Authors: Astrid Lee Donovan
CHAPTER NINE
Even the moon seemed exhausted as Dez walked into the parking lot. It was 12:45 and the past five hours seemed to have snuck up on him like a thief. All he wanted to do was get back to the hotel and sleep for the better part of the next two days. He wanted to cast off this girl and head straight out west. Take the $250 he had on him and start all over. Get a job as a mechanic or factory worker, like his father. It was his genes, assembly line work. Less risk. After all, it’s not like there was a local union for drug dealers, was there?
“Now look, Samantha?” he cried into the desolate air, his voice being met only with a tinny echo. “Let’s not pull anything rash. We’re both tired and we gotta think straight to get out of this. Maybe I wasn’t thinking before I spoke. Maybe I haven’t been thinking all night. Look, we need to figure out a way out of this mess. Let’s just go back to the hotel and think with a clear head in the morning, OK?”
There were no crickets chirping at a quarter to one in the morning. Merely the metallic clang and bumps of dragged mufflers on concrete and the shifting gears from distant diesel trucks. The April air seemed mocking in its stony faced refusal. Even the bar room he just departed from now seemed forbidden.
“Samantha?”
Dez’s mind suddenly turned grave with suspicion and fear.
I shouldn’t have let her bolt out of there like that. What if this chick ran off to squeal to the cops? What if they’re already at the hotel as we speak? What if I’m cornered? I have no idea where the fuck I am and no idea how to get out of Vinita. What if…
His qualms were suddenly interrupted by a muffled yell emanating from the woods behind the parking lot. Dez could have sworn the sound of sobbing and heavy panting was off in the distance. He turned around slowly and heard another shriek and violent rustling, followed by hostile muttering from a clearing in the shallow thickets of the trees and bushes. It was unmistakable a woman’s voice. He quickened his pace, and trotted towards the sound briskly but softly. He fingered his revolver underneath his jacket.
He made his way towards the clearing and gasped catching sight of the two men opposing one another with Samantha in between them. One had his knee on her back, forcing her down on her knees, her body violently jerking and writhing, struggling to break free. Her flimsy t-shirt laid tossed to the ground, forgotten, revealing a tender and bruised body coated by the shuddering and spasms of fear. Her jeans were around her ankles, where one of her attackers was drunkenly trying to pull the cotton panties off. The other attacker was holding her head against the crotch of his slate-grey trousers, trying to mash her cheek into the thick and unyielding fabric, his face contorted in a leer that seemed to spring from the ugliest recesses of his malevolent brain. She growled as he cupped her mouth with his grimy hands, trying to stifle her feral cries. Her hair was matted with the halo of sweat and dread. A not so distant street lamp reflected her only dimly. In the glow half of shadows and half of light, she looked like neither a child nor an animal; simply an accessory. Inanimate. Disposable.
“Get the fuck outta here, faggot… Less you think you’re man enough,” one of the men snarled through a whiskey-coated moustache.
“No,
you
get the
fuck
out of
here
, you redneck son of a bitch,” retorted Dez. His exhaustion had turned to a bolt of primal instinct, and he could feel endorphins surging through his body as he snarled those words. Whatever clouds of beer and fatigue still lingered in his skull soon dissipated. He reached beneath his jacket. They dropped Samantha to the dirt, her body twisted and bruised. She grabbed her shirt and tried to tackle one of them as Dez revealed his .38.
“You don’t have the balls to use—” The threat was futile.
The blow of a sizable hunk of concrete had stunned him. Samantha had hit him and was now repeatedly bashing the back of his head. Blood began trickling as he fell to the ground, dazed by the blows.
The other assailant took a stance as if he was ready to lunge at Dez at any time. Yet Dez stood his ground, scowling furiously. He raised the pistol straight at the man, who responded by ducking into the thicket and running for his life along a path he had known since he was a small boy. Dez shot two rounds blindly into the impenetrable woods, neither knowing nor caring if he shot the attacker. Their sounds were obscured by the belching air-horn of a nearby diesel truck.
He looked at the other attacker on the ground and gave his gravel-bedecked jaw a firm kicking several times with the heel of his boots. He grabbed Samantha by the arm.
“We gotta haul ass out of here!” he hissed, pulling her by the arm as she struggled to throw her clothes back on.
