Thicker Than Blood - The Complete Andrew Z. Thomas Trilogy (105 page)

# # #

Vi prodded me back into consciousness, squeezing my hands, whispering my name. Before I even opened my eyes, I could feel the ache in my skull.

I sat up, foggy-brained, fingering the tender knot on the back of my head.

"Let’s go," Vi begged, her voice seeming to echo. "It’s getting dark out, and I despise this place."

My gaze fell on Maxine, slumped against the wall, then Rufus, lying in a calm black puddle. Painfully, I turned my head and stared into the dark tunnels leading into the innards of the basement, to the trophy case, and its standing dead.

"Where’s Luther?" I asked.

"Gone. He took the truck, but there’s another car out front. I found some keys in the kitchen. Cash, too. About a hundred and fifty dollars."

"Have you called anyone?" I asked.

"Andy, I just want to get off this island."

Vi helped me up, and then we climbed the steps and walked together out of that stone house into the storm-cooled evening, two exiles, stateless and bewildered.

# # #

We reach the north end of Ocracoke at dusk and
board
the ferry.

Vi stays in the Impala with Max, asleep in her arms.

I step out, walk to the bow.

A father and his six or seven-year-old son lean against the railing, wind disheveling their hair, a satisfied, end-of-day peace emanating from them.

The man looks over, nods.

"Fine night, eh?"

I watch the island diminish until nothing of it remains but the distant steady glow of the Ocracoke Light, twelve miles south. When it slips under the horizon, leaving only the black waters of Hatteras Inlet and the clear August sky, flushed with sunset, I pray I’ve seen the last I will ever see of that island.

# # #

I drive us north on Highway 12. The road is empty tonight, wind whisking sand from the dunes across the pavement.

West, beyond the sound, somewhere over the mainland, the last trace of warmth dies on the horizon.

Stars burn above the Outer Banks.

We pass through tiny beach communities, interspersed by stretches of lonely highway. The sea stays mostly hidden behind the wall of dunes that crowds the right side of the road.

Half a tank of gas remains. I never want to stop. I could drive like this for eons, putting mile after mile between us and that stone house on the sound and the things we did today on Portsmouth. I wonder if Vi feels like I do—like we’re the only two souls on the face of the Earth who’ve been told this awful truth.

# # #

Traversing the bridge over Oregon Inlet, the beam from the
Bodie
Island Lighthouse becomes visible, projecting its luminescence out to sea. My thoughts turn briefly to Karen.

# # #

The beach has been practically paved in Nags Head, and the dunes of Jockey’s Ridge, tallest on the East Coast, resemble snow hills in the moonlight.

I pull into the parking lot of a Motel 8.

"All right if we stay here tonight?" I ask, first words spoken since Ocracoke.

"Yeah."

I walk into the office and request a room with double beds.

There’s only one vacancy left. It has one king-size bed.

We’ll take it.

I park in front of our room and give Vi a keycard.

Light from a supermarket and a burger joint shines in full bloom across the street.

"I’ll go get us some dinner. What do you want?"

"Nothing."

"You’re a
fuckin
’ rail, Vi. I’m getting you something. Might as well tell me what."

# # #

I cross Highway 12 and walk into Wendy’s.

"Can I get for you there tonight, sir?" asks the plump and smiling cashier.

I don’t remember how to talk to these kind of people.

# # #

I carry the greasy white bags into Harris Teeter, not that I intend to buy anything. It’s a compulsion. I can’t think of anyplace more ordinary and safe than the mopped, generic brightness of a supermarket. We’re at home among things, items, products, goods for sale. I want elevator music and strangers squeezing produce and price checks over the intercom.

# # #

The magazine rack is riddled with important news I haven’t heard in nine months. Smug celebrities watch me browse. None of it means a goddamn thing anymore.

# # #

On the wine aisle, I walk by three young women stocking up on Andre’s champagne.

I eavesdrop.

There’s a bonfire somewhere on the beach tonight.

They’re going to get wasted.

Going to get fucked.

They smell like cigarettes and energy.

# # #

Vi is sitting in bed nursing Max when I walk into the room, a romantic-comedy on the television. I set the bags of food on the table.

"Can I bring you yours?" I ask.

"He’s almost done."

I sit down on the edge of the bed and stare at the TV screen.

She lays Max, gorged and sleepy, at the foot of the bed on a towel surrounded by pillows. I grab the white bags, and we have a fast-food feast on the bed.

When Vi finishes, she says, "I want to take a shower. Watch Max for me?"

"Sure."

She walks into the bathroom, closes the door. I turn off the television and move over to the window. Peeking through the curtains into the parking lot, I check on the car, see the dunes of Jockey’s Ridge State Park glowing more brilliantly than before.

