MABEN OPENED AND CLOSED THE DOOR OF THE MOTEL ROOM quietly. She had already decided which truck she was going for and she walked directly to it, a blue truck with the rebel flag painted on its front grille. She climbed up onto the step of the driver’s side. The curtains were pulled. Dark inside. She touched her fingertips to the glass. Caught her reflection. Her child slept less than fifty yards away. She felt nauseated already.
And then she pulled her hand away from the window. Bit her lip and told herself to trust that tomorrow would be better. That she would find something to help. This ain’t no way to start over. And she stepped down off the truck and touched the room key in her pocket. She turned to walk back to the room and she saw the cruiser. It had pulled into the parking lot with its lights off and sat idling, the silhouette behind the steering wheel watching her.
Clint didn’t mind this call and he didn’t mind messing around with the girls because he liked what they would do with the cruiser parked off the road to keep from going to jail. He liked the free pie and coffee Ned gave him for running them off. He considered these perks of a job that didn’t pay enough. He watched the woman in shorts stepping down off the rig and she wasn’t what he was expecting. Not the black girl and the white girl who he wouldn’t even have to say anything to. He’d just open the back door of the cruiser and wave them over and they’d say hey deputy and crawl in the back and an hour later after they had done what he wanted them to do he’d drop them off on the side of the road in front of the house where they said they lived and make them swear to give it a week before they headed back over there.
He was happy to see something new.
He got out of the cruiser. Hands propped on his gun belt and his face smooth and his hair parted. Too old was the first thing he thought.
“Hey,” he said.
Maben stopped.
“What you doing out here?” he asked. He spoke with the confidence of a man who knew that he had the power.
“Going to my room.”
“Not what I hear. Ain’t legal to go in them trucks and do dirty things.”
“I didn’t go in no truck. I said I’m going to my room,” she said. Then she reached into her pocket and took out the room key and showed it to him as if this were the evidence that would free her.
He moved on over to her and took the key from her fingers. He held it up to the light and inspected it. Then he gave it back to her.
“The manager called us. Supposed to be a family place.”
“I didn’t do nothing.”
“I saw you up on that truck over there,” he said and then he looked at her legs. At her dirty shoes. He then studied her face. Haggard and worn but a pointed nose that seemed like it might have once been part of something pretty and gray eyes like slick dimes.
“How old are you?”
“I got a kid over there in my room. I got to get back.”
“Not right now. You gonna have to come along with me.”
“I told you I didn’t do nothing.”
“That ain’t what Ned said.”
“Who the hell is Ned?”
“Don’t matter to you,” he said and he grabbed her skinny arm and she pulled back but she mostly pleaded I didn’t do nothing. I got a kid in there I told you. He opened the back door of the cruiser and then he twisted her arm behind her and she couldn’t fight it and she went face-first into the backseat, flopping over on her shoulder. He slammed the door before she could get up straight. He looked around the parking lot to see if Ned might be watching or if he might get an appreciative wave from somebody. But there was no one. She pleaded I didn’t fucking do nothing and my baby is over there I done told you I didn’t do nothing go knock on that truck and ask. I didn’t do nothing. He got in and sat down behind the wheel and he turned around and told her to shut up and then he made a U-turn in the parking lot. Please officer I didn’t do nothing. Please.
And that was the part he liked the most. When they started to beg.
He stayed on Highway 48 between Magnolia and McComb. Nothing out there but a pool hall and a liquor store and then later on a bait shop. When she started to cry he told her to stop it. You ain’t going to jail. If you were going to jail you’d be handcuffed already. Then he asked her name.
“Karen,” she said.
“Karen,” he repeated. “I got a cousin named Karen. She ain’t a whore like you, though.”
“Where we going?”
“Now, Karen. I’m the one driving.”
She stopped crying. She stopped talking. She sat with her arm resting on the door, staring out the window as the deputy drove along the two-lane highway. Clean white lines along the sides and reflectors dotting the middle that shined like diamonds in the headlights.
It was an easy one for her to figure out.
He turned off onto another road that was flanked by flatlands and after another mile he turned onto a bumpy, thin road that had been patched so lazily and so often that the radar and the radio on the dashboard rattled as the cruiser thumped along. Barbed-wire fence stretched along each side of the road and he soon slowed down and then he came to a stop and he turned off the headlights. Maben looked around and there was not a visible light in any direction. He reached above the dash and turned down the volume on the radio. The parking lights remained and an orange glow surrounded the cruiser as if to signal the demons from the dark.
“Look here,” he said and he tapped on the rearview mirror.
“I guess you know I’m about to come back there,” he said. Their eyes meeting in the mirror. “Girl like you shouldn’t care. Figure it this way. You’re still getting paid but with a get-out-of-jail-free card instead.” He gave a small laugh and said something to himself she didn’t understand. And then still with this low and brooding laugh he unbuckled his gun belt, the leather cracking as he slid it around his waist.
He held it up and said see here. We’re gonna be friends. He set the gun belt on the front seat and then he opened the door and got out and he untucked his starched khaki shirt from his starched khaki pants. He opened the door slowly. Leaned his head down and told her to move over toward the other side. She scooted away from him and he sat down beside her on the seat. He told her to take off those dirty shoes and she did. He told her to take off her shirt and she did. And he kept on telling her things to do. And she kept on doing them. Keeping her eyes closed when he’d let her.