Desperation Road Read online

  Maben pulled the folded bills from her pocket and as she counted out the money the waitress looked down at the girl and asked her name.

  “Annalee,” the girl said. Then the girl looked up at the woman and said my momma’s name is Maben.

  “She didn’t ask that,” Maben said and she handed the money to the waitress.

  The waitress turned and took a key from a hook and gave it to Maben and she smiled again at the girl. Then she said, “Be sure and keep your door locked.”

  “Why?” the girl asked but Maben told her to come on and they walked across the parking lot toward the room. They stopped to let a big rig pass in front of them and when they started again the child began to skip along, anticipating sitting on something soft and watching television.

  They had watched cartoons and the weather. Sat on the bed with their shoes off and legs stretched out. Sipped cold drinks from the vending machine. And now the girl was asleep with the television screen flashing across her clean body in the dark room. Maben walked to the window and pulled back the curtain. The parking lot was lit with yellow ghoulish light and more trucks populated the lot, settling in for the night. She could see across the lot into the windows of the café and the waitresses outnumbered the customers. She had spent more than half the money and now she felt stupid. If for whatever reason she didn’t find what she hoped to find tomorrow on Broad Street, if the place was full or closed or simply not the kind of place they needed, then she had made a big mistake. Seventy-three dollars was not much money but take away thirty-five and another eight for lunch and it really wasn’t much.

  She walked over to the television and changed the channel to a news station and looked at the time on the bottom right of the screen. Ten after eleven. She walked back over to the window and sat down in a chair and again pulled back the curtain.

  At least we don’t stink anymore, she thought. Keep your door locked, she remembered the waitress saying but she didn’t understand the warning. It seemed as though people were doing what they were supposed to be doing.

  It was then that she noticed two girls at the edge of the parking lot who hadn’t been there only a second ago. As if they had shot up from holes in the ground. One white and one black. They were dressed alike. Short denim skirts and white tank tops and flip-flops. Each held a small purse. Maybe sixteen, Maben thought. The white girl had her dark hair cut short like a boy and the black girl wore a red bandanna tied around her head. They walked together into the middle of the parking lot and then the black girl pointed at the purple truck and the white girl pointed at the black truck and then they separated. Maben watched as each girl walked to her chosen truck cab and stepped up and held on to the sideview mirror and tapped on the window. The door of the purple cab opened first and the black girl crawled inside. The white girl tapped again and adjusted her skirt and then the door of the black cab opened and she also crawled inside. The curtains of each cab were then pulled closed.

  Maben counted and there were nine more trucks in the lot.

  Nine times thirty. Two hundred and seventy dollars.

  Nine times fifty would be four hundred and fifty.

  She looked across the room at the thirty dollars wadded up on the table next to the television.

  She had done it before and she hadn’t thought about it in a long time, forcing herself to remove it from her memory. And as she thought about it now she felt as if it had been someone else. She had done so well forgetting it that she couldn’t remember when it had been done and where it had been done or how many times it had been done but only that it had been done in a time when she had been backed into some dark and desperate corner by the rabid dogs of life.

  She watched the trucks and wondered if those girls were old enough to drive. Wondered where they came from. Wondered if those men had ever once considered that those girls hadn’t long ago been children. Or still were. Or maybe they never had been because they’d never had the chance. She looked at Annalee and realized what might await her if things didn’t turn around and then she took a deep breath and looked back across the lot and then there was the vision of that night so many years ago. And that boy. That beautiful boy. Them sitting together on the tailgate parked on Walker’s Bridge. Underneath ran the water of Shimmer Creek and alongside the creek and surrounding the bridge stood thick forest, the trees holding the bridge close, almost protecting it. The truck filling up the width of the bridge, its wooden rails leaning and rotting. Declarations of love long gone carved into the wood with pocketknives and bottle openers. The moon full and its light giving shadows through the trees and creating the illusion of an army of still ghosts lying in wait. The stars were many and beneath the music coming from the radio the crickets and frogs formed an abstract chorus over the trickle of the running water and she knew it was right. Knew he was right. So she told him to crawl up into the truck bed and lay down. Don’t ask just lay down and don’t look up and he obeyed and then she stood and she moved away from the truck bed and walked to the edge of the bridge. Don’t peek, she said. She looked up into the sky for reassurance then she took off her T-shirt and removed her bra and stepped out of her shorts and her panties. She knelt and piled her clothes in a loose stack on the edge of the bridge. She stood and a chill ran over her body but she opened her arms and felt the moonlight and it held her like a pair of warm hands. She looked into the truck bed at the boy who had been telling her that he loved her. And she started toward him but then the dark was interrupted by the hum of an approaching car and the glow of headlights appeared over the hill, headlights that came fast, exposing themselves in two bright bursts before she could call out to him, before she had time to pick up her clothes and the car never slowed down. And she heard herself scream out to him as she hurried off the narrow bridge and onto the side of the road and she turned around in time to see the car meet the front of the truck. She ducked with the roar of the crash and Jason’s tall and lean body was shot out of the truck bed and into the night as if he were meant to fly. The sparks and the screech and sound of twisting metal and running down that rough road toward the nearest house light. Breathing hard and running harder but feeling as if she were going nowhere, as if the house light were moving away from her as she ran toward it with her clothes tucked under her arm and forgetting she was naked until she finally ran into the yard and she stopped to put on her shorts and shirt. She left her bra and panties next to the front steps and she beat on the door and beat on the door, certain they would think they were being attacked or robbed and she began screaming out words like bridge and cars and help and please God until a light came on inside and the door opened and a man with gray hair peeked at her and believed that something was horribly wrong. And then getting in the car with him and driving down the road while his wife called somebody. Maben unable to answer his questions, only focusing ahead into the dark with anxious eyes and wanting Jason to be standing there as the headlights shined onto the bridge. She wanted to see him standing there wiping the dirt from his face and arms and saying damn that was close. But then seeing nothing and calling out and hearing nothing and then watching while the blue lights and the red lights topped the hill and then watching while the flashlights shined into the woods at the twisted and smoking heap of car and truck and then hearing them say we got a live one and telling herself it’s him it’s him it’s got to be him and then it was the other one. The one that interrupted.

