Three minutes later she eased up, started driving the speed limit. It would be stupid to get pulled over again.
The anger and violence still rang in her ears. She turned the Wagner up, pounded the steering wheel. She had caused that. She wanted to believe that those rednecks had deserved a beating, but it just wasn?t true. She buzzed with anger and had wanted an outlet. She couldn?t kill the trooper, so she?d taken out her anger on a couple of harmless guys in a pool hall.
Even as it was happening, she knew she was wrong, that she was out of control. Eight months of therapy had taught her to recognize what was happening. But recognizing what was happening and doing something to stop it were two different things. It was as if she were watching a movie of somebody who looked like her going crazy.
Five minutes later she drove into a small town and pulled into the parking lot of a Wal-Mart. She went inside and purchased some black hair coloring and a pair of jeans and an orange Oklahoma State University T-shirt. The fat lady at the bar might not be able to identify the Mustang, but there couldn?t be too many pink-haired freaks in the area.
She drove another mile and found a motel with a dirt parking lot. The room was $33.95 a night. She thought the room might have been nice at one time, say, back during the Eisenhower administration. The room was hot. She flipped on the air-conditioning to high, and by the time she got out of the shower, the room had cooled to a tolerable level. She dyed her hair in the sink. Jet-black. She removed all of her piercings.
In the mirror she looked at her new appearance, bland and anonymous. She was no longer Lizzy. She wasn?t a freak anymore. She wasn?t anyone at all.
She sat on the bed, looked around the dim motel room. The remote for the television didn?t work.
She took out the Oklahoma map and the directions Big Sister had given her. If she drove without stopping, she could reach her destination in under two hours, but the thought of getting back on the road was too exhausting to contemplate.
She stretched out on the bed. Fatigue. Emotionally drained. She was so tired, wanted to sleep, but it wouldn?t come. She stared at the cracked ceiling, at the cobwebs in the corner.
She eventually did fall asleep, and she didn?t dream.
30
There was only ash and dirt and burnt timber.
Andrew Foley had hiked down from Linda?s house to see if he could salvage anything, but really there was nothing left. It almost made him cry, thinking how utter and complete a loss it was. He tried to imagine how his uncle must feel.
His uncle. There had been no word from Mike Foley since he?d driven away in the Cadillac with murder in his eyes. Where could he be?
The morning sun was still low, the day not yet so oppressively hot. The salvage mission had only been an excuse to get out of the house. Andrew thought Linda was feeling the strain of the last few days. She needed a little elbow room, and had hinted she?d like to take a long nap after her bath. Linda was nice, polite, but Andrew sensed an edge in her, that maybe having a houseguest underfoot was getting old. So he slurped a cup of coffee, shouted up the stairs he was going for a hike, and left her alone.
He stood with his hands on hips, looked around. Under other circumstances, he might have thought this beautiful country, but all he could think now was that he wanted to go home. He missed New York, the pizza joint down from his apartment, the bagel place he went to on Sunday mornings, browsing the used record store near Juilliard, the constant, comfortable racket of life in the city.
It was too damn quiet out here in the woods. Eerily quiet, in fact, after the recent craziness.
He looked in the direction of the downed helicopter. He?d been meaning to have a look, but the time never seemed right. Also, he wasn?t sure he wanted to see a charred corpse. But now he had all the time in the world and began walking toward the ridge.
The hike up was steeper than it had looked, and by the time he reached the top he was sucking wind hard. He sat on a fallen tree trunk and smoked a cigarette. He let himself sit there another five minutes and finally got up and started down the other side.
The woods were thick, and he realized he wasn?t sure where he was going. What had he expected? A nice path, winding its way down to the wreck?
He wandered, the woods thicker on this side of the ridge. One tree looked pretty much like another. He headed generally downhill and hoped for the best.
