Chorus
The driver sat heavily down on the floor with a sigh. Despite the desert heat he pulled his shirt off and started wiping away the blood from the front of his Lexus. The grille was sticky with it and the headlight was red like a stop sign. He sat in the shade cast by his car and rested his head back against the door. He was parked up on a side road away from the highway, though he could hear it calling him over the low, dusty hills. He knew he’d have to ditch the car, but he was out here alone and he needed to keep moving, he was sure the police would want to talk to him about the boxes he’d left behind in Jersey and he’d hit something on the highway and he hadn’t stopped. He still hoped his father would reappear in the car’s passenger seat and help him to understand what was fact and what was fiction. He was still covered in flakes of dry paint and the Chrysler logo sat in the sand next to him. He picked it up and twirled it between his fingers in order to watch it catch the light and then he stood up walked back beyond the car towards the brow of the nearest hill and threw it as far as he could into the scrub.
When he turned to walk back, there was a police car parked next to his. It sat strangely mute, its lights pulsing in slowly drifting red circles. He was still holding the bloody shirt in his hand and he tightened his fingers around it to conceal the stains. The patrolman was squatting down examining the car’s grille; he stood and turned as the driver came down the slope towards him.
You’ll burn, said the patrolman, indicating the shirt in the driver’s hand. He was standing very straight with one hand placed on his gun holster. He hadn’t popped the button that opened it, but the driver knew it was only a matter of time.
Where you headed? asked the patrolman.
The coast, he said.
Family? asked the patrolman.
My father’s out there, said the driver and for a moment he believed it himself. That he’d get out to the water and his father would be standing there on a white sand beach in shorts and a polo shirt waving him home as the sun was setting.
What brings you out here? Why’d you stop? said the patrolman, who was examining the dent in the bumper of the Lexus.
Got tired, he said. I just pulled off the road to sleep, I’ve been on the road for days. He indicated the generous back seat as if he’d only just woken there moments before.
What were you doing up there? said the patrolman and looked over at the slope that the driver had just descended.
Call of nature, smiled the driver. No law against it, right?
Not out here, I guess, said the patrolman. Got your paperwork? he said, his tone suddenly businesslike and brusque. The driver reached into the car and rooted around in his glove compartment while the Lexus pinged its annoyance at the open door. The patrolman stood very close to him, just beyond his shoulder. He turned around with his licence and registration in his hand and noticed the patrolman’s holster was open. The patrolman took the papers from him and walked towards his car. Then he stopped and turned and looked at the driver and then down at the shirt clenched in his fist.
Why don’t you put that on? said the patrolman. You’ll be all blisters by tomorrow otherwise.
I’m good, said the driver, his free hand shading his eyes. I could do with some colour.
The patrolman was impassive behind his sunglasses, their dark green tint hiding his eyes.
