BOOK TWENTY-FOUR: DOWN
227. Before leaving Omaha, I dialed. . . .
Before leaving Omaha, I dialed Selva and Adrian’s number from a convenience store on Dodge Street. Adrian picked up the phone on the other end. “Hello?” There was something unsteady, something anxious in his tone.
“Deposit one dollar and seventy-five cents, please,” chirped the operator. I began thumbing coins into the slot, one quarter at a time. As I did so, I heard Adrian again. “Hello? Hello?”
“Adrian, I think you know me,” I said once the operator got off the line. “May I speak to Selva, please?”
There was a shocked silence at the other end. Finally, Adrian said in a choked voice, “I don’t know where she is,” and hung up.
Though I might have gotten the same answer had she been at home, the tension in his first “Hello?” made me suspect him of telling the truth. I quickly replaced the receiver and got back into Julia’s car, driving a couple of blocks before pulling off onto a side street to stop and think. Selva had gone someplace; Adrian didn’t know where. Could she be trying to find me? Did she have a plan? Was this the beginning of the outlaw life we’d joked about? My mind clicked off the possibilities like a wheel-of-fortune spinning out the numbers. First we would need a plane, I had once said. Selva had replied, I know where we can steal one.
She’d gone to her parents’, then. Or if she hadn’t, I didn’t know where she was any more than Adrian. I had one last afternoon to kill; Julia’s car seemed to run all right. I decided to chance the hundred-mile drive to Parade.
As I headed out West Dodge, I grinned at the happy prospect of getting airborne. By flying low, by stopping at county airports to refuel, we could hopscotch across Colorado and New Mexico down to southern Arizona, with Sonora just across the border and Baja California an hour away. Prime dope-running country. I’d make plenty of hard cash as a rogue pilot, with Selva flying copilot by my side. We’d have starry nights in the desert, with occasional sprees in Hermosillo to spend the money we made.
Like Butch Cassidy and all those other dead people who never learned Spanish.
By the time I turned north toward Fremont, the taste of ashes was in my mouth. The problem with the dope-running scheme was Selva. A fair-skinned and independent-minded Anglo girl whose beauty caught men’s eyes like the morning star would be a death certificate for whoever accompanied her. The marijuana brokers I’d be forced to work for were a jittery lot at best; at their worst and most professional, they’d be gangsters. To carry Selva among them would be like going to work each day with a white-phosphorus grenade strapped to my thigh. Nor was I the physical type to pull this off; to put it in animal terms, I had more coyote than wolf in me, and I’d be up against pumas and grizzly bears. It was a recipe for a short and bitter life, leaving the woman I loved best in ungentle hands.
I skirted the town of Fremont in a state of gloom and pushed on to the north and west. The thought of grizzlies brought forward the Alaska alternative. If I could somehow obtain enough false I. D., I could fly the North as a bush pilot or oilfield hack. False papers were an obstacle, but not an insurmountable one. The real obstacle, once again, would be Selva. She loathed the extremes of temperature; in summer she got headaches from the humidity, and she complained all winter of cold hands and chilly feet. I felt certain she would not tolerate the climate of Alaska.
In sum, I had nothing new to say to her. Yet I kept on driving doggedly north and west. If I didn’t have much to gain, I had nothing to lose. I could talk to her one last hour before the curtain fell.
(blank line)
228. I’d left Omaha. . . .
I’d left Omaha at about twelve-thirty; I first saw the water tower of Parade a little after two p.m. I had only been to the Andersen place once, so it took me a bit of driving around to find it. I remembered a turn onto a second highway, and once I got started on the road leading south from town, it wasn’t long until I saw a windsock and aircraft parts in the weeds.
I pulled into the yard of the gaunt and shabby farmhouse to the accompaniment of yodeling coonhounds. To my surprise, Selva marched right out, carrying a suitcase as if she’d been waiting for a taxi. She jerked open the rear door of the wagon, threw in the suitcase, and then got in beside me.
“Well, let’s go,” she said angrily.
Silently, with a happy lift of the heart, I swung the car in a half circle and pulled back out onto the highway. There was nothing in that junk-littered farmyard to attract me.
“Nice to see you,” I ventured after a minute or two of driving.
“Oh, shut up,” she said. “You have to take me back to Lincoln.”
I stopped the car in the driveway of a country cemetery. Some farmer with a welder had built an arch: “Greenview,” it said. I reached across and turned her face toward mine.
“What’s in Lincoln? Maybe I don’t want to go there,” I said.
Selva began to cry. “Oh, Jonas,” she said. “If only you were free, I might go with you. But I can’t.”
“My beautiful one, I am still at liberty,” I replied. “I am alive and kicking, as you see me.”
“Sure. You’re alive and kicking. You’re likely to get twenty years in the penitentiary, too. Do you know what I’ll look like in twenty years, Jonas?” She licked a tear from her chin. “I’ll look like my mother.”
“I haven’t seen your mother. Does she have green eyes?” I asked.
Selva took a tissue from her sleeve and blew her nose. “Drive,” she said. “Damn you.”
I slid across to try to kiss her, but I could’ve been kissing a marble statue in the rain. I desisted and pulled out onto the highway, heading south more or less in the direction of Columbus, an industrial town between Omaha and Grand Island on Highway 30. “So what in the world did you think you were doing in Parade?” I asked finally.
“I thought I was leaving Adrian,” she replied. “Since Julia was busy, and you were running the country God knows where, I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go. I don’t have a lot of friends, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“You could’ve gone to Leonard Strange and Barbara Justman’s.”
“That’s one place in Lincoln where Adrian would’ve been sure to look for me.”
The highway ran through cornfields, passing from one small town, one set of grain elevators, to another. “I haven’t eaten,” I said. “If I stop at one of these drive-in places, will you go inside and order something for me?”
“Of course,” she said.
In the next town we came to, I pulled in under the awning of an outdoor cafe. Selva went up to the window and ordered onion rings, potato salad, and a milkshake. She got nothing for herself. “It’s hard to eat healthy food when you’re on the run,” I said while we were waiting. “Nothing but grease and white bread. It’s as bad as trucking.”
“Why did you start eating vegetarian?” Selva asked.
“You would, too, if you’d helped cut a man up and package him.”
While I was eating, I found out that she’d reached Parade by bus, arriving only an hour before I got there myself. One hour at home had been enough to make up her mind. Her mentioning the word “bus” brought forth my version of Julia’s “accident.” Selva was astonished. “You mean,” she said, “you don’t know if she’s dead or alive, and you’re here with me?”
“I couldn’t stick around,” I said. “Brenda and Alex drove up with the cops behind them. I’d be in the slammer by now.”
“I wish you were,” she said. “It’s the safest place for you.”
I finished eating and we drove on south again. To tell the truth, I was dawdling. We passed a creek with an inviting grove of cottonwoods. “If I was convinced you were completely heartless,” Selva said, “I might hire you to kill Adrian instead of going back to him. He’s made me that angry.”
“What’s Adrian done?” I asked.
“Oh, Jonas! It’s worse than you can imagine.”
“He fucks snakes,” I said. “I always thought he had a snaky look about him.”
“Please don’t try to make a joke of this,” she said. “Adrian is a spy. A fink. A rat. An agent provocateur.”
“No!” I glanced at her in the passenger seat, pale and grim. “How’d you find this out?” I asked.
“When Adrian got back from Atlanta, he was furious with me. He accused me of having an affair with Dexter Coffey,” Selva said. “Dexter! Not that Dex is unattractive, but it just hadn’t crossed my mind. I was pretty amazed, I can tell you.”
“It’s not uncommon for a lover to be paranoid,” I said. “I guess that goes for husbands, too.”
