Three A.M. (25 page)

“What’s wrong?” I shook my head. “Talk to me. Please.”

“It was a friend’s tape. I’ll never see him again. No way. The last thing we did was listen to this music.” She reached out quickly and pressed the stop key on the dash. “No, it’s okay. I want to hear it.” I studied the glowing controls but could not figure out how to restart the music. A sad smile on her face, she took my hand and guided my finger on one of the buttons.

“Fancy new stuff,” I muttered, half-smiling.

“Actually, this truck is ten years old. They don’t even make cars with tape players anymore.”

“Yeah, well, thanks. That makes me feel a lot better.”

Her hand returned to the nape of my neck. “I guess ten years old is six years in the future for you.” I nodded. We were silent for a while, listening to the gentle strains of a slow, mournful movement. Then she looked over. “Will you tell me about him? Your friend? I know it’s hard, but it helps to talk.”

“Yeah … it does. That’s just it. For almost fifteen years, I had no one to talk to. And then this poor kid I’d been chasing for money and roughing up and all—one day I got to talking to him and … turned out he was a friend just waiting to be recognized.… I didn’t have anyone to talk to for all those years and then I had him for just a couple of weeks … Heller. Tom Heller was his name.” I pulled a pack of cigarettes from my pocket and jammed one in my mouth. “You mind?” She shook her head, and I lit the smoke and rolled down my window an inch. The cool evening air felt good on my face.

“I just get the feeling he’s going to get hurt. Maybe killed because of me. Because of all of this.”

Her face twisted into a scowl and she looked away, arms tense on the wheel. “Then you mean because of me,” she said quietly.

“No! No.” I said firmly, laying my hand on her thigh, “Not you. Them. Me. Not you, Rebecca. What you did, you were forced to do. No one forced me to rope Tom into my mess of a life. No one forced me to drink his liquor and listen to his music and go whine and moan to him. You had no choice. He had no choice. Same as you … you there in a red dress…”

“I felt so disgusting. You must have been revolted by me. Stupid slut in a dirty little dress. I kept crying and redoing my makeup … I hate myself for it.”

“No … don’t. You’re so young—your dad—what else could you have done? I’m sorry it happened too, but it’s not your fault—”

“It is my fault!” she shouted, pounding her fist on the steering wheel. “I didn’t have to jump through their hoops! How many people are going to die because I was just a scared little kid!? How many have already died? It is my fault.”

The truck was slowing down and drifting. Sobs racked her body. I put a hand on the wheel to steady the vehicle. “It’s okay, sweetheart.… Just pull over, okay?”

She gradually eased us to a stop and sat there, eyes closed with her hands gripping the wheel. “They were going to kill you too. They’re still trying. Won’t stop.” Her cheeks were bright red. I unbuckled my seat belt and got out of the truck, running around to her side. I pulled open the door and reached toward her to wipe off her face with the sleeve of my shirt. Suddenly she threw off her seat belt and came stumbling out of the car. She fell against me and wrapped her arms around my neck.

Her lips were at my chin, a cheek, on my neck, and finally they found mine and I did not fight it. Her tongue forced its way violently between my teeth. She pressed her face to mine, hands clutching at my neck, my shoulders. Slowly she relaxed. Our lips gently swirled around each other’s, and my hands were on the back of her head in her hair, holding her close.

We drew apart, and she buried her face in my shirt.

“It’s okay, Becca. It will all be okay.”

“How?” Her voice was muffled by my chest.

I thought about it for a minute. “I’ve got no clue. But it will be. We’ll stay together.” I wrapped my arms more tightly around her. “How much further do we have?”

She shrugged and pulled back from me a bit. Her eyes were drying. “Maybe half an hour. A bit less probably.”

“Let’s get moving. I’ll drive.” She fixed me with a cautious smile. “Don’t worry, it’ll be fine. You need to rest anyway.” Nodding, she walked back around the truck, and I climbed up into the driver’s seat. “Which one is the gas?”

She smiled and I turned the key. The engine rumbled back to life.

