Desperation Road by Michael Farris Smith
For Presley and Brooklyn, may your little lights shine
And if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the oppressed,
then your light will rise in the darkness,
and your night will become like the noonday.
—ISAIAH 58:10
The past is never dead.
—WILLIAM FAULKNER
1
THE OLD MAN WAS NEARLY TO THE LOUISIANA LINE WHEN HE SAW the woman and child walking on the other side of the interstate, the woman carrying a garbage bag tossed over her shoulder and the child lagging behind. He watched them as he passed and then he watched them in his rearview mirror and he watched the cars pass them as if they were road signs. The sun was high and the sky clear and if nothing else he knew they were hot, so he pulled off at the next exit and crossed the bridge over the interstate and headed back north on I-55. He’d seen them a few miles back and as he drove he hoped there would be a damn good excuse for what they were doing.
He slowed as he approached them and they walked in the grass, the girl slapping at her bare legs with her hands and the woman slumped with the weight of the garbage bag. He pulled onto the side of the interstate and stopped behind them but neither the woman nor the girl turned around. Then he shifted the car into park and got out.
“Hey!”
They stopped and looked at him and he walked over. Their cheeks red and sweaty from the heat and traces of a sunburn beneath the streaks of the blond, almost white hair of the child. The woman and the girl both wore shorts and tank tops and their shoulders were pink and their legs spotted with scratches and insect bites from walking in the rough grass on the side of the road. The woman dropped the garbage bag to the ground and it hit with a thud.
“What y’all doing out here?” the old man asked. He adjusted his hat and looked at the bag.
“Walking,” the woman said. She squinted as looking at the man meant facing the sun and the little girl folded her hands over her eyes and peeked between her fingers.
“You need some help? She don’t look too good,” he said and he nodded toward the child.
“We’re trying to get up to the truck stop. At Fernwood. You know it?”
“Yeah, I know it. Another ten miles or so. What you got there?”
“Gonna meet somebody.”
“Somebody with a car?”
“Yes sir.”
“Come on and get in. Y’all don’t need to be out here like this,” he said and he reached down and picked up the garbage bag.
“It’s heavy,” the woman said.
The old man grunted as he tossed it over his shoulder and the woman and child walked behind him to the long, silver Buick. He opened the trunk and set the bag in it and the woman followed the child into the backseat.
He watched the woman in the rearview mirror and tried to talk to her as they drove but she looked out the window or looked down at the child as he spoke, only giving one-word answers to questions about where they’d been or where they were going or what they were doing or what they needed or if she was sure there was gonna be somebody there to meet them at the truck stop. In the air-conditioning her face lost its color and he saw that there was a vacancy in her expression when she answered his questions and he knew that she didn’t know any more about what they were doing or where they were going than he did. The woman’s face was thin and he could only see the top of the girl’s head in the mirror but she seemed to look down, maybe from exhaustion or hunger or boredom or maybe some of all of it. He hadn’t been around children in a long time and he guessed she was five or six. She sat quietly next to the woman, like a wornout doll. The old man finally gave up talking to the woman and let her ride in peace, figuring she was happy to be sitting down.
In minutes the sign for the truck stop appeared above the trees on the left side of the interstate and he pulled off the exit and drove into the vast parking lot, where the big trucks moved in and out. Around to the right side of the truck stop were the diesel pumps and a row of motel rooms. The old man drove to the left of the truck stop, through the gas pumps and past the gift shop and truckers’ showers and changing rooms and he stopped at the door of the café, which had its own separate entrance at the back.
“This all right?” he asked the woman and she nodded.
“C’mon, baby,” she said to the girl.
The old man walked around to the trunk and lifted out the garbage bag and set it down on the concrete. Then he reached into his back pocket and took out his wallet and he picked out forty dollars and he held it out to the woman.