Hard Twisted (10 page)

Lottie pressed herself into a sitting position.

Has Buddy ever lied to you?

The woman made a short, snorting sound. Let me tell you somethin about men, honey. If you see a man whose mouth is movin, and if he ain't eatin or chewin snoose, then he's probably lyin.

She shook a matchbox and lit a cigarette and blew a stream of smoke.

Why, you got yourself a boyfriend at school or somethin?

Lottie shrugged. I don't know.

You don't know.

Lottie studied her fingernails. How do you know when you're old enough to even have a boyfriend?

The woman smoked and considered. Well, that there is a good question. When I was your age, I believed that the right man when he finally come along was gonna change everything. Not like in a fairy tale or nothin, but more like, I don't know. Like I was some kinda candle, just waitin for a light. To have some purpose in life, you know what I mean? And then I got married, and I got cheated on, and I got separated. And then one day, maybe ten years and twenty pounds later, I sat down and took stock of my life, and I realized that havin a steady man ain't the be-all or the end-all it's cracked up to be, not by a long shot. And I reckon that was it.

That was what?

That's when I realized I was finally old enough to have a boyfriend.

Lottie looked at the woman. Her head was reclined on the pillow and she was studying the patterns of the smoke curling upward toward the ceiling.

That don't make no sense.

The woman laughed. This boyfriend of yours, he's been less than truthful, is that it?

Lottie shrugged again.

Well, the woman sighed. Don't be too hard on him, honey. Lyin is in the nature of man and boy alike. I think it has somethin to do with their testicles. She held her thumb and finger apart. Hell, I went for years thinkin this here was six inches, till I started datin me a carpenter.

Lottie was sleeping when the sound of voices lifted her upright in bed.

Out in the front room, a hatless Clint Palmer sat cross-legged on the floor, his hair lank and disheveled and his blue eyes shining like antifreeze in the angled lamplight. On the sofa opposite, Lonnie Kincaide's head rested on Buddy's shoulder as an orchestra played softly on the glowing radio. Cigarettes burned in the ashtray, and beside the ashtray stood three mismatched glasses and a nearly empty bottle.

I told you you'd wake her, Lonnie said.

Palmer looked at Lottie standing in the doorway in a way that made her glance down and examine herself.

Tell her what you said.

Shut up, said Buddy.

Buddy says you look like Claudette Colbert.

Lonnie straightened and swatted Buddy's shoulder.

I did not. Her kid sister is what I said.

Well, Bonnie Parker, what do you think about that?

I don't know.

Why, honey, Lonnie said as she reached for a smoke. You know Claudette Colbert, don't you? The movie actress?
It Happened One Night
?

Lottie shrugged.

Oh, honey. Ain't you never been to the picture show before?

Course she's been! What kind of ignorant question is that? Palmer rose unsteadily, lurching and jostling the table.

You don't have to yell. All's I meant was—

You think you're somethin special, don't you? You and your fancy magazines and your big-city airs. Palmer stood like a man in a rowboat. Hell, you think you're better'n her, is that it?

I didn't say that.

But that's what you think, ain't it?

Now you listen to me, Clint Palmer. I don't have to take—

Palmer kicked at the magazines and sent them sprawling. Piss on you. This little girl right here is pretty as a red wagon, and she's worth ten of your big-city swells and movie stars.

He noticed the bottle then and snatched it up, holding it to the light and drinking it dry as the others watched in openmouthed silence. Then he slammed it on the table, clipping one of the glasses and shattering glass and bottle both in a fountain of flying shards.

Fuck!

His hand was bleeding. He held it limp with his elbow raised as Lonnie Kincaide rushed from the room. Whether in anger or
ministration, none was really certain. The room had fallen silent but for the muted strains of the orchestra.

Come on, Palmer said, grabbing his hat. The old man'll be up waitin.

