Casualties (23 page)

Fall 1976

Ruth is sixteen, burning with humiliation that her younger brother must teach her to drive. She squeezes back tears of rage as her grandfather tosses the keys to Kevin in defeat.

“I'm too old for this,” he grumbles, climbing out of the passenger seat of the old Bel Air and slamming the door behind him.

Ruth glares at her grandfather. “You kept grabbing the wheel!”

“Jesus H. Christ. If I hadn't've, you'd've killed us both!” He tosses the keys to Kevin, who's just come out of the barn. “Here, it's your job now.”

“He doesn't even have a license yet!” Ruth does not care that Kevin has been driving one vehicle or another on the farm since he was nine years old.

“I won't tell if you won't. Just stick to the back roads.”

Kevin slouches next to her in the car, skinny, all knobs from his knees to his Adam's apple, red hair exploding like dandelion fluff. His calm, low steady voice drones in her right ear.

“Ditch on your right.” He closes his eyes when Ruth jerks the wheel toward the center of the road and then jerks again as she sees the opposite ditch approaching.

“No need to grip that wheel so hard, you've got to feel the road.”

Ruth grips tighter. It is mid-October but the air is Indian summer warm. Every time her brother speaks in that calm voice, it feels even hotter.

“How can I feel anything in this boat?”

“She's big but she's more sensitive than you think,” Kevin says.

“Jesus, Kev. It's just a car. Stop talking about it like it's a person.”

“Someone's got to watch out for her.”

She's embarrassed by the old car her father loved and her grandfather kept after he died thinking it would be perfect for Kevin and her. Its rounded fenders and aqua paint make it look like a cartoon next to the Camaros and Mustangs that belong to the kids from town. The freckles of rust scream age and no money. When she gets her license, she drives the old Bel Air like she's punishing it—and punishing Kevin for his unwitting power over her in the months before her driver's test.

“Slow down,” her brother pleads when she drives them to school, although he likes going fast enough in other cars.

“No.” Ruth steps on the gas.

They lost the tire just as Casey decided he couldn't take another minute of Ruth's driving. Her foot had nailed the pedal to the floor ever since they left Denver. She'd let the car more or less steer itself while she fiddled with the radio or checked the atlas, to see how far they had come and how long it would take them to get to Ogallala. He was about to tell her to watch the fucking road when the Jaguar lurched to the left, its front end shaking so hard Casey braced himself against the dashboard, sure they were going to flip.

A few minutes later, they came to a rattling but controlled stop on the right shoulder and the car went still. Casey pried his hands off the dashboard and tried to swallow, but his throat was as dry as the Mojave at midday.

“Are you trying to kill us?”

Ruth ignored him, but her hands still gripped the steering wheel and her chin trembled.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“It's not my fault,” Ruth said, angry now. She twisted to undo her seat belt.

“Not your fault? Was I driving? Whose fucking car is this, anyway?”

Ruth shoved open the door, then slammed it behind her. Casey hit the release on his own seat belt and started to stand before he realized that the faker was lying on the floor. He'd peeled off the socks and the liner, too, so the stump could get some air and he could relax.

Ruth was standing on the edge of the paved road, her sunglasses on top of her head, staring at the driver's-side wheel.

“It's down to the rim,” she said. She sounded more mad than scared. He'd been scared enough, apparently, for both of them.

“Shit.” Casey's head was pounding. He twisted in his seat and reached for the liner. She was staring at his stump.

“What?” he barked, looking up. “It's just flesh and bone. At least I've got a fucking spare. Where's yours?”

What had he gotten himself into?

“Come on. Just open the damn trunk.” Casey heard the jangle of her keys and the bleep of the remote lock. He cursed but he couldn't go any faster. Liner, socks, socket, pin, click. Shit, he was sore. He pushed himself out of the passenger seat.

Ruth stood frozen in front of the open trunk. He limped over to her and glanced inside. A Marine's duffel. A bunch of towels. This was what she was so protective about? He shook his head and began to reach for the strap of the big canvas bag.

“Don't.” Ruth grabbed the strap from his hands.

“It's heavy. I'll get it.”

