HE WOKE WITH THE FIRST LIGHT OF DAY, MOSQUITO-BITTEN AND barely able to stand straight from the few hours he had slept in the ridged bed of the truck. He walked around the campground, stretching his back and reaching toward the sky and twisting and trying to get himself right. The Volkswagen was gone and the old couple sat in the same chairs around the same circle of stones that they had been sitting around in the late hours of the night as if they had never moved. Russell waved to them and the elderly man raised his tin coffee cup in response. Maben and Annalee slept and he didn’t wake them. He lit a cigarette and walked around. The air seemed smoky in the earliest light and he came upon a springfed creek no wider than a doorway and he knelt and stuck his hand into the cold, trickling water. The honeysuckle climbed into a thatch of pines and he smelled its sweetness and it caused him to lick his lips with a morning thirst. He cupped his hands and took a drink.
So. What if it is her? So what?
That’s what he had been thinking all night. So what? I don’t owe her anything. I don’t owe Larry and Walt anything. I fucked up and I paid for it and that’s that. The only person I still owe is the dead boy and I’ll pay for that soon enough. It’ll come for me like it comes for everybody. And when it comes I’ll stand there and then I’ll be judged again and I’ll pay again if I still owe something. But I don’t owe nobody down here. Nobody.
It was easy to think of the brothers in that way. Not so much Maben and the child. There was something about her. The way she looked, like she’d been picked up and put down time and time again and like she held on to the girl and shot a man because she couldn’t take it anymore. At least that’s what she had said and he found himself believing the story. Hoped it was true so that he wouldn’t end up the dupe. But she had been shaky with the pistol, so shaky that he had been able to reach over and pick it from her hand like it was a straw. Didn’t hold it like someone who wanted to shoot. He thought he understood the way she felt and no I don’t owe her anything but goddamn it. She was right. They wouldn’t believe her. They would take the child. She would end up in the same type of place that he had just left. She was right.
He had told her he could help her but he was wrong. He didn’t see anything ahead that would be in her favor if that pistol was found. He didn’t see anything ahead that would be in her favor if someone didn’t hold out a hand to her and the child. He remembered himself in the first days and weeks of being put away, alone and scared and isolated and confused and waiting to be jumped on. He figured the look on his face was much like the look on her face now. By the time he stood up from the side of the creek and wiped his hands on his pants, he had resigned himself to the fact that he was going to play the fool and then he walked back toward the truck where he saw their heads in the window.
He tapped on the glass and opened the door. Each of them was sweaty on the side of the face that had been down. Annalee rubbed her eyes and said she had to go to the bathroom and she and Maben got out of the truck and walked into the woods. Russell sat down behind the wheel. The gas tank was close to full and would probably last until they could get back to McComb. All he had to do was get them rolling and if they wanted out they’d have to jump. He looked over at the man and woman and they had a fire going and the woman held a skillet. Russell walked over to them and said good morning and the old man tipped back the hat on his head. His neck was bumpy from a bad shave and he wore a long-sleeved shirt buttoned at the collar. The woman wore a sweatshirt and a hairnet held down her gray hair. She wore a work glove on the hand that held the skillet and she was cooking eggs over the fire.
“Smells good,” Russell said.
“I ain’t got no money,” the old man said.
“We ain’t got nothing,” the old woman said.
“I don’t want nothing you got.”
“My wife can shoot.”
“Shoot what?”
“Anything. She don’t miss.”
“If I wanted to do something to you don’t you think I would’ve come over here in the middle of the night?”
“I was watching,” the old woman said.
“So was I,” he said.
“All I want is some food. For that little girl over there. She’s gonna need something to eat before we start riding.”
“We ain’t got enough,” the woman snapped. A loaf of bread and a tub of butter sat on an aluminum table next to their truck. Russell looked over at it. A pan of some kind of meat sat next to it and a band of flies buzzed around the pan. Paper towels and paper plates and a quart of beer.
“How about a few slices of that bread?” Russell asked.
“We ain’t got enough,” she said again.
“You must be a kidnapper,” the old man said. “That’s what I told my wife last night. That must be a kidnapper. A woman and a girl and no food and no tent and no nothing. Kidnapping.”
“I’m not a kidnapper. I’m a man who wants a few pieces of buttered bread.”
“We ain’t got enough.”
