Rush

by Wozencraft, Kim

  “Hey,” Dodd said, “Gaines is doing the time.”

  “You know there’s supposed to be a paper out on Kristen?” Jim asked.

  “I heard,” Dodd replied.

  One of them struck a match.

  “Hell,” Dodd said suddenly, “both of you look damn good. Healthy. I’m glad to see it.”

  Their droning voices filled my head.

  “What’s Nettle up to these days?”

  “Oh, hell, Jim, you know, he’s same old shit, finally got his appointment. He’s there being the chief of police. Drinking with the city manager and the city attorney, having a good old time. Still talking about the bust-out.”

  “That’ll be grist for the mill for years.”

  “Yep, yep it will. Myself, I may quit policing one of these days and go into the private sector. Got an offer to do some oil field security. Pays good, decent hours, low risk. I might do it. Damn, I’m glad to see you folks doing so well.”

  “Take it easy, boss,” Jim said. “If you want to stay for lunch I’ll cook up some catfish.”

  An oil field offer. Dodd would do well there. Well-intentioned Dodd. Good old boy. Always seeming to try so hard to get the punchline, but usually left scratching his head while everyone else laughed at the joke. He wasn’t even sure what it was he wanted to be a part of but he knew he wanted in. He worshipped Jim, and Jim got off on it. One afternoon soon after the bustout, Jim had told Dodd that old-time street characters always wore lots of diamonds, and the next day Dodd showed up at the office with rings on his fingers and a big dent in his Sears card.

  From somewhere in my half-conscious brain, I wondered if Dodd had been sent to kill me, but I was doubting myself before I even finished the thought. Dodd didn’t know about the stash. He knew the rules had been bent, he knew Jim should have been pulled up, he knew we’d lied in court. But I never got the feeling that he understood why. Or questioned it. He was faithful to Jim, and tried to hide his discomfort at being that way. Dodd protected himself by refusing to look too closely.

  But Gaines was in Huntsville and Gaines wanted out of Huntsville. He would do what it took. He would find a weak link and pull until the chain snapped. Dodd might be a weak link, he was certainly where I would start, but it didn’t make sense. I couldn’t measure the extent of my disturbance, but I felt I was approaching a danger zone. At the edge, ready to lose it. Paranoid. I had to be. Dodd didn’t have it in him to kill anyone. I couldn’t think. No. Wait. Listen. Everyone has it inside: the ability to kill. Paranoia. But Gaines needed me alive. I had been at the meeting. I knew. He needed me alive. Wait. Pay attention. It is only a question of circumstance.

  I gripped my pistol and lay there with my eyes closed, waiting, wondering just how twisted I’d become. I heard Dodd’s heavy footsteps follow Jim out of the living room and into the kitchen. I heard voices, not words. A few minutes later there was the sudden crackling hiss of fish being laid into hot grease. I dropped my pistol and slept.

  * * *

  Pain had a lot to do with it. I told myself that, making excuses. Jim lived with pain, in his shoulder and his leg; it slept with him, he woke up with it, it was always there. He would go weeks with it and then cave in, swallowing legitimate pills. For the pain, he said. To get rid of the hurt that was like acid burning inside his leg, eating away what was left of the muscle.

  I sat in my corner and hoped that he would get through just one night without getting ripped from his sleep. He slept from midnight until just after daybreak, I from breakfast until mid-afternoon. This was our pattern. Evenings we spent at Canyon Reservoir. I wondered what Dodd was doing.

  When winter came and the weather broke we stayed inside, staring at the television or reading.

  * * *

  I didn’t recognize it at first, I was off guard. It may have been happening for months before I knew, before I was sure.

  Rob was working a big case in Austin, and Jim began running with him, leaving me to wander our home well into the morning, checking windows and doors, listening. I knew every creak the old frame house made, the rush of the gas flame igniting under the hot water heater, the tin crack of the stove cooling after I’d boiled water for tea, the pickup that battered down the road each night at ten thirty. The deep-chested dog some acres away that howled for six minutes at moonrise.

