Desperation Road(21)
He walked out past a man and a woman holding hands. The man nodded to him and then the blond man put his hand into the pocket of his creased pants and took out his car keys. He turned the corner and walked a block to the parking lot that was next to the railroad tracks. It was darker there, no streetlight, only the faint glow floating over from the streets behind him. His shadow disappeared as he hurried to the car.
The footsteps came in a hurry and when he turned and saw the two men rushing toward him he wondered where they had come from. He tried to speak but didn’t have time and they were on him like a storm. His nose broken with the first fist and he fell back across the hood of a car and they held him there and he took blow after blow to his head and face. He tried to cover up but they were stronger and relentless and they held his arms with ease and the pain from his nose like a sword shoved into his brain and he felt himself losing consciousness. When he was nearly gone one man pinned his arms to the hood of the car while the other spread his legs and punched him over and over and over in the dick as if to make sure it understood that you do not go into another man’s wife. The blood ran over his face and neck and the four fists that had been pounding him were covered in the same blood. He couldn’t move and he was at the edge of consciousness flat on the hood of a car.
The brothers stepped back and looked around and a handful more people had left the bar and were walking toward the parking lot. Larry wiped his nose on the back of his hand and checked for his own blood where he had gotten in the way of the fist of his brother. Let’s go, Walt said. Here comes somebody.
Larry reached into his back pocket and pulled out an envelope that held the photographs of the bleeding man having a good time with Heather. He shoved the envelope down the front of the man’s pants. Leaned close to his face and listened to him reaching for breath and he squeezed the man’s bloody cheeks into a pucker and said that’s what you get when you fuck with me.
The men hurried away across the blackest end of the parking lot. They climbed in the truck and drove a block and a half and stopped. Watched. Two women going to their car saw the busted blond man and a faint scream came out of the dark. The women hurried back to the Armadillo and Larry and Walt waited until Heather came out to see what was going on. She was out first and her friends followed her to the corner and across the street and they turned into shadows as they passed between the parked cars. Larry imagined them gathering around the punished man and none of them knowing what to do and the errant look in her eyes as she found her toy broken across the hood of a car. He smirked at himself in the rearview mirror and then turned his eyes back toward the parking lot where he could not hear Heather telling her friends to help him up and get him in the car. Could not see them struggling with his limp body and asking if they should call the cops and Heather saying are you deaf I said just get him in the damn car. He could not see them or hear them but he knew that when she finally got him somewhere and wiped the blond man’s blood from her hands and from her dress and found the photographs down in the place she knew so well, she would then understand that it was her turn to crawl.
15
RUSSELL TURNED THE TRUCK RADIO TO AN OLDIES STATION AND the Temptations were playing and Caroline rolled her arms and clapped her hands like she’d seen them do on television. The windows were down and her hair spray wouldn’t hold in the wind but she didn’t complain. Russell enjoyed the show and considered clapping with her but didn’t think he should let go of the steering wheel. She swayed front and back and side to side and her dress clung to her like Saran wrap and she tried to sing but didn’t know the words so she stuck to the choreography. When the song was over she picked up a rubber band that she found on the floorboard and used it to pull her hair back in a ponytail. She kicked off her shoes and set them on the seat with her purse and cigarettes.
She’s older out here, Russell thought. Thirty-five, maybe less in the bar. Forty or more in the streetlight. At a red light he noticed the same freckles across her nose and under her eyes that were scattered across her shoulders. Some of the freckles were lost in the creases at the edges of her eyes. But her curves hadn’t changed in the light and that was all he cared about.
She had asked to go to Russell’s place but he said no and they were on the way to her house. They drove along Delaware Avenue. There was little traffic but for the fast food joints and the night air was lighter after a brief evening rain. They drove on until Delaware reached the interstate and then they passed over the bridge and made their way out of town, passing car dealerships and then wooded lots decorated with oversize FOR SALE signs. Caroline calmed and watched out the window and Russell watched her as if she might disappear, unsure if God was actually going to let him be this lucky. In another half mile the house lights appeared back off the highway. Long driveways separating the houses from the bother of the passersby. Caroline pointed and said right up there and the truck slowed and turned right. Four small identical houses sat together at the corners of a flat square of new black asphalt. Each had the same white vinyl siding, the same green shutters, the same red front door, the same chimney sticking up from the same side of the roof. He stopped in the middle.
“Guess which one.”
Russell looked around. “That one. With the pink flamingo.”
“Jackass,” she said.
“You look like a woman who would have a pink flamingo.”