“You showed them.”
“I showed them good. I messed them up good.” In his mind the old man screamed as the pale highway flowed toward them. “You bet I did.”
“You didn’t hurt them?”
“Damn right I did.”
“You shouldn’t do that, Jerry. That isn’t right.”
“OK for them to hurt me, though,” he said, stiff-voiced.
“No, no. I mean...” She struggled with the soft stuff of her mind. “It’s in the Bible. Don’t be mean, that’s what it says.”
“Your tongue’s sure bubbling.”
“Well, you shouldn’t. I don’t think people are really mean. Like my daddy. He just yells. When he’s drunk, he’s sweet.”
He burst into laughter. “You’re somebody, you sure are, Sue Ann.”
She pulled back from him. “Now don’t you laugh at me.”
“Listen,” he said, “nobody’s got candy in their hands. You just remember that.”
“I’d give you some candy.”
“I guess you’d try, wouldn’t you?”
“You know I would.”
Under their wheels, the road down Alabama pulsed like a concrete heart.
“This thing’s a gas hog,” he said. “We better pull her in and fill up.”
They pulled off the highway and wound through a complicated series of small roads to a combination filling station, restaurant, and general store, spreading out under a bright orange roof. He gave her five dollars and she went inside, among the strange voices, and bought crackers, two large coffees, and four comic books with shiny girls wet-faced on the glowing covers. As she came out, he hurried up to her, white-faced and tight-lipped as if he had just smelled hell.
“You come on here.”
They drove around back of the restaurant and parked by a big square trash container. “That damn Dandy,” he said. “Look here.”
Two bullet holes punched the light blue metal, one above the license plate, the other over a taillight. Impact had dimpled the metal and the edges showed raw and clean. There was a strong smell of gasoline.
He said savagely, “Just creased the tank. Put a big old crack in it. It’s been slopping out gas all this time.”
She goggled at him, making inconsequential sounds.
“That Dandy fellow. I didn’t even hear him shooting.”
“Can... can we fix it?”
“Shoot. Can’t run along showing bullet holes. Turn on the lights at night, maybe blow the whole back out of her.”
Fingers crept over her teeth. “Who’s Dandy?” she asked faintly.
“Might tape it. Probably work right loose. Tank’ll hold maybe four gallon. But shoot — I’m not going to drive all over Florida sticking gas in this sucker every hour.”
“Can’t we go to Florida?”
“Will you shut up?”
“Please don’t be mad, Jerry.”
“Don’t you start whining. Give me a hand.”
They unloaded the trunk, piling reeking cardboard boxes by the side of the car. Under the floor mat shone a pungent skin of gasoline.
“Better not chance it,” he said at last. “Give her a spark, she’ll flare up like the sun in a sack.”
As they stared into the trunk, a dirty station wagon rolled past behind them, packed to the windows with staring children and luggage.
“I gotta get me another car,” Jerry said. Briefly his long arms beat at his sides, a furious sudden violence.
In their inconspicuous place behind the road stop, they waited in a numb paralysis of time, the journey compromised. From out front engines sounded, voices rose, and doors slammed and reslammed, a purposeful outcry of activity emphasizing their inactivity and isolation. Limp in the Toyota, Sue Ann fingered through a comic book. Alone by the dumpster, Jerry fidgeted, a wolf watching empty plains, glancing impatiently off toward the main parking area.
After a long time, a black Lincoln, arrogantly polished, rolled past with three people inside. It was followed by a red Ford with a young woman driving.
“Hey, can you give me a hand?” he called.
She drove slowly by, not looking around. He snarled after her and waited. After another ten minutes, a truck full of ropes eased past.
“Hey, can you give me a hand? Just need a second.”
Then a small tan station wagon drew to a stop and a thin-faced young man with glasses and neat dark hair leaned out and asked, “Trouble?” in a cheerful voice.
“Look,” Jerry said, “I need three hands for a second and I only got two.”
The young man elevated his eyebrows and, grinning, pushed open the car door. “Like the way you said that.” He was long-legged, long-armed, and walked with shoulders bent forward, as if being tall bothered him. He left the engine of the wagon running.
“This is a problem,” Jerry said.
The tall man said, “You sure got a gas leak.” And then, in an interested voice, “Those bullet holes?”
Jerry took a blackjack out of his hip pocket and hit the tall man hard on the side of the head above the right ear. The blow made a solid, single sound. His glasses flew off. Long legs buckled, folding him over the edge of the trunk. His head and shoulders dropped inside. Jerry shuffled sideways, struck twice more. He placed the blows carefully, leaning into them. He tried to heave the tall man into the trunk, could not turn the body. Legs dangled.
Grunting with the effort, he hauled the tall man out and wrapped both arms around his body. He lugged the limp figure along the side of the Toyota. Sue Ann stared at him, face convulsed.
“Get out of there,” he snarled at her.
She leaped away, scattering comic books on the cement.
He stuffed the body onto the seat, fought the long legs into the compartment. The head flopped over to expose an ear webbed with blood. From the rear, he jerked out a gray blanket, threw it over the body, pulled the head right, hiding the scarlet ear.
She was crowded against him, breath loud. “Is he dead? Is he dead, Jerry?”
“No, no.”
“Oh, Jerry.”
“Get that car loaded.”
“Oh, Jerry.”
He came at her, furious and tall, shoved her violently against the Toyota. She yelped as her head cracked against the glass. “Listen to me. Move.”
They tumbled boxes into the station wagon. They jerked their possessions from the backseat, rushing between the cars, stuffing sacks, armloads of coats, shoes, fishing rods blindly into any unfilled space.
A Volkswagen pulled in behind the wagon, blasted its horn. “Get this thing outta the street, buddy.”
“Go on around.”
“Dumb jerks parking in the road.”
The Volkswagen snarled around the wagon and was gone. Sweat iced his body; his fingers were lengths of marble.
“Let’s go,” he said to her.
“Oh, no,” she said, backing away. “No no no.”
He said in a soft distant voice, “Sue Ann, get in that car or I am going to have to hurt you bad.”
Her mouth fell open. She went back from him, taking small uneven steps as if moving ankle-deep through a marsh. She tottered around the car, got in. He darted back to the Toyota and, leaning in the driver’s side, fumbled under the gray blanket until he found the tall man’s wallet He locked all the doors. Stuffing the wallet into his pocket, he swung into the station wagon, eased it away from the building, down the road, turned left, moving with precise care, went down the clipped access road to I-65. The wagon handled fine. Sue Ann, staring and white, slumped in the corner.
The fingers of his right hand felt greasy. Making a fist, he saw the back of his hand smeared darkly with blood.
From the car radio a slow voice whined the lyrics of “Whiskey Woman.”
Behind the voice pulsed guitar, bass, drums, filling the interior of the automobile with urgent pressure. Over that sound their intense voices went back and forth, birds riding a heavy wind.