They must have gone another way.
He pulled off the road, trying to remember if there was a highway that ran parallel to I-20. There were other roads going east, but for the life of him, he couldn’t remember what they were.
He needed a map, but where would he get one with gas stations and stores closed?
The stalled cars. Yes, he could find a map in one of the stalled cars!
He walked his bike to the nearest one, a white Cadillac. Someone had broken the window in and stripped it, so he got in and looked in the door pockets, over the visors, in the glove compartment. There wasn’t one there.
He went to the next one, a Caravan, and searched for a map. Again, he came up with nothing.
Moving from vehicle to vehicle, his rifle swinging from its strap on his shoulder, he searched frantically. And then he found it.
On the backseat of a Buick Regal was an atlas with maps of every state. He flipped the pages, found Alabama, and sought out I-20. Yes, parallel to the interstate, was Highway 78. That must be where they were.
Tearing out that page, he stuffed it into his pocket. Then, mounting his bike, he rode like Lance Armstrong to the next exit, and found his way to Highway 78.
fifty-three
The horses moved slower than they had yesterday, and much to Deni’s chagrin, Vic stopped to water them every hour. Their joints were showing signs of stress due to the hard surface of the road. They would do better on dirt or grass, Vic said, but the grass on the sides of the road wasn’t flat or wide enough.
They reached the outskirts of Atlanta about midafternoon. The trip that would have taken two hours by car had taken them eleven.
Once again, she despaired of ever reaching her destination.
As the highway took them into town, traffic picked up. Bicyclers passed to and fro. Pedestrians seemed to be everywhere, and an occasional horse and wagon went past. Vic’s wagon turned heads, and several walkers called up to them, asking how he’d built the axle holding the wheels on the wagon. Vic pulled over and showed them.
All the while, time hurried by.
While she waited, Deni scanned the stores along the road, looking for a place where she could go to the bathroom in privacy. And then she saw the Dairy Queen up ahead, and two men sweeping the glass in the parking lot.
When Vic got back in the wagon, she pointed up ahead. “Look! That Dairy Queen is open.”
He followed her gaze. “No, it’s not.”
“There are people sweeping. No one would be there sweeping unless they were working there, would they?”
“That doesn’t mean they have food.”
“No, but maybe they’ll let us use their bathroom.”
He didn’t seem convinced, but he slapped the rumps of his tired horses.
He pulled off the highway onto the frontage road that would take them to the DQ. As they grew closer, Deni could see that its windows had been broken out. Cars with smashed windshields—some stripped of their wheels—filled the parking lot. Two men swept up the broken glass.
Deni called to them. “Are you open?”
One of the sunburned men looked up at her. “If we were, what do you think we’d serve you? Ice cream?”
She hadn’t expected such a surly reply. “Excuse me. When I saw you sweeping, I just thought—”
“I’m in charge of this store,” the grumpy man cut in, “and somebody broke into it. When the lights come back on, I’m going to have to pick up the pieces. I’m just here trying to get a jump on it.”
“Can I use the restroom?”
He looked up at her. “No. I don’t have anything to flush with. Find another place.”
She couldn’t believe he was turning her down. “Come on, I just want a little privacy. We’ve come all the way from Birmingham.”
The man perked up. “Birmingham? Is everything out there, too?”
“’Fraid so,” Vic said. “It’s out everywhere.”
The man moaned and picked his broom up again, and swept the glass viciously into a pile.
“So do you know of anywhere around here we could get a hot meal?” Vic asked.
The man laughed bitterly. “No. And all I’ve got is a freezer full of spoiled food, no way to dispose of it, a lot of glass to pick up, and no paycheck.”
Deni tried again. “Then what will it hurt if I use your restroom?”
He sighed. “All right. But you leave it clean. I got enough to do.”
Deni hurried into the Dairy Queen and looked around, trying to breathe in the scent of normalcy, but all she smelled on the stale hot air was rotten hamburger meat. She kicked through the broken glass and made her way to the bathroom.
When she came back out and got into the wagon, Vic was asking the men where he could water the horses.
The man pointed. “Up the street. Go up to that stoplight and take a right. There’s a small lake in that neighborhood there.” The man stepped closer to the rig. “What you got in that wagon? Any food?”
“Just a few provisions. I’m coming this way on business.”
“What business?”
“I own the Sneak Peak.”
The man’s eyebrows shot up, and for the first time he grinned. “Sneak Peak, huh?”
“That’s right. I’m hoping to get my stores back open in the next day or two.”
“What makes you think your stuff’ll sell, what with everybody scraping for their lives?”
