The Hunt Club (9 page)

Dorcas stood on the sidewalk, a few houses past her a streetlight, so that she was lit from behind. She was bent over, hands on her knees. I could see her shoulders shake, like she was crying.

Then she stood up. She put a hand to her mouth, her shoulders still shaking, the other arm pointed at me.

She was laughing at me. No sound at all.

I looked down, saw in the weird purple light from the streetlight my pants wet from my crotch down to my shins.

I looked up at her. Now she was pointing down the street from us, her eyes on me.

There, just past the streetlight, was the Luv.

We climbed in, me on the driver’s side, like we’d planned it all a year before. She gave the door over there a hard pop with her fist, too, the way you had to to get the thing open, her move so quick and perfect I realized right then she’d ridden through more miles on this
thing than I ever would, and for a second I pictured Benjamin Gaillard driving all around the Lowcountry with his deaf-and-dumb little sister, running for groceries, say, to Hollywood, or to the Solid Rock I Stand AME Church out past Gardens Corner, or just out to one of the roads that ran along the Ashepoo.

She reached into her jacket pocket, pulled out my keys. I nodded, put out my hand, and she dropped them. Our fingers never touched, and we looked at each other a long couple of seconds. Then she looked away, sort of pushed herself into her seat a little deeper. She put her hands together and between her knees, her shoulders up: she was cold, all movement and silence.

The engine turned over the first time, like every time. I patted the dash, and she smiled. Then I turned on the headlights, and she nearly jumped, quick opened the glove box. Before I could even put the truck into gear, she’d pulled out a small tablet of paper, peeled off the top sheet, held it out to me.

I looked at it in the pale light from the streetlight, made out the words
Leave off the lights until we’re at least two blocks from here. Take surface streets as far as you can
. She’d written this out in the same perfect printing before she’d come for me.

I turned off the headlights, nodded at her. But she’d already pulled off the next sheet, held it out to me.

Don’t drive as though we’re in a hurry to get anywhere. We don’t want to be stopped by anyone. Once we get to the railroad tracks at Hungry Neck, I’ll tell you which turns to make
.

She was faced forward again, hands between her knees again.

I knew where she lived. I knew: the haint purple half trailer, half shanty up on Hutcheson Road. I knew that.

I motioned to her for something to write with.

She stared at me a second, then let out a hard breath, reached into the glove box, and pulled out a pen. But instead of handing it over to me, she started writing on it, hard and fast. She tore off the sheet, pushed it at me.

You turn where I say
, she’d written.
And we go NOW
.

She was leaning into the corner of the cab, her mouth in what looked like a snarl, the way you look when you can’t believe how stupid someone could be.

Me.

I crumpled up the paper, let it drop to the floorboard. She was right, and this was new, all of this as new to me as the look of a headless man raising a gun to the sky, and I only nodded, put the stick into first, and eased out the clutch, somebody else’s world out there moving into motion, and we were gone.

She wrote more notes, handed them to me once I’d turned the headlights back on and while I drove all the surface streets I could in order to avoid the Mark Clark, hanging up above us and to my right, then to my left like some huge and well-lit concrete snake just above ground. Stoplights and stop signs, and neighborhoods and grocery stores and frontage roads and minimarts, all just to keep off the freeway.

And these notes. She peeled one off, expected me to read it while I drove, peeled off another, and another. I took each one, held it up to whatever light there was: intersection street lamps, gas-station lights, whatever.

If I were you
, the first one read,
I’d ease off the clutch going into second a little more slowly
.

The next read,
Thirty-five miles per hour means you cannot exceed 35 miles per hour
.

And
Keep an eye on the rearview mirror for anyone who might be following us
.

Then,
When you hit Dorchester Road, you’ll have to turn left at the Piggly Wiggly where
—

I wadded every one up, dropped them to the floorboard, didn’t even bother to finish this last one. If she wanted to tell me where to go once we were to Hungry Neck, that was one thing. And I knew to work the clutch easy into second. But telling me where to turn here, where I lived. No.

I pulled up to a red light. My eyes on the empty intersection before us, I whispered, “For somebody who can’t talk, Dorcas, you sure talk a lot.”

The light went green, and I pulled through. Across from us, on the left, sat a Pantry market, a single car out at the gas pump. Its lights came on just as we passed, and I watched it for a second out my window. I eased into second, still watching the car, a big old green Plymouth, the white landau top of it peeled and ripped, like huge scabs on white skin.

I faced forward. Here was another of her notes, her holding it not an inch from my face so I couldn’t even see the road. I pushed her hand away, looked in the rearview a second. No headlights. I shoved it into third.

She went off on another fit with the pen and paper, and I held up the piece she’d given me, read it.

If you have something to say to me, you redneck peasant, say it to my face. I can read lips, even if they’re as white-boy thin as yours
.

I looked from the paper to her. She had yet another one torn off, and pushed it to me again.

Call me Dorcas again, and I’ll knock you on your skinny white butt so hard you’ll be spitting up shit
.

Acts 9:36: Now there was at Joppa a certain disciple named
Tabitha,
which by interpretation is called Dorcas: this woman was full of good works and almsdeeds which she did
.

I wadded this one up, too, dropped it. “Okay,
Tabitha
,” I said, my eyes hard on her, hands tight on the wheel, “I said I think you’re a wonderful person, and a gifted Bible scholar.”

She leaned back into the corner of the cab again, the pen and pad still in her hands. She was facing me, and now I could see her a little more, one side of her face growing slowly into light: here was her cheek, her eyebrow, her nose. She was smiling, her face lit with light through the rear window.

Light.

I looked in the rearview again. Headlights, the scab car right up on us.

