Ben was gripping the steering wheel for dear life now, wondering what was keeping him from punching her head right through the windshield. She was right, in essence. All his schemes, as she’d called them, had fallen through. But not for lack of trying. She was pissed off because their income tax refunds, savings etc. were always dumped into his business ventures.
But, goddammit, at least he tried.
Tapping her hands on her knees, Nancy said, “Listen, baby, all I’m saying is you tried and you failed. Okay. Turn the page. The mill is hiring. You have an uncle there, he’ll get you in. Good pay, good benefits. What’s so bad about that?”
“The minute I walk through those doors, I’ll be there all my life.”
“So fucking what, Ben? I’ve been at the credit union for ten years and I always will be. I’ve accepted that. Each week I bring home a paycheck. And that’s the bottom line. Christ, if not for me, then for the kids.”
That was low. Nancy, a widower, had four kids from her first marriage and Ben loved them like his own. Using them against him… that was bullshit.
“Yeah, well, I’ll think about it,” he said, beaten now.
“Damn right you will.”
White-lipped, teeth gnashing, Ben kept driving, luxuriating in the sudden silence. He could hear the engine humming along, feel the tires bumping along the road. God, what kind of life was it when you took great pleasure in such things?
But the quiet lasted no more than five minutes. “Just where the hell are we?” Nancy demanded to know.
“Short cut.”
She rolled her eyes. “Not another short cut.”
“We’re just going to slip through Cut River, it’ll take twenty minutes off the drive.”
Nancy studied the black farmland, heavy woods encroaching from all sides. “Oh, I’ll just bet.”
“He’s right,” Sam said from the back. “It’s the shortest way.”
Nancy said nothing to that.
“Cut River’s up around the bend,” Ben said.
Nancy giggled deep in her throat. “Sure. Probably be Milwaukee or Altoona, PA knowing you and your short cuts.”
As they rounded the bend in the darkness, thumping over railroad tracks in the process, Ben saw the lights of Cut River. But for one moment, one glaring awful moment, he took his eyes off the road. “You know what, Nancy? I’ve had it right up to here with you and your goddamn mouth. Just keeping running it and see where it gets you. You want me to apply at the mill? Fine, I will. If that’s what it takes to shut you up, God knows I’ll be there with bells on my freaking toes. But right now, how’s about shutting the hell up and letting me drive?”
In the backseat, Sam made a strange stuttering sound. “Hey, hey, hey, you guys—”
“If you could drive worth a damn I’d gladly shut up, Ben. But you have a nasty little habit of getting us lost,” she said, ignoring her brother. “And further more… Jesus Christ, Ben, look out, look out—”
Ben brought his eyes back onto the road long enough to see, not five feet in front of the van, a man standing in the road.
Just standing there.
Shirtless despite the weather, his arms were spread out and, just as Ben saw him, he could’ve sworn this guy was smiling. Ben let out a cry and spun the wheel, hitting the brakes, but it was just too damn late.
He heard the sickening, fleshy thump as the minivan slammed into the guy, tossing him sideways. And then, the wheel spinning crazily in Ben’s hands, the minivan careened off to the left, leaped the culvert and slammed into a tree stump.
And there it died.
Everyone was belted in. Ben always made sure of that.
When he found his voice, was able to drag it up his throat, he said: “Everyone okay?”
“Yeah,” Sam said, his voice shallow. “I think… yeah… Jesus, Ben we hit him.”
Nancy hadn’t said a word.
She just sat there holding her face in her hands as if it would fall off without support. Ben kept calling her name, but she ignored him. Finally she looked up, saw the damage to the van in the glow of the headlights, and looked to her husband. “You ran him down,” she said. “You ran him down… you goddamn moron… oh my God.” She slumped down in her seat, went the color of cheese, and looked like she was going to pass clean out. Ben put a concerned hand on her arm; she batted it away like a pesky fly. “Oh, Ben, oh dear God in Heaven…”
He sat there, staring, thinking, incapable of unbuckling his belt. “This didn’t just happen,” he said. “This couldn’t have just happened.”
All that got him was an evil look from his wife.
Sam popped his belt, slid the side door open. The night came in, cool and damp. “Van’s trashed. We’ll need a wrecker. The… that… the other thing… shit, we better go look…”
Ben nodded, licking his lips with a heavy tongue. All he could smell was the wet foliage. It had a dark, earthy smell of loam and soil and decay.
“You pegged your first one,” Nancy told him, showing no mercy. “Had to happen, right? Way you drive.” She popped her belt and opened her door, stepped out.
Ben smiled grimly. He didn’t even have the energy to tell her to go fuck herself.
He saw her climb out, step into the grass, lean for a time against the van. He could see she was shaking. Every bit of her was shuddering, trembling. After a time she moved on, jumped the culvert and joined her brother out in the road.
The darkness out there was heavy, absolute.
Ben flicked the emergency flashers on.
He got out himself. The headlights illuminated the woods, the flashers turning the road into some crazy, dancing shadow show of yellow strobing lights. He felt dizzy, disoriented until he realized that he’d been timing his breaths with the rapid flashes of the emergency lights.
He took a deep breath and walked around the front of the van.
It was mashed-in but good. The radiator ruptured, the stink of coolant raw in the air. He could hear other things hissing and dripping in there. The stump they’d hit was all that was left of a huge elm bigger around than a tractor tire. Like some modern version of a druid sacrificial tree, he bet it had claimed a lot of Detroit steel, a lot of flesh and blood. Probably why it was cut down. Good idea, except the fools that did it left about three feet of stump jutting up.
They’d have to walk into town.
He was looking into the woods, thinking how dark and thick they were, impenetrable, like maybe you could wander into them and never find your way out again, just listening to the breeze filtering through the boughs with a sound like someone sighing.
Losing himself in there didn’t seem bad all of a sudden, especially since he had manslaughter on his mind.
Vehicular manslaughter.
But he’d only had two beers at the casino. That was good. Guy just jumped out, was all. It wasn’t his fault. Maybe he hadn’t been watching the road like he should have been what with the old wenchbag pissing at him, but that guy… shit, he’d jumped out at them.
Ben knew he’d skate the charges.
That made him feel better, at least a little.
“Where is he?” he said to his wife and brother-in-law, both of whom were wandering the road in circles like somebody had dropped a contact.