This Dark Road to Mercy: A Novel (20 page)

Easter Quillby

C H A P T E R   21

T
he next morning, Wade checked us out of the hotel and then drove across the parking lot to Bojangles’. He went inside by himself and told us to roll the windows down. The heat was killing me after a cold night in our room, and it was miserable inside that car with me and Ruby both sweating and wondering where Wade was taking us next. He came out and handed us sausage biscuits and orange juice, and then he started up the car and didn’t say a word until an hour later when he parked it on the side of the road in a neighborhood full of little brick houses that all looked the same, and even then he didn’t say nothing but “This is the street I grew up on.”

“Which house was it?” I asked, but it seemed like he didn’t even hear me.

“The one with the green garage door,” he finally said. “It looks nice, doesn’t it? Somebody’s been taking care of things.”

“Is that thunder?” Ruby asked.

“No,” Wade said. “Those are planes. There’s an airport back there.”

Me and Ruby sat up on our knees and looked out the back window. You could see a plane taking off over the trees down the road behind us.

We sat there for a long time, me and Ruby watching the planes and whispering to each other, Wade just staring straight ahead at the house he’d come all the way down here to see.

Finally, Wade unclicked his seat belt, and then he turned around and looked at us in the backseat.

“Y’all stay in the car until I come back,” he said. “And keep the doors locked. You can keep the windows cracked a little bit, but don’t roll them all the way down. And stay in the car. I’m serious.” He looked at us like he was waiting for us to say something. “I’m serious,” he said again.

“Okay,” I said.

“Okay what?”

“Okay, we’ll stay in the car.”

Me and Ruby watched him walk down the street. The day was so hot that heat waves came up off the ground and made his body look all fuzzy the farther away he got from us.

“What do you think he’s doing?” Ruby asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “There’s no telling.”

We watched him until he stopped in front of his old house and just stood there and stared up at it. Then he looked up and down the street. He walked up the driveway and rang the doorbell and waited for a minute, and then he reached out for the doorknob, looked up and down the street again, and then went inside.

“You think that’s really his old house?” Ruby asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe his mom and dad still live there,” she said. “Think they’re still alive?”

“I don’t know,” I said again. “I’ve never seen them.”

On the other side of the street a Mexican girl a little bit younger than me was helping her little brother ride a bike back and forth in their driveway. She’d turn his seat loose and then run and catch up with him before he fell. She kept looking at me and Ruby where we sat in the car. She said something to her brother, and he looked up at us too.

“Those kids are looking at us,” Ruby said.

“That’s okay,” I said. “Let them look. They’re not hurting us.”

“But I hate them staring at us,” she said.

“Close your eyes, then. You won’t even know.”

I closed mine and laid my head back against the seat. I was mad at Wade for bringing us down here without telling us why and for parking outside a house in a neighborhood without hardly any shade. Maybe he had lived here, maybe he’d come back to find something else he’d left behind, just like he’d done when he came and took me and Ruby.

How long I had my eyes closed or whether or not I drifted off to sleep I don’t know, but the next thing I heard was Ruby’s voice saying my name, quiet at first and then louder and louder until I finally opened my eyes and saw what it was that made her scream: it was Wade, running up the street toward us, his hands and the front of his shirt covered in blood, the front door of the house he’d gone into flung wide open. His mouth was moving, but from inside the car I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but by the time I opened the door and stepped out, he was screaming for me to get back inside.

It wasn’t the blood that covered Wade’s hands up to his elbows as much as it was the look on his face as he ran toward us that kept me from reaching over the front seat and unlocking the car door to let him in. He must’ve seen it in my eyes—or maybe he heard Ruby screaming inside—but something made it clear to him that he’d have to get that door unlocked on his own; that didn’t keep him from yanking on the handle and pounding on the glass with one hand and searching through his pockets with the other. Each time he beat against the window it left a bloody handprint until the glass was so full of them that we couldn’t hardly see him on the other side. He found his keys and got the right one into the lock and opened the door—but Wade climbing inside only made Ruby scream louder. Wade slammed the door shut and acted like we weren’t even there, like he couldn’t hear what was going on in the backseat. He started the car and put it in gear without even turning his head to look at us. He pulled into traffic, and I saw that the steering wheel was smeared with blood too.

