‘Don’t be such a boy,’ Sundae admonishes me and swerves the truck around a steep precipice as we make our way up Cheat Mountain.
Pie says into the CB handset, ‘Break one-nine, break one-nine.’
‘Go ahead, breaker,’ comes the discarnate voice through the CB.
‘This is Asia Cakes. Ninah Waya, you got your ears on?’
‘That’s big ten-four. What’s your twenty?’ broadcasts a different crackly male voice.
‘I’m comin’ up over the mountaintop, with a pick ’em-up convoy on our backdoor.’
‘Yeah, roger.’
‘Shit!’ I shout as Stacey’s truck pulls alongside us on the right.
‘Our toenails are scratching and the four-wheeler just about blew my doors off,’ Pie says into the mike.
‘Roger,’ says the disembodied voice again.
‘He’s got a rifle,’ I cry out. Driving next to us, Stacey struggles to get his shotgun clear to aim at us.
‘We got a pick ’em-up playin’ duck season,’ Pie says into the CB.
‘Don’t worry. He wouldn’t dare to use a shotgun on the Interstate,’ Sundae says, pulling the wheel tight around a curve, her petite muscles bulging.
‘I lost my flask,’ I say as calmly as I can manage. ‘Maybe I can go back with them and get my flask and y’all can come get me later.’
The usually soft muscles of Pie’s face pull into a clenched look of disbelief as her face turns toward me and then falls into a solid knot of sorrow, concern, and enough disappointment for me to feel so utterly lost and hopeless that all I can do is retch in response.
A loud blast, like an M-80, echoes around us.
‘He’s shooting out our wheels,’ Sundae says matter-of-factly, ‘which I find very rude, not to mention inappropriate, roadside behavior.’
She turns the wheel and slams our truck against Stacey’s pickup.
‘Uh, Ninah Waya, we got a situation here. Pick ’em-up is playing target practice on our skates, deeply offending Day of Rest’s sensibilities, and now we’re playing bumper cars, heading for a crack ’em-up.’
I watch Stacey’s car swerve and the smell of burning rubber fills the air.
‘Roger, Asia Cakes, you got a clean shot to yardstick forty-three to your drop stop and the chicken coop is all clean, copy.’
‘Yeah, roger.’
A shotgun blast booms around us, followed by a loud poplike explosion. Our truck skids and brushes into the rocky pass on our side.
‘We got a blowout from the ankle biter and we just dropped it off the shoulder,’ Pie says into the microphone.
‘Yeah, roger, what’s your twenty?’
‘Crossing the Pearly Gate soon. Gonna handle some business so goin’ down and on the side.’
‘Follow the stripes home with eighty-eights around the house.’
Pie hangs up the CB and stands up, impossibly balancing herself in the rocking cab. She gracefully raises her kimono to reveal a pair of black silk panties exquisitely embroidered with fire-shooting dragons.
Another shotgun blast sounds.
‘That man is so ugly,’ Sundae says, pointing out the window toward Stacey, ‘he’d scare the shit off a pitchfork.’ She rams his truck again. ‘Pie, honey, I know a wild man gets the best of you, but this ain’t the time,’ Sundae laughs.
Pie smiles good-humoredly and proceeds to reach into her panties and dig between her legs. ‘I’m very good at keeping my goods strapped down,’ Pie says to me. ‘And I know just when to whip them out too.’ She pulls out a small, sleek gun, then digs into her kimono and produces a clip and snaps it into the gun.
Pie closes her kimono, leans out the window, and before I even realize it, she’s fired off a whole round of shots. I hear wheels skidding and screeching.
Pie reaches into her underwear, produces another clip and squeezes off another round.
‘Both those trucks are now rolling on their hubcaps,’ Pie declares and waves a graceful goodbye to them.
I pull myself up to see Stacey’s driver trying to keep their truck under control with their front wheels blown out.
‘I date a samurai that uses a mini-glock forty-five. He says swords are outdated. He even fitted this one with night sight for me,’ Pie says over her shoulder. ‘Lord, I love to watch that man shoot,’ she sighs and fires off a few more shots.
‘Pie, it’s coming up—the Pearly Gate. This is the do-or-die point,’ Sundae says, her voice abnormally subdued.
Pie presses the gun to her side and for the first time looks concerned. I pull myself up and I see the Cheat Bridge looming ahead of us.
