On the turnpike somewhere south of Kissimmee, Twilly came up behind a pearl-colored Range Rover. Normally he wouldn’t have paid attention to the style of the vehicle, but this one had a vanity plate that said in green capital letters: cojones. As Twilly swung into the passing lane, a Burger King hamburger carton flew out the driver’s window of the Rover. Next came an empty cup and then a wadded paper napkin, followed by another hamburger carton.
Twilly put a heel on the brake, steered his truck to the shoulder of the highway and waited for a gap in traffic. Then he sprinted into the road and picked up the litter, piece by piece, depositing it in the cab of his truck. Afterward it took him only a few miles to catch up with the pig in the Range Rover; Twilly got behind him and camped there, contemplating his options. He thought about what his therapists would recommend, what his former teachers would say, what his mother would suggest. They were indisputably mature and sensible people, but their advice often proved useless to Twilly Spree. He remained baffled by their outlook on the world, as they were baffled by his.
All Twilly could see of the litterbug was the man’s shoulders and the top of his head. To Twilly, it seemed like an exceptionally large head, but possibly this was an illusion caused by the cowboy-style hat. Twilly doubted that an authentic cowboy would be caught dead in a pearl-colored, fifty-thousand-dollar, foreign-made SUV with vanity tags that celebrated the size of his testicles, in espanol. Nor, Twilly thought, would a true cowboy ever toss hamburger wrappers out the window. No, that would be the work of a garden-variety asshole…
Suddenly the Range Rover cut ahead of a slow-moving travel camper, then vectored sharply off the highway at the Yeehaw Junction exit. Twilly followed toward the toll plaza before switching to the exact-change lane, and scooting past. Then he drove across State Road 60 to I-95 and headed at imprudent speeds toward Fort Pierce, where he again hooked up with the turnpike southbound. He parked in the shade of an overpass, raised the hood of the pickup and waited. Twenty minutes later the Rover sped by, and Twilly resumed the pursuit. This time he stayed farther back. He still had no plan but at least he had a clearly defined mission. When the litterbug flicked a cigar butt out the window, Twilly didn’t bother to stop. Biodegradable., he thought. Onward and upward.
2
After three glasses of wine, Desie could no longer pretend to be following her husband’s account of the canned rhinoceros hunt. Across the table she appraised Palmer Stoat as if he were a mime. His fingers danced and his mouth moved, but nothing he said reached her ears. She observed him in two dimensions, as if he were an image on a television screen: an animated middle-aged man with a slight paunch, thin blond hair, reddish eyebrows, pale skin, upcurled lips and vermilion-splotched cheeks (from too much sun or too much alcohol). Palmer had a soft neck but a strong chiseled chin, the surgical scars invisible in the low light. His teeth were straight and polished, but his smile had a twist of permanent skepticism. To Desie, her husband’s nose had always appeared too small for his face; a little girl’s nose, really, although he insisted it was the one he’d been born with. His blue eyes also seemed tiny, though quick and bright with self-confidence. His face was, in the way of prosperous ex-jocks, roundish and pre-jowly and companionable. Desie wouldn’t have called Stoat a hunk but he was attractive in that gregarious southern frat-boy manner, and he had overwhelmed her with favors and flattery and constant attention. Later she realized that the inexhaustible energy with which Palmer had pursued their courtship was less a display of ardor than an ingrained relentlessness; it was how he went after anything he wanted. They dated for four weeks and then got married on the island of Tortola. Desie supposed she had been in a fog, and now the fog was beginning to lift. What in the world had she done? She pushed the awful question out of her mind, and when she did she was able to hear Palmer’s voice again.