Through the haze of the years the night came back to her with clarity and punch as she stared with empty eyes across the parking lot. A car horn sounded and shook her loose and she turned and walked over and sat down at the edge of the bed and put her hand on the child’s leg and watched her small chest rise and fall in a heavy sleep.
It wouldn’t take long, she thought. It never had before. At least the way she remembered it. They never took long. Fifty dollars. No less. Maybe forty. The child was sleeping like the dead and would never know she was gone. She stood and put the room key in her pocket and she walked over to the sink and brushed her hair that hung limp against her head. She pushed it around with her fingers but nothing changed and then she wiped her eyes with a washrag and she kept telling herself that they didn’t take long. They never take long.
4
SON OF A BITCH,” NED SAID AS HE LOOKED OVER THE TOP OF THE GLASSES on the end of his nose. He sat at the end of the counter with a cup of coffee and the newspaper he had been waiting all day to read. The floor had been swept like he had asked and the dishes had all been washed like he had asked and there was only one table of customers. Three old women smoking and working crossword puzzles. He had only glanced at the front page headlines when he noticed the two girls walking across the parking lot. One white. One black. The same two he’d had to call in before.
He got up from the counter stool and walked over to the phone next to the cash register. He dialed the sheriff’s office and when the woman answered he said, “Hey. This is Ned over here at the truck stop. We got a couple of girls walking around knocking on doors again.”
“All right, Ned. They don’t quit, do they?”
“Don’t look like it. Don’t y’all ever keep them?”
“For what?”
“I don’t know. Scare them or something.”
“They don’t scare too easy. We’ll send somebody on over.”
“Fine.”
He hung up the phone. Watched the girls as they pointed at the different trucks. He could have gone out himself and run them off but they would have walked down the road and come back as soon as he was inside. Don’t get paid enough for that shit anyhow, he thought. He walked to the end of the counter and sat down with his eyes turned away from the window and he opened up the newspaper that would be today’s for only another hour.
5
MABEN OPENED AND CLOSED THE DOOR OF THE MOTEL ROOM quietly. She had already decided which truck she was going for and she walked directly to it, a blue truck with the rebel flag painted on its front grille. She climbed up onto the step of the driver’s side. The curtains were pulled. Dark inside. She touched her fingertips to the glass. Caught her reflection. Her child slept less than fifty yards away. She felt nauseated already.
And then she pulled her hand away from the window. Bit her lip and told herself to trust that tomorrow would be better. That she would find something to help. This ain’t no way to start over. And she stepped down off the truck and touched the room key in her pocket. She turned to walk back to the room and she saw the cruiser. It had pulled into the parking lot with its lights off and sat idling, the silhouette behind the steering wheel watching her.
Clint didn’t mind this call and he didn’t mind messing around with the girls because he liked what they would do with the cruiser parked off the road to keep from going to jail. He liked the free pie and coffee Ned gave him for running them off. He considered these perks of a job that didn’t pay enough. He watched the woman in shorts stepping down off the rig and she wasn’t what he was expecting. Not the black girl and the white girl who he wouldn’t even have to say anything to. He’d just open the back door of the cruiser and wave them over and they’d say hey deputy and crawl in the back and an hour later after they had done what he wanted them to do he’d drop them off on the side of the road in front of the house where they said they lived and make them swear to give it a week before they headed back over there.
He was happy to see something new.
He got out of the cruiser. Hands propped on his gun belt and his face smooth and his hair parted. Too old was the first thing he thought.
“Hey,” he said.
Maben stopped.
“What you doing out here?” he asked. He spoke with the confidence of a man who knew that he had the power.
“Going to my room.”
“Not what I hear. Ain’t legal to go in them trucks and do dirty things.”
“I didn’t go in no truck. I said I’m going to my room,” she said. Then she reached into her pocket and took out the room key and showed it to him as if this were the evidence that would free her.
He moved on over to her and took the key from her fingers. He held it up to the light and inspected it. Then he gave it back to her.
“The manager called us. Supposed to be a family place.”
“I didn’t do nothing.”
“I saw you up on that truck over there,” he said and then he looked at her legs. At her dirty shoes. He then studied her face. Haggard and worn but a pointed nose that seemed like it might have once been part of something pretty and gray eyes like slick dimes.
“How old are you?”
“I got a kid over there in my room. I got to get back.”