Chapter 12

She was still trying to get her mind around all that TJ had told her when a tow truck pulled off the highway in front of her a little ways. It began to back up, its reverse bell clanging loudly like a wounded goose—awnk, awnk, awnk. The truck came to rest a few feet in front of her car. A tall, bearded man wearing a baseball cap jumped down from the cab and walked up to her window. He was carrying a flashlight in one hand, a clipboard in the other.

“What’s the problem, lady?” he asked, shining the light in her face.

“My problem is I’ve been waiting here for two hours,” she replied icily.

“I tried calling.”

“Really?”

“Ah huh. It’s been real busy.”

Elizabeth wasn’t in a forgiving mood. She was pissed at the stupid deer, at herself for having opened a can of worms by calling TJ, at having to wait on the side of the highway all this time.

“What’s the point of having Triple A if you people are just going to show up whenever it suits you? And get that damn light out of my face.”

He averted the light. “Like I said, ma’am, I’ve been crazy busy tonight.”

“And I’ve been waiting here for two hours. All alone. In the dark. So don’t give me any crap about how busy you’ve been.”

“Lady,” he said, holding up two hands in surrender, “you just need to take a step back and calm yourself down.”

His telling her to calm down hit a raw nerve.

“Don’t you tell me to calm down,” she cried, pointing a finger at him.

“Suit yourself. Can I see your Triple A membership card, ma’am?” he said, his tone so polite she thought he was making fun of her.

“Two hours and I don’t get so much as an ‘I’m sorry’?”

He shone the flashlight on his clipboard. “Says here I got the call at seventeen-forty hours, and it’s just shy of nineteen hundred now,” he said with a smile that made her want to slap him. “According to what Mrs. Pickens taught me in math, that’s only an hour and twenty minutes.”

“Are you calling me a liar?”

“I’m just giving you the facts, ma’am.”

“I want your supervisor’s name.”

He grinned again and pushed his cap back on his head. “Why that’d be me, ma’am. I’m an independent contractor.”

“This is bullshit. Do you hear me—bullshit!”

“Whoa, lady,” the man said, staring up the highway behind her. “Now we can do this one of two ways. You can calm down and I can try to help you. Or I can get back in my truck and leave your sorry ass here to wait some more. Makes no difference to me.”

Elizabeth felt the veins in her neck throb with anger. She wanted to scream, to howl with rage. She wanted to punch her fist through the already-broken windshield. But she got the sense this guy meant business. Finally, she swallowed her pride, took her AAA card out of her wallet and handed it to him without bothering to look at him.

“Now whyn’t you tell me what happened?” he said.

“I told them already,” she said.

“How about you tell me?”

“I hit a deer.”

“Can you start the car?”

“I don’t know.”

“All right, wait for me to give you the okay.” He went around to the front of her car, shone the light at the damage. She heard him let out with a high-pitched whistle.

“Go ahead and crank ’er over.”

She turned the ignition and the engine started right up. The man disappeared beneath the front of her car. “Okay,” he shouted above the engine noise, “turn the wheel back and forth. Real slow.” As she did so, a terrible grinding noise came from underneath the car, like a spoon caught in a garbage disposal, and the steering wheel actually shook in her hands. After a few minutes, he came back around to the driver’s side and leaned into the window.

“You can go ahead and turn the engine off.”

Up close she saw that he appeared to be in his forties. He didn’t have an actual beard but a scraggly goatee combined with the fact that he hadn’t shaved for a couple of days. His eyes, of some dusky hue she couldn’t make out in the dark, looked glassy, out of focus, heavy lidded. Over the breast pocket of his jacket a name was stitched in white thread: Stu, she read from the lights of the on-coming traffic.

“So what’s the verdict?”

“Your front end’s all busted to hell. Got yourself a broken tie-rod at the very least.”

“Is it drivable?”

“Not unless you want to kill yourself.”

“Can you fix it then?” she asked.

“There’s not much I can’t fix, lady. By the way, you got yourself a bloody nose,” he said touching his own nose.

“Yeah, I know.”

He glanced into the car and frowned.