  I’d been expecting what I found. It wasn’t that I looked for anything. It would present itself; I was only biding time. I didn’t want to know.

  The phone rings; you answer. The calling party listens for a moment and hangs up. You dismiss it. It happens again, a day or two later. And yet again.

  Rob drops by at nine. Offers a joint. I decline and Jim leaves with him. He comes back around four in the morning, wide awake, hyper.

  “Get some rest,” he says. “I’ll watch. I’m not sleepy.”

  I lie on the couch and listen to him fidget: cleaning a gun, sharpening his knife, polishing his shoes. This happens more and more frequently. The phone calls follow the nights out. Patterns take shape.

  “I am your wife,” I said one morning. “You are my husband. Make your choice.”

  He went out that night with Rob. The phone rang, the caller hung up.

  I poured a scotch. I sat down on the couch and lit one of his cigarettes. I listened.

  * * *

  Just after the first rays of sun came through the slats of the blinds, filling the kitchen with spring morning light, Jim stood up from the table and threw a bowl of Cheerios against the wall.

  “You’re out of your mind!” he yelled.

  The bowl shattered, pieces flying to the floor. The milk dribbled unevenly over the bluebonnet wallpaper.

  “Out of your fucking mind,” he said. He sat down and flopped his hands onto the table. I poured a cup of coffee.

  “Would you like some?”

  “No. I mean yes. What in holy hell is going on?”

  I gave him a cup and sat down across from him.

  “I hope milk doesn’t stain,” I said. I took a sip from my mug.

  “You can’t just leave,” he said. “You can’t just do that. Just leave.”

  “What do you want me to say, Jim? I forgive you the girlfriends? I forgive you the dope? Again? I forgive everything? Just please let me love honor, and obey? What do you think I am, a goddamn fountain overflowing with love and kindness? I’m on empty.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “Something. All of a sudden you’re worried.”

  “There’s a paper out on you.”

  “And I could die crossing the street. What do I do, go introduce myself to the guy and get it over with?”

  “I’m plenty worried. Plenty.”

  “Save it.” I got up and opened a cabinet, tossed a brown paper bag onto the table. “You worried about this?”

  I picked the thing up and ripped it open. Rigs scattered everywhere, a pie-tin-size chunk of crystal meth clattered onto the tabletop. It was fresh from a lab, a perfect circle, white and waxy, like paraffin.

  “I’m worried about this,” I said. “You get it from Rob? Blessings and best wishes to both of you.”

  * * *

  I sat toward the back of the bus and watched San Antonio roll by in the dark. I should have been hurting, should have been wondering if I’d made the right decision. But all I could feel was blissful solitude, a sense that, after years, years, I was going somewhere. It didn’t matter where, it mattered that I was no longer running in place.

  I was alone, away from Jim, away from all of it, and the bus was almost empty, rolling down night highways, taking me somewhere.

  22

  I got off when we hit Corpus Christi. I bought a Dr. Pepper and sat down on my suitcase in a thin strip of shade next to the front door of the depot. I got everything but my feet out of the sun, and sat there dripping from the humidity, feeling the late April heat on my to
es.

  I wondered where Dick Foxwell was, what he was doing.

  I imagined him sitting in a back room somewhere, having lunch with Nettle. Maybe the city manager would be there, maybe the city attorney. Maybe Willard Freeman would attend, his face drawn into a confident smile as he thought about his daughter and listened to quiet talk about how Nettle had finally managed to put Gaines away. Willard would consider his financial investment to have been worthwhile, after all. Gaines was paying for it, paying dearly for having put Willard’s Trojanette daughter in porn films. They would be there, all of them, discussing structure and planning, speaking obliquely of pornography and damage control, of how to tie up loose ends. I was a loose end. Justice, Texas-style. Just us. The tight little circles. The good old boys. It hadn’t started with JFK or LBJ. It was a tradition, and it had been going on since long before Lone Wolf Gonzaulles strapped on a gun and went to take care of the governor’s business. One riot, one Ranger.

