Runaway

“Hello there, Doc,” and went behind the bar.
    Grace believed that it would be like this—everywhere they went, there would be somebody Neil knew already.
    “You know it’s Sunday,” the man said in a raised, stern, almost shouting voice, as if he wanted to be heard out in the parking lot. “I can’t sell you anything in here on a Sunday. And I can’t sell anything to her, ever. She shouldn’t even be in here. You understand that?”
    “Oh yes, sir. Yes indeed, sir,” said Neil. “I heartily agree, sir.”
    While both men were talking, the man behind the bar had taken a bottle of whisky from a hidden shelf and poured some into a glass and shoved it to Neil across the counter.
    “You thirsty?” he said to Grace. He was already opening a Coke. He gave it to her without a glass.
    Neil put a bill on the counter and the man shoved it away.
    “I told you,” he said. “Can’t sell.”
    “What about the Coke?” said Neil.
    “Can’t sell.”
    The man put the bottle away, Neil drank what was in the glass very quickly. “You’re a good man,” he said. “Spirit of the law.”
    “Take the Coke along with you. Sooner she’s out of here the happier I’ll be.”
    “You bet,” Neil said. “She’s a good girl. My sister-in-law. Future sister-in-law. So I understand.”
    “Is that the truth?”
    They didn’t go back to Highway 7. Instead they took the road north, which was not paved, but wide enough and decently graded. The drink seemed to have had the opposite effect to what drinks were supposed to have on Neil’s driving. He had slowed down to the seemly, even cautious, rate this road required.
    “You don’t mind?” he said.
    Grace said, “Mind what?”
    “Being dragged into any old place.”
    “No.”
    “I need your company. How’s your foot?”
    “It’s fine.”
    “It must hurt some.”
    “Not really. It’s okay.”
    He picked up the hand that was not holding the Coke bottle, pressed the palm of it to his mouth, gave it a lick, and let it drop.
    “Did you think I was abducting you for fell purposes?”
    “No,” lied Grace, thinking how like his mother that word was.
Fell.
    “There was a time when you would have been right,” he said, just as if she had answered yes. “But not today. I don’t think so. You’re safe as a church today.”
    The changed tone of his voice, which had become intimate, frank, and quiet, and the memory of his lips pressed to, then his tongue flicked across, her skin, affected Grace to such an extent that she was hearing the words, but not the sense, of what he was telling her. She could feel a hundred, hundreds of flicks of his tongue, a dance of supplication, all over her skin. But she thought to say, “Churches aren’t always safe.”
    “True. True.”
    “And I’m not your sister-in-law.”
    “Future. Didn’t I say future?”
    “I’m not that either.”
    “Oh. Well. I guess I’m not surprised. No. Not surprised.”
    Then his voice changed again, became businesslike.
    “I’m looking for a turnoff up here, to the right. There’s a road I ought to recognize. Do you know this country at all?”
    “Not around here, no.”
    “Don’t know Flower Station? Oompah, Poland? Snow Road?”
    She had not heard of them.
    “There’s somebody I want to see.”
    A turn was made, to the right, with some dubious mutterings on his part. There were no signs. This road was narrower and rougher, with a one-lane plank-floored bridge. The trees of the hardwood forest laced their branches overhead. The leaves were late to turn this year because of the strangely warm weather, so these branches were still green, except for the odd one here and there that flashed out like a banner. There was a feeling of sanctuary. For miles Neil and Grace were quiet, and there was still no break in the trees, no end to the forest. But then Neil broke the peace.
    He said, “Can you drive?” and when Grace said no, he said, “I think you should learn.”
    He meant, right then. He stopped the car, got out and came around to her side, and she had to move behind the wheel.
    “No better place than this.”
    “What if something comes?”
    “Nothing will. We can manage if it does. That’s why I picked a straight stretch. And don’t worry, you do all the work with your right foot.”
    They were at the beginning of a long tunnel under the trees, the ground splashed with sunlight. He did not bother explaining anything about how cars ran—he simply showed her where to put her