LITMIR.BIZ

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and white with fluorescent lights and colorful packaging on the shelves of plenty – but it’s all empty, he wanted to scream. All this shit is nothing. But he kept a hold of himself, steered himself between the aisles and the Halloween decorations and picked up the things he needed: cigarettes, a bottle of water for the truck, Skittles for Charlie, and soda. He found a pair of shoes in the kids’ section. Sneakers with superheroes on them, although he wavered between Batman and Spiderman. What did Charlie like? He didn’t even know.

      It didn’t matter, he thought. Even if Charlie was Ryan’s kid. He could step up. Every kid needs a father figure, a stable home. Not a car.

      ‘Will that be all, sir?’ the cashier said with a smile as automatic as the sliding doors. He managed to say thank you and get out of there.

      But the parking space where he’d left them was empty. He closed his eyes. In case this was one of his hallucinations. But the car was still gone when he opened them. He stood there, the plastic bag with his purchases dangling from his hand.

      ‘She took off,’ said the woman in the RV, leaning through the lace curtains, as if he couldn’t see with his own eyes. Crowing about it.

      ‘I can see that,’ Clayton said, trying not to cry. ‘I’ll give you these smokes if you tell me which way she went.’

      She eyed the shopping bag and turned Judas quicker than you can change the channel. ‘Took off east. Back roads, I reckon.’

      ‘I reckon you’d be right.’ He tossed her the pack of cigarettes.

      ‘Menthol,’ she said, disgusted.

      He might be able to catch her if he hurried. How far could she have got in that rattletrap car?

      He roared through the deserted streets, through the suburbs with their neat little houses and manicured lawns, and onto the road out of town. A dull noise filled his head, like static on the TV swallowing up the rest of the picture, the same way fog was coming up from the lake, a white drift lapping at the edge of the tarmac. The needle on his accelerator leapt up to 60, 70. He lost himself in the driving, caught somewhere half-asleep, half-awake, the truck gulping down the miles of dark road.

      Until he came round the corner on a road in the woods, and saw her tail lights up ahead, between the trees and the fog. He drove up right behind her to make sure, close enough to see the galloping silver horse on the badge on the trunk. He flashed his lights to tell her to slow down. He just wanted to talk.

      He saw the silhouette of Charlie’s wild curls twist round in the passenger seat. She rolled down the window and stuck out her hand, waving for him to pass, even as the Colt sped up. He accelerated until he was right behind her and then veered out so that he could pull up next to her, winding the window down. He could hear her transmission screaming. No way she could keep this up. The needle nudged up to 80, 85.

      ‘What the hell are you doing? You’re gonna trash your house, Lou,’ he yelled. It was the wind that pricked tears in his eyes.

      She gave him the finger, stabbing it into the air. Then she lost control of the car. The Colt swerved violently and her mouth pulled into a perfect O of surprise. He looked back at the road, just in time to see feral eyes glowing in the darkness and then something leapt up like a shadow and punched a hole through the windscreen, coming down hard on the canopy above his head.

      He ducked instinctively and let go the wheel, and the truck shot off the road, bounced heavily through the ditch and plunged into the woods with a sound like cheap wallpaper ripping right through.

      Leaves, he realized, not wallpaper, and branches thrashing against the windows. He tried to pump the brakes, to steer a course through the dark foliage, veering away from the big trees that loomed up in the mist, the ones that would crumple the truck like an accordion, obeying the laws of velocity. He didn’t want to die like this, alone in the woods.

      Branches snapped off against the truck and the thing on top flopped around obscenely, thudding against the roof. He let go, let the truck steer where it wanted, let the woods take him.

      He watched in the rear-view mirror for Lou’s headlights, because surely she would come back for him, but the road was far behind him now, the trees shrinking his view of it, like a porthole.

      The truck slowed and finally came to a stop, kissing up against a huge black willow and rocking back, leaving scrapings of paint on the bark. Clayton felt a sense of terrible calm looking out through the spiderwebbed cracks in the windscreen and the gray fog. There are limits, he thought. Something soft and heavy slid off the roof of the truck onto the ground.

      He got out the truck. Gravity felt different. Walking on the moon. Lou was probably making her way toward him right now with a flashlight, picking her way along the trail of devastation his truck had left through the undergrowth, holding Charlie’s hand because she wouldn’t leave him in the car. Charlie would be sucking his thumb, Clayton thought, trying to be brave for his momma. The thought of that frightened little kid made his heart break. He’d make it up to him, reward him with Skittles and the Spiderman sneakers. Hell, he’d go back and buy the Batman ones too, and it would become a family story they would tell at Thanksgiving. ‘Remember that time Uncle Clay crashed his truck in the woods and we had to go looking for him in the fog.’ (He wouldn’t ask the boy to call him Dad, not if he didn’t want to.)

      ‘Lou! Hey, Louanne, I’m over here,’ he shouted into the gray, the restlessly shifting trees. But there was no flashlight, no answering yell. They’re not supposed to be out here, none of them, so far from civilization. Strange things can happen if you stray off the road.

      He could hear a rasping breath. Shadows moved in the mist, or maybe it was all inside him, his own breath. He kept his hand on the truck because the fog was so thick he didn’t know if he would be able to find his way back if he let go. His fingers were numb. The flecks of paint marking the tree started wriggling into the wood like maggots. They burned from inside, spreading to other trees.

      ‘Louanne,’ he whispered. ‘Charlie?’ He listened hard, trying to hold his own breath. He felt as if something was walking with him, that if he put his hand out, he would touch its shoulder. He thought about all the things in his toolbox in the back of his truck that he could use as a weapon.

      He worked his way round to the front, where the noise was coming from. The pale streamers of the headlights lit up swirls and ripples of bark, and a trembling flank, brown fur with white spots.

      He didn’t think Lou was coming. He thought maybe she had turned into that vicious little cat, and carried Charlie away by the scruff of his neck.

      The deer raised its head and looked at him with black eyes.

      ‘It’s all right,’ he said, kneeling down, putting his hand on the animal’s warm neck. He could feel the life and strength of it under his palm. It panicked at his touch, kicking out, trying to get to its feet. But there was too much wreckage inside.

      He felt like he was falling into its eyes. There were doors opening in the trees all around him, a door swinging open in his head.

      Not yours, he thought. Nothing’s yours.

      ‘It’s all right,’ he said again, stroking the animal’s neck. It shivered at his touch, but it didn’t try to kick again. He didn’t know why, but he was crying again. Fat tears slid down the side of his nose and onto its hide.

      ‘I know how to do this.’

       I dreamed I was a dream of a dream.

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 10

       Detroit Diamonds

      The window of Rocket Coffee gives Jonno the perfect view of the hollow shell of the Michigan Central Train Station. The Acropolis

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