Far up the highway I could see the lights atop the towering grain elevators. Creston, Oklahoma. If I never saw it again, it would be fine with me.
Just as I finished locking up I heard Paula starting the Buick. She drove around to the front of the station. I went around to the driver's side of the car and thought: Christ, she can be beautiful when she wants to! I'll never forget how she looked at that moment as she reached through the window and traced her fingers lightly over my chest.
“It won't be long now, Joe. Within another hour this town will be behind us.”
“I'm ready.”
“We'll start just as soon as I get back. Just as soon as I pick up the medicine and dressings from your father. You didn't forget to call him, did you?”
“I didn't have a chance. Ike left just a few minutes ago. But I'll do it now, if you're still sure it's necessary.”
“I explained it to you, Joe. It's insurance we've got to have. If Karl's arm should get bad again, we won't find another doctor as co-operative as your father.”
I still didn't like it, but when Paula got hold of something she wouldn't turn it loose without a fight. And right now I didn't feel like a fight. “All right,” I said finally, “I guess you'll have it your way.”
I had to unlock the station again to get to the phone. I got the number and listened to the ringing at the other end, and at last a thousand-year-old voice, a voice without life, said, “Hello.”
“Dad, this is Joe. I've got a little favor to ask of you.”
He didn't say a thing. For a moment I thought he had hung up on me, but then I heard the hum of the open line and knew that he was still there.
“Dad, this is the last thing I'm going to ask of you. Believe me, it is. You know this man you've been treating; well, he and his wife are pulling out tonight. They're pulling out for good and you'll never hear of them again. But the woman wants you to give her some medicine, just in case her husband's arm starts acting up again. I'm sending her over to pick it up. Is that all right?”
There was only the hum of the wire.
“Dad, are you still there?”
“Yes.”
“You'll let her have the medicine, won't you? Sulfa, or whatever you think best.”
“Do I have a choice, Joe?”
I felt like hell. For a moment I just stood there with the receiver in my hand, unable to think of anything else to say, and finally I hung up.
I went outside, where Paula was waiting. “It's all right,” I said. “But make it fast. Don't drag it out any longer than is absolutely necessary. I'm afraid he's had just about all he can take.”
I told her how to get to the house, which wasn't much of a job. The town wasn't big enough to get lost in, and anyway, the streets were clearly marked. She smiled faintly and squeezed my hand, then she put the Buick in gear and left me standing there. God, I thought, I'll be glad when it's over!
After I got the station locked again, I went around to Number 2 to see how Sheldon was doing. He was doing fine. He had his clothes on and was doing some packing as I came in.
“You're looking pretty good,” I said.
He looked at me, then looked away, fast. “I'll feel better when we're away from here.”
“Well, it shouldn't be long now. It won't take Paula long to pick up the medicine.”
He wouldn't look at me. He kept fiddling with a shirt that he was trying to get folded, keeping me behind him. He looked nervous and pale, but I put that down to his sickness.
I said, “You want me to help you with that?”
“No!” He turned on me then, and there was something in those eyes of his that put ice in my veins. “What's the matter with you?” I said. “Nothing! Just get out of here and leave me alone! Do you have to stand there watching me, watching every move I make?”
“Look,” I said, “you're pretty jumpy, aren't you? Hadn't you better just sit down and take it easy?”
I thought for a minute that he was going to spring at me. Then he seemed to go to mush inside. He leaned against the bed, then he sat down and put his face in his hands. I guess that was when the first germ of fear became implanted in my brain. I looked at Sheldon and knew that something was wrong, something was wrong as hell. Here he had just pulled through a serious sickness and within an hour would be on his way to freedom, and he looked like a man getting ready to walk his last mile. I stepped over to him, pushed his head back, and made him look at me.
“What's eating you, Sheldon?”
“Nothing.”
“Oh, yes, there is! Something's got its fangs in your guts and I want to know what it is.”
“I tell you it's nothing!”
I think I already knew. In the dark cellar of my mind I knew what it was. Panic's cold feet raced up my spine as I grabbed the front of Sheldon's shirt. I heard myself saying it, before the thought was really clear in my mind.
“Out with it, Sheldon! Does it have anything to do with my father?”
He whined, and I slammed him across the face with the back of my fist.
“Goddamn you, you'd better tell it and tell it fast, or you're going to curse the day you were born! Has it got anything to do with my father?”
But he was too sick and too scared and too weak to make a sound. I hit him again, knowing it was hopeless, knowing that it was a waste of time, but I hit him. His mouth came open and his teeth were red with blood.
“It's Paula, isn't it?” I almost yelled at him. “What's she going to do? What's she got in that hard little brain of hers?”
But I already knew. It was in Sheldon's eyes, gleaming there in the twin small seas of pain. Paula was going to kill my father. He knew too much about her, so she was going to kill him.
I should have guessed. I should have known when I first saw that look in her eyes the night before. That was when she had made up her mind.
I felt sick. All day she had been planning it. She had made up that story about having to go after medicine, knowing that I wouldn't have the guts to face my father myself, now that he knew all about us. She was going to murder him. Right this minute she was on her way. '
It seemed like a lifetime as I stood there, my fist doubled, ready to hit Sheldon again. I thought: She must have known that I'd find out. She couldn't keep a thing like this a secret. How she meant to explain it to me, I couldn't guess—but she would think of something. I knew her well enough for that. With the help of that ripe mouth and soft body she would think of something, and make it sound logical enough, when the time came.
But the time would not come. I was almost sorry as I thought it. The end had already arrived.
I let Sheldon go and he fell to the floor, still whimpering. I could have killed him without a qualm, as easily as stepping on a spider, but there was no time for it. I was out of the cabin and racing through the night toward my car.
I drove like a crazy man, deaf and dumb, blind to everything but the grayish highway and the dazzling lights that rushed at me from the darkness and then fell swiftly behind. I assaulted the night with speed, split it open and made it scream. Past the floodlighted oil-field supply houses, the wind rushing. Past the big motels and the crumby shacks. Past the towering grain elevators; pale, unbelievable giants in the darkness, topped with blinking red lights. Over the railroad overpass and down the breath-taking slope on the other side to Creston.
How I got there, I didn't know. But I was there. I had not passed the Buick—that was one thing I was sure of—and that meant that Paula had reached Creston before me. I drove as though each second were a matter of life or death. And it was. I skirted the heart of town to avoid traffic. Maybe, just maybe...