The Bourbon Thief(41)
As much as Levi hated to leave a perfectly good car behind, he had to admit she made a point. A baby blue Triumph Spitfire wasn’t something you saw every day. His blue ’72 Ford F-100 was one of a million on the roads. Nothing special about it at all.
“You really think your mother’s going to send a search party after us?”
“I think my mother would send the whole army if she could.”
Tamara didn’t smile when she said it.
So they left the car.
Levi loved his truck, but as soon as Tamara was in it, sitting all prim and proper in her white dress on the striped gray seats, he felt a little ashamed of it. She’d traded in a sports car for this? He ought to have cleaned it up a little more. Tamara didn’t seem to mind it, though. Most girls didn’t when he stopped and thought about how many pairs of panties he’d hung from that rearview mirror.
But Tamara wasn’t a girl he picked up in a bar and never saw again the next day. Tamara was his wife, and he did not anticipate her having any desire to spend her wedding night in a truck bed. Not that he was going to fuck her anytime soon. Seventeen years old? A virgin to boot? He’d rather fuck a hornet’s nest. At least only the one part of him would get stung.
“So...” Levi said, casually as he could. “Where we staying tonight? And tomorrow night? And all the nights thereafter? Hotel?” he asked. “Motel? Rent a cabin in the woods? Riverboat? Steamship? Buy plane tickets and keep flying?”
“I know somewhere we can go to save money,” Tamara said. “In case things take longer than Judge Headley says they will.”
“Judge Headley. He is your father. You gonna call him Judge Headley all your life?”
“I don’t know how to think of him as my father. You ever going to call Granddaddy your father?”
“George Maddox is dead. Judge Headley’s still alive. You could tell him.”
“And ruin his life? He’s married, you know. He was married when Momma got pregnant with me.”
“He doesn’t seem like the sort of man who’d cheat on his wife. Even drunk.”
“I don’t think you can judge a man after knowing him an hour. I don’t think you can judge a man after knowing him sixteen years.”
Levi glanced over at Tamara, felt a pang of sympathy for her.
“Your granddaddy sure gave us the shock of our lives, didn’t he?” Levi asked.
Tamara looked at him, startled.
“You know, because he’s my father,” Levi said, surprised by her surprise. “You think you know someone...”
“I thought I knew Granddaddy. And Momma. I wish I didn’t know them.”
“You really hate her, don’t you?”
Tamara turned her face to the falling rain.
“You don’t even know the half of it.”
They drove the rest of the way in silence, Tamara’s head resting against the window. Levi focused on driving, dodging rain-choked potholes and Kentucky drivers who acted like they’d never seen water before. The slap-slap of the windshield wipers lulled him into deep thought. He hadn’t meant to hurt her by telling her to back off the wedding-night talk. He didn’t want to tell her he already regretted marrying her. It wasn’t personal. It wasn’t that he didn’t want her. He did want her and two nights ago he’d have pushed her over a bourbon barrel and fucked her blind had she let him. But two nights ago they weren’t married and he hadn’t been thinking with his brain.
The simple fact of the matter that Levi could not deny was that he knew as soon as he touched her he couldn’t walk from this...this whatever it was. This marriage. This scheme of Tamara’s. He was adrift on a river, no boat, no paddle, and he could not see what was ahead. Tamara was supposed to be the one with the wedding-night jitters, not him.
“Is this it?” Tamara asked as he turned down the long gravel drive to Andre and Gloria’s house.
“It is.” He paused a moment. “Andre and Gloria are black. You should know that if you don’t already.”
“I assumed so. I hope they like me.”
It was a sweet thing to say and Levi smiled at it.
“Don’t worry about it. I don’t like you, and I still married you.”
Tamara gave him the meanest look he’d ever seen on a pretty girl’s face.
“Be polite. Say ‘yes, ma’am’ and ‘yes, sir.’ Compliment Gloria’s cooking. Don’t ask Andre about the scar on his arm. He got it in the war. And whatever you do, don’t swear or use the Lord’s name in vain. Gloria’s very religious. She doesn’t like it. Washed my mouth out with soap more times than I can count.”
“I don’t swear. You swear.”
“I don’t swear around Aunt Glory. You don’t, either.”
“I do know how to behave in polite company. It’ll be nice to be in it again.”
“You’re as rotten as ever, Rotten.”
“More rotten than ever,” she said. Levi believed it.
He eased the truck up the drive, watching Tamara out of the corner of his eye. He’d been prepared to despise Tamara if she put one toe out of line around his aunt and uncle, if she treated them like anything less than they were, which were the best people in his life and about the only real family he had left. Now he repented of those cold thoughts. Tamara was a seventeen-year-old girl married to a thirty-year-old man. She was swimming in deep waters and the last thing he should do was tie a millstone around her ankle. He parked in front of the house, helped her out of the truck, opened the umbrella and took her inside without knocking.