“This went beyond paranoia, Jonas. He said he had proof. I demanded to know what it was. At first he wouldn’t tell me; then he said that a friend of his had seen Dexter coming out of our apartment at two a.m. What friend? I asked. Once again, he wouldn’t say.”
“That must’ve been the night Dex and I came over,” I said. “Last Monday, I think it was.”
“That’s right, Jonas,” Selva said. “Now tell me: who watches our apartment at two a.m.?”
“Mattie Halliday,” I said. “That woman is everywhere.”
“Who else?” Selva replied. “Remember, Adrian knew Dex had been there before he even got off the plane.”
I remembered the unmarked white Ford. “The cops,” I said. “That night, when I walked back to Casey’s to get my truck, your stakeout followed me.”
“Bingo,” Selva said.
I drove on in silence, pondering. “You know,” I said, “that doesn’t mean Adrian is in cahoots. They could’ve told him about Dex out of malice.”
“He’s in cahoots, Jonas,” Selva said. “I made him admit it.” She choked up for a moment; I waited for her to finish. “I knocked him down,” she said finally. “I held a pillow over his face and sat on it. I said I’d smother him if he didn’t confess.”
I glanced across at her satin-clad arms, her thin hands folded primly in her lap. “You?” I said. “No.”
The first hint of a smile crossed her pale lips. “I can be a wildcat, Jonas,” she said. “I was crazy mad. I was out of my mind.” She looked at me and shrugged. “It’s a highly empowering feeling, smothering your husband. Every girl should try it.”
We rode on together quietly. “So Adrian is the informer,” I said. “You thought it was me.”
“Be fair, Jonas,” Selva said. “Some of them may have thought so. To me, you seemed too— I don’t know.” She glanced in my direction. “Transparent. Everyone knew you were lying about Viet Nam. Being a pilot, not being one, whatever you said. Everyone knew it was b.s. If you’re that bad a liar, how can you be an informer? Everyone would know that, too.”
“When I said I was a pilot, I told the truth. I flew combat missions with napalm. I’m one of those baby burners.”
“I don’t think you could burn a baby, Jonas,” Selva said. “You have a kind heart. You should’ve spoken out about the war.”
We passed a collection of pastel boxes under the trees. Houses. Church, bar, gas station and convenience store, post office. It could have been any town. “Why are you going back to Adrian?” I asked.
“Because I married him,” Selva said. “Because he loves me.”
“In his twisted way.”
She gave me a full look. “You love me,” she said. “In your twisted way.”
“But I have no future.”
“You have one,” she said. “Gray walls are your future.”
“What color are your walls? What color is that suburban house in Atlanta? It’s bigger than those houses back there, but it’s still nothing but a box.” Up ahead, I saw a tree beside the road: I gunned the engine, and the station wagon responded. “Suppose I hit that tree,” I said. “I’ll show you no fucking future.”
“Don’t, Jonas,” Selva said wearily. “You can’t scare me just now. I’m not in the mood to feel frightened.”
I drove on, letting the tree go past. “Promise me you’ll write to me in prison,” I said.
“I won’t write you, Jonas,” Selva said. “I’ll be having babies and learning to play golf.”
“I hate golf,” I said. “I’ll kill you if you ever play a round of golf.”
“I’ll name the first boy Benedict Arnold,” Selva said, “just to remind his father what a scum he is.”
(blank line)
229. We entered the flat. . . .
We entered the flat landscape that extends for miles on either side of the Platte River. We bumped along unhappily, mostly silent. The air conditioner didn’t work, and because the car was designed with air conditioning, the vents were inadequate. Selva, from the look of her, felt miserable; I was merely hot. We left the Platte valley and passed through rolling hills. I turned southward toward the little town of Valparaiso.
“Want to go swimming?”
Selva glanced at me and smiled. “I wish,” she said.
“We could stop there, anyway,” I said. “I’m in no hurry to get back to Lincoln.”
“The mosquitoes drove us out last time,” Selva said. “They probably will again.”
We flew through Valparaiso in an eyeblink, and I began to watch for the turnoff to the little lake. “There’s a town in Nebraska named Tarnov,” I said. “I like the idea of an intersection known as the Tarnov turnoff.”
“I almost didn’t get that,” Selva said. “You’re too weird.”
I found the little lake in due time. The entrance was unchained, it being late afternoon on a Sunday, and a number of cars were scattered among the picnic tables. On the ramp where we had parked my truck, a man and his son were loading a boat behind an International Travelall. The smell of charcoal lighter filled the air. “It’s busy,” I said. “No skinny-dipping today.”
“I like it better this way,” Selva said. “I’m still a little nervous about being alone with you.”
“I’m always nervous with you,” I said. “Anywhere. Any time. You make my palms sweat.”
“I do not make your palms sweat,” Selva said. “That’s just something they do.”
We found a parking space and got out of the car. “I wish we’d brought potato chips,” I said. “We’d look more picnicky.”
“Let’s walk around the lake,” Selva said. “Maybe those mosquitoes are asleep.”
We followed a fishermen’s path along the shore. The lake was crowded, the water and shoreline muddy. Deer flies pestered us, but the mosquitoes were not too bold. Selva made me go ahead of her, I suppose to prevent me from looking at her ass. I had her figure pretty well memorized. “That was a transcendent moment in my life,” I said.
“What?”
“Seeing you in the water.”
We found a log where we could sit and look out at the lake. “What do you think will be our legacy?” Selva asked.
“Yours and mine? Nothing,” I said.
“I mean our generation’s. We’ve made a little progress, don’t you think?”
“I don’t believe in progress,” I said. “Mentally, you and I are no different from cave men. Cave persons, I meant to say.”
“But, there,” Selva said. “You did say persons, even if you meant it sarcastically. That’s progress.”
“For you,” I said. “Not such a milestone for me.”
“I think the Republicans are finished,” Selva said after a pause.
“Adrian’s a Republican,” I said. “I bet he turns out to be a rigid little prick when you get to know him.”
“There’s something to be said for a rigid prick,” Selva replied brokenly. I glanced across to see that she was weeping. “My position is not a delightful one,” she said. “I hate going back to a traitor. But I feel I have to.”
“You could go with me,” I said.
“Where?”
I’d have given a million dollars for an answer.
“Jonas,” Selva said, “life continues. I have to have faith in that. Most of my life up to now was pretty terrible, but the last two years haven’t been. It was exciting to be a part of the Movement. Maybe we did some good. You have a hard time coming ahead of you, but you’ll get through it. There are things you can do in prison: read, write. You’ll have more opportunity to study than I will, probably.”
“I don’t want to study,” I said. “I want to kiss your damn cold little titties while the sky falls.”
“It won’t fall,” Selva said. “That’s the trouble with it.”
She went on. “What does it mean to want to kiss a woman’s breasts, Jonas? Sexual passion baffles me because I don’t experience it. I like sex well enough, considering, but if I’m to be honest, I get more out of masturbating. I love Adrian—it’s my misfortune, maybe—but I don’t feel desire and jealousy the way you do. Can you describe it for me, what you feel?”
“Wow.” I took a breath. “Well, to begin with, I’ve had my share of passion, but I never fell in love until I met you. So we’re discussing two different animals here. In the second place, you should ask a woman, because there might be differences. Having said all that—- May I look at you?”
“Who’s stopping you?”
I turned to gaze at her. Almost immediately, moisture filled my eyes. Her image began to blur and waver; at the same time, a sort of halo appeared around it. “For one thing,” I said, “I can never actually see you. It’s like looking at a mirage.
“I can guess, if I think about it, that you’ve had a terrible day. Last night you had the fight of your life with Adrian; today you’ve had a bus ride, spent an hour sitting around the kitchen being gawked at by your relatives, and now you’re resting on a log with an accused murderer. Yet you seem so lovely to me that my heart doesn’t work right, my throat threatens to close up, and I have difficulty breathing. I want two things that exclude one another: I want to kneel before you and dedicate my life to your welfare, and I want to take you down and fuck you till there’s not a drop left in me.
