Paul Kavanagh - Not Comin' Home to You

His mind kept flashing back to that farmhouse. How happy they had been there and all, as if they’d stepped smack into another world. And how she had wanted the day to go on forever, how she’d hoped to spend a lifetime there without ever seeing another person but him.

The more he thought of it, the more pleased he was that he had thought to leave money behind. It surely hadn’t hurt him to do it. Lately it seemed that they kept accumulating money and having precious little opportunity to spend any. He’d left a hundred dollars for the Chittertons, which, all things considered, was a fairly steep price for some eggs and bacon and coffee, but he liked the idea that someone whose path had crossed theirs had profited by the experience. God knew enough of them had lost.

He thought about the most recent victim, tucked into the Coronet trunk and shoved over a cliff and fried to a cinder. It would slow the cops down, all right. Give them a little breathing space for now.

He had told her they were home free now. And wondered if she believed him.

He hoped she did. She had been so happy at that farmhouse, and he wanted her to be happy as much of the time as she could. Because as far as he could see there was no way they could get completely out of this.

There were just too many dead people scattered all over the place, and together they threw up so much heat that you could never expect it to die down. Crossing a state line did you about as much good as crossing a street, and as far as a national border — maybe it was just his mood now, tired and wrapped up into his own self, sad at leaving the farmhouse, but he couldn’t see Mexico for dust. They’d have helicopters out for sure, and every border patrol would be well supplied with pictures of the two of them.

He hadn’t even known they had a picture of him in their files. It had to be an old one, a couple of years at the least, and he couldn’t even remember the last time someone with a badge had pointed a camera in his direction. But then it didn’t have to look too much like him. There just had to be enough of a resemblance to get some cop interested, and then there was nothing to do but try and get out of it alive, and if you managed that it bought you a ticket to run some more until you went through the whole thing all over again.

It would all be worth it, she had said. Even if they were caught, even then, it would all be worth it.

Well, she’d probably get the chance to find out if it really was.

He stomped the gas pedal involuntarily and the car shot forward. She started and asked what was the matter, and he told her nothing was the matter, just a shadow at the roadside.

He took deep breaths and kept his eyes on the road and pushed things around inside his head. He wasn’t going to think those thoughts any more. They made him feel bad, they took the fine sheer edge off him, and besides they weren’t true. Just no way they could be true.

Because as long as you did the right things and made the right choices you got out all right. That farmhouse, for example. What was the odds against finding a farmhouse first shot out of the box with nobody home? Hundred to one? Thousand to one? But that was what they did, proving he was still on top of things, still swimming with the tide, and because of that they had had the best day of their lives and the Chittertons were a hundred dollars to the good.

If the Chittertons had been home, they wouldn’t have that hundred dollars. Instead they’d all be dead. But he was damned if he was going to think about that now. There was just no percentage in it.

A few miles into New Mexico he looked at the gas gauge for the first time in too long. The needle was smack on the big E. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen a gas station, open or shut. And God knew he couldn’t afford to wait for a closed one.

Wouldn’t that just do it. Finally having a really clean car and having to switch cars because he’d been fool enough to run the tank dry.

He cut the ignition, put the car in neutral and let her roll. Might as well get every extra yard out of what he had left.

“What’s the matter?”

“We’re damn near out of gas is what’s the matter.”

“Where’s the station? I don’t see it.”

“I don’t goddamn know where the station is. I don’t spend that much time in New goddamn Mexico.” He got a grip on himself and said, “Can’t be two of us in the car if I do find a station. And your picture’s sure to be in all the papers by now. I’m putting you in the trunk.”

“I’m afraid.”

“Huh?”

“You put him in the trunk. The last one.”

“You rather I let you out and come back for you? Do that if you want, but I might drive ten miles and run out of gas and then how the hell do we find each other?”

“No, I’ll get in the trunk.”

“Not if you can’t handle it.”

“I’ll be all right.”

She got out of the car. He opened the trunk and she hesitated just an instant before climbing up and in. Now it was getting to him; he was being psyched by what she had said. Every image he flashed was a bad one.

“You’ll be right in the car, won’t you?”

“All the time.”

“Don’t leave me or anything.”

He reached for the trunk lid and flashed coffin lids slamming shut, flashed shovelfuls of earth tossed into open graves. He almost told her to get out and chance recognition, preferring the chance of having to gun down an attendant to locking her up like that.

“I’m okay, honey.”

He threw the lid shut and got back behind the wheel.

He drove almost twenty miles before he found a station. He babied the remaining gas supply all the way, taking downgrades in neutral, driving throughout like a contender in a miles-per-gallon derby.

The old man who filled the tank dragged one leg as he walked, and one arm hung loose at his side. He wore a hunter’s jacket and a red plaid cap and spoke only once, to name the amount of the sale. Jimmie John paid him and drove off without waiting for change, and a couple of hundred yards down the road he stopped and let her out of the trunk.

“Wasted effort,” he said. “You coulda been not only up front but stark naked and that old fart never woulda known the difference. He walked like this.”

She giggled.

“Sorry I made you do that. You all right?”

“Seemed like it lasted forever. But then I got so I was happy about it. Oh, it’ll sound silly, but I was thinking how you do everything, you know, and I’m just sort of along, and for a change I was doing something, and I was glad I had the chance to do it.”

When the sun came up he braked the car to a stop. She looked troubled. He put a hand on her leg and told her everything was all right.

“I just wanted a minute to look at all that,” he said. “Big old sun coming up over the desert. All those colors, reds and purples, Nothing out there but sand and rock, and will you just look at the colors they put up when the sun hits them. Never seen anything like it.”

“Have you ever been in this part of the country before?”

“Maybe.”

“Don’t you remember?”

He went on gazing out his window. At length he said, “Well, I’m not a hundred percent sure. I know I never saw what I’m looking at now. I guess I been through here, all right. Maybe by night or in the middle of the day, or maybe I wasn’t tuned into things and never took a long look around. Some people go their whole lives that way, never seeing what they’re looking at. Even the air is different out here. Makes you want to breathe more than usual. Damn, you can see for miles, and everywhere you look there’s something worth looking at.”

“It’s... like a movie.”

He put his head back and laughed. “You know,” he said, “it’s just exactly that. So real it looks like a picture. You look off over there and can’t you just see some old cowboy riding like hell? Hat tossed back and spurs digging into his horse, and way off in back of him a column of dust coming up showing the posse’s after him? See it?”