Fade to Blonde

I pretty much had to lift her out, and she leaned against me as I toweled her off. “Are you going out there,” she murmured.

“Yes.”

“Oh.” She was silent a while, letting herself be rubbed dry. “Can I have my comb?”

“Sure.”

I sat her on the toilet lid and spread some antiseptic salve on her feet and her scrapes, then buttoned her into one of my old flannel shirts and tucked her up in my bed.

“You’ll make me... ” she murmured.

“What?”

She was almost out.

“You’ll make me say things,” she said.

“No,” I said. “I won’t.”

She went to sleep.

I changed into dry clothes, got my toolbox from the closet and put my gun in my pocket. I turned out the light and left, locking the door behind me.

I cut over to Crenshaw and headed due south. It was the same route she’d driven me last Friday, in the sunshine. The night was coolish, and I opened the window and let the breeze clear the bathroom steam out of my head. It was around six miles to the oil fields, a pretty solid walk for someone in bare feet. Maybe she’d had her shoes on for part of the way. She probably had, and thrown them away when a heel broke. Her feet had looked fairly bad. You can do all sorts of things when you’re in shock. Some of the houses and shops I passed were all right, and some weren’t so good, and in some places any white woman on foot would have stood out, even if she wasn’t bleeding and in rags. But whoever saw her had kept their distance. There are people who seem in such trouble that, whether you’re a Samaritan or a hyena, you want to back off, shield your face, as if they were on fire.

As the 405 underpass came up, I could see through it to the big silver curves of the Mobil tanks in the distance. When I got to the other side the road jogged to the right, just as she’d said, and I saw a convertible with its lights on, standing fifteen yards or so from the road. Beside it was a corrugated steel shed with no windows, and behind that, three walking-beam pumps loomed up against the night sky. Rebecca was right. They looked like insects, enormous mantises, bowing and rising very slowly over something on the dark ground I couldn’t see. I stopped ten feet from the convertible and killed the lights, but left the motor running. I got out with my gun in my right hand and my flashlight in my left. I didn’t turn on the flash. The Studebaker’s motor was still running. I didn’t see anyone around. Each pump clanked softly at the bottom of each slow stroke. My nostrils were thick with the rank, gluey smell of crude oil.

There was no one in the convertible, dead or alive. No stains on the white vinyl seats. I switched on the flash and walked once around the car, hearing that big V-8 Stude engine purr, looking at the footprints all around. They didn’t tell me anything. I followed the scuffed-up dirt around the back of the shed and found Lorin Shade where I thought he’d be. He was on his back, just out of sight of the road, and his pearl-snapped shirt was a black mess underneath his heart.

I put the flash on the mess and thought I could count four holes. I swallowed hard and brought my nose down close to the wounds. There was the smell of blood, half new copper penny, half raw beef, and a smell of scorched cloth. I put the light on Shade’s face. He didn’t have any opinion of what had gone on. There was thick red dust on his shirt and his face, even on his open eyes. I stood up and thought a while as the pumps went up and down. I walked in a circle around him and the shed, and kept widening the circle a bit with every revolution, my flash on the ground. Maybe fifteen, eighteen feet from Shade’s body I found a scrap of lacy cloth, stained gray in the middle. I sniffed it, and then dropped it back on the ground. I wasn’t about to introduce it in court. I went to my car, got some surgical gloves from my toolkit, and came back and got into the Stude.

It was the same car, all right, only now I was in the driver’s seat. I had a quick, screwy impulse to put it in gear and cruise around a while. I’ve never driven a car that nice. I opened the glove compartment, but the registration was already gone. There was nothing else in there I needed to think about. Nothing on the floor or under the seats. I killed the lights, turned the engine off, and got out. Someone had thought to take the license plates, too, front and back. Nothing in the trunk, not a thing. It was still the cleanest damn trunk you could imagine, like no one had ever opened it. I closed it, pulled a handkerchief from my pocket, and polished the trunk latch. I polished the gas tank lid too, and all the door handles, and then I got back in and did the steering wheel and gearshift and so on. That was probably everything. I stood there, thinking. The hell, I was tired. I got back in my car and went home.

I spent the night in the armchair, under my overcoat, with my feet propped up on the bed. I woke up at dawn, a little before Rebecca. She hadn’t moved. She was thin enough that you could barely see her body under the blankets. All you saw was thick pale hair on the pillow and a face that seemed a little childish in sleep, with the top front teeth showing, which made her look a little rabbity. When she started waking up, I could tell she didn’t want to. She knew she was going to remember something bad. It was her turn to wake up that way. She blinked at the ceiling, and then she blinked at me, and then she looked at me.

I said, “All right. I’ll take care of him for you.”

23

Bed

She took a long time to focus on my face. She had a strand of hair stuck in the corner of her mouth, and she brushed it away. It took two tries. “You were there all nigh’? In the chair?”

“Sure.”

“You should’n’ be there,” she murmured. “You nee’ your sleep.”

“I slept fine. I’ve slept worse places than a comfortable chair in a clean room.”

“You slept all right?”

“I slept fine.”

“You’ll take care of him for me?”

“Yeah.”

“You need your sleep,” she said. “You should sleep in your own bed. Come on. Get into bed. You need your sleep.”

There was a stirring under the blankets, and then my shirt dropped out the side of the bed.

“You need to rest,” she said.

I got up and went around the other side of the bed. I took off my belt so the buckle wouldn’t jab her and got in.

“No,” she said. “Your skin. Want your arms and your skin.”

I got up again, shucked off my clothes, and got back in. She hitched backwards into me bottom-first and pulled my arms around her as if she were getting into a mink coat. “How’s the nose?” I said.

“I hurt it,” she said. “But it’s better.” She put my right hand on her left breast and my left hand on her belly. “G’night,” she said.

We lay like that for a minute. Then she squirmed around until she was facing me, slung a leg over mine, and gave my collarbone a vague kiss.

“Okay. Good night,” she said. “I keep seeing Lorrie.”

“It’ll be better,” I said. “Good night.”

“You saw him?”

“Yes. I went and saw him.”

“Oh. G’night.”

We lay there for a few minutes. Her breath was humid against my throat, and a little sour. “Mmn,” she said. “I keep seeing Lorrie. Can you, can I have a little... ”

She kept tugging at my shoulder and hip until she’d rolled me over on top of her.

“Easy,” I said.

“Now,” she said. “Now he can’t get at me.”

“All right. Are you all right?”