Marvel and a Wonder (37 page)

* * *

At three a.m. the girl was asleep, the child-size pink boots which had been stolen placed on the floor before her, bare feet curled beneath her posterior, the toes covered in grime, a wadded-up newspaper serving as a blanket, slightly covering her lower half. She looked like a refugee: her left nostril gummy with snot, her hair a tangled bramble, cheeks and chin waxy in day-old makeup. Rick stood above her, staring at her sad shape for a second, before he squatted, placing his hand beneath her chin, softly whispering, “Rylee.”

The girl blinked, the look in her eyes one of confusion before rapidly turning into horror. She tried to scramble to her feet but he put his hand out, grabbing her by the shoulder, sure to keep her from running again. She fought him, shucking her arm loose, eyes wild, searching for the nearest exit, seeking out a security guard, a well-meaning stranger, anyone. But at this hour of the night, this hour of the morning, the waiting room was empty. There were two derelicts nodding off in the opposite corner of the room. The TV set, which was affixed to a metal arm, its volume muted, was a field of scattered electronic snow. He got her back down in the plastic seat and tried to sound reasonable.

“Calm down,” he muttered. “Calm down, just try and calm down.”

“Fuck you,” she hissed, trying to dart off again.

He grabbed her by the back of the neck, still squatting, staring at her solemnly. “Come on, we ain’t got time for this.”

“Fuck you.”

“Listen, little girl—”

“Get the fuck off me.”

He let go of her neck and blurted out the words as soon as she was on her feet again: “Your geegaw—he’s dead.”

She turned, her yellow eyes wild-looking again, an animal caught in the headlights of a fast-moving vehicle. “Fuck you. I know you’re lying.”

“Rylee.”

“Get the fuck away from me.”

“Why do you think they sent me all this way?”

“You’re so full of shit, you stupid fucking—”

“Rylee.”

“It was the day before yesterday. Why do you think they sent me?”

“You think I’m some stupid fucking kid? Well, I ain’t. You’re fucking nuts if you think I’m getting into that fucking truck with you.”

“Have it your way. We’re already a day late as it is. Tomorrow, they’re having the service. You want to miss it? After all that old man did for you?”

“Fuck you,” she said again, though this time it ended with a sob, her shoulders shaking, folding her face into her dirty hands. “Fuck you,” she repeated, a narrow slip of a girl trembling beneath the awkward fluorescent lights of the waiting room.

“You can either get in the truck with me or stay here, I really don’t give a shit. You want to run, keep running. But I’m leaving now. I aim to get back in time to pay my respects.”

The girl looked away.

“You got enough for the bus?”

The girl nodded her head, eyes wide and opalescent.

“Come on, I won’t bother you,” he said in a voice just like her father, or her granddad, or Brian, or any number of them, showing her a little affection.

The girl sniffled again before she lowered her head, grabbed the stolen boots, and slowly limped toward the glass doors. They headed from the waiting room out to the paved parking lot where his black truck had been parked in a handicapped spot.

_________________

Two forms emerged from the double doors of the bus stop as the boy finished sipping from the glass bottle of Coke. He watched them without interest at first: a man with a lean build, dark eyes, and mustache; the second, a girl, a young woman, it was hard to tell, whom the fellow was leading by the shoulder. They paused in front of a dark pickup—and there, attached to a hitch, was the silver trailer, their trailer. The boy rubbed his eyes, watching the girl whisper something to the man, the man, helping her up and inside the cab. Once she was situated, the man crossed in front of the vehicle and climbed behind the steering wheel.

“Sir?”

“—”

“Gramps?”

“—”

“Jim?”

The old man snorted awake.

“Gramps. That’s them. That’s them,” the boy whispered loudly.

The grandfather nodded, wiping at the sleep which had gathered in the corner of his eyes.

“What do we do now?”

“Hold on. Hold on,” the grandfather said.

“What do we do?”

“We watch.”

“Watch for what?”

“The right moment. They’re gonna drive off, and then we’re gonna get that horse back when the time comes.”

The boy nodded once more, though not in agreement.

