by Shelly Frome
Josh pictured Alice leading Darryl on a merry chase till Darryl returned and tried to take it out on Ella, failed, and took it out on the keepsakes behind the bar instead. Then Josh thought about his part in this convoluted exchange.
“And what else did you say about me?”
“What’s to tell? Check out the weather report. See which way the wind’s blowing.”
Smirking even more than usual, Ella added, “And Darryl said, ‘From the north? Both blew in from the north?’ Guess the news hasn’t reached the backwoods yet about the influx of northerners. And I didn’t have the heart to tell him Robert E. Lee surrendered.”
No more words were exchanged as Ella busied herself with last years’ Christmas-special full page ad.
For his part, Josh continued to cast his gaze onto the dim wetness. Lost in thought, he recalled the DVD he was watching for the umpteenth time when Megan, his ex, whisked into his apartment and they had their falling out. Snatches of lyrics to the title song crossed his mind:
‘. . . the highway that calls . . . the highway that carves your heart inside . . . this ain’t no place to fall behind . . . Pick up your crazy heart and give it one more try . . . ’
There was no doubt in his mind he had to make it up to Dewey. He hoped Alice would get in touch and at least give him some clue what she was up to. He worried about what further dark memories might be seeping into her mind. He wondered, How far does this story go?
16.
So far Alice had been a whiz at eluding Darryl. By now it didn’t take much to figure he was in cahoots with the few-words guy and that he was after something blocked in her mind. That idea came to her while she was slumped over on one of those plush chairs at the Peabody before Darryl showed up again.
As a matter of fact, it was the zigzag on the carpet that reminded her of a black and white movie she’d seen. She’d seen a bunch of them while holed up at Ada Mae’s because that was all her aunt could get on her TV with her cheap cable package; the only stuff that Alice found worth watching. In this particular flick, the hero, a wimp who kept fainting over something awful he might have done, noticed this pattern everywhere till it finally struck brain. It reminded him of a ski slope and the zigzag the skis made racing downhill after the real killer. In some other oldie, the same kind of thing happened when a guy got a paper cut while tearing open an envelope and he too remembered everything. In both cases, they both were able to spring into action. For Alice, this was the closest she could come to a solution: locate something that was sure to ring a bell so she could get these guys off her back.
So the second she spotted the grungy crimson and blue college cap darting behind one of the marble columns, she raced outside, made her way back to the ticket window at the Greyhound station and caused a big fuss about having to catch the very first bus up north to Carbondale. She told the lady with the thick glasses she wanted to make doubly sure because her mom was so awful worried to pieces about her. Next, she hid out at the terminal, waited till the very last minute, tore around the building to the rear of the bus revving up and spewing exhaust fumes, boarded it just before the door whooshed closed, ran out again excusing herself as if she was at the wrong gate, and hunkered down behind a nearby bus loading passengers. Sure enough, as she peaked around the grill, she spied Darryl rubbernecking, running alongside the departing bus trying to get a bead on whether or not Alice was seated by one of the windows. Giving up the chase, throwing up his hands, he took off down the street, headed back in the direction of the W.C. Handy Park, Beale Street and Billy’s place, no doubt for the same reason he’d busted-in in the first place.
And that was why she was bound and determined to be one step ahead of the game. To get those two creeps off her trail and keep Dewey and everybody else from any more grief.
She exchanged her ticket for one to New Albany, Mississippi. She wanted one to Holly Springs but the befuddled lady in the thick glasses told her the best she could do was ask the driver to let her off at Exit 30 on Route 78. There she could walk the few miles on Route 4 to the hospital. More than a bit leery at this point, the thick glasses lady took Alice’s explanation with a grain of salt that, in truth, she was trying to escape from the clutches of the man who’d just been asking about her. No, he was not a relative. He was some psycho who was carrying a switchblade and probably should be reported to the police. Besides, Alice figured even if he did double back and stayed out there laying in wait, and even if he did catch her boarding a bus heading south in the opposite direction toward New Albany and Tupelo, what could he possibly make of it? He would surely be faked-out twice.
