The luminous green sign for an exit. He eased up. The second sign specified Bear Valley and Grant Center. “This exit?” he asked.
“I dunno, I guess so.”
“Is this the way to Bailey? Why doesn’t the sign say Bailey?”
“What you want Bailey for?”
“Isn’t that where we’re going? Isn’t that where we’re going to report?”
“Oh yeah, that’s right,” Lou said.
“Well, is this the way?” They had come to the beginning of the exit ramp, and were almost stopped.
“Yeah, I guess so.”
A stop sign. “Left or right?” The road was rural. There was a darkened gas station, and black fields merging into woods.
It took the man a while to decide. “Try right,” he said.
“I thought Bailey was the nearest town,” Tony said. “How come the signs mention Bear Valley and Grant Center and not Bailey?”
“That’s strange, ain’t it?” the man said.
The road was narrow, winding through fields and patches of woods, up and down hills, past occasional darkened farmhouses. Tony drove as fast as he could, hitting the brakes for unexpected curves, chasing a car he could not see, while the distance extended to miles and more miles. In all that time, he met no other cars. They came to a reduced speed sign and another sign, CASPAR, and a small village all dark, nothing open. “There’s a telephone booth,” he said.
“Yeah,” Lou said.
He slowed down. “Listen,” he said. “Where the hell is Bailey?”
“Keep going,” the man said.
A crossroads, a somewhat bigger road, a sign to WHITE CREEK, a cluster of garages and roadside restaurants and stores, all closed. “Left,” Lou said, and they left that settlement behind too. A straightaway, then a fork, one road going down, they took the other, climbing again in hills and woods. “There’s the church,” Lou murmured.
“What?” It was a small church in a clearing with a little white spire. The woods closed in on both sides of the road. There was a light-colored car parked in a turnout on a curve. It looked like his car, then he was sure, by God. “That’s my car!” he said, and he stopped beyond it.
“Don’t stop on the goddamn curve.”
“That’s my car.”
Whatever it was, it was empty. There was a lane into the woods and a house trailer above among the trees with a dim light in one of its windows.
“That ain’t your car,” the man said.
Tony Hastings tried to back up to look at the license plate, but he had difficulty getting the car in reverse.
“Don’t back on the curve, for Chrissake!” Tony thought, I haven’t met a single car on the road since we left the Interstate. “That ain’t your car. Your car’s a four door.”
He looked. “Isn’t that?”
“What’s the matter with you, can’t you see?”
Looking, trying to see the car beyond the man sitting on his right, who was telling him the car was not a four door, asking him to look and see for himself—he recognized panic distorting his judgment and perhaps his eyesight, and he resumed driving.
A winding road making a slow ascent through woods, then descending to a T intersection without signs, they turned right to climb some more. The man asked, “What made you think that car was yours?”
“It looked like it.”
“Ain’t nobody in it. What you think, they went to a party in that there trailer?”
“I don’t know what to think.”
“You scared, mister?”
“I’d like to know where we’re going.”
“You fraid my pals ain’t playing straight?”
“I’d like to know where Bailey is.”
“Well my pal Ray, it’s best to humor him, you know.”
“What do you mean?”
“Here, slow down here.”
The road was straight, with a deep ditch and woods on both sides.
“Watch out, you gotta make a turn up here.”
“What do you mean, there’s nothing here.”
“Here it is, turn here.” An unmarked dirt road, a lane into the woods to the right. Tony Hastings stopped the car. “What’s going on?” he said.
“You turn down here, like I said.”
“The hell with you, I’m not going down that road.”
“Listen mister. Nobody hates violence like I do.”
The man with the beard was leaning back in the passenger seat, arm over the seatback, relaxed, looking at Tony.
“You want to see your wife and kid?”
The road, the lane, dwindled quickly to a narrow track with a grass ridge in the middle. It wound around big trees and rocky outcrops in the woods, while the car jounced and squeaked over rocks and pits. I have never been in a situation resembling this, Tony said to himself, nothing remotely this bad. He had a vague memory of what it was like to be hijacked by neighborhood boys bigger than himself, a memory which he created in order to prove how different this was, that nothing in all his civilized life had ever been anything like this.
“What are you doing to us?” he said.
The headlights flashed on the trunks of the trees sweeping from one to another as they turned. The man didn’t say anything.
Tony asked again: “What are you doing to us?”
“Hell mister, I don’t know. Ask Ray.”
“Ray isn’t here.”
“He sure ain’t.” The man laughed. “Well mister, I’ll tell you. I really don’t know what the fuck we’re doing. Like I said, it’s up to Ray.”
“Did Ray tell you to bring me down this road?”
The man didn’t answer.
“Ray’s a funny fellow,” he said. “You got to admire him.”
“You admire him? What for?”
“His guts. He does what he’s got to do.”
“I’ll tell you something,” Tony said. “I don’t admire him. I don’t admire him one little bit.” He wondered if the man with the beard would admire his guts for saying this.
“Don’t worry. He don’t expect you to.”
“He’d better not.”
He saw a fox standing in the leaves, colored jewels in its eyes, caught momentarily in the headlight flood before it turned and disappeared.
“I don’t think you need to worry about your wife and kid.”
“What do you mean?” There were waves of shock in everything tonight. “What is there to worry about?”
“You ain’t scared?”
“Sure I’m scared. I’m scared as hell.”
“Well I can see how you might be.”
“What’s he doing with them? What does he want with them?”
“Damned I know. He likes to see what he can do. Like I say, you don’t need to worry.”
“You mean it’s all a game. A big practical joke.”
“It ain’t exactly a game. I wouldn’t call it that.”
“What is it, then?”
“Hell mister, don’t ask me what he’s got up his sleeve. It’s always different. It’s always something new.”
“Then why do you say I don’t have to worry?”
“He ain’t never killed anybody yet, that’s all I mean. At least as far as I know he ain’t.”
The nature of this assurance gave Tony still another shock. “Killed! Are you talking about killing?”
“I said he ain’t killed,” Lou said. His voice was very quiet. “If you’d a listen to me, you’d hear what I was saying.”
They came to a clearing where the tracks of the road disappeared into grass. “Well well,” Lou said. “Looks like we run out of road.” Tony stopped the car.
“They ain’t here,” he said. “Wonder if I made a mistake. Guess you’d better get out.”
“Out? What for?”
“It’s time for you to get out. Okay?”
“Suppose you tell me why.”
“We got trouble enough already. Just do what I say, right?”