THEY WERE AWAKENED BY A STOUT WOMAN IN BLACK BOOTS AND A Waylon Jennings T-shirt. They sat up and rubbed their eyes and then they got to their feet and the woman asked them what they were doing.
“Nothing,” Maben said and she brushed at the child’s hair with the palm of her hand and then she picked up the garbage bag.
“You need a ride or something? I’m going down toward New Orleans after I get some food in me.”
“We’re all right,” Maben said and she took the girl’s hand and they stepped out of the dressing room. They walked outside and sat down on the curb. The afternoon was falling away as they had managed to grab a couple of hours of sleep, polite or indifferent bathroom patrons stepping over and around them until the stout woman decided to ask. Maben wondered if they had time to make it to the shelter or if they would be stranded again in the night. If there would be a place for them. If they could help her get a job. If they had coloring books. If they could stay for a day or three days or a month. If.
She looked at the motel rooms across the parking lot. She looked at the girl. They had been on the side of the road or in the woods for three days.
“Come on,” she said to the girl and they walked back inside and to the cash register in the café where the room keys hung on hooks on a wooden board nailed on the wall. The girl who had waited on them stood behind the register stacking receipts and she looked up and said I thought y’all were gone.
“Not yet,” Maben said. “We want one of those rooms if you got it.”
“Sure,” the waitress said and she put down the receipts and she took a notebook from below the counter. She opened it and made a couple of marks and she said it looked like room 6 was free. Thirty-five dollars even.
Maben pulled the folded bills from her pocket and as she counted out the money the waitress looked down at the girl and asked her name.
“Annalee,” the girl said. Then the girl looked up at the woman and said my momma’s name is Maben.
“She didn’t ask that,” Maben said and she handed the money to the waitress.
The waitress turned and took a key from a hook and gave it to Maben and she smiled again at the girl. Then she said, “Be sure and keep your door locked.”
“Why?” the girl asked but Maben told her to come on and they walked across the parking lot toward the room. They stopped to let a big rig pass in front of them and when they started again the child began to skip along, anticipating sitting on something soft and watching television.
They had watched cartoons and the weather. Sat on the bed with their shoes off and legs stretched out. Sipped cold drinks from the vending machine. And now the girl was asleep with the television screen flashing across her clean body in the dark room. Maben walked to the window and pulled back the curtain. The parking lot was lit with yellow ghoulish light and more trucks populated the lot, settling in for the night. She could see across the lot into the windows of the café and the waitresses outnumbered the customers. She had spent more than half the money and now she felt stupid. If for whatever reason she didn’t find what she hoped to find tomorrow on Broad Street, if the place was full or closed or simply not the kind of place they needed, then she had made a big mistake. Seventy-three dollars was not much money but take away thirty-five and another eight for lunch and it really wasn’t much.
She walked over to the television and changed the channel to a news station and looked at the time on the bottom right of the screen. Ten after eleven. She walked back over to the window and sat down in a chair and again pulled back the curtain.
At least we don’t stink anymore, she thought. Keep your door locked, she remembered the waitress saying but she didn’t understand the warning. It seemed as though people were doing what they were supposed to be doing.
It was then that she noticed two girls at the edge of the parking lot who hadn’t been there only a second ago. As if they had shot up from holes in the ground. One white and one black. They were dressed alike. Short denim skirts and white tank tops and flip-flops. Each held a small purse. Maybe sixteen, Maben thought. The white girl had her dark hair cut short like a boy and the black girl wore a red bandanna tied around her head. They walked together into the middle of the parking lot and then the black girl pointed at the purple truck and the white girl pointed at the black truck and then they separated. Maben watched as each girl walked to her chosen truck cab and stepped up and held on to the sideview mirror and tapped on the window. The door of the purple cab opened first and the black girl crawled inside. The white girl tapped again and adjusted her skirt and then the door of the black cab opened and she also crawled inside. The curtains of each cab were then pulled closed.
Maben counted and there were nine more trucks in the lot.
Nine times thirty. Two hundred and seventy dollars.
Nine times fifty would be four hundred and fifty.
She looked across the room at the thirty dollars wadded up on the table next to the television.
