Mad River

found the interview with Virgil on Channel Three. She watched it, growing increasingly angry, then said to Jimmy, who was lying on the floor with his head propped up on a pillow, “They said we had a sex encounter. What the fuck? Tom raped me, wasn’t no sex encounter.”
    “He’s telling his side of the story,” Sharp said.
    His head was clear now, and the fever had mostly disappeared. The wound didn’t look so good, but they were still spraying the Band-Aid stuff on it, and they’d convinced themselves that it was better.
    Becky was freaking out, and wouldn’t change channels, and wouldn’t put any more pornos into the DVD player. Jimmy said he liked them because they were funny, but she didn’t believe him.
    Anyway, it was two hours before the regular news came up, and she saw the interview again. This time she was ready, and she said to Jimmy, “I’m going out. I’m taking the gun.”
    Now he rolled toward her. “Don’t leave me.”
    “I’m not leaving you. I’m gonna drive into the gas station in Arcadia and I’m gonna get me a cell phone.”
    “From who?”
    “From whoever. Fuck this shit. Wasn’t no sex encounter.” She started to cry again.
    Jimmy looked at her and said, “Go on. Don’t bring the cops back.”
    •   •   •
    ARCADIA WAS A SMALL TOWN sixteen miles away, back in Bare County. Becky knew it because there was a park outside of town, with a small lake, a loop off the Mad River, and she and some kids from the high school had gone there on hot summer nights, with the cicadas going in the elm trees, and the fireflies out over the fields, to skinny-dip.
    She got a ball cap before she left the house, swept her hair up under it, to give herself a different look. Outside, checked the gas in the old man’s truck—it was more than half full—and took off, rolling carefully out the driveway, then turning west at the bottom of the hill. She stayed strictly on gravel roads, hunched over the steering wheel. Nobody was looking for that truck, but she knew about the National Guard roadblocks and didn’t want to run into one.
    And in fact, she saw one—a bundle of lights at a crossing a mile or so ahead of her, something you just didn’t see out on this part of the prairie, at eleven o’clock at night. When she dropped into a dip in the road, she turned off her headlights, and when she came to a side track, took it, weaving her way toward Arcadia in the starlight.
    When she got there, nothing was stirring. The only thing open was the gas station, with a single car parked by the pumps. She could see a man standing at the counter, chatting with the clerk, and waited across the street, impatient, until he wandered outside, got in the car, and drove off.
    Nothing else on the street. She got her guts up, did a U-turn into the station. Still nothing moving. She sat there for another minute, then got out with the pistol in her hand.
    The only sound was a faraway truck on the highway north of town. She walked past a flickering neon Bud Light beer sign to the front door, walked in with her head down, the bill of the ball cap covering her face. The counterman said, “Nice night.”
    She brought the gun up and pointed it at his chest, and she said, “Maybe not. Give me your cell phone.”
    He said, “You’re—”
    “That’s right. I’ll blow a hole clean through you if you look like you’re going for a gun or do anything I don’t tell you to do. Give me your cell phone.”
    The clerk was a tall thin boy with a prominent nose and a prominent Adam’s apple that bobbed up and down in fear. He said, “Don’t shoot me. Please don’t shoot me.”
    “Cell phone.”
    He dipped in his pocket and pulled out a cell phone. She handed him the slip of paper with the state cop’s number on it and said, “Call that number and tell them that you have to talk to Virgil Flowers. No, wait . . . first, get them grocery bags and fill them up with what I tell you.”
    She walked him through the store and got two plastic grocery bags full of candy bars and ice cream and Pepsi and corn chips and tortilla chips and salsa and dip and Hershey’s bars and Snickers and a carton of Marlboros.
    She had him put the sacks by the door and then waved the pistol at him and said, “Back to the counter. Call that number. Tell them your real name and tell them it’s an emergency and that you have to talk to Virgil Flowers. Got that? Virgil Flowers. Don’t tell them where you’re at, or I’ll blow