We stopped at a red light, and Wade sat there with his hands in his lap like he was trying to hide them from the cars going by. “Hold on,” he said to us even though he hadn’t turned around to look at us yet. “Hold on,” he said again. “Just let me think for a second.” Hearing his voice made Ruby stop, and maybe that’s why he turned and looked at us; his face was covered in sweat and his eyes were wide open and crazy-looking. Ruby screamed and pushed her face into my shoulder. “Ruby, baby,” he said. “Please stop. I’m sorry. Please.” His hand came over the seat toward us, and when Ruby looked and saw it she screamed even louder. He pulled it back like we’d smacked at it. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry.” He turned around and held the steering wheel with both hands like he was trying to think of what to do or say next. Then the light turned green, and he wiped his hands on his shirt and kept on going.

We pulled off the street and into a convenience-store parking lot. Wade stopped the car and turned off the engine, and then he sat there staring at the side of the building.

“Easter,” he said real quiet and calm, “I need you to get out of the car and see if the ladies’ room is unlocked. If it’s not, then I need you to go inside and get the key.” I didn’t know what he was talking about, but when I leaned forward and looked out the windshield I saw that he’d been staring at the doors to the men’s and women’s bathrooms the whole time we’d been sitting there. He turned his head and looked at me. “Did you hear me?”

I nodded my head yes, but all I could think about was leaving Ruby in the car all alone and that money that I’d tucked down into the bear’s overalls. It was sitting right in between me and Ruby, and if Wade hadn’t been watching I swear I would’ve fished it out, grabbed Ruby’s hand, and made a run for it. But he never took his eyes off me.

“Go on, then,” he said. “I need you to do this for me.”

I reached for the door. Ruby grabbed my arm and tried to keep me from opening it. “It’s okay,” I said. “I’ll be right back.” She turned me loose, and I opened the door and got out. The ladies’ room had one of those big silver door handles with a dead bolt on it, and I knew it was going to be locked before I even reached out and tried to open it. I gave it a tug, and then I turned around and looked at Wade. His eyes were just as wild-looking as they’d been when he got into the car, and he looked at me for a second before nodding his head toward the convenience store.

The store was empty except for a fat blond-headed woman and a guy with a ponytail who were both standing behind the counter. When I walked in the woman was trying to light a cigarette, but she kept laughing at something the guy had said to her. I stood in front of the register until she’d lit her cigarette and tossed the lighter onto the counter.

“Can I help you?” she asked. The guy laughed again like he remembered what was so funny about what he’d said before I came in. He turned and walked back into a little office, and the woman watched him go. She looked at me again. “What do you need, baby?”

“I need to use the bathroom,” I said. “It’s locked.”

The woman reached under the counter and pulled out a long piece of wood with a key attached to the end of it. “Don’t leave this in there,” she said. “The door locks behind you.” I took the key and walked back to the bathroom. When I had the door unlocked Wade stepped out of the car and went inside. Before I could get back in the car with Ruby, he opened the bathroom door and hollered for me. He was holding some wadded-up paper towels that he’d run under the sink.

“Wipe off that window,” he said. “And then wipe down the steering wheel. I’ll be out in a second.”

The window was sticky and the blood had started to turn brown, but I got most of it off and you couldn’t tell what it was by the time I was finished. I opened the door and started wiping down the steering wheel as good as I could, but I knew it would take another handful of paper towels to get it all clean. I sat down in the driver’s seat and waited.

“What’s he doing in there?” Ruby asked from the backseat.

“Getting cleaned up,” I said. “He can’t let nobody see him like that.”

“Why’d he have blood on him?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I ain’t had a chance to ask him yet.”

I tossed the paper towels into a garbage can by the curb and got into the backseat with Ruby. She sat on the passenger’s side, looking out the window.

“You think it was his blood?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “It could’ve been.”

“You think he hurt somebody?”

“No,” I said.

“I don’t either,” she said.

