“I come for Ory,” Gerald said, “but he’s died on me. Just thought I’d talk to you a minute.”
“I didn’t kill him.”
“I know it.”
“I only shot him.”
“A blood clot killed him.”
“Do you want to screw me?”
Gerald shook his head, his face turning red. She seemed too young to talk that way, too young for jail, too young for Ory.
“Let me have a cigarette,” she said.
He passed one through the bars and she took it without touching his hand. A chain was tattooed around her wrist. She inhaled twin lines of smoke from her mouth into her nose. The ash was long and red. She sucked at the filter, lifting her lips to prevent them from getting burned. She blew a smoke ring. Gerald had never seen anyone get so much out of a single cigarette.
“Wish it was menthol,” she said. “Ory smoked menthol.”
“Well.”
“What do you want,” she said.
“I don’t know. Nothing I don’t guess.”
“Me neither, except out of here.”
“Don’t reckon I can help you there.”
“You talk just like Ory did.”
“How come you to shoot him?”
“We had a fight, and he like, came over drunk. He wanted something he gave me and I wouldn’t give it back. It was mine. He busted the lock and started tearing everything up, you know, looking for it. I had a little pistol in my vanity and I like, got it out.
Melanie finished the cigarette and he gave her another one, careful not to look at the ring in her nose. Behind her was a stainless steel toilet with a sink on top where the tank should be. When you washed your hands, it flushed the toilet. He thought of the jail at home with its putrid hole in the floor and no sink at all.
“What was it he was wanting so bad?”
“A wig,” she said. “It was blond and he liked me to wear it. Sometimes I wore it in bed.”
“You shot him over a wig.”
“I was scared. He kept screaming, ‘Give me back my wig.’ So I, you know, shot him. Just once. If I knew he’d get that blood clot, I wouldn’t have done it.”
Gerald wondered how old she was but didn’t want to insult her by asking. He felt sorry for her.
“He give you that eye?”
“The cops did. They think me and Ory sell dope but we don’t, not really. Nothing heavy. Just to, like, friends.”
“Why do you do that?” he said.
“Deal?”
“No. Cut your hair and stick that thing in your nose.”
“Shut up,” she said. She began yelling. “I don’t need you. Get away from me. Get out of here!”
The sheriff came into the common room and took Gerald outside. The sky was dark with the smell of rain. He wanted to stand there until the storm swept over him, rinsing him of the jail. He underwent a sudden sense of vertigo, and for a moment he didn’t know where he was, only that he was two days from anything familiar. He didn’t even know where his truck was.
“She’s a hard one,” the sheriff said.
“I don’t want no charges pressed against her.”
“That’s not up to you.”
“She didn’t kill him.”
“I don’t know about Kentucky,” the sheriff said, “but in Nebraska, shooting people’s a crime. Look, there’s been a big wreck on Ninety-two and five people are coming to the hospital. They need the space. We got to get your brother-in-law to a funeral home.”
“Can’t afford it.”
“The hospital’s worse. It charges by the day.”
“What in case I take his stuff and leave.”
“The county’ll bury him.”
“That’ll run you how much?”
“About a thousand.”
“That’s a lot of money.”
The sheriff nodded.
“Tell you what,” Gerald said. “I’ll sell you his car for one dollar. You can use it to pay off what all he owes. There’s that radio and stuff. Plus I’ll throw in a hundred cash.”
“You can’t buy a body.”
“It ain’t yours to sell or mine to buy. I just want to get him home. Family wants him.”
“I don’t know if it’s legal.”
“He ain’t the first person to die somewhere else. My cousin’s aunt came in on a train after getting killed in a wreck. They set her off at the Rocksalt station. She was in a box.”
The sheriff puffed his cheeks and blew air. He went to his office and dialed the courthouse and asked for a notary public. Half an hour later the car belonged to the city of Wahoo. It was a Chevelle and for a moment Gerald wondered if he’d made a mistake. They were pretty good cars.
The sheriff drove them to the hospital. Gerald pulled the money out and started counting.
“Keep it,” the sheriff said.
“Give it to Melanie. She wants menthol cigarettes.”
“You and Ory aren’t a whole lot alike, are you.”
“I never knew him that good.”
“The only man I saw give money away was my daddy.”
“Was he rich?”
“No,” said the sheriff, “Daddy was a farmer.”
“You all worked this flat land?”
“It worked him right back into it.”
Gerald followed the sheriff into the hospital and signed several forms. An orderly wheeled in a gurney with the body on it, covered with a white cloth. He pushed it to an exit beside the emergency room. Three ambulances drove into the lot and paramedics began moving the injured people into the hospital. The orderlies left the gurney and went to help. A state police car stopped behind the ambulances.
“I have to talk to them,” the sheriff said. “Then I’ll get an ambulance to drop the body down at the train station.”
The sheriff left the car and walked to the state trooper. Nobody was looking at Gerald. He pushed the gurney into the lot and along the side of the building. A breeze rippled the cloth that covered Ory. Gerald held it down with one hand but the gurney went crooked. He let go of the cloth and righted the gurney and the wind blew the cloth away. Ory was stretched out naked with a hole in his side. He didn’t look dead, but Gerald didn’t think he looked too good either. He looked like a man with a bad hangover that he might shake by dinner.
Gerald dropped the tailgate of his pickup and dragged Ory into the truck. He threw his blanket over him and weighted the corners with tire tools, the spare, and a coal shovel. He drove the rest of the day. In Illinois, he stopped and lay down beside the truck. Without the blanket he was cold, but he didn’t feel right about taking it back from Ory. Gerald thought about Ory asking Melanie to wear the blond wig. He wondered if it made a difference when they were in bed.
He woke with frost on him. A buzzard circled high above the truck. He drove into the rising sun, thinking that he’d done everything backward. No matter when he drove, he was always aimed at the sun. Mist lifted above the land as the frost gave way. At the next exit, Gerald left the interstate for a farm road and parked beside a plowed field.
He carried the shovel over a wire fence. The dirt was loose and easy to take. It would make a fine garden at home. His body took over, grateful for the labor after three days of driving. A pair of redwing blackbirds sat on a power line, courting each other, and Gerald wondered how birds knew to go with their own kind. Maybe Ory knew he was in the wrong tree and that’s why he wanted Melanie to wear a wig. Gerald tried to imagine her with blond hair. He suddenly understood that he wanted her, had wanted her at the jailhouse. He couldn’t figure why. It bothered him that he had so much desire for a woman he didn’t consider attractive.
He climbed in the back and mounded the dirt to balance the load. As he traveled south, he reentered spring. The buds of softwood trees turned pale green. Flocks of starlings moved over him in a dark cloud, heading north. By nightfall, he crossed the Ohio River into Kentucky. In four hours he’d be home. He was getting sleepy, but coffee had stopped doing him any good. He slid into a zone of the road, letting the rhythm of motion enter his body. A loud noise made him jerk upright. He thought he’d had a flat until he saw that he’d drifted across the breakdown lane and onto the edge of the median. He parked and lay down in the bench seat. He was lucky not to have been killed. The law would have a hard time with that — two dead men, one naked and already stiff, and a load of dirt.