Last Light (41 page)
The rain had stopped, and puddles glistened on the long stretch of road before her.
Her stomach rumbled, and her mouth was parched. Would she be able to find her way back to the brook without running into Vic?
If she’d just waited, maybe the lights would have come back on in a few days and she could have taken normal, civilized means of travel to get to Craig.
Already, it was at least eighty degrees, and the humidity had to be 100 percent. Yesterday she’d had the benefit of the tarp over the wagon to keep the sun from blistering her. Today she had nothing. She hadn’t thought to bring sunscreen, or a hat to keep from being scorched.
She just hadn’t thought.
She got out of the van, pulling her dress and suitcase with her. The thought of walking to the next town seemed absurd. No, she would go to I-20, and then maybe she could make up her mind whether to go east or west.
As she walked, tears stung her dirty face and the shoes on her feet rubbed blisters. And then she heard it.
Horses’ hooves . . .
“Deni! Hey, Deni!” Vic’s voice carried on the breeze.
Her heart stopped, and she thought of running. But where would she go? There was nothing but woods on either side of the highway, and she couldn’t pull her suitcase through.
Besides, Vic didn’t sound angry. Maybe he’d slept off his drunkenness.
She stopped and waited, her chin thrust up defiantly, and her teeth ground together.
He laughed at her as he came closer. “You sure you want to do this on your own?”
She couldn’t even answer.
“Look, I was drunk last night. I’m paying for it this morning. No reason you should have to pay for it, too.”
She looked up at the wagon, hating it—but she hated it less than the long stretch of road, especially if she had to take it one step at a time. He
had
been drinking too much last night. Besides, what were her options?
“Come on, get in,” he said. “I’ve got some water and a granola bar for you. Next time you march off in a huff, you might want to take some food with you.”
Her anger withered. She was dying for food and a drink of water. She stood there a moment, staring up at him, wishing she had the strength to march right past him. But she didn’t. Her face twisted, and she started to cry like a little girl. “I guess I have no other choice.”
“Oh, you have a choice. I’m not gonna force you into this wagon.”
She hated herself. She was such an idiot.
But she needed to eat and drink, so she stepped toward the wagon and handed him her wedding dress. He threw it in the back, then reached for her suitcase.
“Now get on up. We can make good time today.”
Hope blossomed in her heart.
She stepped up into the wagon, sank into her captain’s chair. She hated the smell of it, the smell of the horses, the smell of him, the smell of herself . . . but she had no choice but to go on.
He handed her a bottle of water and the granola bar.
“Thank you,” she forced herself to say.
“No problem.” He tapped the reins.
And they were on their way again.
Exhaustion played a close second to the frustration Doug felt as he pedaled down I-20, stopping at every exit to ask if anyone had seen the bizarre wagon. So far, no one had. And something else disturbed him.
There were no horse droppings in his path.
If Deni and Vic had come this way, wouldn’t he see an occasional pile on the road? With four horses, there would have to be some.
They must have gone another way.
He pulled off the road, trying to remember if there was a highway that ran parallel to I-20. There were other roads going east, but for the life of him, he couldn’t remember what they were.
He needed a map, but where would he get one with gas stations and stores closed?
The stalled cars. Yes, he could find a map in one of the stalled cars!
He walked his bike to the nearest one, a white Cadillac. Someone had broken the window in and stripped it, so he got in and looked in the door pockets, over the visors, in the glove compartment. There wasn’t one there.
He went to the next one, a Caravan, and searched for a map. Again, he came up with nothing.
Moving from vehicle to vehicle, his rifle swinging from its strap on his shoulder, he searched frantically. And then he found it.
On the backseat of a Buick Regal was an atlas with maps of every state. He flipped the pages, found Alabama, and sought out I-20. Yes, parallel to the interstate, was Highway 78. That must be where they were.
Tearing out that page, he stuffed it into his pocket. Then, mounting his bike, he rode like Lance Armstrong to the next exit, and found his way to Highway 78.
The horses moved slower than they had yesterday, and much to Deni’s chagrin, Vic stopped to water them every hour. Their joints were showing signs of stress due to the hard surface of the road. They would do better on dirt or grass, Vic said, but the grass on the sides of the road wasn’t flat or wide enough.
They reached the outskirts of Atlanta about midafternoon. The trip that would have taken two hours by car had taken them eleven.
Once again, she despaired of ever reaching her destination.
As the highway took them into town, traffic picked up. Bicyclers passed to and fro. Pedestrians seemed to be everywhere, and an occasional horse and wagon went past. Vic’s wagon turned heads, and several walkers called up to them, asking how he’d built the axle holding the wheels on the wagon. Vic pulled over and showed them.
All the while, time hurried by.
While she waited, Deni scanned the stores along the road, looking for a place where she could go to the bathroom in privacy. And then she saw the Dairy Queen up ahead, and two men sweeping the glass in the parking lot.
When Vic got back in the wagon, she pointed up ahead. “Look! That Dairy Queen is open.”
He followed her gaze. “No, it’s not.”
“There are people sweeping. No one would be there sweeping unless they were working there, would they?”
