Gone South (6 page)

Dan didn’t know how much time he had. His apartment was five miles to the west. Beads of sweat clung to his face, blood smeared all over the steering wheel.

A sob welled up and clutched his throat.

He cried, silently.

He had always tried to live right. To be fair. To obey orders and be a good soldier no matter what slid out of this world full of snake holes.

As he drove to his apartment, fighting the awful urge to sink his foot to the floorboard, he realized what one stupid, senseless second had wrought.

I’ve gone south,
he thought. He wiped his eyes with his snake-clad forearm, the metallic smell of blood sickening him in the hellish August heat.
Gone South, after all this time.

And he knew, as well, that he’d just taken the first step of a journey from which there could be no return.

H
URRY!
D
AN TOLD HIMSELF
as he pulled clothes from a dresser drawer and jammed them into a duffel bag.
Movin’ too slow hurry they’ll be here soon any minute now …

The sound of a distant siren shocked his heart. He stood still, listening, as his pulse rioted. A precious few seconds passed before he realized the sound was coming through the wall from Mr. Wycoff’s apartment. The television set. Mr. Wycoff, a retired steelworker, always watched the
Starsky and Hutch
reruns that came on every day at three-thirty. Dan turned his mind away from the sound and kept packing, pain like an iron spike throbbing in his skull.

He had torn off the bloody shirt, hastily scrubbed his hands in the bathroom’s sink, and struggled into a clean white T-shirt. He didn’t have time to change his pants or his shoes; his nerves were shredding with each lost second. He pushed a pair of blue jeans into the duffel bag, then picked up his dark blue baseball cap from the dresser’s top and put it on. A framed photograph of his son, Chad, taken ten years ago when the boy was seven, caught his attention and it too went into the bag. Dan went to the closet, reached up to the top shelf, and brought down the shoebox that held thirty-eight dollars, all his money in the world. As he was shoving the money into his pocket, the telephone rang.

The answering machine — a Radio Shack special — clicked on after three rings. Dan heard his own voice asking the caller to leave a message.

“I’m callin’ about your ad in the paper,” a man said. “I need my backyard fenced in, and I was wonderin’ —”

Dan might have laughed if he didn’t feel the rage of the law bearing down on him.

“— if you could do the job and what you’d charge. If you’d call me back sometime today I’d appreciate it. My number’s …”

Too late. Much, much too late.

He zipped the bag shut, picked it up, and got out.

There were no sounds yet of sirens in the air. Dan threw the bag into the back of his truck, next to the toolbox, and he got behind the wheel and tore out of the parking lot. He crossed the railroad tracks, drove six blocks east, and saw the signs for Interstate 49 ahead. He swung the pickup onto the ramp that had a sign saying
I
-49
SOUTHBOUND.
Then he steadily gave the truck more gas, and he merged with the afternoon traffic, leaving the industrial haze of Shreveport at their backs.

Killer,
he thought. The image of blood spurting from Blanchard’s throat and the man’s waxen face was in his brain, unshakable as gospel. It had all happened so fast, he felt still in a strange, dreamlike trance. They would lock him away forever for this crime; he would die behind prison walls.

But first they had to catch him, because he sure as hell wasn’t giving himself up.

He switched on his radio and turned the dial, searching Shreveport’s stations for the news. There was country music, rock ‘n’ roll, rap, and advertisements but no bulletin yet about a shooting at the First Commercial Bank. But he knew it wouldn’t take long; soon his description and the description of his truck would be all over the airwaves. Not many men bore the tattoo of a snake on their right forearms. He realized that what he’d worn as a badge of pride and courage in ’Nam now was akin to the mark of Cain.

Tears were scorching his eyes again. He blinked them away. The time of weeping was over. He had committed the most stupid, insane act of his life; he had gone south in a way he would never have thought possible. His gaze kept ticking to the rearview mirror, and he expected to see flashing lights coming after him. They weren’t there yet, but they were hunting for him by now. The first place they’d go would be the apartment. They would’ve gotten all the information about him from the bank’s computer records. How long would it take for the state troopers to get his license number and be on the lookout for a metallic-mist Chevrolet pickup truck with a killer at the wheel?