“I said,
don't touch it
.” She hauled on the straps and staggered a few steps to the side of the road before placing it gently down.

Casey grabbed the towels and saw a metal box. He squinted at the sticker in the corner. But Ruth got to it first and clutched it to her chest. Her eyes bored into him.

“Jesus Christ, what's in there?” He started to say more, but the ferocity in Ruth's eyes stopped the words in his throat. He looked behind him at the duffel and then back at Ruth. Then he limped over to the bag and read the name printed along the side:
R. O'Connell.
What the hell?

“Whose is this?”

Ruth shook her head and hugged the box.

An eighteen-wheeler roared past them. Strands of Ruth's hair lifted in the blast of hot air, but she did not move. She scared him, the way she was so still. Casey stepped closer to her and peered into her face.

“What's in the box, Ruth?”

Her eyes flickered. She looked down and hugged the box to her chest. A gust of wind nearly carried her words away. “Robbie. His . . . ashes. My son.”

My son.
Numb, Casey watched Ruth look down at the box in her arms. Another gust whipped a short strand of red hair across her cheekbones, pale now in the green-gray light of the late afternoon. Thunder sounded in the distance and seconds later, fat wet drops thudded down.

Casey turned and grabbed the straps of the duffel. Ruth rushed to the driver's-side door and placed her burden carefully in the seat. Her son. He'd joked about boy toys and she'd been driving her dead child around. Shame licked at him. He placed the duffel into the trunk and pried loose the jack and the wrench stored there. Then he reached back in for the little temporary tire. Nothing more than a hard rubber doughnut. Ruth was already drenched. Rain streamed down her arms and her new pants hung like sodden tarps against her thighs. “Get in the car,” he said gently.

She shook her head.

Casey hesitated, then nodded. They were already soaked; besides it was starting to let up. Instead of pelting, the rain was now showering, soft and steady, running off the road in sheets and swirling at
their ankles as they crouched. Casey stooped but couldn't get down far enough unless he sat down. The faker didn't like the rain; it kept slipping around on him. No cars went by. The trucks that had blocked their vision for miles had disappeared. She was the only help he had.

“Here, hold these until I ask for them,” he said, handing her the lug nuts. Water sluiced through his fingers; the nuts slipped from his hands to hers. She caught them and then looked up, waiting. Casey could not look her in the eye. He'd taken her money, played her without wanting to think about what awful thing had happened that would make a woman like her go along with him. Most likely her son had been killed in a desert thousands of miles away while hundreds of other kids his age were drinking beer and jacking off in a college dorm somewhere. Guilt, infused with an old jealous anger, welled up inside him, cold, mean, and familiar. He lined up the doughnut and held his hands out for the lug nuts she still held. The first one slipped from his hand into the mud.

Fuck.

Well, they'd have to get through this, but as soon as they got to a town, he'd give her enough money to do whatever she had to do, and then find a way to get back to Vegas where he couldn't do any more harm. He felt dirty, the way he'd felt when he left New Jersey in the first place.

“Here, this will help,” she said a little louder. She wrapped both hands around the long end of the wrench and when he closed the jaws around the nut, she pushed down. Her shoulder leaned into his when they repeated the move. With a few more jerks they secured the temporary spare. They were both shivering and wet. Casey took the jack from Ruth and pointed her toward the passenger door.

“Look at the atlas and see where we are while I put this in the trunk,” Casey said. He dragged the bad tire to the trunk and heaved it in.

“We're about fifty miles from Ogallala,” she said a few minutes later as he squeezed into the driver's seat, leaning back on the seat
to squash the duffel and the other bags. They seemed to push back just as hard. Ruth was bowed over the atlas. The metal box was in her lap.

“Ruth.”

“We could get there by seven o'clock, earlier if we make good time.” The words chattered out of her.

“Ruth, I'm sorry.” He started to reach toward her arm but froze when she looked up at him. Her cheeks were streaked with rain and mud. Her hair was plastered back like a boy's. Her eyes were empty of anger and full of tears. He closed his fingers around her arm, and then he just squeezed once, gently.

“I'm sorry.”