  I told myself I was being paranoid, the the part of my brain dedicated to reason had been eaten away by white powder. The sun was burning my feet. I would have sandal-strap tan marks. Foxwell would be told to remove my shoes and look for them after he was sure I was dead. Paranoia. He would check for the scar on my left biceps. He would rifle my pockets, my purse, maybe deliver my driver license as proof that the job was done. I began to believe that I might have twisted off somewhere along the line, that I might still be in the jail cell in Beaumont, only imagining that I had escaped. I took off my sandals and pressed my bare soles against the heat of the concrete beneath me. I could feel it, so hot it almost burned. I licked sweat from above my lip, tasting salt. I could feel and I could taste. I wasn’t imagining.

  I looked carefully as the second hand on my watch ticked over the long slashes that marked the passing of seconds. It moved in short jerks, one line at a time, exactly, precisely, one-second echoes. I watched, it took forever, it took no time at all. Three minutes gone, one hundred and eighty seconds down the tubes. It satisfied me somehow; it felt like a sort of victory, to see time passing and know I was still there.

  I could do this. I knew how to hide.

  The sun was burning my feet. I pulled on my sandals and took Mr. Berthe’s card from my purse and walked to the pay phone.

  A pickup wheeled to the curb, catching a piece of gravel with the edge of one front tire. There was a loud hollow pop and a tiny stone shot out and pinged against the wall a few feet from my suitcase.

  The man driving had one arm dangling out the window. Mr. Berthe had said a green Ford pickup. I stood up.

  “Kristen?”

  I nodded and walked over, tossing my bag in back as I climbed in. He turned toward me, leaning against his door, studying me. “You’re all right?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m fine. I mean, I’m okay.”

  “Roland told me to get here immediately.”

  “You work for him?”

  “A little security now and then. Nothing terribly exciting.” He put the truck in gear and pulled away from the curb.

  “I appreciate this,” I said. “I just need a few days to sort some things out.”

  “Stay as long as you want. And don’t worry about Foxwell. He won’t come around.”

  “I’m not so sure.”

  “Like I said, I work for Roland Berthe. Call me Marshall.”

  “Okay.” I did not ask questions.

  He was big-boned and muscular, with a thin waist that left his Levi’s hanging low on his hips. His jeans were bagged out in the seat and had a large oval spot on the right calf where the material was worn thin, almost white, as though he’d spilled bleach on it. He wore his silver-gray hair pulled back in a short ponytail that reached in a curl to the broad space between his shoulder blades.

  We drove past rows of white stucco houses with palm-treed yards. The air smelled of ocean and soon we turned down a road that ran along the beach.

  He cut the rattling engine as he made the turn onto a gravel driveway and we coasted to a stop in front of a squat wood-frame house that had splotches of light blue clinging to its walls.

  “Been meaning to paint the place,” he said, slamming his door when he got out.

  There were dozens of small Mexican rugs scattered over the wood floors of the house, and bookcases stuffed to overflowing lined two walls of the living room.

  “We’ll put you right back here,” he said, carrying my suitcase to a small room across from the kitchen. There was a twin bed bed against the wall beneath a large window, covered with a multicolored Mexican blanket. There was no closet, but a row of clothes hooks were fastened to a board on one wall. The opposite wall was almost obliterated with drawings done in colored pencil, some on plain gray cardboard. Most of them were frameless, held in place with thumbtacks pressed through their corners.

  “During the season,” he said, “I draw people. I go across to the beach there and set up my easel and people come around to get their portraits done. I use colored pencils, mostly, though occasionally somebody will insist on charcoal. I’ve gotten quite fast at it, it’s almost rote now. I prefer to use color though.”

  He put my suitcase on the bed and turned to see me staring at the wall.

  “Some people are disappointed with the way I see them,” he said. “They refuse to pay for their portrait. Doesn’t happen often. That’s twenty years’ worth hanging on the wall. My monument to rejection.” He stared at the drawings for a moment and then clapped his big hands together. “What the hell,” he said. “Let’s get some chow.”