“For some reason your air bag didn’t deploy. Anyways, I’ll have to tow it back to my garage.”

“How far is that?”

“About thirty miles.”

She didn’t like the thought of getting stuck at some hick-town service station where it would take forever to fix. She remembered seeing the sign for Memphis earlier.

“Could you tow it to Memphis?”

He snorted at the suggestion. “Memphis is a good two hours. If you want, I could tow it over to Brevard. Save you a trip.”

“Save me a trip? What are you talking about?”

“I mean if you got some place over there you’d prefer to work on your car.”

She had no idea what he was talking about. “I suppose you should just tow it back to your place and we’ll go from there.”

“There’s not much there for you.”

“I won’t be staying.”

“It’s up to you.”

He returned to his truck and backed up, then jumped out and began to hook her car up. He walked back to her window.

“It’s against the law to sit in a car when it’s being towed. You’ll need to get in the truck with me.”

“Of course,” she said, getting out of the car. “What about the deer?”

“Deer?”

“I just thought we should make sure—” she said, turning to look back up the highway. But the animal was nowhere to be seen. “It was right there. Dead.”

“Probably just stunned it,” the man said. “That happens. I hit one with the wrecker and the thing just bounced off and kept on going. Deer ain’t the brightest of God’s creatures.”

Elizabeth reached back in the car and grabbed her pocketbook and walked up to the tow truck. From the lights over the wrecker she saw “Tidrow’s Garage” painted along the door. She climbed into the passenger side. The cab had a certain vaguely familiar aroma to it, a smell which reminded her of one she’d sometimes detect in Luke’s room. Then it dawned on her what it was: pot. Great, she thought. She was being chauffeured around by some stoned hillbilly. She wondered if she should call AAA back and just tell them to send somebody else. But how much longer would that take? Instead, she just decided to take her chances with this guy. After a while, he climbed into the truck and off they went.

They drove in silence for a while. She glanced over at him once. He had a gold hoop in his right ear and a prominent Adam’s apple. She decided to try being friendly. “By the way, Stu, I’m Elizabeth.”

He looked over at her and gave her a blank expression.

“Gabe,” he said.

“What?”

“Name’s Gabe.”

“But your jacket—”

“Belonged to a guy used to work for me.”

“Well, pleased to meet you, Gabe,” she said.

“You’re bleeding again. Here,” he said, offering her a rag he pulled out from his back pocket. “Put this on your nose and squeeze hard. And tilt your head back.”

The rag stank of oil and antifreeze, but she squeezed her nose with it and tilted her head back.

They rode the rest of the way in silence. After half an hour, the man pulled off the highway. He drove though a small town that had a Wendy’s and a Pizza Hut and a convenience store, as well as a half dozen other stores that were closed for the night. There was a bar named Sully’s that was still open and beside it a dilapidated old mansion called the Fairmont Inn. They continued beyond the town center for a couple miles, out into a mountainous, heavily wooded countryside before pulling into a service station. The man backed her car along the side of the garage, edging it into a chain-link-fenced yard where several other smashed autos rested. A spotlight illuminated the area. He got out, lowered the car, began unhitching the chains, while Elizabeth grabbed her pocketbook and climbed down. From somewhere behind the garage, she heard a high-pitched yelping.

“Now what?” she asked the man when he’d finished unhitching the car.

“I can take a look at it first thing in the morning,” he replied.

“No, I mean what do we do now.”

“We?”

“What am I supposed to do?”

He offered her another one of his blank expressions, which seemed to be his default expression. “Isn’t somebody going to drive over to pick you up?” he asked.

“Drive over from where?”

“Brevard.”

“What’s Brevard?”

“Aren’t you from there?”

“No. I’m from Connecticut. Didn’t you notice my license plates?”

“The dispatcher told me you were from Brevard.”

He headed back over to his tow truck and reached in and picked up his clipboard. “Says right here,” he explained, thumping his forefinger on the clipboard, “you were from Brevard. Two towns west of here. I assumed you were going to call and have somebody come and pick you up.”

“You’ve obviously mistaken me for somebody else.”

