We Five (43 page)

Keep Calm and Carry On
.

We Are Open for Business
.

Hitler will not defeat us
.

I will duck my head when I'm good and ready, you bloody flying monkeys
.

During air raids, the Balham Underground ticket window was closed. No one was expected to buy a ticket when the farthest they'd be traveling was down to the end of the station platform. Take your pick: southbound or northbound? As the six crossed the crowded booking hall to step upon the rattling down-escalator, they randomly chose the south platform. Others were choosing the same—people who, before the night was over, would find their lives coming to a swift, tragic end.

“Is it a Duster or a Twister?” asked Carrie, ducking her head inside the vehicle through the open passenger door.

“It's both a Duster
and
a Twister,” said Lyle, “and I hope the battery isn't dead, because I don't know where I put the jumpers. I don't drive this car very much. Jane don't either.”

“This was your daddy's car, wasn't it?” asked Carrie.

“That's right,” said Jane, “and I don't know if any of you remember this, but Daddy had a bad habit of driving Winston around in the backseat. And he
wasn't
in the habit of cleaning up after him.”

“What are you saying?” asked Carrie. “That your father, as a rule, would just leave doggy doo-doo in his car?”

“As a rule, it was usually more like diarrhea dribbles.”

Ruth groaned. “Oh God, Jane, really! Do you
mind
?”

“Well, I don't smell any bulldog doo-doo back here now,” said Carrie, matter-of-factly. “Maybe somebody got in here and cleaned it all up.”

“I call shot-got!” announced Molly.

“
Shot-got
? What are you talking about, Molly?” asked Jane.

“I think Molly means shot
gun
,” said Ruth. “I also think the Valium just kicked in. Molly, how many Valiums did you take?”

“Two,” said Molly. “They were old and I didn't think just one was gonna do the trick.”

Ruth nodded. “And are you doing better now, peanut?”

“I'm doing just fine. And I hope ya'll don't think I do this very often. It's just that the dream I had—it was so real. It was so horribly real with the wind and everything. Do you want me to tell you about it?”

“You already did, honey,” said Ruth. “Try not to think about it.”

“I'll ride up front too,” said Carrie. “Next to Lyle. That means Jane and Ruth and Mags—ya'll will have to sit in the back.”

Maggie didn't hear this. She was busy arranging all the luggage in the trunk.

“Is it all gonna fit?” asked Jane, coming around to monitor her efforts.

“I think so. Even though it looks like Ruth and Carrie have totally violated the one-bag-per-person rule.”

“I
heard
that!” shouted Ruth from the other end of the car. “The rule wasn't fair. Carrie and I have a lot farther to go than the rest of you.”

Carrie and Ruth actually
did
have farther to go—
much
farther. They had planned to spend a few days at Maggie's Uncle Whit's vacation house in Bienville National Forest—Carrie's idea; it would give her a few extra days with Lyle—and then Jane had agreed to drive them to the airport in Jackson. By late that night they'd be in Los Angeles and ready to start this much anticipated new chapter in their lives—Ruth pounding the Hollywood pavement and Carrie attending a music school in Glendale.

But first they all had to make it to the vacation house, and the weather wasn't being at all cooperative. Molly walked over to the open garage door and looked out. The rain was coming down in thick sheets, the back mist spritzing her face. Every now and then the sky would light up, and the steady thrum of the heavy downpour would be augmented by the crackle of encroaching lightning. Molly turned and said calmly and a little slurringly to her friends, “I think we should probably wait until it lets up.”

“And how long will that be, Molly?” asked Jane. “The weatherman said it could keep up like this all night. And what if the cops come back and do a stakeout after the storm finally does taper off? They'll catch us right as we pull out.”

Ruth studied the surrounding wet afternoon darkness. “How do you know they aren't out there already? Sitting in their patrol car eating donuts and fixing to make all of our lives totally miserable?”

“In
this
rain?” asked Molly.

Carrie walked over to Molly and said, “It's all planned, honey. Don't mess it up. Don't you want to see your daddy? The sooner we get to Mags' uncle's house, the better.”

