Pursuit: A Novel

37

Varney lay back in the back seat while Mae drove out of the gravel driveway onto the road. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she chanted. “All those lights were on, so I thought it must be over, and it would be okay to drive in.”

Varney spoke carefully, his face set in the effort to overlook the pain in his arm. “I’m not mad. Just shut up and let me think for a minute.” He knew that she wanted to say something more. “Just drive to the casino fast. We need a different car.”

She reached the casino in a few minutes. She parked the car in the middle of a long line of vehicles, then sat and watched while Varney opened the trunk and reached into the suitcase that contained his tools. He took a long, thin strip of sheet metal, slipped it into the space beside the window of the car beside theirs, moved it around a bit, then tugged it to make the lock button pop up. He opened the door, sat in the driver’s seat, used a big screwdriver to pop the silver ignition switch with the key slot out of its socket, and connected two wires from the back of it, starting the car. Then he pulled the trunk-release latch and the trunk popped open. He came back to the car where Mae sat and said, “Put everything in this car, and then wipe that one down and lock it up.”

While she worked, he sat on the rear bumper of the car he had started. “Drive straight to Interstate 35, down to Minneapolis. It’s the fastest way, and we want speed. Now shut me in.”

She gaped at him. “You’re going to ride in the trunk?”

He said quietly, “There will be cops everywhere in about five more minutes. They’re going to be looking for the two of us in a red Ford. But it’s going to be just you in a gray Toyota. See?”

She nodded.

“Then do it.”

He lay in the trunk, and she slammed the lid, hurried to the open door, got in, and drove. When she was on the highway, there were already police cars driving toward her with their lights flashing. She pulled over and slowed, then stopped. But Jimmy had been right. They saw her, drove past her, and went on. She moved back onto the road. When she made it onto Interstate 35, it seemed to her that she saw more police than she had seen since she had been in this state. They seemed to have come from nowhere. She would drive ten miles of empty road, and then four of them would come along in a line, heading north, covering the miles she had just passed, all in the far left lane with their lights blinking so they could go really fast and the few cars going north ahead of them at this time of night would get out of their way.

The car Jimmy had picked to steal wasn’t bad. The odometer said forty-one thousand miles, but the engine was powerful and smooth, and she knew that was all that mattered. She wasn’t sure whether he had looked at the gas gauge as soon as he had started the engine, but she supposed he had, because it was nearly full, and she knew he cared about that. It would get them to Minneapolis, and then things would begin to improve. She decided that this was the scariest night of her life.

She fought the fear by reminding herself that she had been almost as scared the time when Gwen died, and she had come through it. Gwen had passed out at the party and her chest had started going up and down, not like breathing, but like shivering. Mae had known it was an overdose. It had to be. But Mae had managed to keep her fear under control so she could do what she had to do. She had closed the door of the bedroom where Gwen was lying, so nobody else would see her and start calling ambulances and cops. Then she had stepped outside on the patio, as though she were going outside for a smoke. Only she had just kept walking into the night. She had avoided all the terrible unpleasantness that would have come if she had let herself get stupid and stay around. Just the single question—where did the drugs come from?—led into so many complexities and difficulties that it simply had to remain unsaid. Nobody at that party had known her name or where she had come from, so it had all worked out all right. She had been proud of her presence of mind. It was bad enough to have lost Gwen, who had been her friend for a couple of years, but the rest of it would have been too much.

Tonight she just had to keep her wits above the fear long enough to get them both down into a real city, and things would begin to improve. Jimmy would realize that once two people had been through something like this together, they were forever bonded. He would be grateful to her: she was saving his life, after all. He would take care of her for as long as she wanted. She liked the thought of that.

She controlled her fear and made the long, fast drive through the night, listening alternately to two radio stations: one that played music about two years out of date so consistently that she wasn’t sure if it was intentional, and one that had people calling in on the telephone to complain about politicians she had never heard of. When she reached Minneapolis she drove to a street near the hotel where they had stayed, because it was all that she knew of the city. She stopped, pulled the trunk latch from inside, and went to the back of the car. She watched Jimmy sit up and climb out. “We’re at—”

He was already looking around. “I see,” he said. “I can’t go into the hotel.” He had wrapped a piece of cloth from his suitcase around his arm to keep the blood from getting all over everything, but he still looked pale and weak.

