Desperation

“‘Once the addict-behavior starts, the gambling stops,’” she had repeated. “I know, I remember, I believe. You like Tahoe, I like Tahoe, the kids like Tahoe, Tahoe is fine.”

So he had made the reservations, and today—if it still was today—they had been on U.s.

50, the so-called loneliest highway in America, headed west across Nevada toward the High Sierra. Kirsten had been playing with Melissa Sweetheart, her favorite doll, Ellie had been nap-ping, and David had been sitting beside Ralph, looking out the window with his chin propped on his hand. Earlier he had been reading the Bible his new pal the Rev had given him (Ralph hoped to God that Martin wasn’t queer—the man was married, which was good, but still, you could never damn tell), but now he’d marked his place and tucked the Bible away in the console storage bin. Ralph thought again of asking the kid what he was thinking about, what all the Bible stuff was about, but you might as well ask a post what it was thinking. David (he could abide Davey but hated to be called Dave) was a strange kid that way, not like either parent. Not much like his sister, either, for that matter. This sudden interest in religion—what Ellen called “David’s God-trip”—was only one of his oddities. It would probably pass, and in the meantime, David did not quote verses at him on the subject of gambling, cursing, or avoiding the razor on weekends, and that was good enough for Ralph. He loved the kid, after all, and love stretched to cover a multitude of oddities. He had an idea that was one of the things love was for.

Ralph had been opening his mouth to ask David if he wanted to play Twenty Questions—there had been nothing much to look at since leaving Ely that morning and he was bored out of his mind—when he felt the Wayfarer’s steering suddenly go mushy in his hands and heard the highway-drone of the tires suddenly become a flapping sound.

“Dad.” David asked. He sounded concerned but not—panicked. That was good.

“Everything okay.”

“Hold on,” he had said, and began pumping the brakes. “This could be a little rough.”

Now, standing at the bars and watching the dazed woman who might be their only hope of surviving this—nightmare, he thought: I really had no idea of what rough was, did I.

It hurt his head to scream, but he screamed anyway, unaware of how much he sounded like his own son: “Shoot him, lady, shoot him!”

What Mary Jackson recalled, what caused her to reach for the shotgun even though she had never actually held a gun—rifle or pistol—in her entire life, was the memory of the big cop mixing the words I’m going to kill you into the Miranda warning.

And he meant it. Oh God yes.

She swung around with the gun. The big blond CO—was standing in the doorway, looking at her with his bright gray empty eyes.

“Shoot him, lady, shoot him!” a man screamed. He was in the cell to Mary’s right, standing next to a woman with an eye so black that the bruise had sent tendrils down her cheek, like ink injected beneath the skin. The man looked even worse; the left side of his face appeared to be covered with caked, half-dried blood.

The cop ran at her, his boots rattling on the hardwood floor. Mary stepped back, away from him and toward the big empty cell at the rear of the room, pulling back both of the shotgun’s hammers with the side of her thumb as she retreated. Then she raised it to her shoulder. She had no intention of warning hint I-fe had just killed her husband in cold blood, and she had no intention of warning him.

Ralph had pumped the brakes and held the wheel with his elbows locked, letting it work back and forth a little in his hands but not too much. He could feel the RV trying to yaw.

The secret to handling a high-speed blow-out in an RV, he’d been told, was to let it yaw—a little, anyway. Although—bad news, folks—this didn’t feel like just one blowout.

He glanced up into the rearview at Kirsten, who had stopped playing with Melissa Sweetheart and was now holding the doll against her chest. Kirstie knew something was going on, just not what.

“Kirsten, sit down!” he called. “Belt in!”

Except by then it was over. He wrestled the Wayfarer off the road, killed the engine, and wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. All in all he didn’t think he’d done badly. Hadn’t even toppled the vase of desert flowers standing on the table in back.

Ellie and Kirstie had picked them behind the motel in Ely this morning, while he and David were first loading up and then checking out.

“Good driving, Dad,” David said in a matter-of-fact voice.

Ellie was sitting up now, looking around blearily. “Bathroom break.” she asked.

“Why’re we tilted this way, Ralph.”

“We had a—”

He broke off, looking into the outside mirror. A police—car was rushing toward theni from behind, blue lights flashing. It came to a screaming stop about a hundred yards back, and the biggest cop Ralph had ever seen in his life almost hounded out. Ralph saw that the cop had his gun drawn, and felt adrenaline light up his nerves.

The cop stared right and left, his gun held up to shoul—der height with the muzzle pointing at the cloudless morn-ing sky. Then he actually turned in a circle. When he was facing the RV again, he looked directly into the outside rearview, seeming to meet Ralph’s eyes. The cop raised both hands over his head, brought them down violently, then raised and brought them down again. The pantomime was impossible to misinterpret—Stay inside, stay where you are.

“Ellie, lock the back doors.” Ralph banged down the button beside him as he spoke.

David, who was watching him, did the same thing on his side of the car without having to be asked.

“What.” She looked at him uncertainly. “What’s going on.”

“I don’t know, but there’s a cop back there and he looks excited.” Back where I had the flat, he thought, then amended that. The flats.

The cop bent and picked something up off the surface of the road. It was a meshy strip with little twinkles of light bouncing off it the way light bounces off the sequins on a woman’s evening dress. He carried it back to his car, dragging one end along the shoulder, his gun still in his other hand, still held up at a kind of port arms. He seemed to be trying to look in all directions at once.

Ellie locked the aft door and the main cabin door, then came forward again. “What in the samhill is going on.”

“I told you, I don’t know. But that doesn’t look, you know, real encouraging.” He pointed into the mirror out-side the driver’s window.

Ellie bent, planting her hands just above her knees and watching with Ralph as the cop dumped the meshy thing into the passenger seat, then backed around to the driver’s side with his gun now held up in both hands. Later it would occur to Ralph just how carefully crafted this little silent movie had been.

Kirstie came up behind ‘her mother and began to bop Melissa Sweetheart softly against her mother’s stuck-out bottom. “Butt, butt, butt, butt,” she sang. “We love a great big motherbutt.”

“Don’t, Kirstie.”

Ordinarily Kirstie would have needed two or three requests to cease and desist, but something in her mother’s voice this time caused her to stop at once. She looked at her brother, who was staring as intently into his mirror as the grownups were into Daddy’s. She went over to him and tried to get in his lap. David set her back on her feet gently but firmly. “Not now, Pie.”

“But what is it. What’s the big deal.”

“Nothing, no big deal,” David said, never taking his eyes off the mirror.

The cop got into his cruiser and drove up the road to the Wayfarer. He got out again, his gun still out but now held along his leg with the muzzle pointed at the road. He looked right and left again, then walked over to Ralph’s window. The driver’s position in the Wayfarer was much higher than a car’s seat would have been, but the cop was so tall—six-seven, at least—that he was still able to look down on Ralph as he sat behind the wheel in his captain’s chair.