The Suicide Motor Club (22 page)

JUDITH WALKED BACK THROUGH THE WOODS THAT LED DOWN THE HILL TO THE
switchback where Clayton had parked the '67 Camaro. During her long confinement in the blackness of the trunk it had been possible to suppress the knowledge that this was indeed the vehicle that had swallowed her only son; but now, looking at it

Evenin', miss

from the driver's side, just as she had when it nosed up alongside her husband's Falcon

That his name, too?

it looked like some evil black fish that might yet have one more bite in its jaws.

Evenin' evenin' evenin' missss

She touched its cool, steel hide as if in absolution, thinking it was just a tool now, thinking she would use it against them, thinking she would make them as sorry to have seen it as she was, but it was hard not to hate it. How it looked. What it could do. It had been welded and screwed together in Michigan with a big motor that sped easily away from cars with mommies and daddies in them to take children off to witches' pots.

She knew she might have to drive it, and she dreaded that like
poison. Jude had only driven a handful of times since the accident, and each time she had felt her heart racing and her palms grew sweaty. Her mother had coached her through the first episode as if at bedside in the maternity ward:
It's okay, just breathe, just breathe, sweetie, you're okay.
Now she was all right as long as she stayed off the highway and away from bridges. Funny that bridges affected her so since she had wrecked in the flattest, driest part of New Mexico, but coming over the double-decker bridge from Covington to Cincinnati before she left for the abbey had nearly made her black out.

But to lay hands on this . . . weapon. She would have no problems shooting the .45 revolver in the glove box, the gun that once belonged to Hank, but the car was something else.

“There's nothing for it,” she said. “I'll just have to. I have to.”

She didn't know if she believed herself.

No time for that now.

She left it crouched on its switchback as she made her way down the hill and toward the surplus store and, God willing, a phone.

Wicklow didn't answer the first time she called.

Or the second.

—

BY THE TIME DAYLIGHT STARTED RUNNING OUT, JUDITH'S TRAUMA AND EXHAUSTION
caught up with her. She needed to lie down. She feared sleep, not altogether certain Clayton could resist feeding on her. Would he make her a vampire if he did? Wicklow said he believed the act of transformation was both wholly intentional and rare, or else they would propagate unsustainably. Nevertheless, the idea of his teeth anywhere near her horrified her. She thought about going to the Camaro and locking herself in with the keys, but the thought of sleeping where her son had very probably died seemed worse than Clayton shoplifting blood from her. Unable to think of a better idea than locking herself in the car, she
wrapped her rosary around her neck, curled up under the rock overhang not far from the vampire, and, using her new boots as a pillow, began to give in to sleep. Perhaps she would nap for a few minutes to get some strength back and, hopefully, diminish the pain in her head. She was all but certain he would not kill her, but she crossed herself and said an
Ave Maria
before her thoughts drifted into a surprisingly pleasant dream. She walked barefoot on sand beaches and spoke with beautiful colonial women like those in the beginning of
Wide Sargasso Sea
, which she had been reading when her family wrecked. The bookmark had still been in it when it was returned to her in a plastic bag, grainy with New Mexico dirt. Of course she never opened it again. Antoinette would remain on those beaches forever, never marry Rochester, leave for England, descend into madness.

She slept for twenty-two hours.

“YOU CAN'T HAVE IT,” COLE SAID.

“Just till I get something nearly as fast.”

“Well, let's get that first, then. What, a Chevelle?”

“You won't catch me in no Chevelle.”

“Mustang, then?”

“More likely that.”

“Fine. Let's hunt one up.”

“We will.”

“Bet there's somethin' in Houston.”

“Bet you're right.”

“Be in Texas tomorrow night.”

“Just give me them cocoa keys till we find it.”

“It's COPO, dummy.”

“Like I said.”

“Goddamn it, Luther.”

“I'm the best driver, do you argue that? Better not say yes.”

“I ain't sayin' yes.”

“Well, there you go.”

“No, there I don't go. I found the COPO, I get to keep it.”

“Best driver oughta have the fastest car, that's all.”

“You're always pullin' shit like this.”

“Impala don't get up and go enough.”

“You picked it.”

“'T's all there was.”

“You could have took a Camaro yourself. We were at the lot.”

