The Law of Moses(55)

“So you’re going to Levan. And I’m coming with you.” Tag stood as if it was already decided.

“Tag . . .”

“Mo.”

“I don’t want you to come.”

“This is the town you terrorized. Right?”

“I didn’t terrorize anyone,” I argued.

“When they talk about painting the town, I don’t think you were quite what they had in mind, Moses.”

I laughed, in spite of myself.

“I have to go with you to make sure they don’t run you out with pitchforks.”

“What if she won’t talk to me?”

“Then you might have to settle in there for a while. Follow her around until she does. She was pretty persistent with you, it seems like. How many times did you turn her away? How many times did she keep coming back?”

“I still have my grandmother’s house. It’s not like I don’t have anywhere to go or any reason to be there. I’ve paid the property taxes on it all these years.”

“You need some moral support. I’ll pull a Rocky Balboa and train with tractor tires and chickens for a couple of days. If Levan is anything like Sanpete, they have plenty of both.”





Moses




WE PULLED OFF THE INTERSTATE just outside of Nephi and exited onto the old highway that connected Nephi to Levan. The Ridge is what it was called. Just a two lane stretch of nothing with fields stretching out on either side. We passed the Circle A with its big red sign sticking up high enough to be seen above the overpass and a mile down the freeway, telling truckers and weary drivers that there was relief in sight.

“Go back, Moses.”

I shot him a questioning look.

“I want to see it. It was there, wasn’t it?”

“Molly?”

“Yeah. Molly. I want to see the overpass.”

I didn’t argue, though I didn’t know what there was to see. My picture was long gone, covered and forgotten. So was Molly. Long gone. Covered and forgotten. But Tag hadn’t forgotten.

I turned around and found the dirt road that shimmied through the field, came out behind the overpass, and continued up into the hills. There were still broken beer bottles and fast food wrappers. A broken CD player that had probably been there for a while, considering the make and model, lay abandoned on its side, wires protruding from the missing speaker. I didn’t want glass in my tires and pulled off in the barrow pit a little ways off, just like I’d done that night so long ago. It was the same time of year and everything. It was the same kind of October—unseasonably warm, but predictably beautiful. The leaves were a hot riot on the lower hills and the sky was so blue I wanted to reach up and capture the color with my paint brush. But that night it had been dark. That night Georgia had followed me. That night I’d lost my head and maybe something else too.

Tag picked his way through the debris and just kept walking out into the field where the dogs must have canvased, noses to the ground. He stopped once and looked around, eyeing the hills, judging the distance to the freeway, measuring the length between the overpass and the back of the businesses that crowded the on and off ramps, trying to make sense of something that made no sense at all.

I turned away and walked to the cement walls that held the freeway on her shoulders. There were two sides, one slanting right, one slanting left, and I leaned back against the side still exposed to the sun, closed my eyes, and felt the warmth seep into my skin.



Wait! Please, please, please don’t keep walking away from me!” she cried in frustration. I could hear the tears in her voice and the fear too. She was afraid of me, but she still came after me. She still came after me. The thought made me stumble, it made me stop. And I turned, letting her catch me. And I caught her too, wrapping my arms around her so tight that the space between us became space around us, space above us, but not space inside us. I felt the drumming, the pounding beneath the softness of her breasts, and my heart raced to match it. I opened her mouth under mine, needing to see the colors, to feel them lick and climb up my throat and behind my eyes like flames from a signal flare. I kissed her lips over and over, until there were no secrets. Not hers, not mine. Not Molly’s. There was just heat and light and color. And I couldn’t stop. I didn’t want to stop. Her skin was like silk and her sighs like satin, and I couldn’t look away from the pleasure on her face or the pleas in her hands that urged me onward.

Georgia’s hair, Georgia’s mouth, Georgia’s skin, Georgia’s eyes, Georgia’s long, long legs.

Georgia’s love, Georgia’s trust, Georgia’s faith, Georgia’s cries, Georgia’s long, long wait.

And then the cries of passion became something else. There was sorrow in the sound. And there were tears. Georgia was bent over with them, doubled over. And her hair streamed around her like the water falling from her eyes and wailing from her mouth, and her long, long legs were no longer around me but beneath her, kneeling, supplicating, and she cried, and cried, and cried…



I opened my eyes and sat upright, unsure of what had been my own memory or something else entirely. I felt sick and disoriented, almost like I’d dozed too long and gotten a touch of heat stroke. I rubbed at my neck with clammy hands. But it couldn’t have been that long. Tag still wandered around in the field, looking for a sign that led to absolution or a road to reasons why. I winced at the setting sun and turned back toward the concrete wall to give him time to discover there was no such thing as either one.