The moon was up now, and the two men swayed and stumbled down the lawn beneath it, cursing and laughing. When they all had reached the Buick, Lottie stopped short in the gravel.

The backseat brimmed with pans and tools, clothes and bedrolls. Lottie bent to better see. The leather satchel was there, and her father's Bible, and the shortbread tin that held her trove of treasures.

At first she said nothing while Palmer and Buddy busied themselves wrapping the wounded hand. Only once they'd reassembled and the car was started and Palmer's bandaged hand lay draped on the seatback behind her head did Lottie finally speak.

What're we doin now?

Some of us is drivin, Palmer said.

Drivin where?

She felt Buddy's glance across the seat, but Palmer responded neither to question nor to glance, and they rode back to the Palmer homestead in a long and vitreous silence.

Do you know you're gonna see your father? the old man asked from where he stood with his foot propped on the running board, his shaggy goat's head centered in the open windowframe.

No, why?

I thought I'd better tell you. You might run by him.

The wormwood face flexed like a balling fist as the old man leaned and spat. That's what I heard, anyways.

The screen door slammed. Palmer and Buddy, their figures
backlit by the yellow porchlight, hauled a saddle and bridle and other paraphernalia from the house. These they loaded into the backseat alongside a gasoline can and an army-surplus canteen and a box of borrowed groceries.

You could open a mercantile, Buddy said as the last items were passed off and positioned. Lottie watched as the siblings stood and faced each other for an awkward moment before embracing, Palmer's hat levering back and nearly falling from his head.

As Palmer circled the car, the old man stepped away from the driver's window to lay a bony hand on his son's shoulder. He steered Palmer out of earshot, where they stood close-quartered in the darkness with their backs to the car, their conference finally ending with a shared nodding of heads and a long stream of tobacco.

She noticed they did not embrace.

As the Buick bounced through the open gate, Palmer turned and honked once and raised a hand to the receding porchlight.

New Mexico, he said before she could put the question. Your pa went on ahead. We'll catch up with him in Santa Fe.

Fenceposts and the shadows of fenceposts ran like railroad tracks at the edge of their headlamps.

But what about his car?

Honey, that rattletrap wouldn't make it out of Hopkins County. Palmer reached for the pack on the dashboard and tapped out a cigarette. He went and borrowed himself a new one.

Borrowed from who?

You're wearin me out, do you know that?

He cupped the match in his bandaged hand and blew into the windscreen.

I guess you could say he borrowed it from whoever it was owned it before he borrowed it.

They entered Paris with the sunrise. The streets were empty and the fountain dry and the storefronts dark and shuttered.

On the main thoroughfare, a lone truck slowed at the traffic signal, and a man in the truckbed heaved a heavy bundle to the sidewalk. The Negro boy was there, catlike in the shadows, and he knelt to slice the twine and fit the morning's headline onto the sandwich board tepeed beside him on the sidewalk.

Wait a goddamn minute, Palmer said, braking and backing the car in the empty street and angling it until the newsboy raised a hand to his eyes.

Yes, suh, big news today! the boy enthused, palming the coin that Palmer proffered and sliding the folded paper through the window.

Palmer spread the broadsheet on the steering wheel, snapping it taut. The headline was huge and black and it filled the front page in capital letters screaming CLYDE BARROW, BONNIE PARKER KILLED IN HAIL OF BULLETS.

They drove all day, pausing only to nap in the car at Denton, and they arrived with the dusk in Ardmore where Palmer cruised the darkened streets in search of a rooming house where he claimed once to have stayed.

He emerged from the main house whistling, his shadow long in the dim porchlight. He gathered up his satchel from the car and took her hand and shushed her around the back and up a wooden staircase to a single room above a garage where he closed and latched the heavy door behind them.

There was but one bed in the room with a single lamp beside it, and he switched on the light to reveal under sloping eaves a small and windowless space.

They had just the one room, Palmer said, ducking to stow his satchel under the nightstand.

I could sleep out in the car.