“We ain't gonna all drive the same thing.”

“They had Chevelles.”

“Fuck a Chevelle.”

“So get you somethin' else.”

“That Impala's like a brick on skates.”

“Ain't my problem.”

“Uh-huh. Give me the keys.”

“No.”

“Gimme 'em.”

“Goddamn it, Luther Nixon.”

“I'll play ya chicken for it.”

“You'll lose.”

“When have I ever lost?”

“You don't want to test me on this.”

“I'm testin'.”

“I'll burn you.”

“You won't burn shit, Coley-cole. Might as well to hand me them keys and save a disgracin'.”

“I'll burn you to pieces over this.”

“Let's stop talkin' about it and see.”

“Tired of your shit is all.”

“Let's just see.”

“I found that damn car. Ain't even a thousand of 'em in the whole country.”

“Uh-huh. You're still talkin'.”

“Any of the rest of you think this is a good idea?”

Rob said, “I'm stuck drivin' the truck. How much of a shit do you think I give?”

Calcutta said, “You can beat him, Cole. He's due to get beat up.”

Neck Brace said nothing.

“Sun's comin' up. Get out here with me,” Luther said.

They went out into the dirt yard of the dead man's house.

“Yeah, all right, fuck you, Luther.”

“'S gonna be a hot one today.”

“Now who's talkin'?”

“That little bit a' mist, wonder if that'll slow it down at all?”

“I don't reckon. I reckon it's gonna burn you right up.”

“Humid as hell, too. Glad I'm cold-blooded. All them Cajuns out here paddlin' their boats around, sweatin' that cayenne pepper out.”

“Shut up, it's comin'.”

“I know it's comin', Cole. Them birds is chirpin'. Besides, I can feel it. Can't you?”

“I guess I can.”

“You ever have that cayenne pepper, Cole? Before I fixed you?”

Cole was silent.

“Thought so. Seems I took you out for crawdads once in Breaux Bridge after a race.”

“Wasn't me.”

“Was too.”

“We discussed how we wasn't gonna discuss this.”

“That's a good burn, right there, that crawdad burn.”

“You might want to pay attention, it's comin'.”

“This ain't gonna be no good burn.”

“Gonna sneak up on you, Luther. I don't want us both to fry just 'cause you ain't payin' attention.”

“I don't need to pay attention. You're payin' attention for me. I don't run till you do.”

“Bullshit, you'll run.”

“Am I even lookin' east?”

“Ain't gonna work this time.”

“You ever see me run inside first?”

“This time you will.”

“I'm lookin' right in your eyes.”

“You'll know when to turn tail. You can feel it just the same as I can.”

“Sky's getting awful fiery, ain't it?”

“Look, damn it.”

“Book a' Revelations up there, I'll bet.”

“Damn it.”

“Do you see the whore a' Babylon yet?”

“Look!”

“Uh-uh, lookin's your job.”

Cole reached in his jeans pocket.

“That's right,” Luther said.

The sun crowned, prickling through the bald cypress trees to the east and lighting up the moss beards as if they were ablaze. Very weak, filtered light fell on their faces and it hurt.

Cole took the keys in his hand.

“That's right,” Luther said, gritting his teeth.

“Get inside, you idiots,” Calcutta said.

Neck Brace loomed in the shade of the window, staring guilelessly like a child watching some unfathomable exchange between his parents. Rob, pouting about his solitary new duties as pack-truck driver, had already settled himself under the dead man's bed and wrapped up in a blanket.

“Ah!” Cole said, the thin edge of his ear starting to smoke. He swatted at it as if it were a deerfly. Then he jerked the Camaro keys out of
his pocket and threw them high, toward the rope-girdled tree where the dogs used to be, and in the same motion he ran inside, small parts of him smoldering but not yet burned. Luther leapt like a wide receiver and snatched them in one smoking hand, rolling his back toward the east, landing catlike and sprinting just behind Cole, laughing.

He chucked the Impala keys at Cole and folded himself into the rusty, dry-rotted trunk he had claimed. Cole fumed until he tired of it, then, regaining some of his poise, joined Calcutta lifting up the flipped-over pirogue, the two of them nestling close but cold under the boat like two clams in one shell. Neck Brace took his oiled tarp to the chipped and stained laundry tub and, unable to fit himself in, swaddled up on the floor and turned the tub over so it sat crooked on him, covering his upper half.