Put it on, said the patrolman and he reached for his holster. The driver ran forward and threw the shirt into the patrolman’s face, reaching for the knife in his back pocket as he lunged. The patrolman swept the shirt aside with a gasp, taking a step back as he did so; his hand was on his holster when the driver plunged the blade down into his fingers, catching the bone of his knuckle. The patrolman screamed and tried to step back, but the driver held him with his free hand and drew him closer as they fell backwards, driving his head into his face. They bounced off the bonnet of the patrol car and fell apart, the driver scrambling to his feet first, knife to hand, kicking his boot heel at the patrolman’s wounded hand, causing the patrolman to reach across with his free hand to protect it and as he did so the driver forced the blade into the side of his neck. It went up to the hilt and he stepped back as the patrolman reached for the handle, his feet shuffling in the sand. He gasped again and blood gathered at his lips, then he shuddered as if he’d felt a sudden chill and was still. The driver pulled the knife from his neck and pulled the body up and over his shoulder. The blood from the wound ran down his bare back and into the waistband of his jeans. He removed the patrolman’s shirt even though it had blood smeared over the shoulder and his gun and manoeuvred the body into the Lexus’ trunk and then leant against the back of his car and lit a cigarette. His breath was coming in short, hard spurts and he felt sticky and his shoulders burnt. He drove the Lexus up over the hill where he’d tossed the Chrysler logo, parked it out of sight and walked back to the patrol car. The radio was chattering with life so he turned it off and sat down in the driver’s seat. He found the keys still in the ignition, grabbed them and went to the trunk. It sprang open to reveal a high powered rifle and a clip of bullets, what looked like black army fatigues, two bottles of water and a nightstick. He bounced the latter against the ground and grinned as the telescopic arm shot out. Ha! He shouted, striking the sand repeatedly. Ha! Then he took the bloody shirt he’d been wearing, siphoned some gas from his own tank, soaked the top and walked back towards his car. He laid it on the back seat of the Lexus and built a small impromptu fire out of old unpaid parking tickets and scraps of paper next to the armrest. He threw his licence on top, knowing that he wouldn’t need it again now. He lit the paper and whispered and blew onto the shirt, encouraging it to take as it smouldered indecisively. By the time he walked away from the car, black smoke was filling the back seat and he could smell the leather seats starting to burn. He hoped it would explode in a plume of smoke and flames before he’d driven too far away so that he could enjoy the show. He pushed the patrolman’s shades on to his nose and pulled on his bloodied shirt. It was too big for his slight frame, but he tucked it in as tightly as it would go, sniffing at the blood on the shoulder as he made his way towards the patrol car.
He pulled back onto the highway and started to enjoy the impact he made; how oncoming cars slowed when they saw him approaching. He hit his lights a few times and drove past laughing when cars pulled over to stop. He made threatening gestures to a few drivers, wagging his finger sternly and enjoying the perplexed look on their faces. He hit his sirens briefly too and watched startled figures in front of him jump in their seats. They’d drift to the far lane and he’d gun his engine and sail past. He tried the lights and the siren and floored the accelerator as if chasing an adversary, watching happily as the traffic before him opened up like a theatre curtain. When he’d had enough of the game, he pulled off the highway and headed to the baked-looking hills that overlooked the road. He parked up the car and examined the patrolman’s rifle. He had his revolver strapped to his hip, but he guessed the rifle was anything but regulation issue. It was a high-powered hunting rifle with a telescopic sight, the kind he remembered from watching the high-flyers hunt when he worked his summers in the Canadian resort.
Weekend Warrior cop, he muttered to himself. He found a vantage point to rest the barrel of the rifle on and lay down to survey the valley below through the powerful sight. It was quiet and he traced the silent cars below with the gun and imagined picking off the people below and watching the cars racing wildly out of control and into the steel barriers and concrete walls. It always amazed him, the carnage one bullet could bring. Then he saw a black Lexus racing through the traffic, its windows tinted, and he wondered briefly if someone had got to his car, smothered the flames and driven it away. He felt a stab of anger that someone might have stolen his car and his finger tightened on the trigger, and then he saw the patrol cars racing in its wake. The traffic up ahead was being pulled over and then the Lexus swerved wildly to one side, left the ground briefly – he saw sunlight and shadow on the road beneath
its wheels – and hit the far wall, its wing crumpling on impact, it spun once and then stopped. The police appeared suddenly and yanked a man from the Lexus and threw him to the floor. He thrashed around as they tried to handcuff him, he was screaming something and one of the cops hit him with an open hand that flattened him back onto the tarmac. It was then that the driver realised that they thought it was him that they’d apprehended down on the highway. He looked at the black Lexus and back at the slowly inching traffic and then he started shooting.
