He senses the man’s loneliness.
"Good morning," Luther says.
The trucker turns from the window.
"Morning."
"That your rig out there?"
"Sure is."
"Where you headed?"
"Memphis."
"What are you hauling?"
"Sugar."
The old man drags on his cigarette, then squashes it into an untouched egg yolk.
"Gets lonely on the road, doesn’t it?" Luther says.
"Well, it certainly can."
He doesn’t begrudge the man’s curt replies. They don’t spring from discourtesy but rather a desolate existence. Had he more to say he would.
Luther slides out of the booth, zips his sweatshirt, and nods goodbye to the trucker.
The man raises his coffee mug to Luther, takes a sip.
At the cash register Luther pays for his breakfast and then gives Brianna the waitress an additional ten dollar bill.
"See that old man sitting alone in the booth? I’m buying his breakfast."
And Luther strolls out the front door to watch the sunrise.
15
PULLING out of the Waffle House parking lot, Luther can hardly hold his eyes open. It’s Monday, 6:00 a.m., and since Friday evening he’s managed only four hours of sleep at a welcome center outside Mount Airy, North Carolina.
He takes the first left onto Pondside Drive, a residential street so infested with trees that when he glances up through the windshield he sees only fragments of the magenta sky.
He follows Pondside onto Cattail, a street that dead-ends after a quarter mile in a shaded sequestered cul-de-sac, its broken pavement hidden beneath a stratum of scarlet leaves.
Luther kills the ignition and climbs into the backseat.
Lying down on the cold sticky vinyl, he takes out the tape recorder, presses play, and drifts off to the recording of Mr. Worthington begging for the lives of his family.
When he wakes it’s 11:15 a.m. and the crystal sunlight of the October morning floods the Impala, the vinyl warm now like a hot water bottle against his cheek.
In downtown Statesville he picks up Highway 64 and speeds east through the piedmont of North Carolina and the catatonic towns of Mocksville, Lexington, Asheboro, and Siler City.
The sky stretches into infinite blinding blue.
Near Pittsboro, 64 crosses the enormous Lake Jordan, its banks bright with burning foliage. Luther cannot remember ever being so joyful.
By midafternoon he’s hungry again.
At a Waffle House in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, he orders his new favorite dish: hashbrowns, triple scattered all the way, and a cold vanilla Coke. Through the window his view is of a tawny field turned gold by the leaves of soybean plants.
Halfway through lunch it dawns on him.
He was careless at the Worthingtons.
He left something behind.
16
WHEN Beth awoke she thought she was dead and gone to hell but it wasn’t the inferno she expected. The image of hell she entertained derived from a painting she’d seen recently at the North Carolina Museum of Art.
The 1959 painting was called Apocalyptic Scene with Philosophers and Historical Figures, an oil on Masonite board by the Reverend McKendree Robbins Long.
The painting depicts a cavernous chamber and a legion of hopeless souls being herded by demons toward the obligatory lake of fire. Among the philosophers and historical figures are the faces of Einstein, Freud, Hitler, Stalin, and Marx. Others cling horrified to the rocky bank, still in their eveningwear, as if seized from a lavish ball. A horde of men and women fall naked from the ceiling toward the burning lake and in the unreachable distance, visible to all, two luminous angels hover around a white cross—a constant torturous reminder of the love the damned have spurned.
My hell is worse, Beth thought, because it’s real.
Her head ached terribly in this empty darkness and she possessed no recent memory. The faces of Jenna and John David flashed in her mind and as she pictured the three of them lounging on the pier, something shattered inside of her that could not be reassembled.
She sat up suddenly, smacked her forehead into the soundproofing, and fell back onto a limp hand.
"Who’s there?" she shrieked.
Nothing answered.
She located the hand in the dark and squeezed it.
"Do you hear me?" she whispered, thinking, If that’s a corpse I’ll fucking lose it.
A half-conscious female voice mumbled, then gasped, jerked away from Beth.
"My name is Beth. Who are you?"
A voice croaked back, "Karen." It sounded as if she spoke through clenched teeth.
"Is this hell?" Beth whispered.
"It’s the trunk of that psychopath’s car."
Everything came rushing back in a fury of consciousness.
"Where are my children?" Beth asked.
"Your children?"
"Did he hurt them?"
"I don’t know."
Crying now, Beth tried to shove the fear down in her craw, into that calloused niche she’d found when her husband was murdered.
He only took me. That animal did not hurt my children. Please God You did not let that happen.
Lying on their sides, facing each other in absolute darkness, the women held hands. They could each feel the exhalations of the other—warm comforting breath in their faces.
The car was in motion again and the force of inertia tossed them about in the dark at the slightest change in speed or direction. As the pavement screamed along beneath them they snuggled closer. Karen stroked Beth’s hair and wiped her wet cheeks. She wished she’d just lied and said that her children were safe.
Hours later, the car came to a stop, the engine quit, and the driver side door opened and closed.
Karen strained to listen.
Footsteps faded.
As she held Beth she concentrated on the scarcely audible sounds beyond their black cage—the distant continuous slam of car doors, the starting of engines, crying children, and the unmistakable squeak of shopping cart wheels rolling across pavement.
"We’re in a parking lot," Karen whispered.
Three doors slammed nearby.
A voice came through: "Shannon, quit primping, you look fine."
"She doesn’t want to disappoint Chris," another voice taunted.
"Fuck you and fuck you."
"Help!" Beth screamed. She jerked away from Karen’s embrace and put her lips against the foam. "Help me! PLEASE!"
"Be quiet!" Karen hissed. "He’ll kill us if we—"
"PLEASE! PLEASE! MY KIDS NEED ME!"
Karen wrapped her arms around Beth, put her hand over the woman’s mouth, and pulled her back onto the filthy carpet.
"It’s okay, sweetie. It’s all right," she said, Beth shaking violently in her arms. "It’s gonna be all right. But you can’t—"
The voices passed through from outside again.
"There is nothing in that trunk, Shannon. You’re crazy, come on."
"It sounded like a dog barking. What kind of sicko leaves his dog in the trunk?"
"Who cares? Chris is waiting."
Beth elbowed Karen in the ribs, broke free, and screamed through the soundproofing until she thought her larynx would rupture.
When fatigue finally stopped her, all was silent again save her frenzied panting and the shudder of her heart.
17
LUTHER dislocates a buggy from a caterpillar-like row and rolls it past the enfeebled greeter of the Rocky Mount Wal-Mart.