The idea of Le Loup touching me, touching me in any way, propels me to the truck.
‘Fist-kisses,’ I say out loud, surprising myself. ‘I want fist-kisses,’ I say again, close my eyes, and knock the rhythmical knock on the truck door, as Pooh had done two years prior.
‘Is that Sam?’ calls a deep nondescript trucker voice. ‘I only want Sam.’
‘It’s Sam.’
‘C’mon in, then,’ says the trucker.
I climb up and pull open the door. The driver’s face is askew to me, buried in a map, just like last time. It’s a different person, though, I’m fairly sure. This one also is wearing a vented nylon baseball cap, an expanded black flight jacket, and a nettlesome-looking patch of beard and mustache, but there’s a decidedly delicate quality to him I can’t quite put my finger on.
‘Is Le Loup in there?’ I point to the curtain hiding the private recesses of the cab.
The driver turns toward me, and a look of confusion crosses his face.
‘You’re Sam?’
I nod, staring at the curtain, ready for Le Loup to burst out like a stripper from a party cake.
‘The one that was a saint?’
I nod again and begin to doubt whether Le Loup is back there. Maybe this guy is going to drive me to him, to another location, one where bodies are easier to dispose of.
‘Shouldn’t we get going? Get this thing over with?’ I stare at the thick canvas hauler gloves on his hands.
‘Well, yeah. We’ll get going…’ He shakes his head at me. ‘You haven’t had very good training. You can’t be Sam.’
‘What’re you talking about? I’ve had training. I’ve had the best!’
‘Well, the way you began your approach was not in the least stimulating. I mean, to paraphrase you, “Shouldn’t we get going?” is not conducive foreplay.’
‘Oh, so I have to fuck you first?’
‘I really don’t think you’re Sam.’ He shakes his head.
‘I’m fucking Sam! Now, my high is wearin’ out and I’d rather get this over with before that! So can we just move on to whatever?’
‘Fine,’ he says and crosses his legs in a very un-truck-driver manner, ‘just as soon as I make sure I got the right one. Now you’re the fourth boy they sent out to me, and I’ve asked for Sam every time. I’m not so sure I finally got Sam.’ His head sways from side to side in an attempt to regard me from different angles. ‘They told me Sam was indisposed.’
‘I told you I’m Sam!’ I shout and feel a distant urge to cry.
The driver nods his head, narrows his eyes into thinner slits, and rubs his briary chin. ‘Okay…’ he says, like someone staring at an abstract painting and finally starting to understand it. ‘Tell me, has your hair changed in any way?’
‘My hair?’ I say and absently touch it, something I generally avoid doing, as I’ve never adjusted to the shock of feeling a rough bristly surface in the place of fluffy softness. I realize this must be a trucker that once came to be blessed by me. I’ve since tricked with a fair number of my former devotees, and none had ever recognized me. ‘I used to have curls, long golden.’ I sigh. ‘Yeah, that was me. Saint Sarah.’
‘Saint Sarah?’ He starts to laugh. ‘Saint Sarah?!’
‘Are you gonna take me to Le Loup now or what?’
‘You want me to take you to Le Loup?’
‘I don’t care where you fucking take me,’ I say and sit down on the metal cab floor, unable to stand any longer. I start to sob. ‘I don’t care.’
‘How about home?’ says another voice. I look up to see Pie, from The Doves, dressed in her full Japanese geisha regalia, holding the cab curtain open.
I shake my head, thinking, Damn, what did Stacey pour me!?
‘I guess you’re sure, Pie, huh?’ says the trucker, whose voice, like a crazy bouncing ball, jumps from a guttural low to a lilting high in no time at all.
‘I’m sure,’ says the Pie apparition, ‘though I see why you’d be confused.’
‘All right then, I’m taking this mess off,’ the trucker says with a feminine sway and begins to peel the fur off his face.
‘I’m not feeling well,’ I say and put my head between my legs.
I look up to see the trucker taking off his cap and letting down a tumble of luxurious honeyed hair.
‘Oh, Christ,’ I mumble and dry heave as I watch the trucker transform into Sundae.
‘I know I must look awful,’ the Sundae mirage says. ‘But not half as bad as you do. You look worse than a bear’s bottom sewed up with barbed wire.’
‘Honey, try not to vomit inside here.’ The Pie ghost moves forward. ‘This is a borrowed truck. And I know he’ll forgive the lingering womanly scents, but not puke.’ I hear the swishing noises of her gown as she comes closer. ‘My-oh-my! I cannot believe it is you. Cherry?’ She pats my shoulder. ‘Cherry Vanilla?’
