“Your mother called,” he said and watched her. “Says you were supposed to come out. Says you didn’t sound right on the phone. Says she came out here and you wouldn’t answer.”
She looked distracted. “I’m all right.” She appeared to will it true, to get her bearings. “You shouldn’t be here, probably.”
That relieved him some, at least of the worry her husband was within earshot. “I broke your door a bit.”
“Good.” She gave a short, tired smile. “It’ll match everything else around here, then.”
“Any reason you’re avoiding Babe?”
“I believe you’ve met her.”
What tension was left loosened. He breathed. His glance traced down her neck, where a tendon rose. Her bony shoulders in her thin T-shirt leaned in slightly toward him. He remembered what Babe had said about the daughter, about Pam leaving her at Gordon’s. “Just you and the girl, then?”
Her eyes flitted to the space behind his left bicep. He turned to look. There was nobody. She must’ve been paranoid about who was watching. Listening in.
“Got her down for the night,” she said.
He stood, not knowing what to say. “Don’t suppose I should come in.”
She looked at him then. She looked at him fully, first one eye, then the other. Her lips tightened. The edges curled a bit, in a strange, brief grin that left as soon as it came. The girl was fine. Pam wanted him to come in. That much was clear.
“Somebody was there last night,” she said, barely above a whisper. “After you left. Somebody pulled up behind the house.”
Ziske’s naked hobo-ghost, likely one of Pam’s own in-laws. Harley thought about telling her. He decided she’d be safer not knowing. “I’m headed that way, soon as I’m sure you’re all right.”
She said she was.
“I need to know it,” he said. “I need to know you’re all right.”
She smiled again, not happily, and shifted her weight from one skinny leg to the other.
He had half a mind to reach out, take her hip in his palm. “Be a good idea if you stayed in tonight. Stay out of harm’s reach.” The streetlamp behind him flickered on. “I mean it. At least tonight.”
“I will.”
“I need to go,” he said.
“I know.” She looked hard into his eyes again. First one, then the other. He wanted to ask her again was she really all right, but he didn’t. He’d get this thing taken care of tonight, get whoever he needed to—likely Paul—hauled in and processed for the thefts and arson. After that, he’d call. Make sure she stayed all right.
“There’ll be other nights,” he said.
She looked down past his waist and nodded. Then she shut the door.
29
BELLY DOWN ON THE BRUSHY EMBANKMENT by Evelyn Mueller’s mobile home, Rick watched and waited for that backdoor son of a bitch Paul to show up on Rick’s own front porch. Rick hadn’t meant to bring the shotgun. Once it was clear Dell Junior’s streaks and Anna wouldn’t stay put in the pickup, he’d meant to leave the gun in the rack. But he kept it safe off to one side. Anna lay on the other. Meanwhile, Dell Junior zigged and zagged all over the place. Kept saying over and over again in a low, twangy buzz like a mouth harp but deeper: hambone-hambone-hambone-hambone. Irritating. Didn’t make any sense. Drove Rick about nuts.
Dell Junior could’ve taken a lesson from Anna. She was cranky, all right, but she was quiet. Rick told her they had to be real quiet to surprise Uncle Paul. She’d had to pee once, and he’d shimmied with her down the hill a ways. He’d shown her how to go outside best he could. He got her to squat so the stream went downhill and didn’t get on her shoes. If she’d been a boy, it would’ve been a father-son moment. But it was the sort of thing a girl’s mother should’ve shown her. How to pee outside. There had to be some trick to it he didn’t know.
A streak of Dell Junior’s striped shoulder flew through the edge of Rick’s vision. Rick swatted. Told him to shush. Anna swatted, too, giggling. Rick told her to shush. He wished Mom were here, but she didn’t seem to be. He’d bet Mom could give a good honk, shut Dell Junior the hell up.
Anna said she was thirsty. Soon, Rick told her. She was quiet again. They waited. She scratched and fidgeted in the grass. When he heard tires rolling down the main road, Rick put a hand on Anna’s back. She stilled.
