Lake Chickamauga, the way they always did when she returned home. Frank would be there. “I need one more trip,” she had said. “One more trip back home, alone. I miss my mom.”
Billy had told her she could go, but he had a bad feeling.
“What?” she’d said. “Tell me your feeling; go on and say it.”
Billy had lit a joint, said, “Frank.” He’d looked straight at her. “I can tell when you’re lying, Katy.” Then he’d left her standing in the kitchen while he’d gone on to work with a joint in his hand. Just another fight, she’d told herself. She’d take a drive, let it go. She’d make lasagna for him when she got home. He liked it when she took the time to make a real meal. He called them good-wife meals, and he’d tease her, say he saw past her wild streak, saw the happy, peaceful, good wife she wanted to be. And he was right. Maybe. She hoped he was right.
She stared at the pavement and knew Billy had a right to be jealous. She knew she hurt him, but she just couldn’t resist the need sometimes to break a rule. To be a little bad. It gave her a rush, like leaping off a high dive. “I’m sorry,” she said out loud. She’d told Billy that a hundred times: “I’m sorry” for something; then she’d go on and keep doing what she wanted to do. She looked to the pavement and saw that her toenail was chipped; she’d get a pedicure before heading to Randy’s house. He noticed things like ragged nails. Billy didn’t give a shit, but Randy—and her mother—did. She looked up, saw the clerk watching her from the window. Katy smiled, gave a little wave, and went in.
Shuffling through the racks of clothes inside, she kept thinking she shouldn’t spend the money. They couldn’t afford it. “I don’t know, I don’t know,” she muttered to herself as she rifled through hangers holding tops and skirts.
Then the clerk was suddenly beside her, said, “Can I help you?”
Katy jumped. “I don’t know,” she said. Then she looked at the woman, smiled, reached and squeezed the woman’s shoulder. “I’m sorry. It’s just I’m going a little nuts. I’m about to get married and all. Prewedding jitters, I guess.”
The clerk nodded and said Katy had a pretty ring.
“It was his grandmother’s,” Katy said. “The diamond’s not that big, but I like the little designs in the gold.”
“You buying stuff for your honeymoon?”
Katy shook her head and moved hangers across the rack. “Taking a little trip back home. I like it here, but sometimes I feel like Dorothy, want to click my heels, close my eyes, and go home. But then once I’m back there, I know I won’t like it. I’ll know I should be back here. No matter where I am, seems I always want to be someplace else.” Katy looked up and sighed. “Know what I mean?”
The clerk, a sweet-looking older woman, smiled and said, “Tell me about it.” The clerk offered a little white top. “This will look great with your tan.”
Katy took the top. It was cute, cut to show off her shoulders. “I just don’t know if I’m the marrying kind.”
“Oh, you poor young girls,” the clerk said. “You just have too many choices these days.”
“You sound like my mom,” Katy said.
“I don’t mean to lecture,” the clerk said. “It just seems to me these days there aren’t any rules.”
Jesse studied her truck. The Tennessee license plate said, “POSITIV.” Optimistic was good. They went along easy. And it could take days before her truck got into the system back in Tennessee. Perfect. He laughed and sang in a monotone, “Over the river and through the woods . . .”
Mike lit a cigarette. “You one crazy motherfucker, man.”
Jesse waved a hundred-dollar bill and motioned to Mike to move the car closer. “Now, you keep your mouth shut. If she asks, you look stupid, say we just gotta take the car to your granny’s house. Now move.”
Mike’s hands trembled as he gripped the wheel. “Why’s it got to be my granny?”
Jesse leaned forward, his eyes on the store. “Come on, we’ve got a job to do.”
Mike nodded. He was the driver. He told himself that no matter what came of this, he was just the driver. They needed her truck to hit the pawnshop. Get guns, get cash from Jesse’s friend Zeke. Then Jesse could skip town and run back to Atlanta the way he always said he’d do, and Mike would have some cash to buy groceries for his granny, maybe fix his car, score some more weed. “A simple plan, man,” Jesse had said. But Jesse was always saying, A simple plan, man. Jesse made it all sound easy and clean. Mike knew him from juvy. Mike knew Jesse had been behind that dude in the laundry getting stabbed to death with a laundry pin. The guy was always wanting to suck somebody off for cash. But when he hit on Jesse, he hit on the wrong man. When the word got out about some fucker—even a fag—dying like that, stabbed two hundred times with a laundry pin, people said, “Man, that’s fucked up, even in here.” Jesse just shrugged, said, “Everything got a reason, man.” Mike wished he could be like Jesse, all fire and wires and sparks inside. But cool somehow, like the cool blue of a gas flame.
Jesse laid the hundred-dollar bill on the dash, stretched his arms, and cracked his knuckles. With batting gloves stretched tight and smooth on his hands, he looked like he could be ready to knock a fastball out of the park.
Mike watched the glass door of the store. It didn’t seem right to use his granny like bait. Jesse had said he wouldn’t hurt whoever they hit, but Mike knew Jesse’s need to hurt whatever he held in his hands. Except dogs—he had a thing about dogs. And kids. Little kids. Mike hoped maybe that girl inside would be lucky, have a dog in her truck. Jesse wouldn’t go after a girl with a dog there beside her. Mike looked toward the truck. Then he got to wondering if the truck color was called sky blue or robin’ s-egg blue. He’d always liked that color on a truck. He felt Jesse staring at the side of his face. Jesse had a look that really could burn. “How do you do that, man?”
Jesse dropped back and leaned against the passenger door. “What?”
“That thing you do with your eyes.”
Jesse smiled. “Told you, man. I’m the devil. Don’t know why folks have such trouble believing a thing like that. They’ll believe just about anything but that.” In one quick move, he popped the glove box, reached under the papers, and pulled out a bag with a couple of tight little joints rolled and some loose weed. He looked Mike in the eye. “I knew you were stoned, you fucker. You get all paranoid and fucked up when you smoke. I told you, lay off this shit till the job’s done.”
“I don’t get paranoid. I just think about things.” Mike watched the storefront while Jesse shoved the weed in the pocket of his jeans.
“Here she comes,” Mike said as Katy walked out of the shop. She slipped her sunglasses on.
Jesse watched her, thinking, Ignorant, not looking where she’s going, too busy digging for keys. Not seeing a damned thing.
Jesse grabbed the hundred-dollar bill. “Amazing what some folks will do for a buck.”
Katy stood outside the store, happy with what she’d bought: the little white top, a bra and panties, and a short black skirt that would show off her legs. Randy always said her legs were her best part—well, not her best part. Then he’d laugh.
