Backseat Saints Part 3

I saw the lineup of Rose Mae's road men, the ones she left in a scatterpath as she waitressed her way along the coast from Alabama to Texas. Most of them had been like Daddy, hard drinkers with hard fists, with not much sweet to hold me. I'd kept moving until I came to my husband, a ball of charm and anger. He had an eager grin like Jim Beverly's and overeager fists like Daddy. Two for the price of one.

I had an uptilt of thought at the end, like a question mark. It wasn't words, just a bafflement-why these men?-and a fear; Mrs. Fancy could not find a future me because she couldn't imagine I would live to get much older. Maybe she was right.

I didn't feel anything from the cards, but I did start to feel silly, waiting for some inside yes to chime. I stopped shuffling and handed her the deck.

"The first card is your past," she said, her voice flat. She turned it, and I saw a slight widening of her eyes.

It showed a tall and spindly tower, rising to a sky that was blue on one side and black with sooty clouds on the other. A narrow bolt of lightning, sharp-tipped like a crookedy pencil, was neatly slicing the tower's top off. Bright flames licked at the edges, and people were running out the front door and away. One girl had been left behind, framed in the highest window, and she stared right out at me, peaceful, as if she didn't see the flames or the people fleeing.

"Rapunzel," I said, tapping the girl with one finger. "Now there's a chick who used a lot of hair products. Hope they weren't flammable."

"Don't be flip," said the gypsy, her voice sharp. "This is major arcana." She rapped the tower twice with her knuckle. "It can be the scariest d.a.m.n card in the whole deck." Her eyes met mine directly, and now there was a glimmer of something human in them. Maybe kindness, maybe apology, maybe a trick of the light. "In your case, I suspect it means you lost someone."

"Who hasn't," I said.

"This loss haunts you," she said, and I recognized the glimmer. Pity.

I kept my face from changing, but on the inside, I was bristling. "I lost my high school boyfriend," I said. "It must mean him."

The pity hardened over and she said, "No. This would be a big loss."

"It was," I said, my lips pulled back, baring my teeth, and hoped it looked something like a smile. "Huge. He disappeared our senior year. We'd planned to marry right after graduation. He was sweet to me like no one ever had been. He loved my sorry a.s.s. And then one day, boom, he was gone. A runaway, they said. I never saw him anymore. I felt like I'd gone missing, too. Up until then I was an honor roll kid, someone with a future. But losing him wrecked me. I never bothered to show up to take my final exams. He put me where I am right now."

"That is a big loss," she said, tight-voiced. "Perhaps it's him. But I don't think so."

"Jim Beverly," I said, firm, punching his name at her like a fist. "That's the loss. Not-"

"Fine," she said, cutting me off. "This card represents your present." She turned it. It took a second to make sense of the image. A slim woman in a blindfold stood in front of a lake. It was sunset, so the water had gone red behind her. There were twisted, mossy shapes humping out of the water. Logs, or maybe crocodiles. She held a long sword in each hand, crossed over her chest to make an X.

The gypsy put her silver-tipped finger to her bottom lip and tapped, thinking. "It can't have been that bad, losing this Jim. You married someone else, after all."

"How do you know that?" I said, spine a-tingle. She might have seen my rings. But for most of the conversation, my fingers had been hidden in my lap, touching her book. "Have you been watching me?"

She snaked one hand under the tiny round table and pushed a fist hard into my ribs, just under my left breast. I gasped, unable to help it as she pressed directly down on a fresh bruise.

"You've married," she said, as if the pain that flashed across my face confirmed it. Her hand hovered half an inch above the spine of her own book. I waited, breath held, until she leaned back. "This is the two of swords, and it stinks of violence. That's some man you picked." She put her hand back on the deck, readying to turn another card. "Want to see your future?"

"Why not?" I said, still trying to sound casual, but the way her hand had gone straight to my freshest hurt spot had gotten to me. I didn't want my question answered, did not want her to say out loud all the reasons Mrs. Fancy had not been able to imagine a future for me.

At first I thought the card was upside down, but then I realized it was the figure in the center. It was a man in a wolf's-head helmet, hanging from a grape arbor by one ankle. His feet were bare. His hands were clasped in front of him, and I thought he was praying, but then I realized they were bound by slim, thorned vines. The wolf-head on his helmet snarled, but beneath, his human face looked perfectly calm.

