Where the Heart Is (5 page)

“You cleaned up that salt real quick, Jolene.” He tried to say ‘Jolene’

the way the woman had said it.

“I didn’t clean it up.”

“Then I bet you’re gonna get your ass whipped.”

“She ain’t the boss of me.”

“No. I could see that for sure.”

She walked to the road and fell in beside him. “Listen. I’ve got over two hundred dollars I can let you have if you’re interested.”

He stopped walking then. “I’m interested.”

“But you’ve got to take me with you. Take me to Las Vegas.”

“Like hell. They’d get me for kidnapping.”

“I’m no kid. I’m nineteen.”

“And I’m Elvis.”

“Well, I’m older than I look.”

“What do you mean, take you with me?”

“Let me come with you, help you in Las Vegas.”

“Help me with what?”

“With your equipment. Instruments and stuff. I’m strong. I can lift. Speakers . . . amplifiers. Hell, I can move a piano all by myself.”

She picked at her shirt as she talked. Willy Jack had the feeling she was about to push up her sleeves and show him her muscles. He knew if she did, he’d laugh and give it all away.

“What are you smiling about?” she asked.

“About how nice it would be to have someone with me. Someone to take care of my costumes . . . sew on sequins, buttons, stuff like that.”

“Yeah, and I can run errands, take your phone calls—anything.”

“Okay. Let’s do it.”

She smiled then, a smile that crinkled up her eyes and pulled her lips back tight against her teeth—and he saw again that empty space at the front of her mouth.

“Let’s go,” he said.

“Well, I can’t go right now.”

“Why not?”

“I’ve got to get my money. Some clothes. Take care of a couple of things.”

“Well, when can you go?”

“Tonight.”

“Tonight? What the hell am I supposed to do all day? Stand out here in the sun and jerk off?”

“I don’t know. Go to the park. Look around. Just go somewhere.

Then I’ll meet you at the high school.”

“Where the hell’s the high school?”

“Right in the middle of town. You’ll see it. There ain’t that much town.”

She waited for some sign of approval from him, but Willy Jack crammed his hands in his pockets and stared past her.

“Okay?” she asked.

“I don’t seem to have much choice, do I?”

“Now where’s your car?”

“On the highway. ’Bout three miles east of here.”

“What are you driving?”

“Seventy-two Plymouth. Why?”

“Give me the keys.” She held out her hand, trying to act certain she could pull this off.

“The hell I will.”

“Look. I can get a ride out there . . . take a can of gas. Then I drive it in, fill it up, oil, the works. I pick you up at eight. We’re outta here.”

“Naw.” He shook his head. “I ain’t gonna hand my keys over to—”

“You think I’m gonna steal a ’72 Plymouth? Shit. Let’s forget it.”

She turned around and started back down the road. “Just forget the whole thing.”

“Okay,” Willy Jack yelled. “Let’s do it.”

But the girl kept walking away from him. He hurried to catch up with her, then dangled the keys in front of her nose.

“I said, let’s do it.” His voice had a harder edge to it then.

She plucked the keys out of his hand without missing a step.

“Eight,” she said—and then she was gone.

Willy Jack was at the school by seven, hoping the girl might get there early. He’d had all he wanted of Santa Rosa, New Mexico, by then. He had spent an hour at the pool hall watching two fat men play pool like they were spearing fish. When he finally got in the game, he let them win his change so he could sucker them in for a few bucks, but they quit then and left with his money.

In the drugstore, he’d jimmied a gum ball machine for enough 4 nickels to buy a Pepsi and a Slow Poke. After that, he had gone to a cafe called Peaches where he drank water and watched cartoons on a twelve-inch black-and-white with a vertical problem.

Finally, he had walked to the high school where he waited and swatted at mosquitoes that left welts on his face and neck.

But Jolene wasn’t early; she wasn’t even on time. She pulled in at a quarter after nine, driving too fast and without any lights. She missed the school driveway by a foot, jumped the curb and smacked the front bumper against an iron railing that lined the sidewalk.

“Where the fuck have you been?” he yelled.

“I got tied up.”

Willy Jack started for the driver’s side of the car.

“Go around,” she said. “I’ll drive.”

“Like hell.” He jerked the door open and she slid over.

“Did you get the money?”

“Sure.”

“How much?”

