The Speed Queen (20 page)

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Lamont shot them, but first something really funny happened. The sprinkler system went off.

I guess the smoke was bad enough to trigger it. We were standing at the door of the freezer, and it nailed us. I knew that when it went off, it automatically called the fire department.

Great," Lamont said, and stepped into the freezer. This is where I gave him my gun because his clip was empty. This is where the prosecution said I was lying and called on Natalie to prove it. All right, I'll admit that I did use the knife a little —after Natalie had —and that maybe I hit Mr. Close for trying to run over Lamont, but I never shot anybody. Never.

First Lamont shot Margo Styles and then Kim Zwillich. I guess he was hoping Donald Anderson would remember the combination. He didn't. Lamont shot him in the face and then the chest to make sure.

Water was pouring from the ceiling, hissing on the grill. Up front, the Order-Matic was going nuts. I grabbed my shirt and my purse and on my way out a plastic cup with the morning's tips in it. We walked out the front door, soaking wet, Lamont bleeding, like no one would notice.

They were dead when we left, I'm positive. In court they showed pictures of them frozen together from the water, and none of them had moved. I'm sure a bunch of guys had to pick them up and take them out of the freezer so they'd thaw. Either that or they chipped them out with an ice pick. Either way it's a lousy job, and I feel sorry that people had to do that.

I'd say we got about fifteen dollars from the register, ten from Margo Styles's changemaker, and another two from the tip cup. So about twenty-seven dollars. It was enough to buy us some gas and a diet Pepsi for everybody.

In the paper they always call the murders senseless. They were messed up maybe, but there was a reason at least.

Another thing is they call us serial killers. That's just inaccurate —a serial killer kills one person a whole bunch of times. The other thing that bugs me is spree killers. I don't think that's right either. Spree makes it sound like it was a good time, like we were happy-go-lucky or something, like we were having fun, when really it was the exact opposite of that.

The Roadrunner was fine, except a Satellite pulled into the stall beside it, so we had to wait to get in. Gainey was asleep, still holding the spoon in his hand. He'd slopped his ice cream all over the seat and Natalie sat right in it; I'd forgotten to get napkins. Lamont's one arm wasn't working and he had to close his door twice. The engine kicked over on its first try, like always; there wasn't any suspense.

I checked my mirrors and looked through the Satellite to see if anyone was coming, then I eased out and rolled around the back of the building. It had a door with a square window with chicken wire in the glass, but I couldn't see anything. The sprinklers must have taken care of the smoke; I didn't hear any fire engines yet. We coasted past the blonde in the Camaro and the guy still reading in the Tempest. When I stopped to turn left across traffic, I had to wait for a Jimmy to pull in. The bank clock across the way said it was eleven-thirty. We'd only been in there fifteen minutes.

I slid into traffic. It didn't look like we were going to make the light, so I changed lanes and pulled a right on red and headed east on 66. Natalie leaned over the front seat to check on Lamont. She lifted his shirt. I had to watch the road.

"How's he doing?" I said.

"It hurts," Lamont said.

"He'll be okay," Natalie said. "It went all the way through but I don't think it hit anything important. There d be a lot more blood."

"We should get him to a doctor," I said.

"Maybe in Texas," she said.

"Why are we going this way?" Lamont said, a little out of breath.

"I just wanted to get away From there. I'll turn up here in a little."

I looked over and Natalie had taken her shirt off and was dabbing at his ribs, swabbing the blood off. It didn't look so bad when it was clean; it had almost stopped bleeding.

"How's that?" Natalie said.

"Thank you," he said, like alter we made love, like he was glad to be that tired.

I looked back to the road and sped up, thinking it wasn't right. He was my husband, I thought. That should have been my job.

Traffic was light for the most part. We turned north on Coltrane, then headed west again.

We did see one Edmond cop going into a Braum's for lunch, a big old black-and-white Caprice. Natalie sat back so he wouldn't see her in her bra. You could make a big deal of it, like we were nervous, but we were just glad to be out of there. We were feeling lucky, kind of high because everything had been so crazy. The day was nice and we had enough money to get us to New Mexico. We passed the Braum's and made the next light, and Lamont laughed, and then Natalie, and even I started in then.

That's in Natalie's book too, but she makes it sound like she was shocked, like me and Lamont were bloodthirsty or something, which isn't true. It was just good to be moving.

We stopped at a Phillips 66 just over the tracks by the Purina grain elevator. I pulled up to the far pump so no one would see us. For a minute I thought of pulling a drive-off but we didn't want any attention.

Lamont always got the premium, like it made a difference.

"You guys want anything to drink?" I asked while it was filling. I figured Gainey would want some juice when he woke up.

