All the Beautiful Sinners. Stephen Graham Jones
wheel with both hands, to keep the car straight. It was foolish. He started laughing and turned the stereo up, the mechanized hum of another world.
A mile marker folded under the car, scraped the oil pan, tore out the belly of the muffler.
It didn’t matter.
The handcuffs. He had to get the handcuffs off first. He could do it with a paper clip, he knew, but to get it into the lock he’d have to hold it in his teeth, and the sound of metal on enamel, it would bleed out his ear, and the blood would collect in the dead space over his collarbone and congeal there, and then everyone would know who he was, what he’d done.
The dry heads of the grass were silk rubbing against the rough Chevrolet frame.
He thought about leaving the car in low then running ahead, holding the chain of the handcuffs in the path of the rim he was pushing. The rim’s edge was sharp and raw and hot by now. He’d have to tie the steering wheel over with a rag. And set the accelerator somehow. And then pull his arm out before the rim rolled to his shoulder. And then catch the car.
He drove.
Fifteen miles per hour, bits of hot rubber slinging themselves up onto the hood in defeat, or surrender. Once a big truck honked at him the whole time it was passing. He stared after it, trying to memorize the mural that had been on the side. For future reference. For standing next to that particular driver at a long row of urinals, the wall before them not yet splattered with blood and grey matter, the more particular shades of regret.
The next town was two miles away. Kalvesta. It was on the way to Lydia. Lydia was where he was going. He’d forgotten for a while—driving north and east, fast, away from Texas, any way—but now he remembered again: Lydia.
Then, like the tire wasn’t bad enough, pushing it through the tall grass and soft earth spun the water pump out, the bearing in there reeling silver angel hair out against the race.
He could hear it, feel all the heat building up in the engine.
Two miles.
The Impala limped into town on three tires, favoring the tender steel rim. He nosed it into a service station, pulled the hood open from under the dash. Steam billowed up into the sky. He still had the handcuffs on.
Before anything else—the station attendant approaching, shielding himself from the steam with a small, red rag—he had to protect the children. He did. He turned into a white person so as not to attract attention—White—all his hair telescoping into his scalp, pressing on his brain so that he had to set his teeth against it, hard, then broke the round key off in the trunk lock, using both hands because of the six-inch chain between his wrists. He had his shirt hanging from the chain, wrapped in his hands. Like he’d used it to twist the radiator cap off a few minutes ago.
He followed the side of the car around to the open hood. The station attendant was trying to see through the steam. He looked up, the brim of his dingy brown hat framing his eyes. They were blue. The stitching on his shirt read TAYLOR.
“I’d say she’s one hot bitch, yep,” Taylor said, pushing his hat back on his head to see under the hood better.
“You don’t know me,” Amos croaked, shaking his head no, please. “I’m White.”
And now Taylor was studying him, it felt like.
There was only one thing to do.
Amos reached under the hood and placed his bare palm against the radiator cap. The skin sizzled, curling back from the heat, and he fell to his knees, mouth open in a scream, just no sound.
“Holy—” Taylor said, didn’t get to finish because the water was pressuring out from under the cap. It was like a sprinkler head now. In hell.
Amos backed off, holding his hand—his hands, chained together—close to his stomach, staring his eyes wide.
Taylor dove for the water hose, pointing Amos inside, to the garage. Something about a first-aid kit on the wall.
Amos turned, stumbled into the cool, dank air of the garage, and stood among the tools. His hand didn’t hurt anymore, never had. Not really, not him. He became Indian again and slowly removed the Def Leppard shirt from the chain of the handcuffs and straightened it on the hood of a Cutlass. It was his favorite shirt, the one concert he’d ever been to.
The chain he set on a vise. The vise was welded to a three-inch pipe, the pipe set in concrete poured into an old seventeen-inch Ford wheel. There were probably bolt cutters here somewhere, a torch even, but the vise would work. He took a slag hammer by the very end of the handle, to make the most of the six inches of motion he had, then fixed the chain in the vise and tried to hit it with the hammer, missed, came down on the table instead, throwing sparks.
Right next to the vise was a bench grinder, with a foot pedal. Amos smiled. He wasn’t White. He held the leading edge of the slag hammer under the grinder until it was shiny sharp, a flat point, then worked it between one of the links of the chain, started twisting, passing the handle of the hammer from one hand to the other. After three revolutions, the chain snapped; his hands fell free. And then he looked at the hammer, past it to Taylor, the Impala.
Kalvesta. This was Kalvesta.
Maybe they wouldn’t mind if he stayed here an hour or two.
FIVE30 March 1999, Gove, Kansas
The old man was standing in front of the convenience store. It was six o’clock maybe. The fluorescents under the awning made the late, light snow look whiter than it was. The tires of Jim Doe’s Bronco crunched it down. He’d been in four-wheel drive for miles, now, the gas gauge diving. He’d been so alone in his lane that he hadn’t even had to pull over to lock the hubs. He’d just done it in the road. This was Kansas.
The old man looked up out of his pea coat collar at Jim Doe. The old man was Indian. Jim Doe nodded. His deputy jacket wasn’t thick enough for the wind. Opening the glass door, he lowered his head into the old snow whipping around the corner, but his hat was still in Texas and he got a face full of hair instead. His own. The tip ends bit into his eyes. The old man was still watching him.
“What town is this?” Jim Doe called out.
The old man looked around.
“Glove,” he said. Maybe. Or dove. Like the bird. His voice was clipped, from the reservation.
“What?” Jim Doe asked.
Love?
The old man pointed at the sign above the store. Between gusts of white it read GOVE QUICKSTOP.
Jim Doe nodded at the old man again, in thanks, and stepped in. Gove. It was up towards 70, on the map. Just west of Trego Center, where nobody’d seen the longhair either. There was no trail, just miles and miles of blacktop spooling out over the prairie.
“Usually snow this late?” Jim Doe asked the girl behind the counter.
She didn’t even look up from her magazine. “Weird year,” she said. “Like last one, y’know?”
The girl popped her gum to show she was done talking.
Jim Doe looked out at the old man, still standing there. The Bronco was idling, its exhaust curling up past the tailgate, the snow falling on the hood turning into individual droplets of water. But it kept falling there anyway.
“Who’s he?” he asked the clerk.
She still wasn’t looking up. “Who?” she said.
Jim Doe stared at her.
“Coffee’s there,” she pointed. At the side of the store, just past the fountain drinks. Her nail was perfect red. Joe followed it, poured one cup, then another, pressed the lids down onto the white foam lips.
At the checkout counter he asked if they got many out-of-towners this time of year.
The girl finally looked