The Stories of Richard Bausch (24 page)

She smiled. “What?”

“Everything happened so fast.”

“You looked so funny, lying on the sidewalk with that crate of oranges under your legs. You know what it said on the side? ‘Fresh from Sunny Florida.’ Think of it. I mean nobody got killed, so it’s funny. Right?”

“Jesus Christ,” he said.

“Michael, it’s over. We’re safe. We’ll laugh about it eventually, you’ll see.”

And there was nothing he could say. He sat down and stared at the television, the man there talking in reasonable tones about a killer tornado in Lawrence, Kansas. She walked over and kissed him on the top of his head.

“Silly,” she said.

He turned to watch her go back down the hall, and a moment later he heard the shower running. He turned the television off, and made his way back to the entrance of the bathroom. The door was ajar. Peering in, he saw the vague shape of her through the light curtain. He stood there, one hand gripping the door, the rage working in him. He watched the shape move.

She was thinking that it was not she who had run away; that there was no reason for him to be angry with her, or disappointed in her. Clearly, if he was unhappy, he was unhappy with himself. She could not be blamed for that. And how fascinating it was that when she thought of her earlier doubts, they seemed faraway and small, like the evanescent worries of some distant other self, a childhood self. Standing in the hot stream, she looked along her slender arms, and admired the smooth contours of the bone and sinew there. It was so good to be alive. The heat was wonderful on the small muscles of her back. She was reasonably certain that she had dealt with her own disappointment and upset, had simply insisted on the truth. And he could do whatever he wanted, finally, because she was already putting the whole unpleasant business behind her.

One catastrophe after
another, her father said, meaning her. She knew she wasn’t supposed to hear it. But she was alone in that big drafty church house, with just him and Iris, the maid. He was an Episcopal minister, a widower. Other women came in, one after another, all on approval, though no one ever said anything—Missy was seven, and he expected judgments from her about who he would settle on to be her mother. Terrifying. She lay in the dark at night, dreading the next visit, women looking her over, until she understood that they were nervous around her, and she saw what she could do. Something hardened inside her, and it was beautiful because it made the fear go away. Ladies with a smell of fake flowers about them came to the house. She threw fits, was horrid to them all.

One April evening, Iris was standing on the back stoop, smoking a cigarette. Missy looked at her through the screen door. “What you gawkin’ at, girl?” Iris said. She laughed as if it wasn’t much fun to laugh. She was dark as the spaces between the stars, and in the late light there was almost a blue cast to her brow and hair. “You know what kind of place you livin’ in?”

“Yes.”

Iris blew smoke. “You don’t know
yet.”
She smoked the cigarette and didn’t talk for a time, staring at Missy. “Girl, if he settles on somebody, you gonna be sorry to see me go?”

Missy didn’t answer. It was secret. People had a way of saying things to her that she thought she understood, but couldn’t be sure of. She was quite precocious. Her mother had been dead since the day she was born. It was Missy’s fault. She didn’t remember that anyone had said this to her, but she knew it anyway, in her bones.

Iris smiled her white smile, but now Missy saw tears in her eyes. This fascinated her. It was the same feeling as knowing that her daddy was a minister, but walked back and forth sleepless in the sweltering nights. If your heart was peaceful, you didn’t have trouble going to sleep. Iris had said something like that very thing to a friend of hers who stopped by on her way to the Baptist Church. Missy hid behind doors, listening. She did this kind of thing a lot. She watched everything, everyone. She saw when her father pushed Iris up against the wall near the front door and put his face on hers. She saw how disturbed they got, pushing against each other. And later she heard Iris talking to her Baptist friend. “He ain’t always thinkin’ about the Savior.” The Baptist friend gasped, then whispered low and fast, sounding upset.

Now Iris tossed the cigarette and shook her head, the tears still running. Missy curtsied without meaning it. “Child,” said Iris, “what you gonna grow up to be and do? You gonna be just like all the rest of them?”

“No,” Missy said. She was not really sure who the rest of them were.

“Well, you’ll miss me until you
forget
me,” said Iris, wiping her eyes.

Missy pushed open the screen door and said, “Hugs.” It was just to say it.

When Iris went away and swallowed poison and got taken to the hospital, Missy’s father didn’t sleep for five nights. Peeking from her bedroom door, with the chilly, guilty dark looming behind her, she saw him standing crooked under the hallway light, running his hands through his thick hair. His face was twisted; the shadows made him look like someone else. He was crying.

She didn’t cry. And she did not feel afraid. She felt very gigantic and strong. She had caused everything.

