Stolen Life (44 page)

“How do you guys know my name?”

He laughs, points, so friendly he’ll be the worst. “Right there, on your jacket.” And of course it is, her old Butte, Montana, sports jacket; her mom made it. The shorter cop is staring at Loudmouth.

He says, holding the dropped beer, “Yvonne here forgot one.”

“I can’t …,” Yvonne says, “carry it all. I’ll get it, okay?”

“That’s a lotta beer,” says the shorter cop. “Big party?”

Yvonne’s fear cuts deeper. She steels herself to be normal. “Yeah, home party, just two blocks to go,” and slips past them. She cannot let them smell her breath; any second they’ll yell, “Stop!” But she hears nothing. The hardest thing is to walk normally. She’s across the lot—their cruiser is parked right in front of her van—she’s got her door open, she climbs in with her cartons. The ominous cruiser with its bar of flashers is shoved up wide against her radiator. She stacks the beer beside the seat; she is bent down as low as possible. Go, go.

The passenger door opens—Loudmouth. Past him, under the hotel-door light, the two cops stand, still looking at her. She can’t start and drive away because they’ll see she has only one headlight, they’ll be after her in a second, and then they’ll smell her and haul her in for impaired too. The guy hoists up the beer carton and leans into the van.

“I brought your beer. Hey, something wrong? Your old man beat you up, who were you calling there? Look, there’s blood on your pants … you get raped?”

“I got in a fight, I gotta go.”

He laughs, one foot inside the van now. “You look fucken great,” he says. “What does the other guy look like?”

She doesn’t know his name but he’s always hanging around town, always staring at women.

“If it’s rape,” his voice lifts, drawls the word like it feels good in his mouth, “tell it to them cops. They’ll get the bastard.”

This is worse than a nightmare. Her van is her safest place on earth; in it she is surrounded by all the familiar steel which can move her away, away from anything—and now she cannot move it an inch on the busted pavement of the Wayside Inn! This snoop is hooked over her passenger seat and those two cops are staring at her—

“I’m going.” The motor starts with a touch. “Get out!”

But he doesn’t get out; he’s scrambling in and her mind flips over, “Okay,” she tells him, “you brought the beer, you can have it. I’ll drop you anywhere you want to go.”

He’s yapping, yapping, but she swings the van back from the cruiser and around before she switches on the single light and she’s driving slowly, carefully towards the street. No flashing lights behind her. She cranks up George Thorogood,

Loudmouth leaning towards her, yapping because he senses something’s the matter. Something bad.

She’s looking for her smokes; he finds them and passes her one. And she sees the booth by the dark Shell station.

“I gotta make a call.”

“Who you gonna call, eh?”

Yapping on, trying to find out. She corners in quick, leaves the Destroyers wailing even louder.

Shielding her voice around the plastic phone: “Dad, I think … maybe … somebody’s dead. I’m in a phone booth, but the kids——”

“Vonnie listen, listen, you go back to the house, make sure the kids——”

“They’re fine, they don’t know, they——”

“Listen! Go back to the house, make sure they’re okay, now!”

“Dad, what will I do?”

“Okay … okay then, then phone me back, right away, from the house and——”

“Okay …”

“And you gotta tell somebody. If somebody’s hurt bad or—you better tell somebody. You’ve got to. You hear me, Vonnie?”

Yvonne sits in the driver’s chair, bent over the wheel, arms clutched tight around her stomach, rocking back and forth. Gasping at odd intervals, as if she is exhausted, or crying. Her untouched cigarette is smoking itself away and Lyle—he’s told her his name, that he’s the cab driver who used to pick her up before she had a car—Lyle butts it into the crammed ashtray. She rocks back and forth, her body swaying on the chair’s swivel but never leaning closer to him. He’s keeping things rolling, prying at her.

“If your old man did this, leave him. You deserve better. You need a place to hide out?”

“Leave,” she tells him dully. “It’s my problem … I gotta see if the guy I fought is okay. Go see if he’s gone.”

“Okay then,” Lyle says, “I’ll help you, we’ll go get your kids, I’ll take care of you, no worry.”

He’s carrying on his own conversation. Suddenly her arms unlock from around herself and she reaches over for the key, starts the motor, and the van jerks forward.

“I was in a fight, and I think, maybe, someone got hurt, bad,” she says. “I don’t know but maybe. And you can do shit. Now anywhere you want to go, I’ll drop you off.”

She steers with one hand, trees, stop signs, houses, streetlights blazing and gone, everything is blurred and fluorescent; shadows bulge and shift but her solid van blasts through anything.

She’s roaring straight down the avenue heading back to the house.

“I don’t know how bad he’s hurt—pretty bad—I think I killed someone.”

But Lyle is rocking in his chair, cranked higher than flying on sheer adrenaline; his eyes gleam at her like she’s a miracle. She swerves the van to the curb.

“Get out!”

