Absolute Rage (40 page)

“Yep. There's a roadhouse on Route 11 just outside of Selden. They got a pool table and a jukebox with all country favorites. A couple of pinball machines, too.”

“You can see my eyes are sparkling, I guess. Did you also hope to get me drunk, so as to make me more pliable?”

“Be honest? Yeah, it had crossed my mind. There's a motel right behind the roadhouse.” He hugged her more closely. “Come on. We're young. It's summer. Look at these people.” She looked. They seemed to fall into two general classes: parental couples jiggling with fat, mostly lard-pale except for the blue-collar sunburns on the men—face, neck, and lower arms—and rail-thin teens in gaggles and couples, poking and pawing one another. He meant the adults.

“Soon we'll be fat and ugly, too, with mortgages and bratty kids. You want to look back and think you never once did anything just because you had the urge? Seize the day, Lucy!”

To his surprise, she giggled. “Seize the
day?
My God, you're such a pagan! You should be wearing a helmet with horns on it and a greasy beard. Look, let me explain something. If you believe that you're basically an animal, and you're only going to live a certain little bit of time, and for most of it you're going to be in decline, then ‘seize the day' is the right take on life. On the other hand, if you believe that your real destiny is entirely outside of time, and that you were made to be with God forever, then the right take is ‘sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.' In other words, forget the crap from the past and what you're plotting for the future, such as, in your case, getting into my pants. Live for eternity, which means, among other things, behaving in a certain way.”

“What I can't believe is we're having this conversation. You are honestly, really, not going to have
any
sex at all until you're married?”

“Uh-huh.” She gave him another of those light-filled grins. In the bright sun her tan eyes seemed disks of flashing gold. “At which point, I expect to be completely insatiable. They'll have to pry me off it with a sharp tool. And who can tell, you may be the lucky man.”

At these words he felt a thrill go through him, lust mixed with terror.

She added, “But meanwhile I would love a beer in your low dive.”

“You would?”

“Uh-huh. I trust you, and also I have a big, ferocious dog with me. And I can outrun you.”

With that, she spun around and took off, racing along the edge of the lake, with the black dog at her heels. Dan stood there for a moment, slightly stunned, watching her run, those long legs graceful as birds' wings. She was like something out of a fairy tale, the kind of girl who might, in some shady wood, turn into a deer or summon a unicorn to her lap. Heart thumping, he began to run after her.

*  *  *

The roadhouse was a low, windowless, concrete structure, painted tan, plopped like a discarded brick on a gravel lot. Lucy put Magog under the Land Cruiser with a pan of water and a handful of dog biscuits and followed Dan through the olde-saloon-style swinging doors. Inside it was surprisingly cool, smelling dankly of old beer, the air stirred by ceiling fans, the light dim and colored by several beer signs over the bar and a large TV with the volume off showing a stock-car race. Pinball noises and the click of pool balls came from an adjoining room. In the saloon proper half a dozen country boys and a fat woman in a halter top were engaged in serious drinking. They looked up briefly when Dan and Lucy entered and then went back to their drinks. Dan sat Lucy at one of the eight tables and brought a pair of Coors longnecks from the tired-looking blond woman at the bar.

“So,” he said after a long swallow, “do you feel your virtue giving way yet?”

“It's pretty depraved. We don't have anything this bad in New York.”

“Just wait. You might get to hear some uncouth language in a while. Someone might even hurl a sexual innuendo.”

“Well, let's hope it doesn't happen. I don't want to have to change my underpants
again.”

“Yes, and you're always making that kind of dirty remark. I mean, if you're going to be a prude, you ought to act like one. How come you're not grim-faced and shockable like the born-againers at McCullensburg High?”

“I'm sorry if I inflame your lusts even more than they are by my preternatural physical beauty . . .”

“And you keep knocking the way you—”

He stopped abruptly. Something had gone wrong with his face, the expression frozen, the color draining from it so that his lips looked almost blue. He was sitting facing the door. She had her back to it, and he was staring past her shoulder. She turned to look and saw three men walking in, just past the swinging doors.

“Oh, shit!” said Dan under his breath.

