Desperation Road(42)

“You’re not supposed to be here,” she said.

“I know,” he said and he took a slow step toward her.

“I mean it, Larry. You need to go on.”

“I just thought I’d see how you were doing.”

“It’s late.”

“He here?”

She looked around him and out into the dark as if something or someone else might be out there.

“Course he’s here. He’s sleeping. Like I was,” she said.

Off in the woods surrounding the house something howled as if it were hurt. His head turned and followed the sound.

“What do you want, Larry?” she said.

“You think I could just go in there and talk to him a minute?”

“No, Larry. God no.”

“Only a minute, Dana. I swear.”

“You been drinking?”

“Some.”

“You need to go on.”

He knew that every cop and court in Kentwood agreed with her and he knew that he had earned it. Even standing there drunk he knew it. He couldn’t see his boy and he wasn’t supposed to be within so many feet of her and he didn’t argue that it was his own doing. It had been a long time since that had been decided and he hadn’t forgotten. But he had driven down ignoring it and hoped she might do the same but he saw that she was as strong as ever.

“I heard you getting married,” he said.

She nodded.

“Think you really want to again?”

“You did.”

“That’s why I’m asking. Just cause it’s somebody new don’t mean it’s any good.”

“I’m gonna try anyway.”

“Can’t be no worse, huh?” he said.

“If that’s what you want to say.”

He swayed and had to catch himself from falling.

“I’m going inside and you need to go. Right now. Don’t take this no further.”

“Is he playing Little League this summer?”

“He’s too old for Little League now.”

“Already? Shit.”

Larry whispered something to himself. Made an X in the dirt with the heel of his boot.

“Can I go in and look? I won’t say nothing. Just go look at him for a second.”

“Hell no.”

“Is he getting tall?”

“You wouldn’t be able to tell it if he was. He lays down when he sleeps.”

“Goddamn it, Dana. I know that. Is he getting tall or not?”

She folded her arms tightly. “Yes. He’s tall. Now go home. I’m not saying it again. Go on home,” she said. She looked at him like she used to look at him when she wanted him to be better and then she went in the door. Locks clicked and the light went off over the door and then the light went off in her bedroom and he could feel her watching him. Waiting for him to go. That thing howled again. Sounded like it might be for the last time. He walked to his truck and backed out of the driveway and waited to turn on his headlights until he was out on the road.

He was often filled with a serenity as he drove alone on backcountry roads in the late recesses of the night, the empty roads and the feeling of being separated from the things that lived where the streetlights lived. But that serenity was just as often shattered and scattered into the darkest corners of the countryside as he was overpowered by the thoughts of the things that he hated—the wife that had been and the boy he couldn’t see and the wife he had now and the men who tasted her and the dead who were gone and the living who would return. And then he would rage against the most striking object of his hate and he would look into the rearview mirror and see that object staring back at him and it was easy to hate the other things but it was always the most crippling to hate himself and it was in the most vile and the drunkest moments of self-inspection that he knew that one day he was going to kill Russell Gaines for killing Jason. And as time went on, the morning light had done less and less to rid him of this revelation.

He drove back into Mississippi, drifting from lane to lane without realizing it but making it home. He went into the house and stumbled and fell in the hallway and then he got up and he found the bedroom door locked. Open this goddamn door. He knocked loudly once and then she opened the door. He grabbed her in the dark and pulled at whatever she had on and then he fell on top of her on the bed and he tried as hard as he could to disgust her.





29


MABEN PUSHED ON THE FRONT DOOR OF THE SHELTER, EXPECTING to find it locked and hoping that the woman didn’t ask for a password as nobody had given her one. But it was open and she walked in tired but satisfied with the fortysomething dollars she had made and more satisfied that Sims had said she could come back and do it again. No one was at the front counter and the light was on in the office but the office door was shut. There was a glass window on the door with a mostly closed blind but between the slivers Maben could see the young black woman from the night before sitting at a desk talking on the telephone. She walked to the back of the building where she found Annalee sitting on her cot with her legs crossed Indian-style. The Little Red Hen was open across her lap and she was doing her best to read it.

“Hey, baby,” Maben said and the child looked up and smiled at her.

Maben sat down next to her and asked her what she had been doing all night but before Annalee could answer Maben saw that the garbage bag was not under her cot where she had left it. She hopped up and looked under the child’s cot and it was not there and it was not under the dresser. A duffel bag was tucked at the foot of the cot and Maben snatched it and shook it at the girl.