I don't remember what the total was, but we had enough if you included the change. I went to the booth to pay and the guy behind the counter was drawing something in a notebook, bending over it so his nose was an inch away from the paper. It was a picture of the planets lining up. It was Mister Fred Fred.

I didn't want him to recognize me, so I turned my head sideways and tipped it so I could hide behind my hair. I slid the bills with the change on top into the trough and he punched up the sale. He didn't even look he was so far gone. It was too easy, old Mister Fred Fred.

"Bye!" I said.

He didn't even look up from the page. It was disappointing. I went around the side and got some Pepsis from the machine.

"Hey," I said in the car, "guess who that was," but neither of them remembered him. I wondered if anybody had ever listened to me.

Mister Fred Fred—that's it for him. I thought they'd call him in to ID me to put me at the scene, but they never did. They probably wouldn't of believed him even if he did remember me. I have no idea what happened to him, whether the space rays got him or not. In a way. I think they already had.

We also stopped at a rest area oft U.S. 270 to wash Lamont and get him into some fresh clothes. We cleaned the seats and threw his bloody jeans and Margo Styles's shirt into a trash barrel. I tried to light it on fire but the wind was too strong. Lamont said it felt like a stomachache or just a bad stitch. He could make a fist, but it hurt to raise the arm.

"You don't mind driving," he asked.

"You think I'd let her?" I said, and he smiled. There were still some things we agreed on. Maybe not enough, but some.

And we stopped in the lot of a drugstore just over the Texas line in a little town called Higgins. I changed Gainey and gave him his juice and a few saltines and we pooled the money left to buy Lamont a bottle of peroxide and a big gauze bandage. Me and Natalie fought over who got to go in, and finally I did.

Nowhere else close to Oklahoma though, we were very careful. I don't know if Lamont had a plan, or Natalie, but I didn't. I guess we were just hoping things would go our way. We had no money, Lamont was shot, and we'd been awake for two days. The only thing going for us was we had a fast car and a good-sized bag of crank. We were dumb to think that might be enough.

Why did we go west? I don't know. It was never a question. I guess we figured the land was big enough to hide us, or that there might be something better out there, a new start. Isn't that what the old Okies hoped for? In school we had to read The Grapes of Wrath. This wasn't much different. There wasn't anything going on in Kansas or Arkansas, and being from Oklahoma, we'd go to Heck before we went to Texas. West was really the only choice.

Sometimes I'll sit down with my atlas and follow the roads we took, and I'll think, there, that's where we should of split off south, or maybe if we'd taken the route through the mountains, or that dirt road across the desert. It doesn't do any good, but I do it. And I see all the sights again — the tumbleweeds caught in the guardrails, the Navajo trading posts with rugs hanging from the porch rafters, the hippie hitchhikers with jugs of water yoked around their necks. I see the wind-bent trees around broken-down homesteads, and the sagging beehives out back, I see the armadillos crushed on the road and the green bridges advertising their height. But when I try to see all of us in the car, it's always those last few miles outside of Shiprock, the dust filling the back window. It's sad —I've got all of Texas and most of New Mexico, but all I remember is Shiprock.

Here's something you'll like. If we'd have kept going on that road we would have ended up at the Four Corners, where the states come together at a plaque. Here's the choice I would've had: Utah still shoots people; Arizona and Colorado have the gas chamber; at the time, New Mexico electrocuted you, now they've changed to lethal injection. The state police say I was less than thirty miles short of it. Mr. Jefferies would have had one tough decision to make.

Why west? It's the way you go out here. It's like "Route 66," the song— -it winds from Chicago to LA. No one goes the other way. It would be stupid.

We were halfway across the Texas panhandle when we heard it — Dumas, maybe even Dalhart. For, miles there was nothing but fence, gates onto grazing land, cattle guards in the middle of the road. In the distance, the grain elevators rose like white hotels, announcing the towns. It was dinnertime and the sun was in my eyes. We'd gotten fifty dollars from these teenagers in a parking lot in Pampa for an eighth. We gassed up in Skellytown, I snorted a few lines and we headed north. The plan was for Lamont and Natalie to get some rest. They were just getting settled when it came over the radio —three suspects, a yellow older-model Plymouth. They read our license plate number and gave our names, all except Gainey.

"Where the heck did they get all that?" Lamont said.

"Heck," Natalie said. "Heck."

"Do you want me to stop or something?" I said.

"No," Lamont said.

"How far is it to Mexico?" Natalie asked, and Lamont handed her the map. He said he was fine now except he couldn't feel his hand. Natalie rattled the map open.

"Well?" I said.

"It's far."

All night and all the next day. That's how I got my nickname, the Speed Queen. Lucinda always makes fun of it; she says it's a kind of washing machine. I don't mind it. I was thinking you might use it for a title.
The Speed Queen Confesses
, how's that sound?