12

I held five or six thick logs under one arm and a mass of twigs and brambles under the other. It was nearly true night, and I could see very little around me in the dark forest. The small stream that ran near our campsite gurgled in the blue gray haze, but I wasn’t sure if it was to my left or right. I had lost my bearings entirely. It was almost silent, save for the flowing water and the occasional chirp of a bird. Every once in a while, there was a rustling or crackle of dried leaves disturbed by some unseen creature.

Each noise sent shivers down my spine. I used to love forests, but on this night, the woods felt as foreign to me as the ocean’s floor. I felt trapped in some endless catacomb beneath the thick canopy and among the encroaching undergrowth.
Just little squirrels and possums and things,
I told myself.
Crickets and owls. Just get back to camp.

Becca had directed me off the paved road and onto a little strip of dirt at dusk. We followed the neglected path a few miles into the hills and finally into the outskirts of the woods. The dirt road had ended abruptly in a clearing, but she knew the way well and had taken the wheel, inching us another half mile through the trees and thornbushes and undergrowth until finally we could go no farther. We set up camp about a hundred yards from the truck beside the stream as the last light left the sky.

I strained to hear her, but no promising sound came. I’m not sure why I was so frightened to call out, knowing the only things that would hear me would be timid little animals, but still, any words were stuck in my throat. I began to walk toward where I thought we’d made camp. My heartbeat quickened. I crossed a little clearing and stumbled as my foot caught on a root. There were a few stars visible through the gap in the foliage above.

I took in a deep breath and knelt, trying to calm my nerves. Three stones, all about equal size and alabaster white, rested by my boots. I rose to my feet, tasting bile. All around me, the same pale hue shone through the dried leaves and brambles, reflecting the moonlight. To the left was another pile of the strange stones; one, less buried, was cracked in half and I could see that it was hollow, concave. The remains of rotted teeth. A skull. I took a faltering step backwards. Something under my heel broke with a sickening snap. Gasping and coughing, I lurched out of the clearing and back into the forest.

I stood very still for a few minutes to regain my composure. I was determined not to let her know anything of what I’d seen. Finally I worked up the nerve, and throat still dry with horror, I croaked out her name.

For a minute, no response came. Then, about fifty feet away from me, a little flame came to life in the forest. Drawn like a moth, I practically sprinted toward the light. She was kneeling, looking up toward me as I entered the campsite. She lifted her thumb off my lighter, and again we were in darkness.

“I’m freezing,” she said softly, rising to take some of the wood. Her hands found my arms and slid down to the twigs and brambles, and she took several of them from me. “Can you hold the lighter while I make the fire?”

“Sure.” I set down the rest of the wood and reached out to find her. My hand grazed past her breast. “Sorry!” I whispered quickly. I could sense her smiling as she put the lighter in my hand. I flicked it and knelt, illuminating a little space she had cleared in the dirt. She worked quickly, breaking the smallest twigs into kindling and stacking sticks around them into the shape of a little cabin. Or bier. We did not talk for several minutes.

When the fire was set, she took the lighter from me and touched it briefly to the bottom brambles. They crackled and twisted, and soon the larger branches were smoking until one by one, they burst into flames.

“You build a hell of a fire,” I whispered.

“Dad taught us. He used the same kind of scientific approach to the simplest things.” She leaned in close to the flames, blowing gently on the embers. Her face flickered in the dancing light, orange and red playing across her eyes and tinting her golden hair amber. “I swear he would have eaten his breakfast with a compass and protractor if there had been a way to.”

I smiled and leaned back from the fire, my legs crossed before me, palms on the cool forest floor. The flames licked higher into the night. Three rifles glinted where they leaned against the closest tree. I’d left the rest under the back bench of the truck. No sense in hauling them all out here. We had brought the blankets and some food, leaving the rest locked in the vehicle. The water from the stream was cold and sweet, and Rebecca assured me it was safe. Her father had done the same for her years ago.

With the fire crackling and Rebecca at ease, I felt relaxed out here in the forest. It was profoundly dark, and through the treetops, I could barely make out the stars in the sky. She seemed more comfortable than I had ever seen her, and it rubbed off on me. It was a temporary peace, though. Whether we stayed camped out here for a night or a week, we could not sustain this indefinitely. What tomorrow would bring concerned me, but at least for tonight I felt safe and secure. I did my best to banish thoughts of an uncertain future and lit a cigarette as I watched the light dance across her angelic face.

