He also felt deeply ashamed, of course, but it was, in the absence of the facts of what he’d actually done and said, a nebulous, vague sort of shame that was, in its very nature, even more disturbing and shameful than any normal sense of remorse. To put it another way, he couldn’t feel bad about what he couldn’t remember, but he felt plenty bad about what he could.
Normally there was chatter in the car, little conversations about this or that, but this morning everyone was silent. Whatever he’d said and done had certainly made an impression! Content with the quiet, in a sour, sick sort of way, Justin let the silence reign.
At their stop for lunch, when everyone was stretching their legs and making something to eat, he drew Bowler off to one side and quietly put the question to the younger man.
“What did I do last night?” he said. “What did I say?”
Bowler shuffled his feet uncomfortably and looked over Justin’s shoulder, at the others, but then sighed.
“Well, you were good and hammered,” he said. “That homemade stuff must really pack a wallop, huh?”
“Yes, it’s quite strong,” Justin said, suppressing a queasy burp. “But I need to know… what did I say to Mr. Lampert?”
“Oh, man, you laid into him somethin’ fierce! You called him all kinds of names, said how he was a, what was it? A shriveled old fossil, that was one. And a heartless, mean old reptile. Lots of other things, too, none if it too nice. Gee, what else? Well, mostly you like, blamed him.”
“Blamed him? For what?”
“Oh, just about everything, seemed like. You, uh, said how people like him were like, what was wrong with the world, an’ how if he would just lift a finger to help, your mission would be a lot easier. And about, you know, her. Teresa. I dunno, Doc, you were pretty smashed. You said a lotta stuff.”
“I didn’t hurt anyone, did I?” Justin asked. “Physically, I mean.”
“Oh, no,” said Bowler, shaking his head. “You were kind of a mean drunk, but not that mean. No, you just kinda yelled at everybody for a while and then you went off and puked in the bushes. Then you went into the tent and passed out. The end. Personally, if it was me? I wouldn’t worry about, it Doc. Everybody needs to blow off steam once in a while.”
Justin smiled. “Thanks,” he said, and meant it. “But I think you’re being kind. Mr. Lampert wouldn’t be so upset, unless I’d said some pretty terrible things.”
“Aw, don’t mind him,” said Bowler. “He’s just tryin’ to get your goat. Trust me, you weren’t that bad.”
“Well,” said Justin, feeling a little better, “that’s nice to know. Thank you.”
“No problem.”
Justin heaved a deep sigh. “Well, let’s get something to eat,” he said. “We have to keep up our strength.”
It was a quiet lunch, but not quite so tense and sullen as that morning, and by the end they were back to making small talk. Even the Old man contributed a few of his crusty old one-liners. Justin felt better with some food—in this case corn mash, bacon, and fresh peaches—in his stomach and when they packed up and got back on the road, he gratefully nestled into his seat and, lulled by the motion of the vehicle and the warm afternoon sun, fell into a sound sleep.
When he woke up, it was toward sundown. Blearily, he looked around and cleared his throat.
“Hey, Doc,” said Cornell, looking over. “You feel better?”
“A little,” Justin admitted. “But how long did I sleep? Where are we?”
“Middle o’ nowhere, basically,” said Cornell. “And you was out for, oh, quite a while. I was startin’ to think about lookin’ for a spot for the night. After all, this baby won’t run without the sun.”
“Er, yes, of course,” said Justin, running his tongue around in his mouth. “Whatever you think best.”
“Yeah, that’s the one drawback to this thing,” said Cornell, nodding at the dashboard. “We can’t travel at night.”
“Yes, well,” Justin said, “if the alternative is to walk, I think we can call it a fair trade.”
“Amen to that, friend,” Cornell nodded. “No way in hell we’d make it on foot.”
Things went quiet again and Justin sat and watched the landscape flow by his window. Mostly they were in open, formerly farm country, but every so often a burned-out strip mall or dilapidated farmhouse came into view, and they had to slow down at one point to navigate a huge pile-up of cars and trucks that nearly obstructed the road. Humming carefully around the mess, a tangle of maybe thirty vehicles, all smashed and starting to rust, Justin couldn’t help but wonder aloud.
“What happened here?” he said. “Is it a Panic Jam?”
They’d seen a few of these in their travels, great fields of derelict vehicles, hundreds and hundreds all crammed together at some choke point like a bridge or tunnel. They called them Panic Jams because they marked where city dwellers had attempted to leave their homes en masse and had either run out of gas or been turned back by the authorities. Typically, they were sad, often gruesome scenes of destruction, but they were also magnets for anyone in need of gasoline or a vehicle and subsequently quite often very dangerous places, like a no-man’s-land combined with a used car lot. This, though, didn’t seem the same.
“Naw, this here’s a roadblock,” Cornell acknowledged. “This banger clan, the Black Fists, they put all them cars and trucks there so they could stop anybody still out on the road. Used to man the thing, like day an’ night.”
“But not anymore?” said Bowler worriedly, swiveling in his seat to eye the pile of cars and trucks.
“Nope,” Cornell said confidently. “Not for a good year or so, anyway.”
Justin caught the implication that Cornell had been involved with some sort of altercation with this Black Hand bunch and had come out on top, but he decided not to inquire about it. There were plenty enough tales of pain and strife going around as it was.
Once past this minor obstacle, they motored along smoothly for another half hour or so and then Cornell slowed the car and, scanning the roadside intently, finally seemed to make up his mind and brought the car to a halt on what was left of the shoulder.
“Here we are, folks,” he said cheerfully. “Home for the night.”
To Justin, the spot Cornell had chosen looked just like any other stretch of disused highway. There was a burned-down farm house and some outbuildings about a quarter mile away, but otherwise the land here was largely open and anonymous. Once he’d climbed out of the car and stretched out some of the kinks in his back and neck, he decided to satisfy his curiosity.
“Why here?” he asked Cornell, as they unpacked the tent and the cooking gear. “That is, was there some specific reason you chose this spot?”
“High ground,” Cornell said. “Top o’ this little hill here, we can see for a good mile or two, let us know if anybody’s comin’.”
“Ah, of course,” said Justin, filing the strategy into his growing volume of Survival Smarts. “That makes good sense.”
“Basic,” shrugged Cornell.
They set up the tent and the cooking stuff—a compact, gasoline-powered stove and the accompanying pots and pans—and then made something to eat. It may have been only their second night away from the House, but somehow it felt like much longer to Justin. Waiting for dinner, watching the sun sink into a forbidding bank of dark clouds to the west and thinking (despite himself) about Teresa, he thought that it felt rather more like a week had gone by since they’d left. Funny how time was often so relative.