A few minutes later, the door to the ladies’ room opened and Wade stepped out. All the blood had been washed off his hands and his shirt and his jeans were wet where he’d tried to clean them. He walked around to the back of the car and opened the trunk; I heard him opening his bag and moving stuff around. The trunk slammed shut and he walked back toward the bathroom carrying new clothes. When he came back out he was wearing tan-colored shorts and a clean T-shirt. He opened the trash can and tossed his old clothes inside, and then he waved me out of the car and handed me the bathroom key.

The woman was alone behind the register when I went back into the store. I set the key on the counter.

“You okay?” she asked.

“I’m fine.”

“You were in there a long time,” she said. “I almost came looking for you.”

“I’m sick,” I said. “Sorry.”

“I hope you feel better,” she said.

“Thank you,” I said. “I hope so too.”

Wade was on a pay phone in the corner of the parking lot out by the road when I came out. I stood there watching him for a second, but when he hung up and started walking back toward the car I knew I’d better get back inside there too. Wade pulled out of the parking lot and across the road right into the parking lot of a Waffle House. He shut off the car and turned around in his seat. “Are y’all hungry?” he asked.

“No,” me and Ruby both said at the same time.

“Well,” he said, “that’s too bad, because we’re going to go inside here and sit down for a few minutes and we’re going to eat something. Okay?”

“I want to go home,” Ruby said. Even though she was staring down at the floorboard and I couldn’t see her eyes, I knew by the way her voice sounded that there was a chance she might start crying again.

“That’s not going to happen, Ruby,” Wade said. “So right now we’re going to go inside here and eat instead.”

“I want to go home!” Ruby said again, but this time she kicked the back of the passenger’s seat and raised her voice.

“Hey,” he said. “Hey.” He waited for Ruby to look up. “You’re not going to talk to your dad like that. Not right now, not ever.”

“You’re not my dad!” Ruby screamed. “We don’t have one!” Wade looked at me like I’d told her to say it, and then he looked back at Ruby. He started to say something, but then he stopped. When he finally spoke his voice was lower and quieter.

“I’m sorry I yelled at you,” he said. “And I’m sorry I scared you back there. I was helping a friend do something and I got cut and it bled a little bit, and I just wanted to get cleaned up before we ate. That’s all.”

“I don’t believe you,” Ruby said. Wade sighed.

“I do,” I said. “I believe you.” He looked at me and smiled. Ruby looked at me too.

“You do?” she asked. I nodded my head yes.

There wasn’t hardly anybody inside the Waffle House except for the people working there. We’d come in right between lunchtime and dinnertime, and even the waitresses seemed surprised to see us. “Y’all have a seat wherever you want,” one of them said.

We sat down at a booth right inside the door. Somebody’d left a newspaper on the seat, and Wade picked it up and tossed it on the table. It was opened to the sports section; the headline read
SHOWDOWN IN ST. LOUIS
? with side-by-side pictures of McGwire and Sosa swinging at pitches just below it.

“What can I get y’all to drink?” the waitress asked. Me and Wade both ordered waters, but Ruby wanted an orange juice.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” Ruby said after the waitress left. The bathrooms were right inside the door, and you could see them over Wade’s shoulder. Wade turned around and looked at them, and then he looked at Ruby.

“Go ahead,” he said. I got up and let her out of the booth, and then I sat back down and acted like I was looking at the menu.

“I want you to know that I don’t believe you,” I finally said. “I don’t believe that you got cut back there helping somebody. I know you made all that up. I just said I believed you so Ruby wouldn’t start crying again.”

Wade just stared down at the menu. “Well, I appreciate that,” he said.

“So,” I said.

“So what?”

“What happened?”

He sighed and dropped the menu on the table, and then he closed his eyes and rubbed them with his fingers. They were bloodshot when he opened them again. “Telling you isn’t going to do any good.”

“I know you’re worried about scaring Ruby,” I said, “but you can’t scare me. Nothing can.” He stared at me for a second, and then he turned and looked to make sure Ruby wasn’t out of the bathroom yet. He leaned across the table to tell me whatever he was about to tell me.