Crawl Read online

  He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. His face said he understood perfectly. Gone was the dejected, rejected hubby’s countenance. Now, Juliet looked upon a scolded child, one that knew what he’d done and figured he’d better accept his punishment before Mommy went and fetched the belt.

  Their old friend Silence returned, and they crossed into Georgia smothered by his presence.

  2.

  Juliet first noticed the ’50s model Mercury coupe with the JXSAVES license plate fifty miles south of Columbus on I-75. Colton was coasting at a steady eighty-five miles per hour, weaving in and out of slower traffic, and cursing now and then at the latest errant douchebag he considered unfit for America’s highways and byways. They were making damn good time, and Juliet wasn’t sure if it was Colton’s normal impatience or his desire to be rid of her because of their last conversation.

  The Mercury, black as pitch but streaked with reflections from their Subaru’s headlights, maintained the same speed as Colton, two car lengths ahead of them.

  Colton slapped the steering wheel. “Speed up or slow down, man, make up your mind.”

  “If he’s upsetting you that bad, why not just pass him in the slow lane?” Juliet asked, studying her recent manicure and pretending as if she was not interested in this dick-measuring contest by automobile.

  “It’s the principle of the matter. He needs to get the hell out of my way.”

  “We need to see about getting you some anger management classes when I get back.”

  In the ensuing quiet, such an awkward thing it was, Juliet looked over at her husband. He would glance her way then back to the road, a glimmer of boyish hope in his eye and a smile crinkling the corners of his rectangle of a mouth. She hadn’t a clue why such an affect should be gracing his face.

  “What?” she asked.

  “You said, when you get back.”

  “Don’t read too much into it, Colt. I’m just carrying on friendly conversation.”

  “But you didn’t say if. You said when. That counts for something. It means you can still see us together.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. Just drive.”

  Colton turned on his blinker and drifted over into the slow lane. The Mercury did the same. Juliet sat up straighter in her seat and peered through the windshield at the teardrop-shaped coupe. The Subaru’s headlights bounced off tinted windows, making Juliet squint. Though the Mercury’s brake lights never came on, they were gaining on the dark car. She could now see the bumper sticker that had been placed an inch to the right of the vanity plate.

  I DO NOT

  The entire thing, plate and all, read: JXSAVES … I DO NOT

  A chill molested her guts. Colton cursed under his breath and swerved into the fast lane once more. He gunned the V6 under the hood. They shot forward, leaving the Merc in their rearview.

  “Did you catch his plate?” Juliet asked.

  “Yep. I saw that sticker, too. Typical Bible Belt bullshit is all. He’ll be in our dust in no time.”

  And Colton was right. Juliet watched as the Merc’s headlights dwindled, going from blazing orbs to subtle balls of medium-tone light, then down to pinpricks—like cat’s eyes seen in the darkness under a porch. The ice in her stomach subsided and her mind drifted away from JXSAVES … I DO NOT

  Five minutes elapsed before Juliet glanced over at the speedometer. The Subaru was pushing a hundred.

  She said, “You might want to calm it down before we get pulled over.”

  “I’m keeping up with the flow of traffic.”

  She surveyed the dark, empty highway rushing by outside her window.

  “Colt, you are the flow of traffic.”

  “Stop worrying so much. Everyone goes this fast out here. This isn’t my first radio.”

  “Rodeo.”

  “Huh?”

  “Never mind. Just slow down. Please.”

  Colton loosed an exaggerated sigh and the car rocked forward as he decelerated.

  “Better?”

  She read the speed on the dash: seventy-five. “Fine.”

  “You remember,” Colton said, “how I used to drive out here every weekend to pick you up. Phenix City to Warner Robins, every Friday like clockwork, and I never once complained.”

  “How chivalrous of you.”

  “I’d just graduated, and I was going to be some big shot architect. You were still living with your mother, and working part-time at Target.”

  “Don’t remind me.”

  “For six months, I never once let you down. I even came that time I had strep. You were mad because you insisted I was going to get you sick. You wouldn’t kiss me. I’d come all that way, and you wouldn’t even hug me.”