Mcrae picked up
a hitcher on his way west. It was a young woman, carrying a paper bag and a leather purse, wearing jeans and a shawl—which she didn’t take off, though it was more than ninety degrees out, and Mcrae had no air conditioning. He was driving an old Dodge Charger with a bad exhaust system, and one long crack in the wraparound windshield. He pulled over for her and she got right in, put the leather purse on the seat between them, and settled herself with the paper bag on her lap between her hands. He had just crossed into Texas.

“Where you headed,” he said.

She said, “What about you?”

“Nevada, maybe.”

“Why maybe?”

And that fast he was answering
her
questions. “I just got out of the air force,” he told her, though this wasn’t exactly true. The air force had put him out with a dishonorable discharge after four years at Leavenworth for assaulting a staff sergeant. He was a bad character. He had a bad temper that
had got him into a load of trouble already and he just wanted to get out west, out to the wide-open spaces. It was just to see it, really. He had the feeling people didn’t require as much from a person way out where there was that kind of room. He didn’t have any family now. He had five thousand dollars from his father’s insurance policy, and he was going to make the money last him awhile. He said, “I’m sort of undecided about a lot of things.”

“Not me,” she said.

“You figured out where you were going,” he said.

“You could say that.”

“So where might that be.”

She made a fist and then extended her thumb, and turned it over. “Under,” she said; “down.”

“Excuse me?”

“Does the radio work?” she asked, reaching for it.

“It’s on the blink,” he said.

She turned the knob anyway, then sat back and folded her arms over the paper bag.

He took a glance at her. She was skinny and long-necked, and her hair was the color of water in a metal pail. She looked just old enough for high school.

“What’s in the bag?” he said.

She sat up a little. “Nothing. Another blouse.”

“Well, so what did you mean back there?”

“Back where?”

“Look,” he said, “we don’t have to do any talking if you don’t want to.”

“Then what will we do?”

“Anything you want,” he said.

“What if I just want to sit here and let you drive me all the way to Nevada?”

“That’s fine,” he said. “That’s just fine.”

“Well, I won’t do that. We can talk.”

“Are
you
going to Nevada?” he asked.

She gave a little shrug of her shoulders. “Why not?”

“All right,” he said, and for some reason he offered her his hand. She looked at it, and then smiled at him, and he put his hand back on the wheel.

It got a
little awkward almost right away. The heat was awful, and she sat there sweating, not saying much. He never thought he was very smooth or anything, and he had been in prison: it had been a long time since he had found himself in the company of a woman. Finally she fell asleep, and for a few miles he could look at her without worrying about anything but staying on the road. He decided that she was kind of good-looking around the eyes and mouth. If she ever filled out, she might be something. He caught himself wondering what might happen, thinking of sex. A girl who traveled alone like this was probably pretty loose. Without quite realizing it, he began to daydream about her, and when he got aroused by the daydream he tried to concentrate on figuring his chances, playing his cards right, not messing up any opportunities—but being gentlemanly, too. He was not the sort of person who forced himself on young women. She slept very quietly, not breathing loudly or sighing or moving much; and then she simply sat up and folded her arms over the bag again and stared out at the road.

“God,” she said, “I went out.”

“You hungry?” he asked.

“No.”

“What’s your name?” he said. “I never got your name.”

“Belle Starr,” she said, and, winking at him, she made a clicking sound out of the side of her mouth.

“Belle Starr,” he said.

“Don’t you know who Belle Starr was?”

All he knew was that it was a familiar-sounding name. “Belle Starr.”

She put her index finger to the side of his head and said, “Bang.”

“Belle Starr,” he said.

“Come on,” she said. “Annie Oakley. Wild Bill Hickok.”

“Oh,” Mcrae said. “Okay.”

“That’s me,” she said, sliding down in the seat. “Belle Starr.”

“That’s not your real name.”

“It’s the only one I go by these days.”

They rode on in silence for a time.

“What’s
your
name?” she said.

He told her.

“Irish?”

“I never thought about it.”

“Where you from, Mcrae?”

“Washington, D.C.”

“Long way from home.”

“I haven’t been there in years.”

“Where
have
you been?”

“Prison,” he said. He hadn’t known he would say it, and now that he had, he kept his eyes on the road. He might as well have been posing for her; he had an image of himself as he must look from the side, and he shifted his weight a little, sucked in his belly. When he stole a glance at her he saw that she was simply gazing out at the Panhandle, one hand up like a visor to shade her eyes.

“What about you?” he said, and felt like somebody in a movie—two people with a past come together on the open road. He wondered how he could get the talk around to the subject of love.

“What about
me?”

“Where’re you from?”

“I don’t want to bore you with all the facts,” she said.

“I don’t mind,” Mcrae said. “I got nothing else to do.”

“I’m from way up North.”

“Okay,” he said, “you want me to guess?”

“Maine,” she said. “Land of Moose and Lobster.” He said, “Maine. Well, now.”