“For all I know—since I can’t see you—you’re an ordinary woman with everyday thoughts and experiences. Maybe when other men look at you, they don’t even find you unusual. If I could see you in that ordinary way, maybe it would be the beginning of realistic love, which is what I suppose you’d call the feeling between you and Adrian.
“Since I can’t spend that amount of time with you—anyway it seems unlikely that I will—you’ll never become ordinary in my mind. The result will be that I’ll stay in love forever.”
“What you’re describing is a sort of sickness,” Selva said. “Which is why you’re literally dangerous to me.”
“Yes.”
We sat side by side, looking at the dirty water, while in the twisted branches, cicadas blared. A pair of ducks swam by. “When two people share being in love together, it’s a beautiful experience. So the reports go, anyway,” I added ruefully.
“It ends, though,” Selva replied. “It has to end so that life can go about its business, which is to get food, defeat its enemies, and reproduce itself.”
A female mosquito, on a mission to get food and reproduce herself, tried burrowing her way past the hair on my arm. I squashed her. “I love you, Selva,” I said. “I hate that you have to go away with Adrian.”
“I’m sorry you have to go to prison,” she said. “You’re a good man, I think. I wish I had got to know you.”
“Don’t be surprised if I do something to prevent your leaving.”
“Don’t be surprised if I run over you,” she said.
The day was beginning to cool. I felt tired and hungry. We stood up and started walking to the car for the short drive to Lincoln. Once we got clear of the trees I could see a slaty color in the west. My backside itched, where the shrapnel had gone in, and my shoulder ached where it had come out. “It’s going to storm,” I said, holding the door of the station wagon. I could not stop myself from glancing toward the flash of her pale thigh as she got in.
“I hope it doesn’t knock the power out. We’ll be up all night packing.”
“You told me you weren’t leaving for another week.”
“Jonas,” she said, “I didn’t want you hanging around and acting like a pill. We leave tomorrow.”
We left the lake and drove south to the highway that connects Lincoln and Seward. At the next intersection, I pulled into a gas station to refuel the station wagon—it was finally getting low—while Selva got some quarters and telephoned the hospital in Omaha. She learned that Julia had survived surgery and was now in the ICU in “guarded” condition. “What the hell does that mean, ‘guarded’?” I asked.
“It’s not the same as when you were guarded,” Selva said. “I think it’s a step above critical.”
“I wonder if she miscarried Jerome’s baby.”
“I didn’t think to ask.”
There was nothing left to do but take Selva back to Adrian. I let her off on G Street, a block from her apartment, so that the stakeout wouldn’t spot me. It was the closest I dared to get to my own apartment. I watched her lug her suitcase down the hot sidewalk, swearing like a muleskinner, then drove to the N Street liquor store and bought snacks and vodka. “Weren’t you in here a couple of days ago?” the cashier asked.
“I might have been,” I said. “It would be better if you didn’t think about it too much.”
(blank line)
230. I needed to keep. . . .
I needed to keep out of sight until sunrise the next day, but I couldn’t use my apartment. I remembered the hay-bale shed near what was left of Grace’s trailer and thought I could hide Julia’s car there while I finished my chips-and-dip supper. As I drove west on A Street, the sky to the west looked ominously steely, though as yet no thunderheads were visible through the haze. I turned off A Street onto the county road, uncapped the vodka, and took a swig. It tasted like it always does, and I wondered why I hadn’t bought bourbon instead.
The aluminum trailer had melted to a boneless carcass, so low I had to knock my way through eight-foot horseweeds to find it. As I gazed down at the vulcanized pile—weeds already sprouting in the ashes—I tried to picture Grace Kuzak standing on the step and smiling. Now it was so collapsed and mutilated that the blackened appliances stood higher than the trailer itself. I shook my head at my own stupidity. “Sweet Gracie,” I said, and felt deeply sorry for myself. I wished her chess-playing tractor salesman an early and unpleasant death.
I returned to Julia’s car and to the shed beyond. A partial wall of bales still closed off the front, though no stolen Corvette or Chrysler was parked inside. The hay smelled of mold and rats. I considered it would be unnecessary to shift the bales and put the station wagon out of sight, since the horseweeds screened all. I sat on a loose bale and looked around me; mostly, what I could see was green weeds and whitish sky. I happened to recall that Memphis Billy’s guts were interred nearby, so I swallowed a sip of vodka in his memory. By rearing up from the seat of Grace’s Falcon, he’d transformed my life. I no longer needed to worry about becoming a professor.
“It’s quiet.” I went and got another bale so I could lie on my back. Far above me, nighthawks performed their buzz-dance in the air, climbing high and then dropping, making fart-noises by opening their wings at the bottom of the dive. “Goofy birds.” I killed a fly that had come to bother me and closed my eyes. Grace Kuzak. Julia Stein. Selva Andersen. Each in her own way, every one of them had tried to relieve my downward spiral. I should have been grateful, but I could only feel sorry for myself. If I ever had sex again, it would be with my fist in prison.
I slept long enough to let my tiredness sink in, so that when I awoke it felt like coming back from the dead. What woke me was the peculiar flutter of a Volkswagen engine, approaching from Lincoln on A Street. It slowed for the intersection and turned my way. “Shit.” I sat up and rubbed my eyes. Mattie’s van came bouncing through the horseweeds, scattering pollen; she plowed to a stop beside Julia’s wagon, set the parking brake, and turned off the engine. She remained in the driver’s seat and glared at me. “Hi, Mattie,” I said. “I wasn’t supposed to meet you until tomorrow.”
“This is my hiding place,” she replied. “Who knew you’d be here?” She got down from the van and slammed the door. “That’s the fat bitch’s car,” she said. “Where is she?”
“Julia’s in Omaha,” I said. “She had an accident.”
“I hope she doesn’t recover,” Mattie said sourly. She glanced at the bottle of vodka. “Getting drunk, I see.”
“Maybe you’d like to join me,” I said. “Do you have anything to eat?”
“I have cheese and wine,” she said. “I only brought enough for myself.”
We shared a meal of salty corn chips and cheese, washing it down with her jug of Gallo and saving the booze for later. After a period of silent chewing, I asked, “How’d your day go yesterday?”
Mattie offered me a slice of cheese on the blade of her combat knife. “Not too well,” she said. “I went to the hospital to try to see Francis Tarkington, but one of the policemen recognized me and got on the radio. I had a hard time ducking him; I had to stuff one of the cleaning women in a closet and take her uniform, poor thing. Even so, I had an interesting half-hour getting out of there.”
“What did you want with Francis Tarkington?” I asked.
“What do you think?” Mattie cut off another chunk of cheese. “I’m not one to sit on my butt and let them build a case against me.”
“So the cops are looking for you, too,” I said. “It’s about time.”
“If you’ll tell me where the fat bitch is, I’ll kill her instead of Tarkington.”
“Let’s not kill anyone, Mattie,” I said. “By the way, did you know that Adrian Fisher is in with the Feds? I guess he’s been their conduit of information these past few months.”
“Where’d you hear this unattractive piece of slander?”
“Selva Andersen told me.”
“Of course it isn’t true,” Mattie said. “She’s lying to discredit him because she knows he’s secretly in love with me.”
“Of course,” I said. “Why didn’t I think of it?”
“Don’t use sarcasm,” Mattie said. “My husband did that.”
“You were married?”
Mattie put down her knife. “I was seventeen,” she said. “He was a Guamian native. Guamanian. Whatever they call them.”
“Tell me more,” I said.
“He used to beat the crap out of me,” Mattie said. “I’ll back up a little. They have a high school there in Guam, for the American kids. Some of the natives go, too, ones that are connected with the base. He was one of those guys. They mainly go there to pick up women.”
