The Big Ugly (11 page)

When the bus was still fifteen minutes outside of Texarkana, Jack shot ahead of it so we could get there a little early and scope things out. The small Greyhound station was located just off I-30, next to a Super 8 and an IHOP. Jack pulled into the parking lot of the IHOP and pointed us toward a large empty field separating the restaurant from the station.

I scanned the parking lot of the IHOP. A couple of trucks, one car. Through the windows of the restaurant, I saw a table of teenagers laughing and eating. At another table one guy sipped coffee by himself.

The bus station shared a parking lot with the Super 8. Lots of cars and trucks and a couple of minivans. The front of the station was all glass. Through it, I could see a young woman working the front counter, talking on a phone pinched between her ear and her shoulder as she typed on a computer.

"I'm going to get out," I said.

"And do what?"

I shrugged and got out of the truck. The air was warm and heavy. I walked around the field, watching the parking lot the whole time.

A young couple got out of a minivan and started unloading kids and luggage. By the door of the motel, a middle-aged man in a cowboy shirt, jeans, boots and a hat stood talking on a cell phone. He was stocky, maybe fifty years old. There didn't seem to be anyone else in the parking lot.

The father at the minivan pulled out a sleeping child and held her with one arm while he dragged a rolling suitcase with his free hand. His haggard-looking wife corralled a rambunctious little boy and slung a couple of bags over her shoulder. Together they trudged toward the motel lobby.

The cowboy on the cell phone watched me cross the field.

Two beams of light swung across the field as the bus pulled into the parking lot. As it came to a stop, its red taillights bathed the field in red. I stepped into a muddy patch and had to yank out my shoe to break free of the suction. The bus cut its lights and the field went dark again.

I hurried across the grass, slinging mud as I walked. As I did, a white SUV marked TEXARKANA POLICE pulled into the parking lot. A uniformed officer got out of the SUV, opened the back door and let out a German Shepherd.

I came to the edge of the parking lot.

The cowboy with the cell phone ended his call and clipped the phone back onto his belt. For a second, his attention shifted from me to the K-9 unit.

The cop with the dog was a huge man with a shaved head. He wore all black and had a gun on his hip. He strode up to the door of the bus as it opened.

"Evening," I heard him tell the driver as I walked toward the motel. "Gonna do a routine check of the luggage compartment. Please keep your passengers inside the vehicle."

I got to the door of the motel and paused to watch the proceedings, straining to appear as if I was casually interested in what was happening.

The cowboy by the motel door had a roadmap of blood vessels webbing across his thick ball of a nose. He fixed his beady black eyes on me and said, "Stepped in some mud there, girl."

"Reckon so," I said. I jerked a thumb at the bus. "What all do you think is happening there?"

The cowboy hitched his thumb on a big silver belt buckle with a little Confederate flag in the center. "Searching for drugs, mostly likely." He shrugged. "Gives the local po-po something to do, try to catch the drugs before they get to Texas."

I watched the dog sniff at the bus's storage hold. The cop holding the dog's leash glanced over at us.

The cowboy told me, "They found a big shipment a year ago."

"That a fact?"

"Yes, ma'am," the cowboy said. "A whole heap of mare-i-jew-wanna. Somewheres in the neighborhood of a hundred thousand dollars' worth. Made all the news."

"Is that a fact?"

"I shit you not. Some dude with a hundred pounds of whacky tobacky crammed into a couple of suitcases."

The dog stopped at one of the storage holds and gave it extra attention.

"A hundred pounds?" I said. "Now, why'd he think he could get away with that?"

"Dunno," the cowboy said. "He's just eat up with the dumbass, I reckon."

The dog stopped sniffing and backed away from the bus. The officer walked back up to the front and waved at the driver. "All clear," he said.

The driver—a short man with charcoal-black skin and chalk-white hair—got off the bus grumbling about the delay. "What's the use in keeping a damn schedule," he groused as he walked into the bus station.

The girl at the counter was still on the phone, but she gave him a little wave.

People got off the bus. Two guys in their twenties. A middle-aged couple. A tall kid with headphones.

The cop took the dog back to the SUV and opened the door. The dog leapt inside.