I raise my head slowly and look up at Pie. ‘This is not … I’m not hallucinating?’
‘Oh, baby!’ Pie crouches down next to me. ‘Oh, baby! What’d they do to you? What’d that Le Loup monster do?’
‘What in the samhain did he do?!’ Sundae echoes. I look over to see her stripping off the workmen gloves to reveal her dainty, perfectly manicured hands.
I grab hold of Pie like a baby monkey does its mama and bury my face inside the precious, tangerine-scented silk folds of her kimono.
‘I know, I know,’ she says and runs her hand through my hair.
Since Le Loup cut it off, I’ve not allowed anyone to touch my hair. I’ve suffered many beatings from tricks and Stacey for slapping hands off if a john attempted to touch my head to push it down.
‘They can take hold of my ears like I’m a soup mug, but I won’t let them touch my hair!’ I had to explain to Stacey after every complaint. I eventually learned how to gracefully remove their hands and artfully guide them to my neck.
I let Pie stroke my hair, allowing her sensitive fingers to probe out and massage the keloid scars on my scalp from Le Loup’s switchblade.
I must’ve cried for quite some time, because when I finally lift my face out of Pie’s kimono, there’s a long dark stain and it sloshes like a wet towel.
‘Your poor hands,’ Pie says, examining the ripped-up skin of my palms. ‘We’ll have to tend to those when we get well on the road.’
‘Yeah, we better get out of here,’ Sundae says. She has pulled off the heavy Ben Davis jeans, the flight jacket, and boots to reveal her usual cheerleader’s outfit, though not a very showy one, a more functional uniform, one fitting for an escape.
‘Yeah, we bought ninety minutes from that offensive little man.’ Pie shakes her head in repugnance. ‘And that time must be about up.’
‘I told you we should’ve bought more time,’ Sundae says, positioning herself back into the driver’s seat. ‘It ain’t like he’s expensive! No offense, Cherry, honey, but they are selling you way below market value.’
‘How’d you find out I was here? Did Pooh call you?’
‘I think that was the name Glad said called,’ Sundae says, checking the map again, then folding it effortlessly into its original rectangular shape.
‘What took y’all so long?’ I say and blink successively to make sure they really are here.
‘Glad wanted to wait until he found out when Le Loup would be away,’ Pie says.
Sundae puts her cap back on, but with her hair fully flowing beneath it. ‘Glad said we can easily handle a bunch of inbred mountain men. But he wouldn’t send anyone to face down Le Loup.’
‘Well, hopefully we won’t have to face anyone down,’ Pie says, and motions for me to lie on the truck floor between them. ‘We’re just going to creep out of here like a beetle on a tea leaf.’
‘So, Le Loup is gone?’
‘Yup!’ they both say.
Sundae pulls out a pair of high heels tucked under her seat and slips them on. ‘Proper driving shoes,’ she says. ‘Okay, here goes…’ Sundae flicks a bunch of switches. ‘Norm at the garage lent us and wired this baby so we can cruise out as quietly as’—she shoots a grin at Pie—‘a beetle on a tea leaf.’
Pie nods approvingly.
I wait for the truck’s lights to flash on or for it to give that release of compressed air gasp, or the usual noisy tremble trucks make when started, like a giant waking from a fitful sleep, but as we begin to roll I am awed by the utter silence. ‘Glad even paid for special shocks and mufflers,’ Sundae whispers.
I look out the windshield and gasp as we head straight for a cluster of trees.
‘Whoops.’ Sundae giggles and gently stops the truck inches from impact. ‘Glad had this place scouted. He knew we’d need these.’ She takes out from the glove box a pair of goggles with brick thickness around the front. ‘Glad borrowed these from one of our DEA clients.’ She slips on the goggles. ‘Night-seeing glasses…’ She briefly fiddles with them. ‘Oh, now I can see everything.’ She restarts the truck.
I grip the seat as Sundae navigates past the trees and brambles. I hold my breath as we pull soundlessly onto the little broken road that leads to the highway. I turn to the side window and can see Stacey still sitting there, basking in the histrionics of his soaps.
‘Oh, fuck! This is working!’
‘Of course it is. Glad planned it. Would you like a drink?’ Pie says.
‘Fuck yeah!’ I pat my pockets feeling for my flask and can’t find it. I only find my raccoon penis bone stuck in my back pocket. I throw the bone down and search my pockets more. I realize in a moment of panic my flask must have dropped out my pocket when I fell. For a split second I almost tell them to stop so I can retrieve it. ‘Fuck!’