Russell took a five-dollar bill out of his back pocket and reached over to the table and set it down. Then he opened the loaf of bread and took out five pieces and he buttered them with a plastic knife while the woman stood at the fire yelling and pointing at Russell and then yelling and pointing at the old man to get up and do something but the old man didn’t even turn around in his chair. Russell tore off a paper towel and wrapped the bread and then he told them that the meat smelled like shit and he walked back to the truck. Maben and Annalee were sitting in the cab again. Russell handed the buttered bread to Maben and she said what is that and he said breakfast. He cranked the truck and as they left the campground, the old woman shook a spatula and yelled at him in a gravelly, fading voice and Russell thought she might have a heart attack any second. The old man raised his tin coffee cup again and she smacked him in the back of the head.
At the interstate Russell turned south and Maben told him to let them out at the next town.
“I will,” Russell said. “At the next town when I stop.”
“We need to get on.”
“I know you do.”
The child ate the bread and wiped the butter from the corners of her mouth on her shirt. She offered a slice to her mother and Maben took it. She offered a slice to Russell and he told her to eat it. At the next town Russell ignored the exit. And he did the same at the next and the next and Maben said I mean it. Stop.
“You might as well sit tight,” he said.
“I can’t.”
“Yes you can.”
“No I can’t.”
“You’re gonna have to unless you want to drop and roll.”
Maben folded her arms like an unhappy child. Annalee asked if she could turn on the radio and Russell said yes. In an hour they were in Hattiesburg and he turned west on Highway 98 and in another hour they crossed the Pike County line.
“I can’t believe this shit,” Maben said.
Russell didn’t answer. He turned off the highway ten miles before town and took the back way to his dad’s place. Tractors moved across fields leaving dusty trails and cows stood in ponds. A graveyard at the top of a hill amid mosscovered trees. A dead armadillo in the middle of the road. He came up the highway and turned right and in a quarter of a mile he turned into the driveway and the front end spun in the loose gravel. Maben didn’t talk. Russell parked next to the house and the child pointed at the barn and said I thought barns were supposed to be red.
“Sit here a second,” Russell said, getting out and taking the keys with him. He walked around the house and found his father and Consuela sitting outside on the back porch eating tomato and bacon sandwiches.
“You want one?” Mitchell asked.
“I gotta talk to you.”
Mitchell put his sandwich down on the plate as if that would help him hear better. Then Russell said, “I need the barn. My room. Consuela’s room.”
“For you?”
“Not for me and I only need to hear yes or no. That’s all. I can explain it later and if you don’t like it I can do something else but right now I need yes or no.”
Mitchell looked at Consuela. It wasn’t her room anymore.
“Boyd Wilson find you? He was out here looking this morning. You into something I need to know about?”
“I’ll tell you one day but not today. Yes or no,” Russell said. “That’s all I want to hear.”
“Whatever you got to do,” Mitchell said.
Russell nodded and he walked back to the truck and he waved for them to get out.
“Bring your bag,” he said to Maben and she draped the duffel bag over her shoulder. She helped Annalee down from the truck and she held the child’s hand as they walked toward Russell and he told them to follow him. They walked past the house and out across the backyard and to the barn. At the back of the barn was a door and then a flight of steps and at the top of the steps was one large room. In the room there was a double bed and a love seat and other odd bits of furniture. There was a refrigerator and a small cabinet and countertop and a sink. The floors were wide wooden planks and the ceiling was exposed and a ceiling fan hung in the middle of the room from a two-by-four that had been nailed across the beams. The room was hot and steamy and Russell began to sweat just standing there. He walked across the room and turned on the air conditioner that sat in the window and then he pulled the string on the ceiling fan. He pointed at a door in the corner and said that’s the bathroom. There was nothing in the room that belonged to Consuela and he wondered if she had ever been out there at all.
“It’s hot,” Annalee said.
“I’ll have to get you some towels and sheets,” Russell said. “It’ll cool off in a little while.”
“I ain’t staying here,” Maben said.
“Why not?”
She didn’t have an answer.
“I’ll be right back,” he said and he went down the stairs and to the house and Consuela met him halfway across the yard with a stack of towels and sheets and a bar of soap and shampoo. His dad remained in his chair on the porch and he watched Russell without expression. Russell returned to the room and the child was standing with her back against the air conditioner and it blew her hair across her face. Maben was sitting on the edge of the bed taking the clothes from the duffel bag and then she took out the pistol and she placed it on the mattress. Russell set the things on the bed next to her and he asked them if they wanted something to eat.
“I do,” the child said.
“I guess I do, too,” Maben said.
Russell returned to the house and he asked his father what they had to eat. Mitchell asked Consuela to make a plate of sandwiches and she went inside to the kitchen. Russell sat down on the porch steps and wiped the sweat from his forehead. He waited for what was coming but he didn’t have to wait long as his father got up and walked into the yard and stood in front of him and said I suppose you’re planning to tell me just what in God’s name is going on.