There had been no bus from Staser, but a smaller company, local and struggling, had stepped in with an offer, and by that time the passengers were too angry, too tired, too anxious to get home to refuse.
Joey had been upset. Not with the bus; even he understood this was something she couldn’t control. It had been the ice cream—it had run out. Try as she might, she could get him to understand that they had been lucky to get any ice cream at all. Cows, she’d said, were dying. Babies needed the milk more than he needed his chocolate cone.
His face had reddened; his eyes had darkened; she had braced herself for a tantrum, suddenly and deeply afraid. Not for herself. For the others.
Then he had smiled, a lovely, beatific, terrible smile.
“That’s all right, Mommy. I’ll wait ‘til we get home.”
Three breakdowns later he had fallen asleep.
Four rows up, on the other side of the aisle, a match flares, and Patty watches it, smells the sulfur and the tobacco. A heavy set woman blows smoke out her open window, calling to someone passing by below. Flashlight beams turn the windows up there nearly white, the passengers fleeting silhouettes. The windshield and rear window are dancing fire, from the flares.
“For crying out loud, how much longer?” the woman demands hoarsely.
A muffled voice in return.
“Yeah, right,” she says. “That’s what you said an hour ago.”
No one else speaks.
Over the next hour, several people leave to stretch their legs and watch the repair work; over the next hour, Patty dozes, wakes, dozes again; over the next hour, not a single car or truck passes them on the road.
Patty shifts, her back sore, her left leg numb. She would love to get up, walk around a little, but that would mean waking Joey; she would love to get her jacket, up there on the wire shelf, it was cold in here, but that would mean waking Joey.
White lights slash through the interior, jerky, too bright.
Then she hears a smattering of applause and sits up.
“You’re kidding,” the smoking woman says through the window. “You shitting me, kid?” At the answer, she laughs. “Hot damn.”
They stir, then, all who had been sleeping, and Patty smiles wearily, gratefully.
Joey sighs loudly.
When she looks down she can’t really see his face. Only the one vivid eye when he looks up at her and says, “Are we home yet, Mom?”
“Soon, honey. The bus is fixed, I think.”
He giggles. “You wanna bet?”
Her hand squeezes his head in mock scolding. “Don’t say that. It’s bad luck.”
The eye closes. “Not really.”
“Yes, really.”
He giggles again. “Not.”
“Yes.”
“Not yes.”
“Not no.”
His head pushes closer to her stomach. “Okay.”
Passengers hurry back on board, yawning extravagantly, laughing, rubbing hands and nodding to strangers, top-of-the-voice anxious to get on their way. The driver is the last to board, and takes his seat, grabs the wheel with one hand.
“Screw up and you’re a dead man,” the smoking woman warns.
Everyone laughs, even Joey.
And quiets, until the engine catches and sputters and rumbles, and the bus shakes itself awake.
The applause is loud and only half mocking as the bus pulls onto the road, headlights boring white tunnels in the black.
“Mom?” Sleepily, through a yawn.
“Hush, dear, it’s after midnight, Tuesday already. Get some sleep. We’ll be there by morning.”
“Mom?”
She looks down.
Sees the eye.
Nothing else; just the eye.
“We’re gonna have a party.”
She says nothing; she dares not.
He shifts again, snuggling. “Grampa’s coming.”
She can’t help it: “What? How do you know? You didn’t talk to him, right?”
Small hand on her hip. “Aunt Dory, too.”
The heater is on, the blower dragon-loud, but she can’t shed the cold. “Joey—”
“Daddy.” His voice is flat. “Daddy’s coming home.”
And she thinks, oh my God, Ace, what the hell are you doing?
* * * *
The bus grumbles, and morning is no closer. The driver announces through the faulty intercom that moving faster might mean another breakdown. Something about transmissions. Something about hills and speed. He apologizes, swears they will arrive before noon, swears again when something grinds, deep in the vehicle’s bowels below the floorboard.
Patty holds her breath, but the bus doesn’t stop.
The woman near the front, still blowing smoke out her partially open window, demands champagne on arrival, and a few people laugh.
Another suggestion from a man in back—caviar and Jim Beam—and it isn’t long before a menu is proposed. Thirty-four people on the bus, a party being planned, survivors already preparing for a reunion.
Deep in the early morning, and very few can sleep.
Patty’s thighs are numb from the weight of Joey’s head, and when she tries to shift, he groans, rubs his eyes, and sits up, disoriented, blinking, trying to look through the window and seeing nothing but the dark.
“Sleep, hon,” she says, rubbing her legs.