The three men went to the bar and loudly demanded beer. They were obviously already drunk: two big ones—one rawboned with an ugly weasel-sneering face, the other huge, neckless, gut hanging over the broad belt of his jeans—and one smaller with a pretty-boy face bleared by drink, with sleepy, sly eyes. Some altercation at the bar. The woman didn't want to serve them. The pretty boy vaulted the bar and extracted a double handful of beers from the cooler. They leaned against the bar and drank, glowering at the occupants. The other drinkers had fallen silent.

The no-neck said, “Hey, Bo. Go put some music on. This place is fuckin' dead.”

Bo went to the jukebox. It started to play Merle Haggard's “Okie from Muskogee.”

Lucy knew who the men were without being told. She had more acquaintance with killers than most girls her age, and she understood what she was looking at. Next to her, Dan sat frozen, staring at them.

They must have felt the stare, or else their eyes had now adjusted to the gloom of the barroom, for the ugly one said, “Hey, Wayne, ain't that Dan Heeney sittin' there?”

The big one stared and showed brownish teeth, a gaptoothed grin. “Yeah, Earl, I believe it is. How're you doin', Heeney? I hear your brother's in trouble. Hey, boys, let's go cheer old Dan up.”

They clumped over to the table and hovered. Wayne said, “Now, Heeney, I want to know why Emmett'd do a mean thing like that? I mean, killin' his folks and his pore little sister. You all must've had a piss poor upbringin', what d'you think, boys?”

Earl said, “Yeah, and his brother's sittin' in the jail, and he's out drinkin' with some damn ugly girl. Heeney, you must be getting some kinda fierce pussy, to go out with a girl that plain.”

Wayne said, “Yeah, now that you mention it, Earl, I don't believe I ever have seen a girl that flat-chested. You need to put them things back in the oven for a while, honey, get a little more rise outen 'em.”

Then, to everyone's surprise, Lucy said, in a loud, clear voice, audible throughout the bar, over the music. “Yes, I used to worry about it myself. ‘Oh, why don't I grow breasts?' I cried about it for years. Now I've come to accept it as my fate. And isn't that the real secret of happiness? To love your fate?
Amor fati,
as we say in Latin. How much happier you would be, for example,” she added, looking directly at Earl, “if you truly accepted your ugliness and lack of intelligence. You would not feel impelled to take out your rage by doing sadistic and cruel acts.”

Someone sniggered at one of the back tables. Lucy now looked carefully at Bo Cade. There was something off about him that she found interesting, something that distinguished him from the other two. He had composed his face into a contemptuous sneer, but it had no depth. “It's true,” she said in the same tone, “what you feel is real. You're not like them. It's hard to go against your own blood, but sometimes you have to. Drinking doesn't help, really.”

Bo opened his mouth in shock and then shut it with a snap. The others seemed not to have heard any of what she said, although Earl was conscious of having been insulted, and his slow brain was contemplating revenge. Wayne understood only that this little bitch who should have been quaking in terror was not, and it made him cranky. He was a good deal quicker than his cousin Earl, however, quick enough to see something pass between Bo and her, although not to understand it.

“Hey, little Bo, she likes you,” Wayne said. “Why'nt you ask her to dance? I bet she's a real good dancer. Lady, you touch that fuckin' phone and I'll rip it off the wall and shove it up your sloppy old cunt.” This last shouted to the bartender, who had been edging toward the pay phone on the far wall.

Wayne resumed, “Yeah, I want to see some dancing. Bo, go play that song again, and we'll see if Miss Smart here'll dance for us. Go do like I said, Bo.”

Bo hesitated and then went and put another quarter in the slot.

When the music started again, Wayne said to Lucy, “Now, get up and dance!”

“I don't care to, thanks,” said Lucy.

“Well, I don't give a shit what you care to, honey. Just for being pert, you can dance nekkid. We'll see if you got no hair on your pussy like you got no titties.”

When Lucy didn't move, Wayne grabbed her left arm and jerked her to her feet. Dan came out of his chair with a bottle in his hand, but Earl was ready for him and landed a solid punch on the side of Dan's head that knocked him sprawling. He got to his knees, and Earl kicked him in the ribs.