“I didn’t make any mistake. I was told there was a vehicle on I-Forty just past exit one-oh-seven heading west. That’s where you were, lady.”

“Well, obviously somebody’s made a mistake,” Elizabeth said, trying to stand her ground. “So how do you plan to rectify it?”

“Rectify it?” he repeated.

“That means—”

“I know what it means, lady,” he snapped. “What would you like me to do?”

“Do you have a loaner car?”

He smirked at that. “No, lady, I don’t have any loaners.”

“Well, is there a motel in town? Someplace I can stay until I can straighten this out tomorrow.”

“There’s the Fairmont. But you wouldn’t want to stay there.”

“Why not?”

“On account of it’s a flop house for drunks and dopers.”

“Okay. I’ll make this as simple as I can for you. Where’s the nearest motel that isn’t a flop house?”

“Over in Crossville they got a Super Eight.”

“How far is that?”

He shrugged. “Maybe an hour.”

“An hour! There’s nothing closer?”

He wagged his head in a way that suggested he took delight in her situation.

“Could you take me there?”

“Not tonight, I can’t. I’ve been on the road since two yesterday morning and I haven’t even eaten yet.”

“Far be it from me to spoil your dinner,” she said. “So is there a taxi in town?”

He laughed. “Where do you think you are, lady? New York?”

“First of all, enough with the ‘lady’ business. I told you my name’s Elizabeth. And no, I wouldn’t mistake this shithole for New York,” she sniped. She felt almost as if she’d parachuted into one of those dopey comedies where the city slicker finds herself stranded out in the boonies and at the mercy of yokels who got their kicks toying with them. “So what’s Plan B?”

“I don’t have a Plan B. Like I said, I thought somebody was picking you up.”

“What would you suggest I do?”

He removed his hat and scratched his head furiously. His hair was matted to his skull and thinning in front.

“I got an extra bed,” he said, indicating with a nod the double-wide trailer just to the right of the garage. She had a fleeting image of the corpses of women rotting in the crawl space beneath the trailer and untold horrors waiting for her if she set foot inside.

“I wouldn’t want to impose on you like that.”

“No imposition,” he replied.

“How about if I made it worth your while to drive me over to Crossburg?”

He stared at her with a look that made her worry he thought she was offering something other than money.

“What I mean is, I’d pay you to drive me over to Crossburg,” she quickly added.

“Crossville,” he corrected.

“Whatever. How does a hundred dollars sound?”

“Sounds good. But it’ll have to be tomorrow.”

“Two hundred then?”

“Listen, la— Sorry, Elizabeth,” he said, sarcastically pronouncing her name. “I don’t care how much you paid me. I’m dead on my feet and the last thing I want to do is drive an hour over and another back. I have a spare room. You’re welcome to it. There’s a lock on the door, if that’s what you got a hair up your ass about.”

“I don’t have a hair up my ass,” she retorted. “I just don’t want to put you out.”

“I told you, you’re not putting me out. It’s up to you though,” he said with another one of his irritating shrugs. Then he turned and started walking toward his trailer.

“Wait. Where are you going?”

“To make supper,” he replied over his shoulder. “Have a drink. Then hit the hay.”

He kept walking toward the trailer. Finally she realized he was actually going to leave her standing there in the dark of the parking lot.

“All right, hold your horses,” she called after him. “Let me get my things first.”

She found the trailer surprisingly neat and clean, with a woman’s fastidiousness and attention to detail. There were plastic place mats on the tiny kitchen table, as well as matching hen and rooster salt and pepper shakers. The eat-in kitchen led onto a slightly larger living room with a couch and a couple of chairs, a coffee table, a large-screen HDTV. On the coffee table lay several books, neatly stacked. Everything was picked up, nothing out of place. And there wasn’t the least scent of rotting bodies or other depravities.

“Make yourself to home,” he said, indicating the couch. “The head’s down the hall if you need to use it.”

He hung his coat in a small closet to the left of the front door, then went over to the sink and washed his hands. He got out some pans and turned on the gas stove. From the fridge he took out a brown, deli-wrapped package.

“I’m making hot dogs,” he called to her. “You want some?”