“Can’t.” He looks around, puzzled at the laughter, the talk. His expression wants to know why they aren’t fast asleep. “What are they doing?”
“Coping,” she answers with a quiet laugh. “The Ride from Hell.”
The couple in the seats in front of them want to, know where they’re going to get all this party stuff, what with the shortages and all. Don’t they realize people are going hungry, people are actually starving to death?
No one cares.
The woman with the cigarette turns around and says, “Lady, don’t worry, the Lord and the bus company shall provide and succor. And give me a damn refund.”
The laughter is loud and long.
Joey lays back down, Patty’s arm light across his stomach. She can see his eyes, a bit of his mouth, can feel the night’s chill although the bus has grown too warm. She wants to ask him how he knew his grandfather and aunt were coming for a visit, how he knew about Ace, but she has learned there are some things it doesn’t pay to question.
Still...
“Joey?”
His gaze shifts as she looks down.
“Can you ...” She looks away, trying to find the words even though she knows them. “Why, Joey?” she asks instead.
He stares unblinking.
The bus thuds over a series of potholes, rocking hard.
“There’s a man, Mom,” he says. Staring. Unblinking. “He’s coming, too. He acts old, but he really isn’t. That’s silly, don’t you think? He’s silly.”
She swallows, says nothing. Another question best left unasked.
He closes his eyes. “Mom? What’s the Antichrist?”
Streetlights now, the glow sweeping through the bus, sweeping shadows across the ceiling, making things move that weren’t moving at all.
White and dark.
“Mom.”
White and dark.
His eyes open.
He smiles.
“Give me your hand, Mom.”
Patty stiffens. “No, Joey, please.”
“Mom. Hand.”
White and dark.
“Please, Joey, please, I.. .” She shakes her head. “I don’t want to. Please.”
His fingers find the hand that lies on his stomach, and when she tries to pull away, the smile fades.
“Mom.”
She feels the tears, trembling lips.
“He’s wrong, Mommy,” Joey says quietly, taking her hand in both of his, pulling it up, snuggling it under his chin. “The funny old man who isn’t really old? He’s wrong.”
* * * *
Part 4
* * * *
&
nbsp; 1
1
A
two-lane blacktop, swirled with dust. On the north side an open field, brittle cornstalks sagging under their own weight, a stand of trees in the middle distance, and nothing more. On the south the view of another empty field partially blocked by a line of trees that hug the bowed fence on the other side of the shoulder.
Straight ahead, trees and hints of rooftops and a silver water tower that rises above them like a Welles Martian machine.
“It’s changed,” John said, squinting into the setting sun despite the sunglasses Lisse had insisted he wear.
“How can you tell? We’re not even there yet.”
“Believe me, I can tell.”
She reached over to touch his arm. “You’ve been gone for over a year. Bound to be something different.” She poked the arm, withdrew her hand. “You’ve changed, for one thing.”
“Can’t argue with that.”
He pulled over, the engine idling, and pushed a finger across his cheek, not quite scratching. They hadn’t bothered to keep watch for the gray limousine since leaving the motel shortly after dawn. Either Trask would find and follow them, or he wouldn’t; either he’d be here already, or he wouldn’t. Neither of them thought the preacher had given up and gone home.
“Stalling, Yank,” she said lightly.
“Yeah,” and he pulled back onto the road. “What we’ll do is, we’ll go to my place, okay? Freshen up, see what’s going on.”
“Then what?”
He shrugged. Probably, get hold of George and tell him what they had discovered in the inmate tapes. Maybe it was nothing, maybe it was something, he didn’t know. He still wasn’t sure if he wanted to tell Trout about Levee Pete and Paytrice. Aside from the fact that he might be laughed at, he needed more information himself.
Lisse rubbed her arms. “Chilly up here.”
“It’s October,” he reminded her with a smile. “Halloween just around the corner.” A glance over. “Just how far north have you been?”
She pointed at Vallor. “This is it.”
“God, you’re going to freeze, poor thing.”
A quick laugh as the farmland ended, replaced by a high school and its fields, car dealerships and strip malls, a park, a Holiday Inn, then houses and streets and corner stores.
“The main drag,” he announced when the stores and streetlights and traffic lights began. “Madison.” A few blocks later he pointed. “Town Hall.”
“Ugly,” she said. “Lord, that’s ugly.”
“It’s supposed to be impressive.”
“Okay, it’s impressively ugly.” When hp turned at the next traffic light, she hugged herself. “Bigger than I thought.”
“Well, it’s not New Orleans,” he said, feeling oddly defensive, “but it’s big enough, I guess.”
