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Junior’s bed, then you got the deluxe treatment. Usually
they put folks up on the cot in the sun parlor. They tell you how
he died?”
       “ She did. Martha
told me.”
        He was not
comfortable with this woman’s tone. He considered the mechanic and
his wife not just Good Samaritans, but friends.
       “ Football
accident?”
        He nodded. She
grinned and shook her head at a passing service station.
       “ Football, my ass. That boy died of an overdose, mister. They
just tell that story about his being hurt in a football scrimmage
to save face. By now they might believe it themselves.”
        He
recalled Martha’s puffy eyes and steely expression as she insisted
that God’s claim on her boy was no greater than her own. Could she
have felt her grief so deeply and yet lied?
       “ They kept him
going for a while on machines—like that girl you probably read
about in the papers. But he was just a vegetable. Thank God
somebody had the sense to pull the plug on him. Otherwise those
two’d still be sitting in that hospital. They had a wild kid there,
mister.
       “ They
still can’t believe it happened. That’s how come they haven’t
touched his room. They started taking in people like yourself,
accidents and breakdowns from the Turnpike, a little after Junior
died. I guess they get lonely in that big house all by themselves.
But I never heard of nobody getting to sleep in the boy’s own bed
before. They must have taken a real shine to you,” she concluded
with a sidelong grin.
        He found
himself grinning as well. He was still lightheaded, but he was no
longer ill-at-ease.
       “ Say,
you don’t mind we take a little detour?” she said, already slowing
down to turn. She took his silence and his smile, which seemed to
have become a permanent part of his face, for an answer and pulled
off the highway onto what looked like a dirt track, kicking up a
small thundercloud of dust. She bounced down the deeply rutted path
at what seemed the same clip as her highway speed. Tree branches
slapped angrily at the pickup, driving the priest away from the
open window. The woman seemed amused. She took one hand off the
steering wheel and laid it on his knee. “Not much of a country
boy,” she said. “My name’s Anne-Marie. What’s yours?”
        Her
breath reeked of cheap wine. But despite the liberty she was taking
and his terror of the branches lashing at him through the window,
he couldn’t seem to rid himself of his imbecilic grin.
        The
pickup skidded to a stop as the road seemed to just give out. There
was nothing ahead but forest, a low scrub that seemed to cover the
entire southern half of the state.
       “ Where
are we?” he said, reaching out the window to push a large pine
branch off the windshield.
        She put her hand
on his crotch. “What’s the matter, honey? Don’t you like
Anne-Marie?”
        Her
touch paralyzed him. Encouraged, she shimmied closer and began
fumbling with his fly.
       “ Don’t tell me
you wouldn’t like a free blow job?”
        His hand
suddenly snapped onto her wrist. Undaunted, she began to struggle
as if they were playing a game.
       “ You
like me a little,” she said, holding her own in what amounted to a
two-handed arm wrestle. “Let’s see the birdie you got in there.
Anne-Marie wants to see the birdie.”
        They
wrestled some more, then she abruptly gave up the contest and began
unbuttoning the man’s shirt she was wearing. “Want to feel me up
first?”
        Finally
finding his voice, he said, “My God, woman, don’t you realize I’m a
priest?”
       “ Priest?” She laughed and pulled the shirt open, exposing a
large brassiere decorated with tiny pink flowers. He instinctively
turned away—a mistake, because this gave her a chance to go on the
offensive again.
       “ Say,”
she said after they had again wrestled to a draw, “you ain’t one of
them faggots, are you?”