The White Widow: A Novel (17 page)

Jack told Johnny Merriweather to give him a first call. He had no choice. He had to go, no matter the weather. The wind was even stronger and the rain was even harder now than when he had pulled in ten minutes earlier. He heard some thunder off in the distance. A flash of lightning came through the waiting-room door.

But he had to go. He was no Dry Fred Bogard.

There was a small canopy under which the passengers could dash in order to keep from getting completely drenched.

Jack and Willie Church used umbrellas to make it even better but it was mostly a lost cause. Everyone, including Jack, got soaked through.

Back inside, counting his tickets, which were also mostly
wet, Jack had to confront the tragedy that lay before him. She was gone. She had stormed into his life like that tail from the Indianola hurricane outside and then blown off out into the sea, never to sit on his bus again. She had wrung out his soul, caused him to forget to throw off papers, run late, pull out an ignition wire and even to think about Loretta dying. How could she do all of that and then sail out of his life? How could she do that to him?

And then, there she was. She came racing through the waiting-room door, her head covered with a newspaper, the rest of her wrapped in a light-pink raincoat.

“Oh, you’re still here,” she said when she saw Jack.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “There was no way I would leave without you.”

Oh, you’re still here.

Yes, ma’am. There was no way I would leave without you.

Jack watched her buy a ticket.

“A one-way to Corpus Christi,” she said to Johnny Merriweather. She put a five-dollar bill down on the counter.

“You bet,” said Johnny. He grabbed one of the card tickets out of the ticket dispenser, stamped the back hard with the validator, put it on the counter and said: “Two-twenty out of five.”

The water on her face made her even more gorgeous. Jack wished he had a big towel that he could wrap around her and dry her off with. Maybe remove that pink raincoat and what was underneath before doing so. Maybe hold her and then give her a hot bath in a white porcelain bathtub with legs and rub her so she would not catch double pneumonia. Double pneumonia was what his mother had warned him about the most. “Come in here right now, Jack T., before you catch double pneumonia,” she used to say. It could be raining or it could be dry, it could be cold or it could be hot, it could be almost anything and she would say it. Jack never understood,
for instance, how a tornado warning could give him double pneumonia, but that was his mother’s way, so that was it.

Jack knew he was staring. But he could not help it and he did not care. She was just four feet away from him there at the ticket counter.

She took her ticket and her change from the counter and turned to face Jack. But she said nothing.

“Well, it’s all aboard for Corpus and the Valley,” Jack said. Willie Church was standing there with an umbrella. “Let me hold this over you, ma’am,” Willie said.

“Why, thank you so much,” she said.

“We don’t even know what to call you,” Jack said as he followed her and Willie to the door.

Why, thank you so much.

We don’t even know what to call you.

She did not answer. She must not have heard him over all the noise and commotion from the rain and the wind.

At the door to the bus, Jack said to her, “Why don’t you just take that seat up there across from me?”

She glanced around at him, smiled and said, “That would be nice.”

That would be nice.

And there, in a few seconds, she was in his Angel Seat.

Ava was sitting in his Angel Seat!

The storm was worse. Maybe the dispatcher in Houston had heard it wrong. Maybe the forecast was for that Indianola to come right down the coast along Highways 59 and 77, right on Jack’s tail.

By his watch it was 3:45 in the afternoon but by his sight it was nighttime outside. It was that dark.

Lightning cracked off in the distance ahead. He was just going under the railroad underpass on the western outskirts
of Victoria. There was no traffic. Everybody had sense enough to stay off the roads until this thing passed. And it would pass. That was the great and good thing about storms, even Indianolas, down here. They came fast, hit and then they were gone.

Ava’s view was the same as his out the front windshield. She was looking at the storm. So was everyone else on the bus. There were eighteen passengers in all, less than half a full load. The weather probably kept away others, people who just decided it was not worth going through all of this to get to Woodsboro or Corpus or Harlingen or wherever. They would put off their trips until tomorrow or another day.

She didn’t put off her trip. She came through the early darkness, the sweeping rain, the powerful wind, to ride with him to Corpus.

And now there she sits not more than five feet away from him in his Angel Seat.

He wanted to ask her again about what to call her. He wanted to look at her and to smell her. But there was some serious driving to do first.

Jack slowed his speed to just under fifty miles per hour. Even with the headlights on high beam, he could barely see anything more than fifty yards ahead. He knew the road as well as he knew his own name, but that did not help him see a possible broken-down car or a blown-down tree or pole on the road. A Greyhound driver in Minnesota lost his life and four of his twenty-one passengers last year when he drove right into an electrical power pole that had fallen over the highway. It cracked the front axle right out from under the bus and caused it to flip over on its side and roll down an embankment into a flooded creek bed.

They said the driver was decapitated by a tree limb that came through the windshield right in his face.

Her hair had not gotten that wet. A few strands had come
loose and were down over her forehead, the way Ava Gardner’s hair was down across her face when she rode away with a terrible man at the end of
Show Boat.
It only made Ava, his Ava, look more of what she already was. Which was stunningly beautiful.

“This is a real Indianola,” he said to her across in the Angel Seat.

He shot his eyes to his right toward her. She nodded but said nothing.

Is it possible she doesn’t know what an Indianola is? “Indianolas are what we call the worst storms,” he said.

Again, she nodded but said not a word.

Who are you, where do you come from?

I cannot tell you.

Why not?

Because I am a spy for my country.

You are not an American?