“Two hundred eighteen,” she said.

Willy Jack leaned over to her then as if he were about to whisper, so she bent toward him. But his hand shot out, grabbed the back of her head, twisted a thick hank of hair between his fingers. He yanked her head to his, mashed his face against hers, his nose pressed flat into her cheek.

Then, staring into her eyes, he ground his lips against hers and forced her mouth open with his teeth, his tongue. He pushed between her lips, his tongue ripping into her mouth, pushing, probing until he found what he was after. And when he did, his tongue began to fondle her there, in that empty space where she had no teeth, stroking the ridge of her gums, sliding across, slipping into and out of that Where the Heart Is

place . . . moving in and out, back and forth, rocking her head forward and back . . . his mouth hot against hers, filling her with his heat . . .

and then he made a sound, some dark sound back in his throat, and his mouth went slack as his tongue slipped out, slipped free.

Moments later, he twisted away from her, pushing her away, back against the seat.

“Give it to me,” he said.

“What?”

“The money.” The girl stiffened at something she heard in his voice, something jagged and sharp, like words torn by the blade of a knife.

She pulled the money out of her purse and put it in his hand. He didn’t look at the bills, didn’t count them, just stuffed them in his pocket, then started the car and pulled away.

He was quiet until they reached the edge of town when he saw the neon sign over the bar where he had met the girl.

“Who’s Tom Pony?” Willy Jack asked.

“My daddy.”

He laughed. “Don’t suppose you’d like to stop in and say goodbye.”

She didn’t answer him, only slumped down a little as they drove past.

Out on the highway, Willy Jack opened it up and took the big Plymouth up to seventy-five, then he stretched out, putting his arm up on the seat, his hand resting just above the girl’s shoulder. She pulled herself nearer the door.

“What’s the matter with you?” he asked. “Think I’m gonna hurt you?”

She didn’t look at him, but kept her eyes on the road.

“Tell me something. Are you a virgin?”

“Hell no,” she said too quickly.

“You are!” He grinned. “Well, I’ll be damned.” Then he let his hand slide down the seat, across her shoulder and onto her chest where he ran his fingers across her breast and around her nipple.

‘“I’ll just be damned. Got me a virgin! Well, we’ll have to do something about that, won’t we?”

And that’s when he saw the lights flashing in his rearview mirror.

He slowed, hoping the vehicle would go around him, hoping it was after someone else, but he knew better. Then they heard the siren.

“Oh, shit,” the girl said.

Willy Jack pulled onto the shoulder and stopped, then waited while the sheriff crawled out of his car and walked up to the Plymouth.

“Like to see your driver’s license, sir.”

Willy Jack reached into his back pocket and got his wallet.

“Thought you got that stole,” the girl whispered.

Willy Jack scowled at her as he handed his license through the window and waited while the sheriff studied it in the beam of his flashlight.

“What did I do?” Willy Jack asked, but the sheriff had walked to the back of the car where he was copying the license tag number onto a ticket.

“You lied to me about your wallet, didn’t you?” the girl asked.

“I took care of it today.”

“How? How did you take care of it?”

“Look. Let’s pull together on this. Okay? We both want the same thing, don’t we? To go to Las Vegas. Together.” He reached across the seat for her hand. “Right?”

The lights from the patrol car cast his face in a neon hue.

“Isn’t that right?” he asked as he tightened his hold on her hand.

Willy Jack turned when he heard the swish of gabardine at the window.

“You just passing through, Mr. Pickens?”

“He’s with me, Frank,” the girl said.

The sheriff bent down and flashed his light across the front seat.

“Hello, Jolene. I didn’t know you were in there.”

“We’re going to Albuquerque to see a movie,” she said. “This is my boyfriend.”

“I see.”

Then he directed the light into the back seat. Jolene had loaded it with boxes and suitcases. Clothes hung from a hook over the back door; the floor was a jumble of shoes.

“You’re taking a lot of stuff just to be going to a movie.”

“We’re going to stop at the laundrymat. Do some washing.”

“Wonder if you all would mind stepping outside the car.”

Willy Jack took his time, but the girl scrambled out, too fast, too eager to cooperate. When the lights of a passing car moved over them, she ducked her head.

“How long you been in town, Mr. Pickens?”

“Not long,” Willy Jack answered.