Vi gasps in the bathroom.

I rush to the door.

"Everything okay?" I call out.

No answer, only sobs.

"I’m coming in, Vi. I’m coming in."

I open the door slowly, giving her a chance to cover up in case she’s naked.

She’s slumped over against the sink, jeans on, T-shirt and bra in a pile on the floor.

"Vi, what’s wrong?" She shakes her head. "Tell me."

She straightens up, faces me, forearms hiding her milk-swollen breasts, and taps her right shoulder, taps the purple-yellow bruise the shotgun made when it bucked against her nine hours ago.

I step into the bathroom, wrap my arms around her bare back.

"Why don’t you take a bath, huh? I’ll run some water."

"My clothes smell like that house."

"We’ll wash them in the bathtub later. Here, sit down."

As she takes a seat on the toilet, I kneel down, close the drain, and turn the hot water knob.

"How warm do you want it?"

"Very."

I crank the cold water knob, get the mix just right.

"Check on Max, will you?"

I crack the door. Corralled by pillows, the infant sleeps, a stuffed dolphin at his side.

"He’s fine. Call if you need anything."

"Stay with me, Andy."

"You sure?"

"Just close your eyes for a minute."

I turn my back, listening to her jeans unzip and slide down her thighs. She steps into the bathtub, eases down in the water.

"Okay, I’m in."

I take a seat on the toilet.

Vi sits close to the faucet, her legs drawn up into her chest, arms wrapped around her knees.

"This feels so good," she says. "I haven’t had a bath in…I don’t know how long."

She bats the running water into her chest.

Her legs glisten, unshaven for months.

"I’ll pour water on your back if you like."

"Be great."

I tear the wrapper off one of the plastic cups on the sink. Kneeling down on the floor beside the tub, I fill the cup and drizzle hot water over her back.

Her skin turns to gooseflesh.

I do this for awhile and then she lifts her hair off her back and says, "Would you pour some on my neck?"

Feels good to please her.

I ask why she hasn’t called her husband.

"Andy, I feel like I’ve just come home from war. You know what I mean?"

"Yeah."

I drop the cup in the water, run my fingers through her hair.

"And I’m not sure how to go back. All the drugs, the hypnosis, those terrible movies we watched—what if Rufus fucked me up?" She turns and looks at me. "How do you feel?"

"I feel nothing."

"You have somewhere to go?"

"Yeah. A long, long way from here."

"Tell me about it."

I smile at the picture my mind’s eye conjures of my cabin in the Yukon forest. I smell the tall firs. See the meadow at night. Think of lying in its cold, soft grass, beneath the quiet majesty of the northern lights. God, I’d love to see the aurora borealis again.

"It’s paradise," I say, pouring more water down her spine.

"You could go back, yeah?"

"Sure."

"Is it quiet there?"

"Very."

"Middle of nowhere, right?"

"Yes. And beautiful. So beautiful."

"No one bothers you."

"Not there they don’t. You live quietly, simply. It’s lonely, but a good kind of lonely."

"Part of me would like to go back with you."

"Just turn your back on everything?"

"It’s all bullshit anyway. What I did today—if I’m capable, anyone is. Except they don’t know it. They live under the illusion of decency, goodness."

"You, me, and Max, huh?"

"I could have a garden. Live off the land, you know. Never see anyone. You could write."

"Have to come up with a great pseudonym."

"Yeah, and you’d publish books again, Andy. Maybe even write about this."

"And one day, after twenty, thirty years, when everyone’s forgotten, we come back."

I sit down on the tile. Steam curls off the surface of the bathwater, the mirror fogged, walls sweating. Vi leans against the side of the tub and stares at me, not quite as pretty as when I first saw her that raw November afternoon in Howard’s Pub, her beauty now tinged with hardness.

"No," she says. "We never come back."

# # #

At some point during the night, Vi lifts Max from his place between us, and puts him to bed on his pallet on the floor. She climbs back under the covers and snuggles up beside me.

I’m awake. I don’t anticipate sleeping tonight.

"Will you hold me?" she asks.

I raise my arm and she rests her head on my shotgun-bruised shoulder. It’s cold in this room. Most of our clothes lie drying in the bathtub.

Vi drapes her leg over mine and whispers, "What are we going to do tomorrow?"

I cup her face in my hands.

Last two souls on the face of the Earth.

There are things I want to say to her—shards of comfort and warmth and nothing’s as bad as it seems and no you are not a bad person and yes we did the right thing today.

But they would be lies, and we are so far beyond that now.

# # #

I don’t sleep.

Before dawn, I slip out of the room and walk down to the beach. I sit in soft sand, watch the tide push in. The lights of a shrimp boat shine several miles out. No sound save the breakers.