The Big Both Ways Read Free Page B

chrome. He knelt down and touched it with the tip of his finger. It was blood.
    They didn’t speak while driving. A light rain began to fall as the sunrise poured over the fields and forests. Farmhouses showed dim lights through rippled windows. In one of the fields, Slip could make out the form of a lanky kid walking behind the loose-limbed cows ambling toward the barn.
    Still they didn’t speak. Slip kept rubbing his fingers together. He simultaneously thought of the soft flesh of her body and the blood on the bumper. He wanted out of the car and at the same time he wanted to drive with her straight through the night and on over the pass to the Columbia River country. He rubbed his finger against his thumb where the stickiness of the blood was still rough. Maybe it was just blood from that dog she hit back up the road, but the instant he thought it, he knew it couldn’t be true.
    After a few hours they traded places and Slip drove. Every once in a while Ellie would nod her head and tell him to take a particular turn. He didn’t know where they were going, but it didn’t matter because each mile gave him more time to think.
    Eventually there were street signs and small houses on little lots laid out in straight lines.
    “Pull in here,” she said, and he aimed the Lincoln into the driveway of a clapboard cottage with a willow tree dripping over the front porch. The ground beneath was a mâché of narrow yellow leaves no one had raked up the autumn before. An ugly terrier with an infected cut across his snout pulled against his chain in the corner of the yard. When they drove in, the dog stopped pulling and sniffed the air blindly. When Slip opened his door the dog began to growl.
    A screen door slammed against its hinges and a tall man in a wool coat came out on the porch.
    “What the fuck took you so long?” the man asked. He stared at Ellie from under the brim of his hat.
    Slip kept his eyes on the man. He was out of place on this sad little dairy farm. His hands were big and fleshy, with a Masonic ring girdling one of his fingers as if it were meant to cut it off. His shirt was clean but his tie was pulled aside. He gave the nervous appearance of someone who had been waiting a long time in a place he didn’t like. Slip didn’t know him and didn’t even know his type, but he was dangerous, of that he was certain.
    “And what the hell happened to your face?” the tall man barked.
    “I ran into a wall,” Ellie said, as Slip set the car’s brake.
    “I see you also got some help,” the tall man grumbled. “That wasn’t in the deal we talked about.”
    “I got the car stuck and needed the help. He doesn’t know a thing about our business,” and she opened the car door. “We could use some breakfast,” she said and started walking up to the porch.
    A short, fireplug of a man in only his shorts and undershirt walked out behind the tall man. The little man was unshaven and carried himself like a heavyweight boxer who had been shrunk down in the wash.
    “You get me what I want. Then we’ll talk about breakfast.”
    “Just some coffee, and a biscuit if you have one. That’s all we need.” She looked over at Slip, whose eyes were darting back and forth between the two men. Her expression was pleading, her eyes begging him to say nothing.
    A young woman with stringy black hair stepped out onto the porch. She held a baby cocked on her hip in a way that made Slip think she had lots of babies in the house. The short man rolled his shoulders toward her and hissed, “Get that child back inside, Ida.” The tired woman turned and went back inside. When the screen door banged against the unpainted door frame, the baby in her arms started to cry.
    “We won’t be long, I promise,” Ellie said to Slip, and then walked behind the car and opened the trunk with a key. She rummaged in the back. Another dog came slinking around the corner of one of the sheds and growled at the rear end of the car.
    “Hush now,”