The White Widow: A Novel (18 page)

He ran with the Indianola wind back to the front of the bus and leaped inside.

“Everything’s fine,” he said to Ava and the other passengers. “Sorry for the delay. Everything’s fine now. We’ve got a real Indianola on our hands out there. But everything’s fine.”

He tossed the raincoat onto the floor next to his driver’s seat, gunned the engine, threw it in first gear and eased off the shoulder onto the highway for Corpus Christi.

She was looking right at him now. He could feel her eyes on the right side of his face.

“Everything’s fine,” he said again but did not look at her.

I know it is, Jack.

But they are dead.

It’s going to be all right, Jack.

I killed them.

No you didn’t, Jack. It was their fault.

I’ll call the highway patrol and an ambulance at Refugio.

If you do that, you’ll lose everything. They’ll take away your gold badge, Jack.

You noticed the badge?

How could I not have noticed that, Jack dear.

There, again, was Refugio.

He did not want to stop at Adele Lyman’s place. He just wanted to keep moving, to drive right on through town as fast as he could. But there were two people on the bus going to Refugio. They might not like it at all if he did not stop, if he never stopped.

Maybe he would never stop. Not only not at Refugio but also not at Woodsboro or Sinton or Odem or Calallen or even Corpus. Just keep right on to the Valley, to Robstown, or even all the way to Kingsville, or why not stay right on Highway 77 down through the King Ranch to Raymondville and Harlingen and even to Brownsville. Why stop there? Go on over the border to Matamoros, to Mexico.

By the time he got there there might even be a poster at the border station.

WANTED FOR DOUBLE MURDER
: Jack T. Oliver, Great Western Trailways Master Operator. Last seen driving ACF-Brill IC-41, bus #4107, into Matamoros with eighteen passengers onboard. One of the passengers was the most beautiful woman in the world, a White Widow who was last seen sitting in the Angel Seat. Oliver is wanted for the brutal killing of two innocent people near the intersection of U.S. Highway 77 and Farm Road 682 east of Refugio, Texas. He
ran over them with bus #4107. He is armed with a ticket punch and is wearing a gold badge on his uniform cap and should be considered dangerous to one and all.

Nobody saw what happened, Jack dear. It was raining. Even if somebody was right there they could not have seen it. Relax, Jack dear. Relax. Please relax, Jack dear. Please relax.

You saw it.

No, I didn’t.

I saw it.

No you didn’t, Jack dear. You saw nothing. You couldn’t see anything because of the rain and the wind and it was dark.

“You’ve never been this late,” Adele Lyman said to him when he blew into the door.

“Any express?” His eyes went to the black phone on her desk. He should go to it now, this second, and report the accident to Slick Carlton or someone. Slick Carlton. This storm, almost an Indianola, had probably made for a terrible afternoon for him, maybe even washed the grease right out of his hair.

“Not even one small petal from one small flower,” Adele said. “You look awful. What happened?”

He stopped at the door. “What do you mean?”

“You look like you’ve been run over by something.”

“Run over?”

He had always disliked Adele Lyman. Now she scared him. How could she have known what happened? It was a few minutes ago and nobody saw it, nobody knew. Not anybody real.

Not anybody.

“Your raincoat is wet and messed up and so is your cap with that new gold badge. You look like something the cat drug in. And that, Mr. On Time Oliver, is something you don’t normally look like anymore.”

“This storm is worse than I was ready for, I guess. It’s like an Indianola.”

The phone. This was the time. Call Slick now or never call, Jack. Call now or never be able to explain to Pharmacy, to Mr. Glisan, to Slick, to Loretta, to the world, why he did not immediately report what had happened. Call now.

Call now.

Hello, highway patrol, this is Jack T. Oliver of Great Western Trailways. There’s been an accident and I want to report it to my friend Slick Carlton. I just ran over two people and killed them. They are lying dead on Highway 77, two miles east of Refugio. I am really sorry it happened. Please tell Slick I am really sorry it happened. They were trying to flag me down, I couldn’t see them in the storm. Once I did, I was way down the highway so I backed toward them down the shoulder. Something happened and I hit them with my bus. One of them is just a girl. The other is a grown woman. Both of them had black hair. They may both be Tamales. You know, Mexicans. Both of them are bleeding badly. I am so sorry it happened. I have a schedule to keep now. But I did want you to tell Slick Carlton about it.

“I hear it’s already clearing over at Sinton,” Adele said.