“Don't you ever watch movies?” Lucy asked. They all stared at her. “Every single movie you ever saw, a bunch of thugs goes into a place and abuses respectable people, and every time, something terrible happens to them. You're those guys now, and something terrible will happen to you if you don't stop this right now.”

Again, they seemed not to hear what she said. Wayne said, “You better shuck out've them clothes, honey. Or do you want old Bo to take 'em off for you?” Wayne gave her arm a shake to make his point.

Lucy sighed, raised her fingers to her mouth, and produced a piercing, three-toned whistle.

Magog entered the barroom at a dead run, at which point Lucy shouted a command in a language only she and the dog understood. She also pulled against Wayne's grip, at which the man instinctively jerked back. This improved Magog's target picture. Without breaking stride, the dog hit Wayne Cade in the groin with a mouthful of teeth. Wayne went over backward, his mouth open wide enough to swallow a grapefruit. The dog gave a sharp jerk of her massive head, like the jerk a terrier makes to kill a rat, producing the sound of tearing cloth and a high-pitched scream.

Magog then backed off a few steps and dropped on the floor a sodden mass of denim, Jockey-short stuff, blood, and tissue. Wayne writhed with his hands against his crotch, making the sort of sounds he had not made since he was weaned.

Earl reached under his shirt, brought out a revolver, and took careful aim at Magog. Lucy shouted something. Magog started to move and Earl fired. Dan Heeney rose slowly to his feet.

It is extremely hard even when cold sober to hit a black dog moving toward you at speed in a dim room, and Earl's bullet did not connect. His second shot also went wide, into the ceiling in fact, because Dan hit him over the head with a chair, and Magog launched her 110 pounds through the air and landed mouth-first on his forearm. Earl screamed and dropped the gun.

“Magog, off!” cried Lucy. “Heel! Dan, come on!”

After a second's hesitation, because he really wanted to hit Earl again with the chair, he ran after her, shaking his head to clear it.

Outside, they both stopped short, blinking. Four state police cars were lined up head to tail, forming a barricade across the parking lot. Helmeted troopers crouched behind them, pistols and shotguns at the ready. One of the troopers was making frantic “come here” motions. Looking wildly around her, Lucy saw that a team of police in helmets and flak jackets, carrying short-version M16s, were flattened against the walls of the bar on either side of the door.

Lucy and Dan did what the trooper wanted them to do and went behind the line of cars. At that moment, Earl Cade came running out, clutching his revolver in his left hand, his right hanging loose and bloody. Twenty voices started yelling at him to drop it, to get down, get down! Slowly, it seemed, it dawned on Earl that they were addressing him and not someone else with a gun in his hand, and also that enough firepower was pointing at him to stop a battalion. He let the gun fall and lay down on the gravel. Some troopers rushed forward and grabbed him.

“What'd I do? I ain't done nothin',” wailed Earl.

The assault team rushed into the saloon and soon emerged with Bo Cade, in handcuffs. Shortly thereafter, a paramedic van pulled into the lot; two paramedics pulled a gurney out of it and went in.

“Hi, Dad,” said Lucy.

“Are you all right?” Karp asked. She saw how pale his face was and ran to embrace him.

“I'm fine. How did you know I was in there?”

“We didn't, until I saw your truck in the parking lot. I almost had a heart attack.”

“You were following the Cades?”

“A trooper saw their truck and called it in. What were you doing in that place? I thought you were at Four Oaks.”

“Dan took me. He's been showing me the McCullensburg sights.”

Karp turned on Dan a paint-scorching look. “You think that was smart, zooming around the county with a bunch of killers on the loose?”

Before Dan could answer, the paramedics emerged from the building with Wayne Cade on their gurney. They stopped to talk to a tall trooper with gold glinting on his shoulders, then packed the man away in their van, with a trooper for company.

Hendricks walked over to the Karps and asked, “What happened in there?”

Lucy answered, “That big one, Wayne I think his name is, tried to sexually assault me, and Magog bit him.” A child of two lawyers, she was ever alert for torts.

“Bit him, eh? I'll say!”

“Is he badly hurt?” asked Lucy with real concern. “I called her off right away.”