The girl—it was maybe the man’s daughter or girlfriend, Jim did not know—shouted something, shoving the passenger-side door open, trying to make a break for it. The man reached across the seat and, without so much as a frown, offered the girl the back of his hand—a wide, arcing blow that caused the girl’s head to snap to the side. Then the man leaned over and pulled the passenger-side door closed, quickly starting up the truck.

“We’re not gonna do nothing?” the boy asked.

“We are—just wait.”

“But they’re gonna drive away.”

“Just wait.”

“He’s starting it up.”

“Hush now. Keep your eyes out.”

They watched as the dark pickup slowly crept from its parking spot.

“Go on,” the old man said. “Start her up. Follow two or three cars back. Take your time. We ain’t in a hurry now.”

Once again the black pickup made its way along the highway, advancing with a reckless velocity north along I-40; only now it was being followed, the pale-blue truck rumbling along in the distance, the old man’s eyes fixed on the road ahead, the silver trailer—its square shape—the vanishing point of his line of sight.

* * *

An unblinking eye, the moon peering pale over the tips of white dogwoods, the red crumbling brick edges of industrial buildings, black voluminous smokestacks angling skyward—their vapors ringing the skyline, the moon glancing down at a green glass bottle left like an offering, broken at the neck, at the gold and silver necklaces lining an all-night pawnshop window, all of them see-through with moonlight. Darkness falls, darkness falling, the city of Nashville fading behind.

* * *

Along the side of the road was an unfathomable order of trees: the girl held the sore spot on her cheek and watched them whip past with their lifeless fury.

“We’re going north. We’re going north, I know it,” the girl whispered bravely.

Rick, his left eye unblinking, remained silent behind the steering wheel. He looked straight ahead, the wooded highway hurtling past with a violence all its own.

* * *

The taillights of the pickup and the silver trailer flashed brightly before the boy’s eyes, constant, undeniable, quietly dividing the borders of the night. Beside him, his grandfather had gone white. He looked shaky. The boy steered the vehicle and kept watch on the red lights ahead. He whispered his grandfather’s name several times, “Gramps? Gramps? Gramps?” but heard no reply, and so, after about ten minutes, he finally said his name directly once again: “Jim?”

“—”

“Jim.”

“—”

The boy slowed the vehicle down, taking his eyes from the road. He reached over and touched his grandfather’s blue-veined hand. It felt brittle, cold. The old man was murmuring to himself—the boy could see his lips moving—and his eyes were trembling beneath his wrinkled eyelids, the eyelashes also shuddering. The boy turned back to the road and saw the other truck drifting off in the distance, the silver trailer flashing beneath the occasional billboard or highway light, and sped up, the engine slow to respond, the hood rattling before his eyes.

* * *

The woods were a blur of black edges and dull lines: all of a sudden, seeing their shadows, the skeletal, gloomy outlines, the impenetrable black figures, shapes from a bad dream, the girl realized she did not want to die. Not anymore. She did not know when she had figured this out, but she was suddenly aware of how important it was that she stay alive. The pickup was moving faster and faster now, the entire city of Nashville lost somewhere behind, one town, then another appearing before vanishing along the side of the highway; billboards, advertisements, attractions faded into view, then departed from sight, the road ahead lit only by the truck’s headlamps; and beyond the twin globes of yellow light, there was nothing, the night having shifted to the epic, uninterrupted land of blackness. The girl realized she would have to do something quickly if she was going to escape. It was obvious now that he had driven her all the way out here to kill her—she was as sure of this as she had been of anything in her life. So she watched him, studied his stony face. She saw the line of his thin gray lips, the unforgiving glare in his squinting eye, saw him crouched over the steering wheel like some kind of gargoyle, saw a hand on the wheel, the other floating above the clutch, then saw the unfastened seat belt. She almost smiled to herself, feeling her own belt buckled across her chest. Then, without another thought, before the doubt and wordless terror could settle back in, she grabbed hold of the steering wheel and pulled it with all her might, baring her teeth as Rick shouted and tried to fight it free.

The black pickup spun wildly from the right-hand lane, plowing into a plastic mile marker, roaring directly into a ditch, the front end flying up from the ground and burying itself into a culvert overgrown with cattails and brambles. The silver trailer came crashing from behind, slamming into the truck’s rear bumper, tearing loose from its hitch, landing on its right side. The sound of the collision was fearsome—glass spiderwebbing in brilliant shrieks, plastic exploding outward with concussive groans and snaps, metal sheering metal.