Song 10: Bride
Her name was Sylvia and she twinkled back at him from her online picture. He read her profile, taking in every detail; she was born in Verkhoturye (when he tried to pronounce it out loud he couldn’t help but add three or four extra consonants – it sounded like he was taking a long and complicated sneeze). The Russian Brides site said she was twenty-four, though he guessed she might be closer to thirty given the lines around her eyes and smile. She was a Pisces; he didn’t know what that meant, but his dead wife had been a Pisces so he took that as a positive sign, some sort of approving nod from beyond the grave. She liked to travel and she liked herring. He had never eaten any and so bought some the first chance he got, tightly coiled in a jar, rolling around in a yellow mayonnaise sauce. He picked it gingerly out of its glass container and marvelled at its yielding, soft flesh. It was oily and raw-tasting, he briefly imagined it being yanked from the sea and held aloft, its flapping body slowing to meet its fate. He wrinkled his nose at the smell and its salty flesh, but ate it determinedly with his eyes closed as if that might ward off the taste and smell. The next time he wrote to her he made sure that he let her know that he liked herring too. At night, he’d trace her background and history over the internet; her town, the oldest in the South Ural region (when he said it he made it rhyme confidently with plural) had been cut off from the West for years, a shady military complex with huge mineralogical deposits, it had been an area for weaponry development and, he surmised from his research, a tough place to bring up children. Even the nearby monastery was inexplicably and heavily fortified while one of the biggest tourist attractions was a Museum of Nuclear Weapons. There was also a place where you could discover how the Russians developed the machinery for chemical warfare during the Cold War. He imagined Sylvia as a strident fiery bloom growing among the weeds of her empire’s past. Before Russian Brides he’d written to women in a prison in Indiana, his friend had suggested it, and once he’d got past the names they’d adopted for their online profiles; Priestess, Black Widow, The Kat – he felt like he were writing to a biker gang – he began to enjoy their correspondence. Sometimes, the letters would be censored by black marker pen and he was dismayed when he found that Priestess, real name Penny (grand larceny, attempted manslaughter, affray), had added five years to her sentence when she’d attacked a prison guard in the laundry room with a sharpened clothes peg. He couldn’t believe it, and fretted nervously the first time they’d talked on the phone (she was allowed one call a week as part of her privileges) as she told him that she’d kill for him if he’d wait for her. He sat mutely at home, the shadows lengthening across his living room and marvelled at the clanging of steel gates and the clamour of voices in the background that sometimes threatened to swamp her words. He’d thought of travelling to the heart of Indiana to the penitentiary set in its own acres of dry grassland, surrounded by floodlights and observation towers with their armed guards (he’d seen it online). To walk through the shuddering iron gates, each one closing noisily behind him, and into a room partitioned by a glass wall and small booths, set with their own red phones. He imagined his palm pressed against the glass, mirroring Priestess’ actions across from him, both setting their phones forlornly down as the guard called time on the visiting session. Later he realised that all the images he’d imagined were drawn from films and TV dramas he’d seen, he had no idea of what the real interior of a prison might look like. He finally let those letters quietly drop but still panicked when an official-looking letter with the prison service crest came through the door. He imagined looking up and seeing the Black Widow standing in his garden, waving before breaking her way in to exact revenge for all the letters he’d promised but never sent. He was ashamed to admit he felt a thrill at the thought.
Russian Brides was easier, these were women on a different continent, and none, as far as he knew, had ever stolen a car from outside a Walgreens so that they could try to rob a store with a starting pistol. He didn’t even think they had branches of Walgreens in Russia. Sylvia looked almost demure, but had promise and he was sure she’d never sharpen a clothes peg and stick it in someone’s thigh, at least not without good reason. A friend asked him if he knew that all those Russian dating sites were run by the Russian mob and that most of the girls were under the cosh of organised crime. He had to ask him what cosh meant, but he knew it was nothing good. The next time he wrote to Sylvia he asked if she was in trouble, and if she was labouring under an unforgiving regime and she replied that it was no more unforgiving that the one she’d grown up with. He was confused and couldn’t tell if she was joking or not. Is there anything you want to tell me, he wrote and could hear his voice hissing in his head as if not to be overheard in some way. Only that I like your eyes, she responded and her connection to the machinations of the Russian underground were never mentioned again.