I felt my eyebrows come together. "I've seen this card. It was on that mystery show with the old lady who solves crimes. She said it was a death card."

I looked up at her, and the gypsy's eyebrows mirrored mine.

"Most readers will tell you it isn't a death card," she said. "They'll say it is a card about change."

"Being dead would be a pretty big change," I said.

The gypsy's eyebrows were still pushing inward, as if they'd been exchanging letters for a long time and now they were trying to meet. "Some readers would say it only means you need to alter your perspective. Or you should do the opposite of what you would normally do, or you should make a sacrifice."

"So your stupid cards say I should, what, kill a goat?"

"Literal and flip, are those your only settings?" she asked, sharp. "I'm telling you what other readers might say. They'd say it's not a death card. He's hanging by his ankle, not his neck."

"Still," I said. "That can't be all that comfortable."

She waved a hand at me to shush me, and then she spoke again in an urgent whisper. "Most readers would say it's about change. But I'm looking at a girl with the tower in her past. I'm looking at a woman in a marriage made of swords. These cards are screaming. They are saying, Change or die. I suggest you change, and if not, then you should go see Cadillac Ranch today, because for you, there isn't a tomorrow."

I found myself leaning in to catch her words, my hands clamped down tight on the stolen book, as she went on.

"Sometimes, Mrs. Professionally Pretty, those ornaments men hang on your branches get so heavy they can crush you dead, and in this configuration, death is what I see. I'd say it's either for you or your husband." She looked up from the cards, her black eyes burning. I felt held by them, breathless, and she was a visionary in that moment. "Choose him. You live. It's the choice that I would make. If it's a death card, you choose him." She leaned back from me and said, louder and slower, "Until you do, I don't have one d.a.m.n word more to say to you."

With that, she sc.r.a.ped up all the cards and dumped them w.i.l.l.y-nilly down into her bag. She picked up her coffee cup and drained the last, cooling third. I didn't speak, and she stood up and said more words to me anyway. Three of them.

"You are welcome."

I hadn't thanked her, but she wasn't being sarcastic. She said it like she was opening a door, inviting me inside.

"Why are you in Amarillo?" I asked. "You didn't come here to see Cadillac Ranch."

She grabbed her purse and slung the bamboo handles over her shoulder. "It's just a stop," she said.

I shook my head. This could not be coincidence. "Did you come here to see me?"

"Everything is just a stop," she said, picking up her suitcase.

She walked away. I stared after her, sitting like roots had grown out of my hips and twined themselves around the chair legs. At the last moment, she did turn back, looking annoyed. "He's the guy that sang 'Danke Schoen.' Mr. Vegas. You would know him if you saw him."

She went through security.

I sat there, shaking, watching her disappear down the hallway.

When she was truly gone, I scooted my chair back so I could look down at the book in my lap. My hands had been wise. They had understood what the cellophane wrapper meant before my stunned brain had: This was a library book. I expected some new agey self-help thing or maybe something by Robert Penn Warren or Flannery O'Connor. But it was The Eyes of the Dragon The Eyes of the Dragon, by Stephen King. Fairy tales again. She'd always been a scattershot reader.

I flipped open the front cover and saw the manila pocket. There was no card in it, of course. The card would have told me the name she was living under, but it was filed at the library. The words, Property of the West Branch Berkeley Public Library Property of the West Branch Berkeley Public Library, were stamped in black.

The words looked more serious and permanent than ink to me. They seemed carved, as if the page was made of stone. The book in my lap felt heavy enough to be solid granite.

I touched the word Berkeley Berkeley, disbelieving.

Until half an hour ago, I hadn't seen my mother in twenty years. Now, suddenly, my mother was alive. My mother was a gypsy who lived and breathed and checked out books in California. This woman had left her child to save herself, and now she'd come back to flip the hanged man card and say I had to make a sacrifice. What did she know about sacrifice? I'd been hers.

But she had said, "Live."

She had said, "Choose him."

My mother had appeared just long enough to tell me that if I wanted to survive, I would have to kill Thom Grandee.

CHAPTER 3.

