Desperation Road(75)
He finished the milk shake as he drove back to town. The house he was painting was in his neighborhood and he stopped in front and admired his work. A little sloppy on the window frames but nothing that couldn’t be scraped. Solid work on the trim. Nothing splattered on the roof as far as he could tell. He had planned to come back and put in another hour or two but the milk shake had weighed him down and he decided it could wait. He needed to stall some anyway until he could find another house to start on.
He put the truck in drive and he rode around town and like he did in nearly every empty moment he thought about Boyd. He had passed him on the road a couple of times and they had exchanged waves but that had been it. Sometimes at night as he lay awake he felt guilty over what he had asked Boyd to do. That if anything ever came about all the risk belonged to his old friend. But then he thought of Maben out in that black and silent country with her eyes shut and there was nothing to do but hope there would never be another word about it. He had heard something about the sheriff winding up retired after frustration with the case had reached beyond his limits and that seemed as good an omen as there was.
Still, something remained unsettled within him. As if it would be lazy and irresponsible to have a day pass without uncertainty. He only slept in intervals and when he did sleep his dreams put him back into that cell and some nights the visions were so real that when he woke he felt the same anxiety he had felt every morning when the sounds of men and steel had awakened him. But in his dreams he never left his cell and he was alone in the prison and the light was always gray and there was always the sound of a woman’s voice calling out for him and he was never able to determine the direction that it came from. A woman’s voice filled with anguish and calling his name on some nights but on the worst nights of the dream the voice was ghostly. A moaning in the dark. Echoing through the walls of an empty prison and he never knew if she was there to help him or if he was supposed to be helping her and then he would wake in a panic.
As he moved along the familiar streets he thought about the dream and he thought about Boyd and he imagined a day when they would all be sitting together at his father’s place and a row of cars with sirens on the top would come up the driveway. He lit a cigarette and propped his arm in the open window. Thought maybe he’d drive back out to his dad’s and get an early start on the bourbon this evening. Sit on the porch and watch the day die away and watch the evening fall across the land like a blanket covering it for the night. Minutes later he turned into his father’s driveway and let off the gas and rolled across the gravel, hoping to see what they were doing before they noticed him.
He rolled on to the house and he found the four of them together in the backyard. Annalee and Mitchell and Consuela standing. Maben sitting in the chair next to them. The sheet was gone from the statue and they each held a corner end of it, flapping the sheet up and down and making a white wave. Russell got out of the truck and walked toward them and stopped. Annalee saw him and called out to him. Come on, she said. We got room for you. He stood still and watched them and then he noticed the Virgin Mary. The sun was low in the reddening sky behind her and her shadow stretched toward them. He thought that she seemed to be leaning their way, her outstretched arms wide enough for them all. As if to say, Come here and let me hold you.