  “Do you blame me?” She decided to settle into the memories. It was a welcome reprieve from the dark times behind them.

  “Naw,” he chuckled, “I don’t blame you one bit. I remember what you wore that night, too. A yellow turtleneck and a pair of acid wash jeans. I didn’t think they even made acid wash anything anymore. But there you were, a closet full of eighties relics. I’m surprised you didn’t have your bangs swooshed up, and held in place with a gallon of Aqua Net.”

  “I was going to, but you were sick. You wouldn’t have been able to handle my full-on epicosity.”

  “Epicosity? Is that a word?”

  “It is now. Phone Merriam-Webster and tell ’em I have a last minute addition.”

  “We went to see a movie that night. You remember what it was?”

  “Do you?”

  “Yep. Dawn of the Dead, the first remake in, like, forever, that didn’t suck monkey balls.”

  Juliet allowed a smile to grace her lips. “You didn’t want to go because you loved the original so much. Kept on saying they were only going to ruin Romero’s classic. I told you no one could ever ruin the original because it would always be what it was. It’s frozen in time, golden… untouchable.”

  Colton laughed. “I really didn’t want to see that movie.”

  “But you went anyway. Sick and all. Even when I wouldn’t kiss you, you went.”

  “I did it because I loved you.” His tone grew somber. “And I still love you, Julie. I would go to the end of the earth for you.”

  His words brought back the anger. It had never really left, not really. It had only hid in the shadows cast by fond recollections.

  “Just don’t sleep with anyone on the way there.”

  “Julie, please, I’m trying here.”

  “Then maybe you should stop trying.” And, just like that, they were back on track. “I know you’re hearkening back to the early days of The Colt and Julie Show, but I don’t need that right now. I need space. I need you to not be around me for a while. Because the more I think about the good times, the more I think about that skank scampering across the carpet, trying to find her damn clothes.”

  “Can I do anything? I’m feeling kinda helpless here.”

  “No, Colt, you did enough.”

  Her mother’s house, only thirty miles away now, had never seemed so close yet so far away.

  Juliet prayed for the first time since she was a fragile girl of ten in Sunday school.

  God, shut him up before I throw myself from a speeding car.

  The Mercury’s bumper flashed in her mind.

  JXSAVES … I DO NOT

  She could only imagine how many Americans had requested JCSAVES, or some variation of such, since the invention of the vanity plate. Had the Mercury’s driver decided on JX, using the X in place of a C? Juliet wondered if the X in JXSAVES stood for the Greek-to-English translation of Christ, like when someone used Xmas instead of Christmas. The common misconception was that the X was meant to take Jesus out of the holiday. She wondered where she’d come across that information. Perhaps that long ago day in Bible school, listening to the bright lady with the neon-pink hair (whose name evaded her at the moment) tell horror stories concerning the stoning of whores, and Christ’s crucifixion and subsequent zombie-like rise from the grave thr
ee days later. Sweet baby Hey-Zeus, church had been a scary place for a ten-year-old.

  3.

  The second time they ran across the Mercury with the JXSAVES plate was at a Waffle House in Columbus. Neither Colton nor she was hungry, but he needed coffee, and she had to pee.

  The Merc had been parked at the back of the restaurant, beside the dumpster’s enclosure. White exhaust puffed from the tail pipe, and the headlights highlighted the steel doors that hid the trash area. As the Subaru’s lights washed over the driver’s side of the Merc, Juliet could see that even the side windows had been tinted. Given the creepy message made when the vanity plate and the bumper sticker were combined—

  (JXSAVES… I DO NOT)

  —Juliet doubted that a benevolent individual owned that relic of a bygone age. A time when a cup of java and a gallon of gas would have run you about the same price, and twenty bucks bought enough groceries for a fortnight. She kept expecting the Merc’s door to pop open and Satan to step forth into the parking lot—the asphalt smoldering under his cloven hooves. All those thoughts of Sunday school had her imagination running in religious circles. Her mind needed better company. She averted her eyes and focused on the empty booths inside the Waffle House as Colton pulled into a spot directly in front of the entrance.

