The last thing the grandmother had said picked at him: “You’re one of my own children.” The old lady had looked familiar, but she didn’t look anything like his mother. But maybe his father had sown some wild oats in the old days—Railroad knew he had—could the old lady have been his mother, for real? It would explain why the woman who had raised him, the sweetest of women, could have been saddled with a son as bad as he was.
The idea caught in his head. He wished he’d had the sense to ask the grandmother a few questions. The old woman might have been sent to tell him the truth.
When Hiram and Bobby Lee came back, they found Railroad leaning under the hood of the car.
“What we do now, boss?” Bobby Lee asked.
“Police could be here any minute,” Hiram said. Blood was smeared on the leg of his khaki pants. “Somebody might of heard the shots.”
Railroad pulled himself out from under the hood. “Onliest thing we got to worry about now, Hiram, is how we get this radiator to stop leaking. You find a tire iron and straighten out this here fan. Bobby Lee, you get the belt off’n the other car.”
It took longer than the half hour Hiram had estimated to get the people’s Studebaker back on the road. By the time they did it was twilight, and the red-dirt road was cast in the shadows of the pinewoods. They pushed the stolen Hudson they’d been driving off into the trees and got into the Studebaker.
Railroad gripped the wheel of the car and they bounced down the dirt road toward the main highway. Hat pushed back on his head, Hiram went through the dead man’s wallet, while in the back seat Bobby Lee had the cat on his lap and was scratching it under the chin. “Kitty-kitty-kitty-kitty-kitty,” he murmured.
“Sixty-eight dollars,” Hiram said. “With the twenty-two from the wife’s purse, that makes ninety bucks.” He turned around and handed a wad of bills to Bobby Lee. “Get rid of that damn cat,” he said. “Want me to hold yours for you?” he asked Railroad.
Railroad reached over, took the bills, and stuffed them into the pocket of the yellow shirt with bright blue parrots, that had belonged to the husband who’d been driving the car. Bailey Boy, the grandmother had called him. Railroad’s shoulder twinged.
The car shuddered; the wheels had been knocked out of kilter when it rolled. If he tried pushing past fifty, it would shake itself right off the road. Railroad felt the warm weight of his pistol inside his belt, against his belly. Bobby Lee hummed tunelessly in the back seat. Hiram was quiet, fidgeting, looking out at the dark trees. He tugged his battered coat out of the vent window, tried to shake some of the wrinkles out of it. “You oughtn’t to use a man’s coat without saying to him,” he grumbled.
Bobby Lee spoke up. “He didn’t want the cat to get away.”
Hiram sneezed. “Will you throw that damn animal out the damn window?”
“She never hurt you none,” Bobby Lee said.
Railroad said nothing. He had always imagined that the world was slightly unreal, that he was meant to be the citizen of some other place. His mind was a box. Outside the box was that world of distraction, amusement, annoyance. Inside the box his real life went on, the struggle between what he knew and what he didn’t know. He had a way of acting—polite, detached—because that way he wouldn’t be bothered. When he was bothered, he got mad. When he got mad, bad things happened.
He had always been prey to remorse, but now he felt it more fully than he had since he was a boy. He hadn’t paid enough attention. He’d pegged the old lady as a hypocrite and had gone back into his box, thinking her just another fool from that puppet world. But that moment of her touching him—she’d wanted to comfort him. And he shot her.
What was it the old woman had said? “You could be honest if you’d only try… Think how wonderful it would be to settle down and live a comfortable life and not have to think about somebody chasing you all the time.”
He knew she was only saying that to save her life. But that didn’t mean it couldn’t also be a message.
Outside the box, Hiram asked, “What was all that yammer yammer with the grandmother about Jesus? We doing all the killing while you yammer yammer.”
“He did shoot the old lady,” Bobby Lee said.
“And made us carry her off to the woods, when if he’d of waited she could of walked there like the others. We’re the ones get blood on our clothes.”
Railroad said quietly, “You don’t like the way things are going, son?”
Hiram twitched against the seat like he was itchy between the shoulder blades. “I ain’t sayin’ that. I just want out of this state.”
“We going to Atlanta. In Atlanta we can get lost.”
“Gonna get me a girl!” Bobby Lee said.
“They got more cops in Atlanta than the rest of the state put together,” Hiram said. “In Florida…”
Without taking his eyes off the road, Railroad snapped his right hand across the bridge of Hiram’s nose. Hiram jerked, more startled than hurt, and his hat tumbled off into the back seat.
Bobby Lee laughed, and handed Hiram his hat.
It was after 11:00 when they hit the outskirts of Atlanta. Railroad pulled into a diner, the Sweet Spot, red brick and an asbestos-shingled roof, the air smelling of cigarettes and pork barbecue. Hiram rubbed some dirt from the lot into the stain on his pants leg. Railroad unlocked the trunk and found the dead man’s suitcase, full of clothes. He carried it in with them.
On the radio sitting on the shelf behind the counter, Kitty Wells sang “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky-Tonk Angels.” Railroad studied the menu, front and back, and ordered biscuits and gravy. While they ate Bobby Lee ran on about girls, and Hiram sat sullenly smoking. Railroad could tell Hiram was getting ready to do something stupid. He didn’t need either of them anymore. So after they finished eating, Railroad left the car keys on the table and took the suitcase into the men’s room. He locked the door. He pulled his .38 out of the waistband, put it on the sink, and changed out of the too-tight dungarees into some of the dead husband’s baggy trousers. He washed his face and hands. He cleaned his glasses on the tail of the parrot shirt, then tucked in the shirt. He stuck the .38 into the suitcase and came out again. Bobby Lee and Hiram were gone, and the car was no longer in the parking lot. The bill on the table, next to Hiram’s still smoldering cigarette, was for six dollars and eighty cents.
Railroad sat in the booth drinking his coffee. In the window of the diner, near the door, a piece of cardboard had been taped up, saying, “WANTED: FRY COOK.” When he was done with the coffee, he untaped the sign and headed to the register. After he paid the bill he handed the cashier the sign. “I’m your man,” he said.
The cashier called the manager. “Mr. Cauthron, this man says he’s a cook.”
Mr. Cauthron was maybe thirty-five years old. His carrot red hair stood up in a pompadour like a rooster’s comb, and a little belly swelled out over his belt. “What’s your name?”
“Lloyd Bailey.”
“Lloyd, what experience do you have?”
“I can cook anything on this here menu,” Railroad said.
The manager took him back to the kitchen. “Stand aside, Shorty,” the manager said to the tall black man at the griddle. “Fix me a Denver omelet,” he said to Railroad.
Railroad washed his hands, put on an apron, broke two eggs into a bowl. He threw handfuls of chopped onion, green pepper, and diced ham into a skillet. When the onions were soft, he poured the beaten eggs over the ham and vegetables, added salt and cayenne pepper.
When he slid the finished omelet onto a plate, the manager bent down over it as if he were inspecting the paint job on a used car. He straightened up. “Pay’s thirty dollars a week. Be here at six in the morning.”