The cowboy said, "Well, now that the show's over, how about we talk about me and you."

I said, "Maybe some other night, cowboy. Getting a little late for me."

"Late? Ain't but ten thirty."

"Little late for me."

More people getting off the bus. A redhead in her fifties. Another guy in his twenties. A kid, no more than eighteen, yawning and stretching.

"Aw, it ain't late, darlin'. You got to live a little, burn tomorrow's candles tonight. I'm the right feller to do it with, too."

"Some other time."

Another guy. Then another. Finally Alexis and Kaylee. They were accompanied by a young man, or at least he was talking to Alexis. She nodded politely and scanned the parking lot.

"You know," the cowboy said, "you keep saying 'no' but something tells me that—"

I turned to him. "You're mistaking my politeness for indecision, so let me shoot you straight, cowboy. I think you're gross. Now scoot the fuck on out of here."

He stared at me for a moment before he nodded, mustered his dignity enough to tip his hat, and walked back into the motel.

The young man followed Alexis and Kaylee into the bus station. Passengers were buying Cokes and candies from vending machines.

Alexis took Kaylee to the bathroom. I could see that the young man was waiting for her, but when he finally surrendered to his bladder and headed into the men's room, Alexis and the girl slipped out of the ladies' room. Alexis led Kaylee outside, saw me and nodded. We both headed to the other side of the parking lot, away from the open field, closer to some dumpsters in an alley behind the motel.

We got there at the same time. "This way," I said.

Over my shoulder, I could see Jack start her truck, back up, and leave the IHOP parking lot. She met us out by the service road a moment later.

And we were gone.

We rode in silence until we were back on I-30, heading back toward Osotouy City, where we could connect to I-40.

Alexis smelled like cigarettes and old sweat. I cracked a window. Kaylee leaned against her mother and was asleep within a minute or two.

Jack glanced down at my feet. "You track mud into my ride?"

"I tried to scrape it off. Sorry."

Over her shoulder, Jack asked, "Who that boy you talking to?"

"Some guy I met on the bus."

Jack shook her head. "You running from a bunch of killers and you strike up a fucking conversation on the bus."

"He started talking to me," Alexis said. She leaned back in her seat and shut her eyes. "I think he wanted a hand job."

"What makes you say that?" I asked.

"I don't know. He just had that 'please-give-me-a-hand-job' vibe."

Jack said, "Yeah, I know that vibe."

The drive was four hours. Jack wouldn't hear of anyone else driving her truck.

Alexis and Kaylee slept.

Jack played some songs on an iPod that she plugged into the radio. Mostly old school rap. Some Immortal Technique, some Rakim. A bunch of stuff I didn't know. She kept it low so as not to wake up the kid.

After a couple of hours, she turned it off.

We passed Osotouy City. Alexis woke up. None of us spoke until we were on I-40 heading toward Memphis.

As we passed a sign for a little town called Candy, I said, "My father started a church here when I was seventeen."

"Really?" Alexis asked.

I nodded.

"You a preacher's daughter?" Jack said.

"Sort of. I wasn't raised that way, but my mom got religion when I was in high school. She talked the old man into sinking every cent they had into trying to start a church. That dried up the family coffers. I couldn't pay for college without working, and pretty soon I had to quit school and work full time. Eastgate didn't require a college degree to be a CO, so I went in that direction."

"No shit?" Jack said.

"No shit. I thought I was going to be a cop." I shook my head. Just thinking about it gave me a slight headache. As we passed the exit for the town, I said, "They bought a little store front here in Candy. I think it used to be a vacuum-cleaner supply store."

"What was their church called?" Jack asked.

"The Church of the New Birth."

"Still there?"

"Nah. It never occurred to either one of them that the old man wasn't any kind of preacher. He had worked in service stations for twenty-five years … and now he was supposed to start up a church? The only stuff he'd ever read besides the Bible was
Chilton
's and hunting magazines. He'd never done any public speaking. He didn't even like to make small talk with people. But she had her vision and the old man always eventually did whatever she told him to. They sunk every dime they had into the church and trusted God to provide the rest."

