and the two vehicles miss by the width of a raindrop as Smitty stomps the brakes and whips the wheel and the Peterbilt screams down the highway sideways, hydroplaning like a sonofabitch.
Smitty’s tractor ends up on the shoulder, sliding though mud and gravel until Jessie’s door kisses a redwood. Smitty grinds the gears and turns the rig around while Jessie watches the Mustang’s red taillights disappear in the storm, like coals burning down to ash.
One more second and those taillights will be gone.
One more second and Joe Shepard will be on his way.
One more second until the storm and the dark hold sway.
One more second until —
Smitty just can’t help himself. Not anymore.
“This is all your fault, bitch,” he says.
His fist whips out and clips Jessie’s jaw.
Everything goes black.
“Hey there, Jess. Good to see you again.”
She opens her eyes and she’s in the Mustang, riding shotgun with a dead man.
“That was a close one, wasn’t it? Man, that truck-driving asshole nearly ran me off the road.” Joe winks at her. “Or did you have something to do with that, Jess?”
Jessie doesn’t say a word. Joe watches the storm through the windshield, as if he doesn’t really expect an answer, as if he’s determined to enjoy a Sunday drive through hell no matter what happens.
“Too bad Edward Hopper didn’t do pastoral scenes,” he jokes. “He would have loved this stuff.”
Joe laughs, but it’s like a hollow echo of yesterday. Jessie wants to cry. He’s trying really hard. He always tried really hard. He was a carpenter — still is, she figures, even though he’s dead. But money never came easy for him, and it always seemed to go too fast.
So their life wasn’t what they wanted it to be. A succession of low-rent apartments in low-rent towns, the kind of towns where a girl grows comfortable carrying a butterfly knife in her pocket. But that’s how it is when you work for someone else. They make the money, you do the work. They live someplace nice, and you don’t. Their wife doesn’t take anything but her credit card when she heads off to the grocery store after dark, your wife makes sure to remember her butterfly knife.
So when a friend offered to make Joe a partner in a custom cabinet shop, he jumped at the chance. Only problem was that Joe didn’t have enough green to buy his way into the business. So he decided to cash in his savings, make a run up north into marijuana country like he had in his college days, grab some quick profit on a larger scale than he’d ever tried before. But his old contacts steered him in the wrong direction, and he ended up in a Portland bar looking for a friend of a friend, and a short time after that he ended up on the wrong end of Larry Oates’ shotgun, and now his future doesn’t have anything to do with the life he wanted to make.
Now his future is all about death.
“You’ve got to listen to me, Joe. You can’t do this.”
“It’s the only way. Either I do it or I crawl back into that hole in the ground. It’s that simple.”
“But that waitress. The one who’s going to find the money… she doesn’t have anything to do with any of this.”
Joe’s anger flares. “She poured Oates a cup of coffee, didn’t she? Brought the bastard his breakfast while I was digging my way out of a grave like some goddamn gopher. She flirted with him and bought his dope and put money in his pocket that’ll maybe buy more shotgun shells he can use to put some other poor bastard six-feet under.” Joe snorts laughter. “Hell, Jessie, that little waitress gave Oates everything but a sweet little cherry on top.”
“But that’s no reason to kill her!”
“You’re right.” Joe glances at his wristwatch. “But in just a little while she’ll be picking up nine hundred bucks that can buy another chance at life for me, and that’s all the reason I need.”
“But why does she have to
“That money was taken in blood. Blood is the only way to get it back.”
“And what about me?” Jessie asks. “I’ve got your money, too. When you finish with the waitress, will you come after me with Larry Oates’ shotgun?”
“Jesus Christ, Jessie.” Joe sighs. “When I’m done with the waitress, it’s over. That’s what this thing in my gut tells me. I get that money back and I’m alive again, for keeps.”
Jessie doesn’t say anything.
She swallows hard. Up ahead, the road is dark.
Lightning flashes. A rip in the sky that’s too wide and too bright, like the polished blade of a butterfly knife.
Joe breaks the silence. “Don’t you want me to have another chance, Jess?”
‘Yes. Of course I do.”
“Then you have to let me do this thing.” Joe nods at the shotgun, waiting on the back seat. “And I have to do it this way.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“I’m not. This is wrong. Everything tells me that. Even if we could turn back the hands of time, if everything could really be the same as it was, I couldn’t pay the price you’re asking. Because if we pay that price, things won’t ever be the same as they were. You’re not a killer, Joe. You never were. Not alive, and not in the dreams I had for us. If you become one now, you might get a second chance, but what kind of a chance would it be?”
Joe shakes his head. “Remember what your mother used to say, Jess? About the way you saw things, I mean?”
“She said I had a special kind of eye. She said other people didn’t even know how to look at the things I could see.”
“Your mother was wrong. At least on one count. See, I know exactly how you see the world. I know how you see it when you’re awake. I know how you see it when you’re dreaming. Maybe you’re right. Maybe I’m not the man you used to see in your dreams, but your dreams aren’t the same as they used to be. They’re not even dreams anymore. Think about that, Jess.”
“There’s got to be another way.”
“If you think of one, be sure to tell me about it. Until then, the clock is ticking.”
Up ahead, thunder rumbles. Loud. Getting louder.
When it comes again, Joe’s voice isn’t any more than a whisper. “It’s about time for us to say adios, Jess.”
Jessie opens her mouth. She can’t go now. Not yet… not until she convinces him she’s right.
Joe shifts gears, and the engine roars, and so does the thunder. Before she can so much as whisper, lightning tears Jessie’s world in half.
The next part takes only a second, maybe two. But to Jessie it seems to last forever, like crawling up a rickety set of cellar steps with a couple of broken legs.
Out of the dark, into the light.
That’s what it’s like. Because things start to come together for Jessie. The things Joe said about the way she sees things, about her dreams… and the way they’ve changed since Joe died… and the way Joe has changed, too…
A lightning crack as Smitty slaps her one more time, and Jessie’s eyelids flutter open. She’s on the floor of
