The Traveller (28 page)

‘Did you talk to him? I mean, what did he say?’ ‘He just said he looked up and somehow knew right away, split second, really, that it was a baby, and he circled right under the child. He’d been a center fielder on his high-school baseball team, too, which was really funny, because when he said that, everyone nodded and thought, Sure, that explains it, but of course it didn’t explain anything, because baseball players don’t usually get much baby-catching practice.’

But maybe that’s where he learned to catch?’ I guess so. Football, baseball. It was a story that lent itself to sports metaphors.’

Jeffers looked over at Anne Hampton. She caught his eye and shook her head. Then she smiled and the smile widened into a grin. The two of them laughed out loud. “That’s incredible. A bit wonderful, as well…’ “In a way, that’s what photographers do. They periodically go from one incredible to the next. . ,’ Jeffers hesitated. ‘Better get that down,’ he said, then paused while Anne Hampton scrawled some more notes on her pad. When she looked up again, Jeffers continued. ‘Anyway, I can tell you that that particular assignment absolutely made my day. Hell, it made everyone’s day. Made my week. Made my month, probably. I shot the guy, he had the most, I don’t know, delightful, I guess, sheepish grin on his face. We were all of us laughing and giggling, reporters, photographers, television crews, passersby, neighbors, the cop on the beat, everyone. Even the kid’s father, standing there in handcuffs, because the cops felt they sure as hell had to arrest somebody when a baby gets tossed out of a

window. Funny thing was, he didn’t seem to mind. Then I got a picture of the mother, too. Have you ever seen a person whose life changes so abruptly, so quickly, so many times? From terror to despair to agony to hope to incredible happiness in a couple of seconds. It was all wrapped in her eyes. An easy picture to take. Just put the baby in her arms, sit her down next to the guy who caught the child, and press the shutter button. Bingo. Instant pathos. Instant joy.’

‘Unbelievable,’ she said.

‘Incredible,’ he said.

‘You’re not kidding me, just trying to make me feel better?’

‘No. Not a chance. That’s not something I do.’

‘What?’

‘Try to make people feel better. It’s not in the job description at all.’

‘I didn’t mean …’

He interrupted. ‘I know what you meant.’

He glanced over at her and smiled. ‘But it should make you feel better anyway.’

She felt an odd warmth.

‘It’s nice,’ she said. ‘It’s a. really nice story. It does.’

‘Make sure you get it down,’ he said.

She scribbed quickly in the notepad.

‘ .. . And the baby lived,’ she wrote.

She stared at the word for a moment: lived. For a moment she wanted to cry, but she was able to stifle it.

They continued down the highway in the first benign silence she’d known for what she sensed was only hours but suddenly seemed to her to be weeks.

Gulfport slid past them as the morning sun took root. Occasionally the roadway would dip toward the Gulf of Mexico and Anne Hampton watched for the insouciant blue of the baywaters. These glimpses comforted her, as did the infrequent sight of a flight of gulls as they floated on the wind currents, just above the waves. She thought they seemed like gray and white sailboats, the way they

moved with ease in conjunction with the desires and demands of nature.

It was midmorning when Jeffers said, ‘Time to tank up’.

He pulled off the interstate, heading down a narrow ramp toward the first gasoline station he spotted. To Anne Hampton if seemed to be a ramshackle place; the small white clapboard attendant’s building seemed to sway in the morning breeze, leaning against the solid square brick garage for assistance. Two lines of red, blue, green, and yellow pennants snapped in the wind above the pumps. They were the old-fashioned kind that gave off a ring as each gallon was pumped, not the newer, computer-driven style that was more familiar to her. It was called Ted’s Dixie Gas and was empty save for three cars parked on the side by the garage. Two of the cars seemed to be derelicts, stripped and rusted, barely recognizable. The third was a cherry-red street racer, its tail end jacked up, oversized tires and chromed wheels. Someone’s fantasy, she thought. Someone’s time and effort and money wrapped up in smalltown heroics. She stared at the car as Jeffers crunched up to the pumps, knowing that a slick-haired teenager would emerge momentarily to take their order.

‘Hit the head,’ Jeffers demanded.

His voice had a sudden roughness in it. She shivered.

‘You know the rules, don’t you?’

She nodded.