“Girls, I would say. If you were only seventeen.”
“I was fifteen when I met him,” Mattie said. “I didn’t know a thing, except that I liked a lot of orgasms. That was fine with him, at least in the beginning.
“Anyway, my father found out about us and created a huge ruckus. He just wouldn’t let go. The government there, the native council, forced George to marry me to get my father to shut up. It didn’t make my father less angry, but it got me out of that violent household and into another that was worse. I went from being beaten by a sober man to being beaten by a drunk one.
“We didn’t have to worry about money; no one does, there. All my husband ever did was swim, fish, and drink. I didn’t mind his drinking except when it made him crazy. Then he would come after me with whatever he could get his hands on. I put up with this for a long time—it seemed like a long time—”
I handed her the jug of wine, and she drank.
“I suppose I got tired of it,” she said. “Anyway, something in me cracked. I suddenly knew I had to find a way out of that situation. I could have gotten a divorce, but I decided to kill him. It seemed to fit my developing character. More appropriate to an empress. We owned a sailboat—his uncle’s wedding gift—and sometimes, when the weather was right, we’d go out fishing for sharks.
“I happen to like sharks,” Mattie said. “The shark is a mother goddess to those people. When a young woman wants to get pregnant, she goes out swimming with the sharks. The natives say that there’s no danger if there’s no blood in the water. Well, I didn’t want to get pregnant; I wanted my husband dead. I fully expected that the sharks would understand.
“My husband liked to catch big fish and hang them up on a block-and-tackle. I have, or used to have, several photographs of him standing beside the dock. In every picture he’d be wearing a happy smile on his face and holding a beer. Some of the sharks he was photographed with, I caught, but he would never let anyone take my picture. Everything was his: his wife, his boat, his fish. It wasn’t only when he was drunk that the man was an asshole.
“One day we went out when the weather was pretty bad. I’d been watching my time for weeks, waiting for what would happen. Some kind of signal.”
“It’s going to storm tonight,” I interrupted her. “Sorry. Go on.”
Mattie swatted a deer fly and glowered at me. “We sailed out a good distance beyond the reef,” she said. “There’s no way to anchor out there, because the minute you cross the reef you’re in deep water. Also, you’d better know the channel, especially in a sailboat. There was a pretty good swell running, and the sky was gray; not the best conditions for spotting sharks. I got busy throwing chum overboard while my darling husband started his second six-pack. We were sort of flopping around out there, rolling in the swell, and after a while we took down the sail and used the auxiliary motor to hold our position. So far the wind was not too bad, but you could tell the weather goddess was up to something.
“While we were waiting, my husband decided he wanted sex. That was his pattern; first he’d make love to me, then he’d beat me. After the sex, I was trailing my hand in the water—my eyes closed, trying to enjoy the moment—when I touched something rough like sandpaper. Sharkskin. A big hammerhead shark had come up on my side of the boat and was watching my abusive husband balance himself on the opposite rail for his triumphant post-copulatory whiz. I just reached out with my leg and gave him a little shove, and he made a splash right in the middle of his own foam.
“He came up outraged. A proper Guamanian woman does not kick her husband out of the canoe into his own pee. I saw that gleam in his eye, and even though he was smiling, I grabbed the boathook and fended him off. He tried several times to get a grip on the railing, but I managed to prevent it. Eventually he thought to dive under the boat and try the other side. I didn’t quite know what to expect at that point, because I could see he was going to come up right under that shark—she was twelve or fourteen feet long—and I didn’t know what either of them would do. Well, she turned out to be a very permissive shark. She just swam right off and vanished, leaving me to deal with an athletic male of the human species who was hysterically trying to climb back into the boat.
“By this time he and I understood one another. He knew I wanted to get rid of him. I kept finding things to poke him with, and he kept grabbing them away from me. First the boathook went overboard, then the gaff, then the canoe paddle we used for maneuvering around the dock. He was an able swimmer, and I couldn’t drown him or even tire him out. Eventually he got his hands on the rail, and I knew I’d lost.
“I ran down into the cabin and got the rifle we used to shoot the fish; you couldn’t bring a shark like that in unless it was thoroughly dead first. I shot him just as he swung himself up out of the water. Even so, he got on board and was coming for me when I shot him again. The third time I shot him I must have hit something vital, because he stopped and looked at me. Just stood there looking, while all the anger went out of his dark, dark eyes.
“‘George,’ I said, ‘I don’t care any more. You’re dead.’ Then I emptied the rifle at him. I wasn’t as upset as I was with Ted, and a rifle is easier to point than a pistol, so most of the shots hit. He went down on his knees, still looking up at me, and then he fell face forward on the yellow cushions we had. That was a nice-looking boat.”
“Here’s to the yellow cushions,” I said.
“I wish I could say that I didn’t shed a tear for him,” Mattie went on. “But at seventeen I hadn’t developed much poise. I threw the rifle overboard—probably a mistake—and turned my husband face up so I could look at him. He had enough life left to reach up and take a death grip on my hair. If it had been my throat, I’d have been a goner. Then his eyes glazed over, and I got hold of a knife and cut myself free. I tipped him over the rail and set sail for the Philippines. I let him take a handful of my hair down with him.”
“That’s a thousand miles of open ocean,” I said. “You were crazy even then.”
“I left ahead of a typhoon, without enough food or water. It’s a miracle I didn’t die. I was picked up by a Japanese freighter in about a week; I abandoned my boat in the middle of the Pacific, to go wherever the wind and current took her. I was flown back to Guam from Yokohama, with nothing to show for my marriage but a third-degree sunburn. I made up an emotional story about how we’d taken a shark aboard too soon, and how it had started knocking the boat to pieces and I’d shot my poor young husband by mistake. For a while I lived in fear that his corpse would wash ashore with my hair in his fist. But I guess Mother Hammerhead took care of him for me.
“Here’s a peculiar thing from a sociological viewpoint. There wasn’t a white person on Guam who disbelieved my story, never mind that it was as full of holes as George. And there wasn’t a single Guamanian who accepted it. Eventually, I had to be flown off the island to keep from being tried by a native court. I went away to college, and here I am, the model professional woman you see this afternoon.” I gave her the jug of Gallo and she tipped it, closing her eyes as if in pain. She sighed. “It took me seventeen years to kill my first man,” she said, “fourteen more to kill my second, but only a couple of months to kill my third. Now you can count how old I am,” she added, handing the jug back.
“Are you telling me Memphis Billy was alive when you found him?” I asked.
“I didn’t say that,” she replied. “Maybe I’m only planning to kill my third man. Maybe it’s you.”
(blank line)
231. Late that evening. . . .
Late that evening we stood high above the trainyards, watching the storm come up the tracks from Grand Island. “Here’s where I’d like for us to die,” Mattie said, shouting to be heard above the gathering wind. “We could pour gasoline on one end of this bridge and then on the other. These old bridge planks will burn, right?” I nodded. “Good. We’d set fire to both ends, leaving the two of us here in the middle, to either burn up or jump off. The fire department would come, but they couldn’t do a thing except take our picture.”
The wind whistled and moaned about the iron framework of the bridge. “What about Selva and Adrian?” I asked.
“Piss on them and their pretty faces,” Mattie shouted. “This old bridge would make a newsworthy photo, don’t you agree?”
“They won’t see it,” I said. “They’re leaving the state tomorrow in one another’s company. They won’t care anything at all about a bridge in Nebraska.”
“Adrian can’t leave,” Mattie said. “I need an attorney to handle my estate.”
