Desperation Road(46)

“Can I have that book back?” the girl asked. Maben handed it to her. Away from the lights of the rest area there was only dark ahead of them as the lightning from the coming storm flashed in the night sky behind.





30


THEY DROVE NORTH ON I-55. AROUND MIDNIGHT THEY PASSED through Jackson and he turned east on I-20. Once they were out of the city lights and back into empty miles of interstate the child put her head in her mother’s lap and went to sleep. Russell rolled the window down halfway and tossed out the bullets. After miles and miles of quiet and after she was sure the child wouldn’t be listening Maben said you have to promise you won’t tell nobody. Her voice was close to a whisper. Her eyes ahead on the headlights.

“Tell nobody what?”

“What I’m about to tell you.”

He had been thinking that he was glad she hadn’t told him. He had been thinking that he was better off that way. That soon he would put them out somewhere and drive on back and forget about it. I got enough to think about already. Don’t ask her anything else. Just drive. He had been thinking that he was glad he never had a kid. He looked at Annalee and wondered if she had ever been to school.

“There was a sheriff man killed,” she said.

Jesus Christ, he thought. Jesus Christ almighty. You were right, you son of a bitch. You could’ve shut her up but you let her keep talking and Jesus Christ almighty. Russell twisted the steering wheel in his hands as if to wrench what she had said back into her mouth but there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it now and still he wrenched harder and harder. She could have said anything. A crazyass boyfriend or money she owed or he would have even taken that she had kidnapped the little girl. Anything.

“I heard about it,” he said.

“This is his gun.”

She then stopped. More miles passed on.

“You can put us out wherever,” she said.

“I know.”

“It probably ain’t gonna matter anyway.”

“I imagine there’s a lot of people looking for that thing,” he said.

“Then I guess you see why I’m running off with it. I guess you see what somebody might think if they found me with it.”

“I can guess that.”

“And I bet you think you know something right now. But you don’t.”

“I didn’t say I knew anything. I’m driving.”

They came upon the exit for Forest and he said he had to get gas. He turned off and stopped at a gas station and filled up. Maben sat still and the girl didn’t wake. When he was done he paid inside and he came out with a new pack of cigarettes and beer. He drove back onto the interstate and he opened a beer and set it between his legs. Then he opened another and handed it to her.

“You don’t look like a killer to me,” he said.

“That’s because I’m not.”

“I been around some. Killers, that is. And worse. Killers aren’t even the worst. But I know what they look like. They look like they mean it. You don’t look like you mean it.”

“I don’t see how you can mean or not mean something you didn’t do.”

“Yeah. I don’t reckon you can.”

“And I don’t see what’s worse than being a killer.”

He looked over at her. “You know what’s worse,” he said. “There’s plenty worse.”

She brushed the child’s hair away from her face. Stroked her pink cheek. She didn’t answer him. She didn’t have to. They drank their beers and drove on. They were close to Meridian when she began talking again. Explaining what had happened. How she and the girl had walked and walked to that truck stop and how they’d gotten a room and felt like people for a little while. How he’d found her in the parking lot and how he’d taken her off and what he’d made her do and that he’d called his buddies to come on and do it too and how it seemed like he was gonna make a few dollars from it and how he didn’t believe her when she said that her kid was back there and how she believed that was gonna be the end of it. That they were going to do things to her that she didn’t want them to do until dawn and then she was going to sit in jail and she didn’t have any money to get out and the girl would be found and gone and even though I said I wish I woulda never had her I don’t mean it. And how she didn’t think about it much she just saw the pistol and she did it and that it seemed like something that hadn’t really happened but that it had and she knew no matter what she explained to the people who mattered, no one would believe her over a dead man in a uniform. She kept her voice low while she talked but he could tell she wanted to scream.

“Bad shit happens to good people,” he said when she was done.

“Nah. I ain’t a good person. Bad shit happens to everybody,” she said. “I wish to God it’d take a break when you’re trying, though.”

The lights of Meridian glowed ahead in the night sky. But before they reached the city limits sign, Russell turned south on I-59.

“You got to tell me one thing,” he said. “Why are you holding on to that gun? That thing can bury you.”

She stared out into the faint highway light. “If there was one thing that could do you in wouldn’t you want to know where it is?”