Sarah downshifted into fourth, thrilling as the RPM surged. No more old, yellow, bell jingling Beetle for her. She raised her foot from the gas, letting the car slow as she approached the off ramp. She loved driving with the top down, her hair whipping in the chill winter breeze, her heart racing with the speedometer, her body singing with the night.
She gave it a little gas, punched the clutch, and dropped it into third. She shivered as the Corvette bucked, registering its displeasure. The car wanted to go fast. She jumped back on the clutch and shoved it into second. The tires chirped and the RPM soared against the lower gear.
She went off the ramp, in second gear, at sixty miles per hour. The engine screamed as the RPM redlined. She left rubber all over the pavement as she swung off the ramp onto Solitude River Road, but she was an excellent driver. She was in no danger.
But the old woman caught in her headlights was. When Sarah barreled down the ramp, there was nothing ahead of her but open road. Then out of nowhere, there she was, skinny, frail and blocking the way. She panicked and stabbed the brakes, locking the wheels.
The old woman stood her ground. Sarah caught a glimpse of a weathered black face, caught in the headlights, as the car went into a spin, roaring past the woman. She thumped harder on the brakes. The car whipped around and she was going backwards, with the car continuing its rubber-burning-sliding spin off the road.
She screamed as the Corvette’s wheels threw dirt into the air, praying as brush scrapped and screeched along the side of the car. Then it was over. The car came to a sliding halt, dying before she had a chance to get the clutch in.
“ Damn.” She turned around to see if the woman was all right. There was no one there.
She sat in silence and took in the sky, cloudy toward town and the ocean, clear overhead. Her heart was running flat out, pumping like the well would never go dry. She was on an adrenaline high and reveled in it. The old woman was out of her memory. Forgotten. Like she’d never been there.
“ Damn,” she said, again, “I loved it.” She leaned back and faced the Big Dipper and was rewarded with a shooting star cutting across the heavens. She remained in her euphoric trance for about ten minutes, daydreaming and drinking in the night. She felt like she should be in the lotus position. She felt like she’d just had a religious experience. And she was getting cold.
“ Home,” she told the night. She turned the key. The car roared to life, like the thoroughbred it was. Then it died. She turned the key again.
Nothing.
She thought about walking over to the motel and asking him for help, but decided against it. She would wait and let the car cool down. It would start then. It was brand new. It couldn’t be anything major.
A spasm knotted her neck. She massaged it, rocking her head back and forth. That’s when she saw something. Out back, behind the motel, looking in one of the bathroom windows-a peeping Tom. She was quite a distance away, but it was a clear night and floodlights in the parking lot were on. It was the woman, the old black woman.
Her first impulse was to shout, but she didn’t-she watched. Her second was to mind her own business, but she was fascinated. Her third was to get out of the car and to spy on the spy. She was just too curious. The peeping woman moved around to the other side of the building and Sarah gave in to her curiosity.
She felt a school-girl-first-date thrill run through her as she opened the door and stepped out of the car. She walked toward the building, counting her steps. She’d always been a counter. She counted everything, from the floor tiles in the Greyhound bus station to the number of steps between the bank and the beauty parlor. It was habit.
At ten steps, she wondered why nobody came rushing from the motel when she went squealing off the street. Then she remembered that the straight stretch of road, from the motel to where Solitude River Road started curving along the river toward Tampico, was used by the kids as the local drag strip. Her screeching tires probably didn’t sound out of place.
At twenty steps, she began to wonder about the old woman. How and why did she vanish so fast?
At thirty steps, she thought about him.
At forty steps, she’d covered half the distance and began to question the wisdom of what she was doing. That wolf was still around somewhere. It didn’t make sense to be sneaking around like last night had never happened.
At fifty steps, she slowed down and at step sixty-one, she stopped and listened to the soundless night.
The lights from the motel suddenly sent goose bumps running up her arms. She took two steps back. Stopped. Listened to her heartbeat and the silence. She heard the buzzing sound of a big rig eating up Highway 1 off in the distance. She stayed rock still, till the buzzing turned into a roar. She covered her eyes, as the big truck’s brights sliced through the night.
She stayed that way, tall and still, her hair wisping in a slight breeze, till the truck was again only a buzzing in the distance. Maybe the woman was gone, she thought, but maybe she wasn’t. Who was she and what was she up to? She had to know.