I moved closer to Mattie, sharing body heat. The wind blew toward the cloud, mixing hot and cold gusts, and a swirl of dust rose up from the cinders far below us, peppering our lips and eyes. A farmer drove a two-and-a-half ton straight truck carefully past, shuddering the planks. Mattie’s VW was parked off the street at the foot of the bridge, near enough so that we could run for shelter if we chose. A bolt of greenish lightning winked far to the west. “I wish I’d grown up around trains,” Mattie said. “Trains are beautiful. There weren’t any trains on Guam.”
“There weren’t any sharks in Palemon,” I said.
Blowing dust obscured the bottom of the sky, but from our high lookout we could see the advancing clouds, four separate columns muscling one another like bulls. A beetling roll cloud preceded them, while high above, the marching anvils flickered, lit fiercely from within. As the storm came on, it felt as though the bridge were racing westward, cleaving the prairie like a rusting catamaran. In the middle altitude, above a surf of vapor, a constant roiling, a vast slow reaching of tendrils. And always the lightning.
“Don’t you love it?” Mattie shouted into my collar. I gripped a girder, my arm steadying her back, then moved up directly behind her. The poor remnant of her butchered hair flicked about my unbearded face like twigs of shrubbery. “Now the farmers are shaking in their boots. All their precious corn is going to be smashed flat. Those clodhoppers.”
“What’ve you got against farmers, Mattie?”
“They’re Nebraskans, aren’t they? They’re Republicans. I bet every stinking one of them voted for Nixon.”
The four approaching columns merged into a single, massive entity; the gusty east wind quieted as the brow of the anvil loomed above us. At our backs, the sky was blue, while to the northeast and southwest, distant storms advanced along the front, lit shoulder-wise by the reddening evening sun. With the abrupt stilling of the air, navy-blue-and-russet barn-swallows appeared, to dart and swoop among the girders, ferrying bugs to their nestlings below our feet. “The next thing we feel,” I said to Mattie, “will be a cold blast of wind from the foot of the cloud. That’s the time we’d better make a run for the car.”
“I’m not running,” she said. “And I know storms better than you.”
A locomotive’s headlights appeared from beneath the storm. Soon the train passed under us, water streaming from its four slab-sided engines. The coal in the open cars that followed carried a crust of melting ice-spheres. “There’s your hail,” I said. “There’s your flattened corn.” Mixed with the rumble of the locomotives came the crackle of thunder. “Really, Mattie,” I said. “It’s time to go.”
“You go. I’m staying to watch the lightning. I’ve never stood right in the middle of a storm before.”
A broad orange bolt struck the Emerald water tower; after a count of six, a bump of thunder rattled the bridge planks. A verdigris curtain obscured the distant trees. “Jesus Christ,” I said. “I feel like a stem of wheat looking up at the combine.” I pulled my hat down tight, turned up my collar, and positioned myself behind Mattie so that my arms and shoulders sheltered her a little. Above us, beneath the anvil head, gray mammae hung like enormous wasp-nests. Suddenly we were enveloped in a wall of dust and trash, old newspapers and dry leaves. The temperature plunged thirty degrees in thirty seconds. A mighty gust threatened to lift the plank where we stood.
“Your Royal Highness,” Mattie yelled into the wind, “we are privileged to greet you.” I pressed against her, tilting my hat to cover my face, and grasped the steel more tightly. A wave of stinging grit sandblasted the bridge. Somewhere among the girders a hailstone dinged, then two, then a hundred; they hopped and skittered about our feet, marble-sized and larger, a few the size of ice cubes. The wind’s howl increased to a shriek; a constant, slashing rattle rose all around us. Our bodies were mostly sheltered by a girder. I pulled myself against Mattie, my head bowed to the blast, and clung to the humming steel while the three-inch planking on which we stood began to chatter. My open mouth was shoved against her neck; her hair stuck to my palate as in the heat of sex.
My knuckles, exposed where I held the rail, took a pounding from the hail as if I were punching someone’s teeth. A hailstone smashed my little finger and I involuntarily withdrew my hand, then quickly grabbed hold again when the hurricane threatened to topple us. Mattie turned, drawing herself to me, and shouted something into my chest. I lowered my head to hear her better. “Take me!” she was saying. Incredibly, I felt her fingers loosening my fly, then probing impatiently to free my penis. She turned her face to me, up into the storm, and fumbled for my nuts to command my attention. “Can you?”
The hailstones were smaller now, pea-sized and mixed with rain; the wind dropped to a scream. “Try.” Mattie stepped out of her jeans, gave a little hop, and perched herself on the bridge railing. She raised her arms to my neck and I moved into her, conscious of wind and ice-water pouring around me. My limp cock pressed against the heat of her body, wondering what it was doing there. Mattie clutched my collar and pulled my head down to her, grabbed my dick with her other hand and yanked it toward where it was supposed to go. A wave of air seemed to twist the bridge.
I began fucking her, my face turned away from the rain, a drumroll of thunder accompanying my breathing. Her hands twisted fiercely in the skin of my ribs; it felt like she was holding onto my chest with her teeth. At first my response was a mechanical grind, my only thought whether the bridge would collapse, but as the wind slacked more and the rain fell harder, the act began to consume my interest and I no longer feared the wildness of it, the way Mattie hung almost suspended. I humped and humped at her, focusing on images in my brain: Selva on the shower curtain, Julia opening in an armchair, Grace jerking me off in the booth at Lederer’s. Half a second before the spasm arrived, Mattie threw herself backward off the rail and hung by her knees. She lifted her blouse to expose her breasts and watched me with a mocking smile as I ejaculated into the wind.
“More,” I shouted. “Damn you!” I pulled her laughing up, turned her around, and bent her over the railing; still hard, I inserted myself once again and reached beneath her blouse to seize her nipple. Mattie arched her back like a hood ornament and I could feel her touching herself, strumming her clitoris. I clenched my teeth, concentrated my mind in my balls, and began to gather what was left of my supply of semen.
Mattie’s cunt was contracting now. She grunted like an alligator and shoved herself back onto me, and I slammed into her rapidly and with strength. I could feel my glans colliding with her cervix; I could feel a humming all along the length of my prick.
Just then lightning struck the tracks eight hundred feet in front of us. It knocked me to my knees. “Goddess!” Mattie shouted. “Yes!” She bucked, stiffened, writhed, then repeated the cycle. I clung to her haunch and pressed two knuckles into her pulsating cunt. After a moment, she reached between her legs and gently pushed me away.
“Now we can go.” She helped me to my feet. I tripped, my pants around my ankles, then got my balance and dragged the wet denim up far enough so that I could stumble to the car. Mattie skipped ahead of me leaving footprints in the melting hail, bare from the waist down, carrying her jeans as she ran. We climbed into the back of her van, where I kicked off my boots and soggy clothes and lay shivering on the floor. Mattie found a rough blanket to cover me. “Poor boy,” she said, “poor frightened boy. Be brave and come with me. After tomorrow, you need never to be cold again.”
(blank line)
232. I woke to the sound of trickling water.
I woke to the sound of trickling water. The thunder was dying away far to the east. Mattie’s breath was on my cheek; I cupped one of her warm and meaty breasts, pressed myself against her hip, and prepared to fall asleep again like a worn-out husband. “Get up,” she said abruptly. “There are arrangements to be made.”
“Aw, fuck it, Mattie,” I said, opening my eyes in sorrow. The sky beyond the windows of the van was black and bottomless and filled with stars that winked like jellyfish. The Milky Way cut across its surface like a wake. “Let’s let those children slip away and try to live.”
“Next you’ll be asking me to confess and go to prison. I’ll see you in hell before I do that. Get up!”
“OK,” I said sadly. “I’m with you. Just give me a second.” My foot sent a bottle rolling and knocked it into another; we had drunk up all the wine and all the vodka. “I need water,” I said. “I’m thirsty.”
