Whatever he did he couldn’t keep going. He was going to have to shut the truck off. Pretty soon. Before it cracked a head or something. If he cracked the head, he’d have to call a wrecker. And the wrecker would have to tow it to a shop. And the truck wouldn’t be running. And all that stuff in the back would start to thaw out after ten or twelve hours. And if it thawed out and stayed thawed out long enough, it would start stinking. And that pound of weed was back there. And it would be a big stinking melted mess of meat. And the whitetail was back there. And all that might look kind of funny to somebody in town. It might look funny to some shop mechanic. Who might call the game warden. Who might poke around in there and decide it was too much for him and call the city police.
He stopped. He didn’t have any choice. The light was burning bright: HOT. And now steam was coming up from the hood.
Son of a bitch. He was right on the highway. He started up again, looking for someplace to at least get it off the road. There was a green sign up there. Maybe there was a side road there. He knew it was getting hotter and hotter. It hit him then. They were going to find out he’d killed that cop, was what was going to happen. Either that or catch him with the weed. Then they were going to send him back to the penitentiary. He was going to be back in prison. Maybe even on death row this time.
No he wasn’t. He was going to get out of this shit someway. He wasn’t going back to that place. He sped up a little. The green sign got closer. The green sign said PAPA JOHNNY ROAD. He didn’t have any choice. He swung onto the dirt road, went around a curve behind some trees, and pulled to the edge of it, off on the left, and killed the motor. Then the lights.
The motor was making a horrible noise. Even with his bad ear, he could hear it just fine. It was rattling and he could dimly hear steam hissing and now it was just boiling out all over the hood.
Now he was really scared. The motor was knocking like hell and something sounded like it was frying. He opened the door. The interior light came on and he reached down for the black rubber-coated flashlight, one of those six-cell things that would sit flat on the floor without rolling around. He reached under the steering wheel on the left and pulled the hood latch.
He got out and went around to the front. He turned the flashlight on. That’s when he saw the broken piece of whitetail horn that was sticking into the radiator. If his hearing hadn’t been so bad and Perk’s car hadn’t been so loud, he probably would have heard the radiator hissing a lot sooner. But. The pimply prison guard had taken care of that for him a long time before. Kind of like a preordained thing or a snowball effect when you considered all the elements over the years.
31
It was cold where Perk and what was left of Frankie lay in the dark and the snowy woods. No cars passed on the road and it was late now. Snow drifted down from the black limbs above in silent dropping and piled up and became deeper and began to cover up Perk’s face, which was on its side and surprised with one open blue staring eye, and settled in his hair, even melted a little on the neck of his cooling body, but not much longer. The temperature was steadily falling and falling, dropping toward zero, rare cold for this country of snakes and cows and flathead catfish.
Except for the wind, it was very quiet.
In the silent dark, the trunks of the trees stood somehow unclear against the growing white carpet, which itself had no light and showed itself only because it was white. Something moved out there at a distance, out beyond the dead trees slanted among their living brothers, out behind an old rusted fence. The first coy-dog drifted out of the woods and lifted its nose high. A mongrel mix born in a culvert. Like a shark it would eat anything. Its muzzle threaded the air and moved until it found the fresh scent of blood and locked on it and then it began to walk forward. Behind it others slinked, quiet shapes threading their way among the silent trunks and fallen logs, the dark vines, over the dead grass beneath everything that lay waiting for the promise of spring.
32
The road was cold and deserted, winter locked in. Domino had been walking and walking and nobody at all had come along. He’d stayed next to the truck for a long time, thinking that somebody might come along, that maybe somebody who lived down Papa Johnny Road would turn in going home and stop to see if he needed any help, and the only thing he’d known to try if that happened was to maybe ask if he could get a ride up to their house with them and see if they had a phone book and try to find a shop somewhere that had twenty-four-hour towing service and repair service and maybe get the truck towed into town and try to get the radiator fixed tonight. Other than that he didn’t know what to do. He didn’t feel like he could just leave the truck with the weed in it. He didn’t want to take a chance on taking out all the boxes just to get to the one that had the weed in it with the truck still so close to where he’d killed the cop and left the bag. He was nervous about his out-of-state tag because he knew how cops were about out-of-state tags. He was torn between staying with the truck and getting away from it.
But nobody had ever come along. So he’d started walking. He’d walked and walked and walked and now his feet were hurting and his hips were hurting and the boots he had weren’t the best ones for walking. They were made more for keeping your toes warm. They were doing okay with that.
He should have gone straight. That’s what he should have done. That’s exactly what they’d told him to do when they’d let him out. The warden had actually been a pretty nice guy, and had developed somewhat of a fondness for Domino, and he’d had a short talk with him on the day he’d been released.
