Desperation Road(44)

She told him to go to the interstate. She kept the pistol down but pointed at him while they passed through the lights of Delaware Avenue. At the interstate he asked her which way and she looked left and then right and she said that way and pointed north. Russell turned north onto I-55 and she stayed turned on him with the child between them. No one spoke as they drove up past Brookhaven and he noticed the way she handled the pistol. Carelessly. A flimsy grip. And when he caught her looking away from him and out the window he reached over and snatched it out of her hand.

“Give that back,” Maben said.

“Sure thing,” he said and he held it in his left hand between his leg and the truck door.

She slumped back in her seat and then she leaned forward and put her head down on her arm on the dashboard.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll take you wherever within reason.”

“Where we going?” the girl asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “Where we going?”

Maben sat up and wiped at her eyes. “I don’t care,” she said.

“What the hell kind of trouble you in?”

She didn’t answer.

“Pretty big stretch from mopping the floor to holding a gun on a stranger in the parking lot. All in the same night.”

She still didn’t talk.

“Where we going, Momma?”

She didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know what to think. There had been years and years of this. Years of not knowing where she was going or what she was doing or the names of the people she was doing it with. Some of those years blacked out and some too fresh. The bruises and hungry days. The waking up naked in musty rooms with no lightbulb and no money and no idea of the name of the town. The man in Slidell with the convertible and the rehab in New Orleans where they strapped her to the bed for two days until the hallucinations were gone and the man in Mobile with the wad of cash and the strategy for beating blackjack. The man in Natchez with the cockfighting pit in the backyard and the good stuff from the guy with the piercings that led to the bad stuff from the guy with the piercings. Always believing the next step would be better. Always winding up in a tighter squeeze. And now the squeeze held two of them. She looked down at the child and she had opened a book across her lap though it was too dark to read.

Russell lit a cigarette and cracked his window. He offered Maben one and she took it.

“You want one?” he asked the girl but she turned up her nose. Then he asked her what her name was but the woman told her not to answer.

“Don’t nobody need names,” she said.

“No names. No direction,” he said.

“We got a direction. We’re going north.”

“No destination then.”

“You can let us out whenever you want,” she said. “But you got to give me that pistol back. I didn’t mean nothing. Just needed a ride right then. I can pay you for it.”

“How much?”

“Not much.”

“What you running from?”

“Yeah,” said Annalee. “I liked it there.”

Maben took the book from Annalee’s lap and closed it. The girl moaned and reached for it but Maben told her to wait a minute.

“You got to tell me something first,” she said.

“What?” the girl answered.

“When that woman put our clothes away what’d she say when she found the gun?”

“I don’t know.”

“You got to think. Were you sitting there?”

“Yes’m.”

“Then think. What’d she say?”

The child put her finger to her chin and looked out the windshield. She bent her mouth.

“She said what the hell.”

“And what else?”

“Nothing. She asked where we got it and I said it was my momma’s. But I ain’t never seen it before.”

“You told her that?”

“I said I ain’t never seen it before.”

“Then what?”

“Then she took it and went on. She looked funny.”

Russell listened. It wasn’t difficult to figure out that something had come upon them that they hadn’t been expecting. The woman had the look of someone who might have been used to it but there was concern in her voice. He had heard the sound from men who knew what tomorrow would bring and knew there was nothing they could do about it.

They came upon a rest area and Russell pulled off without asking and Maben didn’t oppose. White streetlights lit the parking lot. A brick building of restrooms to the right. A pavilion and picnic tables to the left. A woman walked her dog in the grass around the pavilion and a group of motorcycles were parked in front of the restrooms and men and women in leather stood around the bikes smoking. Vending machines lined against the wall of the bathroom building and above the vending machines a round clock that read 10:05.

Russell parked close to the bikes. Killed the engine. Touched the cut on his forehead.

“I’m hungry,” the child said.

Maben opened her door and got out and the child climbed down after her. Maben gave her two dollars and told her to go get something. Then she sat back down in the truck with her leg swinging out.

Russell picked up the pistol and turned it in his hands. “This is a nice piece,” he said.