They scrambled through the parking lot, not caring if the sound of their steps alerted the bartender or patrons. But no one took notice. They raced down the sidewalk, their nostrils fuming and their pupils dilating beneath the buzzing of street lamps and the blaze of passing pickup trucks and drunkenly swerving motorcycles. No one took notice. They raced with a purely animal energy, trying to forget themselves in the fumes they gave off as they clambered down the concrete, kicking off discarded cans and newspapers whipping like tumbleweeds in their wake.
“You could’ve gotten us killed back there,” panted Samantha as they ran.
“Third time - just could be the charm,” retorted Dez.
They finally found themselves in the silent maw of the 66 Inn parking lot, feeling as if they were about to pelt the inside of a glass house with bricks.
Once inside,
they lay inside the cavernous room with the curtains drawn and the door firmly bolted, anticipating at any moment a knock on the door from state police that would never come. The only illumination was the glow of track lights from behind the half opened bathroom door. Even if it had been working, not even the feeble air conditioner would have been enough to cool down Dez and Samantha.
He lay there, chain-smoking each cigarette to the very filter. It seemed like hours passed before he finally opened his mouth. “I think it might be wise to go to the hospital. Most emergency rooms, they don’t even ask questions. You don’t even have to tell them about the… you know...”
“The rape? Or the fact that you kidnapped me?”
“Look… I just want to make certain you’re alright.”
“No. I’ll be fine. I don’t like hospitals. I’ll just rest it off.”
“At least let me take a look. I owe you that much.”
“Now you’re a doctor?”
“Come on. Let’s go in the bathroom. Let’s have a look.”
“Just - let me get some sleep.”
“I can’t have you injured.”
“You’ve injured me enough, thank you. You can’t have me regardless.”
“You’re assuming too much.”
“And you’re an ass. None of this would have happened if it wasn’t for you. Injured or not, what difference does it make? You’ll still be on the run and I’ll still be stranded out in the middle of nowhere.”
He seized her by the arm, practically dragging her off the bed. “We’re going into the bathroom, like it or not—”
“So help me god, I will…” Samantha tried to finish the sentence, but found it incapable of speaking. She felt a hollow pit in her stomach; a hollow pit that expanded, tearing her upper body. It was a pit of disgust; of sheer, unadulterated revulsion. She tried to swallow the words, but they only lodged themselves more firmly in her throat, taking on strange and unusual shapes. They were no longer words, but hieroglyphs of pain and sheer desolation. They seemed to hum within her, wracking her body until she had no choice but to allow them to erupt in a torrent of wails and sobs, resting her fevered brow on Dez’s shoulder. The more she sobbed, the more she felt it scalding her, her tears steady and streaming the soft denim fabric. Dez tried to hush her, stroking her still matted hair, but it was no use. Her lamentations were relentless.
“Come on…. take it easy…It’ll all be over soon,” he lied, not even believing himself. “I just want to check for sprains…” He reached over to the nightstand table and turned on the light, pulling Samantha’s fragile arm into view. The bruises were noticeable and swollen, already purplish black against the soft whiteness of her skin. Ugly, but they’d fade. He checked the arm and wrist for pressure. No reaction. A good sign? Then he saw them.
Directly, in intersecting diamond-like patterns, was a batch of recent track marks tracing Samantha’s veins. He let the arm drop down to her side and took her face in both hands. Her face, wracked with tears and snot and trembling, cracked lips, had reverted to a sense of childlike helplessness he had never noticed until just then. He stared into her eyes, neither of accusation nor pity, but a fierce compassion. A compassion that was almost inhuman. This could be his sister. Could be a stranger. Whoever she was, whatever she had done to herself, he was directly responsible for it. He realized that it was his poison that had been filling her veins. He wasn’t ashamed to admit he knew remorse. It seemed it was much of what he had known all his life. Now, he knew a self-disgust that left him stripped raw and shattered.
He wiped away her tears, and took a long look at the doll-like poise of her face riddled with a sorrow and desperation that seemed to swell from the very bedrock of life itself. And in that moment, he was faced with a creature more vulnerable and delicate than anything he had ever witnessed in his life. And in that vulnerability was a beauty he knew he would never possess, and that very notion wounded him to his core.