I can not say any more.

Please do not say our love is not to be.

I will not say it.

He slowed down as he went through Inairi and then Vidauri. The Indianola was traveling right along with them. It wasn’t getting any worse but it was also not getting any better. It was almost as if it was stuck right there on the top of the bus.

The temperature outside was warmer than that inside the bus, which was cool from the air-conditioning. That caused the windshield to fog up badly. The defroster spewed out only hot air, which made him and the bus interior hot, so he kept switching it off and on.

He eased the speed down another couple of miles per hour. He didn’t want to have any tree limbs coming through the windshield at him—or her. He did not want to do anything that might cause her harm or discomfort.

Also, the slower he went, the longer he would have with her. Nobody, not even Pharmacy, could question his being late in this weather. A frogman in a submarine would have trouble in this weather was what Paul had said after an earlier Indianola.

A frogman in a submarine. Why can’t I talk cleverly like that?

“A frogman in a submarine would have trouble in this weather,” he said across to her in the Angel Seat.

He looked around long enough to see her smile. But that was all she did.

Look at that creature of beauty and love and all the rest. She should be in the movies, like the other Ava. She’s certainly prettier than the actress who played Maria in that dirty spies thing. Much, much prettier. But she, his Ava, would never play in a movie like that. She was not that kind of woman.

What kind of woman was she?

Was she the kind who would accept and return the love of a bus driver named Jack T. Oliver? A Master Operator named Jack T. Oliver? Was she the kind who would permit a man, any man, to put his hands down the front of her blouse? His hands up the front of her dress? Would she allow a man to kiss her tenderly and passionately upon her breasts?

Would she go to the H.E.B. grocery store with him and throw things into the cart? Does she like to go to the movies? What kinds of movies? Would she do the checkbook every week, the way Loretta does? Jack hated doing the checkbook. What about going to the bathroom? He and Loretta had no problems doing everything in front of each other. But he had heard from some of the drivers that there were women who were too bashful to do it in front of their husbands. One guy’s wife insisted on wearing her bra to bed! What about Ava? Does she like peanut butter? Coke or
Pepsi? Or not either one? Dr. Pepper? Does she drink beer? Or whiskey? Can she swim? Does she like to swim? Would she listen to Kern Tipps’s Humble Oil broadcasts of the Southwest Conference games on the radio with me? Does she eat meat loaf? Would she make me meat loaf?

There were a lot of things like that to know about somebody …

He lost his concentration. He thought he knew where he was but he was not sure.

There was a flash of lightning. Were those people up there on the side of the road? Were they waving at him?

He flashed his lights and goosed the defroster to full power but it was too late. Yes, there were two people! He passed them. They were waving to him, all right, trying to flag him down. My God, why would anybody be standing out in this weather to catch this bus?

Talk about double pneumonia.

He braked the bus to a stop, but he did it slowly and carefully to make sure there would be no sliding on the wet pavement.

He could not see them in the outside rearview mirrors. He had overshot them by a long way. They must be a hundred yards back up there.

He looked around. Yes, he was on that small stretch two miles this side of Refugio. He saw the crossroads ahead there with Farm Road 682. There was no traffic; the shoulder was wide enough to accommodate the bus comfortably.

He threw the gear into reverse. I’ll back up awhile and meet those poor people halfway. They must be drenched by now. And if they have any baggage, there is no telling how wet it is.

Rotating his eyes from the left mirror to the right mirror and then back, he started that bus backing down the shoulder.

He went twenty yards maybe but still he could see no people. Where were they? Did they give up? Did they think he had not seen them?

What is that? He got a glimpse of something white on the right. Oh, my God, is it a car?

He jerked the steering wheel to the right and put on the brakes. He felt a bump against the bus back there. Then another. He had hit something. What?

Oh, my God.

It wasn’t that hard. It was something soft. A dog? A cow? Right, it was probably another damned calf.

He knew Ava was watching him but there was nothing he could do about that. She would just have to watch. There was nothing to say to her because he did not know what had happened. All he knew was that he had missed seeing some passengers who wanted to ride his bus. And now he was trying his best to make up for what he had done by backing up toward them and keeping them from getting any wetter than they already were.

But he didn’t have time to tell Ava all of that. Not now. Not right now.

He yanked up the emergency brake from the floor, grabbed the umbrella and the slicker, hit the door lever and stepped down and out of the bus.

A stream of rain crashed into his face. The sky lit up. Crack! went some thunder off somewhere.

He put his right hand against the side of the bus for balance and bearings and moved toward the rear. The wind was blowing against him. He put his head down.

He felt the motor hatch. He was halfway back. He knew the rear tires were coming up.

Oh, my God, what is that? Something soft. An arm? A leg? He looked down.

It’s a person. Lying under the two dual tires. He saw red running from the person. It was a kid! A girl! She was pinned under the tires.

She had been almost cut in two by the bus!

He fell to the ground, to his knees. He saw her face. Her eyes were wide open, staring up at the bottom of that bus.

Dead. This girl was dead!

He stood up and stepped away. There was another streak of lightning.

Somebody else is back there. There’s another person back there.

He came around to the rear of the bus. Lying half under the bus and half out was a grown woman. She was also bleeding, particularly from her mouth and ears. The rain was trying to wash it away the second it came but there was too much. There was too much blood.

She was dead. She was dead, too. Both of them were dead. He had run over and killed two people. A grown woman and a girl. Both of them. He had run over and killed them with bus #4107.