ANNALEE FOLLOWED CONSUELA INTO THE HOUSE AND RUSSELL AND Maben got in the truck with Maben carrying the pistol wrapped in a pair of socks. Mitchell stood in the yard and watched them drive away but he didn’t wave back when Russell waved to him.
“He don’t want us out here either,” Maben said when they hit the highway.
“He don’t care.”
“Looks like he does.”
“He doesn’t.”
She held the pistol between her legs and she kept her legs closed. Russell drove through town and passed over the interstate and in a few miles he left the highway and turned onto a road that was something between asphalt and gravel. The windows were down and Maben’s hair was wild in the wind and Russell reached behind the seat and grabbed a Peterbilt cap and handed it to her. She put it on and pushed her hair behind her ears. Away from town and away from other cars she took the pistol from underneath her legs and set it on the seat between them. At a stop sign he looked over the weeds growing headhigh along the fence line on each side of the road and turned left. Maben rode along without talking, tapping her fingers on her leg to the song in her head. There were more twists and turns and then the road wasn’t much more than a sidewalk and the trees thickened and reached over the road to one another and it seemed as if they had driven into a tunnel. The air was cooler beneath the trees and flowery vines of something purple grew thick in the shade and ran along with the road. The road turned left into a wide and looping curve and then it straightened and went uphill and Russell slowed down as he got closer to the top of the hill. Maben sat up and leaned toward the dashboard. When the truck reached the top Russell stopped. At the bottom of the hill sat Walker’s Bridge.
The truck idled roughly. An afternoon breeze gave a rustle through the trees. She stared. Russell stared. Waited to see if she would say something.
She pushed back the bill of the cap. Her lips parted.
But she didn’t say anything.
He eased on. Rolled down the hill. Stopped in the middle of the bridge. Metal rails had replaced the rotted wooden rails. Initials and hearts and a smiley face and a pentagram had been spray-painted on the rails.
“You need to get rid of that thing,” he said.
She looked out her window and across the creek. Sunlight glared across the wet rocks and ripples. The banks were overgrown with heavy green brush and on down a little ways a tree had fallen across.
“I’m not throwing it out here,” she said. A tremble in her voice.
He got out of the truck and walked around to her side and opened the door. Get on out he said and he turned to look at the water. She took off the cap and set it on the seat. Dropped her head and when she raised it she wiped her eyes. And then she stepped onto the bridge. They stood at the rail, looking down into the water and across into the woods. The hole created by the crashing vehicles had long since been filled in with new growth.
“What made you think to come out here?” she asked.
“Nothing,” he said.
She looked him up and down.
“Am I supposed to know you?”
Russell pointed toward the hilltop and said a few years back or more than a few years back I didn’t have nothing else to do one night so I started riding around. Ended up drinking some. Met this girl in town and we messed around for a little while and that got me to feeling even better. So after I dropped her off at her car I kept on riding and kept on drinking. By myself. Killing a night. That was all. Somehow though I ended up pretty drunk. Ended up coming over that hill. Ended up in a bad wreck right here.
He pushed his hands into his pockets.
“You’re lying,” she said.
“No.”
“There ain’t no way.”
“That’s what I been telling myself since I found you.”
“You didn’t find me. I found you.”
She turned her back to the water and sat down on the rail. “Jesus. I wish I knew what made the world turn like it does. Spins strange sometimes. Spins stranger for some people anyhow.”
He picked up a rock and tossed it into the creek.
“I thought you was in jail,” she said.
“I was. Got home about three days ago. Right on time.”
“How long has it been?”
“Long time. Eleven years.”
“Russell. Is that right?”
“That’s right.”
She stood up from the rail and walked a lap around the truck. When she came back around she said I hated your guts. Used to pray every night that somebody was beating the shit out of you or holding you down. Used to pray for that. Dear God I’d say and then the rest with the bad words and everything. Bet He couldn’t wait every night to hear that one. She looked back across the water and into the woods. Then I got tired of it. Just like that. Woke up one morning and I was too tired to hate you anymore. Too tired to hate what happened. By then I was a long ways from home and running on fumes and you didn’t matter no more.
“Don’t. Don’t start that up. Don’t come out here with that. That was eleven years ago. That shit don’t matter no more. Ain’t you listening?” She bent over and grabbed her hair with both hands. Mumbled and grunted. Raised up and pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes.
“I never said it then so I thought I’d say it now.”
“Why? Don’t change nothing,” she said and she slapped her hands by her sides. “Might make you feel better but it don’t change nothing.”
“Don’t really make me feel better.”
“Then shut the hell up.”
She took another lap. Let it go let it go she repeated as she walked. Rubbed her temples with her index fingers. She then stood in front of him. Took two deep breaths and nodded toward the creek.
“I ain’t throwing that gun in there.”
“You got to throw it somewhere. In about the next fifteen minutes. I’m not riding around with it anymore.”
“Shit. Guess not. You’re guilty as I am right now.”
“Not right. You pointed it at me and told me to drive. I did. Otherwise I ain’t seen it. Your word on mine.”
“That should make for some fine damn discussion seeing how upstanding we both are.”
“Just throw it.”
“And then what? Then you take me home. Wanna make it all right. Wanna pay for it all in one big splash.”