“Sure am gonna love drivin' that pretty black cocoa lady,” Luther said from the trunk.

“Shut up,” said Cole. “Gloatin's ugly.”

“You're right.” Luther was quiet for a minute, then said, “Hope the old boy owned this house was as lonely as he looked.”

“Wasn't no tracks on the road, and the road was dry. He didn't do nothing but fish and watch his dogs fuck.”

Outside, a fighting rooster crowed in his asymmetrical cage.

Near the end of the late Barnard Gournay's dry-rotten pier, the water bubbled over him, the weight of the junked engine block pinning him down expressing the last air from his lungs. At the bottom of the brown water, the blue crabs he made his living from had found him now, and scorned the bull lip and wild turkey necks in the nearer pots on his trot line. He would not be pulled out of the bayou for three days, and though his mean-as-hell estranged brother-in-law in Grosse Tête would be questioned, his alibi would hold.

Back inside, Luther spoke from the darkness of the trunk.

“If he does get a visitor, too bad for them.”

Now the others heard the sound of his pistol's cylinder spinning in the trunk, then clicking shut.

Luther laughed, but then kept on laughing.

“It wasn't that funny,” Rob said.

“No, I'm thinkin' a' something else now.”

“What?”

“That it's a long way to Fresno.”

Luther kept laughing.

“That's not funny either.”

“You know the sister's touched in the head, right?”

“You told me.”

Luther snickered.

“Well, I was just wonderin' what if we turned her.”

“Now
that
really ain't funny,” Cole said.

“C'mon,” Luther said. “Any of you ever see a retard vampire?”

Calcutta said, “Hell, I saw two of 'em standing in the sunshine a minute ago.”

Luther was quiet.

Then he guffawed.

“Just shut up and go to sleep,” Cole said.

The rooster crowed again.

JUDITH WOKE FROM A DREAM IN WHICH PATSY HAD MADE A NEW FRIEND. THE
friend stood outside her window and asked to see her collection of bells—Patsy loved bells. The friend wanted inside to touch the pretty bells with their painted-on flowers and butterflies, but Judith knew her little sister mustn't open the window, mustn't invite the friend in. Unfortunately, Patsy was with Mom and Dad in Fresno and the only way Judith could warn her from so far away was to stand on the wrong side of the dresser mirror and shout. Patsy couldn't hear her very well. Every time she managed to shout hard enough for Patsy to make out the words, the special friend across the room tapped a funny beat on the windowpane and then distracted Patsy with kaleidoscope eyes straight from that psychedelic Beatles song Patsy innocently loved. The only way Judith could get her attention back was to shout even harder, but her voice was getting hoarse and Patsy went a little farther across the room with every
tap tap tappity tap
. So she broke the mirror glass even though breaking a mirror from the inside caused seven
times
seven years of bad luck, but the friend was already inside and Patsy and the pale, pale man looked at her, their arms around each other's shoulders like old buddies.

Then she was lying on a boot under a rock overhang in what looked like very deep forest. Her shirt was soaked.

“Who's Patsy?” the vampire next to her mumbled. He wore a dark shirt over his head and held his arms crossed close to his chest so that she thought of a grumpy executioner trying to sleep at the airport.

“Never mind,” she said, wiping sweat from her brow. “What time is it?”

He peeped under his shirt-hood at a pocket watch he kept on a fine chain.

“I am sorry to report that it is two o'clock in the afternoon,” he said, replacing the watch and pausing with the hood above his mouth until he finished saying, “I shall be better company near sundown.”

He went back to sleep.

She said, “I'm taking another dime.”

He murmured something that sounded unoffended, so she fished in his pocket long enough to harvest eighty-five cents in change and to make her vaguely repulsed at how lukewarm that pocket was, as though the meat of his thigh were a ham that had been cooling on the range all day; it felt very like what it was—rifling through the pocket of a corpse.

She put her boots on.

That was when she noticed the notebook and the paints.

