Casualties (21 page)

But deliverance, if it came at all, would not be that easy or that cheap.

She just needed a little more time. She wasn't ready to call her family. She wasn't ready to go home, either. She wheeled around and came eye to eye with the book she'd seen earlier, the one Robbie had loved. She reached up and ran her finger down the spine of the book.

“Hey! Don't touch that. What gives you the right to touch my stuff?” Casey limped toward her and grabbed the book off the shelf.

“Nothing . . . I didn't think . . .” She sank back, unnerved by his reaction. “I'm sorry.”

He stuffed the book under his arm silently. His jaw was clenched tight. She could see the muscle working. His shoulders rose and fell as he took first one deep breath, then another. He was trying to calm down.

“Forget it. Just don't do it again, okay?”

Another trickle of sweat coursed down her spine. “Don't worry, I won't.”

Ruth watched him until his shoulders relaxed. She would have to figure out her next move somehow. “I need some cash,” she said.

He squinted at her and cocked his head slightly, as though she'd lapsed into a foreign language.

“I gave you plenty,” she went on. “You don't need all of it. You're walking around just fine.”

“Forget it.”

“I can't leave here any other way. Look, I'll pay you back. I just need time.”

“No.”

She needed him to listen. “You can't leave me here.”

“That's where you're wrong.”

Casey pulled open a door to a narrow closet that Ruth hadn't noticed before. He yanked out a blue canvas bag and began to root through the clothes in a drawer.

“It'll only be a few days. I'll pay interest.”

That stopped him. She heard him clear his throat. “Out of curiosity, where would you go if you had the money?”

Ruth looked up to see him holding a blue and lime green Hawaiian shirt. Good. He was asking questions. A negotiation was still possible. She struggled to articulate what it was she wanted. Anywhere but San Diego, was all she could think of. Anywhere she could be a stranger with no one asking questions she couldn't answer,
giving her advice she didn't want. A place that didn't taunt her with what she had lost. She just wanted a little more time with Robbie.

She shrugged. “Anywhere but California.”

He seemed to make a decision about the shirt. He set it back on the peg and pulled off the one he was wearing, using it to rub the sweat off his chest and arms before letting it drop to the floor. Ruth was startled by the sudden paleness of his skin and by the muscles that webbed beneath it across his shoulders and down his arms. He'd looked too skinny to have much strength. There was something both young and old in the way he hunched forward, self-conscious but defiant about his naked chest. He shrugged into the clean shirt and began to button it.

“Is the Jag yours?” he said.

She nodded.

He stepped to the screen door and stared out. “I've gotta tell you, Ruth, I'm confused. You've got money, but you can't get to it. You've got people who can help you, but you won't call them. Just how would you pay me back?”

“I'll make some calls, get my cards and ID back. In a day or two, I'll be able to walk up to another cash machine and give it to you just as I did before. I could have it wired from my bank to yours if you want.”

His lopsided grin revealed the gap between his front teeth. “You have any collateral? Something in that trunk, maybe?”

The thought of this stranger touching the box or any of Robbie's things made her want to strike him. A protective, helpless rage gathered inside her.

“No,” she said. “Nothing.”

—

Casey trudged toward Lenny's trailer, his mind working over the opportunity before him. He felt sorry for Ruth in a way he could not quite put his finger on, but the woman kept bringing him
luck. Here he was, ready to spend big bucks on a plane ticket and along comes a door-to-door ride and more money. As he made his way past the other trailers, he began to construct a mental checklist. He needed enough gas from Belva's pump to get to Vegas, where they could fill up more cheaply. They'd need a map and some food. Most important, he needed to stay sharp.

He paused on Lenny's doorstep and glanced back at his camper. Its shadow had shifted with the waning sun, even though the air had not yet cooled. This Ruth woman was not thinking clearly, that was for sure, and she sure as hell was hiding something. She'd just about jumped out of her skin when he joked about the things in her car's trunk. Didn't every game hold some unknowns, though? He could handle it.

“What's up, Case?” Lenny stood behind his screen door, a beer in one hand, the television blaring behind him.

“Taking off,” Casey said as he pushed open the door. “Just wanted to say so long and ask you to pick up my mail. I'll call you.”

“How long you gonna be gone?” Lenny settled himself back into the recliner and gestured for Casey to sit.

Casey shook his head. “No time to visit.”

“What about the lady?”

“She doesn't know it yet, but she's my ride.”

“You guys getting friendly?”

Casey laughed. “Let's just say we're scratching each other's back.”

He was still figuring it out. He'd have to hang on to his money and the keys. She wasn't in good shape now, but once she was, he didn't want her stealing off and leaving him somewhere in the middle of fuckin' Kansas or some other purgatory he had no easy way of leaving.

“It's hot. Got a beer to spare?”

