he said with a laugh.
Up ahead Mike rolled down the window of his car and looked back at them. Jesse reached his hand out the window, gave a thumbs-up sign.
Katy asked. “Why don’t you ride with your friend in his car? Why do you need to be here with me?”
He shook his head. “You really need an answer to that question?”
“Yes.”
“All right, then. My friend up there, he farts a lot. I hate riding with that man.”
Katy laughed. “No, really,” she said. She handed back the joint; she didn’t want to get high, just needed to level her nerves.
He took a hit, nodded. “Really.” He exhaled. “And, well, truth is, I guess I did want to make sure you came along. Now, would you please put this thing in gear and go?”
“You won’t shoot me,” she said.
“I swear by all that’s holy and all that’s not, I will not shoot you.” He mashed the joint out, flicked the roach to the floor. “Can’t have us getting too buzzed for the ride.”
Katy drove, thinking, The Lord didn’t give us a spirit of fear. . . . But with each passing mile she felt she was sinking into some soft, wet pit. Nothing sudden as an earthquake but a slow, steady sinking like a million-dollar glass house in the Hollywood hills, shifting, slipping slowly, quietly, in a mudslide rising like a tide from the earth.
She scanned the horizon for a car. Her hands shook on the wheel.
“Relax. Just tell yourself you’re being a good little Girl Scout, doing the public some kind of good.”
“I never was a Girl Scout,” she said.
He shifted. “Nah, I know your type, one of those misfits. You could play the game, but I bet you never felt you really fit in. Probably always dreaming of some other life, some other place you’d rather be.”
Fear hummed like a nest of bees whirling in her head. She couldn’t breathe. “How do you know that?”
“I pay attention. That new-age bullshit on your tag. ‘Positive.’ Like you really believe thinking positive can change a thing. You believers, man. You make me laugh. And this truck of yours. It’s the kind of car a girl who likes to dream of going places can afford. I bet you’re saving money for trips all the time. And never go anywhere, right?”
She could feel his eyes. She blocked his view of her face with her hand. She knew he could see everything she was. “Are you a friend of Randy’s? Have you been spying on me?”
“God, no, I’m telling you I just notice things. Like your fake fingernails. Fake and shiny but got dirt all under ’em. You got this thing about looking good, but you still like to spend your time playing in the dirt.” He poked the back of her hand with his fingertip. “You probably grow all those herbs healthy people eat. Basil, rosemary, dill. My mom, my legal mom, not the blood one, she grows that stuff.”
Katy looked at him. She had been transplanting seedlings to the garden that morning. Like his mother. He had mentioned his mother. She felt a little relief.
“I do grow basil. I keep meaning to make pesto.” She thought about the basil going to seed in her yard. She’d grown it last year too. Always talked about making pesto. Her mom made great pesto, but Katy never got around to it. She could never collect all those ingredients at the same time, so the basil kept growing until it went to seed and she’d tell herself she’d try it again with basil she could buy from the store.
“I look at you and figure, this is a woman believes in things.” He shook his head. “You were one of those little girls who set out cookies for Santa Claus, thought fairy things like Tinker Bell lived in the woods and the Easter Bunny really crept around your house hiding those eggs. You probably believe in things like guardian angels too.”
She looked out at the flat, empty highway. “I don’t know. I did believe in fairies when I was a girl.”
He looked out his window. “Me, I was always playing pirate. Eye patch, scarf on my head, stole this big ol’ kitchen knife.” He laughed. “I scared the shit out of some of those kids. ‘Shiver me timbers,’ man.” He laughed and propped his foot on the dash.
She didn’t want to hear about pirates and kitchen knives. She stared at his running shoes. “You an athlete?”
He laughed. “Yeah, breaking and entering—that’s my sport.” He lit another one of her cigarettes. “Nah, girl, I’m funning you. Football,” he said. “I play football.” He lifted his chin, exhaled. “Love it when the defense crumbles and you’re out there, man, just running.”
She looked him over, wouldn’t have guessed him for football. He was too little, too lean; she figured him for a wrestler, a runner, or some skinny guy who just buffed up with weights.
He turned to her. “I know what you’re thinking. I’m too little for football, right? But I can run like a mother, and I’m stronger than you think.”
Up ahead the right blinker of the Datsun flashed. “Here,” he said. “Get off and follow him.”
“This isn’t the way to Whitwell. Lake Waccamaw is just up there.”
“Shortcut,” he said. “This is farm country. His granny, she lives on a farm outside Whitwell.”
She followed the car, could hear her little-girl self crying inside, but she kept going. She followed his instructions, did what she was told, and the roads grew smaller, the land more empty with each passing mile. “I don’t want to do this.”
“But you’re doing it,” he said.
She trembled, wishing she had paid attention to the exit number, the route number, something. She looked out, saw some kind of abandoned factory. A power station maybe. Lots of electrical towers and power lines that seemed dead now. She’d remember this. If she just paid close attention to where she was going and could get back to this, she could get back to the highway. Lake Waccamaw wasn’t too far. Randy’s house was just south of the lake. If she focused, stayed steady, she’d get there. And Randy, he’d make it all right. He’d make her forget this whole stupid mess. She drove in deeper darkness and realized she’d forgotten to pay attention. While she was thinking about what she’d do later, she’d lost the sense of where she was. A dark wave rolled up from inside her, as if she’d been snatched by a current. The Cape Fear River. She had felt it then. She might have gotten help if she’d done something to get attention, but now she’d been carried too far out for anyone to hear her call.
Katy kept her eyes on the Datsun. Maybe they’d just rob her, maybe rape her, leave her to find her way home. But she was lost; she had no idea where she was. She looked out at the fields going red in the sunset and saw herself rising in the air, like Dorothy in that little house lifted by a storm. She’d get through this, like Dorothy, and she’d wake up, find herself settled in a bright new land.
Jesse flipped through her billfold. “Man, you’ve got no cash here. Not a dollar here.”
She slapped at his hands. “Stop it. Stop going through my things like I’m not here.”
He smacked her arm hard enough