“You can drink from a puddle,” Mattie said, “since you won’t have time to develop diarrhea.” I remembered that this was the woman who had gutted Memphis Billy.
Mattie’s plan involved a safety flare, her Volkswagen, and a can of gasoline. She wanted to crash the giant maple at the foot of their driveway, immolating ourselves and the van to block Adrian and Selva from leaving. I heard her through without comment. She said, “Do you want to make a will?”
“A will? What for? All the money I have is in my pants pocket. The undertaker will get that.” I thought I might jump out of the van at the final moment.
“I’ve made one,” she said. “Do you want to read it?”
“Let me take a leak first,” I said. “Is there anything to eat?”
“No.”
We had spent the night beside the marimba bridge, within rock-throwing distance of the trainyards. Now the clash and screech of steel brakes on steel wheels signaled a new day. I stood in my wet clothes, pissing, and watched a string of cars rumble past, followed by a switch engine. A trainman leaning from the side of the engine waved to me, and I waved back idly. “Never underestimate the simple pleasures, Mattie,” I said on returning to the van. “Killing ourselves is pretty final.”
“I don’t know what simplicity you could be referring to,” she said, “when our enemies are everywhere.”
She handed me the will almost shyly; I turned on the van’s dim overhead light. I, Matilda Halliday, known in past times as Zenobia, Empress of Palmyra, it began, being of sound mind— I glanced up at her and read on. She’d left her empire or “what could be recovered from it” to the Mary Moody Emerson Center. Her bodily organs she’d donated “for the amusement of the scientists, with the stipulation that my brain be preserved forever.” Her financial assets—”considerable,” she claimed—she’d left to the Women’s Institute for Religious Studies, and her books, papers, and manuscripts to the library of Yale University. “I don’t see where it mentions your revolver,” I said when I’d finished. “Who gets that?”
“A warrior is cremated with her weapons,” she said. “I’m taking it with me. What about the document? Is it clear enough?”
“It’s clear,” I said. “Good luck to those women trying to recover your empire after 2000 years. It’s mostly in the hands of the Turks, I believe.”
We bagged the two empty bottles and the snack packages from the night before, and tidied up the van. Julia’s wagon was safe in the middle of a sea of mud and could be left where it was. Among Mattie’s equipment was a gasoline-fueled camp stove. “We can boil up some of this ditchwater and make coffee,” I said. “Do you have Coleman fuel?” Grumbling at the delay, Mattie produced a gallon can, nearly full. “Great,” I said unenthusiastically as I hefted it. “This will save us buying some.” After filling and lighting the stove, I located a pair of bungee cords; I carried the can to the front of the van and lashed it to the bumper. “Now all we need is a safety flare,” I said. “We can get those at Lederer’s.”
“Buy this, buy that,” Mattie said. “I don’t want coffee. I think you’re stalling.”
By the time my coffee was ready, streaks of pink were visible on the eastern horizon. “It’s rosy-fingered Aurora,” I said, gesturing toward the east.
“You’re full of jokes this morning,” she observed. “I’m beginning to feel I can’t entirely trust you.”
It’s the true remark that stings. I filled a Styrofoam cup, tossed out the coffee grounds, and put away the stove. “That’s serious,” I said. “We’d better start before paranoia sets in.” I got into the van on the passenger side. “Lederer’s,” I said. “We need flares.”
“Don’t tell me where to go,” Mattie said. “In fact, why don’t you drive? That way I can keep an eye on you.”
I got out, walked around the front, and got in on the driver’s side; Mattie closed the side door from the inside, squeezed past me and into the passenger seat, and handed me the keys. The starter kicked in with a Volkswagen thud, and soon we were whirring up and across the bridge. I gazed to the west, into the darkness. “Cheyenne is out there. Denver. Salt Lake City.”
“Mormons,” Mattie said balefully. “They think their women are God’s cows.”
“Reno. Lake Tahoe. San Francisco.”
“All those fairies running around,” Mattie said. “Let’s get this over with.”
I drove as close to Cheyenne as I dared—as far as Lederer’s. I walked into the truckers’ end of the building and bought a tin of flares and a couple of so-called “fruit pies,” fruit-and-preservative sandwiches sealed in a wrapper. When I paid the cashier, he seemed fidgety. “Take it easy, Bubba,” I said. “Storm’s over. It’s going to be a lovely day.” I went back out to the van, handed Mattie the pastries, and slid the flares under the seat. “The cashier recognized me,” I said.
“So go,” she said. “I’m not worried about the cops. If they come after us, I’ll shoot ‘em.”
I chose a street called Northwest 48th, which goes beneath the Interstate and north through the decommissioned Air Force base. The old runway was now the municipal airport, but the layout of the buildings felt familiar. I recognized the chapel, the BX, and the former Officers’ Club, now a community center. “I should’ve stayed in the Air Force,” I said. “Then I never would have met Selva Andersen.”
“You would’ve become like my father,” Mattie said. “I may be delusional, but worst of all is when a person thinks it’s normal to attack everybody.”
“That’s not what they think,” I said. “What they think is, everyone’s out to get them so they have to defend themselves.”
“That’s us,” Mattie said. “That’s our reality.”
Northwest 48th ended at Highway 34; I turned right and headed southeast toward downtown Lincoln. It was the final leg of the same route I’d followed to bring Selva from Parade back to Adrian. I reached under the seat and withdrew the tin of flares. “You know how to work these?” I asked. “You peel the top off and use the sandpaper to scratch it like a match.”
Mattie held a flare up to examine it. It resembled a thin stick of dynamite, with a steel spike protruding from the lower end. “Do these ever explode?” she asked.
“Not to my knowledge. I’ve used flares just like it that were twenty years old, and they always worked fine.”
We joined the first of the morning traffic heading into Lincoln. I tore open one of the fruit pies and took a bite. It tasted like sweet glue, so I rolled down the window and threw it onto the median. I could see advantages to being dead; I wouldn’t have to face my father or serve twenty years in the pen for killing a stranger. Mattie had her own line of reasoning, mainly that life as a lunatic did not appeal to her. Selva Andersen could make of it what she chose. A parting gift of fireworks. A flambe version of Van Gogh’s ear. As the Volkswagen whirred and whistled toward downtown Lincoln, I worked to flood myself with battle-emotion in order to tamp down rising fear. I thought of green eyes that hid the secret of departure; I thought of fox-red hair spread out against a pillow. White linen and white skin. I thought of her scar that was like a closeup of the moon.
“Mattie, I don’t want to do this.”
“Look over here.”
She held the chrome-plated revolver in her lap. The bore wasn’t exactly aimed at me, but the barrel lay in my direction. I felt it as a rebuke for my lack of courage. “All right,” I said. “I get it. Let me check the bungees on that can of fuel, OK?”
“You might run away,” Mattie said. “Settle down, now. What can go wrong? All you have to do is drive a car into a tree.”
Highway 34 became I-680 at the interchange. The southbound lanes crossed over Cornhusker Highway and took us past Memorial Stadium, dumping us onto Ninth Street behind the abandoned cop station. I waited at Q for a red light. “Suppose we stop at Denny’s for breakfast?” I said. “That fruit pie tasted like shit, if you want to know the truth.”
“Breakfast is no concern of yours. The light is green; drive on.”
We were swept along southward in the flow of traffic. Too soon, we approached the new police station and jail. Once I turned east at F Street, the rising sun shone directly in my eyes. “Fuck,” I said. “Can’t see where I’m going.”
“You should have worn sunglasses,” Mattie said. “If you don’t stop complaining, I’m going to shoot you. I can drive this thing myself.”
My knees began to jump. We passed my street. I felt the urge to vomit. Up ahead was the judge’s house with its scarlet maple. “The curb!” I said. “I have to get this car up onto the lawn.” F Street had been widened in that neighborhood, so that the curb was high and square and the driveways were steep. It wasn’t possible just to drive up over the curb; the concrete would’ve torn the front end out from under the van. I heard the click of a double-action revolver being cocked. “Wait!” I said. “Give me time to think of something.”