‘Ready?’ Sundae asks before the gray metal structure, slowing the truck like a bull pausing before an attack. Pie and I both nod, then we all take in as much air as we can, puffing out our cheeks like hoarding squirrels. We move cautiously onto the bridge.
We’ve all heard the tales of drivers never making it over the Cheat River.
Some say it’s the spirit of all those pioneers who once crossed a calm and impassive Cheat River in wagons, only to have it jealously rise up and steal their futures under its choleric waves.
‘Those drowned settlers ain’t gonna lie there easy and let y’all just cross the leisurely way,’ Glad would warn any of his lizards planning a trip over Cheat Bridge. ‘Neither are all them in’ians that died putting that bridge up.’
We all heard the tales of the vehicles that, for no reason at all, just suddenly ran off the bridge and plunged down into the Cheat. No matter how high they raise the guardrails, no matter how much grip they spray on the traction bumps, and no matter how slow the speed limit, nothing could stop the dead of the Cheat bringing down more company.
All you could do was take ahold of your breath as you cross and hope the dead let you pass as one of their own. I heard it said those drivers that have to cross the Cheat Bridge as part of their regular run have developed extraordinary lung capacity to rival the great Houdini.
I look down and see the Cheat River below, tumbling over itself, sending bits of spray into the air like little jellyfish tentacles.
The truck vibrates along the metal traction nubs, making it harder to hold in my breath.
I look behind to see Stacey’s truck pause at the start of the bridge. His whole face expands like a bagpipe as he also takes in a gasp of air.
I clutch hard on to the backs of the seats and give myself over to the bridge’s vibrations, overwhelming all my body’s natural sounds and senses.
Pie and Sundae are silent as well. Their red faces are set in grim determination, to reach the other side without the aid of fresh oxygen.
I roll my eyes back up into my head and fight past the hum of our wheels on the bridge, past the roar of the hungry currents below us, and past the moaning voices of all the dead calling out for their lost mamas and papas and babies with a wretchedness so devastating you’re tricked into gasping for air in horror.
I see Sarah’s face, as I cradled it once when she had stopped breathing, the needle still stuck in her arm, leaking like a red-ink pen. I held my breath as the paramedics worked on her until she rose with a sudden thrust like a seedling pushing its head up out of the dirt in a speeded-up nature film. She looked at me, her eyes wild with the secrets of death, and said, ‘I came back for you.’
She never spoke those words again, even when she did always come back for me, claiming me nonchalantly like a forgotten scarf at a coat check from the various group homes or foster care, in the various states, I’d been relinquished to when a new marriage that had seemed promising turned as useless as the fruit of a poison sumac. In my head I assure the dead. My resolve to be with my mother is all the air my lungs require.
I open my eyes and see the ivory turkscap lilies waving at the end of the bridge like a crowd of monks’ white hoods bowing a somber surrender flag.
‘Why do you always come back for me?’ I had asked her once when she lay on the bed in the tenuous world of alcohol-induced consciousness.
She slowly rolled her head to me, flopped an arm over the back of my neck, and pulled me closer as if she were pulling in won poker chips. ‘Everybody needs someone to know who they really are,’ she laughed and guided my head down to lie next to hers.
The white of the lilies grows as searing as the ache of the air pressing to escape my lungs.
‘I know who you are,’ I say, gasping, and let the lonely dead drag me down.
‘We crossed the Cheat,’ Pie says, holding my head in her lap.
I shake my head and realize we’re still in the truck, still driving.
‘You okay?’ she asks and wipes her smooth fingertips across my forehead. ‘You passed out. We shouldn’t’ve let you hold your breath.’
‘Did Stacey fall in the Cheat?’ I ask.
‘No such luck,’ Sundae laughs. ‘He’s still driving somewhere behind us on his axles! But we’re almost home, though. Look!’ Sundae points.
Pie gives me a hand up, but instead of The Doves’ pink neon sign I see yellow signs announcing a weigh station commanding all trucks to stop. As we drive on, flashing yellow lights inform us the station is closed.
‘It’s closed,’ I tell Sundae, annoyed that she had promised me home.
Sundae slows and heads the truck into the station.
‘They’re gonna follow us in there,’ I say pointing to Stacey’s trucks, small in the rearview mirror.
‘I hope they do,’ Sundae says with a grin.
We roll slowly through the empty lot.
I hear Stacey’s shotgun flying off warning shots, which are too far back to hit us.
