Infamous (40 page)

She’d taken a bath and ordered up a steak, baked potato, and Jell-O salad with a couple bottles of ice-cold Shiner Bock. She didn’t wake up the next day till way past one o’clock, having pulled the shades tight, and would’ve slept later if that nigger maid hadn’t made all that fuss about wanting to bring her up some towels and fresh bleached sheets.
Oh, Lawdy, miss. Oh, Lawdy
. She paid for the room in cash, got the hose fixed at a Sinclair Oil station, and headed on up 171 through Hillsboro to Cleburne, where the goddamn hose—the new one—busted again, spewing up clouds of steam, the engine running hellfire hot, limping on—
Another mile to go, another mile to go
—till she saw the billboard for another filling station, this one a Texaco that promised to sell WESTERN GIFTS AND NOVELTIES while they checked your engine.

Goddamn George. Goddamn Sam Sayres.

Goddamn all men
.

The three miles to that Texaco might’ve been a million. Kathryn was more sure than ever that George had found that pretty blond lifeguard—the one who he’d said resembled a mermaid—and run off to Miami or, worse yet, headed back to Coleman to harvest their loot and split the country like he always wanted. Either way, brother, she knew she was out of the picture. Her gingham dress hugged her long body and firm fanny like a second skin, the slow going of the old truck not giving up a bit of wind, her mouth parched and dry, aching for a Dr Pepper, the setting sun coming straight into her eyes. The red wig felt like a winter hat, but Kathryn knew nobody in Texas figured the infamous Kit Kelly for a daring redhead.

She didn’t know who she hated more at that very moment, George R. Kelly or Samuel Sayres, thinking that old Sam Sayres may have the edge for making her give up that Chevrolet for this old metal carcass, not having the decency to trust her word that she’d be wiring him the money. Kathryn kicked in the clutch like she was riding a stubborn mule down that twisty, two-lane highway, past dead-weed gullies and handmade signs for the Texaco perched on fence posts. Nothing but cotton around her forever, making her think that North Texas sure looked a hell of a lot like North Mississippi, waiting for the next stop to be purgatory.

George R. Kelly sat at a linen-covered table with his tanned whore, a cigar in the side of his mouth, a fist of cash in one hand and the girl’s fat Southern ass in the other. Sam Sayres sat at a wooden trough of ice cream, eating and slurping it up like a hog.

The filling station was on the edge of downtown Itasca, population 1,280. The station was a lean, skinny building made out of stone, with two garage doors and twin, globe-topped pumps. Behind the station were stacked junked cars from when they just started making cars, Kathryn wishing she could just add this son of a bitch to the heap because walking to Fort Worth might just be easier.

Two attendants came running out to meet the fuming, jittery truck, as she pulled in and hit the brake and jumped out to kick the tires, just aching to do that for the last forty miles, and then walked to the edge of the highway to light a cigarette. She hadn’t said a word to the men, the men being smart enough to figure it the hell out.

She wanted to rip the crazy wig off her head but instead just stared at all those junked cars and the big, endless acres of cotton getting ripe. She thought back about standing at the edge of the Gulf after she found out George was gone and throwing shells out into the water till her arm ached, salt water licking her toes as an insult.

She walked back to the shade of the filling-station roof to where a split log had been laid across some milk jugs. She sat and spread her legs, feeling just the hint of coolness and breeze between them. She leaned back against the stone wall, ran a sweaty forearm across her brow, and looked north at the endless road, crooking up and forgotten, ’round the bend.

She should’ve known George would’ve pulled something as boneheaded as this. Maybe Ma Coleman was right. Maybe he was Satan put upon this earth, maybe Kathryn was paying for sins going back to that creek in Saltillo when she let the preacher’s son stick his skinny willy in her. Maybe she had lured him there. Maybe she had the same kind of affliction as George and needed to get right in His eyes. Could she change? Could she walk deep into the river—any river—and have her sins and filth and road sweat washed off her and drain on down to Mexico?