This sharp bit of maneuvering sustained her from the time she got herself a half-dozen candy bars and a cherry Coke from the vending machine for the whole forty-five minute bus ride into Mississippi, all the way down the highway till the exit where the driver promised to let her off. The pretext was that she had to get back to the hospital to make sure there were no aftereffects from her concussion. Sympathetic as can be, the driver’s instructions were that even in the misty fading light, she could walk east down well-traveled Route 4 otherwise known as East Salem Road. Well-traveled, especially at this time as everyone headed home at the end of their work day.
Which was fine with her. In Alice’s mind, the clunky old flat-bed truck would surely be still hidden way back in the gap behind the huge bushy trees close to the hospital and she would sit behind the wheel till she came up with a flash. Not any zigzag pattern, of course, or paper cut but something just as good. She would hold out, find some way to make an exchange--tit for tat, end of story.
But then again what in the world could the few-words guy and his flunky be after? And what did it have to do with her nightmare that was so bad she shut it out of her mind and now had to go to all this trouble to try to get it back again?
She bit into another candy bar, having no idea what, if anything, would come to her even if the old clunker was still there. What, if anything, would sitting still behind the wheel in the darkening twilight actually accomplish? But what else did she have going for her to put an end to all this crap? Zero, that’s what. Not a thing.
Getting off close by the exit to Route 4 east went off without a hitch. So did the first leg of the trek as she gripped the nylon hood of her parka and pulled it over her head.
Despite the sprinkles and the damp chill, she got a sense of homey, everyday routine from the buildings and houses with mailboxes on both side of the two-lane road and the cars and trucks zipping by.
Soon however, less than a mile out, all of that began to change. No mailboxes or driveways close at hand and very little traffic. Instead, the two-lane road seemed more narrow. The land opened up on both sides, stretching far back and away, broken only by unreal-looking trees off in the distance shaped like pears. In fact, in the shrouded fog and mist, the trees began to seem more like chunks of clay atop little toothpicks. The rolling hills and the nearby stretches of land were a dull green as if they were dabbed with some kind of eerie paint. At this point, her trek felt more like what her loony aunt called the road to perdition, whatever that meant.
In fact, the further she walked, the more the landscape appeared to rekindle Ada Mae’s view of the world. With her scrunched-up face, piercing eyes, hair probably chopped off with a pair of shears and a frame as scrawny as Alice’s, Aunt Ada Mae was never at ease and always on the lookout. When she spoke, with that sandpaper twang of hers, that road to perdition was never far from her thoughts. At the drop of a hat, she would put down Alice’s mom and lay a lot of the blame on northern city streets. There, someone as gullible as her aunt’s much younger sister was surrounded by demons. And since demons were cold up there and needed bodies, they longed to get inside you. Just loved to hang out in any big town that was home to confusion, atheism, cocaine addiction, lust, immorality—words like that-- and lots more fellow demons and temptations. Which, the way Alice was heading, according to Ada Mae, would be Alice’s exact same fate if she didn’t get a grip and
totally change her ways.
But, in Alice’s mind, there was a great big hole in the story. After all, right here in the Mississippi hill country, Ada Mae found demon spirits everywhere, even in her backyard up in the pecan trees unless her own private angel Gabriel came to her rescue. It was a twenty-four hour battle everyday between angels and demons. Between Ada Mae’s visitations, running her Dixie Dollar store, selling Amway products and looking up scripture to ward off whatever was lurking in the shadows and every which way, Ada Mae had little or no time to look after Alice. Which only added to Alice’s “temptations” and the hunt for a way out. Which, without a doubt, led to the predicament she now found herself in.
The beep of a horn broke through the hush of the roadside as a minivan passed by and some teenagers hurled insults at her like “swamp thing” and “road kill.” By now she’d gotten used to it the more the girls at school in their “princess hoodies,” skirts and tights snubbed her or called her “trash” behind her back and made their “awesome” plans for the Christmas vacation. At the same time, the boys called her a “sleaze” and other putdowns she’d never heard.
