“Take whatever you need, Wally. But I wish you’d stay with us. At least, for your sister’s sake, until we get further away from this part of the state.”
“I have to go back, General. I’m called to do so.”
Ben nodded his head in agreement. “I wish you luck, Wally.”
Wally smiled. “God is on my side, General.”
There was nothing Ben could say to counter that.
Chapter 3
Ben and Judy stood by the pickup and watched Wally Williams walk slowly up Highway 641. He had told them he was only going a few miles, then would cut northeast, toward Eagle Creek on the Tennessee.
He rounded a curve in the road, and was lost from sight.
“I will never see him again,” Judy said.
“You can’t know that for sure,” Ben said.
“I will not see him again,” she repeated. She turned and faced Ben. “Let’s go, Ben. I want to leave this part of the country. And I don’t care if I ever come back.”
Ben opened the door to the truck. “Your chariot awaits you, dear.”
They spent their first night together at a tiny town just off the interstate. They never did find out the name of the town, for they could never find any highway markers denoting the name.
“Don’t you have a tent, Ben?” she asked.
“A pup tent in all that mess somewhere.”
“That won’t do.”
“Oh?”
“Tomorrow, first town of any size we come to, we start lookin” for one of them big pretty-colored tents like I seen in a catalog one time.”
“Those and saw,” Ben corrected.
“You ribbin’ the way I talk, boy?” she asked.
“No. Not at all. I used to be a writer, that’s all. It’s habit.”
“You wrote books!”
“Yes.”
“Big books?”’
“Yes. If by that you mean a hundred-thousand words or more.”
“What’d you write about, Ben? Tell me some stories.”
Ben fought to keep a straight face at her childish excitement. “I thought you told me you went to school?”’
“Oh, I did. I got to the seventh grade. I can read. But I’m slow at it “cause I have to skip over the big words.”
“All right, then. But first things first. We can’t get a bright-colored tent, because the color would stand out and might bring us visitors we don’t want. Understand?”
“Oh, yeah. Right.”
“But we will get a tent-somewhere. Next we’re going to get you some books. Some English books and a dictionary.”
“That’d be great.”
“Why didn’t your brother ever help you with reading?”
“Why … I don’t know. I guess ‘cause I never asked him.” Good reason, Ben thought.
“Which way did they go, bitch?” the voice rumbled out of the huge chest, exploding in the air.
“I didn’t see them, Mister Campo,” the woman said. “I swear to God, I didn’t.”
“There ain’t no God around here but me, bitch,” Jake told her. “And you’d best remember that.”
“No, sir,” the woman told him.
“Huh?”’
“I will not forsake my God and He will not forsake me.”
Campo laughed. The woman thought him to be the ugliest man she had ever seen. His head was shaved clean and round as a basketball, and just about as large. His eyes were small and piggy. His nose was large; with the nostrils flared, he looked like a pig. His mouth was wide, the lips thick and constantly wet from saliva. The man seemed to have no neck. Just the head attached to massive shoulders. His arms were thickly muscled. A huge chest and big belly. But the big belly did not quiver and shake like a fat man’s. It was solid. His legs were like the trunks of small trees. His feet were curiously small for a man his size.
“No, bitch,” Campo said, towering over the frightened woman. “You worship Jake Campo.”
She shook her head.
He squatted down beside her with a grunt and squeezed one soft breast. He clamped down hard, bruising the flesh. He laughed as the woman screamed in pain.
Her husband broke free of the hands that held him, and ran to Campo. He hit the man on the bald head with his clenched fist and the sound of the knuckles breaking was loud.
Campo stood up and roared with laughter.
“You do have balls, mister,” Campo said. “But nobody hits Jake Campo and gets away with it. Let’s see, what shall your punishment be? Should I cut off your balls? Naw! Rip out your tongue and feed it to the hogs? Naw!” Campo’s big face brightened. “I know.” He looked to his men. “Strip the broad, boys. And tie her husband to that tree yonder.”
The man was forced to watch while Campo’s men took turns raping the woman.
Campo pulled out a long-bladed hunting knife. He grinned at the man. “You seen Ben Raines’ fancy pickup truck, didn’t you, pig farmer?”
“No, sir, Mister Campo.”
Campo cut the man’s worn belt and let his patched trousers fall around his ankles. He cut the man’s long- handled underwear and lay the cold steel of the knife against the man’s testicles. “You want your balls cut off and stuck up your wife’s ass?”
“No, sir.”
“Ben Raines.”
“I seen this fancy truck go by just a-sailin’. Two men in the cab and a woman in the back, under a camper. She had a rifle stuck out the open camper winder.”
“You done good, boy,” Campo told the man, cutting the ropes that held him. “I’m gonna let you and your big-pussied woman live. This time around.”
He waved for his men to follow him. The hungry—
looking truck farmer jerked up his pants and ran to his wife’s side.
“Radio headquarters,” Campo told a man. “I want half the men to come with me, the other half stay in this area and collect our booty. Tell the boys to gear up for a long hard run. Lots of food and warm clothing and winter gear. I’m gonna foller Ben Raines until I catch that prissy, law-and-order son of a bitch. And I don’t care if I have to foller him, and that snooty cunt with him, all the way to the Pacific Ocean.”
Jake Campo looked to the west. “I’m gonna git you, Raines. And that there’s a promise.”
Even though the going would be much slower and would sometimes involve backtracking, Ben decided to stay on the secondary roads. They would afford him so many more ways to twist and turn in case Campo and his men were chasing them.
And Ben felt sure they would be.
Ben and Judy pulled out just after dawn, angling more west than north. At a small town in West Tennessee, Ben stopped at the public library-or what was left of it-and found some books for Judy. A book on creative writing, a good dictionary, and Fowler’s Modern English Usage.
On the road again, Judy opened the dictionary at random. “Ga-vo-tit,” she said.
“I beg your pardon?”
She repeated her pronunciation.
“Spell it, Judy.”
“G-a-v-ocommentcomment-every.”
