The Bourbon Thief(44)
“I’m fine,” he said. “Nothing broken, only bruised.”
“You sure you don’t need a doctor?”
“I’m sure.”
“You can eat?”
“I can eat. But we’re not staying here. We need to get to a hotel or something where your mother can’t find us. This could have gone very bad. I can’t get Gloria and Andre in trouble.”
They should probably leave the state tonight. They could make it to Indiana or Ohio easy. Ohio cops would laugh it right off if Virginia Maddox told them to go fetch and carry for her.
“Can you handle a long drive?” Tamara asked. “A few hours tonight and then all day tomorrow?”
“Why?” he asked as he pulled himself together enough to walk up the porch steps and into the house.
“Because I told you I know a place where we can go. Somewhere nobody will find us. Somewhere no one will look,” Tamara said.
“Where is it?” he asked. Her eyes glinted like sunlight on water, ever changing. She didn’t smile.
“Do you trust me at all?”
“More than I did ten minutes ago.”
“Then trust me, we should go there.”
“Where is there?”
“A place my mother doesn’t even know exists.”
Levi nodded.
“Sounds like the best place on earth.”
15
Paris
“What aren’t you telling me?” Cooper McQueen asked.
“Why, whatever do you mean?” Paris looked wounded, innocent. He didn’t buy it for a second.
“There’s something you aren’t telling me that you should tell me, and you should tell me right now.”
“Mr. McQueen, what I’m not telling you could fill up a bourbon barrel.”
“I want to know who you are. I want to know why you’re really here.”
“Why do you think I’m telling you this story?”
“To torture me.”
“Ah, well...” she said with a smile. “I suppose a girl can have more than one reason for keeping you up all night.” She leaned forward and rested her chin on her hand, her elbow on her knee. “Are you scared?”
“Scared? Of you?”
“Of what I’m telling you? Are you scared of this story?”
“Should I be?”
“What’s your biggest fear?” she asked.
“Wasting my life,” he said, surprised the answer had come to him so readily. “What if everything I’ve done has been for nothing? What if all this—” he waved his hand to indicate the room, the house, the fortune he’d inherited and earned “—is worthless?”
“Well, then, yes,” she said, and he hated the smile she gave him. It was the smile of a woman winning a contest where he didn’t even know the rules and winner took all and loser lost everything. “You should be scared of this story.”
“Keep talking,” he said. “I’m not scared.”
“I’ll keep talking. Then you will be.”
16
Veritas
All Tamara told him was to drive south on I-95. And it wasn’t until three hours into the trip that she revealed they were heading to South Carolina.
“Of course we are,” he said.
“Is that bad?” she asked, pointing to the interstate sign. He knew they’d been heading south, but he hadn’t known they were going that south.
“You have any idea how much Klan is in the Carolinas?”
“The Klan? Like the KKK?”
“You know any other Klan?”
“I didn’t...” She looked at him, panic-stricken. He laughed again, not quite with her, but not at her, either.
“It’s all right. I mean, it’s not right, but there’s Klan in Kentucky, too. But do me a favor and don’t tell anybody your husband’s passing, and I should make it out with my head still attached to my spine.”
“It’s 1980, not 1880.”
“It’s not 1980 down here. Trust me. Time passes a lot slower down here.” The sad thing was black people were the only people he trusted and yet they were the people he’d have to avoid lest someone pick up on the truth of him and Tamara. But what was the truth? The one-drop rule had never made any sense to him. If one drop of black blood made you black, why didn’t one drop of white blood make you white? And hadn’t anyone noticed yet that everybody’s blood was red? But such questions of logic didn’t occur to the sort of men who thought putting on white sheets, calling themselves wizards, of all the stupid ignorant things, and hanging black men from trees were appropriate Christian activities akin to church potlucks and baptizing sinners in the river.
“If it helps, there aren’t any people where we’re going,” Tamara said.
“What is this place? A desert island?”
“It’s not a desert,” she said.
“But it is an island?” Levi asked.
“It is. A pretty one where we can be alone and hide out. Nobody will bother us.”
“Sounds like Fantasy Island. Is some little guy going to greet us and offer to make our dreams come true?”