  Both hopped out. He held the door open for her then followed. Garth Brooks’s “Friends in Low Places” played over the speakers while the cook at the grill sang a high-pitched backup. The heavy-bosomed lady twirled a spatula like a drumstick as she crooned. She nodded at Juliet and winked at Colton.

  “Down, boy,” Juliet chided.

  “As if,” Colton said, before grabbing a stool at the bar, looking not unlike a cowboy saddling up to a saloon in preparation for a night of drunken abandon. He dropped a quick “Hello” on the cook as Juliet made for the restrooms.

  As she passed the men’s room, the door swung open and a man stepped into her. His momentum pushed her into the opposite wall. Her arms came up in a defensive reaction.

  “So sorry, child.” It was as he said this that she realized he was dressed like a priest. No… Not a priest, exactly. His slacks and shirt were a deep crimson, but the requisite white clerical collar was unmistakable.

  She scanned his face; his coal-colored eyes couldn’t actually be black… could they? No. Just a deep (hell-deep?) brown. Had to be. His silver hair came to a widow’s peak that could surely have pierced stone. Ruby cheeks offset a bloodless face, making him look like a corpse all made up and ready for his wake. His thin, purple lips arched perpetually downward, and, when he smiled at her, stretched into a flat line you could balance a level on.

  “Jesus saves…” she heard herself mutter.

  He smiled, “…and I do not.”

  She pointed down the short hallway. “I’m… I have to piss.” As unladylike as her statement was, it burst from her nonetheless.

  “Do wash your hands afterward, young lady. Cleanliness is next to godliness. I suggest running the water before using the commode, though, as the water takes a while to warm up. Have a good night.”

  A silly need to ask him what his ominous “I do not” meant caught in her throat and she coughed.

  Forget that shit, she thought as she retreated down the cramped hallway to the ladies’ room.

  She rushed into the first of two stalls, shoved the door in, spun, and slammed it closed. She yanked the chrome lever into the clasp and backed up until the back of her jean-clad legs bumped into the lip of the toilet. Her heart, a wild animal in her chest, scrabbled at her ribs. It was hard to breathe. A cloying antiseptic odor hung in the air. She filled her lungs to the point of bursting with that smell. She tasted cigarettes, and was not surprised to see a fine, gray haze clinging to the ceiling above the cubicles.

  In the stall beside her, someone coughed.

  A raspy female voice, sounding an awful lot like Kathleen Turner with throat cancer, said, “I’ll be done in a minute.”

  “No rush,” Juliet managed.

  She undid her button-down fly and sat on the cold porcelain. She made water like a busted fire hydrant.

  “They don’t let us have a smoke break,” Deathbed Kathleen Turner said.

  This isn’t happening, Juliet thought. I am not having a conversation with some unseen soul while I’m emptying my bladder.

  Obviously DKT hadn’t gotten that memo, for she continued with, “Takin’ a crap’s the only time I get to have a butt.”

  “That’s… unfortunate,” said Juliet, and instantly regretted it.

  “Don’t worry, though. I wash up real good ’fore goin’ back to work. Say, where you headin’? No one comes in here—” DKT paused and made a sucking sound Juliet assumed was her taking another puff off her cancer stick, “—at this time ah night unless they’s travelin’.”

  Do not answer. Ignore her.

  Juliet heeded her inner voice’s advice. Instead of playing twenty questions with DKT, Juliet wiped, flushed, and stood up.

  “You okay in there?”

  Quietly, Juliet undid the chrome latch.

  “Eh, didja have a stroke or somethin’?”

  As she pulled the door inward, the hinge squeaked. She cussed it, her lips moving but not adding sound to the expletive.

  “Fine, then. I’s just makin’ conversation. Sheesh…”

  A half-smoked cigarette cartwheeled over DKT’s stall door and landed in the sink. Juliet wanted to wash her hands, badly—

  (Cleanliness is next to godliness)

  —but she didn’t want to spend another minute in this carnival sideshow, with attractions like red priests and Kathleen Turner impersonators.

