Ravens (7 page)

But then there’s that other guy. The guy out on the road, the madman.

My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring?

Next to him, Patsy slept. Amazing to him that she could sleep. But she was pretty drunk. The fumes curled from her nostrils
when she breathed out. While Mitch just kept rehearsing the rush, over and over, a thousand times: the stabbing, the blood,
the making ribbons out of that son of a bitch. Killing him all night long.

Shaw
got up and went into the bathroom and pissed. He left the door slightly ajar, and when he was done he stopped to listen for
a moment. Stillness came pouring through that door. It struck him as an aggressive stillness — rebellious. He flushed, and
went out and stood before the door to Mitch and Patsy’s room.

“Mitch?” he said quietly.

Naturally there was no answer.

“Mitch, I know you’re awake. Say something before I get annoyed.”

That earned a soft croak: “Yes.”

“I just want you to know, Mitch, I’m not going to rape your daughter or anything, unless you’re planning to fuss with me.
You’re not planning to fuss with me, are you?”

“No.”

“Good. If you do I’ll rape her and cut her tongue out so she’ll never be able to tell you how much she blames you, but you’ll
see it in her face every day for the rest of your long shitty life. But if you cooperate with me, I’ll treat her like a princess,
and no harm will befall her. Or you, or anyone else you love. All right?”

A long wait. “Yes.”

“OK. Get some sleep.”

Shaw went through the house and out the back door, into the panting night. He stood on the wooden deck and waited, and at
exactly 2:00 a.m., Romeo called.

“Hey, Romeo.”

“How’d I do?

“With Tara? I think you did well. She’s scared.”

A silence, then Romeo said, “I feel like I fucked up.”

“You got to seem like you’re batshit. Like you’ve got the killings all planned out in your head. Like you’re ready to blow,
like you’re just waiting for the spark.”

“Yeah.”

“Where are you now?”

“Riding around Brunswick.”

“You finding everybody’s house OK? You find the grandmother?”

“Yes.”

“Clio’s? Uncle Shelby’s?”

“I found ’em. But I still don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”

“Keep moving. What I said: if I send you a mayday, you go kill whoever you’re closest to.”

“Right.”

“But keep moving, so they’ll never know where you are.”

“OK.”

“And if I don’t answer a check-in call, that means I’m probably dead. You keep trying me for twenty minutes — then you start
killing.”

“Starting with which one?”

“Doesn’t matter. So long as
you
know which one.”

“Start with Nell?”

“Whatever you want. Just make a plan, get it in your head. Make it concrete. You’ve got to believe it so they’ll believe it.”

“OK.”

“You understand?”

“I think.”

“If it’s true for you, it’ll be true for them.”

“Right,” said Romeo.

Romeo,
after that call, felt a dead ache in his stomach. It wasn’t hunger but still he thought he better eat something. He went
over to I-95 and found a Huddle House. The bounteous light was repellent to him, but nothing else was open, so he went in
and took a booth. The menu was so shiny he could hardly bear to look at it. He felt conspicuous and awkward. The waitress
hovered. Though he knew perfectly well what grits were, he thought she was expecting to be asked, so he said, “Could you tell
me something about grits?”

The waitress shrugged. “They’re white.”

He approved of this opacity: he thought it fitting. The hour, this job, this hash joint half-full of drunks, toads, and marginal
grifters: why in the world should she open up to anyone? He ordered the grits plus scrambled eggs and bacon, and she went
away. Then the woman in the next booth turned, and sized him up, and said, “Grits is nothing. It’s what you put your butter
on. You makin a big thing about grits, you
must
be a Yankee.”

He said, “I am.”

“Knew it.”

She turned to the gnarled cracker who shared her booth. She gave him a look like,
what did I tell you
, and he conceded, “You called it, Wynetta.”

She turned back to Romeo. “I’m Wynetta. This is Lonnie.”

“OK. I’m Romeo.”

Naturally Lonnie thought that was funny. His laugh was petty, jagged. Wynetta killed it with a sharp look, and asked Romeo
what he thought about the trial of Miss Glynn County. Was that a travesty or what? Romeo said he didn’t know anything about
the trial of Miss Glynn County. Wynetta showed him the picture in the
Brunswick News
and laid the whole thing out for him: the cheating, the recriminations, the secret baby, the missing bullet.