“Hey, people’ll always dish out a few bucks for some good reading material.”
The man laughed. Deni frowned and looked at Vic, wondering why that was so funny.
They found the little lake some time later, situated at the center of a circle of houses. They pulled the horses and wagon into an empty lot, and Vic jumped out, filled up a bucket full of water, and brought it for the horses to drink.
“I have to do some business here,” he said as they drank. “It’ll bore you to death. So I was thinkin’ I could leave you here for a couple of hours and come back and get you later.”
“A couple of hours?” She gaped up at him. “We’ll lose so much time. Couldn’t you do business here on the way back, after you’ve gotten me to D.C.?”
“No, darlin’. I need to get my store open today. We won’t lose that much time. Go for a walk. Stretch your legs. I’ll be back before you know it.”
“How do I know you’ll even be back? You could leave me stranded here.”
“Now why would I do that? If I wanted to get rid of you, I would’ve let you keep walking this morning.”
“Why can’t I just come with you?”
He looked back at his wagon, as if trying to decide whether to take her or not. “I don’t want to take you because I don’t want to hear your yapping about my store.”
“My yapping? What would I yap about? I don’t care anything about your stupid bookstore!”
His lips compressed, and he took the bucket from the horses. “All right. You can come. But I’m warning you. You yap, and I’m putting you out.”
As they rode the few miles to the store, Deni tried to imagine what he was so sensitive about. It must not be much of a store. She pictured an old broken-down building that smelled of mold and dust, with shelves and shelves of used paperbacks.
But then, how did he live in such a fine house and have so much cash?
As they made their slow progress through town, the clomp of those horses’ hooves percussing through her, she longed for a Cosmo magazine, or People. Maybe they had some at his store. She wished she were in Starbucks sipping on a Grande Caramel Mocha Latte with whipped cream while she caught up on celebrity gossip. She longed to watch Regis and Kelly, and Good Day Live, to get her nails done, to eat in a restaurant.
But the longings only made her ride worse.
Vic was quiet as he turned the horses down a seedy-looking street, and the horses pulled them past several nightclubs and huge billboards advertising a strip club. A railroad track ran the length of the road they were on, and clusters of men loitered on the co
rners. They looked like drug dealers.
As they rode by, Deni grew uneasy at the attention their wagon drew. She hoped they wouldn’t get curious about the things it contained.
As if Vic had the same thoughts, he pulled his revolver out of his pocket. That made her feel a little better.
“There it is,” he said. “There’s my store.”
She looked up ahead and saw the sign—“Sneak Peak.” Had there been electricity, the words would have been lit up in red neon on the front of the store, beneath the sign that said “Adult Book Store.”
Deni caught her breath. “You’re kidding me.”
He shot her a look. “I warned you not to go yapping.”
“An adult book store? You sell trashy books?”
“One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.”
He pulled the wagon into the Sneak Peak’s parking lot, and she saw a handwritten sign on the front that said “open.”
He laughed with delight. “My boy’s already got the place open. I have good managers. You want to come in?”
She gave him a disgusted look. “No. I’ll stay here, thank you very much.”
“All right. I’ll leave you the gun. It’s loaded. Don’t shoot yourself with it.”
She took the pistol and watched as he went inside. Nervous, she craned her neck to make sure none of the loitering men approached the wagon. When she was satisfied it was safe, she stood up and reached for one of Vic’s boxes. She pulled back the tape sealing it and ripped it open.
Filthy magazines and pictures were stacked there, carefully wrapped in cellophane to protect them, like rare art. She closed the box, feeling sick.
Vic Green was a pornographer. He got rich pedaling his evil in disgusting stores across the country.
And she had run away with him.
Nausea ripped through her. She couldn’t go on with him. It was dangerous. She had known it last night and had escaped. Why had she accepted a ride from him again?
She should take her suitcase, her wedding dress, and his revolver, and leave right now, while he was distracted. But wouldn’t those men on the street be even more of a threat to her than Vic?
No, she couldn’t leave now. She’d have to stay with him until he got her someplace safe. But she would get away from him as soon as it was humanly possible.
She looked back at the loitering men. Business seemed to be good for them. Despite the shortage of food, she supposed drug addicts still found ways to buy drugs. And husbands and fathers spent their families’ provisions to feed pornography addictions.
That self-loathing at her own stupidity threatened to smother her again. She closed her trembling hand over that pistol, and prayed for a way out.
fifty-four
Vic took back his gun when he got into the wagon and got the horses moving again. “I have good men running my stores. Key is to compensate them well. Give them a share in the profits, and they’ll always put the store first.”