She inhaled the night air. No more counting. She jogged the remainder of the way to the motel, not stopping till she reached the asphalt parking lot. She stopped by a white Toyota, to catch her breath, when she heard a noise around the side of the motel. The woman? She darted to the side of the building and scurried along the wall. She was a spy after a secret. She felt like a teenager. Her blood started delivering more oxygen to her brain as her heart accelerated. She was exhilarated. Excited. Nothing should come in the way of a secret.
She stopped at the corner, took a silent breath and inched her head along the wall toward the edge, her cheek brushing against the cool stucco. She wondered who it was, this old woman that peeked in motel windows. Who was she and what did she see?
She poked her eye around the ridge.
There was no one there and all of the bathroom windows were closed.
“ Damn,” she whispered, turning away from the motel. She started across the parking lot, and at a fifty-eight steps back toward the car, she stopped and gazed at her beauty. Long, low, sleek, and red. The kind of car she’d wanted all her life and only dreamed about. If only Miles, and his Volvo mentality, could see her now. At seventy steps, she stopped again.
She thought she saw movement on the other side of the car. She took five cautious steps forward, squinting through the night. “Is somebody there?” Five more steps, slower than the last, eyes straining, heart again beginning to race. “Who’s there?” Still no response.
“ You better not hurt my car,” she said. What a stupid thing to say, she thought. “Did you hear me? Get away from the car.” She was shouting as she took ten more steps toward the Corvette.
She stopped again. She was well over halfway back to the car, no longer protected by the bright overhead lights of the motel. A small part of her worried about who could be waiting for her, hiding behind her car, like a mugger. But that’s ridiculous, she thought. There were no muggers in Palma or Tampico.
“ I said, get away from the car.” She took five more cautious steps, thought about the highway, and stopped again. Whoever was hiding behind her car may not be from town at all. He may have come on the highway.
She saw movement again. Her car door opened and someone got out. He called her name in a raspy, throaty voice that sent shivers crawling along her skin. She turned and fled, because she knew that whoever he was, he was coming after her.
She stumbled, fell, and scraped her knees. She jumped up and continued running. She heard great clomping, stomping steps as it got closer. Thud, thud, thud, big feet pounding the earth. She felt like her lungs were going to pop. She gasped for air and struggled to keep running. She felt hot breath on the back of her neck as she plunged onto the road.
She was blinded by the lights of the huge metal monster bearing down on her, blaring its horn, as it roared off the highway. She screamed as a huge hand grabbed her by the arm, jerking her out of the way of the tanker truck carrying gasoline to the service stations of Palma and Tampico.
She got out the beginnings of another scream, before a strong hand clamped across her mouth, cutting it off, choking her. She bit it and the attacker jumped back, releasing her.
“ Shit, you bit me,” the voice rasped.
Once free, she whirled around to flee.
“ It’s okay, Sarah, I won’t hurt you.”
“ You?” she said. This was a man that would never cut and run. She looked into his eyes and saw the pain there. He was a worried man. She was both afraid of him, and fascinated by him, and she was hopelessly drawn in to the churning green sea behind those troubled eyes.
“ Yeah.” He released his hold on her arm.
“ You chased me.”
“ I had to stop you from killing yourself.”
“ What are you talking about?”
“ The truck.”
“ Oh, that.” She turned to look at its taillights fading in the distance. The truck went around the first bend and the lights were gone. For the second time in less than twenty-four hours she was almost killed by a tanker truck.
“ Yeah, that.”
“ You scared me,” she said.
“ Didn’t mean to.”
“ Well, you did.” She crossed her arms against the cold, while she took in his battered and scabbed face. What she couldn’t see in the dark last night was hauntingly surreal in the moonlight as he led her back to her car. He was rugged handsome, with the same crooked smile carried by his daughter.
“ I’m sorry about that,” he said when they reached the car, “but I’ve always wanted to own one of these. When you walked away from it, I couldn’t resist. I just wanted a few seconds behind the wheel. I wasn’t going to steal it.”
“ I didn’t think you were.”
“ Occupational hazard,” he said, and she laughed.
“ Were you always a thief?” she asked, remembering what he’d told her last night.
“ Always.”
“ No, really. How’d you start?” She smiled at him and got in the passenger side of the car.
“ I’ve been a thief ever since I can remember.” He looked down at her.
“ Why?”