Only then did she realize she hadn’t eaten. “Sure. If it’s not too much trouble.”

“No trouble at all.”

She watched as he threw several hot dogs into a pan. He also got out a Tupperware bowl filled with something which he placed to his nose and sniffed before dumping it into the pan alongside the hot dogs. Then he opened the freezer and took out a tray of ice cubes. He removed a dish towel from one of the drawers, cracked the tray of ice into it, and wrapped the cloth around the ice. He headed down the hall and came back in a second, picked up the cloth and brought it over to her.

“Here. Use this for your nose,” he said, handing her the cloth-covered ice.

“I’m all right.”

“You’ll have a couple of shiners tomorrow if you don’t. You probably will in any case. But this will keep the swelling down. And here’s a Band-Aid you can put on later. And a couple of Tylenol for the pain.”

“Thank you,” she offered, almost grudgingly. She took the ice and applied it to her nose, which ached for a while before going numb as the ice started to take effect.

“What would you like to drink?” he asked. “I got some Coke or iced tea. Or do you want a drink-drink?”

“Coke is fine.”

He put some of the ice in a glass, poured some soda in, then brought it over to her.

“Thanks,” she said, tossing the Tylenol into her mouth and washing it down with the Coke. “You live here all alone?”

He looked at her and smiled.

“Used to have a cat but I think he got eaten,” he offered.

“Eaten?”

“We got coyotes around here.”

He headed back over to the kitchen and from a cupboard above the sink removed a fifth of Jack Daniels. He poured himself a sizable drink, then topped it off with Coke. He stirred the drink with his index finger, then sucked on the finger. With one hand he tended to the food, while with the other he sipped his drink. Watching him, Elizabeth thought how her strange life had gotten qualitatively stranger in the past few hours. Here she was stranded in the trailer of some guy named Stu or Gabe, in some town in Tennessee she was equally ignorant of, and having just learned that her son might have been gay, or at the very least had ceased being “interested” in women, whatever the hell that meant. The once-familiar lineaments of her life were now completely alien, unrecognizable to her. She’d recently read about a woman in France who’d had a complete face transplant. This is what it must have felt like, Elizabeth thought, for that woman to look in a mirror for the first time. Who the hell is that?

“I don’t want you to think I don’t appreciate this,” she called over to him.

“Oh, I can tell you’re just brimming with appreciation.”

“No, I am. Really. I guess I must have sounded a little bitchy earlier.”

“A little?”

“All right, more than a little. It’s just that I was frustrated with hitting that deer. And to tell you the truth, I’d just gotten some upsetting news.”

She immediately regretted having shared this. Gabe looked over his shoulder at her. She thought he was going to ask her about the upsetting news and she’d decided she wasn’t going to get into any of that, that she’d say it was something she didn’t want to talk about. She was a little surprised, though, that he just nodded and turned back to the stove without asking a thing.

“I’m used to highway people,” he said, over the noise of the sizzling hot dogs.

“Highway people?”

“They’re always in such a big rush to get from one place to another and when they break down they think you’re supposed to drop everything and come running.”

“Isn’t that your job, to help them?”

“Yeah, to help them. But I’m not anybody’s lackey.”

The guy obviously had an attitude problem, Elizabeth felt. She decided not to press the issue. Instead she glanced at the books on the coffee table. There were several glossy ones, including one called Scenes from the South, another that was a pictorial history of Tennessee Civil War battlefields. What caught her eye, though, was on the far wall, to the left of the big TV. Three framed charcoal sketches, each about sixteen inches across. Two were of young girls, the older one on the left perhaps fourteen and stunning, the younger seven or eight. The third was of a pretty woman in her thirties, who resembled the girls enough so that Elizabeth assumed it was their mother. The picture had the woman sitting on porch steps, in shorts and a tank-top, knees bent, arms wrapped around her legs, while she stared off into the distance. The woman had long blonde hair.

“Who drew the pictures?” Elizabeth called over to him.

He turned, followed her gaze. “Oh, those,” he said, as if he had forgotten about them. “Me.”

“They’re very good.”