To reach Verkhoturye he had to fly into Ekaterinburg (Ural’s buzzing capital, as the guidebooks described it), via Moscow. By the time he’d landed he felt as though he’d been in the air for days and the staunch pain in his lower back made him wonder if the hostess had kicked him while he’d slept. He perused his guidebook as the plane emptied, alighting on the words, buzzing and metropolis, though very little appeared to be moving outside his window. Sylvia, her mother and a man who remained ominously silent met him at the airport. It was early autumn and bitterly cold and Sylvia and her mother were pale, unreadable faces swathed in hats and scarves. His coat flapped uselessly about him as they crossed the tarmac and his eyes streamed in the unremitting wind. Over the next few days he discovered that it was not only the monastery but the cathedral that was fortified too. He tried making a joke about both iconic buildings being two of the most heavily defended sanctuaries he’d ever seen, though Sylvia only looked confused and the quiet man just stared at him with contempt. He saw numerous caves and lakes, he spent an afternoon at Zone No. 145 where the Russians developed their nuclear weapons and one day even travelled five kilometres out of town to bear witness to a memorial dedicated to the slain victims of Stalin’s repression (this was translated to him loudly from the grand-looking brass plate by Sylvia). All things considered, he thought, he couldn’t blame Sylvia for wanting to leave her home. The fauna, as predicted, was fulsome and startling, as were most of the two hundred national parks throughout South Ural (he felt like he saw them all), but it wasn’t enough to tie you to a place made infamous as the valley where the former Soviet Union conceived their weapons of mass destruction. And the wind, he thought, as his hair fell into his eyes for the thousandth time, the wind was inhuman.
They called it a dowry, but it was really a fee, a price tag that he paid for Sylvia, and even while they celebrated with caustic-tasting wine and cake hard enough to knock a stranger out if you’d lobbed it into a crowd, he found himself feeling dirty and tragic that it had come to this. He stepped outside and looked on the ruddy beauty of the valley he was standing in, the distant shimmer of a lake could sometimes be glimpsed like a promise. Evening was falling and tomorrow he would return to California and wait for Sylvia to come to banish the shadows that haunted him, take away the crippling fear and loss in his guts. She joined him on the steps of her house as her mother and the ever-silent man worried the curtain to stand in the window behind them and watch their every move. She linked an arm through his and he wondered why he’d come all this way to a place he could neither spell nor say to find hope in a face he’d found peeking out of his computer monitor so many months before.
Are you happy, she asked him, and all he could do was nod as he tasted the tears that had reached his mouth.
It had been over two years since he woke up in his chair and knew that she’d gone. He tried to stay sleeping to stave off the inevitable realisation like a child who hides its eyes and tells you that you can’t see them because they can’t see you. He couldn’t explain it, but he knew the knock at the door was a policeman and he knew that the policeman would be crying. His neighbour was standing with the policeman; he looked like he’d been punched hard in the stomach by circumstance.
It’s Lulu, said his neighbour, but he already knew that too. He let the policeman in and his neighbour too, but his neighbour loitered by the living room door and quietly let himself out with a nod before the policeman had finished speaking.
I’m sorry, said the policeman. He believed he was too.
There was a shooting out on the highway, the policeman said.
He nodded mutely, had someone shot his wife? Why would someone shoot Lulu?
We were chasing a suspect, we were chasing his car, we think he ran a small boy down and didn’t stop.
He was numb; someone had run a child down and not stopped? He wondered where their son Charlie was and if he was safe, but Charlie was away in college miles from here. The policeman was still talking to him; he seemed lost in his own thoughts.
We chased the car down, he said, we chased him for miles, he was out of control and then when we managed to stop him, we blew his tyres out, we ran a strip of spikes across the road, it wasn’t him. It was the wrong car, it wasn’t the man we were after, it was some guy, he was drunk or on dust or something, he was insane, screaming and shouting and as we corralled him with our cars and got him down someone started firing at us from a long way off, up on the hills some place. Someone with a high-powered rifle, we think, someone who knew what he was doing.
Cross Country Murder Song Page 15