The inertia of the moment carried me farther than I wanted to go, so that I ended up skidding to a stop at the foot of their driveway. I roared the engine and ground the transmission into reverse; as I did so, I glanced anxiously up the driveway to see Adrian pulling the screen door closed behind him. Selva, carrying a lamp and a small suitcase, waited beside the orange Volvo.
“They’ve seen us!” Mattie said furiously. “Back up and crash the tree! What are you waiting for?”
“Put the gun down and light your flare,” I replied angrily. “I have to maneuver. I can’t just levitate this thing.” I backed the Volkswagen in a quarter circle, heedless of traffic, and gunned it toward the neighboring driveway. We hit the dip at the bottom and bounced to sidewalk level, and I cranked the wheel to the right. I had to shift into reverse once again, backing up to get the van headed down the sidewalk. The high-backed vehicle rocked wildly as I crossed the neighbors’ drive; I slammed it into first, gunned the engine, bounced, straightened, and we were high up on the lawn next door, pointed down toward the maple tree at last. I glanced at Mattie, still struggling with the flare. “Get the damned thing lit!”
“Don’t swear at me, mister,” Mattie said. “I can still shoot you.”
I heard a sizzling sputter and the van filled up with stinging, acrid smoke. My eyes watered fiercely; I held my breath and batted the smoke away from my mouth and nose. “Stupid bitch! Hold it out the window!”
“Don’t call me stupid!” Mattie said. “You just crash that tree.”
I roared the engine and feathered the clutch. Up ahead I could make out a blob that was the maple. I floored the accelerator, and the van hiccuped and rocked forward. I gripped the wheel and ducked. At the last instant, just as I closed my eyes, something orange crossed my path. I slammed on the brakes, and the van teetered to a halt at the edge of their driveway. I looked down over the steering wheel to see Adrian looking up at me from the other car, two feet from my knees. The barristers’ bookcases on top of the Volvo nearly scraped the windshield of the van.
“What did you stop for?” Mattie shrilled. “We almost had them!”
“I thought we were aiming for the tree.”
“To hell with the tree!” she shouted. “They’re getting away!” Below us now and to our right, Adrian backed the Volvo into the street. Mattie threw the flare at their car. She missed; the smoke inside the van began to clear, so that I could see Selva looking up at me as Adrian drove off.
“What do you want to do now?” I asked.
Mattie gaped at me like a madwoman. “After them!” she said. “Nitwit!” I roared the engine again and swung the van down the driveway, scraping bottom. “And drive more smoothly this time,” she growled. “Or how am I supposed to light another flare?”
(blank line)
233. The little Volvo should have. . . .
The little Volvo should have outdistanced the Volkswagen easily. But both Adrian and I were prisoners of morning traffic, so that neither of us could drive as fast as he liked. I managed to stay within a block, and when Adrian came to Tenth Street he made a blunder. Instead of turning north and aiming for the Interstate, where the Volvo could’ve simply walked away and left us, he continued on to Ninth and headed south. I followed as fast as the van would go, losing ground steadily but keeping the orange car in sight. “Hurry up!” Mattie grated. “What a botch! Why didn’t you hit them?”
“I was aiming for the tree,” I said. “They got in the way.”
“Well, I want you to hit them now,” Mattie said. “They’re making fools of us.”
Ninth and Tenth Streets joined at the southwest edge of Lincoln, where Pioneers Boulevard led off toward the penitentiary. The conjoined streets then turned southeastward as Highways 2 and 77. A little farther on, Highway 77 turned south toward Beatrice. Adrian stayed on Highway 2 going east toward Nebraska City, where wagon trains formed a century and a half ago. He evidently planned to cross the Missouri and catch I-29, then follow the Insterstate system to Atlanta. I started naming the towns backward from Nebraska City: Dunbar, Syracuse, Unadilla—
“Hey, Zenobia,” I said. “Guess which town we’ll be coming to in a bit. Palmyra.” She gave me a hurt look. “It’s true,” I said. “When we pass the turnoff to Cheney, there’ll be a sign. See if it doesn’t say ‘Palmyra, 12 Miles.’”
“Liar,” she said. “It isn’t my Palmyra.”
“How do you know?”
“There would have been palm trees, not cornfields.”
Adrian caught a green light at 56th Street; I shot through half a minute later, on yellow turning to red. We hadn’t reached the city limits, but 56th was the last stoplight on Highway 2. I pressed the accelerator hard against the floor, and the Volkswagen slowly picked up speed. A minivan like Mattie’s would do 75 on the level, or 55 going uphill and 80 going down. Though heavily loaded, the Volvo was faster. I was beginning to feel complacent about losing the race.
“You’d better crash them before we get to Palmyra,” Mattie said. “Otherwise, blam blam.”
I glanced across at her lap to see the revolver pointed at me, then returned my attention to the highway in time to correct a swerve. “You wanted me to drive, God damn it,” I said. “So let me drive.”
We passed Cheney Road. The mileage sign I had foretold flew by: Palmyra 12. The speedometer needle fell below 65; Adrian and Selva were invisible over the crest of a hill. Mattie aimed the pistol at a mailbox but did not pull the trigger. “Ten minutes more of this and you die,” she said, leaning back. “I shouldn’t have let you get away the last time.”
“We could drive back to the hospital and kill Francis Tarkington,” I offered.
“Don’t toy with me,” Mattie said. “I’m not feeling very positive right now.”
Mid-August was the beginning of silage-cutting season; if I’d been at home in Palemon, I’d have looked to get a job driving a silage truck. The pay was poor but the hours were plentiful, and nobody minded if you drank beer in the cab. Here, too, the silage cutters were working. We drove past a cornfield with a neat slot running through, the width of a single pass.
“Tractor ahead,” Mattie said. “We’re catching up to them.”
We’d crossed a rise, and now the Volkswagen picked up speed. At the bottom of a low hill was a flat that stretched for half a mile, to where a creek came down from the north, passed under a bridge, and joined the Little Nemaha flowing along the south side of Highway 2. From our vantage on the shoulder of the rise, I could see a line of farm equipment led by a silage cutter, approaching the bridge from the far side of the creek. Nearer at hand, an enormous yellow farm tractor with “dualled” drive wheels pulled a converted semitrailer in the opposite direction. A row of cars, the orange Volvo among them, had stacked up behind the thing, waiting to pass.
“Shit.” I glanced at Mattie, frozen and triumphant. “Time to light your stupid flare. Only this time hold it out the fucking window.” As I said this, I devised a last-second plan. I would head down toward the traffic, aim the Volkswagen off the road, and bail out at seventy miles an hour. I’d get banged up plenty, maybe even killed, but I wouldn’t kill anyone else, unless it was my cracked companion, who wanted to die anyway. She’d be in no shape to come looking for me with the thirty-eight, I could be sure of that. “Hold on,” I said aloud. “This is going to be wild.”
“Good,” Mattie said. “Get it over with.”
I heard the scratch and sputter of another flare, and in spite of my warning to Mattie, smoke blinded me. As the straining Volkswagen picked up speed, I lost the advantage of the hill, so that by the time the smoke cleared, I couldn’t see beyond the line of cars. Then the orange Volvo, weaving dangerously, pulled out of line in a desperate attempt to pass. I held my breath as the little car pulled slowly even with the trailer, then wobbled past the farm tractor and disappeared from view. Brake lights came on all the way up the line of cars.
I pulled over into the left-hand lane, just as the farm tractor ahead of me did the same; I tested the brakes as the farmer swerved back to his right. The approaching silage cutter appeared in the oncoming lane, then veered ponderously off the grade toward my left. The chopper-head that preceded it like a row of fangs carried a ribbon of orange sheet metal in its teeth.