She had done it before and she hadn’t thought about it in a long time, forcing herself to remove it from her memory. And as she thought about it now she felt as if it had been someone else. She had done so well forgetting it that she couldn’t remember when it had been done and where it had been done or how many times it had been done but only that it had been done in a time when she had been backed into some dark and desperate corner by the rabid dogs of life.
She watched the trucks and wondered if those girls were old enough to drive. Wondered where they came from. Wondered if those men had ever once considered that those girls hadn’t long ago been children. Or still were. Or maybe they never had been because they’d never had the chance. She looked at Annalee and realized what might await her if things didn’t turn around and then she took a deep breath and looked back across the lot and then there was the vision of that night so many years ago. And that boy. That beautiful boy. Them sitting together on the tailgate parked on Walker’s Bridge. Underneath ran the water of Shimmer Creek and alongside the creek and surrounding the bridge stood thick forest, the trees holding the bridge close, almost protecting it. The truck filling up the width of the bridge, its wooden rails leaning and rotting. Declarations of love long gone carved into the wood with pocketknives and bottle openers. The moon full and its light giving shadows through the trees and creating the illusion of an army of still ghosts lying in wait. The stars were many and beneath the music coming from the radio the crickets and frogs formed an abstract chorus over the trickle of the running water and she knew it was right. Knew he was right. So she told him to crawl up into the truck bed and lay down. Don’t ask just lay down and don’t look up and he obeyed and then she stood and she moved away from the truck bed and walked to the edge of the bridge. Don’t peek, she said. She looked up into the sky for reassurance then she took off her T-shirt and removed her bra and stepped out of her shorts and her panties. She knelt and piled her clothes in a loose stack on the edge of the bridge. She stood and a chill ran over her body but she opened her arms and felt the moonlight and it held her like a pair of warm hands. She looked into the truck bed at the boy who had been telling her that he loved her. And she started toward him but then the dark was interrupted by the hum of an approaching car and the glow of headlights appeared over the hill, headlights that came fast, exposing themselves in two bright bursts before she could call out to him, before she had time to pick up her clothes and the car never slowed down. And she heard herself scream out to him as she hurried off the narrow bridge and onto the side of the road and she turned around in time to see the car meet the front of the truck. She ducked with the roar of the crash and Jason’s tall and lean body was shot out of the truck bed and into the night as if he were meant to fly. The sparks and the screech and sound of twisting metal and running down that rough road toward the nearest house light. Breathing hard and running harder but feeling as if she were going nowhere, as if the house light were moving away from her as she ran toward it with her clothes tucked under her arm and forgetting she was naked until she finally ran into the yard and she stopped to put on her shorts and shirt. She left her bra and panties next to the front steps and she beat on the door and beat on the door, certain they would think they were being attacked or robbed and she began screaming out words like bridge and cars and help and please God until a light came on inside and the door opened and a man with gray hair peeked at her and believed that something was horribly wrong. And then getting in the car with him and driving down the road while his wife called somebody. Maben unable to answer his questions, only focusing ahead into the dark with anxious eyes and wanting Jason to be standing there as the headlights shined onto the bridge. She wanted to see him standing there wiping the dirt from his face and arms and saying damn that was close. But then seeing nothing and calling out and hearing nothing and then watching while the blue lights and the red lights topped the hill and then watching while the flashlights shined into the woods at the twisted and smoking heap of car and truck and then hearing them say we got a live one and telling herself it’s him it’s him it’s got to be him and then it was the other one. The one that interrupted.
Through the haze of the years the night came back to her with clarity and punch as she stared with empty eyes across the parking lot. A car horn sounded and shook her loose and she turned and walked over and sat down at the edge of the bed and put her hand on the child’s leg and watched her small chest rise and fall in a heavy sleep.
It wouldn’t take long, she thought. It never had before. At least the way she remembered it. They never took long. Fifty dollars. No less. Maybe forty. The child was sleeping like the dead and would never know she was gone. She stood and put the room key in her pocket and she walked over to the sink and brushed her hair that hung limp against her head. She pushed it around with her fingers but nothing changed and then she wiped her eyes with a washrag and she kept telling herself that they didn’t take long. They never take long.