Pistol Fanny's Hank & Delilah (12 page)

“I don’t think she is.”

Delilah laughed that laugh again. It was playful, a touch amused, but underneath, Hank could feel the seriousness. It was like a low, howling wind, a warning the storm is on its way. As she continued to laugh, all he could think of was razor sharp, sweet candy.

“She’s a criminal. It doesn’t matter what the papers say. If she’s capable of robbing all those banks, she’s capable of more. Don’t be naïve. Think this through. She can’t love you all that much if she could hold a gun to your chest. And besides, what if she gets killed? Bank robbers don’t usually have the fairy-tale ending.”

Hank couldn’t answer her. Pistollette killed? He never thought about it. She was so damn fierce, the idea almost seemed absurd. She was bigger and stronger than life, and she was knocking it down as she went. The thought made him feel sick. He crossed his arms over his stomach to hide his discomfort.

“I’m sorry, Hank.” Delilah’s sweet voice cut through his thoughts, just like that gashing, honeyed candy. “I’m sorry that fate chose to bring you such a rotten choice to love. I’m sure she loves you too. Her life seems complicated. If she didn’t love you, she would have kept you, I think. I think her leaving you speaks volumes, more than if she could have told you herself. If it were me, I wouldn’t want you to be involved.”

They continued to blow down the road for a few miles until Hank was finally ready to answer her.

“I don’t think you truly understand. No deal breakers,” he said with a finality that made her glance at him. “And I will stop her from doing anything she might regret for the rest of her life. I’ll find her just like she found me. I’ll find her and I’ll stop her. No deal breakers.”

“Oh.” She sighed and looked at him with pity. “Bless your heart.” After that she got real quiet like and didn’t speak for some time. When she did, she had an amused grin on her face. “Hank, how do you know these are even women robbers? I know they look like women, but how can you be sure?”

Hank swallowed hard. “Well, that would be a, well, a great shock.”

“What would you do then?”

Hank shook his head. He didn’t know how to answer that. What could he say? He would have to reevaluate every feeling he ever had if it were the truth.

Delilah started laughing and that playful wind was just a-howling, just a-tumbling throughout the car, like that bus ticket he had found. “Bless your heart!” she howled. “Bless your heart!”

T
he lonely road stretched on, just like the silence that had somehow built between them. The miles between his heart and hers never felt longer. Hank laid his head back and faced the window, soaking up the hot sun falling upon his face. The smell of burning diesel fuel was like stale perfume filling up the interior of the car.

He had fallen asleep for a few minutes until he heard the growl of mammoth tires. He opened his eyes and noticed a big truck right beside them. The Barracuda’s grill was just pulling up to the rear of the rig. A bigger than life size chocolate cake was painted on the side. Hank’s mouth was salivating. He wished with all the unused wishes in the world that he had one right about then. He was starving.

Delilah pressed the gas down harder, moving her arm up and down. Signaling she wanted the trucker to blow his horn. Hank noticed a capped head tilting over, looking in his rearview mirror. A flash of sunlight burst in Hank’s eyes and he had to close them for a second. When he reopened them, his vision was a bit spotty.

As the spots cleared, Delilah pulled up next to the rig. The man looked down at them and smiled, a cigarette hanging from his mouth, the cherry bouncing and glowing.

Hank gasped for breath, pressing his back further into the seat. God Almighty, he was seeing dead people! It was REO! Hank blinked his eyes a few times, but he was still there, driving that big truck. Hank didn’t know what to do. He looked at Delilah. He could see she was staring at him from the corner of her eye. He looked back at the man, the ghost never disappearing into thin air like everyone said they do. REO was like Large Marge and Hank felt like Pee-wee.

He could feel himself starting to sweat profusely. He grabbed a bunch of his shirt, fanning himself.

“Hank, are you all right?” Delilah’s voice drifted over to him.