‘I don’t have to explain anything to you, do I?’

She shook her head. She noticed that he had the short-barreled pistol in his hand, and that he was sticking it in his belt, beneath his shirt. She stared, then turned away.

‘Good,’ he said. ‘Makes things much easier. Now sit still while I come around to open your door.’

She waited.

‘Hurry up,’ he said as he swung wide the door. She looked up and saw a gangly teenager with straight dark hair sticking haphazardly out from beneath a battered, faded baseball cap, walking across the dusty station toward them.

‘Fill ‘er up?’ he drawled. It took him almost as much

time to speak the words as it had for him to lope across the space between the garage and the pumps.

‘To the top,’ said Jeffers. ‘Where’s the ladies’ room?’

‘Wouldn’t y’all want the men’s room?’ the boy replied, grinning. Anne Hampton thought suddenly that Jeffers would shoot the teenager right there and then. But instead Jeffers laughed. He made his finger into a gun and pointed it at the boy. ‘Bang,’ he said. ‘You got me on that one. No, I meant for the lady, here.’ The attendant turned his huge grin on Anne Hampton and she smiled faintly in return.

The boy pointed to the side of the building. ‘Key’s on the inside of the door there. The old man will show ya.’ He waved at the gas station office.

Anne Hampton looked at Jeffers and he nodded.

She felt hot as she crossed the twenty feet to the station. It was as if the wind had suddenly died down, just in the space around her. She stared up at the pennants, which still flapped and twisted above her, and wondered why she could not feel the breeze. She felt dizzy and her stomach churned in quick fashion. She stepped out of the sunlight into the doorway. There was an older man, unshaven, with a greasy striped shirt on, sitting by the register, drinking a can of soda. Her eyes fastened on a sewn name above his shirt pocket. It said Leroy. ‘The bathroom key?’ she asked.

‘Right next to you,’ the man replied. ‘You okay, miss? You look like yesterday’s bacon left in the skillet overnight. Can I get you a cold one?’

‘A what?’

‘A soda.’ He nodded toward a cooler.

‘Uh, no. No. Yes, actually. Why, thank you, Leroy.’

‘Hell, it’s my brother’s shirt. That good-for-nothing never did a solid day’s work. I put all the grease there. I’m George. Coke?’

‘Thafd be fine.’

He handed her the cold can of soda and she pressed it against her forehead. He smiled. ‘I like to do that, too, when the heat gets to me. Seems to get right inside your head, that way. Better with a bottle of beer, though/

She smiled. ‘How much do I owe you?’ Then, suddenly,

she almost choked. She had no money. She turned quickly, searching for Jeffers.

‘Hell, it’s on me. Don’t get to buy nothing for no pretty gals too much no more. Make the boy jealous, too.’ He laughed and she joined him, her breath bursting from inside her in relief.

‘I appreciate it.’ She put the can in her purse.

‘No matter. Where you heading?’

She choked again. Where? she asked herself. What does he want me to say?

‘Louisiana,’ she said. ‘Just taking a little holiday.’

‘Right time of year,’ the attendant said. ‘Even if a tad bit warm. We get a lot of folks traveling through. People ought to stay, though. Got a right fine beach and there’s fine fishing. Not so famous though, as some other spots. That’s the problem. It all boils down to publicity nowadays. You got to get the word out. No two ways about it.’

‘Get the word out,’ she said. ‘That’s right.’

‘Got to be the right word, though.’

‘True enough.’

‘Like take this place,’ he said. ‘The boy’s a right fine mechanic. Better’n his old man, for sure, though I don’t let on nowdays. Give him a swelled head and all. But got no way to let folks know. They end up taking their cars to those fancy big places near the shopping malls, when, hell. we’d do a better job for half the price.’

‘I bet you would.’

He laughed. ‘Feeling better?’

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘Got to get the word out. Don’t make no matter what you’re doing in life, fixing cars or selling burgers or fixing to fly to the moon. Publicity is what makes this nation work. Yes, ma’am. You got to tell folks what it is you got and what it is they’re gonna get. You just gotta get the word out.’

He handed her the bathroom key.

‘Just cleaned up this morning. Fresh soap and towels on the back of the door. You need something else, just holler.”

She nodded and started out the door. She turned and pointed in a quizzical way and he nodded to her and waved her around the corner.

