Thicker Than Blood - The Complete Andrew Z. Thomas Trilogy (41 page)

"I’m all right, baby," Beth said, her voice breaking. "Stay in your room."

Luther turned and gazed at the teenager.

"Obey your mother."

"Why are you doing this?" Jenna cried.

"Get in your room!" Beth yelled.

"
What is happening?
"

"Get in your room!"

Jenna’s door slammed and locked.

When Beth looked back up at the intruder she saw he’d traded his knife for a blackjack.

"Turn around," he said. "I need to see the back of your head."

"Why?"

"I’m going to hit you with this and I’d rather it didn’t smash your face."

"Don’t you touch my children."

"Turn your head."

"Swear to me you won’t hurt—"

Luther seized her by the hair and whacked the back of her skull.

14

ACCORDING to the official website
www.wafflehouse.com
, the thirteen hundred Waffle Houses in the United States collectively serve enough Jimmy Dean sausage patties in twenty-four hours to construct a cylinder of meat as tall as the Empire State Building. And in one year they serve enough strips of Bryan bacon to stretch from Atlanta to Los Angeles seven times.

Luther recalls these amusing factoids while cruising down the
offramp
of I-40, exit 151, in the city of Statesville, North Carolina. Though it’s 4:13
a.m
., two establishments remain open for business. There’s the never-closing Super Wal-Mart on his side of the underpass and the wonderful Waffle House—just a left turn at the stoplight and two hundred yards up the street. Its lucent yellow sign cheerfully beckons him. He smiles. He hasn’t enjoyed that smoke-sated ambience in awhile.

Luther pulls into a parking space and turns off the ’85 Impala. In addition to stinking of onions, the car has been running hot and he worries it won’t endure the remainder of his journey. With respect to his sleeping cargo, breaking down would be an unthinkable disaster.

Intricately patterned frost has crystallized on the windshield of the car beside his, a web of lacy ice spreading across the glass. Touching the fragile crystals, he shivers and takes in the predawn stillness of the town. From where he stands the world consists of motels, gas stations, fast food restaurants, the drone of the interstate, and the sprawling glowing immensity of that Super Wal-Mart in the distance, set up on a hill so that it looks down upon its town with all the foreboding of a medieval stronghold.

Luther heads first into the bathroom. Though his work clothes rest safely in a trash bag in the backseat, he hasn’t had the opportunity to wash up. His hands and face are
bloodspattered
and he watches the water turn pink and swirl down the drain.

Even at this hour of the morning, Waffle House is buzzing, the bright light from the huge hanging globes bouncing off a murky cloud of cigarette smoke. The grill sizzles on without respite, the smell of the place a potpourri of stale coffee, smoke, and recycled grease.

A waitress moseys over to Luther’s booth.

"Know what you want, sweetie-pie?"

Though still perusing the illustrated menu he knows exactly what he wants.

"Vanilla Coca-Cola. Sausage. Bacon. Grits. Scrambled Eggs. A stack of pancakes. And more maple syrup. I’m going to use a lot more than what’s in that dispenser."

The waitress chuckles. "We don’t serve pancakes."

Luther glances up from the menu.

"Is that a joke?"

"Umm, this is the
Waffle
House. We serve
waffles
."

She’s being friendly, flirtatious even, but Luther doesn’t catch this. He feels only humiliation. The waitress is a young thing. Very pregnant. He thinks that she might be pretty if her teeth weren’t crooked. Her nametag reads Brianna.

"I hate waffles, Brianna."

"Well, there’s other stuff than that,
darlin
’. Fr-instance, my favorite thing is the
hashbrowns
. If you get em’ triple scattered all the way you never had anything so good."

"All right."

"So you want to try it?"

"All right."

"And you still want all that other stuff, too?"

"Yes."

When Brianna the waitress is gone, Luther leans back against the orange-cushioned booth. He tries not to dwell on how severely disappointed he is that the Waffle House doesn’t serve pancakes. How did he miss that? The waitress probably thinks he’s stupid now. Perhaps she should join the others in the trunk.

Numerous signs adorn the walls. While he waits for his Coke he reads them:

Cheese ‘N Eggs: A Waffle House Specialty

You Had a Choice and You Chose Us. Thank you.

Bert’s Chili: Our Exclusive Recipe

America’s Best Coffee

By the time his food arrives the first inkling of dawn is diffusing through the
starfilled
sky.

"You tell me how you like them
hashbrowns
," Brianna says. "Pancakes, that’s a good one."

The triple scattered all the way
hashbrowns
taste like nothing Luther has ever eaten. The bed of shredded fried potatoes is covered in melted cheese, onions, chunks of hickory-smoked ham, Bert’s chili, diced tomatoes, and slices of jalapeno peppers. He likes it better than pancakes and when Brianna brings him a refill of vanilla Coke he thanks her for the recommendation. No longer is he ashamed for ordering pancakes in a restaurant specifically called Waffle House.