Kathryn did something she hadn’t even thought about since she’d had a child’s mind. Kathryn Kelly, now thinking she could become Cleo Brooks again, began to pray. She started with something simple, about the only thing she could recall, about how great He was, how powerful He was, and how she wasn’t nothing but dirt.
O heavenly Father, I’m so damn stupid and trusting . . .

When she opened her eyes, she saw three figures—shadows, really—in the big blot of the afternoon sun, coming down the road. Two tall and one short. Kathryn was worn-out from the prayer and lit another cigarette, wondering if one of those grease monkeys fussing over her truck might have a spot of liquor on him, knowing she’d give up her last hundred-dollar bill to be good and drunk right about now.

The figures grew closer, coming down the road. She could hear the men knocking around in the garage, but also the cicadas and crows. A nice, new Packard blew past the filling station, scattering up dirt and trash from the roadside. Some of the grit blowing across to her, into her eyes and onto her tongue.

She spat, spread out her legs farther, and used the front pages of the newspaper to fan her undercarriage. JUDGE ORDERS SHANNONS TO OKLAHOMA.

The shadows became people, and those people became a short man and a taller woman and a little girl in a dress made out of a flour sack. The sack hadn’t even been disguised, Kathryn clearly seeing WESTERN STAR MILL written across her middle. The girl trudged along, wearing a pair of oversize men’s brogans and kicking a tin can, a sharp stick in her hand. The man behind her looked to be about Kathryn’s age but with plenty of wrinkles and scars, wearing overalls and work boots. The woman was slope-shouldered and poor-mouthed, in her tattered flowered dress that had been washed threadbare. They stopped a good bit shy of the filling station, and the little girl plopped to her butt, the man rousting through a junk pile to find an old metal bucket where he sat down, not even offering the comfort to the woman or child, and Kathryn nearly laughed at the sight of it.

Another car passed, and the man stepped a long, skinny leg onto the road and put out his thumb.

Those people
. They were everywhere.

The mechanic came out after a while and told Kathryn the damage, and it was only going to be twenty dollars, and she reached into her purse and handed him the money without looking at him or making the fuss he clearly expected.

She fanned her face and between her legs again with the newspaper, Boss and Ora’s hardscrabble faces staring back.

Advertisements on tin all around her. DRINK COCA-COLA. SMOKE CAMELS. BUY FIRESTONE
.
She lit her Lucky and waited for another car to pass and kick up a little wind.

“Sure love the smell of a cigarette,” a little voice said.

Leaning into the stone wall, legs spread, opening one eye, Kathryn Kelly looked at the little girl in the flour sack standing in front of her. She opened the other eye and muscled her sweaty forearms onto her knees and took in some more of the Lucky, blowing the smoke right into the girl’s face and pug, freckled nose.

The little girl winced a little, but then sniffed the air like a rabbit and said, “Yes, ma’am. That’s smells right stylish.”

“You’re an odd little duck.”

“Don’t take me on account of my clothing,” the girl said. “My father lost our suitcase in a card game.”

“You don’t say . . .”

“He almost won, too.”

“Where’s your car?”

“We don’t have a car,” the girl said. “We’re just tramping.”

“I see.”

“You have a car.”

“If you can call it that.”

“Must be nice.”

“What’s your angle, kid?” Kathryn asked, crushing the cigarette under the heel of her shoe. The sunset cut across the girl’s light eyes and blunt, bowl-cut hair. She wrinkled her nose. “Thought maybe we could hitch a ride, is all. Don’t want to be no trouble, ma’am. We just walked a fur piece.”

The mechanic pulled the truck around. He had black teeth, and black grease across his red neck, and he winked at Kathryn as he opened the door, at the ready.

“Some town,” the little girl said. “Even the people have fleas.”

The grease monkey spat.

The little girl turned to walk back to her old bucket daddy, Momma sitting like an Indian beside him. Kathryn wondered where in the hell were those Western gifts the billboards had promised.

She kicked in the clutch and clattered up slow to the girl, having to shout over the coughing motor and through the open passenger window. “What’s your name?” she asked.

