“That’s just the problem,” the stand-in for the woman said. “He’ll never forgive himself because he knows at the bottom of his soul that he’s unforgivable.”
“You know, sweetheart,” the stand-in for the man said, “you can be a sanctimonious bitch. I suppose you’re forgivable, right?”
“At least I can forgive myself,” she said after an intake of breath, offering an icy laugh that sounded like glass breaking.
There was a moment, a measure, of silence and the car swerved to get out of its own way.
“Isn’t one lane wide enough for you?” he said, addressing his remark to me.
“People with low self-esteem tend to be cruel to those closest to them,” she said. “It’s not his fault — he can’t help himself.”
“I won’t dignify that with a reply,” he said.
“You already have,” she said.
“We need your help,” the man said, nudging me with a rolled-up newspaper. “Are you awake?”
I blinked my eyes open and was disturbed to discover that we were parked at the side of the road. “What’s going on?” I said.
“We need you to settle an argument,” the man said. “You must have heard most of our argument. Tell us who you think is right.”
“Right about what?” I asked.
They talked over each other in strident voices and what filtered through made little sense to me.
“Uh huh,” I said, playing my part.
“We’re not always like this,” the woman said. “Zach needs an audience to express his…”
“Just shut up,” he said, shouting her down. “Will you shut up, for God’s sake.”
At this point, the woman slapped her husband, a resounding blow, which he answered after a pregnant pause of outrage with a closed fist.
After he hit her in the eye, he apologized, but there were more blows to come, punctuated by apologies, curses and cries of pain.
Sensing they had forgotten me, I slipped out the door on my left and trotted off wearily in the direction the car was pointed.After awhile, my breath coming in echoes, assuming there was no immediate danger pursuing me, I slowed to a feverish stumble.
I was amazed how much the landscape I was passing resembled the landscape I had already passed.
It struck me as a profound discovery that the passing scene of the American road (if indeed this was America) tended to repeat itself as a kind of delayed emphasis. As I filed away this awareness for future use, a familiar lumbering car appeared alongside me, the passenger window rolled down.
“Please don’t forsake us,” the woman, who had an ugly bruise under her left eye, said. “We desperately need your help, Jack. We’ve agreed between us not to fight in your presence. We need someone of your seeming objectivity and wisdom to mediate our dispute.”
“You’ve got the wrong person,” I said. “I have no wisdom to offer.”
“Nonsense,” the woman said. “No matter. You have our word that we will defer to your wisdom whatever it is. Besides, Jack, this is not the direction you were escaping in when we picked you up.”
She reached behind her and opened the back door.
I groaned silently, and with an unacknowledged sense of defeat, climbed into the skanky back seat, pulling the door shut behind me on the second try. The man, who was in the driver’s seat, whisked the car around in a daring maneuver and we restarted our trip together as if for the first time.
100th Night
You’re never out of the woods, I saw that now, even when you’ve planted your feet on paved roads. Unspecified time had passed — three days, a week, a month? — since I had kissed Mina and Bobby goodbye as prelude to taking a run through the woods from which I secretly hoped never to return. I had made a point of not thinking about them as I worked my way against unforeseen obstacles back to civilization.
The thing was, civilization as I remembered it, seemed to have disappeared while I was unavoidably elsewhere.
Days would pass with no signs of human habitation outside of two ratty gas station/convenience stores idling miles apart on opposite sides of the road.
Despite my single-minded pursuit of freedom, dumb luck had impeded my progress. The knowledge that I should have been further along at this point nagged at me with punishing regularity. I needed wheels to make time, but I had become with good reason wary of accessing another ride with strangers.
About a mile back, I had inquired of a clerk at the Puritan Farms self-service gas station as to where the nearest town was.
“This is the nearest town,” she said.
“This?”
“We sell stamps in the back,” she said. “We share a zip code with the Puritan Farms station on the other side of the road down aways. We think of ourselves as a town.”
I asked her if she knew of a place in the area that rented cars.
She thought about my question for more time than I wanted to hang out in her store.
“There used to be one in the back of the middle school,” she said, “but I don’t think it did much business. I don’t remember when it closed down — the owner died or something — but it was like ten years ago. Sorry.”
As I walked along the side of the road, I kept glancing over my shoulder, expecting to see Mina’s VW floating toward me in the distance. If I spotted her faded blue splotched with white Beetle before she spotted me, I could step back into the brush until it passed. I rehearsed the move periodically so as not to be taken by surprise.
After awhile, I came to what looked like a bus stop and I sat down on a rickety bench to await the next bus. I was awakened by a head sticking out the window of a sheriff’s car that was idling a few feet from where I sat. “What’s going on here?” the head asked.
“Isn’t this a bus stop?”
He ignored my question. “You got any money?” he asked.
His question seemed presumptuous but I answered anyway so as not to give offense. “Some,” I said. I also had a credit card but I didn’t see the need to acknowledge all my assets on such short acquaintance.
“I’d also like to see some ID, if you don’t mind,” he said.
I did mind. “What’s the problem?” I asked. No doubt my appearance had given him the wrong impression. My hands were grimy, there was a cut on my face, my pants had an alarming stain below the crotch.
“We have a nice town here,” he said. “It’s not that we don’t like strangers, it’s just that we like them better when they’re somewhere else.”
I got up from the bench and walked off into what was beginning to seem like a sunset. It passed my mind that he might shoot me in the back and I chose not to think about it.
When I looked up, the sheriff’s car was crawling alongside me.
His twangy voice accosted me. “We were having this polite conversation when you jumped up and walked away,” it said. “That’s disrespect. Do you mean to be disrespectful?”
“I’m getting out of your town,” I said.
“Is that right?” he said. “You might have told me so I could have arranged a parade. If there’s no objection, I’ll ride along to see that you don’t get lost.”
I didn’t see that objecting would make a difference one way or another.
It felt odd walking alongside the sheriff’s car, which was mimicking my pace, but it must have felt odd from his vantage also. At some point, he offered me a ride since, as he put it, we were both going in the same direction.
I said I didn’t mind walking, but five minutes later he asked again.
I noted, though there hadn’t been much traffic, that a string of cars was piling up behind him.
“You don’t get anywhere being a hard-head,” he said. “I know how lonely it can be being out on the road by yourself. And you must be tired. You’re not so young any more.”