They did not speak a word to each other the entire time in Arkansas. From the moment Wiley and Erica crossed the Mississippi to five hours later when they skirted Fort Smith on the western border, they stared out the windows at the passing pavement and had nothing to say. The day, which had started innocently, sweetly, perfectly, had degenerated into rancor and frustration. He fumed in the driver's seat, strangled the steering wheel, met her eyes only by accident. Cowed by his rage, she resented him, grew bored by his pettiness, found his attitudes and reasoning more than slightly absurd. No hope for peace existed while they were locked into the bucket seats and speeding down the road. She put her bare feet up on the dashboard. He drummed his fingers for an hour. They needed to stop and have it out or seek forgiveness from each other, but the urge for redemption gave way to the desire to put as much road as possible behind them.
The car, a red Ford Torino, made the journey tolerable, that is, the car was clean, comfortable, handled the road with ease. They had stolen it the night before, their second evening in Memphis, and rejoiced in their good fortune. Behind locked doors, the keys in the ignition sparkled like gold, and all Wiley had to do was jimmy a hanger behind the window while she stood watch. From Beale Street, he drove straight to their hotel and sailed in, had the valet park the car in the garage, bold as you please, pretending they were two newlyweds enjoying an expensive gift from Mom and Dad. The thrill of the crime gave them a sense of invulnerability, and they ordered room service, beer and barbecue, throwing around their money and pretending to be who they were not. After the night's debauch, she woke up first early in the morning, and letting him sleep stretched out in a cruciform, Erica left the hotel to explore the city on her own. Stepping into the sudden light, she was unencumbered by the hovering presence of her familiars. The fatigue which had crept into her soul lifted with each step along the sidewalk. She had been overtired by solicitude and had borne too much the kindness of strangers. An hour or so in her own company, she felt, would refresh her spirit. At the corner, a bus ingested passengers, and she ran to join the line.
The route wound from the city center up Third Street before turning right onto Walker at Gaston Park and into a leafy neighborhood, and with no particular place to go, she watched the changing housing patterns, the cars below, her fellow passengers. She had never seen so many black people together in one place and drank in the different skin tones from high yellow to burnt coffee, some folk with hair straight as her own, other's cut scalp-close like Wiley's and brittle stiff, still others under halos or helmets of hair, one man's Afro high enough to hide a tall black comb with five long teeth and the hilt shaped like a fist. Despite her stares, no one tried to speak with her, though one or two people looked back, and when their eyes met, she felt they could see inside her soul, so she immediately averted her gaze, ashamed. Two seats in front of her, an older man flinched at what he saw through the window, removed his fedora, and brought it to rest over his heart. Erica strained to see the object of his reverence and realized that they were passing a cemetery, and on impulse, she pulled the overhead cord to signal the driver to stop.
Among the stones and statues, she wandered, dallying beneath the spreading elms and blazing myrtles continuing on all the way to the Victorian cottage at the northern end and its small gift shop, where she bought two postcards and stamps, and sitting in the quiet of the Confederates Rest, she wrote her messages. From across the green, a woman in round glasses and beret pretended to be reading from a small book, a woman who reminded her of the radiant angel of her dreams. She looked like the girl from Tennessee whose car they had stolen, and the woman she imagined that first night standing in front of the Friendship School as they raced past. When she finished writing the second postcard, Erica rose to cross the leaf-strewn lawn and speak to the stranger, but the figure had disappeared. After searching the forest of headstones and carved memorials without any luck, she caught another bus back to the hotel. Not gone but two hours.
Though it was nearly noon, Wiley was still asleep, naked in the bed, a bare foot peeking from the covers, and smeared across the white sheets and pillowcases were crimson streaks the texture of dried blood, evidence of some gory struggle in her absence. Suicide, she thought, and I am the ghost upon the scene to lament the loss of one so young, no chance for the life expected, no revolution, no glory, no retirement to the wilderness, no babies crawling across the bare earthen floor. Romeo, in error. But when she slipped her hand beneath the covers, he stirred and pulled her to him, the spice of last night's barbecued ribs still on his lips. Her trailing arm brushed against his erection, and she smiled at him in the half-light pulsing through the drawn curtains.
“But we should be quick,” he said as he tugged at her blouse. “We have to get out of this place.”
Without his mane of curls framing his face, his head appeared like a dish on the stick of his neck, beet red from his exertions, his eyes wide, blank and unblinking, a hint of cruelty in his unchanging visage. His neck corded, a tremor ran the course of his shoulders, and his biceps twitched. She let him rest his weight against her bones, and he shivered, stopped, exhaled like a boiling kettle. As he relaxed, he felt heavier, and the slick of perspiration between them felt clammy against her skin. She patted him on the bottom and he rolled off.
“How long have you been up?” he asked.
Using her open palm, she fanned her face. “For hours. I already went out—”