“One of them what?”
He glared at Walt and felt his blood rising as if he were beginning to melt on the inside, his rage stoking the heat in his veins until he became nothing more than some torrid and molten puddle of flesh and bone. He glared and didn’t answer and then he slammed the door. Walt didn’t wait around for a convoy back to McComb and he stomped the gas and his back tires spun on the rough pavement. Larry walked around to the back of his truck and let down his tailgate and sat and stared at the empty ball fields. At the empty bleachers and walkways. He then walked barefoot along the walkway and he entered the gate at the first base dugout and he ran. He ran and slid headfirst into second base and then got up and went for third and slid headfirst again. Red dirt streaked down his shirt and jeans and arms and neck. Heart racing and breathing hard and he took off his shirt and ran and slid. Ran and slid. His chest and arms scraped and bleeding and the dirt in his nose and ears and under his fingernails and the raging eyes of hate.
46
THE NEXT MORNING RUSSELL AND MABEN STOOD BY THE POND AND talked it out. The last bus of the day would leave at ten o’clock that night. Nice and dark, he said. Kill the day out here and then I’ll take you to the station. Not much chance of running into anybody or of me and you being seen together. Even if Boyd comes this way we’ll see him coming along the highway and tuck you and her away. Bus heads north but Memphis is as far as you can go. Get off wherever looks good to you. Maben smoked and nodded, watched a cloud of gnats hovering above the surface of the pond.
Annalee spent the day feeding the fish and then catching them. Tossing bread to the ducks. Climbing up on the tractor and pretending to drive. Throwing rocks into the pond or at trees or whatever.
Maben was not so easy. Anxious. Jumpy. Ready to go. Overcome by her nomadic nature. She smoked a pack and asked for more. Russell fed them to her like they were french fries. Didn’t matter to him what she did as long as she stayed put and then got on that bus. Once the afternoon passed and the evening came on he figured they were safe. That ten o’clock was going to arrive and she would leave town under the cover of stars and in a few weeks or a month she would be back and then they could go from there. No need to try to figure it all out in one day.
They finished eating a late dinner after it had been difficult to get Annalee to put away her fishing pole and Mitchell and Russell sat outside with coffee while the women sat in the living room watching television. Only the light from the window above the barn interrupted the dark.
“She’s going tonight,” Russell said.
“Going where?”
“She’s not sure.”
“Just she?”
“Yeah. Only the big one.”
“What you gonna do with the little one?”
“Watch her. Give her something to eat every now and then. Can you do that?”
“For how long?”
“Not long.”
“And what are we going to say if someone asks about her?”
“We’ll say she’s visiting Consuela. She’s her niece or something.”
“That don’t sound so great.”
“Well. That’s all I got right now.”
The back door opened and Maben came outside to join the men. She sat down in a rocking chair next to Mitchell.
“We’ll let it get a little darker and then I need to stop by the house before we go to the station,” Russell said to her. “Got some stuff you might need.”
“Fine,” she said.
“When I finish my coffee,” he said.
“Anything you can get here?” Mitchell asked.
Russell shook his head.
The evening sky stretched out in lavenders and pinks. Wisps of bluegray clouds settled along the horizon and the weight of night began to drape the twilight. Mitchell stood and patted Maben’s shoulder and then he left them and took his worry out to the pond.
“So what is it I need exactly?” Maben asked.
“How much money you got?”
“Don’t know. I’ve had less, though.”
“Then that’s what you need. I got some at the house. Not much. Some.”
“You don’t have to give me no money.”
“I know I don’t have to.”
“You don’t have to do none of this.”
“I know,” he said again. “We better go.”
Consuela had packed Maben a bag of clean clothes and a toothbrush and hairbrush. And at Russell’s instruction she had tucked away a pencil and paper and several stamped envelopes. A scrap of paper with Russell’s address paper-clipped to the top envelope. The bag sat at the edge of the porch and Maben rose from the rocker and slung it over her arm. Then she stood in the open door and stared inside at Annalee.
“Do you want to tell her bye?” Russell asked.
“I did. Before I came out here.”
“Do you want to tell her again?”
Maben watched her child. Took one step toward her and stopped. Then she turned and walked past Russell and across the yard to the truck.