Once she crossed that bridge, she’d be in farm country. There’d be hardly anyone around. Randy would laugh at the risk she was taking. And Frank, he’d just say it was one of Katy’s new adventures. Even Billy would like the cash. But her mother would be furious.
“My mother,” she said thinking her mother could never hear about this.
“What about your mother?”
“Nothing,” she said. “My mother,” Katy said again, looking out at the suspension bridge she was about to cross. “My mother hates driving over bridges. She’s a nervous type, that’s all.”
He laughed. “And look at you. You’re not nervous at all.”
Katy headed up the ramp to the bridge over the Cape Fear River and saw the dark water swirling below. She’d heard stories of all those guys thinking they could swim the river. They got caught in the cross-currents of the river rolling out and the tidewaters of the sea rushing in. The churning force pulled them down in the river, so dark it was almost black with tannins from the vegetation that rotted on its shores. People drowned all the time in the current that whirled like a wheel. They got disoriented, couldn’t see which way was up, the water so thick and dark it sucked away all light.
As the truck surged forward, the bridge seemed to shudder, but it was her own shaking inside. Her stomach clenched, and a flash of fear shot up her spine. She saw his hands now clenched in his lap while his face looked so easy and mild. She’d seen that expression of a man about to explode: face calm, body tensed. And that look just before they grabbed a beer bottle and broke it over someone’s head. And she knew it. This was bad. This was stupid.
Slowly she reached under the seat for the little pocketknife she kept there, but all she’d ever used it for was to cut apples and cheese. She tried to slip it under her thigh to be ready. Maybe this was really bad.
Jesse saw the move, reached across, snapped up her wrist, and squeezed. The truck veered into oncoming traffic, and she pulled back into her lane. A car horn blared; the driver gave her the finger and rushed by.
He took the knife, put it in his pocket, and laughed. “What do you think you’re doing, girl? You could’ve killed us back there.”
“I’ll give you the truck,” she said.
“Really,” he said with a teasing little sound.
“You can have it. I won’t call the cops. You drive to his granny’s house. Once we get across the river, just let me out. I’ll walk home.”
He smiled. “Now, why would I make you do something like that? You’ll get home later.”
Billy would be furious. “My fiancé, he’ll be wondering where I am. He doesn’t like it when I’m late coming in.”
“Your fiancé.” He shook his head. “And what about Randy? Girl, I’m sitting in your truck and see you got Bob Marley, Lou Reed, Tom Petty, Stones, all that old rock-and-roll shit. Don’t sit there and tell me you take this fiancé shit serious.” He looked her up and down and laughed. “Damn, girl, I’m betting you got two guys on the side. Don’t you?”
She stared ahead at the highway unrolling, wished she hadn’t stopped to buy some stupid skirt for Frank and that damned underwear for Randy. Maybe if that lady had let her change in the restroom, this guy would have jumped into someone else’s car.
He was nudging her. “You get it on the side, don’t you? Don’t you?”
She gave a nod, eyes still on the road.
Jesse slapped her shoulder as if they were old friends. “Women. You got all the power, man. Don’t give a shit about nothing but a man between your legs. My momma, my blood momma, she was like that.”
Katy gripped the wheel harder, thought of yanking the car off the road, but there was nowhere to go. She glanced his way but couldn’t meet his eyes. “You’re not going to hurt me,” she said.
“Hell, no. You can drop me off and go see Randy.” He laughed, popped open the glove box. “Let’s see what other music you have.” He rummaged through a couple of CDs and, as if he’d known it would be there, grabbed the bag of pot. “Jackpot!”
She reached for his hand. “That’s my fiancé’s.”
“Right,” he said. “The bad shit we got always belongs to someone else.” He found the papers, started rolling. “I’d say we could use a little something to relax,” he said. “I knew you were into this. Smelled it the minute I got in your truck.” He reached in her purse, took her lighter, and lit up.
She felt a tear slip down her face, wiped it with the back of her hand.
“Ah, don’t worry, girl. It’s not what you think. We’ve just got a little thing to do here.”
She heard the hissing sound when he inhaled. She squeezed the steering wheel as they descended from the bridge. Back on solid ground she felt she’d left the world she knew behind. It was happening. Her mother had warned her: “You only think you’re in control, Katy. With every little reckless thing you do . . .” Katy couldn’t remember the rest of the warning. But somewhere inside she’d always known something like this would happen one day. She was Dorothy suddenly lifted by a furious wind spinning her to a terrifying new place where good really did battle evil, where a rebellious girl’s only desire was to go home.
When Katy was a girl, she believed in Oz. The first time she saw the movie, she was five years old. On the overstuffed green sofa she leaned into her daddy’s side, ate popcorn, and sipped Coke. She sat transfixed when the black tornado rolled across the prairie and snatched up Dorothy’s house, sent it spinning in a world flying by with cows mooing, chickens flapping, the mean old lady furiously pedaling her bicycle as if anyone could really outrun a storm.
During the commercial she asked her daddy if a tornado really could lift her off to another land. “Most definitely,” he said.
She asked, “Do we have tornadoes in Tennessee?”
“Sometimes,” he said, “but you don’t have to worry about that. Our house is made of brick. Remember the wolf? He huffed and puffed and couldn’t blow the brick house down.”
Katy glanced at the man beside her, now looking at the CDs she kept between the seats.
“Cool; this old truck’s got a player.”
“I had it installed. This was my daddy’s truck.”
But he wasn’t listening. “You got lots of Marley.” He turned on the accent. “You like da ganja, lady. I got good ganja for you.” He held the joint out to her.
“I don’t want any pot,” she said. “I just want to get home.”
He was studying a CD cover. “Yeah, Bob Marley, he’s cool. Black folks, white folks, all kinds of folks dig Bob.” He tossed the CD to the floor and looked out the window. She realized Randy’s shirt was down on the floor. But she didn’t say anything. He was watching her every move, and when he caught her eye, he just grinned. “You believe that Rasta shit ’bout Haile Selassie? I’ve got these black friends I do some dealing with. They talk about Selassie like he was some kind of a god.”
She’d heard that. Most
