It was worse than dumb. It was suicidal. The sun was fearsome and the temperature was easily a hundred and twelve degrees. The slipstream from the cars was like a hot gale, and the suction from the giant trucks wasn’t far from pulling him off his feet. He had no water. He could barely breathe. There was a constant stream of people five yards away, but he was as alone as if he was stumbling blind through the desert. If a state trooper didn’t come by and arrest him for jaywalking, he could die out there.
He turned and saw the Cadillac, still sitting inert on the shoulder. But he kept on walking away from it. He made it about fifty yards and stopped. Turned
to face east and stuck out his thumb. But it was hopeless, like he knew it would be. After five minutes, a hundred vehicles, the nearest thing he’d gotten to a response was some trucker blasting his air horn, a huge bass sound roaring past him with a whine of stressed tires and a hurricane of dust and grit. He was choking and burning up.
He turned again. Saw the Cadillac lurch backward and start up the shoulder toward him. Her steering was imprecise. The rear end was all over the place. It was close to slewing out into the traffic. He started walking back to it. It came on to meet him, fishtailing wildly. He started running. He stopped alongside the car as she braked hard. The suspension bounced. She buzzed the passenger window down.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
He didn’t hear it in the noise, but he caught the shape of the words.
“Get in,” she said.
His shirt was sticking to his back. He had grit in his eyes. The howl of sound from the road was deafening him.
“Get in,” she mouthed. “I’m sorry.”
He got in. It felt exactly the same as the first time. The air roaring, the freezing leather seat. The small cowed woman at the wheel.
“I apologize,” she said. “I’m sorry. I said stupid things.”
He slammed the door. There was sudden silence. He put his hand in the chill stream from the vents.
“I didn’t mean them,” she said.
“Whatever,” he said back.
“Really, I didn’t mean them. I’m just so desperate I can’t tell right from wrong anymore. And I’m very sorry for the thing about the sex. It was a crass thing to say.”
Then her voice went small. “It’s just that some of the guys I’ve picked up, I figured that was what it was going to have to be.”
“You’d have sex with them so they’d kill your husband?”
She nodded. “I told you, I’m trapped and I’m scared and I’m desperate. And I don’t have anything else to offer.”
He said nothing.
“And I’ve seen movies where that happens,” she said.
He nodded back.
“I’ve seen those movies, too,” he said. “They never get away with it.”
She paused a long moment.
“So you’re not going to do it,” she said, like a statement of fact.
“No, I’m not,” he said.
She paused again, longer.
“O.K., I’ll let you out in Pecos,” she said. “You can’t be out there walking. You could die in heat like this.”
He paused too, much longer than she had. Then he shook his head. Because he had to be somewhere. When you live on the road, you learn pretty quick that any one place is about as good as any other place.
“No, I’ll come with you,” he said. “I’ll hang out a couple of days. Because I’m sorry about your situation, Carmen. I really am. Just because I won’t walk in and shoot the guy doesn’t mean I don’t want to help you some other way. If I can. And if you still want me to, that is.”
She paused another beat.
“Yes, I still want you to,” she said.
“And I want to meet Ellie. She looks like a great kid, from her picture.”
“She is a great kid.”
“But I’m not going to murder her father.”
She said nothing.
“Is that completely clear?” he asked.
She nodded.
“I understand,” she said. “I’m sorry I asked.”