They came up to the house and right away, Lester hollered for Rodney to come up onto the porch, wherever he was. The porch lamp breathed yellow and brought up the low, draping pine branches against the railings. Lester moved closer to its halo, his face oil-slick and his eyes dancing like he was following hummingbirds.
“Where the hell is that kid?”
“Lester,” Nadine said.
He stared back at her, his mouth slack and his brow collapsed in layers. “What Nadine?” he said, rolling his hand at her impatiently, aggravated. “I don’t have time to try and be a goddamned mind reader.”
She didn’t care now, not anymore. “What the hell was that all about?” she said. “Throwing that man down the hole. We could have taken his body into town. We didn’t have anything to do with what happened to him.”
Lester let a puff of air out through his teeth. “I don’t want a single thread connecting me to that sonofabitch,” he said. “I want this place wiped clean of him and the kid.” And with that, he hollered for Rodney again.
“Oh come on,” Nadine said. “He’s harmless.” She felt her voice losing its steadiness.
He walked up onto the porch and leaned out over the railing. “Where’d that little fucker run off to?”
She stared out into the direction of the outhouse, to the van and the trees beyond, and when there was nothing to see she melted into the warm embrace of relief. “I’m sure he’s just scared out of his mind. He’s a kid, for Christ’s sake.”
“You’re too soft, Nadine,” he said. “That kid’s a hell of a lot tougher than you give him credit for. Look at who he showed up with. I wouldn’t put it past him to have taken out poor old Otis all by himself.”
Nadine laughed at that, a laugh that nearly sent Lester off the ledge.
“Keep on with that,” he snapped. “See how funny you think it is doing the long walk in handcuffs and leg irons.” With no response from her, he grunted and stomped away into the dark, down the path toward Otis’s Bonneville. She watched as the dome light flickered on and he crawled inside.
“Lester!” she called out. “Lester, what are you doing?”
He moved from the back seat to the front, flipping the visors, popping open the glove compartment. Then he reached up behind him and fiddled with the ceiling, and the interior space fell into darkness.
“Lester!” she shouted again.
“Go to the garage and get my toolbox,” he yelled.
She didn’t like the sound of his voice. It was too leveled, too calm. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Get my tools,” he repeated. “Damn thing’s busted.”
Reluctantly, she turned and went into the house, to the mudroom in the back where she knew his toolbox sat against the wall. If there was something to be fixed, she told herself, it would take time, and attention. She could stall if she needed, give Rodney time to do whatever it was he was doing to get the hell away from there.
She had just come from the mudroom when a bank of headlights swept over the windows.
“Oh no,” she said, dropping the metal box in its place and running out onto the porch, just in time to see the taillights of Otis’s Bonneville flickering down the drive toward the highway.