“Just a few days,” Jolene said. “Three or four.”

“Sir, would you open the trunk for me?”

Willy Jack leaned through the window, grabbed the keys, then went around to the back and unlocked the trunk. It was more or less the way he had left it, except his suitcase was open and there was a plastic garbage bag beside it. The sheriff pushed things around inside the suitcase, then untied the bag and rummaged through it for several seconds.

“You smoke, Mr. Pickens?”

“Yeah.”

“What brand?”

Willy Jack pulled a pack of Marlboros from his shirt pocket and held them out for the sheriff to see.

“Wonder what you’re doing with fourteen cartons of Winstons then.”

“What?” Willy Jack’s voice sounded squeezed. “They’re not mine.”

Then the sheriff looked at Jolene.

“I don’t smoke,” she said.

“Mr. Pickens, you’re under arrest. You have the right to remain silent . . .”

Willy Jack had watched Hill Street Blues back in Tellico Plains, so he knew the words, knew them by heart. He even thought the sheriff there behind him sounded a little bit like Renko.

A deputy stood near the door. Frank, the one who had arrested Willy Jack, sat beside a desk, facing him. The girl was in a chair beside him, but he never looked at her. Not once. The money she had given him was spread out on the desk.

“Look,” Willy Jack said. “I run out of money. I just come here to see what I could hustle up.”

“And you hustled up two hundred eighteen dollars and fourteen cartons of Winstons—Winston Light 100s. And you run into the strangest coincidence because that’s exactly what someone stole from the 7-Eleven in Puerto De Luna on Wednesday morning.”

“I wasn’t even here Wednesday morning. I was in Oklahoma.”

“Anyone who can prove that?”

“Yeah. My girlfriend, Novalee. She was with me.”

Jolene shifted in her chair; one of the wooden slats at the back made a sharp cracking sound.

“Where is she now?” the sheriff asked. “This girlfriend.”

“I left her in Oklahoma. Some town starts with an S.”

The sheriff pulled an atlas from a drawer in his desk, thumbed through it a few seconds, then turned it toward Willy Jack.

“There’s Oklahoma. Find the town.”

Willy Jack ran his finger part way across the map, then tapped it twice.

“Sequoyah, right there.”

“So, you left that girlfriend in Sequoyah, Oklahoma. With a relative?”

“No. ”

“A friend?”

“No. I left her in a Wal-Mart store.”

“She have a job there? In the Wal-Mart?”

Willy Jack shook his head as he began to pick at a tear in the knee of his jeans.

“Was she going to meet someone there?”

“No.” Willy Jack pulled at the loose threads, giving the hole in his pants all his attention. “I just left her there.”

“What do you mean you left her? You let her out?”

Willy Jack nodded, then hooked his finger inside his torn jeans.

“You dumped her out?”

“Yeah.” He pulled at the faded denim then and ripped the jeans open from the knee to the hem. “I dumped her out.”

“That’s what you were going to do to me, wasn’t it,” the girl yelled. “Dump me off like some stray dog.” Her voice slid into a higher register. “You son of a bitch.”

“Now Jolene, don’t be harsh,” the sheriff said. “Let’s give Mr.

Pickens the opportunity to be heard.” The deputy at the door laughed.

“So what time was it on Wednesday when you dumped this girl out?”

“I don’t know. ’Bout ten. Maybe eleven.”

“That’s a lie,” Jolene said. “He was here with me on Tuesday night. Asked me to go to Las Vegas with him. That was late Tuesday night. Said he’d figure out a way to get the money if I’d just go with him.”

“No,” Willy Jack yelled. “I said—”

“That’s right, Mr. Pickens. You said. But can you prove it?”

The sheriff stared at Willy Jack a moment, then raised his eyes to the other man beside the door. When he looked back at Willy Jack, he was shaking his head.

“You’re a piece of work.”

“Let me call. See if I can find her.”

“Call? Call where?”

“The Wal-Mart store.”

The sheriff laughed then, like he’d heard a joke that wasn’t funny.

“You think she’s still there? Waiting for you?”

“Well . . . no, but . . .”

“Besides, the Wal-Mart’s closed now.”

“But there might be someone there. Someone who’s seen her or knows where she went. A night watchman, maybe. Or a janitor. Don’t I have the right to make one phone call?”