“ I don’t know. I don’t have the kind of conscience most people seem to have. It doesn’t bother me. I used to think I did it because it was easier than working, but stealing’s a job, like any other.”
“ I can’t believe I’m having this conversation. Yesterday I was a married, mild mannered school teacher with a ten-year-old VW. Today the yellow bug is history and I’m single again. And I’m out here in the middle of nowhere-”
“ Talking to the kind of man you would have passed by without a glance before,” he interrupted.
“ I’d have given you a glance.”
“ How much they give you for the Volkswagen?” he asked, changing the subject.
“ How do you know about that?”
“ I followed you.”
“ How? I didn’t see you?”
“ I must be better at it than you.”
“ You saw me?”
“ After you gave up, I turned around and followed you.”
“ All the way to Eureka?”
“ All the way.”
“ When I went to the bank?”
“ I was right outside.”
“ When I bought the car?”
“ I was looking at a new station wagon.”
“ Why?”
“ You came around checking me out. I was curious.”
“ You wanna drive it?” She rubbed her hands on her knees against the cold.
“ Sure you want me to?”
“ I think I might like it.”
He grinned and moved around to the driver’s side, trailing a hand along the car as he went.
“ You ever driven one of these?” she asked.
“ In my kind of work you can’t afford to draw too much attention to yourself.”
“ Of course,” she said as he started it up and revved the powerful engine.
“ Started for me,” he said.
“ It would,” she said.
“ It’s a guy thing,” he said. Then he looked up, checked the road, shifted into first, popped the clutch, and held on to the wheel, as dirt and small rocks shot out from the spinning tires. The Corvette sprang out from the dirt, fishtailing, till Coffee wrestled it onto the road.
Sarah pulled her seatbelt on as Coffee accelerated. She gulped air as the tack redlined in second, then again in third, then fourth. She glanced at the speedometer and gasped as the needle pushed a hundred, before Coffee threw it into fifth.
She ran her fingers through her hair, massaging her scalp. He was driving like a man possessed and he was invigorating her, making her come alive like she hadn’t been in years. Doing for her in a few seconds what no man had ever done. And he’d hardly touched her.
And she was afraid he never would. He was a self-confessed thief. Of what she didn’t know. But he was definitely not the kind of man she wanted anything to do with. However she found herself running her hand along the back of her neck to quiet the chills that shivered there when she thought of him.
And he could drive.
She was an experienced driver. He was a reckless driver, taking the car to its limits. A hundred and five and she grabbed her knees, pushing herself back into the seat. A hundred and ten and she was digging into her knees with white knuckles. A hundred and fifteen and she couldn’t feel her knees. A hundred and twenty and she was holding her breath.
She tore her eyes away from the speedometer and glanced at John Coffee, hair blowing in the wind, hands clenched on the wheel, eyes on the road ahead. He was married to the Corvette. He’d become part of the car, the oil flowing through the engine the same as the blood flowing through his veins.
She saw a flash out of the corner of her eye and turned her head to see another shooting star. She bit into her lower lip, because it looked like it landed up ahead. She looked back at Coffee and knew that he’d seen it, too, but he wasn’t slowing down. The speedometer read one-twenty.
“ Hang on,” he said.
She looked up and screamed. The old black woman was standing in the center of the road. Impossible, but there she was, and Coffee still had his foot to the floor. He was using the car like a weapon, guiding it like a missile, and he aimed to run her down.
She exhaled and took a huge breath. There was nothing she could do except watch it happen. The lights, like lasers, were guiding the car toward its mark. Sarah screamed again as the tires gobbled up the road and the old woman refused to move. She was still screaming when the old woman turned into a miniature comet of red and orange flame. She fainted as the Corvette tore through the tail of fire, never feeling the heat of it.
He opened his eyes and checked the clock on the nightstand next to the bed. He’d been asleep for a little over two hours. He got up and shucked off his clothes. He wanted to be between the sheets, but he also wanted the sweat, dirt and grime off his body, so he ambled into the bathroom.
Ten minutes later he stepped out of the shower careful not to slip on the tile. He ran a hand around his neck and winced, the bruises still hurt. He resisted the temptation to turn and look at himself in the mirror. His beard grew fast, so all it would tell him was that he needed a shave and he didn’t feel like it right now, not with the scabbed over scratches. He padded across the cold floor, picked up a towel from the rack and left the bathroom.
