Karen G. Berry - Mayhem 01 - Love and Mayhem (40 page)

She had looked toward the cinder-block central structure where a Lion’s club was offering coffee and cookies and conversation. Fifty feet away, she’d thought to herself. They were all only fifty feet away.

Gator smiled.
Well, if it’s all the same to the two of you, I think I’ll be leaving. I’ve got a load to deliver.

You think so?
Memphis had eyes like concrete, and his hand was on his gun.
Why don’t you just go on and try to leave.

Let him go, Memphis.

Her uncle might have argued with her if he hadn’t been a lawman. He might have even found a more personal justice for the man before him if he hadn’t been a lawman. But Memphis was a lawman through and through. And he knew who went on trial when a man was accused of rape.

He walked her over to get some coffee. That midnight blue rig rolled out while she drank it. Standing there sipping like she wasn’t afraid of a thing in the world. He stayed with her as she got clean clothes from her rig, kept watch outside the door of the rest stop bathroom, waving away grumpy women who needed to go as she washed with cold water and granulated soap, scouring at her parts until she stung. He’d sat with her in her rig when she started to shake, suffered the blows she rained on him when he tried to touch her. He’d climbed out of her rig when she told him to and watched her pull away.

Free Coffee. She’d never stopped there again.

Raven looked up at the stars, thought about those dark eyes, that flat line smile. He was gone. Burnt. Ash. Gator Rollins was dead.

But in some way she couldn’t name, so was she.

HE WOKE BECAUSE
his feet kept touching the icy zippers and he was too tall for those old bags. His shoulders stuck out and his teeth chattered. His lips were going numb.

“Raven?” He could hear her singing, singing, her song as old and high and hard as the ceiling of a limestone cavern.

It was a song that only women knew.

His teeth knocked together. “Let’s get out of here. Please, Raven. Let’s get in the truck and get warm. I can’t take it out here.”

She stood up and walked over to stare down at him. “You’re cold?”

Once while out hiking, he’d encountered a wolf. A lean, dark, nearly silent thing, that wolf. He’d imagined, in his granola-fed, well-educated ignorance, that an encounter with a wild wolf might be something sacred, something spiritual. A moment of awakening, of meaning, of oneness. But the wolf had only looked at him, head slightly cocked, eyes full of cold curiosity, before loping away.

Raven looked at him in just the same way.

She took off her hat and climbed in beside him. He lay his hands on her bare, icy skin. How could she stand it? She could have slept naked, the earth her pillow, the stars her blanket, and never felt it at all. She crawled on top of him, then, cold as stone and just as smooth.

She was a cold, cold woman, but she made him warm.

Friday

ASA GREETED THE
dawn seated on his cot with his head in his hands, giving off a distinct odor of salad dressing. The vinegar had done the trick. He’d bought five bottles and though it stung, he’d saturated himself from head to foot, opening the crevices of his body to air and acid, burning away the rot and pests, and going so far as to sprinkle the mattress, as well.

“The vermin have left, Lord. Praise be onto you.”

His was not to question the verses, just to post them.

“Lord, it is thy call, and not for me to question.” He wondered if the Lord were trying to tell him that for bugs, gin would do in a pinch, as well.

As the sun rose, he gave thanks to God for his deliverance.

IT WAS STILL
dark when she woke beside him in the sleeping bag, feeling his fingers trace the muscles in her stomach. This part was easy. But all the rest of it was too complicated.

She climbed out, found her clothes, shook the desert out of them, dressed. She sat behind the wheel of her father’s truck while he got ready.

He dozed off on the way back.

She braked at Levi’s, let him out, then drove up to her parents’ trailer to return the truck. She wished men were as easy to return as vehicles. Early on, she’d gone through a few years of sleeping with married men for just that reason. They were the only men you could borrow, drive as far as you needed to take them, and leave them in someone else’s carport. She was younger back then. Younger and more stupid.

She walked back to the rig, knowing what she needed to do. Francie June floated on the air, like she always did. “Shut up, Francie June. There ain’t no love in my heart, and you know it.” She pulled open the door. He was just sitting there. Sitting there not doing a damn thing. “I’m taking off tomorrow. You’d better pack.” He looked at her in silence for a moment. “Listen, if you want a girlfriend, go see Fossetta Sweet. She’s always lookin for a good man.” Shock passed over his face, followed by disbelief. Then betrayal.

Oh Lord, he was crying.

How had she gotten tangled up with a man who cried? What on earth did he think he’d gotten into when he climbed into her rig? Some kind of relationship?

He expected her to mark him out and rope him off. He expected her to want to spend the rest of her life playing house with him. How could she explain, she wasn’t wired up like that?

She climbed in the sleeper and started gathering. She crawled around, thrusting one wadded-up t-shirt after another in his pack, picking up one used rubber after another and throwing it into the corner. She didn’t want to look at his face.

