“Oh, Portia…”
Lis must have unknowingly inhaled a huge lungful of air; her chest stung suddenly and she lowered her forehead to her drawn-up knees to ease the pain. In the turbulent silence that flowed between them Lis felt the pain drift away and she lifted her head again to face her sister. As she was about to speak, a faint, not unpleasant roll of thunder filled the room and as it did Portia’s eyes harrowed with understanding. She said, “Oh, no.”
“Yes,” Lis said. “Yes. My lover was Robert Gillespie.”
28
“So how long you known the Atchesons?”
The Jeep driver had a narrow face and gray wattles running down his throat. He downshifted the old vehicle and nursed it up a hill north of downtown Ridgeton, exhaust popping and the gears in agony. The big man next to him was studying the shifting with more interest than the driver thought natural.
“Years and years I’ve known them,” he said. “Many years.”
“I know Owen,” the driver said. “Talked to him a few times. We run into each other at Ace Hardware some. A decent sort. For a lawyer.”
“A hundred years, I’d guess.”
“Pardon me?”
“Lis-bone especially.”
“I didn’t think she pronounced it that way. But you know ’em better’n me, I’d guess.” The Jeep bounded over a rough spot of road. “You’re lucky I come by. Nobody’s out on the streets tonight because of the storm. Those weathermen with their toupees and funny names, they said it’s going to be a pisser of a storm but naw it’s just a little rain is all it is.”
The big man didn’t respond.
The Jeep hissed past the intersection of Cedar Swamp and North Street and for a moment the driver thought that he saw someone turn quickly, startled by their passage, and drop over the side of a small hill near the drainage ditch. Simultaneously the sky filled with a huge sphere of lightning and shadows danced every which way. A branch fell nearby. The driver put the apparition down to a freak arrangement of lights and fog and rain. He sped up and followed the winding, uneven course of Cedar Swamp. “Shameful on the part of the county. When’re they going to get around and do it up right? Put some new asphalt along here? This road’s mostly mud and twigs.”
“Mud and twigs,” the big man fired back. “Mud and twigs.”
I believe I may’ve made a mistake here. “What happened to your car?”
“Mud and twigs maybe, something you seem to know a lot about.”
When his rider added nothing more, the driver said, “Ahn.”
“She slipped out from under me on a slick road. She went and twisted. Rolled over and over.”
“What about the police?”
“They’re busy elsewhere. Two of them. Two young men. I was particularly sorry about them. Poor Gunderson boys. But I had no choice.”
Never again, the driver thought. Never ever again, rain or no rain, cracked wrist bone or no.
The big man stared intently at the trees then with great concentration unlocked and relocked his door seven times. He asked, “You ever been in the army?”
What’s the best answer to give? The driver said, “Did a tour, yessir. Was stationed in-”
“Army intelligence?”
“Nope. I was a GI.”
The big man frowned. “What’s that?”
“Government Issue. A dogface. Combat infantry-man.”
“A GI.”
“Yessir.”
“GI, GI. Gee, I wonder if you know where Abraham Lincoln was shot.”
“Uhm.”
“In the head. Or during a play. They’re both right answers.”
“I knew that, sure.” Oh, brother, what’ve I done to myself here? “Quite a storm after all. I stand corrected. Glad I got four-wheel drive.”
“Four-wheel drive,” the man said. “Yes. What is that exactly? What is four-wheel drive?”
“You don’t know that?” The driver blurted a laugh. “Everybody knows what four-wheel drive is.” The big man turned to him with a malevolent glare and the driver rubbed the back of his hand across a stubbled cheek, adding, “That was most probably a joke.”
“Nice try,” the man snapped, leaning across the gearshift, placing his round face very close to the driver’s. “But if somebody was away in a different country for a long time, isn’t it possible that they might not know what four-wheel drive is?”
“Put that way, it’s more’n possible.”
“What if somebody from 1865, for instance, just showed up now? Are you saying it’s not possible that they might not know what four-wheel drive is?”
“More’n possible,” he repeated miserably. “You know, I’m thinking we should really stop by that hospital. Get your arm looked at.”
The big man wiped his face with his stubby peasant fingers, yellow as his teeth, and then took from his pocket a blue-black pistol. He lifted it to his face and smelled it then licked the barrel.
“Ah,” the driver whispered and began to pray.
“Take me to the Atchesons’ place,” the man bellowed. “Take me there now and use all of those damn four-wheeled drivers of yours!”
Several miles up the road the driver pulled the Jeep to a stop, bladder loose and hands quivering. I’ll never forgive myself for doing this to the Atchesons, he thought, but this’s the way it’s gotta be. “That there’s the driveway.”
“Nice try but I don’t see the sign.”
“There it is. There! Underneath that rose on the mailbox. See the name? Are you going to kill me?”
“You get out of this car and I want to make it so it won’t work anymore.”
“The Jeep?”
“Yes. I want to make it so it won’t work.”
“Okay, I can do that. Let’s both get out. Only I’m asking you not to hurt me.”
“You ever have a mind to go to Washington?”
“D.C. you’re speaking of?”
“Of course D.C.! Who gives a shit about Seattle?”
“No, no! Never have. I swear.”
“Good. Show me how to dismember this truck.”
“You take off the distributor cap and pitch it away. This thing’ll never start.”
“Do that.”
The driver opened the blunt hood of the car and ripped the cap off. It sailed into the woods. He looked completely forlorn. The rain matted his hair and ran into the deep grooves of his face. The big man turned to him. “Now, you think I’m stupid. You’re trying reverse psychology. You say you don’t want to go to Washington hoping I’ll say go there? Is that right?”
The man choked. “That’s about right, sir.”
“Well, I want you to run. You run all the way to Washington, D.C., and tell them that revenge is here.”
“Are you going to shoot me in the back?”
“You tell them that.”
“Are you going to-”
“RUN!”
He ran, never looking back, believing that he’d die before he got ten feet. Then before he got twenty. Then fifty. Running through the streams of rain, waiting for death. He never turned and so he never saw the big man, holding the pistol high in front of him like a nineteenth-century Pinkerton detective, stalk slowly down the driveway of gravel and mud.
Lis stared at the young woman’s face. Even in the dark she could clearly see silver dots of reflection in her eyes. Yet Lis would have turned on all the lights in the kitchen, risked attracting a hundred Michael Hrubeks, to witness her sister’s expression at this moment, to see if her words were lies or the truth.
“Tell me honestly, Portia. Did you know about us, Robert and me? Before you… made love with him.”
Either way I lose, she thought. Either her lover had betrayed her. Or her lover and her sister. Still, she had to know the answer.
“Oh, Lis, of course not. I wouldn’t do that to you. Didn’t you know that?”