He walked to the foot of the double bed and ran his head around in a tight circle, moving his shoulders back and forth at the same time. He was tense, partly because of the woman on the other bed, but mostly because of what he would have to face soon.
He dropped the towel on the bed and stepped into a pair of Dockers. He didn’t like being naked. He picked the towel back up and dried his hair, then dropped it back on the bed and moved across the carpeted floor toward the television. He slipped on a tee shirt, followed by a dark brown sweater. He grimaced as he bent over and eased his feet into loafers without socks. Then he balled his fingers into fists, then flexed them, before leaving the room. They served coffee all night in the lobby.
“ How’s it going tonight?” He closed the door behind himself.
“ Fine,” the desk clerk said. She was an elderly woman with too much blue rinse in her hair.
“ Just came in for a cup of courage.” He poured himself a cup from the motel’s never empty jug. He was reaching for one of the free donuts when the flashing red and white lights pulled into the parking lot.
Police, he thought, turning away from the blue hair. He closed his eyes for a second and tried to summon up the fantasy blond, but he didn’t have enough time to do it right, so he gave it up, crossed himself and walked out into the night.
“ You. Stop.” The voice belonged to the young man that jumped out of the police car. It had the authority of one in command. Coffee stopped and smiled at the young cop.
“ Yeah, you. Where do you think you’re going?” The young man wasn’t wearing a uniform and didn’t have a gun. Instead he was clothed in jeans, a white tee shirt and black tennis shoes. He looked like he’d dressed in a hurry and he was pointing his finger like it was a thirty-eight.
“ My room.” Coffee hated to waste words.
The young man recoiled when he saw Coffee’s face, and retracted his finger, using it to push his longish hair out of his eyes.
“ Name?” the young man asked, walking toward him, still brushing his hair with his fingers.”
“ You a policeman?” Coffee asked, stepping back a couple of feet.
“ You know I am.”
“ Yeah. I guess I do.”
“ Answer the question.”
“ John Coffee.”
“ Holy shitsamoly,” the kid yelped as another police cruiser pulled into the parking lot. “Harrison, I got him, I got him,” he continued yelling to the man who got out of the other car. This one was wearing a uniform and had gun.
“ Back off you,” the officer said.
“ What’s this all about, officer?” Coffee backed away from the kid.
“ Hands up, no don’t put ’em up, turn around and face the wall.” The older cop pulled his gun.
Coffee turned, not wanted to upset the cop.
“ Frisk him, Marty,” the cop said.
The kid moved in and felt Coffee up the way policeman do. “He’s clean, Harrison.”
“ Can I turn around?”
“ Not till I cuff you.” Coffee dropped his hands behind his back and the cop put on the cuffs. “Okay, you can turn around now.”
“ Mind telling me what this is all about?”
“ Grand theft auto.” The kid pointed his trigger finger at the Volvo.
“ You’re kidding?” Coffee said. He couldn’t believe the coward from last night had screwed up enough courage to call the police.
“ Mr. Chase reported it stolen less than an hour ago. Said you abducted him and his wife at gunpoint and stole the car. That was pretty stupid of you telling him your name.”
“ Even stupider parking it right outside my room, wouldn’t you say?”
“ Yeah,” the kid said, “even stupider.”
“ Hard to piss with these things on,” Coffee said, changing the subject. There was no sense protesting his innocence any further. This small town cop had him and wasn’t about to let him go.
“ You’ll have to hold it till we get to the station.”
“ Got a bad prostate. When I gotta go, I gotta go.”
“ Why don’t you take the cuffs off and let him go to the bathroom, Harrison?” Sarah Sadler said. She was standing in the doorway with her hair mussed, like she’d just gotten out of bed.
“ Miss Sadler, I mean Mrs. Chase, what are you doing here?”
“ It’s Miss Sadler, Harrison, and what I’m doing is minding my own business, which is more that I can say for you.”
“ Your husband said-”
“ I heard what he said,” she cut him off, “but I suppose he had to say that if he wanted you to come looking for us.”
“ I don’t get it,” the cop said.
“ Let me try and make it clear,” she said. “If Miles would have called the station and said something like, ‘Hey, Harrison, my new wife is shacked up over at the Pine Tree and I want you to go and drag her back to me,’ would you be here now?”
“ No, ma’am.” Harrison looked embarrassed. Then he turned to Coffee, “Why didn’t you tell us you were with the lady?”
