He willed her to turn around, but she pushed off with her feet, and then she just kept coming, the angle of the hill and gravity causing the wheels of the bike to spin faster and faster until he thought for sure that she would crash. He couldn’t give anything away just in case the police were surveilling the parking lot from the south-facing windows of the station. He couldn’t show he had seen her by any movement of his body, so he just observed the scene woodenly, as if he were watching a news clip of a disaster that had already occurred.
And then the pocket of gas caught fire, and Lyle was filled with a great and liberating inspiration. As he revved the engine of the truck and aimed it at the sidewalk outside the bus station, he thought of the man pushing the Plunge-O-Sphere to the edge of Niagara Falls and getting in. He pictured the improbable orb spinning along in the current and then barreling over the edge as he aimed for the empty bench on the sidewalk, for the weedy shade tree, for the plate-glass window behind which he was sure the men in their bulletproof vests were waiting for Maggie and the bus.
But now a woman was easing her bulk onto the bench, looking expectantly down the road in the direction the bus would come from and shifting from side to side to settle her skirt around her knees. Lyle couldn’t sound the horn or he would alert the police too early, before Maggie had a chance to see him. Before she had a chance to see that something was wrong. And before she could turn into the side street just uphill from the station house and pedal out of sight. Woman-in-a-skirt or no woman-in-a-skirt, there was no stopping what he had started. It was as if Lyle was running on gasoline or the truck was running on rage when he hunched into the wheel and shouted out the open window, “Get the hell out of my way!” At the last second, the woman saw him coming and jumped clear, and at 11:59 by the clock on the dash, Lyle rammed the truck right through the rickety bench, right through the skinny tree and into the metal awning supports, where it came to a stop only inches from the glass.
Out of the corner of his eye, Lyle saw Maggie’s bicycle veer into the side street. The bicycle skidded and she almost fell, but then it was safely around the corner and Maggie was gone and the police were streaming out of the bus station, swarming like hornets, aiming their guns and shouting at Lyle to put his hands in the air. Lyle had to laugh to see the look on Ben’s face when he said, “What the fuck, Lyle.” He had to laugh when the sheriff said, “Lyle Rayburn, you’re under arrest.” He had to laugh to see the disappointment on the SWAT team’s faces as they realized they weren’t going to get a chance to fire their military-style weapons after all. And he had to laugh because it had never occurred to him that anger could feel so good.
12.7 Maggie
Maggie was glad to see the bicycle leaning against the shed. She had left her empty duffel in the house, but she kept her backpack with her as she mounted the bike and started pedaling. The crunch of the gravel beneath the tires brought to mind the free, almost floating feeling of heading off to Phoenix all those months ago. This was entirely different. With every revolution, the front tire rubbed against the fender, which was rusted and bent, and the brakes squealed whenever she slowed down. Even the wind generated by the bicycle was dusty and seemed to suck at her rather than blow. But the tires were new, and they bounced obligingly over any potholes or stones they encountered.
When she turned onto Main Street, she kept her head down in case there was traffic, but even though it was nearly lunchtime, everything was quiet. It was as if the town had shrunk in her absence, or she had somehow grown. She passed the town’s lone office building, although now, from the looks of things, they were getting another, and the Main Street Diner had a freshly painted sign indicating it was now called the Main Street Café. She peered at the window as she went by, but the glass storefront only reflected her image back at her, and if any of the customers were watching her from the leatherette booths, she couldn’t see them. She thought of eating dinner there with Lyle and Will and wondered if she was having a memory of the past or a happy premonition of the future.
An oil truck whizzed past, frightening her because she hadn’t seen it coming. It was as if the film of her life had been spliced, leaving out the vehicle’s approach and also its departure, for just as suddenly, it was gone. Even the air seemed jumpy, as if it were attached to her nerves and images were painted on it in thin colors rather than seen through it, or as if the town she had lived in for her entire life was only a mirage or an elaborately constructed set that could be changed at the whim of an unseen director, someone she envisioned smoking and laughing at her from a canvas chair with his name stenciled on the back or flirting with a winsome assistant rather than caring about what was taking place on stage.
She recognized the feeling as a combination of apprehension and loneliness, and then she realized that the apprehension was turning into full-blown fear. Where was Lyle? She passed the turnoff to the Church of the New Incarnation and thought of going there to seek refuge in its sparkling vastness. She missed having the shell of a church around her, and if she went there, she could ask the pastor for advice. She could ask God to forgive her for reneging on her promise. But all she could think about now was finding Lyle.
The bell on the Catholic church was chiming the hour when she turned the corner by the muffler shop. A group of men were sitting outside smoking cigarettes and drinking Dr Pepper. She wondered briefly what their lives were like, whether the good in them outweighed the bad. Now she could see the bus station far ahead. It was little more than a storefront with a park bench outside for waiting. An old metal awning and a thin tree provided a stripe of shade, and just beyond was a chain-link enclosure for long-term parking. She thought she recognized Lyle’s truck at the end of a short row of parked cars, but the glare of the noonday sun made it difficult to tell. She paused for a moment at the top of the hill before pedaling forward again.
The truck’s window was open, and as she got closer, she could see that the driver of the truck was wearing aviator glasses and a blue shirt and a baseball cap that she imagined — no, she knew! — was made of crushed red felt with the letters OU stenciled on the front. Lyle! He was looking in her direction. He was looking and she knew in her heart he had recognized her. But even when she took one hand off the handlebars and held it up in joyful greeting, causing the bicycle to teeter dangerously beneath her, Lyle didn’t wave back. Worse than that, he turned away. Of course he was angry with her. Anyone would be.
Anyone, she thought, except for Lyle. Lyle didn’t get angry.
Maggie pressed her sneakered foot on the brake just as the truck lurched through a gap in the chain-link fence, wheels spinning. It careened sideways into the road and gained momentum before slamming up on the curb, across the sidewalk and into the bench and the spindly metal stanchions. He had seen her! He was warning her away! A side street was coming up. As Maggie skidded into it, the bicycle’s tires shimmied and slipped in the gravel. She almost lost her balance, but then the tires bit, and by some saving miracle, she didn’t fall.
12.8 Danny Joiner
— The what? I can’t hear you, soldier. You’d better speak up.
— The dust. Just there…in the distance…eleven o’clock…