A desperate thought hit him: maybe Blanchard hadn’t died.

Maybe an ambulance had gotten there in time. Maybe the paramedics had somehow been able to stop the bleeding and get Blanchard to the hospital. Then the charge wouldn’t be murder, would it? In a couple of weeks Blanchard could leave the hospital and go home to his wife and children. Dan could plead temporary insanity, because that’s surely what it had been. He would spend some time in jail, yes, but there’d be a light at the end of the tunnel. Maybe. May—

A horn blew, jarring him back to reality. He’d been drifting into the next lane, and a cream-colored Buick swept past him with a furious
whoosh.

He passed the intersection of the Industrial Loop Expressway, and was moving through the outskirts of Shreveport. Subdivisions of blocky tract houses, strip malls, and apartment complexes stood near warehouses and factories with vast parking lots. The land was flat, its summer green bleached to a grayish hue by the merciless sun. Ahead of him, the long, straight highway shimmered and crows circled over small animals that had been mangled by heavy wheels.

It came to Dan that he didn’t know where he was going.

He knew the direction, yes, but not the destination. Does it matter? he asked himself. All he knew is, he had to get as far from Shreveport as he could. A glance at the gas gauge showed him the tank was a little over a quarter full. The Chevy got good gas mileage for a pickup truck; that was one of the reasons he’d bought it. But how far could he get with thirty-eight dollars and some change in his pocket?

His heart jumped. A state trooper’s car was approaching, heading north on the other side of the median. He watched it come nearer, all the spit drying up in his mouth. Then the car was passing him, doing a steady fifty-five. Had the trooper behind the wheel looked at him? Dan kept watching the rearview mirror, but the trooper car’s brake lights didn’t flare. But what if the trooper had recognized the pickup truck and radioed to another highway patrol car waiting farther south? On this interstate the troopers could be massing in a roadblock just through the next heat shimmer. He was going to have to get off
I
-49 and take a lesser-traveled parish road. Another four miles rolled under the tires before he saw the exit of Highway 175, heading south toward the town of Mansfield. Dan slowed his speed and eased onto the ramp, which turned into a two-lane road bordered by thick stands of pines and palmettos. As he’d figured, this route was all but deserted, just a couple of cars visible far ahead and none at his back. Still, he drove the speed limit and watched warily for the highway patrol.

Now he was going to have to decide where to go. The Texas line was about twenty miles to the west. He could be in Mexico in fifteen hours or so. If he continued on this road, he would reach the bayous and swampland on the edge of the Gulf in a little over three hours. He could get to the Gulf and head either west to Port Arthur or east to New Orleans. And what then? Go into hiding? Find a job? Make up a new identity, shave off his beard, bleach out the tattoo?

He could go to Alexandria, he thought. That city was less than a hundred miles away, just below the heart of Louisiana.

He’d lived there for nine years, when he’d been working with Fordham Construction. His ex-wife and son lived there still, in the house on Jackson Avenue.

Right. His mouth settled into a grim line. The police would have that address too, from the bank’s records. Dan had faithfully made his child support payments every month. If he went to that house, the police would swarm all over him. And besides, Susan was so afraid of him anyway that she wouldn’t let him in the door even if he came as a choirboy instead of a killer. He hadn’t seen his ex-wife and seventeen-year-old son in over six years. It had been better that way, because his divorce was still an open wound.

He wondered what the other Snake Handlers would think of a father who had attacked his own little boy in the middle of the night. Did it matter that in those days Dan had been half crazy and suffered nightmarish flashbacks? Did it matter that when he’d put his hands around the boy’s throat he’d believed he was trying to choke to death a Viet Cong sniper in the silver-puddled mud?

No, it didn’t. He remembered coming out of the flashback to Susan’s scream; he remembered the stark terror on Chad’s tear-streaked face. Ten seconds more — just ten — and he might have killed his own son. He couldn’t blame Susan for wanting to be rid of him, and so he hadn’t contested the divorce.

He caught himself; the truck was drifting toward the center-line again as his attention wandered. He saw some dried blood between his fingers that he’d missed with the soap and rag, and the image of Blanchard’s bleached face stabbed him.