“He has you shooting up now?”
Samantha’s face contorted into a ball of hysteria. She pleaded silently for mercy, but from whom? From Dez? From some vaguely imagined savior? From the invisible friends of her childhood? From her parents? From herself?
“It’s only been… just… just a few times… honest… You know… how it is,” she lied, but they both knew it was purely in vain.
“Dope?”
“Only a couple… couple times. Not enough… for a real habit or nothing.”
“What else?”
“What… what do you think?”
“Rush?”
Samantha looked downward and let out a soft sigh that admitted to Dez more than words ever could.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” said Dez, scooting up on the bed and covering his face with his palms.
They sat there, too impassive to even make a motion. Only the occasional sniffling of Samantha punctuated the crypt like atmosphere of the room. Even the sensations of self-pity and self-loathing seemed suspended in air. Instead, they could only face the pain of the immediate, a stark pain, more infinitely palatable than a thousand confessions or a thousand prayers. It was the infinite hunger for the present, confronted with an uncertain future and an unabsolvable past.
Decades might pass before either one of them would have the strength to leave the confines of that motel room. Decades might pass before either one of them could share a single word. The only thing they could share was a breath, but even that seemed tainted. Even the shadows seemed impure, like an obscene charade. Their clothes seemed like shackles, but they had already seen through one another to the very nakedness of their being. When stripped of both self-respect and self-denial, what is there to strip down to?
It was 2:30 in the morning and they still sat there silently. Outside, a drunken couple fought. They heard the sound of doors slamming, and high heels walking stealthily across pavement. Belches and the lung piercing hacks of tubercular coughing. They could smell, even at this late hour, the smell of cigarettes and last minute sexual excursions hanging in the air, even from outside their room. Their bodies felt withered. Perhaps they were finally home after all.
Samantha turned her head to face him. She uttered in a soft, uncertain voice, quavering with every word, “Dez… can I… sleep with you tonight? Just… hold me. That’s all.”
He wrapped his arms around her as she curled her face against his chest. His breathing seemed shallow and alert as she closed her eyes.
She felt him kiss the top of her head lightly as she drifted into sleep.
CHAPTER TEN
If there was ever a more pitiless sun in Craig County—or in all of Oklahoma for that matter—Dez and Samantha hadn’t known it. It came in mercilessly, despite the thickly drawn curtains, reminding them both that tomorrow had come, and there was no solution to be found. They were stuck with themselves.
It had been a restless night when they finally rolled out of bed at 7:30. Both had slept in fits and starts, and both were surprised to find that they shared the same habit of waking up
precisely
at a quarter past 4 in the morning, unable to fall back to sleep for another hour or two.
Despite the heavy lids of her sleep-deprived eyes, Samantha found herself quickly becoming mentally alert. She supposed she should have felt hungover; but only the dull, dry taste in her mouth claimed evidence of any excesses from last night. The throbbing pain she knew in her body reminded her of the assault, but it was nothing compared to the shame she felt for having fallen victim to it. And the shame she felt for having opened up so freely to an absolute stranger.
Dez, on the other hand, was practically immobile. Though his wide-open eyes indicated he was awake, his body was so pensive that he could have passed for a hypnosis patient. His brain felt swathed in leather, and he could feel the straps tightening with every incessant chirping of the birds outside. Samantha tried to nudge him.
“Hey… hey you. It’s morning now. Come on. Let’s get showered. We’ll grab some coffee or some donuts or something.”
The supine body on the bed refused to acknowledge her. He just stared straight ahead, his mouth agape.
“Come on, now. There’s time to fret later. For now, we gotta get up.”
The body didn’t budge. She laid back down and poked his rib a few times. She thought she saw him grinning, so she seized on the advantage, and began to tickle his stomach. Soon he was laughing uncontrollably. As if by automatic reaction, Samantha did so as well. Soon, it seemed like the entire room was spinning and colliding like a funhouse ride as they began play-thrashing one another, eventually stopping only to catch their breaths and collapse, staring into one another’s eyes.
