“Bring her.”
“Ray, you don’t have to do this,” she said. “Let me help you. Remember our talk? I can help you.”
He sighed. “Listen, lady, I don’t want your help. And I’m not so stupid that I’m gonna trust you either. Now get out of the car. Nothing’s gonna happen to those people except we take their wheels.”
“You can promise me that, Ray? Really?”
He couldn’t. Only Emil could.
“Damn right I can promise you.”
He dug into his shirt pocket and pulled out a wallet-sized snapshot, creased and worn. He handed it to her. “Look,” he said. “I found it.”
She was looking at a color photo of a scrawny dishwater blonde and two scrawny kids of indeterminate sex, barely smiling, standing in a miserable yard in front of a broken swing.
His family.
“Now would you please get the hell out of the car?”
He held out his hand and she gave him back the photo and opened the door. He got out behind her.
“Listen,” he said. “I want you to know I feel bad about… what happened back there. At the house I mean. Sometimes a guy… you know…”
“I know,” she said and started walking.
She guessed the man and woman to be in their late twenties, early thirties. The woman had seen the guns and was out of her seat already and had gone around back to the little girl. The woman was pretty and her left eye had let go of one long tear that streaked her cheek but her arms were around her little girl and you could see she was trying to be brave and stay calm so as not to panic her and you could see that it was working. The girl was only five or so and looked confused by all this activity and her mother’s sudden urgency but she didn’t cry but only sat silent, wide-eyed and tense.
Beside her sat a teenage girl who looked much like the woman. She guessed they were sisters because the girl was too old to be the woman’s daughter. At first glance she seemed frozen with fear. Then Janet saw something pass across her face and her lips set tight as she took the girl’s hand in both of her own.
A family with grit, she thought. They don’t deserve this.
“Let’s go,” said Emil.
He waved them out of the car. She noticed that it was another station wagon. Another fake “woodie” like Marion’s, only a later model.
“Like I said, it’s just the car we want, ma’am.”
The man’s arm went around his wife’s waist and his hand down to his daughter. The sister held the girl’s other hand as Emil and Billy walked them back to Marion’s car. Marion lit a cigarette with a wooden match that flared brightly in the still air and then diminished. She leaned back against their car.
Somewhere in the distance frogs bellowed out their longing.
“I think you can all squeeze together in the backseat there, right?” Emil said. She could hear every word. “I mean, for all I know, your wife might be an expert at hot-wiring. This is your wife, right, sir?”
He was trying to be reassuring. Janet wasn’t reassured.
“Yes,” the man said.
“Your daughter?”
“Yes.”
“Kid sister?”
“Yes… well, no. My wife’s sister.”
“Well, sir, you’ve got a real pretty family here.”
“Thank you.”
“What I want you all to do is to stay in the back right where you are till we’re ready to leave, okay? Then I’ll toss you the keys as we go. Oh, and I might as well take yours now, sir. Good now as later, right?”
The man dug into his pocket and handed him the keys.
“What we’re going to do is, we’re going to have a little conference, the three of us, and then we’ll be moving on.”
They walked back to Ray, Janet and Marion.
“Give Margaret the gun, Bill,” he said. “I don’t see any problem coming from these people, Maggie, but you might want to watch your friend here. Ray, let’s us talk.”
They went off onto the shoulder a bit. Janet nodded toward the gun.
“Would you really use it on me?”
She seemed to consider.
“I don’t know. I might. I think, probably. I mean, old times only goes so far, you know?”
“Jesus, Marion. He can’t even get your name right!”
And then she shut up because she could hear what they were saying, talking the way other men might discuss some ad campaign or product or corporate merger, the way she’d heard herself talk in conference rooms and chambers with judges and lawyers and witnesses, all matter-of-fact and bottom-line and so much more terrible for that to hear hell, they’ll remember all of it, everything… how many guns we’ve got, what we look like, what we’re wearing… sure they will… I don’t see that we’ve got a choice, then… neither do I… we have to kill them… we’ve got to kill ’em… okay then, so what about the kid? because if Janet could hear, then so could the people in the car, the windows were all wide open and they could hear their deaths discussed like three guys splitting the check in a restaurant and she could see them all huddled together, heard somebody openly crying now, saw them through the rear window embracing tight and frantic and the woman stroking her sister’s hair and thought, so tender! my god! this can’t be happening! and the man leaning over and wrapping his arms around them as though to ingest and swallow them up safe inside him and his back moving, sobbing or trying not to sob, she couldn’t tell which and then she looked at Marion.
Marion standing there still and cold as a snake. The gun pointed casually in her direction.
Marion, who could and would let this happen.
She might be the worst of them, she thought. At least the others have their twisted evil reasons.
Then the men were moving, Billy toward Marion, taking the gun from her hand and following Emil who was headed straight for the car and Ray stopping beside Janet saying, you want to be very smart now and then watching them walk to the wagon and Janet watching too still unbelieving and wholly unable to speak as though that power was shut down tight in her as Billy and Emil turned their guns to the backseat of the car, flashes of muzzle fire and raw sharp clapping in her ears and bodies jerking, twisting, falling inside the car, blood and glass suddenly everywhere and the sharp tang of cordite assailing her and she turned and tried to run, needed to run, run anywhere, fighting Ray with all her strength and Ray simply turning her, his grip on her arms shearing deep into her muscles, turning her and forcing her to see the final volley, the sullen punch of bullets into limp flesh.
“Bless our loved ones,” Billy said.
And when she heard the whimpering into the silence that followed, the little girl’s voice, the first she'd even heard that voice take breath, her legs gave way beneath her. Oh dear god no, she thought. Alive. Amid all that frightful death.
Ray held her to her feet while the firing began again and Janet closed her eyes.
When she opened them and cleared them of tears the first thing she saw was Marion, her hands clutching hard at her breasts, the sheen of perspiration on her face and the wild light skittering in her eyes-a woman shattered in the wake of revelation and probably the orgasm of her life. She saw the men staring through the window, watching for further movement. She turned and saw Ray. And there was nothing there to see at all.
In the distance behind them headlights crested a hill and began to roll toward them deep into the moon- drenched valley.
Emil held up his brand-new set of keys.
“Let’s move!” he said.
They’d driven a mile or so before she thought of it. Until then she’d felt empty inside as a propped-up wooden manikin sitting between Billy at the wheel and Ray riding shotgun, aware only of the straight smooth tarmac hissing beneath their wheels, the sound of flight, of movement. And maybe it was that which served to bring her back to herself and back to what she’d actually seen these people do just moments before. Because finally she thought of it.
She reached over past Ray to the glove compartment. Popped it open and reached inside. A can of de-icer. A pair of sunglasses. A cracked plastic windshield scraper. Half a roll of Five-Flavor LifeSavers.