Lee Martin - Late One Night

But soon the headlights were close again and this time Missy could hear the roar of the Firebird’s engine.

“Here he comes,” Pat said, and he eased off the accelerator, letting the van coast along at forty miles per hour, hoping Ronnie would press on and soon he’d be around them and his taillights would be growing dimmer in the distance.

The Firebird, though, swung out into the left lane, and after all that brightness the van seemed so dark to Missy. She could look across Pat and see the Firebird pull even with the van.

Then Ronnie started to edge the Firebird across the center line. Pat steered as far to his right as he could, but the Firebird edged closer until its front fender scraped up against the van, and Missy felt it rock a little.

“Dear God,” she said.

And it was as if Ronnie had somehow heard her prayer. He slowed the Firebird. He steered it back to the left of center.

Pat saw his chance, and he pressed down on the van’s accelerator. He shot ahead, his headlight beams stretching out down the blacktop.

The Firebird fell back, and soon its headlights disappeared. It was dark again inside the van, and though Missy was trembling, she steeled herself and she told the girls everything was all right. That they were almost home, and everything was fine.

Ronnie watched the van pull away from him. He slowed to forty and then thirty-five, and finally he was creeping along at twenty miles per hour, watching the taillights of Pat’s van crest a hill. Ronnie kept his eyes on those taillights until the van went down the slope of the hill, and then he couldn’t see them anymore. His girls were in that van, and he understood now the danger he’d put them in when he’d bumped it.

He hadn’t meant to do it. At least he didn’t think he had. He’d only wanted the van to stop. He’d wanted to gather his girls into the Firebird and take them someplace where no one would ever be able to find them, and little by little all the bad things swirling around them would stop, and they’d be a family, happy forever. He feared he’d ruined any chance at that, but still he had to try.

At the next crossroads, he slowed and turned the Firebird around. He started back up the blacktop toward Goldengate. It was time to start facing facts, time to tell his own story, time to say exactly what was what.

Ronnie didn’t bother to knock. He just opened the door and walked in. Brandi was sitting on the couch, facing the front door, every light in the house turned on as if she were waiting for him.

She didn’t even move when she saw him. “Where have you been?”

Her voice was all flattened out, not soft and sweet the way it was the night she came into the bedroom and told him Pat Wade was there and he’d better come out to hear what he had to say. Ronnie remembered the way her fingers trembled when she buttoned his shirt for him and how later, once Pat had told him about the fire — once Ronnie understood that Della and Emily and Gracie and the baby were gone and he knew he needed to get to the ones who were left — Brandi said she’d be there waiting for him. She’d made it plain she wasn’t going anywhere. Her heart was tied up with his. Then, now, forever.

“I’ve been driving,” he said

He couldn’t bring himself to tell her that he’d gone to the river, walked out on the ice, got down on his knees, and looked up at the stars and the crescent moon. He couldn’t tell her about opening the blade of his knife and thinking long and hard about what he might do with it before giving up on that idea. Most of all, he couldn’t tell her what he’d just done out there on the blacktop. He couldn’t say that he’d been so angry about Missy and Pat taking his girls, he’d been a crazy man. He’d tried to chase them down. He’d bumped their van, and if they’d been driving any faster, or if Pat hadn’t been on the lookout — well, Ronnie didn’t like to think about what might have happened. He couldn’t get the picture out of his head, the one he’d manufactured, of that van leaving the blacktop and going airborne, turning over and over, his daughters — the people who mattered most to him in this world — at the mercy of another one of his hotheaded decisions.

His life was out of control, but all he could offer Brandi was this: “That night,” he said. “The night the trailer burned.” He got down on his knees in front of her, and he gathered her up, his arms easing in between her back and the couch. He lay his head on her swollen stomach. He listened for the baby moving about. Then he said the rest. “I didn’t go out for a drive because I was antsy. I knew I was going out there to the trailer.”

He closed his eyes and held onto her. He needed to know what she’d say next, but he was afraid to hear it.

“Ronnie,” she finally said in a shaky voice. “Did you—”

He wouldn’t let her say the words. He’d save her from that. “Please,” he said before she had to finish her question. “Baby, please don’t think that of me.”

She let the minutes stretch on, willing to do that, wishing that she and Ronnie could stay where they were for a good long while. Just the two of them in the brightly lit house, his head on her stomach, her hand stroking his hair again. She’d feared when Laverne had gone and Missy and Pat had driven away with the girls that she’d turned a corner into a dark room and she’d never be able to see her way out of it. Then Ronnie came back. Here he was, holding onto her, and she’d asked the question she’d had to ask. Had he set that trailer on fire? He’d asked her to please not think that of him, and she was trying. She was doing her best to believe he was innocent. She let that belief build from the way his hands fit into the small of her back and cradled her, the way he lay against her now, his eyes closed as if there on his knees he was giving himself to her. Broken down as he was, he was still hers. She’d loved him long and hard and she couldn’t bear the thought of losing him and then being alone when their baby came.

“That knife,” she finally said, though really she didn’t want to say anything at all. She just wanted the closeness of him with no need for words. She wanted this story that they were in the midst of to stop and for there to only be the story of their love. But there were still questions that needed answers, and she forced herself forward. “Your pocketknife. When I was pushing you out the door last night, you looked like you wanted to hurt me with it.”

“No, baby. Not for a minute.” He opened his eyes and raised his head. “Oh, baby. I’d never hurt you like that.”

It was then that Brandi told him that Laverne Ott had gone to Sheriff Biggs and the sheriff was looking for him. She scooted to the edge of the couch and tried to get to her feet. He got up from his knees, and he took her hands and helped her.

“Wait here,” she said.

He did as she asked. He watched her go down the hall and turn left into their bedroom. He heard a dresser drawer open, the drawer that screeched on its runners every time he opened it. The bottom drawer, which was his.

As soon as she came back into the hallway, he knew what she had: his Sun Records T-shirt. He didn’t know how she’d found it in his car, but she had, and now he knew she’d have another question and it wouldn’t be one he’d want to answer.

“How’d your shirt get ripped?” She held it up and showed him where the cloth had been stripped away. “Ronnie, it smells like gas. Why? Did you spill some on you when you poured it into my car that morning?”

“I can’t get that smell out of my nose.”

“So you did? You spilled some?” When he didn’t answer, she remembered again that he’d called Della that night and she hadn’t answered. Brandi said, “Ronnie, why did you go out to the trailer that night if you thought no one was there?”