He turned left on Jackson Street, slowing so he could lean over as they passed Vallor High West. A large banner had been strung over the main entrance, exhorting the football team to victory in Kentucky.
“Kentucky? What the hell are they doing in Kentucky?”
At the railroad tracks he stopped again, sliding his palms over the steering wheel, back and forth, up and down.
“I take it we’re kind of close?” she asked.
He nodded. “A couple miles up the road.” He inhaled slowly, blew the breath out. “It’s been a long time.” A brief smile when she patted his arm, and for a moment, just a moment, he covered her hand with his without looking over. When her fingers slid away, he squared his shoulders, muttered, “Into the breech, you jerk,” and pressed the accelerator.
Lisse kept silent until they reached the Burgoyne ranch. “You ride?”
“Nope. Those things scare the hell out of me.”
“Me, too.”
He stopped just before the bridge, leaning forward, gripping the steering wheel tightly. “Son of a bitch.”
“What?”
He nodded toward a low house on the other side of the street, beyond the creek. The trunk of a small car was visible in the driveway through the trees and shrubs. He wasn’t sure, but he thought he saw another one in front of it.
“Company,” he said.
“Your house?”
He nodded.
“Maybe . . . maybe your wife’s come back.”
Maybe, he thought, but he didn’t like it.
He inched the car forward, ignoring her puzzled look,. stopping again when he could see the front of the house, the porch, and a man sprawled in a lawn chair by the front walk, legs outstretched, hands clasped across his stomach, eyes closed in the fading sunlight.
“God damn.”
“What?” she whispered.
“Anthony Garza,” he told her. “Patty’s father. He— Jesus, what the hell is she doing here?”
A woman stepped onto the porch from inside, short and slender, wearing a sweater that reached halfway down her thighs, jeans and sandals.
“Patty’s sister,” he explained, confused and angry. “Dorina Castro. Christ, she lives in Philadelphia, for God’s sake.” He frowned as Dory hurried down the steps and leaned over her father, hands on his shoulders, whispering something in his ear.
“Family reunion?” Lisse guessed.
He shook his head, trying to think, trying to decide. “Sharon must have let them in. The girl, she lives up the street, who’s supposed to be watching the house for me. Her and her brother, Phil. God almighty, how long have they been here?”
“Well... why don’t you ask them?”
He watched Garza open his eyes, grin up at his daughter, cover her hands with his before shaking his head and pushing himself to his feet. Stretch his arms overhead. Peer up and down the street.
“No,” John decided suddenly, twisted around until he could see through the rear window, and backed up hastily. He swung into the Burgoyne driveway and sat for a moment. “Plan B,” he said then, and drove back across the tracks, took his first right and sped down the street until he reached Madison again. Another right, and west a second time.
“Where are we going?”
“A friend.”
They thumped over the tracks again, fields on both sides now.
“I don’t understand,” Lisse said nervously.
“Tony Garza hates my guts,” John said tightly, the rasp more pronounced. “I never did know why, but he cannot stand me. Even before Patty left, he made it clear I was tolerated only because I was his daughter’s husband. And because of Joey. He never comes out here to visit unannounced. Never. Last time was a couple of years ago, for Joey’s seventh birthday. Patty wanted a big party, we were not having a good time of it, and I hoped it would make things better.”
It hadn’t.
“But if he’s here,” she said, “doesn’t that mean Patty is, too?”
“Could be,” he admitted. “But I’m not going there until I find out.”
“But it’s your house,” she protested. “You have a right.”
“He thinks he has a bigger right,” John said bitterly. “After all, he paid for the damn divorce.”
* * * *
2
They sped through empty fields spotted with crows and what remained of a corn harvest. When the road swept north in a sharp bend, he followed it too fast, and they nearly ended up in a ditch on the other side. That slowed him down; that, and the whimper Lisse made.
“I’m sorry,” he said, wiping his face with one hand.
“Don’t be. Just don’t kill me before we get where we’re going.”
He pointed. “There.”
She saw a small dark-brick house set back in a clump of trees, facing the road and what looked to be a dry marsh on the other side. John pulled into the driveway, turned off the engine, and leaned his head back, closed his eyes.
She opened the door right away and stepped out, shivering in the cool air. This was without a doubt the most stupid, flat-out out of her mind thing she had ever done in her life, and there wasn’t a damn reason in the world she co
uld give for it, either. A few slow breaths while the car creaked and cooled behind her, a push of her fingers through her tangled hair. Lord, I would kill for a shower, she thought, looked down, and abruptly realized that the only clothes she had were the clothes that she wore.
In the Mood - [Millennium Quartet 02] Page 22