Presently Lonnie got tired of being ignored. He paid for his coffee and took off, and Wynetta came to sit in Romeo’s booth.

She was large. She had thinning hair and a mail slot for a mouth, and there was nothing sexy about her unless you weren’t
looking, and even then you smelled her breath which was a bouquet of onions, slim jims and gin. When Romeo’s breakfast arrived,
he couldn’t begin to eat it. But he probably wouldn’t have eaten it anyway, and he was glad for the company, glad that Wynetta
was talking a blue streak. It distracted him from his obligations.

After a few minutes the waitress came by again and noticed his untouched plate. “You don’t like the grits?”

“Oh, no, they’re fine, I just can’t eat right now. Could you maybe just bring me the check?”

She muttered, “You don’t pay if you don’t eat,” and swept the plate away. She was vexed, but there was nothing he could see
to do about this.

Wynetta had lost the thread of her chatter. For a moment she and Romeo were quiet, looking into each other’s eyes. Then it
occurred to her to ask, “So what’re you doing down here?”

That was a tough one. Shaw had told him something to say to this but he couldn’t remember. He tried, “Well. I’m with my buddy.”

“Yeah?”

She waited.

“And, um, we’re in business. My buddy and me.”

“What business?”

“Well, like insurance.”

She said, “I used to sell insurance. Who you work for?”

“It’s not like regular insurance.”

She waited.

“It’s hard to explain,” he offered. “It’s like, I don’t know. Like
secondary
insurance.”

“What’s that?”

“Oh. Well, it’s like if all the people you loved went out to a field in a thunderstorm? I mean, we could tell you the odds
they’d get hit by lightning, and how much money you’d get if they did. But that’s secondary because we can’t give you anyone’s
life
back.
You know?”

“I need a drink,” she said. “Buy me a drink?”

“OK.”

She checked the time. “Everything’s closed, but we could go to Pigeon’s out in Sterling. They’ll let us in. That’s where we
should go.”

However, they wound up not going there.

When they stepped out to the Huddle House parking lot, there was all that heat again, and next door were the remains of a
pickup truck immersed in kudzu, and out of the night came a deep-throated train whistle. It was sort of like the South as
Romeo had imagined it, except for the Huddle House itself, which looked to him like any box-shaped interstate diner anywhere.

Wynetta asked him, “Where you staying?”

“Blackbeard’s Motel.”

“That’s a real shithole, isn’t it?”

“I guess.”

“But all of Brunswick is a shithole, to tell you the truth. I got a trailer out on Balm-of-Gilead, if you want to stay there.
Really it’s my Dad’s trailer, but he’s in the hospital.”

“What’s he there for?”

“Congestive heart failure.”

“Whoa.”

“Yeah.”

Romeo supposed that this trailer would turn out to be some kind of redneck nightmare, with cockroaches as big as owls. Still,
it’d be a lot more private than Blackbeard’s Motel, and it wouldn’t hurt to take a look at it. So he got in the Tercel and
followed her. She drove fast and made a lot of turns, and it was a challenge to keep up — but also sort of relaxing, like
a low-level video game. He let her lead him along, this way and that, no questions. He wouldn’t have minded if she’d led him
clear out of Georgia.

He wondered why he’d ever said yes to Shaw.

What’s the matter with me? Shaw says I need you — I say, OK, at your service. Why don’t I tell him I can’t do this?

Wynetta led him through a neighborhood where everything was built out of cinder-block. All the houses looked like outbuildings
at a sewage-treatment plant. The churches also. He kept following Wynetta as best he could, and he remembered the first time
Shaw had ever said to him, “I need your help.”

They had been twelve years old. Shaw had come to Romeo’s house — a visit that Romeo thought miraculous. And they were up in
Romeo’s room, and when Shaw said, “I need your help,” he said it in a voice as throaty and resonant as an adult’s, and that
little lopsided smile went crawling up his face, and Romeo had been dazzled, in awe, and had no chance.

OK, he thought. But now I should tell him: “I’m not good at this. I love you but get someone else.” Why not say that? What
is the
matter
with me?