“Go straight, kid,” he’d said, even though Domino wasn’t a kid, the warden sitting kicked back in his chair with his ostrich-skin cowboy boots up on his desk. And Domino had assured him that he would. Now look where he was.
He had the gun hidden inside his pants and the knife was still inside his shirt. He’d thrown the Walkman and the CDs into a bunch of privet bushes. The road curved a lot and he’d already gone by the gin. It was deserted, no pickups parked out there, no lights that would indicate somebody working late inside.
He thought he’d been walking for at least an hour. Maybe over an hour. He’d taken one of the Schlitz tallboys with him, but it had been gone a long time. He wished now that he’d stuck another one in his pocket.
The more he walked, the more he thought it might be a bad idea to try to find a towing service or a repair service. What if he succeeded in getting it towed to town, but then couldn’t find a place that did overnight repairs? The stuff would thaw out if the truck sat there long enough without getting cranked up. He’d still have the same problem. What he needed was another vehicle. It didn’t even have to be a refrigerated one. If he could just get his hands on a vehicle, he could drive it back to the truck, turn the headlights on the reefer box, and pull out enough boxes to find the one that had the weed in it. Then what he could do was just drive the weed box on over to the empty house tomorrow and drop it off. Since he’d already made the phone call, they were expecting it, and the money would be there. The lion meat would all be ruined, but Mr. Hamburger would just have to understand that accidents sometimes happened. And what the hell was Hamburger going to say crossways to him now anyway? The whitetail would ruin, too, sure, but fuck that now. At least he wouldn’t get caught with the weed, close to a dead cop. And somebody dismembered in a garbage bag.
But where was he going to get a vehicle? Even if somebody came along, what was he going to do, hijack somebody? If he did hijack somebody, what was he going to do with the person after he got through with the vehicle? Kill him? Kill her? What if there were children? Where exactly was he going to stop?
But he didn’t have time to think about that for long, because by the time his good ear picked up the sound of something coming up behind him, he was already beginning to see the road getting lit up in front of him.
What if it was another cop? He had a dead cop’s gun on him and a bloody knife inside his shirt. He was down here all alone. If it was a cop, he might not
have any choice but to shoot him. And then where would he be? Not in a different boat.
But it wasn’t a cop car that slowed behind him and pulled alongside him. It was a blue Dodge minivan with one headlight out, and Domino raised his hand and waved as it stopped. He couldn’t see inside it. He couldn’t tell who was driving it. He didn’t know if it was a man or a woman, or an older person or a teenager. He wasn’t going to know who it was until he opened the door, and he wasn’t going to know what to do until he opened the door, whether to come on out with the gun or not.
But he had to do something. His hand reached out for the door handle. His fingers closed around it. He pushed the button. He pulled the gun out of his pants and raised it. When he opened the door, the guy already had his hands raised. He was wearing a coat and a sweater and glasses and what looked like a homemade muffler. He had wide eyes. He also had long pale fingers and wild curly hair.
“Shit! Don’t shoot!” he said. He looked like he might be an intellectual from all the books piled up on the dash and the seat.
33
Merlot didn’t like guns and thought there were way too many of them in America, so by the time he saw this one, pointed at him, and being stoned, it was too late to do anything but put his hands up and say: “Shit! Don’t shoot!”
The man holding the gun looked awful. He looked like a butcher with that bloody apron. Merlot was trying not to shake and let the guy see it. But he was pretty outraged, too. He didn’t want to put up with this bullshit. He put up with enough bullshit at the university. And he got paid for that. Twice a month. With health insurance. And a credit union.
“Don’t try anything funny,” the guy said. He knocked some books off the seat and down on the floorboard, and Merlot saw immediately with even more outrage that he was one of those people with no regard for your stuff.
He couldn’t help saying: “Hey, man, I paid a lot of money for those books.”
The guy got in and closed the door. He was stepping all over the books. The guy pointed the gun at Merlot. Little black hole. Right in his face. Some death lay in there, waiting to come out.
“Move this thing on down the road,” he said.
“Where to?” Merlot said, since the little black hole was scary.
“You gonna have to speak up,” the guy said. “Just go,” the guy said, and poked him with the gun, on his arm, hard, so hard it hurt.
“Hey, man, that hurts!” Merlot said, pretty loud. He had a roach in his pocket. He was just riding around. Taking a break from grading papers. Bored out of his mind. Worried as always about Candy. What did he stop for? Just because the guy looked like he needed a ride. And where the hell were the cops when you needed them?
“Hurt you worse you don’t move your ass.”
Merlot did like he said. He tried to watch the road and tried to cut his eyes sideways to get a look at the guy, but the guy said:
“Don’t watch me, watch the road.”
Merlot wondered what kind of gun it was. How did he know it was a real gun? Merlot didn’t know anything about guns other than the fact that he was afraid of them, but somehow it didn’t look like a real gun. It didn’t look like any gun he’d seen in TV shows or movies. What if the guy was just pulling his leg? What if it was a water pistol? Or a starting pistol? He raised his voice again.