I TRIED TO CHOOSE HIM, and I failed. What did that leave? That was all I could think as I tore through the woods, sprinting back to Mrs. Fancy's Honda. The next thing I knew, I was zooming east down Highway 40 toward home, praying harder than I had ever prayed in my whole life. I called every saint it seemed might do a lick of good. I called them out loud, demanding intervention with the kind of flailing desperation that can rise when even hope has left. TRIED TO CHOOSE HIM, and I failed. What did that leave? That was all I could think as I tore through the woods, sprinting back to Mrs. Fancy's Honda. The next thing I knew, I was zooming east down Highway 40 toward home, praying harder than I had ever prayed in my whole life. I called every saint it seemed might do a lick of good. I called them out loud, demanding intervention with the kind of flailing desperation that can rise when even hope has left.

Francis, patron of cars and drivers, answered first. He was in the car with me. I could hear him breathing easy in the seat behind me. Then Michael took the seat beside Francis. He'd come to close the eyes of his policemen, making their radar guns heavy in their hands, sending them for coffee at any Dunkin' Donuts that took them off my path.

I should have been surprised. h.e.l.l, I should have been wetting myself. I'd been calling my saints my whole life, but I hadn't had one show before. I must have wept out Mary's name for comfort, because she was in the back as well, even though she had to squash into the narrow middle seat with her patient feet on the hump.

"I'm sorry," I told her, but if saints were answering, then the place by me was only for Saint Roch, patron of both dogs and pestilence. I needed him for Gretel and for Rose Mae Lolley, in that order. As I thought his name, before I could call, he was already obliging me. He appeared beside me with his ankles crossed, one gentle arm's length away.

I was driving fast enough to make the blowsy air outside sound like a great wind. I was sweating hard. I could feel it clotting in my hair, which was once again tucked up inside my baseball cap. I reached up to pull the cap off, but my hand U-turned on the way up, going to the dash to flip on the AC instead.

That was when the first shiver hit me: My body understood the danger long before my mind did. My hand had been right not to remove the hat. I needed it to shade my face and hide my hair.

I was driving down the very road Thom would be taking. My heart bounded up from my chest, lodging in my throat. Each beat banged against my gag reflex, choking me. I could pa.s.s him at any second. Het up as he must be right now, if he saw me tearing down the highway in a borrowed car, he'd run it off the road and yank me out of the wreckage, demanding answers. Then he'd find Pawpy's gun in the Target bag, and he'd know in two heartbeats where I'd spent my morning. I hadn't looked down into the gun's black eye since I was little and my daddy and I stared down into it together. You must never, never point that hole at anything, at anything, ever, unless you want to see it utterly destroyed. You must never, never point that hole at anything, at anything, ever, unless you want to see it utterly destroyed. If Thom caught me now, I had no doubt I would be looking it in the eye again. If Thom caught me now, I had no doubt I would be looking it in the eye again.

My foot went weightless on the gas pedal, and the car slowed. Then I stomped down again. What if I had pa.s.sed him already? I could have easily slipped by in Mrs. Fancy's plain car while he was checking on Gretel, who I had to believe was absolutely still alive. Saint Roch nodded in comforting agreement.

Thom could already be behind me, or he might be two cars ahead. There was no way to know. I twisted my head this way and that, trying to see all around me, searching for his Bronco. The road got away from me, and I listed so far right that I ran up onto the b.u.mpy shoulder. I wrestled the wheel and got mostly back in my lane. I saw the next exit, mercifully close. In two minutes, I was safe off the highway, panting as I pulled into a gas station.

I drove around to the back side of the building, letting the Honda idle by the restrooms while I tried to swallow my heart back down and breathe. Every piece of me hollered to keep moving, to run, to go far and fast. But where?

I knew three things: That I had to get home. That Thom was somewhere on the road between me and my house. That I must not be seen as I made my way. These were facts, true and unchangeable, and they bounced off each other in hopeless, tangled equations. I couldn't go home, and I couldn't be still. Maybe I should start driving and hope that the Honda and my saints would know a safe path. If Mary had her way, we'd head east, very quickly, putting state after state between us and Thom Grandee until we came home to Alabama, to hill country, with its thousand places to hide. This flat state gave me nothing.