“Over there, help yourself.” Lenny pointed to the nook that served as a kitchen, but Casey was already there with his hand on
the refrigerator door. “Sure you don't want to sit a bit? Nice and cool here by the AC.”

Casey leaned forward and pushed himself up. “No, Len. Gotta go.” He remembered the El Camino. “Hey, keep Belva away from my car. All it needs is a tire. You fix it, you can drive it.”

Lenny took a long pull from the can. “Where you headed?”

“East. New Jersey.” There, he made it real.

“Nearly three thousand miles.” Lenny settled back in the recliner, pulled the lever, and stared at Casey over the tops of his bare, gnarled toes. “A long time to be locked up in a car with a crazy woman.”

He took another pull from the can and squinted like he was taking aim at something over Casey's shoulder, out beyond the open door. “Better watch out. She already tried to run you over once. She could do it again.”

—

Ruth slouched in the passenger seat of the Jaguar watching Casey and a fat, blond-wigged woman argue about gas. Their voices blew through the open window on a gust of hot dusty air.

“You're rippin' me off, Belva. I put exactly ten gallons in there. Give me my change.”

“Price has gone up. Didn't have a chance to change the prices on the pumps.” She didn't even bother to look at Casey. Instead, she stared at Ruth through the longest set of false eyelashes that Ruth had ever seen.

Ruth stared back through a haze of misgivings and exhaustion. When Casey stalked out earlier—to “take care of a few things,” he'd said—she had curled up on the pull-down bed and given up trying to think. If he gave her enough money for gas and a hotel, that would be a start. The heat bore down on her; her throat was dry again and her stomach, empty as it was, still felt as though it were going to erupt. She was still huddled on the bed, her BlackBerry silent and
waiting beside her, when Casey limped back into the camper and laid out his proposal to drive together across the country.

“My money, your car.” He'd cover her expenses and, when they got where he was going, she'd come up with the cash to pay him back. For this, he would charge a fee: three thousand dollars.

“It's a win-win, Ruth.”

She'd spent more money than that in one day for a new suit and a purse. If she said yes, she'd at least have more time to think things through, and she wouldn't be stuck in the trailer he called home. She nodded her assent. “I need shoes,” she'd said.

A pair of men's sneakers was produced from the bottom of the closet. When she stood, the waist of the shorts slipped to midthigh. Without speaking, he'd dug through a drawer, pulled out a couple of bandanas, and made her a belt. Then he'd picked up his bag and her computer and walked out the door. Ruth watched Casey wrangle with the fat woman. This was exactly the kind of “win-win” that she helped Don create for his clients: one “winner” always made out better than the other. Casey would control the money, the car keys, and how fast they traveled. He hadn't even said where they were going. All she knew was that they were headed east.

As Casey shook his fist at the fat woman one more time and walked toward the car, another fragment of memory slipped through the wall Ruth had erected around the previous night. She was lying in the camper bed, as his hands washed her down, dabbing gently at the cut on her lip, sluicing water over her breasts, ribs, hips, and thighs and mopping it up with the care, if not the skill, of a nurse. Those same hands had lifted her up from the pavement in the casino parking lot.

The car door opened. Ruth glanced up at him and then at his fingers closing over the steering wheel. She'd made her choice. For now, she was in Casey's hands.

They were two hours out of Las Vegas when Casey conceded that Lenny had been right. He should have slept one more night in Cactus Gardens and gotten a fresh start in the morning. He squinted in the glare of an oncoming semi, unconsciously easing off the gas and veering away from it.

“Are you all right?” Ruth had said little since she'd agreed to get in the car, but more than once she'd reached for the dashboard as if to brace herself.

“Fine.”

“You don't seem fine.” Her voice was stronger now. She no longer sounded like she was scratching out each word on sandpaper. She had been sipping constantly on a bottle of water and had even nibbled some crackers he'd picked up at the gas station in Vegas.

“Okay, time for some ground rules. First, lay off the backseat driving.”

“I didn't say anything about your driving.”

“Next, you don't get to hold the keys until I get my money.”

“Don't you think you'll get tired?”

Now she was pissing him off. Casey gripped the wheel and glared through the windshield. A sign popped up out of nowhere: Cedar City, fifteen miles ahead.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” Ruth said.

Casey said nothing.

“You've got to be kidding,” Ruth said. “You're not even going to stop for that?”

He glanced at her but she was looking straight ahead, her chin thrust out, foot tapping angrily. Good. Let her be mad. At least she shut up.

Twenty minutes later, Casey guided the Jaguar off the highway and into a parking lot shared by a gas station, an all-night hamburger place, and a motel. “See what a good guy I am?” he said.

Ruth shoved open the door before he switched off the ignition and slammed it behind her. Casey watched her take three steps and then stop, flat-footed in the huge sneakers. The crowd at this hour was small. He looked around and saw only a pickup at the gas pumps, and a row of semis sleeping farther back, engines idling.