“They’re strikingly competent,” he replied, and went back to fixing dinner.

“Who are they?”

“My family.”

“Your wife is lovely,” Elizabeth said.

“Ex-wife.”

“And those are your daughters?”

“Ah huh. The younger one’s Jo. She lives over in Nashville with Abby and the proctologist,” he said.

“Your older daughter’s beautiful. What’s her name?”

“Kelly.”

“Your ex is married to a proctologist?”

He looked over his shoulder at Elizabeth. “He’s not really a proctologist. I call him that on account of him being a royal pain in the ass,” he offered straight-faced.

Trying to make conversation, Elizabeth said, “Do you get to see your daughters much?”

“What, are we all buddy-buddy now?”

“I apologized about before. But if you’d rather not talk . . .”

“I get Jo for the summer and one weekend a month. But she’s a teenager. Poor kid’s bored out of her mind over here. And you?”

“And me what?”

“You got kids?”

She wanted to keep things simple. She didn’t want him nosing around in her business or having to explain any of her plans.

“A son,” she replied.

“How old is he?”

“Twenty-two,” she said without missing a beat.

“And what do you do for a living, Elizabeth?”

“I’m a lawyer.”

He grinned at that.

“What?”

“Somehow that doesn’t come as a surprise. How many hot dogs you want?”

She told him one was fine. When dinner was ready, he had her sit at the small kitchen table. He served the hot dogs without buns, along with pork and beans and potato salad, Doritos and apple sauce. He refilled her glass with Coke, topped his off with Jack Daniels, then sat down. The table was so small their knees bumped.

“Sorry,” he said. “I’m not used to other people’s knees. And you’re pretty tall. I’m guessing five-ten?”

“Five eleven and three-quarters.”

As he took a sip of his drink, Elizabeth noticed his wedding ring.

“Why don’t you just round it off to six and be done with it.”

“I always felt too big. That quarter of an inch seemed somehow important when I was in high school. My mother used to call me Big Bird.”

He stared at her, nodded without commenting, then dug in, wolfing the food down, using the side of his fork to cut his hot dogs and washing it down with big gulps from his Jack and Coke. Elizabeth watched him unawares for a moment. He was obviously used to eating alone. He kept his hat on, a thing frayed and stained with sweat rings, the brim blackened from greasy fingerprints. His cheeks were pitted by old acne scars, and his eyes, a not-unattractive rust-brown color, were heavy and somnolent, as if he hadn’t gotten enough sleep in a long while. His mouth was full and framed by deep fissures like parentheses. He reminded her a little of a young Jeff Bridges.

“How’s the nose?” he asked.

“Hurts.”

He stared at it, then reached out and put his thumb and forefinger on either side of her nose and tried to wiggle it.

“Ouch,” she cried.

“I don’t think it’s broken.”

“Are you a doctor?”

“I broke mine twice and you could feel the bones moving around in there. And I doubt you’ll need stitches.”

She watched him take a drink of his Jack and Coke and it made her long for a scotch over ice.

He must have noticed her watching him. “You sure you don’t want a drink?” he asked. “It might loosen you up.”

“Why? Do I look like I need loosening up?”

“So where y’all headed, Elizabeth?”

“New Mexico.”

“What for?”

“Business,” was all she said.

“Don’t business people usually fly?”

“It was a last minute sort of thing.”

“And your husband?”

She saw him staring at her wedding ring.

“What about him?”

“He all right with his wife driving out to New Mexico in a car that old?”

“Always been dependable before.”

“Car or husband?” he said with a grin. He had this odd habit of staring right at you, without blinking or looking away, so that it was almost like a challenge to see who would blink first. Elizabeth let her gaze drop to her plate.

The conversation seemed to lag after this, and they ate the rest of their meal in silence.

“You want some more?” he asked when they were finished.

“No, I’m good. Thanks.”

He got up and served himself another helping.

She took out her cell phone and said, “I probably ought to check in with my husband. Let him know where I am,” she explained. “By the way, where am I?”

“Earl’s Creek.”

She excused herself, and went outside to call her husband. While the phone rang, she realized that whatever animal it was before had now fallen silent.