I hit the gas, took off and away, watching him the whole time. A second later his blinker came on. He pulled down one of the streets we’d passed.

Dorcas—Tabitha—tapped my shoulder, and I turned to her.

She was sitting up, and made a sharp move with her hand toward her chest. She held out her hand to me, and I could see her first two fingers were crossed. Then she made the move again, her fingers crossed brought quick to her chest.

She pointed at me, did it again, nodded: she wanted me to do it. So I crossed my fingers, made the move, smiled at her because she was smiling at me and nodding away, and I did it again.

She wrote, tore off the sheet, handed it to me.

That means “I am a liar.” You are. You said something about me talking a lot, not about my biblical acumen. That makes you a liar
.

I shrugged.

And a truck shot out from a side street, stopped dead in front of us. I hit the brakes hard, sent Tabitha forward, her shoulder rolling into the dashboard, the big yellow Ford pickup not two feet from the hood.

Two men sat in the cab, the one closest to me, on the passenger side, with a hand up to block the shine from my headlights. He had a beer in the other, and waved it in a sort of salute. He had his baseball cap on backward, a face that needed a shave a few days ago. The driver had his cap on straight, faced forward. He was grinning and chewing on something at the same time, his mouth working away.

“Sorry, y’all!” the one with the beer hollered out, then, “Happy Thanksgiving!” and the truck slowly moved on across the street, back into the neighborhood.

We sat there a few seconds, Tabitha with a hand to the dash and breathing hard, her mouth open wide. She looked at me, then at the taillights of the truck.

We were only one more block from Dorchester, where we’d turn left. Then we’d finally be on the Mark Clark, headed over the Ashley River, then on to 17 South, the Savannah Highway. And maybe, if we were lucky, Hungry Neck, sometime tonight.

I pulled up to the intersection with Dorchester, the street we were on dead-ending into it. Across from us was the Piggly Wiggly, and a Phar-Mor Drugs, and a Piece Goods store, a video store, a dry cleaner’s. Everything was dark but for the Piggly Wiggly. It was a twenty-four-hour job, the inside still lit up and sparkling, a couple cars in the parking lot.

And there at the curb right in front of the automatic doors, its lights off, was the Plymouth with the scab roof.

I took in a breath. Maybe he knew a shortcut to the Pig. Or maybe it just
looked
like the same car from here. Maybe it meant nothing at all.

Tabitha tapped me hard on the leg, and I turned to her and in the same second felt the hard crack and lurch of the truck, us bumped from behind.

She was turned in her seat, looking out the back, and I turned, too, saw the yellow Ford, the headlights right up against the bed of the Luv, above and behind the lights those two shits.

They backed up a few inches, hit the bed again, that same crack and lurch.

She looked at me, her breath going faster. They hit us again, only this time kept going, pushed us three or four feet into the crosswalk.

They were pushing us out into the intersection, wanted us broad-sided all on our own.

They pushed, and I jammed on the brake hard as I could, put it in neutral so I could let off the clutch, then mashed down on the emergency brake. If they were going to push on us, I’d make them work for it.

I heard their engine going harder behind us, and now my tires were sliding, and that was it: the light, still red, didn’t matter, nor the few cars out on Dorchester, headed toward us from both directions. None of it mattered. I sat with my foot on the brake one last second, watched for these cars coming, watched, watched—there were three of them, two on the right, one on the left—and then, when it seemed all things might work together for us in the next second,
I reached down and released the emergency brake, popped it into first, and stomped on the gas.

We shot out between the oncoming cars, and I turned left hard. The Luv went sideways, hit the curb across the street, and the cars coming at us all screeched at once, all three squirming to stay straight and stop, even though we were already through.

And of course the pickup behind us shot out, too, his gas gunned for trying to push us.

The two cars on our side of the intersection hit him, one at the rear panel, the other at the front fender, and the truck jumped up off the pavement a good foot or so, landed hard on its left two wheels, sort of hung there a second, balanced like it had an idea to just go right on over. But it didn’t, and with a slow pitch fell back onto all four tires.

It was a good sound, loud and stiff, metal bitten and chewed and spit out all in a half second, and there was the sound, too, of scattered glass from one of the truck’s front headlights and all the headlights on those two cars. It was a good sound.

Then people jumped from the driver’s side of both cars, already shouting, waving fists. Next somebody climbed out of the car that’d been headed the other way, and now that guy was running toward us, and I realized only then we hadn’t gone anywhere, just sat here against the curb, watching it all.

I pulled away, headed for the Mark Clark on-ramp only a quarter mile or so ahead, hoped whoever it was running along behind us and yelling wouldn’t be able to see my tags.

I watched in the rearview, saw the man finally give up, stop right there in the middle of Dorchester Road.

And then saw the pickup swerve out of the whole thing, one headlight busted out, his tires squealing. The back end wagged one way and the other, the driver trying to get hold of a straight line, one that would deliver him right to us, headed up the ramp and onto a freeway that wouldn’t let us off until we were over the Ashley River, a good couple of miles from here.

Here came Tabitha’s hard breaths, a high-pitched shard of sound, and I looked at her. She had both hands to the dash, looked forward and behind us and forward again, and I could only push harder on the gas, push harder and harder, and forget easing anything into any gear.

The freeway was a freeway: big and wide and empty this time of night. The first thing I did was cut across for the fast lane, the little yellow reflectors set down in the concrete skipping past beneath us, and I looked down, saw we were doing seventy, just like that. I’d never gotten it going this fast, only drove the speed limit. I still had only my learner’s permit, and then I felt something small in my throat, thought it might be a laugh too scared to get out: here I was, with only my learner’s permit, doing seventy in the middle of the night and being chased by who knew who, me not even old enough to be at the wheel after sunset by South Carolina law.