"God didn't come through?" Jack asked.

"No. He must have been short on cash, too. They had to declare bankruptcy after a couple of years." In the truck's side mirror, I watched the sleeping town recede into the darkness. "In the end there was nothing left of my mother's vision except a story she hated to tell."

They were both dead now. The old man at fifty-nine of a heart attack, the old woman at sixty-two from cancer. The only saving grace of the whole sad story was that neither of them had lived to see me go to jail. They'd both died thinking that even if I wasn't born again, at least I was an upstanding member of society.

Now I wasn't even that.

I looked in the rearview mirror. Alexis was sitting up and looking right back at me, and for an instant I confused our reflections. It looked like my mouth that opened when she said, "At least you had parents."

About two-thirty in the morning, we pulled off the interstate in a tiny town called Marked Tree just outside of West Memphis. In the parking lot of a little Methodist Church, a truck was waiting.

We pulled up next to it, and Alexis's cousin got out. She was a middle-aged bruiser with tiny breasts, a big gut, and long curly blonde hair.

Alexis hugged her, and then she pushed Kaylee toward her. "Sweetie," she told the girl, "this is your cousin Tawnya. We're going to live with her for a while."

Tawnya yawned and rubbed the girl's head. "Hey, kiddo." Alexis didn't introduce us, but cousin Tawnya gave us a tired smile. Then she told Alexis, "I'll be in the truck. We need to get on the road. You can drive?"

"Sure."

Tawnya took the kid to the passenger side of the truck.

I watched the little girl. She dragged her feet, but she was awake. When she got to the truck, she looked back at me.

She waved.

It was the first time the child had acknowledged me at all. I gave her a little wave, and she got into the truck with Tawnya. I wondered how many people like me that little girl had met in her life, how many strangers, some kind and some not, who had already drifted through her chaotic life before she climbed into a truck with yet another new one.

I was thinking that when Jack asked Alexis, "Where's Tawnya live in Tennessee?"

"Pigeon Forge. She's a glass blower at Dollywood."

"I ain't got the slightest fucking idea what that means."

"She—"

Jack stopped her by waving it away. "Don't matter. All that matters is that you don't come back here. Ever."

Alexis stuck out her hand. "Thanks, Effervescence. For everything."

Jack nodded. Alexis turned to me. I shook her hand. "Jack's right," I told her. "This place, and everybody in it, is nothing but trouble for you. Don't email. Don't call. Don't go on Facebook. And don't you ever come back to Arkansas."

Alexis nodded. "Thanks, Ellie."

Jack and I got in the truck and drove away. We rode in silence most of the way, but not far outside of Osotouy City I turned and asked her, "Why'd you ask where her cousin lives?"

"What?"

"Why'd you ask where her cousin lives? Why'd you want to know where Alexis is going?"

She didn't say anything but the answer hung unspoken in the silence of the truck. It was insurance. Jack had insurance now. And so did I. Even if I told myself that I didn't want it, I had it now. If everything went wrong and Kluge started putting the questions to me in a rough way—in a way that did not accept an honest "I don't know" as an answer—then I needed to know where she was. I needed to know how I could still give them Alexis if it came down to a choice between her or me.

We got back to Jack's place a little past four in the morning. I drove home and collapsed on my bed.

I didn't sleep though. I just lay there thinking about things. I would have to see Kluge and try to sell him on the idea that Alexis was gone to Texas. I rubbed my eyes.

I rubbed them again and noticed that the room was full of sunlight. I'd been asleep for hours. I got up and went downstairs.

The family was at the table having a late lunch.

"No one working today?" I said.

Felicia was wearing a T-shirt for some band that looked vaguely Christian. Chewing some potato chips, she laughed, "It's Saturday, Aunt Ellie."

Nate and Bethany glanced at each other. She got up to get me a plate, but Nate wouldn't even look at me. He scanned the sports section of the paper without settling on any one thing to read. Mostly he just ignored me.

After lunch, I took a shower and got dressed. I broke out another dark skirt, matched it with a white blouse and a darker jacket. I dressed and went downstairs and found my brother holding the baby, watching a couple of birds in his yard.