“I already paid for it. You can look at this however you want. The way I see it once that gun is gone that’s it. That’s it between you and what you did and between you and me and whatever I’m doing standing here. Thing is, I’ve ended up believing everything you said and if it’s true then I’m glad you shot that asshole. I don’t even know who he was but I can see him in my head. If you’re lying then I’m the dumbass. But many times I wish I would’ve had a gun to shoot whoever had ahold of me. Been many times God heard what you were praying and He damn sure answered. So you can believe He’s up there.”
“He heard me then. Not no other times.”
“I don’t care about when He heard you and when He didn’t. It didn’t exactly work out for nobody.”
Maben sat down in the road. “No. It didn’t,” she said. “But I don’t feel right throwing the gun here. It don’t work that way. Seems like something is going to creep up. And that creek ain’t deep enough. You knew that.”
He nodded.
“Then why’d you bring me out here?” she asked.
But he didn’t bother to answer and she didn’t ask again.
She leaned back her head and looked toward the pale and empty sky. She had wanted somebody to blame for a long time and now here he was but she couldn’t do it. Seemed like everything had paused. Like they would get in the truck and drive back into something different from what was waiting.
“Answer me something,” he said. “I always wondered why you weren’t in the truck with that boy. Why it was only him.”
With the question she stood. Russell sat on the bridge rail and waited to see if she would answer.
She could see him there in the truck bed. Lying flat like she had asked him to. Lying still like she had asked him to. Young and strong and darkskinned from long summer days. She could see him there waiting for her. Waiting like she had asked him to once they had begun to feel one another under the full moon. Wait, she had said. Lay down. Sure it was what she wanted to do but unsure about the best way to go about it. She had told him to lay down and don’t look. Maben looked toward the grass at the end of the bridge. Where she had stood and taken off her shorts and T-shirt and bra and flip-flops and set them in a pile on the ground. Certain that if she were to go back to him this way she wouldn’t turn back. That she would do what she wanted to do and what he wanted to do. She stared at that spot at the end of the bridge where she had taken off her clothes, remembering how she had looked at herself in the moonlight and assured herself in the moonlight. Naked and young and that beautiful boy lying in the back of the truck waiting for her. She could see herself standing there and she wanted to see herself coming toward the truck. Wanted to see herself climb on top of the boy. Wanted to see the boy’s hands on her hips and across her back and shoulders and down her legs. Wanted to see what they were going to do but it had all ended with her standing naked in that spot, interrupted by the hum of an approaching car and the glow of headlights that had appeared over the hill, headlights that came on fast and exposed themselves in two bright bursts before she had time to call out to Jason. Before she had time to pick up her clothes and the car had never slowed down. What she saw now as she stared at the spot at the edge of the bridge was a young girl terrified and ducking with the roar of the crash and she looked back across to the other side of the bridge where his suntanned body disappeared into the dark.
“Maben?” Russell asked.
“I just wasn’t in it,” she said. Her eyes still in the trees. “That’s all. Don’t remember why.”
He wanted to push her. To get the real answer. But he didn’t. He wanted to make a crack about what the hell was she doing with one of them Tisdale boys anyway. But he didn’t. Recognized in her look that she had said all that she was able to say. She then opened the truck door and sat down and she told him to take her to the lake. The gun will sink in the lake.
He put the truck in gear and they drove on. The fields were showing signs of drying out, being fed with only scattered rain instead of a soaking storm. A kid sat on a four-wheeler at the edge of the road and checked the mailbox though it was Sunday. More graffiti on bridge rails and on the road itself. Once they were back in town he told Maben to stick the gun under the seat and he stopped to use a pay phone at a gas station. He called his father and told him they would be back after dark. Feed Annalee. Mitchell said she wanted to try to fish if that was all right. He hung up the phone and he went in and bought beer and then they spent the afternoon riding and drinking, riding along roads and passing houses that triggered memories for each of them, things they thought they had forgotten. When they got hungry they bought chicken in a drive-through. Russell bought more beer and they rode around until it finally got dark and then they drove on out to the lake.
He had not set out for redemption. Not once thought about it in the years and months and weeks and days that led up to the moment he would be free. But he seemed to have stumbled upon its possibility in the thin cheeks of the woman and the sunburned scalp of the child and he kept saying and kept thinking that he had paid and paid some more and he was free and clear but there was something uncomfortable in his gut now that made that sentiment feel less and less like a conclusion. As they rode he set his mind on what he knew. His mother was gone and Sarah was gone. His dad had a different life and the town had taken on a different life. He was sitting next to someone he had no business sitting next to but here they were. He only thought about the things that he knew. The concrete. What he could put his hands on. And the things that he could put his hands on needed someone to put out those hands. To hold out those hands and pull. He thought again about the preacher and how the conversation had only enhanced his confusion about the here and now and the later on but as they drove on and the day became the night he began to understand that his concern lay with right now. His concern was with the woman and the child and what they had gotten themselves into and his role in it all and what the hell else am I waiting on and it was then that any doubts he harbored about helping her were carried away with the evening wind coming in the rolled-down windows.
Do what you want to do and don’t look back, he told himself.
Like everybody else.