A glance in the rearview mirror almost stopped his heart entirely. Speeding after him was a vehicle with its lights flashing. Dan hesitated between jamming the accelerator and hitting the brake, but before he could decide to do either, a cherry-red pickup truck with two grinning teenagers in the cab roared past him and the boy on the passenger side stuck a hand out with the middle finger pointed skyward.

Dan started trembling. He couldn’t stop it. Sickness roiled in his stomach, a maniacal drumbeat trapped in his skull. He thought for a few seconds that he was going to pass out as dark motes spun before his eyes like flecks of ash. Around the next bend he saw a narrow dirt road going off into the woods on his right. He turned onto it and followed it fifty yards into the sheltering forest, his rear tires throwing up plumes of yellow dust.

Then he stopped the truck, cut the engine, and sat there under the pines with beads of cold sweat on his face.

His stomach lurched. As the fire rose up his throat, Dan scrambled out of the truck and was able to reach the weeds before he threw up. He retched and retched until there was nothing left, and then he sat on his knees, breathing sour steam as birds sang in the trees above him.

He pulled the tail of his T-shirt out and blotted the sweat from his cheeks and forehead. Dust hung in the air, the sunlight lying in shards amid the trees. He tried to clear his mind enough to grapple with the problem of where to go. To Texas and Mexico? To the Gulf and New Orleans? Or should he turn the truck around, return to Shreveport, and give himself up?

That was the sensible thing, wasn’t it? Go back to Shreveport and try to explain to the police that he’d thought Blanchard was about to kill him, that he hadn’t meant to lose his temper, that he was so very, very sorry.

Stone walls, he thought. Stone walls waiting.

At last he stood up and walked unsteadily back to his truck. He got in, started the engine, and turned on the radio. He began to move the dial through the stations; they were weaker now, diminished by distance. Seven or eight minutes passed, and then Dan came upon a woman’s cool, matter-of-fact voice.

“… shooting at the First Commercial Bank of Shreveport just after three-thirty this afternoon …”

Dan turned it up.

“… according to police, a disturbed Vietnam veteran entered the bank with a gun and shot Emory Blanchard, the bank’s loan manager. Blanchard was pronounced dead on arrival at All Saints Hospital. We’ll have more details as this story develops.

In other news, the city council and the waterworks board found themselves at odds again today when …”

Dan stared at nothing, his mouth opening to release a soft, agonized gasp.

Dead on arrival.

It was official now. He was a murderer.

But what was that about entering the bank with a gun? “That’s wrong,” he said thickly. “It’s wrong.” The way it sounded, he’d gone to the bank intent on killing somebody. Of course they had to put the “disturbed Vietnam veteran” in there, too. Might as well make him sound like a psycho while they were at it.

But he knew what the bank was doing. What would their customers think if they knew Blanchard had been killed with a security guard’s gun? Wasn’t it better, then, to say that the crazy Vietnam veteran had come in packing a gun and hunting a victim? He kept searching the stations, and in another couple of minutes he found a snippet: “… rushed to All Saints Hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival. Police caution that Lambert should be considered armed and dangerous …”

“Bullshit!” Dan said. “I didn’t go there to kill anybody!”

He saw what would happen if he gave himself up. They wouldn’t listen to him. They’d put him in a hole and drop a rock on it for the rest of his life. Maybe he might live only three more years, but he wasn’t planning to die in prison and be buried in a pauper’s grave.

He engaged the gears. Head to the bayou country, he decided. From there he could go either to New Orleans or Port Arthur. Maybe he could find a freighter captain who needed cheap labor and didn’t care to ask questions. He turned the truck around and then he drove back to Highway 175. He took a right, southbound again.

The truck’s cab was a sweat box, even with both windows down. The heat was weighing on him, wearing him out. He thought about Susan and Chad. If the news was on the radio, it wouldn’t be long before it hit the local TV stations. Susan might already have gotten a call from the police. He didn’t particularly care what she thought of him; it was Chad’s opinion that mattered. The boy was going to think his father was a cold-blooded killer, and this fact pained Dan’s soul.