“Good,” Jack said. “I’m gone.”

I’m gone.

Ava had her eyes closed and her head back on the seat headrest when he sat back down behind the steering wheel across the aisle. He looked at her for several long seconds.

Will you go to Mexico with me, Ava dear?

No, no, Jack dearest. Not Mexico. I cannot go to Mexico.

Why not?

Why not is why.

He moved #4107 back onto the highway. The storms were still there, still blowing against the bus, and blowing inside his head.

He saw the face of the dead girl and the dead woman. Now they were completely covered with blood mixed with rain and sand and mud. He saw himself come through the front door of his house in Corpus. He smelled the meat loaf, but no one was there. Loretta was gone. Their wedding picture on the mantel in the living room had a black ribbon around the right side, her side of the picture. Loretta was gone.

He drove #4107 right through Woodsboro without even stopping. It was an accident. He forgot to. Everything was an accident. He didn’t even notice until he was on the west side of town, already two miles past the depot at La Hacienda Motor Hotel. Nobody had stood up and said anything, which meant nobody was going to Woodsboro. He remembered from the tickets. Yes, nobody was going to Woodsboro. If there were passengers waiting at the La Hacienda for his bus … well, they could catch the next one.

He went into the kitchen and opened the oven. It was cold and there was nothing in it but the smell of meat loaf.

The rain had almost stopped and the wind was almost quiet and the sky was almost clear by the time he got to Sinton twenty-four minutes later. Stopped, quiet and clear.

Was it stopped, quiet and clear back there at Highway 77 and Farm Road 682? Had someone come across the bodies of the woman and the girl? How much blood would be left along the side of the road?

How could he ever drive by there again?

How could he drive a bus anywhere again?

There are other things to do with your life, Jack dearest.

I have to be up here behind this wheel.

“You make this trip a lot, I have noticed,” he said to her across the aisle.

“That’s right,” she replied.

He tried to come up with something else to say. Something bright and witty and appropriate. His mind was blank and numb.

His mind was stopped, quiet and clear.

He drove on toward Corpus Christi in silence. There she was in his life, right there next to him and he could not talk to her, he could not break the silence.

At Odem, just after he passed Smitty’s Seafood Heaven and Earth, he came to his Master Operator, master person senses. Of course he would turn himself in the second he arrived at the Corpus depot. Of course he would tell the dispatcher, who was probably Jennings, to call Slick or somebody at the highway patrol and get on with making amends for what had happened. There was simply no way he could live with what he had done, even if he got away with it. He would wake up every morning, drink every cup of coffee, eat every bite of meat loaf, go to bed every night, go to every movie, go and do everything in his life from now on thinking of that woman and the girl and their blood in the rain. They must have relatives. Were they a daughter and a mother? Where was the father?

You are a better man than this, Jack T. Oliver.

He so much wanted to talk to Ava about it. He so much wanted to say, with real words, what he had in his mind. He wanted her to know what he had done, what he thought about her, what he was now going to do. He so much wanted to say something, anything at all, to his White Widow in the Angel Seat, to his Ava. But his lips would not move.

He looked at her, right at her, when he got off in Sinton and Odem to unload passengers. He remembered to do his job now. He had driven right on through Woodsboro but he would not do that again. He would never do that again. Master Operators do not drive through towns without stopping at bus depots. Jack T. Oliver would never ever do such a thing. He had done it once, just a while ago at Woodsboro, but he would never ever do it again. Not at Sinton, not at Odem, not anywhere.

She, Ava, was not paying any attention to him. She kept her head and eyes slanted always slightly to her right, to see out the right front of the windshield. Her mind was away from him, he was sure, along with her eyes. It was like he was not even there, like this bus was not even being driven by him or by anybody.

Look at me! Look at me, Ava!

Ahead, he saw the early-evening lights of Corpus. It would be the last time he would see them from behind the wheel of a Great Western Trailways Silversides Thruliner. Twelve years and twenty-one days after becoming an intercity bus driver, one week and a day after becoming a Master Operator, he was through. They would fire him for this. They would have to. Pharmacy and Mr. Glisan and the other bosses at Great Western Trailways could not have drivers behind the wheels of their buses who run over people and then keep driving. It simply could not be tolerated.

Look at me! Look at me, Ava!

This would be the last time she would be his passenger. The last time he would take, punch and tear her ticket. The last time he would thank her for riding Great Western Trailways.