Deni sat stiffly in her seat. “If you don’t mind, I’d rather not talk about your perverted business. You should have told me the kind of bookstores you owned before we left home. I wouldn’t have come with you. You misled me into thinking you were a legitimate businessman.”
“I am legit. There’s nothing illegal about selling adult pornography, depending on the city. And I’m legitimately rich. What I do doesn’t hurt anybody.”
“Tell that to the wives and children of your deviant customers. Does Mark know what you do?”
“Mark couldn’t handle it. He has those trumped-up ideas of right and wrong. His mother made a pansy out of him. Much as I’d like for him to share in some of this wealth, he’d be nothing but trouble.”
Deni closed her eyes. What was she going to do? Last night was enough to make her flee for her virtue—maybe even her life. Then her stupidity had refreshed itself this morning, and she’d accepted Vic’s help again.
Her parents would say she had stinking judgment, and they’d be right. They’d say she was immature and irresponsible, that she wasn’t ready to make decisions for herself. That she followed her emotions without a thought, putting herself at risk. That she did whatever she pleased, determined to manipulate things in such a way that they’d work out somehow.
It had always worked that way before. But now . . . she was in over her head.
She had to get away from Vic. There was no way she would stay with him tonight. If she could just get help from someone, trade something for a bicycle, she could go back home. But she had nothing to trade.
She turned in her seat and looked in the back of the wagon, to the ridiculous suitcase she’d brought with her. It was full of useless things. A flat iron. A makeup mirror. A blow-dryer. They were worthless, like confederate dollars after the Civil War. They only weighed her suitcase down, made it difficult to carry. No one would want to trade a bicycle for them.
She looked at her precious wedding dress, still in its plastic bag. It, too, weighed her down. Why had she brought it? It was just dead weight, making it impossible for her to move quickly.
Anger rose inside her, at the government, at her parents, at Vic, at herself . . .
But most of all, at Craig.
Why hadn’t he come? Why had he left her there in Crockett, desperate to see him? Why hadn’t he been her knight in shining armor, coming for his princess? Just this once, why hadn’t he put her first?
It was his fault she had stolen away with this jerk who worked in that sleazy trade, and if anything happened to her because of it, that would be his fault, too. If he’d chosen his work over his bride-to-be, his senator over his fiancée, then he deserved whatever happened.
But it wouldn’t happen to him . . . it would happen to her.
She seethed at the thought of what his neglect might cost her.
Craig always put his work first. Ambitious to a fault, he’d often stood her up for dates without even an apology when Senator Crawford needed him.
She remembered one Sunday afternoon, not so long ago, when he’d promised to meet her for a picnic at the Washington Mall. She packed fried chicken and potato salad from the local deli, and found the perfect spot to lay her blanket.
Craig forgot to come.
She had finally reached him on his cell phone, and he told her about some public relations crisis that threatened Senator Craw-ford’s reputation. She was expected to understand completely.
So she did.
Even the night he asked her to marry him, he had cut the evening short and run back to the senate office building to work on a bill the senator was proposing. She accepted that, and spent the rest of the evening showing her friends the ring.
Now she hated herself and all she stood for, all she fell for, all she was.
She had to cut her losses and get out of this wagon. She determined that the next safe-looking house she saw would be her destination. She’d get off the wagon and tell Vic good-bye. Maybe some kind soul would show compassion and loan her a bicycle.
Her stomach signaled the dinner hour, but she didn’t want him to stop to eat. She wanted to move on, until she could see a place where she could find refuge.
And finally she saw it. A farm off the highway, with a big white house on the other side of a plowed field. She saw people sitting on the porch of that peaceful-looking house, a family enjoying each other’s company, children playing in the yard.
Her heart jumped. This was it. This was where she would get off.
“Stop the wagon,” she said.
Vic glanced over at her. “Why?”
“Just stop!”
He reined the horses in, and the wagon rolled to a creaking halt.
Deni reached over the boxes of his sleazy books and magazines and pictures, and grabbed her suitcase.
“What are you doing?” Vic watched her throw her suitcase over the side.
“I’m getting off here.”
“What? You can’t just get off out in the middle of nowhere. What’s the matter?”
“I just don’t want to go any farther.” She grabbed her wedding dress and jumped off the back of the wagon. Walking around to the front, she looked up at him. “Thank you very much for the ride, Vic. But I’ve changed my mind.”
She grabbed up her suitcase, and lifted her dress to keep the bag from dragging the ground.
“Wait a minute. You think you’re just gonna up and leave? I haven’t done anything to run you off.”