“ A gentleman doesn’t tell,” Coffee said.
“ What about the car? The car’s still stole,” Marty said.
“ That’s a fact. We still got a stolen car,” Harrison said.
“ Harrison Harpine, I think your boy is smarter than you. How can I steal my own car?”
“ It’s Miles’ car, everybody knows it.”
“ So if you drive your wife’s Buick to the store you could be arrested for stealing it?”
“ I getcha,” he said, but he didn’t look convinced.
“ The cuffs,” Coffee said, “I really do gotta piss.”
“ Hold on a minute while I try and figure this out,” Harrison Harpine said.
“ Harrison, if I tell you why I’m here, with him, and not at home with my husband will you take the cuffs off?”
“ Maybe.”
“ You have to promise to keep it a secret. I don’t want it blabbed all over town.”
“ I’m a cop. You can trust me,” he said, leaning in to her.
“ Send him away,” she said, looking at the kid.
“ Marty, you can go now. I can handle this.”
“ Harrison, that’s not fair.”
“ You can go, I’ll see you back at the station.”
The kid turned and stomped to his cruiser. He gunned it in protest as he shot out of the parking lot, and as soon as the car was out of sight, Harrison Harpine turned to Sarah Sadler.
“ You’re not gonna tell?” she said, knowing he would.
“ You have my word.”
“ Miles is gay.”
“ Holy shit. No.”
“ And he dresses up in my clothes.”
“ No swinging shit. You’re not shitting me?”
“ No, Harrison, I’m not shitting you. And he wanted me to watch while he did it with other men. So you can understand why I’ll be getting a divorce right away.”
“ Oh yes, ma’am.”
“ Cuffs,” Coffee said to the cop. He turned his back and the policeman released him from the handcuffs.
“ Sorry about that. Just doing my job,” Harrison said.
“ I understand.”
The cop turned back to Sarah, “Is there anything else you wanted to tell me?”
“ Just that if you see him over in Palma, could you kind of watch him? I’m afraid of him. You know what I mean?”
Coffee had to bite his lip to keep from laughing.
“ Ma’am, if he even thinks about coming into our town, I’ll run him back across the way quicker than you can wink.”
“ Can you do me one small favor?” She asked the cop.
“ Anything.”
“ Can you follow me home and make arrangements for the Volvo to be delivered to Miles. I don’t ever want to see him again.”
“ Yes, ma’am. We can go just as soon as you’re ready.”
“ I’ll only be a minute.” She went back inside the motel room, leaving Coffee with the cop.
“ What happened to your face?” Harrison asked.
“ Bear.”
“ No shit?”
“ No shit,” Coffee said.
She came out of the room a few seconds later, walked up to John Coffee and kissed him on the lips, like they had been lovers. “The keys to the Corvette are on the bureau, on top of the note,” she said. Then she got in the Volvo, rolled the window down and said, “Oh yeah, one more thing, I’ve got a pair of hiking shoes behind the passenger seat, could you put them in the trunk. They’re new.” Then she followed the cop out of the parking lot.
He ran his hand along the stubble on his chin, then gingerly felt the bruises on his throat. He could understand her being done with the coward, Miles, but what was she doing nosing around him? That he couldn’t understand, but then there was a lot in this world John Coffee didn’t understand, like why the terrorists attacked the World Trade Center, why his government chose to use the attack as a vehicle to undermine the Constitution with the so called Patriot Act, why his government chose to go after Iraq when the culprits were mostly Saudi, why he seemed to get audited year after year when he’d never filed a dishonest tax return, yet certain people he knew, who were as crooked as the day is long, never came under the gun of the IRS. So in the grand scheme of things, Coffee supposed her lying to the sheriff to get him off the hook was no big deal, but still he was nothing to her.
He shook his head, it made no sense, then he went back into the room and read the note.
John Coffee
I’m sorry Miles called the police. I told him not to. You can use the Corvette till tomorrow, when I’ll want it back, all in one piece. You can deliver it to me at 108 Pine Woods Road. Tomorrow at eight. I’ll have dinner on.
See you then — Sarah
P.S. Thanks for the ride.
He folded the note and slipped it into his pocket. Then he stretched out on the bed and closed his eyes. The last thing he thought about, before drifting into a fitful, dreamless sleep, was that old black woman, the witch that couldn’t die.