‘Well, now you sure got yourself a pair of latrine lips!’ Pie sighs and lifts a silver thermos.
Relief swells over me as she hands over a little silver lid cup. ‘You’ve turned into such a…’
‘Boy,’ Sundae finishes for her. ‘Oh! I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say that. I don’t mean to insult you.’
Pie pours what looks like a nice warmed brown bourbon into the cup.
‘I know,’ I say. ‘But I’m going home and things can go back to normal.’
‘Sure they can,’ Sundae says, overly cheery. ‘Look, look out there…’
I look away from my drink and up to see the fluorescent lights of the Interstate glowing in the near distance.
‘God, I wanna go home.’ I take a sip of the drink and almost gag. ‘What is that?’ I say wiping my mouth.
‘Plum tea. Homemade,’ Pie says, looking puzzled, then hurt. ‘I made it special for you. Plum is excellent for digestion and I figured you probably haven’t been eating very well, this being the heart of ramps country, after all.’
‘I have missed Bolly’s cooking something fierce.’
‘He was featured in
Gourmet
magazine not that long ago. Now, they take reservations at The Doves. But of course all of Glad’s are welcome any time and CB’d-in reservations get priority,’ Pie explains.
‘You don’t have anything else to drink?’
‘What, like whiskey? I knew I smelled that on you.’
‘I could smell it before he even came in,’ Sundae laughs. ‘Naw, we don’t have that. Just plum tea and biscuits!’
‘Want a biscuit?’ Pie reaches for a tin at her feet.
I shake my head no. I crave a drink. I need a drink to help me utter the words that have been on the edge of my tongue since I realized this was not all an illusion.
I clear my throat. ‘So, how is Sarah? How is my mom?’
‘Look, look!’ Sundae jumps up in her seat. ‘We made it!’ The lights of the highway blaze and twinkle above us like a straightened halo. Sundae bounces again on her seat and as she does so, the five-inch heel of her sling-back, open-toed pump snaps off, causing her leg to skid out from under her, land on the gas, and lurch her forward to land forcefully on the truck’s horn.
The bellow of the horn was the only item on that truck that had not been mechanically muted. It vibrated the truck with its endless bass trombone wail.
‘I’m stuck!’ Sundae screams over the horn’s blare. ‘I can’t get my arm out!’
Pie leaps up and yanks at Sundae’s arm that is somehow woven into the steering wheel as if it were a piece of macramé. They both stand and yank and yank till they tumble backward as Sundae’s arm is released.
The silence as the horn blast stops is deafening.
‘Let’s get the fuck out of here,’ Sundae says.
When I hear the distant air-raid siren, I am not surprised. I realize I’d been waiting for it the whole time. I just feel angry that I had actually let myself start to believe that I could go home.
I watch Pie’s and Sundae’s mouths yell in panic as the siren overcomes us like the scorch after a mine explosion. I watch them abandon their usual gently balanced lissome conduct and supplant it with precarious, rigidly hysterical movements.
‘We have at least a good lead on them!’ Sundae yells as if the horn were still bleating.
The truck roars around the mountainous curves, rocks flying like projectiles in its wake as the back wheels brush off the road.
‘They’re here!’ Sundae says as if a home team had just scored a touchdown.
‘I thought it would take longer for them to catch up to us,’ Pie says, gathering her composure after gazing into the side mirror.
‘Maybe you should just pull over and let me out,’ I say, only able to imagine going back to find my flask, incapable of thinking beyond that.
‘Fuck that!’ Sundae says in a deeper more masculine voice. ‘I’m late for a date as it is!’
‘Gimme that CB!’ Pie says, also with a virile tonicity, and grabs the CB mike with a forceful poise I’d never imagined her capable of.
It dawns on me that their spastic, emotional display is like watching a metamorphic transformation in reverse. It’s as if two butterflies were sucked backward into their cocoon to unravel into staid, solid caterpillars. I lean over to look in the rear mirror and can make out, in a red pickup truck behind us, Stacey sitting shotgun, his substantial head leaning out the window with his mouth stretched wide open like a dog howling at the wind.
‘They’re right on us,’ I say, trying to keep a well of panic at bay.
I look again and notice another pickup right behind the first. I remember hearing Stacey caution us Le Loup paid a thousand dollars for the live recapture of any escaping lizards. And I also remember Stacey boasting how he had used a good portion of his various reward monies to tool up his truck so he could ensure more of those captures.
‘There’s no way we’re gonna make it!’ I say.