He said, “We need to get out of this state.”

“But you’re bleeding.”

“That’s right,” he said. “But I want to be over the state line into Iowa before we rest.” He began to walk. “We need another car. I want you to go back to the hotel. Call a cab for the airport. When you get there, rent a car and come back for me.”

All the way to the hotel, she whispered under her breath the instructions he had given her. She sat in careful silence with the cab driver, because she was afraid she would say something that would give away her secret. It was more than an hour before she was back on the block where she had left Jimmy. She stopped the car behind the one he had stolen up north, but he was not in it. She faced the possibility that she might have to walk around, up and down alleys and things to look for him, but he was suddenly right beside her. He reached into the window, snatched the keys, opened the trunk, and put their suitcases in it, then sat beside her in the front seat. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah,” she said. “How about you?”

“Drive,” he muttered.

She supposed that it was a stupid question. He could hardly be okay. What she had been trying to do was convey some kind of concern, make a connection, like a touch. He must know that. Men seemed intentionally to miss the point sometimes, to pretend they didn’t know, or that they had forgotten, so they could look at a person with contempt for having said something that was literally stupid but wasn’t really.

She decided that he was simply in a bad mood, and she could not blame him. He was in pain. He was tired, and worried about what was going to happen to the two of them now. That was a special part of his problem. He was a man, and that meant he was used to being the one who made things happen. They expected that of themselves. When he couldn’t do it, he must feel like less than a man. She decided that all she could do was behave as though she believed everything would be all right.

Mae concentrated on driving. The distance to the Iowa state line from Minneapolis was about as long as the drive had been to get this far. Now she saw few police cars. Her problem was endurance. In the dim gray light before the sun came up, she saw the sign that said WELCOME TO IOWA, but he would not let her stop. She had to keep driving toward the east with the sun in her eyes until noon, when she could go into a motel and rent a room.

The hours after that were not as easy as she had promised herself they would be. She had to go out again and buy disinfectants, bandages, tape, then wash and dress his wound. It was a strange, ugly hole right through the forearm, and when she washed it, the hole started bleeding again. She could see that when she touched him, it hurt terribly, but he didn’t make a sound. Later, she went out to bring back food, and he slept. She managed to get into bed beside him for a couple of hours before he woke her and made her change the bandages, get into the car, and drive on.

Before he let her stop again they were in Indiana. She changed the bandages again. This time he said, “I’ll drive.” She was afraid. How could he be strong enough? “Are you sure you want to?” she asked. “I can keep going for a while.”

He got in behind the wheel without answering. Mae sat beside him, studying his movements, watching his face and especially his eyes. A person who had lost a lot of blood could easily faint. She watched for twenty minutes, her body tense, waiting to grab the wheel, but he showed no sign of weakness. She slowly let her muscles relax: her tight shoulders, her stiff shoulder blades, her tired arms. Then she was asleep.

Mae awoke when the car seemed to slow and turn at the same time. She sat up hurriedly, taking in a quick breath through nose and mouth that was almost a snort. It was night, and the glare of headlights hurt her eyes.

He said, “You’re awake.”

She was alarmed. She must look awful. Her mouth was dry and her throat was sore from sleeping with her mouth open. She ran her fingers though her hair quickly, and rubbed her face to be sure she hadn’t been drooling. She scrutinized him, searching his face for signs that would tell her what he was thinking of her. He didn’t seem to be looking at all. She took her brush out of her purse and began to brush her hair. “How long was I asleep?”

“I don’t know. A few hours,” he said. “I’m stopping because the sign said there were restaurants up here, and gas stations.” She was ready for him to look at her now, but he still had his eyes ahead. She knew that was what he was supposed to do, but it would have made her feel reassured if he had just sneaked a glance at her now.

He stopped the car on a blacktop surface facing the back of the restaurant and far out of the glow of its overhead lights. She said, “Can I change your bandage before I go in?”

He nodded, “Okay.”

She took out the bandages and the antibacterial salve and got everything ready before she opened his shirt and took off the old dressings. She could see well enough in the dim light to tell that when she changed the gauze this time, there was no new blood. He was incredible. Over months she had gotten used to his ability to lift things, his ability to keep on running or exercising without seeming to get winded or tired. Those were things that seemed to her to be impossible to evaluate, because his body was so different from hers. But this—hurt and bleeding and healing—was something that everyone had, and it must be the same for everybody. It didn’t seem to be the same for Jimmy.

