Desperation Road(64)
“I don’t have it anymore,” he said. And he eased back away from her and her arms fell at her side.
He could see in her eyes that she didn’t believe him but she didn’t ask again and she didn’t accuse. There was a shriek from the smallest child and Sarah snapped to as if she had been released from a spell. She turned from Russell and took another paper towel and dabbed at her eyes. Dabbed at her nose. She breathed fragmented breaths and then she turned to him again. Managed to pull it together. And then she touched her hand to his chest and she unlocked the door and stepped out.
He locked the door again. Leaned on the sink with his back to the mirror. He hoped that no one would knock on the door and they didn’t as he listened and waited until the family was gone. And when they were gone he came out of the bathroom and paid his check and he walked out of the café.
He walked on down the street to a pawn shop and he showed them the ring and he got about a third of what he remembered paying for it and then he walked a couple of blocks to the Armadillo and he sat down and asked for a beer. When he was done he drove back to his house and he put the money from the ring between two plates in the kitchen cabinet and then he drove out to his dad’s place. Maben remained sleeping and the rest of them remained fishing though there was not much light left. He sat down on the back porch and lit a cigarette and looked across the place. Wishing for rain. Wishing for something. Trying to believe there’d be an end.
43
HE STOOD IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD AT THE PRECISE SPOT where only four days ago they had found Clint lying facedown in front of his cruiser in a maroon pool of his own blood. Boyd’s hands rested on his gun belt as he looked down at the spot and then he looked up and down the road. Across the fields. Into the trees.
Nothing. Which is exactly what he had gotten from the woman at the shelter about Maben. A skinny white girl with a little kid. A girl. But hell we get those in and out of here regularly.
His stomach growled and he patted his belly and shook his head at the girth that kept adding up while he kept swearing to take it off and then he looked at his badge. He unpinned the silver star and he held it out in front of him and examined it as if he were thinking about buying it. The sun was hidden behind a cloud and there was no shine on the badge and he held it to his mouth and breathed hot air onto it and rubbed it on his shirt. Then he pinned it back above his name tag on the left side of his chest and he let out a sigh.
It was a small department and Boyd had heard things. Couldn’t help but hear things. Couldn’t much tell what was fact and what was fiction and he figured most of it fell somewhere in between but he had heard a lot more about the new guy than he had wanted to hear. Heard he likes the liberty of the badge if you know what I mean. Heard he likes to cross down into Louisiana from time to time to some old house back in some old hills and give his money to halfdressed, halfdrunk women who give him what he’s paid for. Heard he likes the late shifts because you can get away with more if you know what I mean. He’d heard it. Nothing that put an X on him for anything in particular. But enough to make Boyd stand there now and ask the question. What the hell was he doing out here in the middle of the night?
And then he applied the same question to Russell.
Boyd knelt down and picked up a pebble from the patchy pavement and he tossed it into the brush off the road. He wondered if their guy had asked for it. Wondered if this was the first or tenth or fiftieth time he’d ended up in this spot. This spot away from everything and everyone and nothing but the sky to see what you’re doing.
Don’t matter what he was doing, he thought. He’s dead and he’s one of us. It was hard to get past that one. Hard for Boyd not to imagine himself making the news in the same way someday. Deputy shot and killed. For apparently no good reason. Funeral to be held on Friday. Survived by a wife and two sons.
He walked back to his cruiser and thought about his boys. Thought about Lacey. He got in and called the office. Said he was done for the day. He then took a phone from his shirt pocket and he called Lacey and asked her if she was hungry and when she said yes he told her he’d swing by and pick her up. We’re going out.
They lived a couple of streets from the high school and he drove by the football field. His boys were there doing the same summer workouts he had once dreaded. Boyd parked but kept it running and he looked for his boys in the wave of shirtless bodies going up and down and up and down the aluminum bleachers, the clanging of a hundred feet echoing like steel drums. The oldest one had to be there and the youngest one didn’t. But he wouldn’t be outdone and no coach was going to tell him not to work out if he wanted. Boyd picked them out. Their bodies and heads slick with sweat. All of them slick with sweat. A different set of bodies from the year before and the year before but yet somehow the same. Somehow the same boys running the same bleachers and sweating the same sweat and breathing the same heavy air. It was easy for Boyd to imagine himself running with them. Up and down and up and down until you didn’t think you had anything left and then you went up and down again. Feeling the hurt and the exuberance and the strength and the weakness all in the same moment wound together like the spirals of a rope. He sat and watched and it could have been twenty years ago. It could have been twenty years from now. He rubbed at the muscles in his thighs. Could almost feel the burning. Wanted to get out and drop his gun belt and rip off his shirt and head across the field and go up and down and up and down with them. Wanted to but couldn’t.