one of the boys. “A. Devil Dawson.”
“Oh, you mean the Devil Woman,” says Dorie. “Sure, I know her. Everybody knows the Devil Woman. Lives out on Farm Road 67. Crazy as all get-out. Plays the organ at my daddy’s church, even though we’ve all warned him she’s possessed.” She turns to Wade again. “My daddy’s the preacher at First Baptist, if you’re ever in need of a church home.”
Wade smiles at the word home , as if he’s just been invited to move in.
“Why you lookin’ fer the Devil Woman?” the redhead asks, swiveling on his stool to face us.
“We’re traveling Bible salesmen,” I answer.
He laughs. “Well, y’all be sure you hold them Bibles up nice and high to protect yer heads. The Devil owns a twelve gauge and she ain’t afraid to use it. She don’t cater much to visitors, either.”
“She don’t cater to nobody but that damn pig of hers,” says the black-haired boy sitting next to him. He turns to me. “She took her son on a five-state shootin’ spree when he was barely ten years old. That’s what turned him into a cold-blooded killer.”
“No, it ain’t. It’s ’cause she kept him locked up in that barn, feedin’ him pig slop.”
Wade’s eyes grow as big as two silver dollars.
“Don’t listen to them,” Dorie tells him, sliding to-go cups filled with soda in front of us. “Red and Dakota just like to spin tales.” Wade pulls out his wallet to pay her, but she touches his hand, smiles, and says, “It’s on the house.”
“I ain’t spinnin’ no tale,” says Dakota. “They’re gonna fry D.J. Dawson’s ass over in Huntsville in ten days, at six o’clock in the p.m.”
“They don’t fry nobody’s ass no more,” Red corrects him. “Not since they retired Old Sparky to the Texas Prison Museum. They’re gonna give him a lethal injection. Put him to sleep. He deserves a helluva lot worse for what he done.”
I’m suddenly dripping in sweat. Someone opens the door, and the buzzing sound from outside fills the room. I drink the soda in one long gulp to keep from catching on fire, and then I stand to leave. “Come on, Wade.”
“What did he do?” Wade asks Red, making no move to get up from the bar stool.
“Killed a cop. Tornado T.’s daddy. Tornado, you okay?”
Only then do I notice that the third boy, a husky flax-haired kid, has taken all the tortilla chips from the basket and mangled them into dust while we’ve been talking. He stares straight ahead, breathing hard, like he wants to hurt somebody. He turns to look at me, and his eyes are cold and dark.
“You idiots,” Dorie tells Red and Dakota. “Ain’t you got no feelin’s a’tall?”
“We gotta go,” I say, grabbing Wade by the collar and pulling him out of the drugstore. By the time we get into the Mustang I am shaking so badly I can barely drive.
“That was your father they were talkin’ about,” says Wade.
“Yeah.”
“Is he really a cold-blooded killer?”
I take a long, slow breath, trying to steady my nerves. “I don’t know. Do you wanna go home?”
“Home?”
>
“Back to California. You don’t have to stay here. California’s a big place. You could hide from Eight Ball somewhere up north. It might get dangerous here.”
“It’s dangerous everywhere.”
“Colorado, then. Start over.”
He looks out the window as if he’s thinking it over. Remembering California, maybe. He finally says, “I can’t do that, Dylan.”
“Why not?”
“’Cause you’re the only family I got.” He smiles at me, and I know we are in this together until the bitter end. Even if it would be better for us both if things were otherwise.
I find Farm Road 67, a dirt trail heading off into nowhere. The Mustang bumps along, leaving a cloud of dust behind us.
We pass a brick house with a white picket fence, a shack that leans to one side, and a double-wide mobile home. Then I spot a mailbox up ahead with the name DAWSON on the side. I come to a stop and see that the mailbox is full of bullet holes. The name LEVIDA has been crossed out and replaced with A. DEVIL scrawled in red paint.
“Do you think she really has a shotgun?” asks Wade.
“Everybody out here has a shotgun,” I tell him as I pull onto the gravel drive leading to a farmhouse, about fifty yards off the road. We see a series of signs painted on planks of old barn wood. Wade reads them out loud as we pass. “‘Keep out,’ ‘No trespassing,’ ‘Reporters go home,’ ‘Enter at your own risk and suffer the consequences.’”
We’re about twenty feet from the house when I hear the blast of a shotgun and feel something hit the front of the Mustang. “Shit!” I yell, spinning the car around as fast as I can, no easy task on the narrow dirt road. Another round of shot hits the back end. I try to race back to the farm road.
I hear an engine and look back to see a tractor roaring toward us.
“Look out!” Wade yells, as the tractor rams us from behind, scoops up the rear end of the Mustang, and starts shoving us toward a ditch. “Damn! She really is crazy!”
“Why can’t you people leave me in peace!” yells the woman behind the wheel of the John Deere.
My car goes nose first into a ditch. Wade and Baby Face and I scramble to get out, crawling back up the ditch to find ourselves facing the barrel of the shotgun. The woman from the tractor is standing in the dirt with her finger on the trigger. She’s wearing men’s overalls and has wiry gray hair going in twenty directions. There’s a big fat pig beside her.