Rydell mustve gotten it lined up how he needed it, then, because he did that thing boys did, up in Oregon, with their brakes and the transmission.
She realized then that she was screaming. Not words or anything, just screaming.
Then they were in a turn that almost took them over, and she thought how these RVs probably werent meant to move very fast. Now they were moving even faster, it felt like, uphill.
Well fuck she heard Rydell say, in this weirdly ordinary kind of voice, and then they hit the door, or the gate, or whatever, and it was like the time she tried to pull this radical bongo over in Lafayette Park and theyd had to keep explaining to her howd shed come down on her head, and each time they did, shed forget.
She was back in Skinners room, reading National Geographic, about how Canada split itself into five countries. Drinking cold milk out of the carton and eating saltines. Skinner in bed with the tv, watching one of those shows he liked about history. He was talking about how all his life these movies of history had been getting better and better looking. How theyd started out jumpy and black and white, with the soldiers running around like they had ants in their pants, and this terrible grain to them, and the sky all full of scratches. How gradually theyd slowed down to how people really moved, and then theyd been colorized, the grain getting finer and finer, and even the scratches went away. And it was bullshit, he said, because every other bit of it was an approximation, somebodys idea of how it might have looked, the result of a particular decision, a particular button being pushed. But it was still a hit, he said, like the first time you heard Billie Holiday without all that crackle and tin.
Billie Holiday was probably a guy like Elvis, Chevette thought, with spangles on his suit, but like when he was younger and not all fat.
Skinner had this thing he got on about history. How it was turning into plastic. But she liked to show him she was listening when he told her something, because otherwise he could go for days without saying anything. So she looked up now, from her magazine and the picture of girls waving blue and white flags in the Republic of Quebec, and it was her mother sitting there, on the edge of Skinners bed, looking beautiful and sad and kind of tired, the way she could look after she got off work and still had all her make-up on.
Hes right Chevettes mother said.
I-I am?
About history, how they change it.
Mom, you
Everybody does that anyway, honey. Isnt any new thing. Just the movies have caught up with memory, is all.
Chevette started to cry.
Chevette-Marie her mother said, in that singsong out of so far back, youve gone and hurt your head.
How well you say you know this guy? she asked.
Rydells SWAT shoe crunched on little squares of safety-glass every time he used the brake. If hed had time and a broom, hed have swept it all out. As it was, hed had to bash out what was left of the windshield with a piece of rusty rebar he found beside the road, otherwise Highway Patrol wouldve seen the holes and hauled them over. Anyway, he had those insoles. I worked with him in L.A. he said, braking to steer around shreds of truck-trailer tires that lay on the two-lane blacktop like the moulted skin of monsters.
I was just wondering if hell turn out like Mrs. Elliott did. Said you knew her too.
Didnt know her Rydell said, I met her, on the plane. If Subletts some kind of plant, then the whole worlds a plot. He shrugged. Then I could start worrying about you, say. As opposed, say, to worrying about whether or not Loveless or Mrs. Elliot had bothered to plant a locator-bug in this motorhome, or whether the Death Star was watching for them, right now, and could it pick them up, out here? They said the Death Star could read the headlines on a newspaper, or what brand and size of shoes you wore, from a decent footprint.
Then this wooden cross seemed to pop up, in the headlights, about twelve feet high, with TUNE IN across the horizontal and TO HIS IMMORTAL DOWNLINK coming down the upright, and this dusty old portable tv nailed up where Jesuss head ought to have been. Somebodyd taken a.zz to the screen, it looked like.
32. Fallonville
Must be getting closer Rydell said.
Chevette Washington sort of grunted. Then she drank some of the water theyd gotten at the Shell station, and offered the bottle to him.
When hed crashed out of that mall, hed felt like they were sure to be right by a major highway. From the outside, the mall was just this low tumble of tan brick, windows boarded up with sheets of that really ugly hot-pressed recyc they ran off from chopped scrap, the color of day-old vomit. Hed gone screeching around this big empty parking lot, just a few dead clunkers and old mattresses to get in the way, until hed found a way out through the chain link.
But there wasnt any highway there, just some deserted four-lane feeder, and it looked like Loveless had put a bullet into the navigation hardware, because the map was locked on downtown Santa Ana and just sat there, sort of flickering. Where he was had the feel of one of those fallen-in edge-cities, the kind of place that went down when the Euro-money imploded.
Chevette Washington was curled up by the fridge with her eyes closed, and she wouldnt answer him. He was scared Loveless had put one through her, too, but he knew he couldnt afford to stop until hed put at least a little distance between them and the mall. And he couldnt see any blood on her or anything.
Finally hed come to this Shell station. You could tell it had been Shell because of the shape of the metal things up on the poles that had supported the signs. The mens room door was ripped off the hinges; the womens chained and padlocked. Somehody had taken an automatic weapon to the pop machine, it looked like. He swung the RV around to the back and saw this real old Airstream trailer there, the same kind a neighbor of his fathers had lived in down in Tampa. There was a man there kneeling beside a hibachi, doing something with a pot, and these two black Labradors watching him.
Rydell parked, checked to see Chevette Washington was breathing, and got down out of the cab. He walked over to the man beside the hibachi, whod gotten up now and was wiping the palms of his hands on the thighs of his red coveralls. He had on an old khaki fishing cap with about a nine-inch bill sticking straight out. The threads on the embroidered Shell patch on his coveralls had sort of frayed and fuzzed-out.
You just lost the man said, or is there some kind of problem? Rydell figured him to be at least seventy.
No sir, no problem, but Im definitely lost. Rydell looked at the black Labs. They looked right back. Those dogs of yours there, they dont look too happy to see me.
Dont see a lot of strangers the man said.
No sir Rydell said, I dont imagine they do.
Got a couple of cats, too. Right now Im feeding em all on dry kibble. The cats get a bird sometimes, maybe mice. Say youre lost?
Yes sir, I am. I couldnt even tell you what state were in, right now.
The man spat on the ground. Welcome to the goddamn club, son. I was your age, it was all of this California, just like God meant it to be. Now its Southern, so they tell me, but you know what it really is?
No sir. What?
A lot of that same happy horseshit. Like that woman camping in the goddamn White House. He took the fishing cap off, exposing a couple of silver-white cancer-scars, wiped his brow with a grease-stained handkerchief, then pulled the cap hack on. Say youre lost, are you?
Yes sir. My maps broken.
Know how to read a paper one?
Yes sir, I do.
What the helld she do to her head? Looking past Rydell.
Rydell turned and saw Chevette Washington leaning over the drivers bucket, looking out at them.
How she cuts her hair Rydell said.