A small jar of cloudy water sat near an open notebook containing heavy paper suitable for watercolors. On one page of the notebook she saw a portrait of herself sleeping. It looked exactly like her, so much so that his representation of her scar made her touch her nose and cheek. Clayton Birch the vampire, it seemed, was an artist of no small talent. Her realization that he was still a human being struck her in part by making her aware of its novelty—he hadn't
been
a human being to her until that moment. What had he been? An aberration, a diabolical parlor trick. Dead meat housing a damned soul, falsely alive and
displeasing to God. If he was kinder than the others, and there was no denying that, it was perhaps only an echo of what the man had once been but was no more. But now. It was obvious that whoever painted that picture had seen her through a prism of genuine affection. Her own father might have painted that, so fully did it capture the peace of sleep and evoke and amplify what remained of her youth. There was something of Glendon in that picture, too.

“It's beautiful,” she said, her voice shaking with emotion.

He stirred again, lifted his hood, and peeked at her.

When she saw him, she gasped.

He had taken on the appearance of a young, rudely healthy man.

Had her defenses failed her? Could she now be mesmerized?

“Thank you,” he said.

“You're beautiful, too,” she said, before she could stop herself, then hurried through the trees and down the switchback as fast as her insulted feet and overlarge boots could carry her.

He
was
beautiful.

She chose to see this not as some flaw in her armor, but as a gift. If she had been given Clayton as an ally, she must see him as one.

Thank you, God,
she thought.
Now please let Phillip Wicklow pick up the phone.

She got her wish.

—

“IT'S JUDITH.”

“Don't tell me where you are.”

“Okay.”

“Are you safe?”

“I'm hurt, but I don't need a hospital.”

“The others?”

She paused.

Looked toward the hill where Clayton waited.

“No.”

“Ah,” he said, and she hated how flat it sounded, like something you might say when a stranger disappoints you.

“I want to go on with the mission,” she said. “I'm worried about something.”

“How many are left? Of our foe, I mean.”

“All five, I guess. I saw five.”

She could almost hear him sorting through a drawer full of possible responses.

“Come back to the ranch.”

“They got Hank alive,” she said.

His silence was heavy. Hank was the most important man on the mission, more important than Lettuce. Hank hadn't been leading only because his temper ran too hot. Hank knew things.

“Yes,” he said at last, “I feared as much.”

“Mr. Wicklow?”

“You should really come to the ranch, Judith.”

“What did Hank know? About me?”

“We can talk more freely at All Souls Ranch.”

“Is my family safe?”

His silence hit her between the eyes.

When he finally spoke, she knew it for a lie.

“Yes.”

“I'm not coming back to the ranch, Mr. Wicklow.”

“I'm sorry if it sounded like a request.”

“Help me find them.”

“And what will you do when you find them? All five of them? What will you do alone that you couldn't do with armed men to help you?”

Now it was her turn to be silent.

“
Are
you alone?”

His ability to see through people frightened her. What would he do if he knew a monster was helping her? That she was beginning to feel something like affection for him?

“Tell me everything you remember about the attack, but nothing they don't know.”

She did. Wicklow listened in silence.

“Is that all?”

“Yes.”

“You're sure about the man in the Indian bonnet? That he was working with them?”

“I'm sure.”

“All right. I have an urgent call to make. I'll give you directions to a meeting place from which I'll escort you back.”

“I'm not coming back until I get at them, Mr. Wicklow. Help me find them.”

“I will. With a team.
After you get back here.
”

“There isn't time for a team.”

“Why not?”

“They're headed for my family.”

“You don't know that.”

“I do.”

“How?”

“I just do.”

Silence.

“Judith,” he said, but nothing followed.

She hung up.

—

SHE STOOD FOR SOME TIME WITH A SECOND DIME PINCHED BETWEEN THUMB AND
forefinger, looking at the pay phone's black slot. She yearned to call her father and warn him, but what could she say? Pack up the family
and go to the Big Sur cabin because killers the police can't stop are on their way?

“Gonna use that?” an older fellow with a big watch and pants almost up to his breasts said, pointing a long, brown finger at the phone.

“Yes,” she said, and dialed the operator.

An uncapped plastic pen sat near the phone, looking like a sun-dried artifact. She tested it on the skin of her arm, approved of the grainy, intermittent blue line it left there.

“Hello,” she said. “I need the number of every towing service you can find near Joplin, Missouri.”