Night Shift(99)

He flipped the sides of the blanket over the body and scooped it up, hating the thick, dead weight of it. It tried to make a U in his arms and slither through his grasp. He clutched it tighter and they walked back to the T-Bird.

'Open the trunk,' he grunted.

The trunk was full of travel stuff, suitcases and souvenirs. Vicky shifted most of it into the back seat and Burt slipped the body into the made space and slammed the trunk lid down. A sigh of relief escaped him.

Vicky was standing by the driver's side door, still holding the cased rifle.

'Just put it in the back and get in.'

He looked at his watch and saw only fifteen minutes had passed. It seemed like hours.

'What about the suitcase?' she asked.

He trotted back down the road to where it stood on the white line, like the focal point in an Impressionist painting. He picked it up by its tattered handle and paused for a moment. He had a strong sensation of being watched. It was a feeling he had read about in books, mostly cheap fiction, and he had always doubted its reality. Now he didn't. It was as if there were people in the corn, maybe a lot of them, coldly estimating whether the woman could get the gun out of the case and use it before they could grab him, drag him into the shady rows, cut his throat -Heart beating thickly, he ran back to the car, pulled the keys out of the trunk lock, and got in.

Vicky was crying again. Burt got them moving, and before a minute had passed, he could no longer pick out the spot where it had happened in the rear-view mirror.

'What did you say the next town was?' he asked.

'Oh.' She bent over the road atlas again. 'Gatlin. We should be there in ten minutes.'

'Does it look big enough to have a police station?'

'No. It's just a dot.'

'Maybe there's a constable.'

They drove in silence for a while. They passed a silo on the left. Nothing else but corn. Nothing passed them going the other way, not even a farm truck.

'Have we passed anything since we got off the turnpike, Vicky?'

She thought about it. 'A car and a tractor. At that intersection.'

'No, since we got on this road, Route 17.'

'No.I don't think we have.' Earlier this might have been the preface to some cutting remark. Now she only stared out of her half of the windshield at the unrolling road and the endless dotted line.

'Vicky? Could you open the suitcase?'

'Do you think it might matter?'

'Don't know. It might.'

While she picked at the knots (her face was set in a peculiar way - expressionless but tight-mouthed - that Burt remembered his mother wearing when she pulled the innards out of the Sunday chicken), Burt turned on the radio again.

The pop station they had been listening to was almost obliterated in static and Burt switched, running the red marker slowly down the dial. Farm reports. Buck Owens. Tammy Wynette. All distant, nearly distorted into babble. Then, near the end of the dial, one single word blared out of the speaker, so loud and clear that the lips which uttered it might have been directly beneath the grill of the dashboard speaker.

'ATONEMENT!'

this voice bellowed. Burt made a surprised grunting sound. Vicky jumped.

'ONLY BY THE BLOOD OF THE LAMB ARE WE

SAVED' the voice roared, and Burt hurriedly turned the sound down. This station was close, all right. So close that yes, there it was. Poking out of the corn at the horizon, a spidery red tripod against the blue. The radio tower. 'Atonement is the word, brothers 'n' sisters,' the voice told them, dropping to a more conversational pitch. In the background, off-mike, voices murmured amen. 'There's some that thinks it's okay to get out in the world, as if you could work and walk in the world without being smirched by the world. Now is that what the word of God teaches us?'

Off-mike but still loud: 'No!'

'HOLY JESUS!'

the evangelist shouted, and now the words came in a powerful, pumping cadence, almost as compelling as a driving rock-and-roll beat: 'When they gonna know that way is death? When they gonna know that the wages of the world are paid on the other side? Huh? Huh? The Lord has said there's many mansions in His house. But there's no room for the fornicator. No room for the coveter. No room for the defiler of the corn. No room for the hommasexshul. No room -Vicky snapped it off. 'That drivel makes me sick.' 'What did he say?' Burt asked her. 'What did he say about corn?'

'I didn't hear it.' She was picking at the second clothesline knot.

'He said something about corn. I know he did.'

'I got it!' Vicky said, and the suitcase fell open in her lap. They were passing a sign that said: GATLIN 5 MI. DRIVE CAREFULLY PROTECT OUR CHILDREN. The sign had been put up by the Elks. There were .22 bullet holes in it.

'Socks,' Vicky said. 'Two pairs of pants. . . a shirt. . . a belt. . . a string tie with a -' She held it up, showing him the peeling gilt neck clasp. 'Who's that?'

Burt glanced at it. 'Hopalong Cassidy, I think.'

'Oh.' She put it back. She was crying again.

After a moment, Burt said: 'Did anything strike you funny about that radio sermon?'

'No.I heard enough of that stuff as a kid to last me for ever. I told you about it.'

'Didn't you think he sounded kind of young? That preacher?'