Delilah put her hand to his head and wiped sweat from his face. Hank would have loved the contact, would have loved to feel her skin against his, but he was too afraid. Those damn ghosts just wouldn’t leave him the hell alone. Hank kept staring at the man, fanning himself even harder. He couldn’t turn away. Then the man started to disappear. Delilah was starting to drive faster.

“Hank, when was the last time you ate? Hank, answer me!” Delilah shouted.

Hank couldn’t answer. He was starting to hyperventilate. He couldn’t seem to grasp on to the reality that seemed to be buried behind him, driving down the road in a big rig. Hank heard voices; thank the Lord it was only Curly and Delilah’s. Curly was patting him on the shoulder in a frantic way. He thought he heard Curly ask him what was wrong, but all he could do was point and say, “REO.”

After Delilah stopped the car by some roadside burger joint and corner store, Hank felt like he could breathe again. He sat in the car while she ran in to get them something to eat, his eyes as large as quarters. He was too afraid to close them. Afraid of seeing that face again.

Even though Judge Pilgrim’s death was devastating to him, REO’s was worse. REO didn’t even have a name or someone to come looking for him. He was in a nameless grave in some town that he may or may not have come from. Judge Pilgrim had a service. They put an empty coffin into the ground and marked his plot. His family went by every Sunday to visit him, and they missed him.

Hank didn’t know if anyone missed REO. No one mentioned him. Not one small poster asking:
Have you seen this man?
Checking “missing” posters was a funny thing Hank had to do after that day. It became a morbid obsession. When he was a boy he checked milk cartons, checked the posters at all of the groceries and stores, looked in the newspaper. Nothing ever appeared. All that was left of REO, of his last moments on earth, was those pictures.

Hank always felt guilty about that. REO had become a part of his family, a secret part. Now he was seeing his ghost? Or was REO still alive? He remembered REO vividly, breathing in quick gasps and struggling for life.

Curly sat forward, trying to put himself in the middle of the two front seats. He put a hand on Hank’s shoulder. “I think we need to get outta here, Hank. I think it’s really time to abandon ship. No joke.”

“I just need a minute, Curly.” Hank leaned his head against the cool glass of the window. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“You’re seeing dead people now. Dead people, Hank! You wasn’t seeing them before. Not until she came along and put that gun to your chest. I think you need to walk away. Just walk away.”

“I can’t do that.”

“I’m worried about you. I seriously am. This ain’t no joke, Hank. No joke at all. You’re playing a fool’s game that you can’t win. I can’t lose you, Hank. When my mother died, I had nobody but my dad. And you understand. He’s not the most caring of men. He cares, but in that old-school way. Then you and Randy came along. Randy could care less about me.”

“That’s not true, Curly. Randy loves you too.”

“Randy loves me, but he doesn’t like me. I understand that. My dad married June-bug, and in Randy’s eyes, he took her away from you and him. But you always treated me right, Hank. You stood up for me when the kids picked on me in school. You treated me real—like a big brother would. You weren’t always nice to me, but it made me feel normal. I really had somebody. Big brothers were supposed to pick on their little brothers. You did that. Big brothers were supposed to sock a guy if they socked his little brother. You did that. I have you and you’re the only brother I know. I’m begging you, please, just, let’s go home.”

Hank shook his head. He was still trying to shake the ghost loose.

“These are not regular women we’re dealing with here, Hank. Delilah seems like a nice girl, and in her own way, she wants you to abandon ship. You’re not listening! That girl, if she’s your Pistollette, she’s not playing. She can shoot a sucker out of the air and split a card in two and all in under just a few seconds. No hands on their triggers, Hank!”

“What did you say?” He remembered that saying for some reason, after Curly had said it:
No hands on their triggers.

“I don’t know. It just made sense, so I said it. She’s part of a gang.
The Hoodooin’ of Miss Fannie Deberry
times five, Hank! They talk in Morse code, they know when someone is approaching before they do, they walk like their floating on clouds, and you don’t even hear them coming. They are deadly and whatever they’re after, whatever their game is, Hank, we don’t come from that. If she doesn’t kill you, crime of passion and all that, those other sisters will. Look here—” Curly leaned over the front seat, pulling out a leather gun case. “Why would she need this? Answer me that.”