“Mind telling me what kind of gun that is?”
The guy looked at the gun, then back up at Merlot.
“Asshole, it’ll shoot your ass is all I know. You got a light?”
“A light?”
“Push in your cigarette lighter there for me. You know you got a headlight out?”
“Yeah, yeah, I know it.” He’d been meaning to get the damn thing fixed but he’d been so busy getting ready for Christmas break that he just hadn’t had time. And Candy getting worse every day. Now this shit.
Merlot was going about twenty and pushed the lighter in. They didn’t speak while it was getting ready to pop out. The radio was turned low, but Merlot could hear the voice of a man speaking about pills for your nerves in these uncertain times. What if he slammed on the brakes and jumped him?
The lighter popped out and Merlot reached for it, but the guy beat him to it. Merlot looked at him. He had a big fat smelly cigar in his mouth and he was holding the red, glowing lighter up to it. Some smoke started coiling from the end. Merlot could really smell it. It smelled horrible. It reminded him of moldy couches he’d sat on as a child and deserted theater lobbies and some other things he’d just as soon not have to think about right now.
“And speed up,” the guy said.
Merlot sped up. To about thirty. Stoned, that was plenty fast enough. He was holding the wheel with both hands when he went around the curves.
“Is this a carjacking?” Merlot said loudly. “Is this what this is?”
“Put whatever label on it you need to,” the guy said. “And you’re gonna have to turn the heat up a little. Cold as a polar bear’s butthole.”
“What do you expect? It’s winter. It’s deer season. People are out in the woods in flannel coats and shit.”
Merlot reached and pushed the lever over one more notch, which put it on medium. The guy rolled the window down just a little after first pushing the lock and unlock buttons and making all the doors click several times, until Merlot said: “The one in front,” and wanted to add, “Dipshit,” but didn’t, and the guy found the right button.
Merlot wondered if he should turn the radio up. He wondered if the police were looking for this guy. He had to be a desperate guy if he was going around carjacking innocent people like him. If he was desperate, then why was he desperate? He must have done something pretty bad. He might be an escaped convict who’d broken out of jail somewhere. There might be a big search going on for him right now. And here was something else to think about while he wasn’t doing anything but driving this asshole around:
What if they were looking for the guy and had roadblocks set up and he had to blast through one at gunpoint in the minivan? Why hell, there’d be a hail of bullets, wouldn’t there? What if it was like Bonnie and Clyde? They’d get cut to bloody ribbons like Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, wouldn’t they?
“How much gas you got?” the guy said.
“Almost a full tank,” Merlot said. “I just gassed it up yesterday.” He waited a moment. “It dropped a dime, so I went ahead.”
He waited again, but the guy didn’t say anything. Maybe he didn’t hear him. He was busy smoking his cigar. Merlot could watch him from the corners of his eyes. He could keep his eyes mostly on the road but kind of lose focus and let them slide to the right just a bit and he did that some more until the guy said: “Keep your eyes on the road.”
The guy seemed to be really enjoying his cigar. He was wreathed in smoke, leaning back in the seat, watching the farms and woods and fences and fields pass, sometimes a few dim, yellow lights. Merlot’s daddy had smoked the stinkingest cigars he’d ever smelled in his whole life. And this guy’s was almost as bad.
But if he was an escaped convict, what had he done to get put in in the first place? That was the thing Merlot wanted to know since he liked to question everything objectively. Was he a simple thief or was he a serial killer? Had he done some computer crime or had he molested some schoolchildren? Had he ever killed anybody before? In other words, would he use that gun he was holding if it was real? Was he capable of it? Did he have the guts it took to pull the trigger? And was it even loaded? How did he know it was? It was also possible that the guy might have another hidden weapon on him. Like a knife. Maybe even two. Mightn’t a butcher?
A cop car passed them casually and went over a hill. But in a valley three minutes later they met it coming right back with its lights on dim, and when it came alongside them, Merlot could see the star on the side and as soon as Merlot could see it in his side mirror he could see that it had hit its brakes and was angling to the opposite side of the road. It looked like it was going to turn around. Oh yeah. It was definit
ely turning around. He was going to get stopped for that headlight being out. The cop had seen it in his rearview mirror when he passed. He was surprised it hadn’t happened before when he was riding around. Now some new shit was going to hit the fan. Now they’d see how bad Mr. Gun-Toting Antisocial Bully Butcher here would be against forces of good who were also armed with guns.
So, should he say anything? Huh? Should he say anything?
What if saying something was worse? What if there were bullets flying? What if the guy killed the cop? What if the cop accidentally killed him, Merlot? Hell, bullets got to flying, innocent people got shot.
So should he say something? He decided he should.
“That cop’s turning around,” he said.