Wynetta took another turn. The street sign said Balm-of-Gilead Road. Romeo turned after her, and in a few minutes they came
to the trailer. He pulled up behind her. They went in together. To his surprise, the place turned out to be clean and shipshape.
Wooden models of shrimp boats, and on the walls were neatly framed photos of little Wynetta and her mother. Romeo said, “So
that’s your mom?”

“Yeah.”

“Where is she now?”

“Dead.”

She gave him a Pabst Blue Ribbon; she turned on the TV and ate a can of Vienna sausages while they watched one of those famous
Christy Brinkley infomercials. Then she came on to him. It wasn’t so bad. At least she was brisk and matter-of-fact about
it, and although drunk, not sloppy. Once, with her weight splayed out over him and his face wedged between her great white
breasts, he imagined himself stuck between the
Titanic
and the Iceberg, and this almost made him forget where he was.

Tara
scrambled eggs for the bastard, since that’s what he said he wanted. She cracked the shells and whisked the yolks. In her
slippers she shuffled to the fridge, and as she got out the bacon, and milk and butter, she wondered what she might poison
him with. There was a can of Drano under the sink. But he’d smell that, wouldn’t he? Also some kind of roach thing: Combat:
wasn’t that like a nerve poison? Wouldn’t it be odorless and tasteless? She conjured an image of little scorched-earth glittering
crystals. How much would it take? How much, you bastard, to tie your spine into knots? Maybe I could mask the taste with cayenne
sauce? Or maybe not. She had no idea. And anyway, even if he did eat it, would it really kill him? Maybe it’d just make him
sick and rabid and more dangerous than he already was.

And suppose he died — would that even help us? His friend Romeo would still be out there.

And Romeo would kill Nell. And after that…

But who cares about after that?

I can’t afford, she told herself, this anger. Keep my head clear. Scramble his eggs and pour the OJ and watch every move he
makes, every gesture. Find out who he is. Maybe I can figure out how to trap him. Also keep an eye on Mom, that she’s not
sneaking shots; also make sure Dad’s not boiling over where he sits. Keep everyone calm and floating on an even keel.

The sunrise shoved in through the big sliding glass door. She went and shut the blinds.

The family ate without a word. When they were done, Shaw wiped his lips carefully, cleared his throat and said, “OK. It’s
time to work on our story.”

They looked at him.

“Here’s my idea. Flat tire. I was on the road and got a flat tire. And then, Mitch, you came along and helped me out. Like
a good Samaritan, OK? We took the tire to that convenience store to fill it with air. And then on the way back you remembered
you were supposed to buy lottery tickets for your wife. And I said, hey, would you buy some for me?”

He looked for their reaction. No reaction. He sipped his coffee and pondered. Then he shook his head. “No. You’re right. It
feels phony.”

He thought some more.

“Mitch, you go to bars?”

“I don’t drink,” said Dad. “Patsy does, sometimes.”

Tara kept her gaze on Shaw. He was biting his lower lip, and his gray eyes had a stormy light to them. He said, “It might
work better if we’d met before. You ever been to Ohio?”

Dad shrugged. “Through it. Once. On my way to Chicago.”

“When was that?”

“Um —’85?”

“Way too long ago. Where else you been?”

“Well. I went to Columbus when I was in the Guard. I mean Columbus, Georgia. That was, well, like ’91?”

“Anything more recent?”

“They had me up to Greenville once for training.”

“Where’s Greenville?”

“South Carolina.”

“Training for what?”

“Service Mita copiers.”

“How long were you there?”

“Don’t know. Two months?”

“This was when?”

“Few years ago. ’03.”

“No bars?”

“No sir.”

“Well then,” Shaw pressed, “how could I have met you? Say, if I was just passing through Greenville, South Carolina?”

Dad shrugged. “I stayed at the motel when I wasn’t training. That’s about it. Except church.”

“What church?”

“Faith Renewal. Same as my church here.”

“So I might have gone to that church and met you there?”

“Might have.”

“Would you say that church is welcoming to strangers?”

“Oh, yeah. We had a crisis center there. You know, for anyone in trouble. I volunteered there. I guess I could have met you
through that —”

“What’s a crisis center?”

“Um. If you’re suicidal? Or, you know, you just need someone to talk to, you’re depressed, or if it’s drugs or whatever. Or
any kind of trouble and you need to talk?”