Don't be silly. He patted the musty bedspread. Come and sit.

She perched beside him on the bed, the walls around them bathed in a jaundiced light from the burlap-covered lampshade.

I ain't sleepin here with you, she told him as he bent to work his boots.

I don't see as you got a whole lot of options.

She stood and started toward the door, but he grabbed her shirt collar and pulled her backward to the bed.

You're hurting me!

Shhhh. You don't want the law pokin his nose up here. Not with your daddy on the lam like he is. He held her collar and stroked her, in the manner of a man calming a dog he held by a chain. Not with me the only one knows where to find him.

She turned away as he undressed, his shadow huge on the wall before her, and then she felt him pull back the bedspread.

Come on, darlin. I won't bite.

She didn't move. He gripped her arm and turned her.

Look at me and I'll prove it. Watch this.

He reached a hand into his mouth, extracting his upper teeth with gums attached. He set them on the little nightstand.

Thee? I couldn't bite you if I wanted.

Again she tried to rise, but he wrapped his arms around her, this time working the buttons on her shirtfront.

Stop it! She fought to shrug him off, but he only hugged her tighter, kissing her wetly on the neck.

I'll scream, she said.

No, you won't. You'll take your goddamn clothes off and get in bed.

She had already started to cry. He stripped her shirt, then eased her onto her back where he stood naked before her and removed her boots and dungarees.

She lay on her side now, balled and quietly sobbing. He snuggled in behind her, his body pressed against hers and his breath hot on her neck, whispering to her that everything would be all right. That she needed to relax. That she'd thank him in the morning. Whispering to her and telling her that this was the way it was between them. Telling her that, in the world of men, this was the way it had ever been, and the way it would ever be.

Q
: Didn't you?

A
: No.

Q
: With your schoolgirl charms and your feminine wiles?

BY MR. PHARR
: Objection.

THE COURT
: Counsel will ask a question.

BY MR. HARTWELL
: Mr. Palmer followed you over hell's half acre looking for your father, isn't that true? Trying to help you?

A
: Help himself.

Q
: You led him by the nose.

A
: I done what he told me.

Q
: A virtual captive, is that what you were? A prisoner?

A
: That's right.

Q
: And when you tried to escape all those times, what happened?

THE COURT
: The witness will answer.

A
: It weren't like that. He told me—

BY MR. HARTWELL
: Move to strike.

THE COURT
: The witness will answer counsel's questions.

BY MR. HARTWELL
: Surely you had many opportunities to
escape from the clutches of this villainous blackguard holding you hostage?

A
: It weren't like that.

Q
: I daresay not. You stayed with him for an entire year?

A
: About a year.

Q
: Through town after town?

A
: Yes.

Q
: State after state?

A
: Yes.

Q
: You shared his bed the whole time?

A
: Yes.

Q
: While the two of you searched high and low for your father?

A
: Yes.

Q
: Who was, as far as you knew, alive and well and on the lam?

A
: Yes.

They mostly traveled by night.

Oklahoma City, Shamrock, Amarillo. Long and flat horizons. Vast plains shrouded in dust clouds that billowed and raged and swallowed the Buick, dimming their headlamps and forcing them to the side of the road. Then, clear nights with cow towns and Okie campfires twinkling like starlight to the farthest edge of nothing.

Vega, Tucumcari, Santa Rosa. Dark canyons and low mesas. Quirts of dry lightning on the distant mountains. Hours of darkness broken by cities that rose up in bright lights and traffic and gave way again to the dark.

They swapped their license plate in McLean, and they slept in
hobo camps or in motor courts, or on the ground beside the Buick. When Palmer talked to her at all, it was not of the past, but of the future; of pinto horses and grazing cattle and rolling wildflower meadows. Of a log cabin hard by a river, backset by snow-peaked mountains. Of a place where they would be law unto themselves, free and unbound by convention or disapprobation and answerable to no authority.