“Annalee?” she called out.
No answer. Footsteps past the front of the counter and then footsteps walking away and Maben got to her feet and she ran into the office and took the pistol from the desk and then she was out the front door and toward the child who was sitting on top of the duffel bag on the sidewalk. Get up get up get up and she lifted the child and grabbed the bag and then she set the child down and took off running. Come on I told you to come on and the girl ran behind her with the books held against her chest and calling out for her momma to slow down. Maben ran on, looking over her shoulder to make sure that the child was running behind her and when she got to the corner she stopped and waited for the child to catch up. She looked down the block toward the shelter and she thought she saw a figure standing on the sidewalk but she wasn’t sure and she told Annalee to run baby run. She grabbed the child’s hand and they started again and they raced up Main Street and at the end of the street a man came out of the bar and walked to his truck. She tucked the duffel bag under her arm. Squeezed the pistol with one hand and Annalee’s arm with the other. Do exactly what I do, she told her. You hear me? Annalee grunted and Maben pulled her and they slid along the sidewalk. Crouched and creeping closer as the man got in and cranked the truck and they slipped right up to his open window. Maben stuck the pistol to the side of his face and told him to sit still and she told the girl to get in the other side. Hurry goddamn it she told the girl and when Annalee was sitting in the cab Maben hustled around the front of the truck with the pistol on him and she hopped in and slammed the door. Drive right now. I said drive. He didn’t ask where. He only did what she said as the pistol shook nervously at the side of his head and he said he could drive a helluva lot better without that damn thing pointed at him.
She told him to go to the interstate. She kept the pistol down but pointed at him while they passed through the lights of Delaware Avenue. At the interstate he asked her which way and she looked left and then right and she said that way and pointed north. Russell turned north onto I-55 and she stayed turned on him with the child between them. No one spoke as they drove up past Brookhaven and he noticed the way she handled the pistol. Carelessly. A flimsy grip. And when he caught her looking away from him and out the window he reached over and snatched it out of her hand.
“Give that back,” Maben said.
“Sure thing,” he said and he held it in his left hand between his leg and the truck door.
She slumped back in her seat and then she leaned forward and put her head down on her arm on the dashboard.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll take you wherever within reason.”
“Where we going?” the girl asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “Where we going?”
Maben sat up and wiped at her eyes. “I don’t care,” she said.
“What the hell kind of trouble you in?”
She didn’t answer.
“Pretty big stretch from mopping the floor to holding a gun on a stranger in the parking lot. All in the same night.”
She still didn’t talk.
“Where we going, Momma?”
She didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know what to think. There had been years and years of this. Years of not knowing where she was going or what she was doing or the names of the people she was doing it with. Some of those years blacked out and some too fresh. The bruises and hungry days. The waking up naked in musty rooms with no lightbulb and no money and no idea of the name of the town. The man in Slidell with the convertible and the rehab in New Orleans where they strapped her to the bed for two days until the hallucinations were gone and the man in Mobile with the wad of cash and the strategy for beating blackjack. The man in Natchez with the cockfighting pit in the backyard and the good stuff from the guy with the piercings that led to the bad stuff from the guy with the piercings. Always believing the next step would be better. Always winding up in a tighter squeeze. And now the squeeze held two of them. She looked down at the child and she had opened a book across her lap though it was too dark to read.
Russell lit a cigarette and cracked his window. He offered Maben one and she took it.
“You want one?” he asked the girl but she turned up her nose. Then he asked her what her name was but the woman told her not to answer.
“Don’t nobody need names,” she said.
“No names. No direction,” he said.
“We got a direction. We’re going north.”
“No destination then.”
“You can let us out whenever you want,” she said. “But you got to give me that pistol back. I didn’t mean nothing. Just needed a ride right then. I can pay you for it.”
“How much?”
“Not much.”
“What you running from?”
“Yeah,” said Annalee. “I liked it there.”
Maben took the book from Annalee’s lap and closed it. The girl moaned and reached for it but Maben told her to wait a minute.