Of course, there were also things that Carl needed to say to the hitchhikers, but that could usually wait until after they parked the car. “Take a look at this,” he’d begin, when he pulled the camera out of the glove box, a Leica M3 35mm, and held it up for the man to see. “Cost four hundred new, but I got it for damn near nothing.” And though the sexy smile never left Sandy’s lips, she couldn’t help but feel a little bitter every time he bragged about it. She didn’t know why she had followed Carl into this life, wouldn’t even try to put such a thing into mere words, but she did know that that damn camera had never been a bargain, that it was going to cost them plenty in the end. Then she’d hear him ask the next model, in a voice that sounded almost like he was joking, “So, how would you like to have your picture took with a good-looking woman?” Even after all this time, it still amazed her that grown-up men could be so easy.
After they carried and dragged the army boy’s naked body a few yards into the woods and rolled it under some bushes heavy with purple berries, they went through his clothes and duffel bag and found nearly three hundred dollars tucked away in a pair of clean white socks. That was more money than Sandy made in a month. “The lying little weasel,” Carl said. “Remember me asking him for some gas money?” He swiped at a cloud of insects gathered around his sweaty, red face, stuck the wad of bills in his pants pocket. A pistol with a long pitted barrel lay beside him on the ground next to the camera. “Like my old mother used to say,” he went on, “you can’t trust any of them.”
“Who?” Sandy said.
“Them goddamn redheads,” he said. “Hell, they’ll spit out a lie even when the truth fits better. They just can’t help it. It’s something got fucked up in their evolution.”
Up on the main road a car with a burned-out muffler went by slowly, and Carl cocked his head and listened to the pop-pop sound until it faded away. Then he looked over at Sandy kneeling beside him, studied her face for a moment in the gray dusk. “Here, clean yourself off,” he said, handing her the boy’s T-shirt, still damp with his sweat. He pointed at her chin. “You got some splatter right there. That skinny bastard was full as a tick.”
After wiping the shirt over her face, Sandy tossed it on top of the green duffel and stood up. She buttoned her blouse with shaky hands, brushed the dirt and bits of dead leaf off her legs. Walking to the car, she bent down and examined herself in the side mirror, then reached through the window and grabbed her cigarettes off the dash. She leaned against the front bumper and lit a smoke, dug a tiny piece of gravel out of one skinned knee with a pink fingernail. “Jesus, I hate it when they cry like that,” she said. “That’s the worst.”
Carl shook his head as he flipped through the boy’s wallet one more time. “Girl, you got to get over that shit,” he said. “Them tears he shed is the kind of thing makes for a good picture. Those last couple minutes was the only time in his whole miserable life when he wasn’t faking it.”
As Sandy watched him stuff everything that belonged to the boy back into the duffel, she was tempted to ask if she could keep the girlfriend’s class ring, but decided it wasn’t worth the hassle. Carl had everything figured out, and he could turn into a raging maniac if she tried to flaunt even one little rule. Personal items had to be disposed of properly. That was Rule #4. Or maybe it was #5. Sandy could never keep the order of the rules straight, no matter how many times he tried to drill them into her head, but she would always remember that Gary Matthew Bryson loved Hank Williams and hated the army’s powdered eggs. Then her stomach growled and she wondered, just for a second, if those berries hanging over his head back there in the woods were fit to eat or not.
AN HOUR LATER, they pulled into a deserted gravel pit they had passed by earlier when Sandy and Private Bryson were still cracking jokes and making fuck-eyes at each other. She parked behind a small utility shed cobbled together out of scrap lumber and rusty sheets of tin and shut off the engine. Carl climbed out of the car with the duffel bag and a can of gasoline they always carried. A few yards past the shed, he set the bag down and sprinkled some gas on it. After he had it burning good, he went back to the car and searched the backseat with a flashlight, found a wad of gum stuck under one of the armrests. “Worse than some kid,” he said. “You’d think the military would teach them better than that. With soldiers like that one, we’ll be fucked if those Russians ever decide to invade.” He peeled the gum off carefully with his thumbnail and then returned to the fire.
Sandy sat in the car and watched him poke the flames with a stick. Orange and blue sparks hopped and fluttered and disappeared into the darkness. She scratched at some jigger bites around her ankles and worried about the burning sensation between her legs. Though she hadn’t mentioned it to Carl yet, she was pretty sure that another boy, one they had picked up in Iowa a couple of days ago, had given her some kind of infection. The doctor had already warned her that another dose or two would ruin her chances of ever having a baby, but Carl didn’t like the look of rubbers in his pictures.
When the fire died out, Carl kicked the ashes around in the gravel, then took a dirty bandanna from his back pocket and picked up the hot belt buckle and the smoking remains of the army boots. He flung them out into the middle of the gravel pit and heard a faint splash. As he stood at the edge of the deep hole, Carl thought about the way that Sandy had wrapped her arms around the army boy when she saw him set the camera down and pull the pistol out, like that was going to save him. She always tried that shit with the pretty ones, and though he couldn’t really blame her for wanting it to last a while longer, this wasn’t just some damn fuck party. To his way of thinking, it was the one true religion, the thing he’d been searching for all his life. Only in the presence of death could he feel the presence of something like God. He looked up, saw dark clouds beginning to gather in the sky. He wiped some sweat out of his eyes and started back to the car. If they were lucky, maybe it would rain tonight and wash some of the scum out of the air, cool things off a bit.
“What the hell were you doing over there?” Sandy asked.
Carl pulled a new cigar from his shirt pocket and started peeling off the wrapper. “You get in a hurry, that’s when you make a mistake.”
She held her hand out. “Just give me the fucking flashlight.”
“What you doing?”
“I got to pee, Carl,” she said. “Jesus, I’m about ready to bust, and you’re over there daydreaming.”
Carl chewed on the cigar and watched her make her way around the back of the shed. A couple of weeks on the road and she was down to nothing again, her legs like goddamn toothpicks, her ass flat as a washboard. It would take three or four months to put some meat back on those bones. Slipping the roll of film he’d shot of her and the army boy into a small metal canister, he stuck it in the glove box with the others. By the time Sandy returned, he had loaded a new roll into the camera. She handed him the light and he stuck it under the seat. “Can we get a motel tonight?” she asked in a tired voice as she started the car.
Carl pulled the cigar out of his mouth and picked at a shred of tobacco caught between his teeth. “We need to do some driving first,” he said.
Heading south on 79, they crossed the Mississippi into Illinois on Route 50, a road they’d become mighty familiar with over the last couple of years. Sandy kept trying to hurry things, and he had to remind her several times to slow down. Wrecking the car and being pinned inside or knocked out was one of his biggest fears. Sometimes he had nightmares about it, saw himself lying handcuffed to a hospital bed trying to explain those rolls of film to the law. Just thinking about it started to fuck with the high he’d gotten off the army boy, and he reached over and twisted the knob on the radio until he found a country music station coming out of Covington. Neither of them spoke, but every once in a while, Sandy hummed along to one of the slower songs. Then she’d yawn and light another cigarette. Carl counted the bugs that splattered against the windshield, stayed ready to grab the wheel in case she nodded off.