The way he lived had made him into such a healthy animal it was almost frightening. He was beginning to recover from a gunshot wound in just twenty-four hours.

Mae put the new bandages on. She liked the business of touching him like this, ministering to him. She felt as though she was putting good feelings in his mind for later. When he felt better, he was going to know who had gotten him through this. She said, “I’ll bring us something to eat. What do you want?”

“I’ll go in with you.”

They went inside the restaurant, and she was amazed to hear what he ordered, and more amazed to see him eat it. He was healing, all right. Otherwise, he couldn’t have eaten all that steak and the potatoes and vegetables, and then order pie and milk too. She had to cut his steak for him, but after that, if his left arm hadn’t been resting in his lap while he ate, she would not have known.

When they were finished, he paid the bill in cash and they went out to the car again. It made Mae feel a tiny bit sad to leave the place where there were lights and cheerful voices and the smells of food cooking, and come out here where it was dark and the air was beginning to take on the late-night chill, and the smell of gasoline was so strong while Jimmy filled the tank. It was easy to be lonely when she was with Jimmy. He had started talking a little more before things had gone all wrong the other night, but that had died out.

Varney said, “You ready to drive some more?”

She drove while he slept, but she found as she drove that the night didn’t bother her much, because she forgot about it for long periods. She was thinking about Jimmy while he slept. She could tell during dinner that he had become more settled in his mind. It was as though he had been shocked and confused at first, but had finally made some sense of what had happened. To Mae, that was a very good sign. It meant he was going to be all right. He had not lost his health, and he had not lost his nerve. She drove through the night devising ways to make this work. She considered getting him to marry her, but there were too many reasons why that would be unwise. He would have a responsibility to give her money, but he would also have a right to some of hers, including the money Tracy had been paying her to be with him. And that would stop. He wouldn’t pay Tracy for his own wife. Mae would have no income at all. No, marriage was not for her.

In the morning, Jimmy took the wheel and drove into Cleveland while she rested. They turned in the car at the airport, and rented a new one at another lot. Mae was preparing to drive on again, but he stopped at noon and checked into a hotel.

Mae was delighted. It was a nice hotel, with room service and a beautiful lobby with a marble floor. She determined to make this phase of the trip the very best for him. He might have been distracted and inattentive while he was scared and in pain, but he had recovered enough now so she believed he would remember what she did next. She made herself devote every moment to him. Now that they were in good light, she could examine the wound better and see that it had no signs of infection. She bathed him, changed the dressing, brought him food from the restaurant downstairs, massaged him. On the second day, he asked her to dye his hair again. “The guy who shot me saw that it’s light brown,” he said. “Darken it.”

This time, Mae did something more radical, a gesture for him. After she had colored his hair, she waited until he slept again, and colored her own too. She made it the same as his, but with lighter highlights. When he awoke, he looked at her for a long time without speaking. Then he wordlessly took off her clothes and made love to her.

At ten the next morning, they left the hotel and drove toward Cincinnati. At noon, Jimmy stopped at a restaurant and bought a picnic lunch. They drove for a time looking for a place to stop, until he found a secluded grove of trees near a river. It was quiet and empty and beautiful, and she smiled at him as she ate.

Mae was fascinated by the sight of three birds high up in the sky, circling one another. They seemed to be playing. She couldn’t tell what kind they were. She was just about to turn toward Jimmy to ask if he could tell, but she didn’t, because that was when he brought the blade of the knife across her throat.

A bit later, as Varney dragged her body into the ditch he had dug, he felt himself getting angrier. It was outrageous that Tracy and her stupid sons had done this to him, so that he had needed to kill Mae. He felt this betrayal more strongly than the rest of their offenses. Mae was the part that he held against them most bitterly.

Tracy had let herself get suckered. She was so greedy that all she had needed to hear was a high number, and she was in. He supposed that he should not have been surprised. He had even suspected there was something wrong with the way she was thinking about the job at the moment he had heard of it. Varney had not imagined that Prescott was behind the offer, but that was not the point. A man didn’t have to be clairvoyant to survive, if only people would take reasonable precautions. Well, she was going to have to make reparations.