Paul Kavanagh - Not Comin' Home to You

“Never even locked the door. I had my foot back to kick it in and then I thought, hell, try the knob first, and I turned it and walked right in. And there they are, going at it a mile a minute. Man and a woman, both of ‘em naked as jaybirds, and he’s this little guy with these little wire-rim glasses stuck up on his nose so he won’t miss seeing a thing, and she’s forty years old trying to look seventeen, makeup and lipstick and all, and I won’t tell you what they were doing.”

She did not want to ask but couldn’t help herself. “Never you mind,” he said. “Just say it was nothing to be proud of. And they looked up, you know, first him and then her, and they didn’t know whether to shit or go blind. I said to give me the car keys or I’d blow his damn head off, and he just said, ‘On the dresser, on the dresser, and take the money too.’ Like it wouldn’t occur to me to take the money without his damn permission.”

“You shot them.”

“I figured you probably heard the shots.”

“No. Or I did and didn’t know it.” She was just so tired and everything was pressing down on her. “I just... I don’t know. I just knew you shot them. My father and my mother and my grandmother and that boy at the gas station and now these people. What were their names?”

“I don’t know. I left the wallet; I just took the money out. Maybe there’s something in the glove compartment with their names on it. His name, I mean. She ain’t his wife, you can bet on that. You don’t do things like that with your wife.”

“I don’t want to know their names.”

“Whatever you say.”

“But I’ll hear them anyway. On the radio. Tomorrow, the next day.”

“I had to do it, Betty.” His voice was different now. The lightness was gone. “If I left them alive they’d be on the phone to the police five minutes after we left. And they’d give them a description of the car and the license number and we’d be right back where we were, with a car that’s getting talked about on every police radio around.”

“They’ll know about the car anyway. When they find the bodies.”

“That’s not until morning. Because nobody’ll go into the cabin until nine o’clock at the earliest, and that gives us all those hours in the meantime to put all the miles we can between us and them. I had to buy us that time. Don’t you see?”

She saw. She kept seeing things and not wanting to see them. The gas station attendant and her father and her mother and her grandmother and the man and the woman. Six people. And who else? Walker P. Ferris? Probably. If Walker P. Ferris had a wife, after everything he’d said about the man being a widower, maybe that whole story about the heart attack and the breakneck trip to the hospital was equally false. But the way he had talked about it, the way he made the man come alive for her as he spoke—

After awhile she asked where they were going. South, he said. South and west. Colorado, New Mexico. Someplace where they would be safe.

She said, “Safe?”

He looked at her.

“In the morning they’ll find the man and the woman,” she said. “And they’ll know about this car, so we’ll have to get another one, and then another one after that, and then—”

He stomped on the brake pedal. She was hurled forward against her seat belt. He pulled off the road and put the transmission in Park and turned toward her, and she thought he was going to kill her.

He said, “Now listen to me. Will you listen to me? There’s dead bodies all over this state now, six of them. That is murder. It is not stealing nickels out of a parking meter. That means if they get me I die. Do you understand that? I die. ”

She saw him dead then, and for an instant her veins ran ice water. The image was unbearable. Her family, the gas station attendant, the man and woman — she could somehow stand these images, these images of reality, but the fantasy image of Jimmie John dead was unacceptable.

“I have to get us away,” he said. “And that means doing what I have to do. Whatever it is. That man and woman bought us maybe ten hours. Damn it, do you know what kind of people they were? For you to be crying over them?”

“I wasn’t—”

“She had his pecker in her mouth, god damn it! She was sucking his cock!” He closed his eyes for a moment. Softly, as if to himself, he said, “The thing is that you don’t see what’s happening. All my life moving around, here and there and everywhere, and never getting anyplace at all, never adding up to anything, never being anybody, and all of a sudden everything starts coming together.” He made a fist of his hand and thumped the steering wheel. “Everything coming together for me, and I would know about everything in advance, I would see it coming, and I would just do everything just right, smooth as silk, everything neat and clean and razor-sharp. First the car and then you, everything good happening to me right on schedule, just knowing to wait for the right car, just knowing to stay in Grand Island and drive around until I found the right girl, and searching all my life for the right girl and then missing you coming out of school, never seeing you, and then getting another chance with you walking out of the movie just as I’m driving past it, and one look at you and one look from you and that was it. Remember?”

She nodded.

“Every single thing just right. Remember asking me what your name was, and me taking it the wrong way? I thought you thought I didn’t actually remember your name. Shit. I knew every damn thing about you just looking at you. I knew more about you then in that minute than you ever knew about yourself.

“And now everything’s coming together faster and faster, and I’m still on top of it, I know I am, and it’s going to work out. Because it’s all written down somewhere. It’s all planned, and I’m keyed into it right now and all the speed and power is flowing right through me. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“I think so.”

He took her chin between his thumb and forefinger. He said, “You maybe think that I’m crazy.”

“No.”

“Maybe you do. The things I’m saying, they sound crazy, don’t they?”

“I don’t know.”

“They do. Don’t think I don’t know it. If I heard somebody else talking like this I’d figure he was crazy. My mother had me in a home for a couple years and there was one kid there and he was crazy. He counted his steps. He’d be walking around, ‘Ninety-seven, ninety-eight, ninety-nine, hundred, hundred and one, hundred and two,’ just counting every time he picked his foot up and set it down, and he’d lose count and start over a dozen times a day. The goddamnedest thing you ever saw, never taking a step without counting it.” He frowned. “The older boys used to do things with him. You know what I’m talking about?”

“I’m not sure.”

“I mean like sex things.”

“That’s what I thought.”

“He would do anything, see. I never did anything like that. Never. It’s the truth.”

“I believe you.”

“I never wanted to lie to you. God damn it. I told you some lies that I can’t tell you the truth of them yet. But I will. You got to give me time.”

“All right.”

“Twenty-two years I never told anybody anything. Hard to turn it all around in a day.”

“I understand.”

“Betty? You can get out of this, you know. I can let you out of the car and you walk to some farmhouse and holler for the cops. Tell ’em you were a hostage, I held a gun on you and made you come with me. Killed your parents, killed the man and the woman, and you didn’t have a chance to get loose until now. Then at least you’re shut of it.”