Jane turned to her brother. “Lyle, you should probably hoof it over to Ruth's house now. Take the back way, like we talked about, so you'll keep off the street.”

“I know the plan. But first I gotta see if this shitty old engine is gonna turn over for us.” Lyle slid onto the front-seat bench and put the key in the ignition. The shitty old engine started immediately. He grinned. “I never liked Plymouths. But I'm liking Plymouths just fine right
now
. Where's my umbrella? Hey, Ruth! Herb and Lucille know I'm coming, right?”

“They know, they know. So skedaddle. Everybody else in the car. Jane, you gonna drive us to my house or do you want
me
to?”

Jane walked around to the driver's side of the Duster while Lyle threw on his slicker and slipped out the garage's back door. “I think it better be me, Ruth. Daddy didn't like just
anybody
driving his car.”

Ruth rolled her eyes exasperatedly. “Your father's been dead for four years, Jane.”

“Humor me.”

Molly had moved to the door through which Lyle had just left. She was still assessing the growing storm. On a sunny day she would have gotten a good view of Jane and Lyle's junk-strewn backyard behind the antique store. Right now the cataract of water coming off the roof gave her the feeling she was standing in the mouth of a cave, right behind an enormous waterfall. Molly said, to no one in particular: “Just a couple of weeks ago Mags slip-slided us off the road and right into a dip—a
ditch
. We don't seem to have a very good track record when it comes to riding around on stick sleets.”

“Well, the good thing, baby doll,” shouted Jane from the driver's side of the Duster, “is that Mags ain't drivin'. I'm not letting her anywhere near this steering wheel. Anyway, once we make our secret pick-up of Lyle from Ruth's house, it'll be Lyle behind the wheel all the rest of the way, and he's never had a single wreck.”

“
Sober
,” clarified Ruth.

“Which he is right now, smartass. So everybody get in the car and let's get this show on the road.”

Jane had stopped mail delivery and put a sign on the window of the antique store that read Closed for Inventory. Will Reopen Soon. Aside from that, no one else had any hint they were leaving town, so as not to raise suspicions, with the obvious necessary exceptions of Herb and Lucille Mobry, and, of course, Michael Osborne and Clara Barton, who were supposedly already at the vacation house and awaiting the arrival of We Five.

By the time Jane had finally pulled the yellow-gold coupe out onto the street, the rain was coming down on a Genesiacal scale. Jane drove fifteen miles an hour to the Mobrys' place—a quarter mile away—to pick up Lyle. The subterfuge wasn't necessary. Nobody was watching the house, and the Duster wasn't going to be followed. The cops had come the night before to ask their questions and had put them to Jane in a very routine, almost bored manner. They openly registered doubt over Will Holborne's claim that he knew for certain it was Lyle who'd killed his friend and roommate Tom Katz. As it turned out, the Bellevenue police lieutenant who was handling the case and the county sheriff who was working with him had theories of their own having nothing to do with Lyle Hig-gins and everything to do with a string of recent murders in the area, each potentially linked to a Memphis crime syndicate thought to be muscling in on the casinos' sports betting operations. An unrelated revenge killing based on personal animus wasn't a possibility anybody was considering at this point.

We Six didn't know this. The only thing they knew at this moment was that no one seemed to be surveilling their getaway Duster-Twister as it headed out of town in the torrential rain. And even if they
had
been accidentally observed by the cops driving around in the middle of a major early spring thunderstorm, it wouldn't have elicited suspicion—only the possibility of an offhanded comment by one of the wisecracking officers that “somebody in that Duster sure picked a fine time to run out of Marlboros.”

Lyle was waiting. He took the wheel and drove the six of them in the direction of Bienville National Forest in the middle of the state.

Herb and Lucille Mobry, standing side by side looking out one of their living room windows, watched their rainswept departure. “Our Ruthie-girl's leaving the nest,” Lucille had sniffled.

“It was only a matter of time before she'd want to try her wings, Sister.”

“I hope California treats her nice.”

“Ruth can take care of herself. She'll do just fine.”

“Do you think she'll call us now and then, Brother?”

