Josh slowed the truck and turned down a dirt road that led deeper into the woods. Rufus had filled him in on some of the details of what had happened twenty-five years ago, what those men had done to him. Josh felt his face grow hot as he now recalled an incident he had kept buried. It was principally what drove the anger, the hatred in him. What their little town in Alabama had done to the Harms family after the news of Rufus’s crime. He had tried to protect his mother then, but had failed. Let me meet up with the men who did this to my brother. You hear that one, God? You listening?
His plan was to hide out for a while and then hit the road again when the pressure died down. Maybe try to get to Mexico and disappear. Josh wasn’t leaving all that much behind. A disintegrated family, a carpentry business that was always on the wrong side of profitability despite his skill. He guessed Rufus was all the family he had left. And he was certainly all Rufus ever would have. They had been cut off from each other for a quarter century. Now, in middle age, they had a chance to be closer than brothers normally were at this time in their lives. If Josh and Rufus could survive. He tossed out the cigarette and kept on driving.
In the back of the camper, Rufus was, indeed, not asleep. He lay on his back, a black tarp partially over him — Josh’s doing, the tarp designed to blend in with the dark truck bed liner under him. Stacked around him were boxes of food, secured by bungie cords — also Josh’s doing, a wall to prevent anyone from seeing in. He tried to stretch out a little, relax. The motion of the truck was unsettling. He had not been in a civilian automobile since Richard Nixon had been president. Could that really be? How many presidents ago was that? The Army had always transported him between prisons via helicopters, apparently unwilling to let him get this close to the road, to freedom. When you escape from a chopper, there wasn’t much place to go except down.
Rufus tried to peek between cardboard, out at the passing night. Too dark now. Freedom. He often wondered what it would feel like. He still did not know. He was too scared. People, lots of them, looking for him. Wanting to kill him. And now his brother. His fingers gripped the unfamiliar texture of the hospital Bible. The one his mother had given him was back in the cell. He had kept it beside him all these years, turned again and again to the scriptures as sustenance against all that was his existence. He felt empty of brain and heart without it. Too late now. He felt his heart start to accelerate. He figured that was bad — too much strain on it. From memory he recited comforting words from the Bible’s bounty. How many nights had he mumbled the Proverbs, all thirty-one chapters, the one hundred and fifty Psalms, each one telling and forceful, each one with particular meaning, insight into elements of his existence.
When he finished his “readings,” he half rose and slid open the window of the camper. From this angle he could see his brother’s face in the reflection of the rearview mirror.
“I thought you were sleeping,” Josh said.
“Can’t.”
“How’s your heart feel?”
“My heart ain’t troubling me none. If I die, it ain’t gonna be because of my heart.”
“Not unless it’s a bullet ripping through it.”
“Where we headed?”
“A little place in the middle of nowhere. I figure we stay there a bit, let things die down, and then we head out again when it’s dark. They probably think we’re shooting south, going for the Mexican border, so we’re going north to Pennsylvania, at least for now.”
“Sounds good.”
“Hey, you said Rayfield and that other sonofabitch — ”
“Tremaine. Old Vic.”
“Yeah, you said they’ve been watching over you all this time. After all those years went by, how come they were still hanging in there? Didn’t they figure if you remembered what happened you would’ve said something before now? Like maybe at your trial?”