Ann took Jordan to their house while I sat watching TV, but really listening for the phone. Wanting it to ring. Wanting to get on with things.
Nothing happened.
Ann came back and we finally went to bed about ten and made love, which wasn’t too good because she was still mad at me. Or mad at Jim Bob really, but I was handy. She said something about, “I’ll make that goddamn bastard think snag my panty hose” a couple of times before we gave it up for the night and she rolled into my arms and I held my hand between her legs and buried my nose in the fragrance of her hair. And just as I was drifting into sleep, the phone rang.
I got to it without turning over the nightstand and groped it off the hook and coughed something into it.
“Get on up here,” Jim Bob said.
“Yeah,” I said. “Coming.”
“You awake?”
“About half-ass.”
“Well be whole-ass by the time you get here, got me?”
I said something and lay back down. Ann rolled over and put her arm around my chest. “Jim Bob?”
“Yeah. We’ve got to go meet him.”
“Does that mean we don’t have time for a quickie?”
“He didn’t say anything about a time limit,” I said.
Our lovemaking was rushed, but Ann wasn’t mad anymore, and it was better than when we had spent more time. I knew why.
We were both scared.
22
Jim Bob and Russel met us out in the parking lot.
“We’ll take the Red Bitch,” Jim Bob said.
Ann and I got in the back and Russel got in front with Jim Bob. It occurred to me that if Russel and Jim Bob were pulling our legs, they might be taking us out to the river bottoms to dispose of us. It could be that way. Russel and Jim Bob had been friends for a long time, and I hadn’t any idea what Russel had really said to him on the phone. I wished I had thought of that before now. I looked at Ann, and as the lights from stores and buildings slanted across her face and made her fine profile show there in the car, I got the feeling the same thoughts had occurred to her. I figured that if that was the case, her last words to me would be, “I told you so.”
We drove on out of town and as we did I looked over the Red Bitch real good. The upholstery was red and on the dash in upraised blue-silver letters was JIM BOB. The steering wheel was covered with a tacky, false cheeta skin and an emerald-colored suicide knob the size of a doorknob was fastened to that. Jim Bob liked to drive with his left hand on the knob and his right hand across the back rest. I could see a little of his face in the rearview mirror. He looked happy as a drunk.
“How are we going to dig him up?” I asked. It had occurred to me that I hadn’t seen any shovels, and that was making me even more nervous.
“Got some shovels and stuff in the trunk there. All manner of tools. Damn near everything’s back there in the trunk but another car.”
“Maybe we could use another,” Russel said. “This ain’t exactly one to be sneaking around in.”
“Who’s sneaking, goddamnit. We’re driving. Ain’t no crime in driving. Hell, I have a pickup, but I didn’t bring it.”
“No joke,” Russel said.
Jim Bob looked over at Russel and grinned. “Want to see me lose this cop?”
Russel grinned back. “I thought you were losing your touch. I noticed him when we left the Holiday Inn. They switched cars on us.”
Neither Ann nor I had looked back to see the car that was supposed to be following us, but it was tempting.
“Are you sure it’s a cop behind us?” I said.
“Oh yeah,” Jim Bob said.
“Can’t he just pull us over?”
“What for, driving a red Caddy? That ain’t no crime.”
“Perhaps this one ought to be,” Ann said.
Jim Bob laughed. “Lady, I like you, I really do.”
“If we run, won’t the cops be laying for us?” I said.
“Well, we ain’t gonna just run, we’re gonna lose him legal like. But before I do, could you folks tell me where the hell this graveyard is?”
“The other direction,” Russel said.
“Figures,” Jim Bob said, and he took a left in the Safeway parking lot just in front of a big tractor trailer rig. The car that was tailing us went by. Or I assume it was the one. When I got the chance to look, I saw a sporty blue Plymouth slow down and fall over to the left-turn lane. But the traffic was thick and he couldn’t make the left.
Jim Bob got back on the highway by rushing out front of a yellow Volkswagen that honked its horn and flashed its lights. It whipped around on the left and came even with Jim Bob. A husky college boy on the right-hand side rolled down his window and flipped Jim Bob the bird and yelled something.
Jim Bob waved at him friendly like, put his foot to the floor and the Red Bitch jumped forward. Jim Bob whipped in front of the Volkswagen again, went around another car and made the right lane. We went fast like that for two blocks, then Jim Bob took a right, then a left, then a right and a left again.
“Am I going in the general direction?” Jim Bob asked.
“General,” Russel said.
“Good enough.”
“We lose the cop?” I asked.
“Oh yeah,” Jim Bob said. “Them and their little toy cars. Whatever happened to the good ole days when it was the biggest, meanest car on the road, not the smallest and the cheapest?”
“The Arabs is what happened,” Russel said.
· · ·
We finally got out to the graveyard, and Jim Bob killed the Red Bitch and went around and opened the trunk. I stood there wondering if we were about to be killed, but the trunk was just like he said. Full of tools. He got out two shovels and a long canvas bag and put them on the ground. He gave Ann the keys.
“You take the Red Bitch on down the road a piece and kill the lights but leave the motor running. Turn it facing this way, though, so you can see what’s going on in case something goes on. We’re gonna try and make this quicker than a bunny fucks-pardon me again.”
“Would you quit saying that?” Ann said.
“You know, I’d rather,” Jim Bob said. “What say if we’re gonna be waltzing partners I just let fly when I need to and consider me sorry for what I say. If I don’t cuss I get all filled up inside just like I was constipated and I don’t feel worth a damn.”
“I sure wouldn’t want you all constipated with cuss words,” Ann said. “But listen, I’m not a taxi.”
“No, ma’am, you ain’t, but we’re gonna do the digging and someone’s got to do the driving, and I’m running this shindig, so do what I say.”
“But we’re paying,” Ann said.
“And it’s money well spent,” Jim Bob said. “You can’t do no better than me. Now let’s get on with this.”
Ann looked at me and I shrugged.
“Okay,” she said.
“Take it easy on the clutch,” Jim Bob said as Ann got in.
“I can drive,” Ann said. She closed the door and started the car and drove down the road a ways, backed around, pointed the lights at us and killed them. The Caddy was just off the road and under an oak. When the lights were out, you couldn’t see it. It was that kind of night.
“They can wrap you up for quite a few years for grave stealing, can’t they?” Russel said.
“Hell, they can throw away the key,” Jim Bob said.
We went over to the graveyard fence and found the gate unlocked. “Reckon they don’t expect folks to come in much,” Jim Bob said, “and the ones here ain’t going nowhere.”
Russel located the grave and I took a shovel and Russel took one.
“What about you?” Russel asked Jim Bob.
Jim Bob opened the canvas bag and took out a long flashlight. “Hell, someone’s got to hold the light.”
Russel and I started digging. While we were at it, it began to turn off cool and it got darker. You could smell rain in the air. When we were about halfway down to the coffin, it began to sprinkle.
“Better get with it,” Jim Bob said. “I think it’s gonna come a real frog strangler, and if it does, you’re gonna have to bail as well as dig.”