“Yvonne, I’ll help you! It’s your old man’s fault. You’d never hurt nobody, I know that. I’ll …”

She can’t get rid of him. She drives, rockers pounding; she’s reeling and can barely aim herself between the rows of parked cars. Where is her house? She knows every street. Where? She stops. The middle of a street; she is blind in flashes; the world twisted into streaks, lights like bare branches leaning down, her head hits the steering wheel; she is so wrung out and she sees Lyle’s face inches from her face, talking.

“Please,” she pleads. “If you want to help, get the fuck out!”

Staring at her. Never look directly into a man’s eyes, it’s too dangerous; never, unless you know there’s nothing left but to fight.

Go
home drive let Dwa and Ernie scare him off

The van is moving again, it seems to be alongside a park—the park; there’s her house on the corner and she has to look and instantly sees Chuck’s car is gone. The van rolls, stops.

“We put him in the back of his car.” She hears herself saying that aloud. “And now the car is gone!”

“What? Where?” Lyle is staring around, wildly.

“Where?” Lyle has grabbed her, is shaking her, and with one last jolt of what’s left of her strength she steps on the gas. The van heaves forward under the streetlight across the intersection; she is aiming for her driveway in sheer panic, her children have to be in that dark house and Dwa has to be protecting them. Let him get rid of this asshole!

But he’s screaming, “No! Go, go, go, go!” and lunges over, grabs the wheel, twists it back, knocking her aside as he slams his booted
foot on her bare one on the gas, guns the van past the house and down the street. For an instant Yvonne freezes. My
house gone my children my children
. The van shudders to a stop past the next corner with his foot on the brake and she shudders too, crumples, crying hopelessly.

“Get your ass outa there!” He drags her over himself into the passenger seat, shoves her against the door. She sinks, weeping. He’s in the driver’s seat.

Gravel. A line of weeds along a ditch and big rolls of baled hay, a barbed-wire fence, fields. Yvonne is crying and crying, curled tight.

Lyle drives her van as he pleases, drinking beer and talking, but she does not listen: she is trying to make a plan. What she must do now is get him to kill her; then he can go to the cops and be a hero because he’s solved the murder and that’ll save Dwa, and then the cops will get him for shooting her and stick him behind bars for ten years and that will protect all the little children in Wetaskiwin for ever, that’s a good plan. A really good plan.

She says into whatever he is saying, “If I gave you a gun, would you shoot me?”

He stops, he must be staring at her. He’s trying to get hold of her hand and she jerks away.

“I couldn’t,” he says with the stupid hang-dog look of a man trying to be convincing. “I’m your friend.”

“You make it look like suicide, you’ve solved their case, and you’re famous.”

She is crying, a hand gropes inside her shirt and she shoves, she hears a voice, it may be her own, it may be the cropped grass in the fields they pass whispering, “… so tiny, she’s showing her raspberry birthmark, Shirley Anne told me … o my Baby, my sweet little Baby.”

The van does not move; a wall looms over her, the edge of long roof, and a man’s face is against her face, she can feel it.

“I’ll get you,” his voice says—did he say that?

He’s driving again; drinking beer. It is night, the sun will never rise. Talking whenever she actually hears him, he has another reason for
going nowhere in particular. She has to pee. He says, “Go ahead,” he’s so confident, and she gets out. The wash of black night air, stars all over like fireworks when they explode—behind the van or he’ll see her in the big sideview mirrors. She peers back around the corner as she pushes her jeans down and yes, he’s out of the van; he’s stretching around, trying to see her, but she has to squat, it comes in a rush and he looms over her, knocks her back and she’s fighting even as she falls, her jeans are soaked, her bare buttocks ground into the gravel.
He’ll never get me not this stinking vulture
NO!

He’s sprawled out full length, holding her flat. She cannot heave him off, but her jeans are still up on her thighs, he’ll never spread her legs wide enough like that. She can time it; if he lets go of her wrists she’ll wrestle him and he’ll have to grab her wrists again to flatten her. Her back is shredded on the gravel, but all he can do is weigh her down, panting; he can’t get his own pants off either. She’s okay, she can lie here for ever with her van flashers blinking red, her head bent back into the gravel ditch, and everything’s safe.

But she feels herself sink: she is too wrung out, too much beer, too much everything. She’s going to lose it.

“You’re gonna pass out,” he hisses in her ear. “I’ll get it, one way or the other.”

The worst is, she knows that, either way, he’ll do it: while she’s awake, or just wait till she’s passed out.

He chuckles deep and soft, the old male flip from real brutal to pretend gentle. “C’mon, you know you want it. And I’ll take care of you; listen, we go to your house and pick up your kids and we’re outa here. Let some shit take the rap, who cares, we disappear. I know how to do it, we’ll be safe, c’mon baby.”

She feels herself sliding into a black hole. Not even the gravel digging into her back will help her.

He heaves her step by step along the ditch to the open van door. He throws her across the two front seats. She sags between them, and he hauls back on her legs till her buttocks are on the passenger chair. He shoves his pants down and climbs up on top of her.