Desperation Road(70)
“That might be a fair way to put it. Like soul mates. But between bad souls.”
“Bad?”
“Maybe bad ain’t the right word. Sometimes I don’t know what word is right.”
They drove on. The back roads like a shelter.
“Even if they figure it out I won’t say nothing about you helping me.”
He shifted in his seat. “You’ll do whatever you got to do.”
“I mean it. I won’t say nothing.”
“Okay.”
“I won’t. I just wanted you to know.”
“Okay.”
He stayed out among the stars for a little longer and then he drove back into town. She didn’t talk anymore. And neither did he.
47
WHEN LARRY TURNED ONTO RUSSELL’S STREET HE DIDN’T SEE THE Ford and that was what he wanted. He parked a block away and then he walked to the house with a beer in one hand and a crowbar in the other. He stumbled with the uneven sidewalk. Stumbled off the curb and dropped the beer and he kicked it across the street. But then he gathered himself and he walked on carefully. When he reached Russell’s house he went around to the back door and turned the knob. It was locked and then he pushed at the bedroom window and it seemed to give. He wedged the end of the crowbar underneath and he lifted and the window raised. One leg in the window and then the rest of him and he sat down on the bed. He didn’t turn on any lights and he sat still with the crowbar across his lap. If he would have slid the heel of his new boots back six inches he would have bumped the barrel of the shotgun.
The longer he sat still the more he realized he was alone. For whatever reason he was alone and he didn’t envision a future that would be any different and then the booze and the emptiness bled together and he began to cry. And as he cried his thoughts weren’t filled with faces or voices or any of the memories of a life but with the image of sitting at the bottom of an empty well and looking up at the circle of light. Reaching for a rope that was out of reach. He cried like a man who was out of faith and he didn’t try to stop himself and he was glad that there was no one to see him or to hear him. He laid the crowbar on the bed and he walked around in the dark bedroom, pulling at his hair and crying like the forsaken and stomping in a circle and kicking at anything that interrupted his pacing and in the streaks that ran from his face and down his neck he began to feel a cleansing, a release, an answer, a promise and he raged on and on, crying and wailing and stomping. Forcing it out of his body as if there were a holiness to be achieved. He stomped around the room and heaved and then he clenched his jaw and growled and raised both fists and shook them at the God he didn’t want to know.
He then opened his hands. Touched his fingertips to his damp cheeks and his damp neck. He bent over and felt as if he might vomit and thought how good that might feel but he raised back up and he extended his arms and palms toward the ceiling and screamed a muffled scream with his teeth clenched as if not quite ready to fully release the hell burning inside.
He walked back over to the bed and picked up the crowbar and sat down. A loaded Beretta was underneath the passenger seat of his truck but he did not want the power of the clean and the crisp. He stared at the wall and his blood surged and in the shadows he felt it all. His young brother Jason ripped away from him and the son he could not see and his ex-wife dismissing him with a wave of a hand. The joke he had become to Heather and everyone who knew the shit that she did and even now Walt turning his back on him. The final betrayal. And that motherfucker Russell free and clear. His hands sweating around the iron bar and his jaw clamped tight and then he heard the Ford pull into the driveway and he knew that he was ready and he was going to make it hurt and hurt and hurt.
He stood and moved into the small hallway and then slid into the bathroom doorway as he heard the front door unlocking. The door opened and a light came on in the living room and he couldn’t tell if they were the steps of one or the steps of two but he heard something coming his way and he squeezed the crowbar and he imagined right where Russell’s forehead would be. And when the steps made it to the edge of the bathroom he was already beginning to swing and he saw that it wasn’t what he was after but it was too late and he hit a woman in the side of the head and she dropped.
He paused drunk and confused and Russell flew at him as Larry stood over the fallen body. Russell tackled him back toward the bedroom and the crowbar clanged on the floor as the two men went flying. Russell got his hands around his throat but Larry was able to pry them away and Russell took a head butt to the nose and then another and they rolled across the room, hands clawing at the eyes and mouth and throat of the other and Larry was able to get to his knees first and he got Russell by the hair and thrust his head back against the wall in three quick knocks but Russell sent a sharp elbow into his stomach and pulled away from him and they hurried to their feet. Larry went for the crowbar and expected to be grabbed or pulled but he made it to the hallway and picked it up and then turned around to see Russell lying on the floor next to the bed. Reaching underneath and snatching out the shotgun and Larry had only half a second to be surprised before he heard the blast and felt the sting and the searing hot pain in his chest. He stumbled back, falling over the motionless woman and dropping the crowbar and then getting to his knees and crawling for the door as another blast sounded and splintered his hand reaching to open the door.