They had traveled through fields of tall cornstalks and the crisscrossed acres of clipped grass that stretched out forever, to the low hills that wrapped them on all sides. Otis looked to be trying to stick to country roads that wound through old farmland with roadside signs warning of God’s word and the evils of drunk driving. Cockeyed fence posts connected strings of sagging barbed-wire.
At one point, shortly after he swilled down an entire can of Coke, Otis steered off to the shoulder and vomited a brown fountain out the open window onto the pavement. “Well damn,” he said, wiping his sleeve over his mouth. “I didn’t see that coming.” The stench filled the car, of cola and the nastiness of everything else that had come up with it.
The cars passing by had their headlights snapped on now. Rodney hadn’t realized until then that dusk had already begun to settle.
“Are we gonna get a motel?” he asked.
“A motel,” Otis said. “Look at you. The little prince.” He knocked the car into gear and meandered back onto the highway, leaning over the wheel and scanning the horizon like he was looking for birds, or flying saucers maybe. This went on for a good five miles or so, until he finally took a left branch off the route onto a downward running access road.
Rodney asked, “What’s here?” but Otis ignored him, still hugging that steering wheel, his eyes rolling from hill to field now.
“Otis,” Rodney said.
“Otis,” he echoed back to Rodney, then suddenly he fell against the driver’s side window. The Bonneville started to drift, the rise of the nearby shoulder looming toward them. Otis’s eyes fluttered and his breathing hissed through a hard-bitten jaw, the white foam of spit pushing through his lips. The casting of fields came up over the dashboard and Rodney grabbed hold of the wheel, bringing the car back into its lane. He managed to push Otis’s foot from the gas, enough of an interruption to allow a rolling stop against the graveled shoulder, inches from the split rail fence.
Rodney slid the gearshift to P and fell back into his own seat, his shoulder pressed firm to the door. Otis looked to be coming around, his breathing more settled, hands moving over the steering wheel as if he was rediscovering it after a long sleep. It was when Otis shifted himself in his seat that Rodney saw the dark bloom that now spread out over his lap.
“There’s water spilled on me,” Otis said, running his hand over his crotch. He looked up at Rodney. “What did you spill on me?”
Rodney told him he hadn’t spilled anything, but he could not bring himself to say anything further.
Otis dabbed at his lap with his fingers and surveyed the view that stretched from one window to the other. The blood on his forehead had begun to crust over now, the tiny cracks breaking up the heaviest of it.
“I called the number,” Rodney said.
“I said I called that number, even though it wasn’t a Lincoln.”
Otis pulled his chin to his chest and searched Rodney’s face like he was hearing all of this for the first time.
“If it was Mr. Kruger I was supposed to watch for, you should have said so.”
Otis dug around in his shirt pocket and took out a pack of cigarettes, sliding one from the pack, bent and beaten. He punched in the dash lighter and thumbed toward the glove compartment.
“Open that up.”
Rodney did as he was told. A small revolver dropped into the cradle of the door, almost toy-like, with a cylinder about the size of a Ping Pong ball. Rodney looked over at Otis, who sat there grinning at him as if he had caught him red-handed in something. Maybe with one of those skin magazines of his.
“Go ahead and pick it up,” he said.
Rodney wanted no part of this thing, but Otis insisted, pushing on Rodney’s elbow. “Pick up the damn gun,” he demanded. “Feel how heavy it is.”
Rodney lifted the pistol like it was a dead animal, holding the grip between his thumb and forefinger. And it was heavy in spite of its small size. Otis said, “Hold it like you mean it,” and then Rodney took it in his palm, running his finger along the trigger guard, turning it over in his hand, from one side to the other.
“It’s a nice piece, huh?” Otis nodded out the window. “Point it, point it out there. Out into the field.”
Rodney kept it where it was.
“Don’t be a puss,” Otis said. “Point it out the window and see what it can do. There’s no one around. But hurry the hell up.”
Rodney leveled the barrel so that it pointed in the direction of the far distance, and he knew that Otis would not leave him alone until he did it. He squeezed down on the trigger, and there came the hard kick before the crack of the gunshot even registered.
“Sonofabitch!” Otis said, and then he gave a kind of animal howl before snatching the revolver from Rodney’s hand and stuffing it under his seat. And as if nothing had happened at all, as if there hadn’t just been a bullet fired from this car, he slid the Bonneville into gear and pulled out onto the highway, the weight of acceleration whipping Rodney into his seat back.
They drove in silence for a good while, Otis staring straight forward, wild-eyed, chewing on his lip, only once or twice glancing in Rodney’s direction. Finally, he reached over and smacked Rodney’s arm.
“Do you know what an accessory is?” he asked.
“You mean like a crime?” Rodney had seen this in stories. People who helped roll the body up inside the big carpet or dig the hole in the woods, or wipe up all the blood from the bathroom floor.
“Yeah. Like in a crime.”
Rodney said yes, that he knew what an accessory was.
