The Bourbon Thief(45)

“I thought I already did that for you,” Tamara said. “Your own stables. Your own horses. You remember?”

“Yeah, I remember,” he said, trying not to sigh.

Good dream if it did come true. He only hoped he’d live long enough to enjoy it.

Levi didn’t tell Tamara he was too hurt to sleep, so he drove on through the night, using the pain in his ribs to keep himself awake. At about four in the morning he was worn-out enough to sleep. He pulled over at a rest stop, locked the doors, rolled up the windows and lay back to rest a couple hours.

Dawn and his bladder woke him up too soon, and he found Tamara lying on her side in the fetal position, her naked feet pressed against his thigh. She looked too young in this light, like a half-grown kid using his suit jacket for a makeshift pillow with her skinny knees pulled up against her chest.

Levi rubbed her bare leg gently and whispered Tamara’s name.

“Levi?” she said, her eyes still closed.

“I’m about to start driving again. You better run to the bathroom if you need it.”

“I don’t need it.” She closed her eyes again and seemed to drift back to sleep. But then she spoke again.

“Levi?”

“What is it?”

“Thanks for marrying me.”

Levi only looked at her a moment, at his little girl half-asleep and all out of her mind.

“You’re welcome, Rotten.”

“Were you scared?” she asked, still sounding like she hadn’t woken up yet.

“When?”

“When those cops beat you up.”

“Nah. I kind of liked it. Getting the shit kicked out of me for messing around with a white girl? Most black I ever felt. I should get some kind of merit badge or certificate of authenticity now.”

“You’re joking. I know you didn’t like it.”

“Yeah, I know, too.” Levi tried to swallow the fear. It stuck in his throat. “I make jokes when I’m scared.”

“You make jokes all the time.”

“I’m scared all the time.”

“I’ll protect you,” Tamara said. He would have teased her, except the way she said it...he almost believed her.

“I bet you will,” he said, and Tamara didn’t answer. She’d fallen back to sleep.

Levi drove for a couple hours until they took a long stop in Asheville, North Carolina, for lunch and clothes shopping for Tamara. She hadn’t packed a suitcase, had nothing on her but the clothes on her back and her purse full of money—two thousand dollars in cash. That made him nervous, but he’d be more nervous if she hadn’t had it. Levi didn’t buy anything. He always kept a few changes of clothes and a spare pair of boots at Andre and Gloria’s and he’d brought all that with him in Andre’s old army duffel. It wasn’t much of a honeymoon they were on, but it wasn’t much of a marriage, either.

“Look at that,” Tamara said.

Levi glanced out the window. A Confederate flag, the old stars and bars, hung proudly from the porch of a bleached wood shack with a tin roof.

“Told ya so,” Levi said.

Tamara shook her head and sighed. “Ignorant,” she said.

“That’s what Mom always said. She’d see something like that and pray, ‘Forgive them, Lord, for they know not what they do.’”

“A good prayer.”

“Yeah, but...they know what they do. They know.”

Levi hit the gas and drove on, getting as far away from the house and the flag as fast as he could. Not even a jet engine would be fast enough for him. Not even a rocket engine.

Tamara played navigator with the road atlas and directions on her lap. She did a good job because it wasn’t too long before they passed a sign that said Welcome to Beaufort.

“According to the directions, we’re real close,” she said, peering down at the map on her lap. Levi glanced at it, too—well, not at the map so much as her legs. She had on her new short shorts she’d bought that morning and a loose cotton blouse.

“How far?”

“Twenty more miles about to the island. Twenty miles and four bridges.”

“So what is this place?”

“Bride Island,” she said, putting the atlas aside.

“Never heard of it.”

“It’s not on the map under that name. They say that’s what the locals call it.”

“Are you sure it exists?”

“I’m sure. I got directions from someone down here.”

“Who?” he asked as he took the exit that pointed to the Sea Islands. He saw a hand-painted sign that read Jesus is Lord of the Lowcountry and one right after that that said Fresh Tomatoes.

“Someone Daddy knew.”

“How do you know he knew him?” Levi asked as they drove past the first pink house he’d ever seen in his life. Solid pink but for the white trim, and then another house farther on that was yellow as the sun. After that a pale green house and another that was sky blue. Then a white house with an orange clay roof. And the trees were something else. Ivy coated the tree trunks and Spanish moss hung down from the branches, brown and hoary as an old man’s beard. And palm trees. Skinny tall ones that looked like green cotton balls on top. Short squat ones with trunks like fat pineapples.