An Avianca stew had left half a bottle of blue dolls in my medicine cabinet. She only used to need two to put her away for the night. I gave Rebecca four with a finger of Old Overholt. “I don’t want it,” she said.
“Drink.”
I took the glass from her and helped her lather up her hair. “Becky? Where did all this happen?”
“Don’t want to think about it.”
“Tell me.”
“Down past Crenshaw.”
“Where exactly?”
“Where Crenshaw jogs over, past 405? As if you’re going to the airport, and there’s a little hill and those jointed oil things. That look like bugs. Crickets.”
“Which one? Near which of the pumps? Can you remember?”
“Don’t know. Three or four of them. There’s a little silver shack. Listen, Ray?” She sat up in the water and looked at me with wide eyes to show me how reasonable she was being. “I decided, he can have my face if he wants, because don’t you think he’d leave me alone then? And be satisfied? It doesn’t matter what I look like if he’ll just leave me alone, but I can’t be running around like this. I can’t be scared all the time.”
“Close your eyes,” I said, and dunked her head in the water. She reached back and worked her fingers through her hair, then sat up again.
“We didn’t get it all out,” she said. “But don’t you think he’d leave me alone then? It doesn’t matter what I look like. How I look’s never brought me anything good.”
“What were you doing down there past Crenshaw?”
“We went for a ride. He must’ve followed us.”
“From where? Where had you been?”
“Don’t know.”
“We need to dunk you again,” I said. “There. I think that’s all of it.” I lifted one of her feet from the water. “You’ve got some blisters coming up. Want me to take care of them?”
“Yes please,” she said, speaking very clearly. She was starting to go.
I didn’t have a needle, so I got out a fresh razor blade and used the corner. She acted as if I was doing it to someone else’s feet. “There. Let’s get you dried off and in bed now.”
I pretty much had to lift her out, and she leaned against me as I toweled her off. “Are you going out there,” she murmured.
“Yes.”
“Oh.” She was silent a while, letting herself be rubbed dry. “Can I have my comb?”
“Sure.”
I sat her on the toilet lid and spread some antiseptic salve on her feet and her scrapes, then buttoned her into one of my old flannel shirts and tucked her up in my bed.
“You’ll make me... ” she murmured.
“What?”
She was almost out.
“You’ll make me say things,” she said.
“No,” I said. “I won’t.”
She went to sleep.
I changed into dry clothes, got my toolbox from the closet and put my gun in my pocket. I turned out the light and left, locking the door behind me.
I cut over to Crenshaw and headed due south. It was the same route she’d driven me last Friday, in the sunshine. The night was coolish, and I opened the window and let the breeze clear the bathroom steam out of my head. It was around six miles to the oil fields, a pretty solid walk for someone in bare feet. Maybe she’d had her shoes on for part of the way. She probably had, and thrown them away when a heel broke. Her feet had looked fairly bad. You can do all sorts of things when you’re in shock. Some of the houses and shops I passed were all right, and some weren’t so good, and in some places any white woman on foot would have stood out, even if she wasn’t bleeding and in rags. But whoever saw her had kept their distance. There are people who seem in such trouble that, whether you’re a Samaritan or a hyena, you want to back off, shield your face, as if they were on fire.
As the 405 underpass came up, I could see through it to the big silver curves of the Mobil tanks in the distance. When I got to the other side the road jogged to the right, just as she’d said, and I saw a convertible with its lights on, standing fifteen yards or so from the road. Beside it was a corrugated steel shed with no windows, and behind that, three walking-beam pumps loomed up against the night sky. Rebecca was right. They looked like insects, enormous mantises, bowing and rising very slowly over something on the dark ground I couldn’t see. I stopped ten feet from the convertible and killed the lights, but left the motor running. I got out with my gun in my right hand and my flashlight in my left. I didn’t turn on the flash. The Studebaker’s motor was still running. I didn’t see anyone around. Each pump clanked softly at the bottom of each slow stroke. My nostrils were thick with the rank, gluey smell of crude oil.
There was no one in the convertible, dead or alive. No stains on the white vinyl seats. I switched on the flash and walked once around the car, hearing that big V-8 Stude engine purr, looking at the footprints all around. They didn’t tell me anything. I followed the scuffed-up dirt around the back of the shed and found Lorin Shade where I thought he’d be. He was on his back, just out of sight of the road, and his pearl-snapped shirt was a black mess underneath his heart.
I put the flash on the mess and thought I could count four holes. I swallowed hard and brought my nose down close to the wounds. There was the smell of blood, half new copper penny, half raw beef, and a smell of scorched cloth. I put the light on Shade’s face. He didn’t have any opinion of what had gone on. There was thick red dust on his shirt and his face, even on his open eyes. I stood up and thought a while as the pumps went up and down. I walked in a circle around him and the shed, and kept widening the circle a bit with every revolution, my flash on the ground. Maybe fifteen, eighteen feet from Shade’s body I found a scrap of lacy cloth, stained gray in the middle. I sniffed it, and then dropped it back on the ground. I wasn’t about to introduce it in court. I went to my car, got some surgical gloves from my toolkit, and came back and got into the Stude.
It was the same car, all right, only now I was in the driver’s seat. I had a quick, screwy impulse to put it in gear and cruise around a while. I’ve never driven a car that nice. I opened the glove compartment, but the registration was already gone. There was nothing else in there I needed to think about. Nothing on the floor or under the seats. I killed the lights, turned the engine off, and got out. Someone had thought to take the license plates, too, front and back. Nothing in the trunk, not a thing. It was still the cleanest damn trunk you could imagine, like no one had ever opened it. I closed it, pulled a handkerchief from my pocket, and polished the trunk latch. I polished the gas tank lid too, and all the door handles, and then I got back in and did the steering wheel and gearshift and so on. That was probably everything. I stood there, thinking. The hell, I was tired. I got back in my car and went home.
I spent the night in the armchair, under my overcoat, with my feet propped up on the bed. I woke up at dawn, a little before Rebecca. She hadn’t moved. She was thin enough that you could barely see her body under the blankets. All you saw was thick pale hair on the pillow and a face that seemed a little childish in sleep, with the top front teeth showing, which made her look a little rabbity. When she started waking up, I could tell she didn’t want to. She knew she was going to remember something bad. It was her turn to wake up that way. She blinked at the ceiling, and then she blinked at me, and then she looked at me.
I said, “All right. I’ll take care of him for you.”
23
Bed
She took a long time to focus on my face. She had a strand of hair stuck in the corner of her mouth, and she brushed it away. It took two tries. “You were there all nigh’? In the chair?”