“Gerry.”

“Y’all want a ride, Gerry?”

“Can my folks come?”

“Why not.”

A mile down the road, Gerry sitting up on an apple crate beside Kathryn and talking ninety miles an hour, her poor-faced folks in back on the Ford’s flatbed, Kathryn started to think about the miracle of prayer and how that family, cresting over the hill with holes in their shoes, just might be some kind of crazy redemption, like they had in the Bible and in the movies.

Cleo Brooks knew she could be good. She just goddamn well knew it.

“YOU SAY SHE’D JUST UP AND LEFT YOU, MA’AM?” JONES ASKED. “Did your granddaughter say where she was headed?”

“No, sir,” Ma Coleman said. “I can still smell him among us.”

“How does he smell?”

“Like sulfur and hellfire.”

“I think it smells right pleasant, ma’am,” Jones said. “Smells like you baked a pie.”

“Coconut,” she said. “Just starting to cool. Yes, sir, it is.”

Jones looked to the ledge, where dozens of flies had gathered over the pie, taking off and landing in a spotted black swarm. He sat across from the old woman, on the other side of a table cobbled together with barn wood, coffee-ringed and beat to hell. Behind her, he had a clear view of the agents walking the land, and he could see young Agent Colvin conversing with that sharpshooter Bryce by a willow growing in the bend of a narrow creek.

A black row of clouds inched toward them, about to blot out the sun.

“It’s nice to converse with a fine young man, for a change,” Ma Coleman said. “Picks up the spirit. May I offer you some more sweet tea? I brewed it in the sun this morning. My son brought me a block of ice just before you men arrived.”

“I don’t mind if I do,” Jones said, reaching across to grab the sweating pitcher. “I appreciate you inviting us in.”

“It’s a hot day,” she said.

“It’s supposed to rain.”

“You don’t say.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Jones said, fanning his face with his Stetson. “Sure would cool things down.”

“Mmm-hmm,” Ma Coleman said, cold and vacant as a broken doll on a ladder-back chair, flies buzzing off from a half-eaten cheese sandwich. “You will find that man she’s with?”

“Kathryn’s husband?”

“If that’s what he claims.”

Bruce Colvin walked through the front screen door and was careful not to let it bang closed. He’d sweated through his white dress shirt, perspiration ringing his neck in an effect that looked like a halo. He looked to Jones and shook his head.

There was dirt across the front of his pants.

“She left some things here?” Colvin asked.

“Her furs and trinkets,” the old woman said. “Vanity has no shame. He bought them for her. He made her wear them. They feel like dog skins to me.”

“I understand,” Jones said.

“You are a fine bunch of men,” she said, rocking a bit to herself and smiling. “You understand that he’s the one to blame?”

“Of course,” Jones said, shifting his eyes over to Colvin. Colvin rested a shoulder against the wall, flowered wallpaper peeling from the wood planks, listening. “We only want George Kelly.”

Jones reached out his hand and grabbed the frail old woman’s arm. “Tell us what you know, ma’am.”

Colvin shook his head and looked away from Jones, letting the screen door slam behind him. Jones watched the young man walk away down a rutted path but then turned back to the blind woman, who smiled and rocked. “You do know she has a friend named Louise in Fort Worth? You do realize she’s a demon, too?”

KATHRYN RENTED A CABIN IN A LITTLE MOTOR COURT NEAR Cleburne for herself and Gerry and her parents, the Arnolds. Flossie Mae and Luther. She’d left them there to get cleaned up and she’d gone to town to try to phone Sam Sayres again, getting the runaround from his secretary and finally giving up, bringing back some boxed dinners of fried chicken and some fresh clothes for the family. The family sat together on a short bed opposite an identical short bed where Kathryn sat and gnawed on a chicken bone. She was thinking of Sam Sayres being so almighty stupid as to let her momma get sent back to Oklahoma when Luther Arnold coughed in the silence of hungry people eating and said how much they appreciated meeting a real-life angel out on a Texas highway.