She nodded once and looked down at the atlas. A glob of water ran from her hairline down the front of her nose and dangled off the end before plopping onto the page in front of her. On another day, Casey might have laughed. Instead, he turned the key in the ignition.

“You ready? I'm going to take it nice and slow.”

Ruth stared at him a moment, eyes still watery. Then she placed the map carefully between them and clasped both hands around the box.

“Yes.”

It was almost a whisper. She did not say another word for forty miles. The only sounds were the constant thump of the small hard spare and the smack of water against the Jaguar every time a car passed them on the way to Ogallala.

The pimpled kid behind the desk at Lilly's Wayside Motel frowned at Casey.

“We're full up.”

“That's not what your sign says.”

“That's what I say.” Small blue eyes settled on Ruth, snagging on her bruised lip and eye before flashing back to Casey. His stub nose twitched. “You're messing up the floor.”

Ruth knew she needed to do something before they ended up sleeping in the car. This was the fourth place they'd tried. She'd hardly noticed when they stopped at the first three, just sat in the car and watched Casey limp in and storm out of the little offices of the small motels that lined the highway outside Ogallala. “Some kind of rodeo's in town,” he said when she asked what was going on. “The summer's their busy time. The rain. Everyone got here before us, I guess.”

The words fired out of his mouth at a rapid clip, but there was no energy behind them. His face was drained of color; it was all
shades of gray in the fading light, paler across his forehead, smudged charcoal under his eyes. The flesh of his good leg, stark white, shivered beneath the hem of his wet shorts. He needed help. She'd gotten out of the car with him when they pulled into the parking lot of the fourth motel.

She started to speak to the boy, trying to temper Casey's irritation. Casey grabbed Ruth's arm and held her back.

“The fucking sign outside says
vacancy
. You're either a liar or a fuckup. Which is it?”

“What's the problem, Kyle?” said a husky female voice from behind the counter.

“Nothin', Aunt Lil.” The boy spoke over his shoulder and moved aside at the same time. A square-jawed woman with strong shoulders rolled her wheelchair from behind the counter to the entry area that served as a lobby. She squinted through glasses first at Casey, then at Ruth, then at the path of dirt they'd tracked over the linoleum tiles. She sighed and then smiled.

“Sorry, folks. My nephew didn't mean to be rude, he's just frustrated is all. This'll be the third time today he's had to mop this floor. It's been raining off and on all day. You two must've got caught, huh?” She was speaking to both of them but looking at Ruth. Ruth knew she was taking in the bruises just as her nephew had done.

Ruth removed herself from Casey's grasp but left her hand on his arm, ready to check him if he went off again. She smiled at the woman and spoke calmly.

“I'm sorry. We're a mess. We lost a tire and had to change it in the rain.” She glanced at Casey's scowl and hoped he'd keep his mouth closed. She brushed her hand across her bruised face. “This is . . . not what it looks like. . . . You won't have any trouble.”

The woman in the wheelchair was silent for a moment. Her eyes, some light color that went with her faded blond hair, squinted in
appraisal. Ruth held her gaze. The woman named Lil finally nodded.

“We've got one more room open, Kyle. Give them that one.”

“Thank you,” Ruth said. “How much?”

“Eighty dollars a night, pay up front,” the boy grumbled.

“Thank you,” Ruth said.

“You're lucky it worked out,” Lil said. “We've only got the one left. Things are busy this time of year what with . . .”

“Yeah, yeah, we heard all about it,” Casey interrupted, but he didn't sound angry, only tired. He dug into his pocket for the cash they'd need. Ruth watched the boy's unfortunately small eyes blink behind his glasses as Casey tried to separate a hundred-dollar bill from the sodden roll in his pocket. Ruth reached over and extracted the bill. She handed it across the counter and took the key and change from the boy.

“Is there any place nearby to get some food?”

Ruth directed the question at the woman in the wheelchair, who had already started to turn back toward the desk. Lil stopped and gestured to the shelves behind her. Packets of soup, a freezer down below with some frozen dinners, a coffee urn. Beer and soda lined the shelves of a small glass cooler.