They stared back at one another wordlessly for what seemed like hours. Dez took a long look at her. The resilience and glow of her skin was supernatural, even despite all that she had been through during the past twelve hours, there was a radiance to her that was elastic, tickling his nerves. Her fine mouth seemed carved to present a perpetual question; a question that held no answers and no clues. Her hair, unkempt and free, clung to her head and shoulders like a shawl, and one look into the jade green hue of her eyes and he knew he would be lost. The question was for how long?
He shut his eyes and pressed his lips to hers. Her breath tasted pure, and her mouth yielded without struggle. When they finally stopped, she smiled sweetly at him and ran her fingers through his hair. Dez leaned in for another kiss, but she squirmed away.
“There’s plenty of time for all that later. Right now, I’m going to take a shower. I think I deserve it. Want to fetch us some coffee from the lobby? Cream and two sugars in mine, if you could.”
The sun seemed even more unrelenting as Dez stepped into broad daylight, and he knew in all likelihood he was irrevocably, resolutely and irredeemably
fucked
.
When he returned, he halfway expected to find Samantha vanished, along with his jacket—and his pistol. But she just waited on the bed, combing her long dark hair in her t-shirt and jeans, the androgynous attire doing nothing to deflect from the delicate femininity of her body.
He carried a road map and a newspaper under his arm. He rested in the naugahyde sitting chair, and begin studying the former. “Sorry ‘bout the coffee. Weaker than hell, but what do you expect? Now, if we just head east on 44, seems like we could be in St. Louis before nightfall…”
“St. Louis? Missouri?”
“No, I mean St. Louis, Pennsylvania…. Of course St. Louis, Missouri.”
“Why the hell you want to go there?”
“I got an old army buddy out there.”
“You were in the military?”
“That’s not something I wanna talk about right now.” Dez’s face suddenly grew sullen and he knew he shouldn’t have brought it up. But Samantha just dismissed it.
“But what about my cousin?”
“I think your cousin can probably take care of herself for once.”
“She’s only 16.”
“Weren’t you only 16 once? She’ll tough it out. I’ll see if Reg or Dim can keep an eye on her. Loan her some money. We can wire it Western Union, if we have to. The key is... it ain’t safe for us in Oklahoma. Not until I get word from Reg. We can hold out for a few nights in St. Louis - maybe a week. Two weeks, tops. You’ll like it there. You ever been?”
“I’ve never even left this state!”
“It’s a fun time. Laid back. We can lay low. I’ll get you on a bus back to Tulsa after a few days, once everything’s cooled down; my buddy can loan us the bread. And from there, I’ll try to make it out to Chicago. Maybe even out west. Always wanted to see the desert… you know, cactuses and all—”
“Stop!”
“What’s up?”
“Didn’t you say I’m a potential accessory?”
“Yeah, but the thing is, they probably ain’t looking for you after a few days. They’d be looking for me. Besides, don’t you want to go home?”
“What makes you think I have a home?”
“‘Scuse me?”
“I said,” Samantha’s voice suddenly grew adamant as she reemphasized each syllable resolutely, “What. Makes. You. Think. I. Have. A. Home?”
“Well you just said you lived in Tulsa all your life now, didn’t you?”
“That don’t make it a home. That makes it hell.”
“What do you wanna do instead? Live on the road with me?”
Her face grew even brighter, and she gave him a wry smile.
“You can’t be serious,” Dez said. “I already feel guilty enough about everything. Taking you on as a responsibility—”
“Who says you’d be taking me on as anything? I can look after myself.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
Samantha’s face soured. “Well, what the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“I ain’t holding nothing. And even if I was, I wouldn’t give ‘em to you. From now on, I’m clean. Getting out of this game. Too much hassle. Too much heat.”
“How dare you!” she exploded, practically hissing the words through tersely drawn lips. “How dare you even think for a moment that I’m—”
“Strung out?” Dez walked over to Samantha and rolled up the sleeve of his striped jersey, revealing an array of scabbed over, fading needle marks and abscesses dotting his arms. “Probably cuz I’ve been there. In the exact same boat you’re gonna be in. I know what it’s like to be sick and wanting and craving. I know what it’s like to do things you never in a million years would have dreamed of just to get a taste - to degrade yourself. I’ll leave you to guess just what I mean,” he spat out bitterly. Samantha’s face turned ashen at his exclamation. He simply continued. “The point is, when I say I’m staying clean, I’m sure as hell mean that I’m gonna be staying clean. And you’re gonna be finding yourself hurting. I can’t abide by that. And I sure as shit can’t stand to witness it.” He trembled visibly as he sat back down, resting his head in his hands.
