“Yeah. I don’t reckon you can.”
“And I don’t see what’s worse than being a killer.”
He looked over at her. “You know what’s worse,” he said. “There’s plenty worse.”
She brushed the child’s hair away from her face. Stroked her pink cheek. She didn’t answer him. She didn’t have to. They drank their beers and drove on. They were close to Meridian when she began talking again. Explaining what had happened. How she and the girl had walked and walked to that truck stop and how they’d gotten a room and felt like people for a little while. How he’d found her in the parking lot and how he’d taken her off and what he’d made her do and that he’d called his buddies to come on and do it too and how it seemed like he was gonna make a few dollars from it and how he didn’t believe her when she said that her kid was back there and how she believed that was gonna be the end of it. That they were going to do things to her that she didn’t want them to do until dawn and then she was going to sit in jail and she didn’t have any money to get out and the girl would be found and gone and even though I said I wish I woulda never had her I don’t mean it. And how she didn’t think about it much she just saw the pistol and she did it and that it seemed like something that hadn’t really happened but that it had and she knew no matter what she explained to the people who mattered, no one would believe her over a dead man in a uniform. She kept her voice low while she talked but he could tell she wanted to scream.
“Bad shit happens to good people,” he said when she was done.
“Nah. I ain’t a good person. Bad shit happens to everybody,” she said. “I wish to God it’d take a break when you’re trying, though.”
The lights of Meridian glowed ahead in the night sky. But before they reached the city limits sign, Russell turned south on I-59.
“You got to tell me one thing,” he said. “Why are you holding on to that gun? That thing can bury you.”
She stared out into the faint highway light. “If there was one thing that could do you in wouldn’t you want to know where it is?”
He nodded. He understood her argument and thought to give the other side of it but decided to let her determine her own fate.
“You’re making a square,” she said.
“You didn’t tell me not to.”
“Don’t take us back there.”
“We’re still a long ways off. Sooner or later we got to stop.”
“I told you a while back you can let us out wherever.”
“You need a better plan than that.”
“You the one who said you could help. Now you know it ain’t so simple. I bet you thought I was running away from some asshole who smacked me around.”
“Hoping is more like it.”
“No sense in that.”
“In what?”
“Hope.”
“I’d say where you and that girl are concerned that’s the only damn thing that matters.”
They continued on in quiet until they approached a sign for a campground off the next exit. Russell looked over to ask Maben if she wanted to stop for the night but she was asleep, slumped against the door and her head against the window. Russell took the exit and turned right and followed the highway for half a mile and he turned at the plywood sign for the campground. The campground was a couple of acres that had been thinned out and the camping spots were bare patches of dirt within a scattering of trees and a circle of stones sat in the middle of each spot for a fire. He drove along and the campground was mostly deserted. He passed an old Volkswagen van and then he passed a truck with a camper on the back and an old man and woman sat around a fire. When he was clear of others he picked a spot and parked the truck. He turned off the headlights and got out. The sky was covered with clouds and the only light was that of the fire, an orange speck fifty yards away.
He flicked his cigarette lighter and walked around to the passenger side. Then he reached into the cab and he tapped her on the shoulder. She lifted her head and looked at him and he whispered we stopped. In the middle of nowhere. Lay down for a while. She opened her door and slid out from under the child and she walked around and climbed back in on the other side and lay alongside the child with her feet hanging off the end of the seat. Russell followed her and when he pushed the door half shut and bumped her foot she raised up.
“Sorry,” he said.
“Maben,” she said.
“What?”
“Maben. That’s my name,” she said and she lay back down.