She walked on, recalling that the low-lying hospital lay far behind a wall of thick trees and had to be somewhere over on her left. Keeping a sharp eye out occupied her for the next twenty minutes or so and took her mind off recollections of Ada Mae’s demon spirits, the awful time she’d had these past few weeks and, come to think of it, the awful time she’d always had.
As night came on, she passed the outskirts of the hospital and the pinpoints of light beyond, along with the sound of car doors closing, the scrunch of tires on gravel and motors idling. It took her about another fifteen minutes to make out the particular clump of trees flanking a wide enough gap where she had driven through, killed the motor of the old flatbed and, clutching her head, worked her way over to the emergency entrance.
And, sure enough, there it was under the darkening sky, a good hundred yards back through the gap and well out of view, like a rusting relic from an antique car show that didn’t make the grade and was left to rot.
Shivering in the dark and clammy dampness, Alice slid behind the wheel on the worn plank seat. She caught a glimmer of the empty liquor bottles on the rubber mat on the passenger side, unfastened her hood and rested for a while.
But nothing much came to her. Not only was she having second thoughts, she had trouble remembering exactly what she hoped to gain from all this. Satisfying her on-again, off-again hunger with the last of her candy bars didn’t do much good either as far as sharpening her mind went.
It was only when out of complete boredom she fiddled with the glove compartment, flicked on the flashlight that barely glowed and examined the rest of the stuff did some of it start tumbling back to her. Especially, taken together with the liquor bottles at her feet and the hot wire set she’d swiped from Stan the repo man’s toolkit. Stan was the guy her mom was presently shacked-up with. The one who taught her to drive and help him repossess clunker cars and trucks from deadbeats who tried every trick in the book to elude him. On any given weekend, Alice was behind the wheel ready to honk while Stan did his hot-wire act or visa versa or any number of variations including rustling two vehicles at a time. When the repo game went belly up, it was the same Stan who dumped Alice and made sure she got shipped off to Ada Mae’s. The very same Stan who, while she was shivering close to the old Paducah railyard, told her on the phone she was not only to get lost but to stay lost.
The hot wires and empty liquor bottles actually did do the trick but not at all like the silvery flashbacks in the movies. They came back to her with a sharp and jangled rush.
The first one cut directly to Ada Mae hurrying to get over to the Dixie Dollar while Alice hung back, faking that she forgot something for school but really wondering how she was going to kill enough time besides pestering LuAnn down at Cody’s for some advice. But hardly able to even hear herself think with all the fuss going on:
“I told you, I done told you,” Ada Mae said, standing on the front steps of her woodsy house, her voice grating even more than usual. “No work till spring. No need to clear out brush or any of the sort. And certainly no call for paint on these slats this time of year. So get it through your head. Besides, what you doing over this way? Why aren’t you back there over at Sardis Lake where you belong? Doing what you always do for odd jobs and such?”
“Take yourself a big fat guess,” the paunchy guy answered. Not about to take no for an answer, and with the smell of whiskey on his breath even this early in the morning, the guy went on. “No work, lady. You the one said the free market will provide, remember? ‘Trust me. Seekers shall prosper, you have my word.’ Well here I am, ma’am, seekin’ like hell. The opposite of prosper and at the end of my goddamn tether.”
“You hush your mouth in front of the child. I told you, it’s the ones whose finances are in order. Who pledged at least $100 of seed faith money to the church whose fruits are victory over the spiritual battle. ‘Turn away from sin. Book of Acts 3:19. ‘Open your eyes away from darkness to light. Acts 26: 18.’ ‘Get behind me, Satan. Cast off the demon spirits. Satan is a liar and the father of lies. John 8:44.’ Now if you will excuse me, I have to be off to reap what I have duly sown.”
As Ada Mae stiffened, gazing past the paunchy man, about to stalk off down the warped steps, he looked right up at her and said, “You through? Is the sermon over?”
Ada Mae brushed past him, swung back around and said, “You’d best listen to me. It’s not my voice that’s talkin’ here. It’s my angel Gabriel that guides me every day. You see, Satan can only steal from your head. He’s after your heart but can’t get to it. It’s locked up and he don’t have the key and can’t never get it. So my advice is, look inside your heart. Change those shiftless ways, Bubba, afore it’s too late. Afore no angels and no visitations will have anything to do with you.”