“Of course she will.” Herb paused. “But regardless, we should probably go ahead and rent out that old trailer. Ruth's boss at the casino, Ms. Colthurst, said one of her new cocktail waitresses is looking for a place. A real nice girl. Kind of quiet.”

“Quiet? Well, we can't have that, Herb.”

“Why?”

“Because Ruth has spoiled me for girls who speak up for themselves. We'll have to pull this new one out of her shell.”

“If you say so, Lucille.”

“Jane, honey, do you have any more of those little prepackaged cheese and crackers?” asked Carrie. “I've got the munchy-belly.”

“Check the snack sack. I think it's up there with you.”

“Here it is,” said Carrie. “Molly's using it for a footrest. Molly, pick up your feet and let me look in the snack sack.”

“What's that smell?” asked Ruth. “All of a sudden the car smells like old bananas.”

“It's old bananas,” said Carrie. “I was gonna bake us some banana bread when we got to the woods. They always say the riper the banana the better the bread.”

“Well, they're stinking up the whole car,” concluded Ruth. “Lyle, how can see anything through that windshield?”

“It ain't easy,” admitted Lyle. Lyle turned on the radio and skittered around the dial to find a weather report.

“Oh stop it right there—please, please, please,” said Molly. “I love that song. It's from
Ghost
—it's what they played when Patrick Swayze was trying to help Demi Moore turn her pot.”

“Not
turn
her pot—
throw
her pot,” corrected Ruth from the backseat. Ruth turned to Maggie and said, “But let's give her the benefit of the doubt since she's on industrial-strength tranquilizers.”

Molly didn't hear this. “And—and—and—all the clay got all over the place because she was hungering for his touch.”

“Lonely river flow to the sea, to the sea,” sang Carrie pensively.

“Like us,” said Ruth. “All this rain is gonna take us right out to sea. Are you sure we shouldn't pull over for a few minutes?”

“Sure,” said Lyle. “Let me just find a place.”

“Lonely rivers say ‘wait for me, yes for me,'” paraphrased Carrie tunefully.

“I cannot believe LeAnn Rimes was only four when she sang this,” marveled Molly.

Ruth muttered, “
Fourteen
. Not four.”

Molly went on, “Only four years old and singing this very adult song about rivers and love and shit.”

“She was
fourteen
,” muttered Ruth.

“Indulge her,” whispered Maggie. “It's just nice to see her finally calmed down.”

“
I
could use a Valium right now,” said Jane, looking apprehensively out the window. “I don't like this. I don't like this one bit.” Jane, who was sitting directly behind her brother, leaned forward. “Lyle, really now, honey, find a place to pull over.”

“I'm trying to. It's just farms and fields—I mean, from what I can see, and I can't see much.”

LeAnn Rimes was gone. She had been replaced by a man giving a dire weather report. “The National Weather Bureau has issued a tornado warning for the following counties in northern Mississippi—”

“Well, we can't just pull off to the side of the road,” said Ruth. “Not if there are tornadoes all around.”

Lyle groaned. “Well, what do ya'll want me to do—pull over or not pull over?”

Several opinions went up at once, while Molly said, “Do you think Patrick Swayze has soft and supple girl hands? Some say this, but I never noticed.”

Jane raised her voice above everyone else's: “Everybody shut up and help Lyle find some safe place to pull off. The wind's picking up. This isn't normal wind. It's blowing sideways.”

Jane was correct in her observation. The car was being slammed in the side by forty- and fifty-mile-an-hour wind gusts. Lyle was having a difficult time keeping the Duster on the road.

“On second thought, Carrie,” said Jane, nervously, “why don't you keep on singing?”

“And help take our minds off the fact that we're all about to die,” commented Ruth in an equally nervous voice.

“I've never been in a tornado,” admitted Molly, peering calmly through the passenger window. “I've never even
seen
one except in the movies. Like—like
Twister
, with all the cows and tractors and stuff flying around. But maybe there are also tornadoes like the one in
The Wizard of Oz
that picked up Dorothy's house and set it down all nice and easy in that place where all the midgets lived.”