"It'll be a while before we get where we're going, so I got you a hamburger and co-cola. I loosened the cap, so you won't need an opener."
"Thank you," Rachel said, setting the bag beside her, "but what about you?"
"I'm fine," the sheriff said.
Rachel smelled the grilled meat and realized she was hungry again despite the bowl of beans, the cornbread and buttermilk. She settled Jacob deeper into her lap, then unwrapped the wax paper moist with grease. The meat was still warm and juicy, and she pinched off a few bits for Jacob. She took out the drink and pressed her thumb against the metal cap, felt it give. A kindly thing for him to have done that, Rachel thought, just his thinking to do it, same as buying the marbles. When she'd finished, Rachel put the bottle and wrapper in the bag and set it beside her.
They skirted Asheville and passed over the French Broad. As Rachel stared at the river, she told herself to think of something that wasn't fretful, so she thought of the sheriff's room, how you'd have known it was a man's room as much from what wasn't in it as what was-no pictures on the wall or lacy curtains over the window, no flowers in a vase. But there had been a neatness she'd have not have reckoned on. On the bedside table, a shellcraft pipe and stringed cloth tobacco pouch, a pair of wire-rimmed glasses and a pearl pen knife he'd pare his nails with. Across the room on the bureau, a looking glass, in front of it a black metal comb, a straight razor and its lather bowl and brush. On the chest of drawers, a Bible and a Farmers' Almanac, a tall book titled Wildlife of North America and another called Camping and Woodcraft, all stacked in a tidy row like in a library. Everything looked to have its place, and that place seemed to have been set and determined for a long time. A lonely sort of room.
In a while they passed a sign that said Madison County. The mountains around them rose higher, blotted out more of the sky.
"Where are we going?" Rachel asked.
"I called a relation of mine," the sheriff said. "She's an older woman who lives by herself. She's got an extra room you can stay in."
"She your aunt?"
"No, that would be too close of kin. A second cousin."
"Where does she live?"
"Tennessee."
"Her name McDowell too?"
"No, Sloan. Lena Sloan."
They drove west now, the road rising steadily toward mountains where the day's last light limned the ridge tops red. Jacob waked for a few minutes, then nuzzled against Rachel's breast and fell back asleep. It was full dark when she and Sheriff McDowell spoke again.
"You ain't tried to arrest them?"
"No," Sheriff McDowell said, "but I think soon I'll get enough on them that I can. I'm going to have the state coroner in Raleigh help me. But until then you've got to stay as far from them as possible."
"How'd you know they was coming after us?"
"A telephone call."
"A call last night?"
"Yes."
"And they said Jacob was in danger, not just me?"
"Yes, both of you."
"Do you know who it was, the one that called?"
"Joel Vaughn."
"Joel," Rachel said.
For a few moments she didn't speak.
"They'll kill him for that, won't they?"
"They'll try."
"Do you know where he is?"
"I drove him to Sylva this afternoon so he could hop a freight car," Sheriff McDowell answered, "one that wouldn't be going near Waynesville or Asheville."
"Where's he going?"
"If he did what I told him, as far from these mountains as possible."
The road leveled out a few yards before unfurling downward. Below in the distance were a few muted clusters of light. Rachel remembered how a month ago she'd sat before a hearth of glowing coals and listened to Jacob's breathing, thinking how after her mother had left when Rachel was five there'd been so much emptiness in the cabin she could hardly bear to be inside it, because everywhere you looked there was something that had reminded her that her mother was gone. Even the littlest thing like a sewing needle left on the fireboard or a page turned down in the Sears, Roebuck catalog. The same after her father died. But that night a month ago, as she'd listened to Jacob breathing, the cabin had felt fuller than it had in a long time. More alive too, a place where the living held sway more than those dead or gone.
Now everywhere was emptiness, the only thing left the child sleeping in her lap. She thought about Widow Jenkins and Joel, gone now as well. A part of her could almost wish Jacob too were gone, because it would all be so much easier. If it was just her left, she wouldn't even have to be afraid because all they could take from her was her life, and that seemed a piddling thing after all that had happened. Rachel thought about the bowie knife in the box trunk, how easy it would be to hide in her dress pocket, then wait until the last light in the camp went out and walk up to the Pemberton's house.
But Jacob was alive, and she'd have to protect him because there was nobody else to. She'd have to be afraid, for the both of them.
"We just crossed into Tennessee," Sheriff McDowell said. "They won't find you here. Just don't use your real name and don't take the young one with you when you go into town."
"Besides them two you told me about, is there anyone else you figure might come after us?"
"Maybe Pemberton, but I doubt it. Probably not her either. Most likely it'll be Galloway."
Rachel looked out the window.
"I've never been to no other state before."
"Well, you have now," Sheriff McDowell said. "Not much difference though, is it?"
"Not from what I can see."
The blacktop curved and the sheriff shifted gears. The road made a last brief rise and then plunged downward. They drove another thirty minutes before coming into a town. The Model T turned and bumped over railroad tracks, then passed a depot before stopping in front of a small white house.
"Where are we?" Rachel asked.
"Kingsport."
Twenty-eight
"A RATHER DAINTY APPETITE TONIGHT," SERENA said. "Are you feeling ill?"
They sat across from each other in the back room, the table's width between them, the empty chairs set against the walls. Pemberton noted the sound of Serena's silver cutlery ringing against the bone china, how it further accentuated the room's emptiness. Serena set her knife down.