Samantha was shaken, and walked over with some trepidation resting her hand on his shoulder. “Dez, it’s rush, not smack. It’s not the same.”
He glared at her. “No, it isn’t. It’s worse. Takes you maybe a day or two before you start feeling back to normal. That’s when it lies to you. Tells you since it only took a day or two to kick, can’t be that bad. So you start using again. Then you stop, and start the whole seesaw all over again. It’s a cycle. Just like dope. It just builds and builds up on itself.”
“How long did it take for you?”
“For me to what?”
“Clean up.”
“For which? The dope or the rush?”
“Which came first?”
Dez let out a deep sigh. “Back before I served, we were always toolin’ around. Bennies… inhalers… shit was legal back then. Easy to come by. Had all these dreams… music, poetry -the whole Beat generation gig. Kinda corny now, but we took that seriously. But the war ended all that. Back when I was in service, overseas, I got strung out. Dope. Lotta guys did over there. Easier to come by than bennies. Cheaper too. When I was discharged, I landed without any means to survive. That’s a different story.” He lit a cigarette from a fresh pack. “In any case, I had a habit. Crashing here and there, ‘til friends got sick of me. Then it was the park or wherever or whoever would take me in… the Missions, wherever. I was pretty gone by that time. Even skinnier than I am now.”
“I find that a little hard to believe.”
He answered her with the same enigmatic smile she had seen last night in the bar. “Connections were getting scarce,” he continued. “Long time, most we could get was Demerol. If we were lucky, dilaudid… and that was sold like it was some kinda vintage wine. I needed to clean up. I mean, that much was obvious. I was living just outside Kansas City, and I heard about this doctor. He had a limited test run he was trying of methadone. This was about five years ago now. I was lucky enough to be one of his patients. It was almost like a lottery. Just sheer dumb luck that I won. This test trial was real secretive, at the time. Could only ‘officially’ get it in New York. You know about methadone, right?”
Samantha nodded.
“Now, what they don’t tell you is, it’s just as hard to get off of as dope, actually - a hell of a lot trickier. It’s just a substitute, nothing more. So when I tried to wean myself off, I kept having symptoms. Had to taper ‘em with something. Rush took a little bit of the edge off. Helped make me feel less goddamned tired, that’s for sure. Eventually, I cut back in such rapid time, the doctor said I was a case for the textbooks.” He chuckled, and drew on his cigarette. “Course what I didn’t tell him was that I had switched to a massive amount of speed in order to quit his fucking methadone! At the time, I was dealing a little here and there, but mainly I was using. To make a long story short, I met my ex-wife. I was still shooting a hell of a lot of crank, and she, well, I ain’t gonna hold nothing against her. She was the one who convinced me to stop doing drugs, to get a job, just sort of clean up my act. ‘Course it was only after the birth of my daughter that she gave me that ultimatum, but that’s another story too. To tidy this all up for you, I’ve been clean for about three years now. Took my last hit the same day I found out my kid had been diagnosed. Matter of fact, we both did.”
“We?”
“My wife and I.”
“I… see…”
Samantha looked at him, trying hard to hold back the tears misting her eyes. Her face blanched, and all she could do was meekly hold on to his knife-like wrist, knowing deep down that to apply anything more than fleeting touch would be to wound him all over again.
“The temptation’s still there, but…”
“But?”
Dez paused. “The temptation’s still there, that’s all. Sometimes you don’t have any answer for than to admit your own temptations.
“So if the temptation’s still there, why did you sell?”
“Simple. I had a kid to provide for. That’s one way to answer for your temptations.” He paused and let the cigarette smolder in the ashtray. He took her trembling hand in both of his, clasping them so tightly that she gave a sharp wince. His eyes were clear and penetrating, but his face loomed against hers. “Now, you tell me. What do you have?”
Samantha thought long and hard. She sat gnawing at her thumb—a childhood habit she was never fully able to break—before answering. “A different life,” she said with no small amount of certainty.
The only thing she was uncertain about was whether or not Dez would be a part of that life.