The long front end of a police cruiser, a Fury, pulled past the edge of Evelyn Mueller’s trailer. The cop. The same cop that was at Mom’s place earlier. He parked, went up the steps, and knocked. He came back down and circled the trailer. The hose. He’d see the pieces of hose Rick had left when he cut the tube for siphoning. The cop went back up the steps and beat the door. He yelled out Pam’s name. Then he said who he was. Said he was a sheriff’s deputy. He said she needed to answer the door. He kept pounding.
What was he yelling Pam’s name for? Wasn’t he looking for Rick?
Rick saw her. Not the whole of her. Only her knee. It bent white and thin from inside the trailer. His blood pumped hot through his limbs. His whole body hurt. Felt sick with his own blood. It was all he could do to stay put.
Anna asked if it was a policeman. Rick nodded. He put a finger to his mouth. She whispered, asked why Mama called the policeman.
Rick thought hard. Why would Pam call the policeman?
Of course. Rick would be damned. Rick would be goddamn. That was it.
Pam called the cops. Because Anna was missing. Of course she did. But why hadn’t she said anything on the phone, then? Why’d she lie about Anna being there when she wasn’t?
Dell Junior’s shirtsleeve swept through Rick’s line of sight and hambone-hamboned.
Rick swatted. Shushed him. Anna swatted, too, but didn’t giggle.
Dell Junior. The shit with Mom being missing. That was why Pam didn’t say anything. She knew what it’d do to Rick. What it’d do to him if Anna went missing, too. Pam couldn’t put him through that. She’d been protecting him.
The sick ache of pumping blood lightened a touch, then a touch more. And then that feeling like light radiating through him came again. She’d fucked up. Pam had fucked up, and that’d have to be dealt with. But something was there still, on her part. She still felt something for him. Which meant there was something to salvage.
He wanted to stand right up. He wanted to call over and wave. Show them that, here—Anna was right here. Anna was fine. Pam had fucked his brother, but everything was going to turn out fine. He could almost march down there, squeeze Pam off her feet till her back cracked. But there was that damn siphoning hose. And Paul’s stolen truck. Rick would wait.
What Pam and the cop said was too low for him to hear, which seemed impossible. Everything else was so loud. Loud like the chug of an engine. The rattle of siding and skirting.
The van. He heard the van. It passed on the highway behind him. Down on the other side of the embankment. He waited for it to slow and make the turn into the court. He waited for the roll of tires on the main road and held his breath. The sound didn’t come. But it’d been Paul, all right. Rick knew the sound of his own van. It’d been headed east. Rick would deal with him in a bit. Right now he’d focus on that bare knee in the doorway.
It’d disappeared. Pam’s knee. Rick blinked. The knee was gone. His heart stuttered. The door was closed. She hadn’t disappeared. She’d only closed the door.
The cop walked to his cruiser. He made a U-turn and headed back to the main road. Rick held Anna low to the ground until he was sure the cop was gone. Then Rick stood.
Let’s go, he told Anna. Change of plan. They’d surprise Uncle Paul later. Right now, they’d go surprise Mama. Anna asked if she could say surprise. Like a party. Like on TV. He said sure. Sure, she could yell surprise. He could’ve yelled it himself right now. He took Anna’s hand tight in his own. Too tight, Anna whimpered, and he tried to loosen his hold a bit. He remembered the shotgun and bent, grabbed it. They walked down the embankment. Dell Junior streaked to and fro like he was cele- brat
ing. Like he was fireworks. Streaks of light. The sky was deepening blue, the stars starting to shine. Rick felt weightless. Pam had fucked up. And that’d be dealt with. But there was something more important now. Something he could salvage.
The door was locked. Good. She’d finally figured out she needed to lock the damn door.
30
PAM WAS AT THE HALLWAY’S EDGE when the work boots clomped heavy up the steps. The van hadn’t pulled up. She would’ve heard the van pull up, the shudder and rattle when he shut the thing off. It hadn’t pulled up. But those were his boots. Those were his boots on their way inside, where Anna wasn’t. And Pam still couldn’t be sure whether or not Paul had told Rick about Harley. Even if he hadn’t, even if Rick knew nothing about her having an affair or her leaving Anna at Gordon’s that day, he was sure to find out once he called the cops to say Anna was gone. And none of it would play in Pam’s favor.