Hank fogged up the glass with his breath. He drew twisted shapes in the mist. “I’ll tell you why. She has two strange guys riding with her in the car. Even if she is Pistollette and she knows me from the bank, she doesn’t really know me. If she didn’t know how to defend herself in some way, then that’d be a shame, Curly. Because we both know what’s out in the world. She drives alone a lot, it seems, on these highways, and there’s no telling what could happen to her.”

Hank pointed out the window. Delilah was still waiting in line. There were a group of dirty looking men watching her like they wanted to eat her instead of the hamburgers. “See, that’s why. I don’t blame her. Not one bit.”

Hank got out of the car and walked over to Delilah. He walked right in front of the men, standing close to her, letting them know she wasn’t alone. She looked at him and smiled and she was just so beautiful.

“Feeling better?”

“Yeah, I’m sorry about that. I think I was having one of those low blood sugars your Uncle Hennessey has.”

She laughed. “I know why you got out of the car, Hank. I can take care of myself.”

“I’m sure you can. But that’s beside the point. I want to take care of you. Pistollette, she’s the kind of woman who seems to have no trouble taking care of her own. But you, I worry about you. So, if you don’t mind, I’d like to stay close to you and buy you lunch.”

“Who’s Pistollette?” She looked up at him and the sun shone in her eyes. How easily she could rock him with just one look.

“Pistollette is her…that’s what I call her.”

“You named her?” she yelled.

“She’s mine. I get to.”

“Are you sure you don’t have Stockholm syndrome?”

“Just as sure as I don’t have diabetes,” he said with a laugh. They moved up in line and Hank put his hand on the small of her back. She leaned into him. He smiled that she did.

They ordered their food, and as they were walking back to the car with an armful of grease, a couple of Big Gulps, and two bags of watermelon old-time hard candies, a strong wind gusted past, blowing Delilah’s skirt against her legs. The thinness of the fabric was revealing.

The big secret: the revolver she had strapped to her thigh. The dirty men, who Hank knew were assaulting her in their thoughts, averted their eyes and turned their faces. They became deathly quiet as she walked by—the prey in the forest, hiding from their potential host. She winked as she walked by. Then they were off again.

Delilah ate her hamburger like Hank had never seen a woman enjoy a piece of meat before. Hank liked that. He liked that she ate without hesitation or embarrassment. In between bites, she sucked down her Big Gulp and told him she loved those watermelon candies because they were her mama’s favorite. She got quiet after that.

She seemed lost again, daydreaming out the window. Exceptionally calm, very much in control. Hank imagined all those thoughts in her head, each one having a space, in alphabetical order and organized by where the thought belonged. Was it a memory, something to be, or something that might be? He imagined her releasing them just because she could, just because she was in that much control, and then collecting them once again just to organize them by color and feeling.

After the hunger in the car was cooled, but not other things, Delilah asked Curly to dig in her purse. She wanted a tape. He handed it to her. She held it up to Hank.

“Do you like music, Hank?”

“Why yes, I do, Delilah.” Hank laughed a little at that. The way they were saying each other’s names was funny. To him, it sounded like the beginning of a great country song—“Hank & Delilah”—or even a great Nashville show with the same name.

He could hear her saying, “Why, Hank, do you like
my
music?”

And he would reply, “Why yes, little darlin’, I do. I love
your
music only.”

“What about my robbing banks? Do you mind that?”

Somehow in this fantasy duo she was Pistollette, too. She was just very open with it.

He’d slap his knee and say real angry like, “Why yes, I do! You gotta quit that, you naughty woman. It’s a bandit habit. What’s a poor feller to do when his little woman goes around shootin’ and cavortin’ like that?”