She looked up at me and I did not look away. She smiled.

“You’re beautiful.”

“Thank you,” she said with sincerity, holding my gaze. “So what now?”

My heart skipped a beat, not sure what she meant by that. Her face was earnest and concerned. Not a come-hither look if I’d ever seen one. But her eyes fixed me with an intensity I would not have recognized before. She was a complicated girl. Probably more confused and conflicted than suited her intelligence. I was resolved to be nothing but a protective, positive force. In my mind I put ice on my loins—injected them with novocaine and ordered them to bed. But the curve of her neck … the hint of cleavage peeking out from her low-cut sweater … the firelight dancing across her and turning her flaxen hair into a waterfall of amber and gold.

“We’ll need to travel by dark. At least it’s getting on toward winter and dark for so long … If we drive hard, we’ll make it only fifty miles a night at best, considering all the off-road we’ll have to do, avoiding checkpoints and searchers.” Her eyes settled on the fire. A vacant veneer crept over her face. Maybe she had meant the
What now?
I would have liked. But the moment was gone.

“The next town—the first place where they’re not in control … You know how to get there?”

“I guess,” she said quietly. Then, her voice more firm, “Yes, we can get there. There are lots of checkpoints and only one road for the first hundred miles, but the truck should be able to handle the fields.”

I nodded. We exchanged no words for a long time. It was a painful silence. I wanted to level with her, to tell her she was amazing and beautiful and that I yearned for her … lusted for her.… I wanted to tell her I had bought a bottle of vodka for her. I’d masturbated to a specter of her red-dressed alter ego, and here she was before me, alone in the forest … and I would not act.

I wondered how much all cities had changed since I had been stuck in my own, since I had been stuck in time. I assumed everything would look just about the same. That bothered me more than a brave new world of flying cars and pneumatic tubes would have—it was like I had been in a drug-induced coma, and now, for reasons no more cogent than it had begun, it was over. She was still watching the fire.

“What are you thinking about?”

She looked up at me and smiled. “You.”

“That won’t take long,” I said, looking away. I hoped she couldn’t see the blood rush to my cheeks in the flickering light.

“I was just thinking about how I feel I know you, but I know so little about you. Don’t know what were you like as a kid. What sports you played. What you were afraid of.”

I sighed and rubbed my eyes with a thumb and forefinger. “I was always scared of being alone. Of being lonely. So I worked my whole life to be all alone and not need anyone or have anyone need me, so that I could never be abandoned. That’s what I was like as a kid. That’s … it’s—”

“How you are now?” She finished for me.

“Yeah. That’s how I am,” I whispered.

Rebecca rose and walked around the fire. She knelt behind me and began massaging my shoulders. “Will you tell me about yourself? What you’ve done … seen…”

“I don’t know.… What do I say?”

“Say one time I went to the beach and I found a shell. Say once I saw an elephant. Tell me about skinning your knee in a soccer game.”

“Once I went to the beach and skinned my knee. There was an elephant there too. He found a shell.”

She laughed, her voice rising into the cold dark air. It felt divine to have inspired that wondrous noise.

“Okay, I’ll tell you about me.”

I told her everything. I told her about Salk’s giant nose and about his pills. I told her about the two girls who had broken my heart. I told her about bruising ribs and smashing in faces for handfuls of wrinkled dollars. I told her about guarding the roads as part of a squad of boys unwittingly tasked with delivering death. I told her how I dreamt of her so many nights and of how I had watched her through the shower curtain. Her hands wrapped more tightly and sensuously around me at that, sliding forward down my chest. I was losing myself in her. Soon there was nothing but the warmth of the fire on my face and the ministration of her hands on my body. I was talking to her, to myself, to everyone. I dictated my autobiography—I babbled out a diary entry for every event I had so long sought to suppress. It was euphoric—it was awful. I was scarred and healed all at once. Maybe for twenty minutes, maybe an hour did I carry on until finally I realized she was talking to me and that I had been silent for some time.