I started praying again, calling Rita of Cascia now. She watched over s.h.i.tty marriages and all things impossible. She appeared crunched up on Michael's lap, the low roof making her bend her head to a miserable angle. I still had no idea where to go, but a picture of our arrival flashed into my head. They would pile out of the tiny Civic after me, wispy saint after wispy saint, like the Honda was a mystical clown car made up special for Catholics.

I got the giggles then. My own laugh scared me, it was so high-pitched and hysterical, and I tried to make it stop. The laugh turned into hiccuping, and the lady figure on the closest bathroom door got all bendy and rubbery. My vision went gray around the edges, and it was all I could do to keep my foot pressed down onto the brake so I didn't rev slowly forward and have a five-mile-an-hour collision with the back of a Sh.e.l.l station. I thought, It's bad to faint while the car is on. It's bad to faint while the car is on.

I saw my bottle of c.o.ke resting in the driver's-side cup holder. I focused on it, and the rest of the landscape became a fuzzy backdrop that looked like it was being filmed through cheesecloth. I bought these small bottles instead of cans and allowed myself one a day; Thom, an ex-jock, liked my body tight beneath its curves. I'd grabbed it this morning on my way out the door, thinking about how the cap would pop off with a hiss of gas I would feel more than hear. I'd planned to have it when I had finished up my morning's awful business, a working-cla.s.s girl's champagne. Now here it sat like a party favor left over from my real life. I picked it up. It still felt cool.

I held the bottle first to one eye, then the other, trying to clear my vision. More than that. More than that. It was the word version of that same impulse that had turned my hand when I went to take the hat off, but now it had a voice. I recognized Rose Mae, working to save my a.s.s while Ro Grandee, professional nice girl and dedicated victim, hunched and writhed in a lathery panic. Rose knew to press the cool bottle to my eyes to take the swelling down and ease the red. When next I saw Thom Grandee, I could not look like I'd been crying. It was the word version of that same impulse that had turned my hand when I went to take the hat off, but now it had a voice. I recognized Rose Mae, working to save my a.s.s while Ro Grandee, professional nice girl and dedicated victim, hunched and writhed in a lathery panic. Rose knew to press the cool bottle to my eyes to take the swelling down and ease the red. When next I saw Thom Grandee, I could not look like I'd been crying.

As far as Thom knew, I was home right now, chirping a happy tune while I bleached his underpants back to white and waltzed the vacuum back and forth across the den. When I saw him, I couldn't even ask how Gretel was, or even if she was alive, which she absolutely had to be and was. Roch nodded his agreement. I had to be like regular until Thom told me what had happened. I'd need to listen to him say all the things I had done to him in the woods as if the story was new and strange to me. I felt my eyes widening, practicing surprise.

"Oh, my G.o.d, Thom, are you okay? Is Gretel okay?" I said. It sounded fake. I tried letting my mouth drop open. "Are you kidding me? They shot shot at you?" That sounded worse. "I am completely f.u.c.ked," I said, and that, at least, rang absolutely true. at you?" That sounded worse. "I am completely f.u.c.ked," I said, and that, at least, rang absolutely true.

I pressed the bottle against my other eye. It felt good, that cool smoothness holding my eyelid closed. My saints rustled around me, impatient for action but low on actual suggestions. Why should they help me, anyway? What kind of a low-rent Catholic shoots at her husband because of mystical tarot cards?

Something about that pinged around in my head like a false note. Not tarot cards. One card. The last card.

But the gypsy had turned three. Past, present, future. A loss, a marriage made of swords, a choice. I'd been running for days on the steam of the third card alone. I hadn't thought about the rest of them. When a twenty-years missing mother pops up at a routine airport drop-off, a person can miss a few tricks. If the mother then drops a bomb like "Kill your husband," the rest of the conversation tends to get s.h.i.t-canned in the fallout. But we hadn't started with change or death. We hadn't even started with my marriage. We'd started with a loss. The gypsy acted like she was the thing I'd lost, but the card hadn't been the four of mothers. mothers.

It was a tower on fire, and it could mean anything. I'd said it was Jim Beverly mostly to hurt her, but she'd insisted she was the thing I'd lost with all the things she didn't say. She'd tucked messages all sneaky under her words. Under every word. Even her pauses seemed, in my memory, to be dripping secret meanings. I could see her in my mind's eye, giving her lip a sly tap with that silver-stained finger.