But yeah, driving all night up and down those two-lanes, cruising through the little four-corners towns. It was Saturday night and the kids were out low-riding in their chopped Hondas and trenched Chevy Luvs. It was slow going. Lamont and Natalie were sleeping, so was Gainey. All the drive-ins were jammed. They reminded me of Coit's and the good times we had there. Every little cow town had one —the Dairy Princess, Custard's Last Stand, the Dallas Dairyette —the kids in sweatshirts in the back of pickup trucks, couples dating in flame-jobbed fastbacks, sucking down fizzes and splits and dipsy-doodles. I thought about how easy their lives were, and how messed up they'd get, and then I'd hit the town limits and click on my high beams and make time.

Further west in Texas, the towns were closed for the night, only roadside diners open —the Wide-A-Wake, the Miss Ware City — their signs trying to convince me I wanted KC steaks and broasted chicken and chiliburgers and spudnuts. Coldest beer in town! one place claimed, but it had a telephone number written in white shoe polish across the front windows. Livestock auction every Tuesday. We passed the shells of old drive-ins, hollow train stations, a gas station advertising used tires, and then for the next fifty miles nothing but stars and maybe an iguana caught in my lights.

We hit the New Mexico border after midnight and I fixed the clock and it was Saturday again. You could smell the feed yards coming. I had gum and I turned the radio on low just to have someone to listen to. The night hypnotizes you, the lines holding the car on the road, the reflectors tricking your eyes. Cattle trucks passed the other way, deadheading, lit up like UFOs. On the sharper curves people had left shrines for loved ones, plastic flowers and yellow ribbons nailed on crosses. It was a stretch you'd fall asleep on during the day —nothing for miles, then a graying billboard, a mileage sign for old mining ghost towns and places you'd never heard of: Capulin and Wagon Mound, Ojo del Madre. Around three in the morning, in the middle of the desert, a railroad gate swung down in front of us and a Santa Fe engine blared past, hauling a long line of gondola cars. An hour later I had to wait for it again. It was like we were going nowhere.

At Springer the road finally hit 1-25, and I pulled into a Loaf 'n Jug and while I was filling up, squeegeed the bugs off the windshield and bought a cold six of diet Pepsi. Gainey woke up and I gave him a Nilla wafer. I got back on the road and chugged a can and felt better. When I turned around, he was out again, the cookie in his fist.

The mountains slowed us down. They were scenic, like it said on the map, but the curves took hours and hurt my eyes. Dawn came up. Lamont's bandage was dry, Natalie was wearing one of my shirts. The shadows of the trees fluttered over their faces, and I tried not to think of Kim Zwillich and Margo Styles. Outside of Taos we got stuck behind a Winnebago with black nylon skirts; on the spare they had a map of the country with all the states colored in, and I thought that would be a neat thing to do, just keep going till we hit all of them.

"You want me to drive?" Lamont asked when he got up. His hand was better, he said, and showed me he could open and close it.

"I'm fine," I said. "Want a pop?"

In back, Natalie groaned and stretched her arms over her head. "Where the heck are we?"

"Cuba," I said. "The next town is fifty miles."

"I'm hungry," she said.

"I should eat something," Lamont said, like it was final.

"Something quick," I warned him.

We cruised through town, skipping the Tip Top Cafe and the Stagecoach Inn. There was nothing with a drive-thru, so I pulled in behind Anita's Coffee Pot. Breakfast 99

The menu was huge. Silver dollar pancakes, flannel cakes, pork fritters. Country ham, dropped eggs, buttered toast. They had dinner for breakfast — Adobe Pie and Zuni stew, chalupas and tamales and flautas, chilaquiles and stuffed sopaipillas and Hopiburgers, and for dessert, Millionaire Ice Box Pie. I wasn't hungry at all.

"Then just get coffee," Lamont said.

"This is stupid," I said.

"Marjorie, we have to eat."

"No," I said, "we have to not get caught. They'll feed us all sorts of stuff in jail."

Natalie just sat there reading the menu like she didn't have an opinion.

"You're just loving this," I said.

"Did I say anything?" she said.

"Forget it."

"I think someone's getting a little paranoid," she said.

"What do you mean someone?" I said. "I'm right here, Natalie. I'm not someone."

"Do you want people looking at us?" Lamont said. "Because that's what they're going to do if you don't control yourself."

"Look who's talking about control."

"Do you want to go sit in the car? Do you want me to treat you like a little kid? I'm not feeling too good if you haven't noticed. I don't need this stuff."

I said the F-word then and walked out. He could feed Gainey. They could be their own little family.

In the car I cracked my last diet Pepsi. It was warm. I didn't need them, I thought. They were my whole problem. And watching the cars passing behind me on the highway. I thought I could just take oft and ditch the car somewhere and start over. But I couldn't. They needed me to drive.