With a look of great satisfaction, she pivoted sharply and marched off under the overcast sky, leaving the guy named Bubba laughing and wheezing. So caught up she completely forgot about Alice and the usual right-before-school righteous warnings.
Bending over, slapping his thighs, Bubba could hardly get the words out as he called after her. “Well, there you go. Promised my ol’ daddy I’d give it one more shot. Leave it to divine providence . . . and damn if I almost meant it!”
This first memory quickly dissolved. In its wake as Alice snapped back into the here and now was the next part which was easy to remember. Especially since she was just reminded of Christmas, the putdowns from the kids and Ada Mae’s constant badgering. Easy to see why she had to split and couldn’t take it anymore.
But as the following jumble of snippets came rushing in, she also knew her memory would only go so far before it seized up again like a frozen gear:
Bubba’s callused hands banging the steering wheel of the flatbed . . . a little man wearing bright orange suspenders as he headed toward Cody’s, looked back, scratched his mop of snow white hair and kept on walking . . . herself retrieving the hot wires from her knapsack back in her room . . . popping the hood, turning Bubba’s steering wheel till it unlocked, clipping the black wire off the battery to the coil, red wire to the battery terminal and the starter solenoid . . . the flatbed weaving up and down the street till it stalled . . .
Next, the flashes in Alice’s mind zeroed in and held for a minute:
She eased her foot off the gas pedal as Bubba remained beside her. His bleary eyes matched the cock-and-bull story he’d just handed her as she answered back.
“Get off it, man. What do you take me for? No way a guy gets sloshed first thing in the morning ‘less he’s unsure he can pull it off. No way it’s just a little trick or treat.”
“And no way I’m gonna be lectured to by some scrawny little tramp.”
“Fine. Just cut the crap and call it what it is—a shakedown. I do the deed and spy on the hermit while he forks over what he owes, otherwise he doesn’t get his keepsake
s back. You said all the cash is on hand, right? ‘Cause he doesn’t use a bank.”
“Uh-huh . . . oh yeah, sure thing.”
“Hey, it’s your idea, not mine.”
“I am thinkin’ out loud, is all. Figuring what with the way things are goin’, Rowdy out of the picture . . .”
“Which leaves only me. With my street smarts, and a way with motors and this junk heap, fast as hell and the guy doesn’t even know I exist. But, like I said, if you’re not up to it—”
“Look, little sister, I ain’t the one lookin’ every which way, pullin’ my jacket zipper up and down about to bust a seam.”
“Just antsy, man. Itching to get on with it. You’re looking at a girl who worked repo. This is repo except it’s money ‘stead of cars and I blow the whistle instead of a horn.”
“Maybe maybe, but—”
“Then get my cut and hightail it like a shot.”
“Disappear, you mean.”
“You said it. Goodbye, never see my face around here again.”
Bubba glanced around and reached deep into his overalls.
“Come on, get with it,” she said, egging him on. “I’m game, I tell ya. Now all it takes is you.”
Jerking out a flat half pint of whiskey, he drained it, tossed it beneath Alice’s feet, let out a whoop and said, “Can you beat it? Fat ol’ drunk hooks up with a Yankee street kid.” Fumbling around, he came up with another half pint. “Well, what the hell, I’ll drink to it, why not? All drunks and tramps are kin, bless their hides. You’re on, missy. I am way past due and loaded for bear.” With that, he switched the bottle to his left hand and patted and slapped something hard under his wool jacket.
Whatever it was that Bubba had patted merged in Alice’s mind’s into Darryl’s switchblade knife and whatever had followed after that clicked off like a switch.
Despite a shake of her head, she thought of Satan who got into your brain before you knew what you were doing and wouldn’t let go. Not that she believed in Satan or anything else Ada Mae was pushing. Besides, when you considerd the box she was in, trapped with this loony aunt, not a penny to her name, and school kids who made her life miserable and double-dared her to clear out, it sure didn’t take much to grab any offer she could get.