“There's a microwave right here you can use to heat it up. Of course, if you're in the mood for something fancier, there are some restaurants up at the lake or back in town, but it's kind of late. Probably have to get a move on if that's what you want.” Ruth thanked the woman again and followed Casey out the door.

They unloaded the Jaguar in silence, emptying the backseat armful by armful. Casey reached for the duffel but then paused and looked at her, apparently uncertain.

She hesitated, then nodded back. “Thanks.”

The last thing Ruth retrieved from the car was the metal box, which she placed in the room, on top of a low dresser with two
drawers. She paused, her hands resting on the box. Beneath it was a thin strip of yellowed cloth that did not hide the chipped veneer of the dresser. Not much but it was better than the floor. She arranged her purse and the plastic Walmart bags along the wall so that there was a clear path around the single queen-sized bed.

When she turned around, Casey was standing by the window, his bag next to his ankles. He stared out through the blinds to the parking lot. His fingers tapped against the windowsill, short nervous thwacks.

“What's wrong?”

“Nothing. Just wet and tired, that's all,” Casey said without turning around. “Go ahead, you take the first shower.”

The words were kind enough but his tone was detached, verging on impatient. He seemed anxious for her to leave the room.

Then it hit her. He was going to leave. Hours ago she'd thought she'd welcome the chance to get away from him; now she only knew she did not want to be alone. At least not tonight.

“No, it's all right. You go first.”

He faced her. “Look at you, Ruth. You're freezing.”

“You're not in much better shape yourself,” she said. “You won't get far like that.”

He lifted his eyes, stared across the room into hers, and then his gaze slid from hers to something behind her right shoulder. “What are you talking about?”

Ruth said nothing.

Casey straightened. He dug into his pocket and pulled out the keys to the Jaguar.

“You worried I'll steal your car? Here.”

She had not thought about the car or money. She had not thought at all. She'd picked up the scent of abandonment and fought back.

“Forget it,” Ruth said. Avoiding his eyes, she stepped carefully around the bags on the floor and entered the bathroom. She shut
the door behind her and flipped on the light switch. Weak yellow light filled the windowless room and turned the grape-colored vinyl shower curtain a muddy brown.

“Get a grip,” she muttered to the face staring back at her from the chipped mirror above the sink.

—

Casey watched the bathroom door close behind Ruth, then sagged against the wall. He pressed his palms against his temples. His headache pushed back. He needed some pills. He needed rest. He needed to be where nothing was expected of him. That was the plan he'd made in the rain, leave Ruth the car and some money and just get out. Now he was miles from a town where he could hitch a ride or even find another place to hole up and sleep. The day was over, the room was already dark. Casey pushed himself upright and looked around for the Walmart bags. He stooped and pawed through the pile of bags and Ruth's belongings on the floor. Where were they? He rummaged through them, his ear cocked toward the bathroom, his mind on Ruth's tired face when he tried to give her the keys. Guilt fought with the pain in his head.

He seized one of the plastic bags. “Shit. Shit.” He threw the bag across the room. Women's underwear, toothpaste, and other things she'd gotten for herself spilled onto the dingy carpet. She must have the bag with his stuff. He dug into his pockets and pulled out a soggy, nearly empty pack with a few cigarettes and one and a half sodden joints. He clapped his pockets. No matches.

She'd probably be in the bathroom all night. He jammed the pack back in his pocket, grabbed his bag, stalked to the door, and pulled it open. Rain sheeted down; small lakes had already formed across the parking lot. A violent longing for the scorched sand and dry air of the desert came over him. Casey stepped back inside, slammed the door shut, and flung himself onto the bed. One more night, and then he was out of here.

—

Ruth heard the door slam seconds after she turned off the shower. The sound echoed inside her like a rifle shot. She wrapped the towel around her shoulders and hugged herself.

Why should she care whether Casey stayed? He was a stranger, only in this for his own purposes, whatever they were.

She pulled on dry clothes, hung the towel on the rod behind the toilet, and snatched up the plastic bag full of his headache medicine and cigarettes that she'd taken by mistake. Maybe she'd start smoking. She gripped the doorknob and pushed open the door.

Casey stared back from the bed, his face a mosaic of impatience and resignation. “Finally. I need some of those pills. My head is killing me.”