She felt his hands around her waist. He pulled her onto the mattress and pinned her down with his weight, his need. Any other man in the world, she’d have had him off her and bleeding in a heartbeat, but she just lay there under him, feeling his sobbing shudders as he held her.

A FEW MILES
away in Ochre Water, Clyde Groth woke up grumbling. Melveena had turned off the television and put on a CD. He reached around, frantic.

Understand, her greatest mistake had awoken the morning before to the Greek tragedy of a vanished remote. He’d gone straight to Wal-Mart for a replacement, and actually tethered this new universal remote to his wrist with clothesline. He stretched out the cord and used the remote to reestablish control over his domain. Music off, TV on.

He tuned in a wrestling show and turned up the volume.

Melveena, in her closet, could hear the announcer’s booming voice announce the upcoming grudge match between Hormonetta and a woman known as Evil Estrogenia, the Wrestling Queen of PMS.

Over that, she heard a knock. She knew Clyde would ignore it, so she left her task of sorting and folding and answered the door.

“Hey, lady.”

“Hey woman.” Melveena looked at Raven’s uncombed hair, her dirty fingernails. She reeked of sex. Sweet Jesus, the mess of this woman. “Make yourself at home.”

Raven stepped in. “Howdy, Clyde,” she said with a tip of her hat. He didn’t acknowledge her. Raven offended something so basic in Clyde that he never so much as acknowledged her in public. Having her in his home was an insult beyond bearing. “Nice weather we’re having, huh, Clyde.” She waited, her face amused. “How ’bout them Lakers.” He didn’t so much as grunt. “How about I hitch down my Levi’s and take a piss on your television, Clyde. Maybe then you’ll say howdy.”

Clyde stood and walked out the door, carrying his remote with him.

“My Lord,” murmured Melveena. “No one has
ever
done that before.”

“Done what?”

“Gotten him up off the davenport. I’ve been telling him to leave for eight years. You must have magic. Can I offer you something to drink?” More than anything else, Melveena wanted to offer her a shower.

Raven looked suddenly tired. “Do you have any fruit around here? Fresh?”

“Fresh fruit? Of course.” One of Melveena’s more constant suitors from the old days had enrolled her in the Fresh Fruit of the Month Club. She always had something fresh-picked and perfect on hand.

Raven sucked on a mango, oblivious to the juice she was dripping. “This is heaven,” she slurped. “I been craving this.”

“Cravings?”

“Don’t even joke about that.”

“Are you?”

“I ain’t.”

“You’re sure.”

“I’m sure. That boy is very serious about that whole business.”

“Bless his heart.”

Raven shook her head. “I have to get rid of him.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t keep what I don’t need, and I don’t need a man.” She wiped her fingers on the front of her shirt and let out a belch. “Do you want him?”

“Oh for Heaven’s sakes, Raven. You’re ridiculous.”

“I mean it. I tried to send him over to Fossetta but he’s having none of it.”

“Why would you DO such a thing.” Melveena looked shocked, not that ladylike pretense of being shocked that she put on for the sake of how things looked, but honestly astonished.

Raven sighed. “You know I like to pick up a guitar now and then, just to make sure I can still play. I love the guitar, Melveena. I love having one in my hands. But I won’t own one.”

“I actually understand that.” They sat in that kitchen, as different as two women could be while still being of the same species, but in perfect mental accord. Raven looked around. She wasn’t much for domestic arrangements, living as she did in a sleeper cab. But she knew what it was she saw.

The magnetic poetry was gone from the fridge.

“You’re leaving, aren’t you.”

Melveena nodded. “You’re leaving too? With Annie Leigh?”

“I have to.”

“Gator is dead? Is that why you’re finally taking her out of here?”

She’d known somehow. How had she known? Raven shook her head. “We are staying for the talent show. You’re staying for the talent show, aren’t you?”

Melveena frowned. “Monday morning would make more sense.”

“Of course it would. Would it make any sense to leave before the most important event of the year at the Francie June Memorial Trailer Park?”

Melveena nodded.

“Hey, lady.” Raven extended her hand across the table.

“Hey, woman.” Melveena took Raven’s hand and held it close. She let Raven’s coldness flow into every corner of her, with no caution, no buffer. They sat there together, two stoic women. At one time, it’s possible that both of them had known how to cry. But crying was a relic of the past, an indulgence, a broken habit.

Neither of them remembered how.

Another Saturday

ASA STEPPED INTO
the dawn, lifting his head, taking a suspicious whiff. There wasn’t much time. It would be here soon.

He was a man on fire, sliding and shifting squares as if he didn’t know which words he was forming, as if it were a giant puzzle that he struggled to solve. It took nearly every letter he had to make it.

He stood back to read it.