When Ruth had shuffled into the restroom, Casey pushed open the driver's door, got out, and stretched. His back pinched, and his right leg cramped when he moved. He hadn't driven a car for this long a stretch since he arrived in Nevada a decade ago. The farthest he was used to going was Vegas, where he went once or twice a month for a change of scene and some female company. He had an arrangement with a married cocktail waitress who liked the stump. Casey steadied himself against the Jaguar and reached down to scratch the skin around the edge of the socket. Maybe the waitress would miss him, maybe not. She had other boyfriends.

He stared west but the road beyond the gas pumps was lost in the blackness. He'd landed in Vegas a week after kissing his sleeping daughter good-bye. Emily was five going on six then; he was twenty-five going somewhere, anywhere, where he wouldn't screw up her
life the way he'd screwed up her mother's and his own. Twelve years of no one asking questions, no one expecting much.

When the engine of the pickup rumbled to life, he watched the truck nose out of the rest stop and accelerate east, until the night swallowed it. Soon enough, he'd be following it, all the way to the place and people he'd left behind a dozen years earlier. Fear coiled through his gut. He turned away from the road, elbows on the roof of the Jaguar, and dug his palms into his eyes. If he'd stayed in Cactus Gardens one more night there was a chance he wouldn't have left at all. When he told himself he was going, he'd let out the desire he'd buried. The desire for more than a couple of hours with Emily. The desire to explain things that could never be explained. The desire for absolution. The odds were way against him, but it was too late to stop now; all he had was the hope that had blindsided him when he read Katie's note. Hope, he knew, was the last resort of desperate and very bad card players. Nothing good ever came of it.

—

From the entrance to the restroom, Ruth saw Casey bowed over the roof of the car and pulled back into the shadows. She shivered; the chill in the night air shocked her after the heat of the day, but instinct made her wait. To surprise him when he was low might set him off; she wouldn't want to appear weak if she were in his shoes.

You
are
in his shoes.
It was the kind of thing Robbie would say. She almost felt him here.
Go ahead
, she wanted to tell him.
Tease me.
She would laugh, and think of something silly to say back, something she'd rarely let herself do when he was growing up. She wanted to see his pudgy thirteen-year-old face collapsed in laughter. She wanted to hear that squawking teenage guffaw that used to sear her nerves.

“Hey, Ruth. You still in there?” Casey's voice scattered the echoes of Robbie's laughter. He couldn't see her standing in the shadows of the entrance.

“Cold, huh?” he asked her as she made her way back to the car.

“A little.” Ruth hugged herself, rubbing her hands up and down her bare arms.

“Want some coffee or something?” His voice was gruff, as though reminding both of them that he was still in charge—but she could hear a little gentleness in it too.

Ruth nodded. “Just some tea and some more crackers. Water too, doesn't matter if it is bottled or not. I'll wait in the car.”

She saw him squinting as if he had not heard her correctly. “I'm not waiting on you. If you want something, come and get it yourself.”

She did want something to eat and to drink. She couldn't believe it but she did. She looked down at her clothes, the oversize shoes. When she looked up, he frowned with impatience.

“Shit, Ruth, you think anybody in a place like this is going to care what you look like?”

A flame ignited in Ruth as he trudged away from her toward the restaurant. Maybe he liked humiliating her, watching her clomp around like a clown. Maybe part of him enjoyed her tagging behind him, her lip swollen, one eye black and nearly shut. Ruth would have to look out for herself. She shuffled into the glare of fluorescent lights, toward the smell of deep fryers and grease burning on the grill. She ignored the stares of the woman behind the counter when she asked for a large tea. Then she sat at one of the orange plastic tables bolted to the floor.

Ruth saw belated understanding fill Casey's eyes when he set the tray of food down in front of her. He winced at the sight of her swollen face and then he looked around. The waitress looked back, standing with her hands on her hips as if she were waiting for him to make a move she didn't like.

“Those bruises look pretty bad in this light.”

“They make you look worse,” Ruth said.

“I never touched you.”

“She doesn't know that. She'd call the police in a heartbeat if I
stood up and screamed for help.” A grim satisfaction warmed Ruth. She reached for the paper cup of hot water and the tea bag.

“You won't do that. It would screw things up for you too, wouldn't it?” His voice was steady, unworried. Good for him.

Casey pushed a bag of fries toward her. Ruth put one in her mouth. Her stomach suddenly craved more: more of the salty, greasy skins, the hot potato pulp inside. She reached for the bag.

“Look, we need to talk,” she said.

Casey unwrapped a burger. Half of it disappeared into his mouth in one bite. “What about?” he said between chews.

