Driving through town they crossed the arching bridge that stretched over the railroad tracks and at the height of the bridge she took a quick look down the tracks. “There’s something pretty about that,” she said.
“About what?”
“About the railroad tracks at night. How they go on and on and you can’t see where. But they’re so straight and perfect. Like there’s no way to get lost.”
“There ain’t no way to get lost on a train.”
“You know what I mean,” she said. “Maybe pretty ain’t the word.”
“Maybe.”
“But what if you get on the wrong one?”
“What about it?”
“You’d be lost then.”
“You got me there.”
“Don’t go to your house yet. Let’s ride some,” she said. “We got time?”
“Some.”
She turned on the radio and she didn’t talk anymore. When they passed through town Russell told her to duck down and she kept her head below the dashboard until the lights of town were behind them. They moved along the winding, dark roads. Shades of black through the trees and across the pastures in a moonlit night and then he asked if that was enough and she said no. Keep riding some more.
Later she said if you don’t have to then I don’t understand why you are doing all this. Nobody never helped me or her. They were deep in the country when she asked. Only able to see what the headlights would give them. He didn’t know how to answer. But she waited.
“You’re the one who picked me,” he finally said. He looked at her. At the dim light on her face from the dashboard lights. Her tired face. Her old face. Not yet thirty but the face of the defeated. The face of holding on. “It’s like you got an invisible collar around your neck and so do I. And there’s an invisible rope pulling us together.”
“That might be a fair way to put it. Like soul mates. But between bad souls.”
“Bad?”
“Maybe bad ain’t the right word. Sometimes I don’t know what word is right.”
They drove on. The back roads like a shelter.
“Even if they figure it out I won’t say nothing about you helping me.”
He shifted in his seat. “You’ll do whatever you got to do.”
“I mean it. I won’t say nothing.”
“Okay.”
“I won’t. I just wanted you to know.”
“Okay.”
He stayed out among the stars for a little longer and then he drove back into town. She didn’t talk anymore. And neither did he.
47
WHEN LARRY TURNED ONTO RUSSELL’S STREET HE DIDN’T SEE THE Ford and that was what he wanted. He parked a block away and then he walked to the house with a beer in one hand and a crowbar in the other. He stumbled with the uneven sidewalk. Stumbled off the curb and dropped the beer and he kicked it across the street. But then he gathered himself and he walked on carefully. When he reached Russell’s house he went around to the back door and turned the knob. It was locked and then he pushed at the bedroom window and it seemed to give. He wedged the end of the crowbar underneath and he lifted and the window raised. One leg in the window and then the rest of him and he sat down on the bed. He didn’t turn on any lights and he sat still with the crowbar across his lap. If he would have slid the heel of his new boots back six inches he would have bumped the barrel of the shotgun.
The longer he sat still the more he realized he was alone. For whatever reason he was alone and he didn’t envision a future that would be any different and then the booze and the emptiness bled together and he began to cry. And as he cried his thoughts weren’t filled with faces or voices or any of the memories of a life but with the image of sitting at the bottom of an empty well and looking up at the circle of light. Reaching for a rope that was out of reach. He cried like a man who was out of faith and he didn’t try to stop himself and he was glad that there was no one to see him or to hear him. He laid the crowbar on the bed and he walked around in the dark bedroom, pulling at his hair and crying like the forsaken and stomping in a circle and kicking at anything that interrupted his pacing and in the streaks that ran from his face and down his neck he began to feel a cleansing, a release, an answer, a promise and he raged on and on, crying and wailing and stomping. Forcing it out of his body as if there were a holiness to be achieved. He stomped around the room and heaved and then he clenched his jaw and growled and raised both fists and shook them at the God he didn’t want to know.