  When she stepped back into the hall, she caught a glimpse of Colton as he disappeared into the men’s room. She quick-stepped in that direction, hugging the wall, and backed into the restroom after him.

  When she faced him, Colton already had his fly down and his pelvis thrust into the urinal.

  He craned his neck to look at her. “Whoa, what’s wrong with you?”

  “Weird, weird, weirdy-type people.” Her heart continued to race. She couldn’t remember if it had calmed in between the red priest and Deathbed Kathleen Turner, but she didn’t think so.

  Now, standing in the men’s room of a Waffle House and watching her hubby piss into a wall, she began to laugh. Whether her sudden joviality was a nervous outburst, the realization that a chatty restaurant employee on an illegitimate smoke break was nothing to be worried about, or the insanity of the situation truly setting in, she didn’t know.

  “You’re the only weirdo I’m seeing right now. Get out of here before some stranger comes walking in. We guys are infamous for whipping out our hoses before we get to the fire.”

  “Nope. Nu-huh. I’m bound to stumble upon Laurel and Hardy running away from the Wolfman out there.”

  “What’s gotten into you?” He shook off, flushed, and went to the sink—

  (Cleanliness is next to godliness)

  —to wash his hands.

  Juliet felt faint. The way her pulse was throbbing in her temples, her blood pressure had to be through the roof.

  You’ve gone crazy. Deathbed Kathleen Turner was nothing to worry about, and neither was that priest. You’re acting foolish. This situation with Colton’s infidelity has you mistrusting people and jumping at shadows.

  “Oh,” Colton said, meeting her eyes in the mirror, “did you see that dude in the priest getup? Is that what freaked you out? I think he’s the one driving the Mercury I passed earlier.”

  They had passed the Merc with the vanity plate, hadn’t they? Juliet fought to remember whether or not the car had overtaken them again. The interstate had been empty, though, and she would have recalled the return of the red priest, if he was the Merc’s driver after all.

  JXSAVES… I DO NOT

  Colton finished washing his hands and faced her. “You look like shit. You feel all right?”

  “Are you done? Can we leave?”

  “Lemme tell
the lady to put my coffee in a to-go cup, and, sure, we can go.”

  “Hurry up.”

  “She had to put on a new pot. It might be a—”

  “Just hurry. Please.”

  Juliet spun on her heel and exited the men’s room. As she passed the booths and then the bar/grill area, she noticed the small-framed, greasy-looking woman who had joined the big-breasted cook behind the counter. The new lady flashed Juliet a yellow smile and waggled nicotine-stained fingers at her as Juliet pushed through the exit. As the door swung shut, she thought she heard DKT call her a bitch.

  The Mercury was nowhere to be found. And neither was the red priest. She sighed in relief as she popped open her door and slid back into the passenger seat of the Subaru.

  Five minutes passed before Colton, blowing into the suck-hole of his coffee cup, rejoined her in the car.

  “Ready?” He shot her a smile through the steam rising from the Styrofoam mug.

  “Very funny. Drive. Now.”

  “I be honking, Miss Daisy.”

  “Shut up. That’s racist.”

  “Really?” Colton started the engine. “I had no idea. I’ll have to write my congressman to have that film stricken from public record.”

  She ignored him. He might have thought she’d momentarily misplaced the memory of his indiscretions, but they were still in the forefront of her mind, only now they were accompanied by a red priest piloting a black Mercury.

  JXSAVES …

  And I do not.

  4.

  The accident occurred on Highway 96, just outside of Fort Valley, Georgia, at two-fifty-three in the morning, between mile marker eight and a cross bearing the name of a girl who’d been killed by a drunk driver. A layer of thick fog covered the road, and a light drizzle made windshield wipers a necessary evil. The rubber smeared the mist instead of removing it, but to go without the wipers was to be blind, eaten up by an all-consuming gray scale maw. Colton left them squeaking.