  Through the haze of the years the night came back to her with clarity and punch as she stared with empty eyes across the parking lot. A car horn sounded and shook her loose and she turned and walked over and sat down at the edge of the bed and put her hand on the child’s leg and watched her small chest rise and fall in a heavy sleep.

  It wouldn’t take long, she thought. It never had before. At least the way she remembered it. They never took long. Fifty dollars. No less. Maybe forty. The child was sleeping like the dead and would never know she was gone. She stood and put the room key in her pocket and she walked over to the
sink and brushed her hair that hung limp against her head. She pushed it around with her fingers but nothing changed and then she wiped her eyes with a washrag and she kept telling herself that they didn’t take long. They never take long.

  4

  SON OF A BITCH,” NED SAID AS HE LOOKED OVER THE TOP OF THE GLASSES on the end of his nose. He sat at the end of the counter with a cup of coffee and the newspaper he had been waiting all day to read. The floor had been swept like he had asked and the dishes had all been washed like he had asked and there was only one table of customers. Three old women smoking and working crossword puzzles. He had only glanced at the front page headlines when he noticed the two girls walking across the parking lot. One white. One black. The same two he’d had to call in before.

  He got up from the counter stool and walked over to the phone next to the cash register. He dialed the sheriff’s office and when the woman answered he said, “Hey. This is Ned over here at the truck stop. We got a couple of girls walking around knocking on doors again.”

  “All right, Ned. They don’t quit, do they?”

  “Don’t look like it. Don’t y’all ever keep them?”

  “For what?”

  “I don’t know. Scare them or something.”

  “They don’t scare too easy. We’ll send somebody on over.”

  “Fine.”

  He hung up the phone. Watched the girls as they pointed at the different trucks. He could have gone out himself and run them off but they would have walked down the road and come back as soon as he was inside. Don’t get paid enough for that shit anyhow, he thought. He walked to the end of the counter and sat down with his eyes turned away from the window and he opened up the newspaper that would be today’s for only another hour.

  5

  MABEN OPENED AND CLOSED THE DOOR OF THE MOTEL ROOM quietly. She had already decided which truck she was going for and she walked directly to it, a blue truck with the rebel flag painted on its front grille. She climbed up onto the step of the driver’s side. The curtains were pulled. Dark inside. She touched her fingertips to the glass. Caught her reflection. Her child slept less than fifty yards away. She felt nauseated already.

  And then she pulled her hand away from the window. Bit her lip and told herself to trust that tomorrow would be better. That she would find something to help. This ain’t no way to start over. And she stepped down off the truck and touched the room key in her pocket. She turned to walk back to the room and she saw the cruiser. It had pulled into the parking lot with its lights off and sat idling, the silhouette behind the steering wheel watching her.

  Clint didn’t mind this call and he didn’t mind messing around with the girls because he liked what they would do with the cruiser parked off the road to keep from going to jail. He liked the free pie and coffee Ned gave him for running them off. He considered these perks of a job that didn’t pay enough. He watched the woman in shorts stepping down off the rig and she wasn’t what he was expecting. Not the black girl and the white girl who he wouldn’t even have to say anything to. He’d just open the back door of the cruiser and wave them over and they’d say hey deputy and crawl in the back and an hour later after they had done what he wanted them to do he’d drop them off on the side of the road in front of the house where they said they lived and make them swear to give it a week before they headed back over there.

  He was happy to see something new.

  He got out of the cruiser. Hands propped on his gun belt and his face smooth and his hair parted. Too old was the first thing he thought.

  “Hey,” he said.

  Maben stopped.

  “What you doing out here?” he asked. He spoke with the confidence of a man who knew that he had the power.

  “Going to my room.”

  “Not what I hear. Ain’t legal to go in them trucks and do dirty things.”

  “I didn’t go in no truck. I said I’m going to my room,” she said. Then she reached into her pocket and took out the room key and showed it to him as if this were the evidence that would free her.