I tramped the brake pedal and herded the skidding Volkswagen toward the bit of daylight between the tractor and the silage chopper. The rear end tried to get ahead of me, swinging right, and I waltzed it back to the left just in time and went zinging through and into the clear, stopping the van and blocking traffic in the center of the bridge. I jumped out and ran to look over the edge. Below me, in the angle between creek and river, the Volvo sat upright, its front end crumpled and one of its fenders missing. Steam rose from under the folded hood.
I took the flare from Mattie’s dispirited hand and planted it in the gravel beside the bridge. Then I vaulted over the railing and ran to help Adrian, who was painfully climbing out of the car. “She’s trapped,” he said hoarsely. “Get something to cut her free.”
I ran back up to Mattie, still sitting in the passenger’s seat with a glazed expression on her face. “Your combat knife,” I said. “Where is it?” Her abstracted gaze went to the glove compartment. I reached in, tore it open, and rifled through the contents until I found the knife. I ran back toward the Volvo, passing Adrian, who stared at the car and cradled his left arm. As I passed the rear of the car, I smelled gasoline.
Selva was fully conscious, her elbow resting on the door as if she were out for a cruise. She looked up at me, blood on her lip. “Hello, Jonas.”
“Adrian said you were caught,” I panted. “How can I help?”
“Gosh, I don’t know,” she said. “You’ve done so much already.”
“Cut the crap. There’s gas all over the place. We have to get you out of there.” Selva was wearing a seat belt, lap and shoulder harness. I quickly cut through the shoulder strap and leaned inside to sever the lap belt. As I did so I bumped right into the transmission; the engine of the car had been shoved rearward and was sitting in Selva’s lap. I heard something bubbling and smelled a stench of cooking meat.
I backed out the window. “Jesus Christ,” I said. “That engine is right on top of you.”
“Don’t I know it,” she said. “Like the press of love. Jonas, why not cut my throat? I know you want to.”
“No, no,” I said. “Got to get you free.”
“You had me for free,” she said. “It wasn’t what you wanted.”
I dragged the door open, and she tumbled halfway out and into my arms. I cut the remaining seat belt and tried to lift her, but she hissed with pain. “Oh, oh, oh, I wish you wouldn’t do that,” she said. “You’re pulling me apart.”
“Where’s it holding you?”
“I think it’s got me by the pussy,” she said. “Put that door back the way it was so I’ll have something to lean on.”
Reluctantly I lifted her back inside, dragging the door to near its former position. “The EMS will be here soon,” I promised. “We’ll tear this car apart to get you out of there.”
“No hurry,” she said. “Why don’t you sing something? It would help to pass the time.”
“My dear one, I play the drums,” I said. “I do not sing.”
A little flame started up near the battery. It was almost nothing. I went to the front of the car to unhook the terminals. I pulled one of them loose with my bare fingers, and the sparking stopped. Just then I heard Selva’s voice: “Jonas, look out!”
Whupp!
I jerked back involuntarily. In an instant—literally, the blink of an eye—much of the Volvo was bathed in flame. A rivulet of gasoline burned along the right side of the car, down to the creek. I leaped across it and ran to where I stood face to face with Selva, who looked up at me through a thin bright curtain of fire. “Open the door!” I cried, dancing in frustration. “Get out! Get out!” I rushed forward, only to be thrown back; I lunged toward the door again, seizing the handle and releasing it as quickly, my sleeve on fire. “Selva!”
She withdrew her arm inside the car and, to my horror, rolled up the window. Now a look of distress crossed her face; I could see she was having trouble breathing. I made another lunge for the handle; I grasped it firmly and pulled hard, but this time the weight of the car shifted, shoving the bottom edge of the door deep into the clay. Burned, I retreated once again and, recognizing the danger, backed away farther.
I was just in time. The gas tank exploded, drowning the car in flame. Beneath the fire, the orange paint began to blister and turn white. I could see Selva’s hand passing back and forth against the glass; then it stopped moving, coming to rest against the sill. The interior of the car filled up with smoke, until I could no longer see her. I turned away and, passing behind the burning car, walked up the embankment toward a line of solemn men in overalls. Halfway up, Mattie and Adrian sat together, her arm around his shoulder. Adrian, his face gone white with shock, stared blankly at the blazing wreckage. I could feel the heat on my back.
“If you don’t know it, mister,” Mattie said, “your clothes are smoking.” She cradled the chrome revolver in her lap. I still carried her combat knife in my left hand; I transferred the blade to my right, then reached down gently to tilt her chin and deliberately drew the knife from left to right across her freckled throat. I adjusted my grip and was prepared to complete the X, slashing from right to left, when something huge exploded beneath my wrist and I felt a blow in my guts like the kick of a bull.
I dropped the knife, fell to my knees, and began to crawl away. I heard more explosions behind me, but compared to the pain within my bowels they were a mere distraction. I focused on the wonderful changes taking place: my limbs weighed tons, and I no longer felt like breathing. I lay down in weariness and turned to look at the sky, where a column of greasy smoke roiled upward, shot with sparks and black against the morning sun.
(blank line)
234. I died that morning. . . .
I died that morning on the road to Palmyra. Yet here I am, soft-bodied in middle age, looking out an eighteen-inch window at men in prison uniforms as they slowly walk the perimeter of a basketball court. They are Death Row inmates. White-haired and stooped, Dan Kroger walks among them. Years after I first saw him, he executed one of his disciples Special Forces style, a nine-millimeter bullet to the back of the head. He also shot the man’s fourteen-year-old son.
I should have taken throat-cutting lessons from Dan. Mattie Halliday survived my attempt to kill her. Mattie is an inmate of the Women’s Correctional Facility over in York. She keeps extending her sentence by attacking the guards.
Marion Saunders came through here, caught driving a load of stolen cattle. He took the rap for a rich man’s son, served his sentence, and is back in the cattle-hauling business up in Palemon. So I hear from my father.
My father is now past sixty. He’s kept himself and his trucking company going, so that I have a life waiting for me. I also have a woman who’s willing to marry me; we met by correspondence. It’s unconventional outside, but common among inmates. Some use it as a scam to take the woman’s savings. Soo Lin’s a waitress, Vietnamese, with a disabled son. I don’t think she has anything I could steal.
I once waged a six-month campaign to get hot sauce put on the tables, but the administration said it could spark a riot. When I look at Soo Lin’s photograph, I smell garlic and ginger.
Prison has become a concentration camp for addicts; I’m glad my time will be up soon. I’ve joined a drum group for Native Americans, the “Stony Mountain Intertribals.” We make a caterwauling racket on Sunday afternoons. I sing along in Lakota, even though I don’t understand a word. When I get out, maybe I’ll go to a powwow.
I’ll drive to both coasts, see Alaska and Mexico. After that, I’ll settle in to trucking and see how that goes. I don’t have big plans. I want to visit The Wall, the Vietnam Memorial. I want to run my fingers across some names.
Xin loi. That’s the way I look at it. You’re here for a while and then you’re gone. My old friend Stuart checked out early. I’m luckier than Stuart; I get to see what comes next.
Xin loi.
I’ll be out there on the road. I can drive; I can keep awake. I have good intentions. If I stop to help you change a tire, do not fear me. You are not in danger. I’m within the average run of men; there are better and worse. I am not a rapist.
I’m gone. I’m coming to meet you. Greet me with a flick of your headlights, with a wave and a smile. I won’t turn around and ride your bumper; there’s no need to pull aside to let me pass. I’m cool. I’m calm. I’m irrelevant.
Garlic and ginger. Life is good. I’ve paid for my crimes. It could be that I’ve paid for part of yours as well.
|