‘Testy, testy, testy!’ Sundae laughs and pulls the truck into a space under a dim fluorescent light and parks.
‘That was more fun than a dog rolling on a dead frog,’ Sundae says and opens the cab door for Pie.
‘Are you turning me back?’ I say somewhat hopefully, unable to envision getting all the way back to The Doves on just plum tea.
‘C’mon with me.’ Pie motions for me to give her my hand. I lift it to her and am not surprised to see it has a slight tremor to it.
‘I don’t think that’s from nerves,’ says Sundae, seeing my hand.
I hear the scraping sound of what must be Stacey and his accompaniment driving on their flat wheels. I follow Pie out of the truck and into the gloomy darkness of the closed station. I don’t see any other vehicles around, except for Stacey’s pickups, which are heading right toward us. We walk fully exposed out into the desert openness of the lot. I’m holding Pie’s hands and can feel the quivering spread throughout my body now.
‘Stacey’s gonna blow us out like melons on a fence,’ I mumble to Pie.
‘Sure he is, honey, sure he is.’
I hear Stacey’s truck heading right toward us.
‘Pardon me, ma’am?’ Stacey shouts to us from his rolling truck.
‘Yes?’ Pie turns to face the oncoming truck. I step behind her in a rather weak attempt to hide. Stacey’s braying laugh fills the lot. The trucks pull up next to us.
Stacey and his partner, a gas station worker from Three Crutches, get out of their truck.
‘Hi.’ I give Stacey a partial wave, which he ignores.
Like a dog hearing the clink of a can opener and licking its chops in wetted desire, just hearing the jingle of Stacey’s big key ring hanging off his pants causes my throat to click in its dryness and sets my nose twitching in narcotic craving.
A look of incredulous incomprehension sits on Stacey’s face. ‘Ma’am. Sorry to disturb you,’ he says with thinly veiled sarcasm, ‘but I do believe you have something that belongs to me.’ He motions his head toward me. His other truck comes to a screeching park next to his.
‘What, this little trick babe?’ Pie says, holding up my hand like a mother being informed her child had done some transgression.
The gas attendant is holding the rifle at his side and I notice his finger is firmly pressed on the trigger.
‘Is the driver in the truck? I’d like a word with him,’ Stacey says as if he were a school principal.
‘Oh, I guess he’s in the truck still,’ Pie says and points to it.
Stacey looks at his partner in disbelief and lets out a cold hard laugh. Pie joins in, which stops Stacey cold.
‘What’s this about?’ Stacey asks, his face gone icily stiff except for his jowls that still are recovering from the laugh. ‘Maybe you can help me. You see, someone stole one of my boys, I get brung out in the middle of the night for a chase, my wheels got shot out, and now I’m standing here making small-talk to some Oriental geisha like we’re all heading to a picnic.
Voce
e um maluco e tambem um sete um!’
Stacey says and sucks his teeth like the Portuguese soap villainess. I feel a weird twinge of pride that Stacey is able to get in a bit of sarcastic humor, not his usual strong point. His Portuguese language tapes are finally paying off.
‘I’m so sorry about your wheels. But didn’t you shoot first?’ Pie asks, and I almost expect her to slap his wrist in admonishment.
‘Honey, I don’t know who you are, but you are now the property of Le Loup of Three Crutches. And
I
do not hit or shoot mares, but
Le Loup
has no such qualms, so you might want to practice your restraint now.’
Pie nods her head in a submissive geisha way.
‘Now, let’s go get that driver.’ Stacey nods and the gas station man nudges us with the rifle in the direction of the truck Sundae is in.
We walk in silence. Just the clicking of the men’s boots and the soft padding of Pie’s geisha slippers, set against the soft breezes blowing refuse, and the assorted scamper of small mammals chasing after the garbage. It’s too overcast to even discern any stars.
I want to make some gesture of apology to Pie but am numbed by an overwhelming feeling of responsibility for her now being captured too, and soon Sundae, and in most likelihood having to endure the same circuitous fate as me.
I determine myself to stoically brave my engulfing nausea and protect Pie and Sundae in any way I can. I squeeze Pie’s hand in what I mean as a reassuring signal, but she thinks my hand is slipping out of her clutch, so she gives me a quick comforting squeeze.
We get to the truck door and Stacey steps beside us. The gas station man raises the rifle. ‘Knock,’ Stacey orders Pie.
Pie does her little bow and knocks.