Ruth's stomach churned. Her appetite sparked surprise, then guilt. She shouldn't feel hunger and thirst when Robbie could feel nothing. She focused on Casey. “Our agreement, for one thing. How much money do you have? Is it enough to get us wherever we're going, or are we going to be relying on you having another accident in a parking lot somewhere?”

“I've got enough.”

“Good. Because I need some clothes and a pair of sunglasses.”

She picked up the last two fries and nibbled while she talked. “Let's be reasonable, okay? I've already agreed to pay you back for every dime you spend. On top of that, you're getting three thousand dollars. Robbery, if you ask me.”

“That's my price.” He leaned back and crossed his arms across his chest.

“I've already agreed to it, haven't I?”

The French fries were gone. She glanced at the tray. Nothing but his empty wrapper, his Dr Pepper, and a couple of packets of sugar. She grabbed both of the little brown envelopes, emptied them into her tea, and looked up. “Is there any cream?”

Casey shook his head. His arms were still folded but she knew she had his attention. “What else?”

“You can't drive straight through all by yourself. You've got to either stop and sleep or let me drive.”

“You're not driving.”

“Fine. Then plan on spending some money for motels. Running water, no roaches. And no smoking in my car.”

He shook his head. “I won't have a dime left.”

“What does it matter? I told you I'd pay you back.”

“Where's all that money come from, Ruth?”

“All that matters is that I have it.”

“Not right now you don't. And for all I know the car isn't even yours.”

Ruth put down her tea and held his gaze. “I thought you were a gambler.”

She saw his eyes narrow as he tried to guess where she was going with this. “I've been known to play a little.”

“So, shut up and play.” She lifted the paper cup to her lips and swallowed, trying not to wince when the tea seeped into the cuts in her lips.

Over the rim of the foam cup she saw he was staring back at her. Then his mouth split into a grin that showed the small gap between his front teeth. He slapped the table in front of him and stood up. “Okay. Let's go.”

—

The steering wheel of the Jaguar barely vibrated under Casey's fingers; the twin blasts from the radio and the air conditioner were not enough to keep him awake. His eyelids were as heavy as old Army blankets and itched like them too. He rubbed his right eye, glanced at the dashboard clock, and shook his head. No point in looking for a motel now; the night was half over. He glanced at Ruth but she was asleep in her seat, huddled like she was cold. Maybe it wasn't a good idea to keep the air on. He peered at the dashboard, trying to find the controls, but his attention was caught by a sign up ahead. An exit. No rest stop but probably another one
of those ranch-only exits, a quiet place he could pull over for a while, take a leak, close his eyes.

A few minutes later, Casey turned off the ignition. The night held its breath. Quietly, he opened the door, limped a few feet into the darkness, and unzipped his fly.

“So long, Dr Pepper,” he thought. He'd been having a silent conversation with himself since they'd gassed up the car and left the rest stop behind, armed with a packet of extra-strength ibuprofen for the headache she was giving him and a map he'd picked up in the gas station. They would get to a town big enough for a Walmart or Target and he'd get a real map, an atlas or something. He nodded into the shadows beyond the dirt road and zipped up his fly.

Ruth was still asleep when he opened the driver's door and settled back into the seat, lowering the back as far as it would go. Not bad. He turned toward her. Her breathing was heavy but regular, not the tortured gasping of the night before. The alcohol was long out of her now. She must be feeling a little better.

He leaned up on one elbow and watched her breathe. Her small breasts were lost inside that old shirt of his. She was nearly forty-seven, he remembered from her license. The hair on her temples looked dusty compared to the bottled red of the rest of it but her body was as skinny as a kid's. One of her arms angled out of its maroon sleeve. The nails at the ends of her fingers were chipped and red, like scabs. She was a mess, that was for sure. He had to hand it to her, though, she'd straightened his ass out. “Shut up and play,” she'd said.

She shivered in her sleep. He glanced into the backseat for his bag. He reached behind the passenger seat, unzipped the bag, and felt inside for something warm. There, his jacket. He yanked it out and spread it over Ruth's shoulders. She rolled away from him, clutching it around her without waking. He nodded at her sleeping form, then leaned back in his own seat. In a few minutes, he began to snore.

—

The snoring woke her. For a few seconds Ruth thought she was in her bedroom in San Diego, Neal deep into the sleep that never failed him. Reflex took over; without opening her eyes she thrust her finger toward the sound to prod him. The motion opened up the pain in her hip and tore back the blanket of oblivion that had, for a few hours, numbed her.

She turned her head and blinked at the stranger sleeping in the driver's seat. Recall swept in swiftly and without mercy. Her boy was dead. She might have saved him. Ruth lay back in the seat, eyes forward, staring through the film of condensation on the windshield. Nothing moved in the murky light. She wanted sleep to take her again. But her eyes wouldn't close. She looked from Casey's sleeping bulk to the droplets of water on the windshield and back to her hands, which had twined together as if they were hanging on to each other for dear life.