“That doesn’t mean they have food.”
“No, but maybe they’ll let us use their bathroom.”
He didn’t seem convinced, but he slapped the rumps of his tired horses.
He pulled off the highway onto the frontage road that would take them to the DQ. As they grew closer, Deni could see that its windows had been broken out. Cars with smashed windshields—some stripped of their wheels—filled the parking lot. Two men swept up the broken glass.
Deni called to them. “Are you open?”
One of the sunburned men looked up at her. “If we were, what do you think we’d serve you? Ice cream?”
She hadn’t expected such a surly reply. “Excuse me. When I saw you sweeping, I just thought—”
“I’m in charge of this store,” the grumpy man cut in, “and somebody broke into it. When the lights come back on, I’m going to have to pick up the pieces. I’m just here trying to get a jump on it.”
“Can I use the restroom?”
He looked up at her. “No. I don’t have anything to flush with. Find another place.”
She couldn’t believe he was turning her down. “Come on, I just want a little privacy. We’ve come all the way from Birmingham.”
The man perked up. “Birmingham? Is everything out there, too?”
“’Fraid so,” Vic said. “It’s out everywhere.”
The man moaned and picked his broom up again, and swept the glass viciously into a pile.
“So do you know of anywhere around here we could get a hot meal?” Vic asked.
The man laughed bitterly. “No. And all I’ve got is a freezer full of spoiled food, no way to dispose of it, a lot of glass to pick up, and no paycheck.”
Deni tried again. “Then what will it hurt if I use your restroom?”
He sighed. “All right. But you leave it clean. I got enough to do.”
Deni hurried into the Dairy Queen and looked around, trying to breathe in the scent of normalcy, but all she smelled on the stale hot air was rotten hamburger meat. She kicked through the broken glass and made her way to the bathroom.
When she came back out and got into the wagon, Vic was asking the men where he could water the horses.
The man pointed. “Up the street. Go up to that stoplight and take a right. There’s a small lake in that neighborhood there.” The man stepped closer to the rig. “What you got in that wagon? Any food?”
“Just a few provisions. I’m coming this way on business.”
“What business?”
“I own the Sneak Peak.”
The man’s eyebrows shot up, and for the first time he grinned. “Sneak Peak, huh?”
“That’s right. I’m hoping to get my stores back open in the next day or two.”
“What makes you think your stuff’ll sell, what with everybody scraping for their lives?”
“Hey, people’ll always dish out a few bucks for some good reading material.”
The man laughed. Deni frowned and looked at Vic, wondering why that was so funny.
They found the little lake some time later, situated at the center of a circle of houses. They pulled the horses and wagon into an empty lot, and Vic jumped out, filled up a bucket full of water, and brought it for the horses to drink.
“I have to do some business here,” he said as they drank. “It’ll bore you to death. So I was thinkin’ I could leave you here for a couple of hours and come back and get you later.”
“A couple of hours?” She gaped up at him. “We’ll lose so much time. Couldn’t you do business here on the way back, after you’ve gotten me to D.C.?”
“No, darlin’. I need to get my store open today. We won’t lose that much time. Go for a walk. Stretch your legs. I’ll be back before you know it.”
“How do I know you’ll even
be
back? You could leave me stranded here.”
“Now why would I do that? If I wanted to get rid of you, I would’ve let you keep walking this morning.”
“Why can’t I just come with you?”
He looked back at his wagon, as if trying to decide whether to take her or not. “I don’t want to take you because I don’t want to hear your yapping about my store.”
“My yapping? What would I yap about? I don’t care anything about your stupid bookstore!”
His lips compressed, and he took the bucket from the horses. “All right. You can come. But I’m warning you. You yap, and I’m putting you out.”
As they rode the few miles to the store, Deni tried to imagine what he was so sensitive about. It must not be much of a store. She pictured an old broken-down building that smelled of mold and dust, with shelves and shelves of used paperbacks.
But then, how did he live in such a fine house and have so much cash?
As they made their slow progress through town, the clomp of those horses’ hooves percussing through her, she longed for a
Cosmo
magazine, or
People
. Maybe they had some at his store. She wished she were in Starbucks sipping on a Grande Caramel Mocha Latte with whipped cream while she caught up on celebrity gossip. She longed to watch Regis and Kelly, and
Good Day Live
, to get her nails done, to eat in a restaurant.
But the longings only made her ride worse.
Vic was quiet as he turned the horses down a seedy-looking street, and the horses pulled them past several nightclubs and huge billboards advertising a strip club. A railroad track ran the length of the road they were on, and clusters of men loitered on the corners. They looked like drug dealers.
As they rode by, Deni grew uneasy at the attention their wagon drew. She hoped they wouldn’t get curious about the things it contained.
As if Vic had the same thoughts, he pulled his revolver out of his pocket. That made her feel a little better.
“There it is,” he said. “There’s my store.”
She looked up ahead and saw the sign—“Sneak Peak.” Had there been electricity, the words would have been lit up in red neon on the front of the store, beneath the sign that said “Adult Book Store.”