Her purse was loaded with the change she’d dumped from their “savings account,” the old Butter-Nut can by the bed. Mostly nickels. A lot of pennies. The strap skidded down the bend of her elbow to her wrist, where she clenched the tied-off end of a pillowcase. She’d stuffed it with two changes of clothes, her birth control, some tampons, a toothbrush, a motel soap, and the knife shaped like a machete. The blade was so dull it hardly sliced through meat loaf, but it looked intimidating. She hadn’t even needed to wrap it in one of the towels that were no good for anything else, but she had.
The knob clicked twice—back, forth.
Before the key scraped the lock, she slipped from her sandals, snatched them up, and moved soundlessly down the hall to the back door.
They’d never used the back door once Rick finished putting up paneling, so there were no stairs. She opened it and dropped her things to the dirt. His boots crossed the floor at the trailer’s other end. He called her name.
She sat, then slid down, bare foot landing on a nest of burrs. She gritted her teeth, reached up, and pushed the bottom edge of the door as far as she could with her fingertips. She balanced on one foot and pinched two burrs from the thin skin of her arch. She stepped into her shoes and gathered up her things. The bags whispered against the weeds.
She hadn’t relocked the door behind her. He might not notice. She slipped around to the trailer’s short end and flattened her back against the skirting and siding. She steadied her breath, the hammering in her chest. He called her name.
The plan was to drive till the Nova ran out of gas. Get as close to the interstate as she could. When the tank dried up, she’d hitch a ride east to Chicago or west to Cheyenne or south to a place with a name like Nacogdoches or Tishomingo or Natchez. She’d say she had a sister there. Some family emergency. And if she had to ride with a trucker, she’d keep one hand in the pillowcase, fingers folded around the wood handle of that knife.
Her big brass P key ring had shifted in her pocket when she made the jump down from the back door. It dug into her groin.
If she started the Nova now, he’d come running out and want to know what was going on. He’d want to know where Anna was, and Pam would have to say why she was carrying a pillowcase full of toiletries and a knife shaped like a machete and why she’d dumped all the pennies and nickels from the Butter-Nut can into her purse. He’d run back inside and call the cops, call Harley, and that’d be the end of it. That right there would be the end of everything.
No. She wouldn’t have to tell him anything. She’d start the Nova, he’d come running out, and she’d gun it.
She felt his steps at her back. They vibrated through the thin wall, through the insulation, through the siding molded to look like clapboard. She heard the knob of the back door turn. As it sighed open, she darted around the front of the trailer toward the car, toward the road.
Surprise!
Anna’s yell, the squeal that followed, knocked the wind from Pam’s stomach. She stopped cold, not ten paces from the Nova’s door. Anna stood on the landing, hands cupped over her mouth with excitement.
Surprise, Mama, she said again, this time a little annoyed Pam hadn’t reacted the way she should’ve.
Pam stood where she was, purse heavy in one hand, pillowcase dangling from the other. She closed her open mouth. It’d gone dry. Her head was light. Dizzy. Like the whole world had tilted.
Behind Anna, past the open storm door that swung loose against the railing, he surfaced from the dark pit of the trailer entrance. He stepped into the light of the lamppost.
He looked wrong. The shape of his limbs, the worn and patched jeans streaked with silver swaths of roof coating, the now-thick Fu Manchu in a sea of stubble—those were all Rick’s. She understood they were his. But nothing else was right. She couldn’t put this body and Rick together.
His T-shirt and jeans sagged. His weather-worn skin looked drained of blood so the tan was a yellow cast. His lips were too pale. His shags of hair whipped out every which way in sharp-ended coils and his eyes weren’t his eyes. They were wild, glassy. There’d been a time she hadn’t known Rick’s eyes. When all she saw in them was that yearning and need and that mystique that’d course through her. Those eyes hadn’t looked like these.
He had a shotgun. The barrel tipped out and up at the sky at an angle. His finger rested across the double trigger. Not on the guard.
“Surprise, Mama,” he said, like he was choked up. Like he was a soldier just come home from a war.