Not fairy dust. Paint, I thought, and at once I understood where I had to go. My hands were still shaking, but my vision was clear. I put the Honda in reverse and pulled out, heading back to the highway. I thought, and at once I understood where I had to go. My hands were still shaking, but my vision was clear. I put the Honda in reverse and pulled out, heading back to the highway.

I got back on 40, going west this time. I drove one-eyed, with only one hand on the wheel. The other hand still held my c.o.ke bottle to my face, letting the coolness do its good work. Amarillo grew smaller again in my rearview mirror. If I'd been Lot's wife, I'd have been salt nine times over by now; I made myself quit stealing peeps at it.

I had to look sharp and purely forward and check oncoming traffic for Thom's Bronco. Nothing pa.s.sed me going the other way except a jewel bright VW Beetle. Back in Kingsville, when Thom and I were first dating, I'd have said, "Punch buggy blue!" and knuckled him in the shoulder. We'd graduated to harder hitting games since those days.

When 40 ran into the remains of the old Route 66, I knew I was close. I scanned the horizon, slowing. Over the years, Thom and I had driven past Cadillac Ranch a few times on the way to other places, but its graffiti greetings were for teenagers and tourists. We had never stopped.

The land was so flat, I saw the silhouette of the cars jutting up against the horizon from a long way off. Sunlight bounced off the metal. They were in the middle of a wheat field, ten Cadillacs buried b.u.t.t-up in the soil, rusting out slowly in the dry air and covered in graffiti. I pulled off the road and eased down the shoulder until I came up even with them.

I turned off the engine, and the only sounds left were the outside wind and my own heart pounding. It hammered so strong that I could feel my pulse in my hands and in my ears. It banged at my ribs from the inside. I pictured the backside of those flat bones shivering into a lacy network of cracks that matched exactly the healed ones Thom had put on the other side. My heart was the only part of me that felt like moving. My eyelids felt cold and heavy, and my worthless legs were made of slag.

"What's wrong with me?" I asked Saint Roch. He only shrugged. It was Rose Mae who knew the answer. You're in shock, you moron. Eat some sugar. You're in shock, you moron. Eat some sugar.

I popped the cap off the c.o.ke with the opener on my key chain and drank half of it off. I usually carried a granola bar, but I'd left my purse at home. It hadn't seemed right to bring my driver's license and a lip gloss along to shoot my husband. All I had was Pawpy's gun, both pieces stuffed back inside the Target bag, and the gypsy's Stephen King book, sitting on the pa.s.senger seat.

Then I thought to look in Mrs. Fancy's glove box. She had three snack-size boxes of Sun-Maid raisins tucked away in there. I dumped one box out in my hand and started eating them, picking them up one by one with unsteady, pinching fingers, like a toddler. They had no taste, but I swallowed them dutifully, taking them like pills. When they were all gone, I got out of the car. The wind grabbed at me, stronger than it sounded from inside. There was nothing in these flat fields to slow it.

I pulled down the brim of my cap so the wind couldn't take it. I walked across the field, my saints trailing behind me in a line. The only footfalls I heard were mine, but the heavy wind was saint's breath on my neck, strong enough to move ships, yet sweet like a cow's, warm and gra.s.sy.

There were no tourists, no one at all around right now. Just me and the cars. I stepped in between two of them to get out of the wind. The closest car looked ready to crumple in on itself. The looping net of spray-painted words over words over words might have been the only thing holding the back doors on. The graffiti overlapped, letters and pictures and colors canceling each other out, layered a hundred deep. I found I still had the c.o.ke in my hand, and I finished it off, staring at the closest car over the tilted bottle.

The gypsy had told me to come here. She'd been insistent. She hadn't wanted me to wait even an hour, and now I understood why she'd been so demanding. I knew what I would see. Somewhere on these cars, she'd left a message for me. Maybe she wasn't sure if she even wanted me to see it, so she had hinted it was here and then left it up to fate. She'd seemed like she was big on leaving things to fate.

I could imagine her with a spray can, the wind in the wheat field blowing her scarves and layered skirts around as she covered over older words with silver, the paint staining her finger, making one car's side into a blank, clear page so she could write to me. It was the safest way to tell me how to find her.