  He moved on over to her and took the key from her fingers. He held it up to the light and inspected it. Then he gave it back to her.

  “The manager called us. Supposed to be a family place.”

  “I didn’t do nothing.”

  “I saw you up on that truck over there,” he said and then he looked at her legs. At her dirty shoes. He then studied her face. Haggard and worn but a pointed nose that seemed like it might have once been part of something pretty and gray eyes like slick dimes.

  “How old are you?”

  “I got a kid over there in my room. I got to get back.”

  “Not right now. You gonna have to come along with me.”

  “I told you I didn’t do nothing.”

  “That ain’t what Ned said.”

  “Who the hell is Ned?”

  “Don’t matter to you,” he said and he grabbed her skinny arm and she pulled back but she mostly pleaded I didn’t do nothing. I got a kid in there I told you. He opened the back door of the cruiser and then he twisted her arm behind her and she couldn’t fight it and she went face-first into the backseat, flopping over on her shoulder. He slammed the door before she could get up straight. He looked around the parking lot to see if Ned might be watching or if he might get an appreciative wave from somebody. But there was no one. She pleaded I didn’t fucking do nothing and my baby is over there I done told you I didn’t do nothing go knock on that truck and ask. I didn’t do nothing. He got in and sat down behind the wheel and he turned around and told her to shut up and then he made a U-turn in the parking lot. Please officer I didn’t do nothing. Please.

  And that was the part he liked the most. When they started to beg.

  He stayed on Highway 48 between Magnolia and McComb. Nothing out there but a pool hall and a liquor store and then later on a bait shop. When she started to cry he told her to stop it. You ain’t going to jail. If you were going to jail you’d be handcuffed already. Then he asked her name.

  “Karen,” she said.

  “Karen,” he repeated. “I got a cousin named Karen. She ain’t a whore like you, though.”

  “Where we going?”

  “Now, Karen. I’m the one driving.”

  She stopped crying. She stopped talking. She sat with her arm resting on the door, staring out the window as the deputy drove along the two-lane highway. Clean white lines along the sides and reflectors dotting the middle that shined like diamonds in the headlights.

  It was an easy one for her to figure out.

  He turned off onto another road that was flanked by flatlands and after another mile he turned onto a bumpy, thin road that had been patched so lazily and so often that the radar and the radio on the dashboard rattled as the cruiser thumped along. Barbed-wire fence stretched along each side of the road and he soon slowed down and then he came to a stop and he turned off the headlights. Maben looked around and there was not a visible light in any direction. He reached above the dash and turned down the volume on the radio. The parking lights remained and an orange glow surrounded the cruiser as if to signal the demons from the dark.

  “Look here,” he said and he tapped on the rearview mirror.

  “I guess you know I’m about to come back there,” he said. Their eyes meeting in the mirror. “Girl like you shouldn’t care. Figure it this way. You’re still getting paid but with a get-out-of-jail-free card instead.” He gave a small laugh and said something to himself she didn’t understand. And then still with this low and brooding laugh he unbuckled his gun belt, the leather cracking as he slid it around his waist.

  He held it up and said see here. We’re gonna be friends. He set the gun belt on the front seat and then he opened the door and got out and he untucked his starched khaki shirt from his starched khaki pants. He opened the door slowly. Leaned his head down and told her to move over toward the other side. She scooted away from him and he sat down beside her on the seat. He told her to take off those dirt
y shoes and she did. He told her to take off her shirt and she did. And he kept on telling her things to do. And she kept on doing them. Keeping her eyes closed when he’d let her.

  6

  WHEN HE WAS DONE HE GOT OUT OF THE BACKSEAT AND HE dressed standing next to the car. He saw her doing the same and he said don’t worry about that. We ain’t done yet.

  Maben pulled her shirt on over her head and ignored him.

  He leaned down and with a smirk he said, “You think I’m playing?”

  She put on her shorts. And then he reached into the backseat and snatched her by the back of her neck and pinned her down on the seat and she let out a groan at the strength of his grip.

  “Take it back off. You hear me?” he said in a whisper with his mouth against her ear. “We ain’t done.” He let go of her and she sat up slowly. Wary of being slapped or worse. She pulled her shirt back off and she said I thought that was what you wanted.

  “It was.”

  “I did everything you told me. I got a kid back there. I swear to God.”

  “If you got a kid back there then you’d damn sure better do what I tell you. What you think would happen if that kid’s momma gets picked up for whoring herself out? Kid left alone in a motel room. Guessing there ain’t no food or nothing in there either. What you think would happen? You’d better keep on listening.”

  She didn’t answer. No reason to. She started praying that Annalee would stay asleep. Wouldn’t wake up and believe her momma had left her. She hoped that like most nightmares this one would be over by daybreak and that she could be sitting in the bed next to Annalee as if nothing had happened when the child first opened her eyes.

  Clint left the door open to the backseat. He was that sure. He got into the driver’s seat and turned up the radio. Nothing going on. Then he took a phone out of the glove compartment and he dialed.