Luther sips the vanilla Coke, briefly at peace, watching the sky revive through the fingerprinted glass.
  

Things are progressing famously.

How could the kidnapping of both Karen Prescott and Elizabeth Lancing not grab Andrew’s attention, wherever he is hiding?

As he starts to leave Luther notices a man of sixty-five or seventy facing him two booths down, his sallow face frosted with white stubble, eyes bloodshot and sinking, staring absently out the window, a cigarette burning in his hand.

There is a transfer truck parked outside and based on the man’s J.R. Trucking hat and hygienic disrepair Luther assumes he’s the truck driver.

He senses the man’s loneliness.

"Good morning," Luther says.

The trucker turns from the window.

"Morning."

"That your rig out there?"

"Sure is."

"Where you headed?"

"Memphis."

"What are you hauling?"

"Sugar."

The old man drags on his cigarette, then squashes it into an untouched egg yolk.

"Gets lonely on the road, doesn’t it?" Luther says.

"Well, it certainly can."

He doesn’t begrudge the man’s curt replies. They don’t spring from discourtesy but rather a desolate existence. Had he more to say he would.

Luther slides out of the booth, zips his sweatshirt, and nods goodbye to the trucker.

The man raises his coffee mug to Luther, takes a sip.

At the cash register Luther pays for his breakfast and then gives Brianna the waitress an additional ten dollar bill.

"See that old man sitting alone in the booth? I’m buying his breakfast."

And Luther strolls out the front door to watch the sunrise.

15

PULLING out of the Waffle House parking lot, Luther can hardly hold his eyes open. It’s Monday, 6:00
a.m
., and since Friday evening he’s managed only four hours of sleep at a welcome center outside Mount Airy, North Carolina.

He takes the first left onto
Pondside
Drive, a residential street so infested with trees that when he glances up through the windshield he sees only fragments of the magenta sky.

He follows
Pondside
onto Cattail, a street that dead-ends after a quarter mile in a shaded sequestered cul-de-sac, its broken pavement hidden beneath a stratum of scarlet leaves.

Luther kills the ignition and climbs into the backseat.

Lying down on the cold sticky vinyl, he takes out the tape recorder, presses play, and drifts off to the recording of Mr. Worthington begging for the lives of his family.

When he wakes it’s 11:15
a.m
. and the crystal sunlight of the October morning floods the Impala, the vinyl warm now like a hot water bottle against his cheek.

In downtown Statesville he picks up Highway 64 and speeds east through the piedmont of North Carolina and the catatonic towns of Mocksville, Lexington, Asheboro, and Siler City.

The sky stretches into infinite blinding blue.

Near Pittsboro, 64 crosses the enormous Lake Jordan, its banks bright with burning foliage. Luther cannot remember ever being so joyful.

By
midafternoon
he’s hungry again.

At a Waffle House in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, he orders his new favorite dish:
hashbrowns
, triple scattered all the way, and a cold vanilla Coke. Through the window his view is of a tawny field turned gold by the leaves of soybean plants.

Halfway through lunch it dawns on him.

He was careless at the
Worthingtons
.

He left something behind.

16

WHEN Beth awoke she thought she was dead and gone to hell but it wasn’t the inferno she expected. The image of hell she entertained derived from a painting she’d seen recently at the North Carolina Museum of Art.

The 1959 painting was called
Apocalyptic Scene with Philosophers and Historical Figures
, an oil on
Masonite
board by the Reverend
McKendree
Robbins Long.

The painting depicts a cavernous chamber and a legion of hopeless souls being herded by demons toward the obligatory lake of fire. Among the philosophers and historical figures are the faces of Einstein, Freud, Hitler, Stalin, and Marx. Others cling horrified to the rocky bank, still in their eveningwear, as if seized from a lavish ball. A horde of men and women fall naked from the ceiling toward the burning lake and in the unreachable distance, visible to all, two luminous angels hover around a white cross—a constant torturous reminder of the love the damned have spurned.

My hell is worse
, Beth thought,
because it’s real.

Her head ached terribly in this empty darkness and she possessed no recent memory. The faces of Jenna and John David flashed in her mind and as she pictured the three of them lounging on the pier, something shattered inside of her that could not be reassembled.

She sat up suddenly, smacked her forehead into the soundproofing, and fell back onto a limp hand.

"Who’s there?" she shrieked.

Nothing answered.

She located the hand in the dark and squeezed it.

"Do you hear me?" she whispered, thinking,
If that’s a corpse I’ll fucking lose it.

A half-conscious female voice mumbled, then gasped, jerked away from Beth.

"My name is Beth. Who are you?"

A voice croaked back, "Karen." It sounded as if she spoke through clenched teeth.

"Is this hell?" Beth whispered.

"It’s the trunk of that psychopath’s car."

Everything came rushing back in a fury of consciousness.