“You did. You beat on him.”
“I had to.”
“Oh, you didn’t have to. Take away your hand. It’s bloody.”
He clenched the fist, lifted it, rotated it before her face. “You see blood? You tell me, you see blood?”
“You beat on him and beat and beat. I heard you.”
He said thick-voiced, “You shut up and hear me. I had to get us a car. Us with a shot-up old bomb, the police maybe lookin’.”
“Police?”
In the southwest, mouse-gray clouds ledged in the silver sky.
“You don’t know anything at all, do you? You sit there like a dummy, big grin on your dummy face, don’t know a thing.”
Fear came between them and she strained away from him, her back against the door, feet jamming the floor.
“We need a car, I took us a car. Nobody going to give us a car. Nobody going to give us anything. You need it, you go and get it.”
“You was always so nice.”
“I’m same as I always was.”
“No, you’re not.” She stared at him and it was like looking into a long tunnel with a fire burning in it, far back. “You’re glad you hit him.”
“I didn’t and you wouldn’t be in this car right now, going to Florida, going to have you some fun.”
She began to cry. Country rock poured from the radio. They were building in the fields beyond the highway, orange iron skeletons rising in the sun, with trucks shuttling back and forth and men small among the shining beams.
Eyes on the fields, she said, “You don’t like me any more.”
“I don’t want to hear that. I’m not going to listen to that all the way to Florida.”
“It isn’t right.”
He felt the shaking begin then, the glorious deep trembling that would build and rise, wave on rich wave, half fear, half joy, a terrible exhilaration lifting him out of himself to tower gigantic, invincible, striding, and magnificent.
“It’s what I do.”
Her voice, muffled, wept. “But you hurt them, Jerry.”
“Shoot,” he said, feeling his body stretch and grow. “I busted their heads. Didn’t hurt them. Didn’t feel a thing. Old Davidson, too.”
“Mr. Davidson?”
He said, with cold satisfaction, “I knocked his head loose of his shoulders. Him with his mouth — ‘Gimmie, gimmie, you pay.’ Him with a big fat wallet and a nice blue car.”
“He’s a nice man.”
“He’s nothing now. He’s dead on the floor with his head cracked.”
“Dead?” she asked. “Dead?” Her mouth went quite square and bloodless.
He began to laugh. “You wanting to put a blanket on a dead man.”
“I want to go home. I want to go home, Jerry.”
He laughed.
“You let me out.”
She was across the seat then, snatching at the wheel, jerking it toward her. The car reeled right. He smashed her hand away as the metallic shriek of tires cut above the music. The world outside weaved and bobbed. He drove the back of his hand against her face, wrenched the wheel, accelerated, felt the skidding berme under the tires and the pop of stones flung against the body, felt the sheering lurch back onto the highway. Fought the wheel, tapped the brakes as the station wagon steadied. Struck past her snatching arms.
He slammed her forehead, her ear, drove her back, hands up before her face, smashing the hands back into her face. Awkward blows, slow and deliberate as if he were pounding nails.
She made a thin, high sound, like tearing flesh.
Steady on the road, the wagon lost speed as he pumped the brakes. They swerved to a stop on the shoulder.
“You get out,” he said.
She squealed thinly, without sense, brown eyes rolling.
“Don’t hurt me, Jerry.”
He showed her the point of the knife. It glittered unsteadily in the sunlight, the hot tip jittering in arcs and circles, trembling with a dreadful eagerness. She grew quite still.
“Out that door, Sue Ann.”
“Please please please please.”
He yelled at her. “I’ll do it if you make me. I don’t want to.”
The door opened. She sprawled out onto the shoulder, one hand before her face, palm out. She slipped and fell heavily, crying out.
Leaning across the seat he said, along the length of the knife. “Now you stay gone.”
“Jerry, dear.”
The door slammed. The station wagon leaped forward, kicking up dirt. It picked up speed, rushing south, full of towering mindless power. In the rear mirror he saw her staring after him, her figure dwindling, hidden by a gentle rise, reappearing smaller as the road rose again, still motionless, a huddle of pink by the white highway. Perhaps looking after him.
Five miles down the road, he saw her gray yam purse on the floor. He cranked down the window. After a moment’s hesitation, he opened the purse, opened the worn brown wallet inside. It contained a dime, a nickel, seven pennies. He shook the change onto the seat, dropped the wallet into the purse. Then he hurled the purse from the window. It bounded among the road weeds, leaping flying twisting.
The sun was low now. It was hard to see where the purse had gone.
He drove in silence for ten miles, listening to the radio.
At last he said, “She could have come on to Florida if she wanted to.”
He began to sing softly with the music. He had a pleasant baritone voice, warm and with a sort of lilt to it.