* * *

When things had stopped moving, when the dirt had settled itself earthward once more, there was a low hum, the engine running down, and a fierce wailing from the upended trailer. Then there was a thump, and another, then a third; hearing it, Rick knew it was his pulse pounding, reminding him that he was alive, and what a damnable fool he had been.

He held one hand to his forehead, the blood hurrying down his face, the thump coming from somewhere inside his head again. He pulled himself free from the wreckage, jaw sore, left shoulder popped from its joint. He limped away through the crushed door, afraid something might catch fire, knees buckling as he fought his way up the incline, falling on his side, his breath coming in sudden, uneven gasps. He heard the thump once more, realizing then it was the horse, before it began to whinny—the sound of its pleas unlike anything he had ever heard, guttural though high-pitched. Cursing, he made his way back down the culvert, sliding through the upturned mud to the trailer, placing his hands on the lopsided handles. The trailer door was bent, forced shut, and it took all of his strength to pull it open. The horse came galloping out of the warped, silver prison like a cloud, like a cannonball, leaping free, though as it moved, Rick could see its rear flank was seeping blood and its foreleg was split, broken below the knee. It cantered a few paces on, then stopped, huffing at the cool night air, flicking its head, ears erect, turning to glance back at where Rick was squatting in the mud.

He did not think of the girl; not until he was breathing properly again. Shifting his weight to his left side, he limped back to the driver’s-side door, folded upon itself, and peered inside. The passenger seat was empty, the door hanging wide open, no shadow nor trace of her shape visible anywhere in the night. He began to laugh, as he had once again underestimated her, thinking how much she was like her old, sickly grandfather, how vicious, how fearless. He pulled himself up out of the ditch, keeping his eye on the horse, seeing the animal stumbling slowly toward the highway.

“Ho! Ho!” he called to it, holding out a hand, taking a wobbly step forward, spooking it. And then, once again, it was gone, taking off wildly down the hillside—broken leg or not—disappearing in a white-and-red-specked flash, the sound of its hooves striking the dirt, marking time with the thrum of blood in Rick West’s head. He stood there numbly, blood-soaked, staring off as if he were born mute or dumb, watching it go.

_________________

The pale-blue pickup halted a good fifty yards from the crash, slowing down along the shoulder of the road, the pernicious rattle of loose gravel beneath the vehicle’s tires startling the grandfather awake. He grunted a little, lifting the white cattleman hat from his eyes, peering out into the darkness at the abstract, rectangular shapes rising from the edge of the highway, just beyond the yellow circles cast by the flickering headlights. Before bothering to even ask, he had the door open and was limping out, staring at the upturned trailer flung on its side, its door torn open, the horse gone. There was the man, the one who had been driving the other truck, squatting along the side of road, shaking his head, laughing a little to himself, out of his wits maybe, whistling at some far-off point in the distance. Jim followed the man’s gaze and saw a white streak passing across a wide-open field—saw, at once, that it was the mare, running off-kilter, one of its forelegs hitting the ground awkwardly, as if it did not trust its own step, though, somehow, the animal still appeared to be flying. The grandfather turned back and hurried toward the open door of the pale-blue pickup, seeing that the night in the distance had just begun to blossom with color—a smear of orange, then blue, then red—and the eastern sky, where he was now staring, already showing light.

Back in the truck, the grandfather slammed the door behind him. “She’s off the other way.”

The boy quickly threw the truck into gear. The vehicle jerked forward, its headlamps momentarily lighting the raw-looking face of the man sitting alone on the side of the road, laughing at the balled-up truck and trailer, before passing on.

“That was her?” the boy asked.

“That was her,” the grandfather said, looking back over his shoulder.

“How do we get her?”

“Turn around. And then we’ll hop on that exit over there.”

The pale-blue pickup rattled off, its engine clattering, returning to the road. The grandfather glanced in the side-view mirror as the man on the side of the culvert stood, pulled a weapon from beneath his coat, and began to stalk off through the weeds toward the barren field where the horse was now standing frightfully still.