“Out? By yourself?” He propped himself by his elbow and stared at her.
“To this cemetery. Historic Elmwood. I took the bus.”
“You shouldn't go out by yourself.”
“I needed some time alone. Nothing happened. I just sat there in the quiet with all those gravestones and all those souls underneath. Just sat in the sun to think.”
“About what?” He licked his lips. “Why do you need to think?”
“That morning you found me on the floor, I had been dreaming. The whole house was a nightmare, all those creepy things coming to life, coming to get me. I dreamt of my mother and father. And saw Una. Do you know she thought we were angels, real angels, because of this?” She traced the tattoo on his shoulder with her fingernails. “And I dreamt of that girl from Tennessee you wanted, only they were like angels. I saw her before on the night we ran away, and I'm starting to think there are angels everywhere.”
Wiley groaned and pushed his head deep into the pillow. “You think too much. You let your imagination run away. Don't be going out without me.”
Leaping off the bed, she found her discarded jeans and hoisted them up her legs. “I wanted to send a letter. I promised her I'd write.”
“Who?” He was out of bed too, hands at his hips.
“The little girl, Una.” The full-length mirror on the open bathroom door held her reflected gaze. Her illness had taken some weight from her frame, except for a tiny potbelly. She sucked in the bulge as best she could and studied her profile. “And my mother. I sent a card to my mother so she wouldn't worry—”
“You what?” He rushed to the chair, flung on his pants and shirt.
“So she wouldn't worry. I couldn't stand her waiting like Mee-Maw for someone who isn't coming back. Just to let her know, but I didn't say anything, just not to try to find us—”
“Jesus, Erica. They'll start looking right here once they get your letter. What were you thinking?”
They fought while packing to leave, fought on the elevator and in the checkout line in the lobby, fought in the car as they tried to find their way out of the maze of Memphis. He swore at her, called her unthinking, stupid, clueless. She absorbed the shocks with scant rebuttal, sniping back until they were high over the Mississippi River and the trestle shadows began skipping across their faces like the beat of a folksong. Halfway across, on the Arkansas side, a slick of algae bloomed in a broad arc in the muddy waters, and caught in the trash and muck, an anhinga, slick as a snake, labored to swim, and watching the water bird's efforts, Erica could no longer bear the sound of Wiley's voice. Or her own. They did not speak again until they reached Oklahoma, where they shot a man.
25
“Where are you going with that gun?” Erica wanted to stop him before it was too late, but she did not know how.
In Garrison's Creek, Oklahoma, they had parked in the lot of a clapboard Mom-and-Pop roadside market with a pair of Esso gas pumps around back and a screendoor entrance that read Open though the place appeared deserted. All still for twenty minutes, no customers in or out, not a bird in the sky. In the front seat of the Torino, Wiley popped out the cylinder and inserted a moonclip with six rounds and tucked the Colt revolver inside his jacket. He reached behind the seat, fumbled with the blanket, and soon produced the shotgun, handing it to her as tenderly as an infant passed between them. “Take this,” he said, “and wait outside as lookout. If you see anyone coming, you stop them, and if you hear any trouble inside, you come in blazing like Patty Hearst.”
“But Wiley—”
“Don't but me. We're out of money, spent it all living it up in hotels and room service, and now's your chance to show you're ready. For the revolution. Comes a time in everyone's life where they must act instead of just thinking. This is your opportunity. Don't let it be your only chance.”
A quartet of houseflies sunning themselves on the wooden columns stirred halfheartedly when Wiley stepped on the porch, and then they lurched back to the same sunlit spots, not even bothering to move when Erica took her post by the door. Wondering why he was taking so long, she stole glances at the scene inside. He pretended to be shopping the meager inventory. A jar of peanut butter, a loaf of bread, a quandary at the rack of jerky and pemmican. Laying the goods on the counter, he watched the man rise from his stool, put down the notebook he was writing in, and transfer the pen from his right hand to his left to ring up the prices on an old-fashioned cash register, an ordinary man, not particularly pleased or disturbed to have a customer in the heel of the afternoon, merely anxious to return to whatever he had been writing. With a ding, the total appeared and the register drawer sprang open, and the man looked up to announce the sum and found the one eye of the pistol staring back at him.