You are welcome, she had said, right at the end. Not like I had thanked her, which I most certainly had not. She'd said it like an invitation, but an empty one, to nowhere in particular. I'd been focused on stealing her book, looking for the information she'd already left here for me. It seemed so obvious now, and now was when I most needed it. she had said, right at the end. Not like I had thanked her, which I most certainly had not. She'd said it like an invitation, but an empty one, to nowhere in particular. I'd been focused on stealing her book, looking for the information she'd already left here for me. It seemed so obvious now, and now was when I most needed it.

Thom was out there, so angry that he had swollen up to be miles wide, filling up all the s.p.a.ce between me and home. The sun was rising up and making full, bright morning, and every minute that pa.s.sed made it more likely he would catch me out.

I wasn't sure exactly what-all she would have written. An apology? She owed me a thousand of those. I wanted her note to say that I was a red hole dug out of the guts of her, a seeping wound that hadn't healed a lick in the twenty-odd years since she had left me. More likely it would be more crystal-fueled dumb-a.s.sery, telling me which stars were sorry. She'd left a map or an address, that I was sure of. You are welcome You are welcome, she'd said. It was an offer. There would be a place for me to come, to hide, if I failed and had to cut and run the same way she had done.

If I was like her.

I went to the end of the row and began searching the cars, working my way down, looking only for newer messages that had silver in them. I found quite a few on the first car. Neal + Wanda = 4ever. Tre is a mans.l.u.t. Cowabunga! Neal + Wanda = 4ever. Tre is a mans.l.u.t. Cowabunga! Metallic paint was popular. Metallic paint was popular.

The second car said that gay men were for peace, and they'd drawn silver hearts and stars and peace symbols all around the words to prove it. There was a tic-tac-toe game that the cat had won. My saints trailed me, mournful, offering no guidance as I moved to the next car. I found more silver paint, spelling out Karen has June Fever Karen has June Fever and and Uncle Kulty was here! Uncle Kulty was here!

On the fourth car down, on the side that faced away from the road, I saw the rosebud. It was the wrong colors: red with a long green stem and poinks of brown paint for thorns. But a rose is a rose, and my heart stuttered at the sight of it. I quickly scanned the words around it, regardless of color. To the right, someone had written, s.e.x, Drugs, Rock-n-Roll, Anna! s.e.x, Drugs, Rock-n-Roll, Anna! in thick blue paint, and on the other side, there was only in thick blue paint, and on the other side, there was only I am the Bringer of Blood I am the Bringer of Blood in dark red. I looked down the row and saw the next car sported a red-and-green tulip drawn by the same sure hand. I walked down a few steps, and sure enough, the next car's side had a red daisy. The rose was not for me. It was only some LSD-infested flower child in a belled ankle bracelet, getting all literal. in dark red. I looked down the row and saw the next car sported a red-and-green tulip drawn by the same sure hand. I walked down a few steps, and sure enough, the next car's side had a red daisy. The rose was not for me. It was only some LSD-infested flower child in a belled ankle bracelet, getting all literal.

I went back to the fourth car. The only silver here was under the rose, and it said, The fun's at RODEO! The fun's at RODEO! That had to be the gay men for peace again; Rodeo! was Amarillo's most notorious drag bar. I saw some glints of older silver, but the newer messages were all in neons and primary colors. That had to be the gay men for peace again; Rodeo! was Amarillo's most notorious drag bar. I saw some glints of older silver, but the newer messages were all in neons and primary colors.

I moved on to the next car, then the next, working my way down the row. I found a silver proposal, Marry me, Lia! Marry me, Lia! and pictures of musical notes, b.o.o.bs, and a pair of running horses that looked like cave drawings. Nothing for me. and pictures of musical notes, b.o.o.bs, and a pair of running horses that looked like cave drawings. Nothing for me.

I came to the last car, but it was entirely free of fresh silver paint. I searched it even more carefully. There was nothing.

I hit the final car's back fin with the flat of my hand, as hard as I could. My palm stung. I pressed my hand against the hot metal, panting hard. It was here. It had to be. I must have missed it.

Or I was too late. Three days had pa.s.sed since I'd seen her at the airport. She'd insisted that I come out here at once; she knew her message would be covered over sooner or later.