“Good,” Otis said. “Then I don’t need to say anything more.”
And he didn’t, not for a long time. When the sun dropped completely behind the far ridge and the roadway began to bleed indistinctly into the shoulders, Rodney suggested headlights, and Otis snapped them on without a word. There was a strange warmth that came from the glow of the dashboard lights, and Rodney felt a certain security in being able to see that there was plenty of gas, that the engine temperature was in the middle. That they were not going a great deal faster than they were supposed to.
Otis turned into a forest service road, bringing them up above the highway into the curtain of trees. The headlamp beams slid over pine trunks like piano keys, and Rodney thought there were moments when he saw eyes in there looking back at him, eyes of men and monsters.
In time they came to a turnout and Otis pulled into it, laying on the brakes and killing the engine.
“Here’s your motel,” he said. “You can have the back seat all to yourself and I’ll stretch out up here.”
Rodney opened the door. The air outside was cool but not cold, and there was much in that car to make him think he would not be getting anything close to a good night’s sleep.
“Do you have a blanket or anything?” he asked.
Otis laughed at him. “A blanket,” he said. “You might turn up a hand towel back there if you’re lucky.” He gave Rodney a shove against his leg. “You and me, we’re fugitives now, in case you ain’t figured it out yet. No blanket is the least of our troubles.”
Rodney climbed into the back and pushed the candy wrappers and empty soda cans onto the floor and laid out over the bench seat. An excavated flannel shirt, draped over his torso, did a lousy job of anything other than stinking like Otis. In the front, Otis soon began to rattle the interior with his snoring, breaks of snorts and whistles, and the occasional dead space after the heavy rush of exhale. In those moments Rodney did not think Otis would take another breath in his life, just a stone silence, outside of Rodney’s own heart knocking in his head. And then there would come the sudden gasp, and Otis would suck in a roomful of air, as if he’d just surfaced from a deep-sea dive.
It wasn’t long before the windows fogged over thick like cotton. Rodney reached up and rolled down the window, and the space was filled with the gift of fresh air that had never touched Otis. He leaned out and took in the scent of juniper and sage and, maybe from far off in the distance, the smallest hint of wood smoke.
The car settled and rocked slightly as he straddled the open window and lowered himself gently to the ground. Outside it was nearly full dark, but from where he stood he could make out a hint of openness, of the roadway in front of him, and he walked slowly from the car up the slope of the drive, the packed dirt and ruts guiding him forward. Overhead, the night sky was a view up into the underside of a colossal umbrella, a million pinholes poking through. A single point of light drifted from star to star in a straight line, and Rodney knew it was a satellite up there. But for a brief moment he imagined it might be a spaceship, an alien craft way up there looking down upon them out there in the middle of nowhere.
“What in the hell are you doing?”
Rodney looked back at the car, at the dull stripe of yellow, the illuminated interior of the Bonneville. The stick silhouette of Otis ambled up the roadway toward him, arms drifting at his sides in broad circles.
“I had to go pee,” Rodney lied.
“All the way up here?” Otis came within spitting distance and stopped. He put his hand over his brows as if in salute, then looked back in the direction of the car. A little unsure, Rodney thought. As if perhaps he ought to have felt for that gun before he got out of his car.
“Did you look up?” Otis said, tipping his head back almost to his shoulders. “Look at how goddamned clear that sky is. There must be a million stars up there.” He stood up tall and straight, lifting on his toes like he was trying to reach for them. “I wonder if maybe there ain’t some Jack up there on one of those things looking right back down at us. Maybe a couple of Martian fugitives just like you and me, kid. Standing on a Martian road looking up at the Martian sky. You ever think that?”
“I guess.” Of course Rodney had wondered this.
Otis went on. “I think sometimes a fella could live a thousand years and still never do a single thing worth a damn, something that would make a real difference, anyway. Not in a universe of a million stars. Think about it. One minute we’re here taking in air, the next we’re nothing but worm food, rotting under a pile of dirt. Gone and forgotten.”
“Anyone can make a difference,” Rodney said. “It doesn’t take a thousand years.”
“Says you.” Otis moved a little closer to Rodney, shuffling a couple little steps and leaning into him, like he was preparing a secret. “I don’t wanna talk about what happened back there,” he said, almost a whisper.
“You mean with Mr. Kruger.”
Otis shook his head and then he produced a lone cigarette from his shirt pocket and fired up the tip, his face lit in an orange hiccup. For an instant, almost like a snapshot come and gone, it looked as though he had been crying.
“I said I don’t want to talk about it,” Otis said, his voice like split wood.
“I didn’t say—”
“Don’t push me, goddamn it!” He reached down and took up a rock then, and hurled it through the air, the impact against the tree trunk like a gunshot in the night.
Rodney jumped back and Otis took a swing at him, grazing his sleeve with his open hand. “Get back to the car,” he ordered, then he turned and stumbled his way down to the Bonneville, the windowlight flickering now from the inside, as if lit by candle.