It was cool inside the rest room, but close, and the air seemed old and tired. She quickly used the toilet, then went to the sink and splashed water on her face. She looked up in the mirror and saw herself pale and drawn. I’ve seen this scene a hundred times, she thought, picking up the soap bar. It’s in every movie on television. She remembered Jimmy Cagney and Edmund O’Brien. ‘White Heat,” she said out loud. He writes on the mirror in the gas station. She thought of Jeffers and pictured him speaking: I’m on top of the world, Ma! She wrote the word help on the mirror. Then she wrote, i’ve been … what? She rubbed that out. She felt hot and her hand was shaking. Got to get the word out, she thought, mimicking in her mind the slow Southern accent of the old man. call police she scrawled, then rubbed that out when she realized she’d written it too swiftly and it was illegible. And tell them what? She felt nauseated and gripped the sink to control herself. She looked down at her hands and pleaded with them, as if they weren’t attached to her body. Be still, she prayed. Be steady.

She looked back up. This is where the heroine gets saved, she thought. The attendant comes in and calls the handsome young policeman, who saves her. It always worked that way. Every time. She rubbed the mirror clean, using quick, panicked strokes. What if it doesn’t work that way? she thought. She suddenly felt angry and impatient, and the smeared soap across the mirror. The soap bar had gotten wet, and streaks of white ran down the surface. Like tears, she thought. It never happens like in, what? Fairy tales. The movies. The stories her father used to tell her when she was a child. She looked at her reflection between the soap streaks. She could see redness rimming her eyes. She shook her head in dismay and impotence and clenched her fists in anger and helplessness. No handsome prince through that door. It’ll be him. He’ll come in. Hell see it.

He’ll kill me. And George. And the boy who fixes the cars He’ll kill all of us. One right after the other.

And then maybe the word will get out.

She heard a scraping noise outside.

Bile rose in her throat. Oh, God, she thought. He’s there

The door rattled.

It’s the wind, she said to herself. But she frantically wiped at the soapy residue on the mirror.

What am I doing? she asked herself. Do you want to die?

Do nothing. Go along. He hasn’t hurt you yet.

That was a lie and she knew it. She argued with herself quickly. He will. He has. He’s going to use you and kill you, he said it himself.

The door rattled again.

He’s everywhere, she thought suddenly. The room was windowless, and she spun about, looking at the whitewashed walls. He can see! she said. He knows. He knows. He knows.

Just walk out calmly and apologize, she thought.

She checked herself in the now-clean mirror as if she would see signs of betrayal on her face that he would notice Then she turned and walked slowly back outside, thinking I am blank inside. She returned the key to the hook by the door and turned to the gas pumps and froze in sudden and complete terror.

Jeffers was standing next to the car, talking with a state trooper. Both men were wearing large sunglasses and she couldn’t see their eyes. She stopped, as if suddenly rooted

He saw Jeffers look up and smile at her. He gave her a wave.

She couldn’t move.

Jeffers waved again.

She screamed commands to her body. Walk! But she was still frozen. She forced herself to push and pull at every muscle and managed to take a step, then another. The walk across the sunlit macadam surface seemed interminable. The heat seemed to build around her, and she had the odd thought that it was burning her. We’re all going to die, she thought. She saw Jeffers reach under his shirt

and the black revolver jump into his hand. She heard the girl’s report. She saw the trooper falling back, dying, but in his own hand was his weapon and it was spitting bullets and fire. She saw the teenager and George the attendant going for cover as the pumps suddenly exploded into flame. She took another step and realized none of it was

happening.

Jeffers waved again. ‘Jump in, Annie, I just want to get

these directions straight.’ He turned toward the trooper.

Now, as I get into New Orleans, the road splits and six

takes me downtown and four-ten heads to the coastal

parks?’

‘You got it,’ said the trooper. He smiled at Anne and touched his hat brim. The little motion seared her insides.

‘Great, said Jeffers. ‘Always like to double-check. You’ve been big help.’

‘My pleasure,’ said the trooper. ‘Have a nice day.’ He turned toward his own car and Jeffers slid down behind the wheel. At first he was quiet as he slowly accelerated out of the station past the trooper’s cruiser. Then he said in a flat, harsh voice, ‘What were you and the old two jawing about?’