“Zack, it’s me,” she said when her husband came on. “Listen, I had an little accident.”

“My God!” he cried. “Are you all right?”

“Yes, I’m fine. I hit a deer. But the car is messed up. It had to be towed.”

“Jesus, Elizabeth. Are you sure you’re all right?”

“I’m fine, really.”

“I was worried something like this could happen. And you all alone. Maybe I should fly down.”

“No, don’t do that. I’m all right. They’re going to fix the car tomorrow and I’ll be on my way.”

“Where are you?”

She knew that if she told him she was staying at a complete stranger’s house he’d be worried, so she lied and said she was staying at a Holiday Inn. She realized that in the past few years she’d taken to lying to Zack as a matter of course, that lying—or at least avoiding the truth—had become the norm. At one time in their marriage she had always told the truth. Zack had been her closest confidant, her best friend. What had happened, she wondered. How had they drifted so far apart? They talked for a while, he about his day, her about her travels. She thought about telling him about her conversation with TJ but she didn’t have the energy to get into that now.

After a while, she said, “I should go.”

“I miss you.”

“I miss you, too,” she replied. Oddly, she felt closer to Zack now than she had in a long time. Maybe it was the distance, or the fact that she felt so isolated out here. But in any case, she longed to be held by him, to make love to him, and then to fall asleep in his arms. She couldn’t recall the last time they had fallen asleep together.

“Be safe. I don’t know what I’d do if I something were to happen to you, too.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll be home soon.”

Inside she found Gabe doing the dishes.

“Let me give you a hand,” she offered.

“You don’t have to.”

“No, it’s the least I could do.”

He washed, while she dried.

“Did you always draw?” she asked.

“Since I was a little kid. I wasn’t much at sports so I drew and played guitar.”

“So how does an artist end up in a place called Earl’s Creek, Tennessee, running a garage?”

“I wouldn’t exactly call myself an artist. I just dabble. Fool around.”

“You seem pretty talented to me.”

“I used to think I was. I was even planning on going to art school.”

“What happened?”

“A wife and two kids happened. My old man gave me some good advice. He said, ‘Gabe, you want to eat, you’d better get your ass out there and get a job.’”

He looked over at her and smiled, one slightly buck tooth catching on his lower lip so that it gave to his face the mischievous look of the kid in school who was always cutting up. The class clown.

“How long have you been divorced?”

“Four years.”

“That’s a long time to still be wearing your wedding ring,” she said.

He stared at it for a moment. Then he finished the rest of his drink with a single gulp and dropped the glass into the soapy water. Instead of answering he said, “So what’s this business out in New Mexico?”

“Just some stuff I have to take care of.”

“Some stuff?” he said, eying her. “What are you, smuggling dope?”

“Some loose ends I got to see to.”

He held her gaze for a moment, then said, “You’re probably tired.”

He led her down the hall to a small room on the right. From a closet he got her an extra blanket and a towel.

“In case you get cold. Like I said, bathroom’s just down on your right. You need anything, give a yell. I’m a light sleeper.” He started to turn away, then said, “Oh, like I said, there’s a lock on the door. You won’t hurt my feelings if you use it.”

“That won’t be necessary,” she said.

The first thing she did once in the room was lock the door as quietly as she could. A tiny window looked out onto a black postage stamp of night. She got into bed fully clothed, including her running shoes just in case she had to make a fast getaway, and she lay there for a moment allowing her body a chance to acclimate. Yet she was no longer as worried about this Gabe as she’d first been. He didn’t seem so bad, just quirky, with a chip on his shoulder. Besides, she’d been nasty with him, so what could she expect? She thought again of her conversation with TJ. She shouldn’t have called her. She had no right to do that to the poor girl, to say the things she had. More importantly, she didn’t know what she was going to do with what she’d told her about Luke.

* * *

Something woke her in the middle of the night. She lay in the stuffy darkness of the tiny room and tried to get her bearings. It was music, the sound coming from just on the other side of the wall. A voice singing a capella. After a while she recognized the song as Harry Chapin’s “Cat’s in the Cradle.”