  I woke late the next morning, in a sweat, and the house smelled of saltwater and coffee. When I opened the window the breeze was hot. I could hear Marshall humming in the kitchen, something that sounded like opera.

  He was at the stove, stirring eggs while he sprinkled jack cheese over them.

  “Wait’ll you taste this,” he said. “Migas. It’s got eggs and tomatoes, onion, a little cheese here, a few pieces of tortilla, jalapeños . . . can’t beat it.”

  I found a pitcher of iced tea in the refrigerator and drank a glassful quickly, pouring a refill before I sat down.

  The table was set with mix-and-match dishes, and paper towel in place of napkins. Marshall brought the pan to the table and spooned huge portions of eggs onto the plates.

  “Go ahead,” he said, “eat. I’ll be right there.” He stuck the pan in the sink and ran water into it, staring over his shoulder at me. “Well?”

  “Delicious,” I said. “You call it migas?”

  “Got the recipe from a Mexican gentleman who had me draw him. Talked me into a barter, and I think I came out the winner on it. You’re soaked.”

  He flipped a light switch as he sat down, studying me. The overhead fan buzzed loudly and then got quiet as the blades began turning.

  “What did you do, keep that blanket on all night?”

  I pushed the wet hair off my forehead, embarrassed.

  “I have a thing about windows,” I said. “Since the shooting. I’d rather sweat.”

  “Nobody’s going to come around here and try to shoot you,” he said quietly. “Believe me.”

  He had no idea how much I wanted to believe him, or maybe he did. I just wanted to be able to trust someone. I wanted someone to promise me that I didn’t have to be terrified anymore, that I was safe, that I could fall asleep without wondering whether I would be awakened by a goddamn double-barreled alarm clock.

  His eyes softened and he looked, for a moment, like he would pull me close and do just that, comfort me, assure me. It would have been wonderful, that morning, just to fall onto his shoulder and cry.

  I wished that I could. I blamed it on the pills, the Azene and Inderal. That had to be the reason why my feelings were trapped. It was as though they were playing hide-and-seek, darting around inside me, hiding, afraid to be found. I picked up my fork.

  “You’ll have to show me how to cook this,” I said.

  He leaned on the table and started eating seriously, h
is eyes rounding larger before each bite, a look of infant bliss spreading over his face as he chewed. Halfway through the meal, the table began to jiggle. When I peeked beneath it, I saw the Marshall had one foot twisted behind the leg of his chair, and his heel was bobbing rapidly up and down, like a piston in action. The white spot on the calf of his jeans was against the metal chair leg, rubbing.

  He saw me looking and raised an eyebrow.

  “What is it?”

  “I can’t get a bead on these eggs,” I said. “They’re moving around.”

  “Oh,” he said, straightening. “Nervous habit.” He took another bite and we ate in silence for awhile. I assumed he was nervous about Foxwell.

  My tongue was still burning from jalapeños while I washed the breakfast dishes. Marshall stood next to me, humming, carefully drying each dish I gave him.

  “You know, “ he said at one point, “I run every morning on the beach. It might do you a world of good.”

  It scared me to be without a weapon. I would jog for as long as I could, trying not to think about the fact that my gun was wrapped in a towel under Marshall’s umbrella and I was getting farther and farther away from it. Too, there was the pain of it. I had forgotten how to push past that point where I knew I would stop hurting and start to enjoy the run. Each day, I dropped out and walked back to the umbrella long before Marshall made his U-turn at the surfboard rental shack a few miles down the beach. I dreaded it, railed at myself, called myself a topwater floater each time I had to stop and watch his massive back drawing away from me while I stood bent over on the sand, gasping.

  By the time he returned and took a quick swim, I would be almost dry, sitting on a stool next to his easel.

  “Keep after it,” he would say. “You’re doing better. Starting to look almost healthy.”

  Almost three weeks passed before he strolled into my room one morning and took the pill bottles from the nightstand. I was bent over tying my tennis shoes and found myself tripping after him as he walked to the bathroom and began dumping the pills into the toilet.