They were waiting, he and Anna, for her reaction. For her to speak. She said the only thing she could think of, the only thing that came to her. “Surprise.” It was barely loud enough for her to hear.
He took Anna’s hand, said, “Come on, now,” like none of this was a big deal. He said it like this was any other moment, like they were headed to a drive-in or a visit to Babe and Red’s place. He patiently led her down the first step.
Pam wished her own legs to move. To carry her the short distance to the car. But her joints fused in place. She didn’t know what this meant. She didn’t know what any of this added up to. Rick, Anna, they’d been gone. Pam had been about to be gone. But now they were all here again and he looked as crazy as she felt except he had a gun.
When he stood right in front of her, he spoke. “I know,” he said. “What you did.”
The van wasn’t anywhere. That was right. She hadn’t heard it pull up. But he was here. Had he been out here the whole time? When Harley came by? He must’ve pieced it together. Or Paul told him. Maybe Rick had been the one who was there last night. The one who’d pulled in behind the Jensen place.
“Okay.” Her voice scraped against her throat.
“We’ve just got to make things right.” He was measured, like he was holding back. She couldn’t tell what.
“Okay.” She sucked a breath and searched his eyes. For something familiar enough to make her feel her legs again. To root her feet to the dirt beneath her. Even if it was the misery and need that always wrung her out, that always reminded her of that barn cat at her folks’ place who’d lain splayed on the hay and dirt while Pam thumbed the cooling strip of fur between his ears. He’d stared up, body limp, eyes fixed on her with some need he couldn’t say. Some need she couldn’t do shit about.
She’d take that. She’d take that look right now if it meant she could feel her legs again. But that look wasn’t there. She didn’t know what was.
For the first time, he glanced down and saw the pillowcase.
“Some clothes,” she said. “Soap. Tampons.” If he knew, he knew. Maybe he’d see it was no use. Maybe he’d say, Well, go on, then, I guess. Be on your way. Get.
Rick nodded. She couldn’t tell if what she’d said had registered. She couldn’t tell what he’d made of it, if anything at all. He swatted at the air in front of him, at some moth or gnat Pam couldn’t see. The gun slipped against his side, double barrel falling dead even with her chest. “We just got to make it right,” he said again and propped the stock in the bend of his elbow. He looked down at Anna and back up at Pam. “Come on, no
w,” he said again, voice too gentle. He gestured with the shotgun, nudged its aim in the direction of the far hill, between the trailers.
She didn’t try to run. She didn’t know if she needed to. She walked ahead of him, bags heavy, shoulders sagging with their weight. Every few steps, the smooth metal barrel brushed the thin hairs of her arm. A hard beat pulsed through her chest and her back. She couldn’t tell if the beat was from her feet landing against the dirt or from her heart pumping. As they passed Evelyn Mueller’s place, a memory nagged at her till she remembered. It was a time Babe told her about a man forced to dig his own grave before he was murdered. It was in the paper. “Can you imagine?” Babe had asked.
Pam thought she could. She thought she could imagine the weight of the shovel, the grain of the handle in her palms and fingers, the rise and pinch of blisters as the smell of parting soil brought on a flood of small, forgotten things. But if that was what was happening here, if Pam was being led to her own grave, it was nothing like the dread and the weight and the flood of memories she’d imagined. What was happening here was nothing momentous. It was matter-of-fact. Pam supposed that made sense. She supposed it made sense that the brain had a switch. That it turned itself off, let the body be just body when things got to be too much.
When they reached Paul’s pickup, parked up on the road closest to the highway, she didn’t ask why Rick had it. She glanced in the ridged pickup bed for a spade. There was nothing. The three of them walked around to the passenger side first, where he opened the door for Anna and helped her in. Pam was next. He shut the door, rounded the front end, and got in the driver’s side.
The gun was propped between his legs, aimed toward his forehead and the ceiling. She didn’t tell him to move it. He did anyway, so it was pinned between his leg and the driver’s-side door. He swatted the air again, at the space between his face and the steering wheel. “Yeah, all right,” he said, pinched, irritated. She didn’t know who he’d said it to.
Pickard County Atlas Page 20