“Sir, could I just get my clothes?”
“No, you cannot get your clothes. Could he get his clothes! Just go. Get out of my barn and get off of my land and get out of this state, you hear? Because if you’re not two states over by morning I will set the law on you, I swear to God. I’ve half a mind to do it anyhow, except I don’t want the shame on my family.”
“But, Daddy, he’s half nekkid,” Linnie said.
“You shut up,” Mr. Inman told her.
He jabbed the rifle harder into the back of Junior’s neck and Junior lurched forward, sending a last desperate glance toward the crumple of his clothes in the hay. The toe of one boot was poking out from underneath them.
It was dark in the yard, but the bulb above the back door of the house lit him clearly, he could tell, because the people crowding out on the stoop all gasped and murmured—women and a couple of men and a whole bunch of children, all ages, their eyes as round as moons, the little boys nudging one another.
It was a blessing to leave the circle of light and step into the deep, velvety blackness just beyond. With one last jab of the rifle muzzle, Mr. Inman came to a halt and let Junior stumble on by himself.
He hadn’t walked barefoot since he was in grade school. Every stob and pebble made him wince.
Next to the Inmans’ yard it was woods, the scrubby kind thick with briers to snatch at his bare skin, but that was better than the open road, where headlights could pick him out at any moment. He found himself a middling-size tree that he could stand behind, close enough that he could still see pieces of the Inmans’ lighted windows through the undergrowth. He was hoping for Linnie Mae to come out eventually with his clothes.
Gnats whined in his ears and tree frogs piped. He shifted from foot to foot and swatted away something feathery, a moth. His heartbeat got back to normal.
Linnie didn’t come. He supposed they had locked her up.
After some time he took his shirt off and tied the sleeves around his waist with the body of the shirt hanging down in front like an apron. Then he stepped out from behind the tree and made his way to the road. The ground alongside it was stony, so he walked on the asphalt, which was smooth and still faintly warm from a day’s worth of sun. With every step, he listened for the sound of a car. If it was the Moffats’ car, he would need to flag it down. He could already picture how the twins would snicker at the sight of him.
One time he heard a faint hum up ahead and he saw a kind of radiance on the horizon. He ducked back into the bushes just in case and kept a watch, but the road stayed empty and the radiance faded. Whoever it was must have cut off someplace. He returned to the pavement.
If the Moffats did come, would he recognize their car in time? Would he mistake another car for theirs and get caught by strangers without his pants on?
This was the kind of fix that the men he worked with told jokes about, but when he tried to imagine talking about it ever, to anybody, he couldn’t. To begin with, the girl was thirteen. Right there that put a different light on things.
Sawyer Road took so long to show up, he started worrying he had passed it. He could have sworn it was closer. He crossed to the other side of the pavement so he’d be sure not to miss it, although the other side was low-growth fields and he would be easier to spot there. He heard a fluttering overhead and then the hoot of an owl, which for some reason struck him as comforting.
Much, much later than he had expected, he came across the narrow pale band of Sawyer Road and he turned onto it. The gravel was vicious, but he had stopped bothering to mince as he walked. He trudged heavily, obstinately, taking a peculiar pleasure in the thought that the soles of his feet must be cut to ribbons.
He hoped Linnie had found a way out of the house by now and was standing in the yard calling “Junior? Junior?” and wringing her hands. Good luck to her, because she was never going to lay eyes on him again as long as she lived. If only she hadn’t noticed that he’d been caught without his overalls on, he might have been able to forgive her, but “Daddy, he’s half nekkid!” she’d said, and now whatever little feeling he might have had for her was dead and gone forever.
He didn’t know what time it was when he finally hit Seven Mile Road. He walked in the very center, where the asphalt was smoothest, but his feet were so shredded by then that even that was torture.