Strange Highways

she doing in the trunk?"
     "I had the tarp. I couldn't leave her there."
     "You should've gone for the sheriff."
     "I couldn't leave her there alone on the road. I was scared, Joey, confused and scared. Even your big brother can get scared." P.J. raises his head from Joey's, lets go of him, gives him a little space for the first time. Looking worriedly toward the house, P.J. says, "Dad's at the window, watching us. We stand here like this much longer, he's going to come out to see what's wrong."
     "So maybe you couldn't leave her there on the road, but after you put her in the trunk and came back to town, why didn't you go to the sheriff's office?"
     "I'll explain it all, tell you the whole thing," P.J. promises. "Let's just get in the car. It looks strange, us standing here in the rain so long. We get in the car, turn on the engine, the radio, then he'll think we're just having a private chat, a brother thing."
     He puts one suitcase in the trunk with the dead woman. Then the other. He slams the trunk lid.
     Joey can't stop shaking. He wants to run. Not to the house. Into the night. He wants to sprint into the night, through Asherville and across the whole county, on to places he's never been, to towns where no one knows him, on and on into the night. But he loves P.J., and P.J. has always been there for him, so he's obligated at least to listen. And maybe it'll all make sense. Maybe it isn't as bad as it looks. Maybe there's hope for a good brother who will take the time to listen. He's only being asked for time, to listen.
     P.J. locks the trunk and takes the keys out of it. He puts his hand against the back of Joey's neck and squeezes lightly, partly as a gesture of affection, partly to urge him to move. "Come on, kid. Let me tell you about it, all about it, and then we'll try to figure out what's the right thing to do. Come on, in the car. It's just me, just me, and I need you, Joey."
     So they get in the car.
     Joey takes the passenger seat.
     The car is cold, and the air is damp.
     P.J. starts the engine. Turns on the heater.
     The rain begins to fall harder than before, a real downpour, and the world dissolves beyond the windows. The interior of the car seems to shrink around them, humid and intimate. They are in a steel cocoon, waiting to metamorphose into new people and be reborn into an unguessable future.
     P.J. tunes the radio until he finds a station that is coming in clear and strong.
     Bruce Springsteen. Singing about loss and the difficulty of redemption.
     P.J. turns down the volume, but the music and the words are as melancholy when played softly as they are when played louder.
     "I figure the sonofabitch must've kidnapped her," P.J. says, "been holding her somewhere in the woods, in a shack or a hole somewhere, raping her, torturing her. You read about that sort of thing. Year by year there's more of it. But who'd ever think it would happen here, in a place like Asherville? She must've gotten away from him somehow when he let his guard down."
     "What did he look like?"
     "Rough."
     "What's that mean?"
     "Dangerous. He looked dangerous, a little crazed. He was a big guy, maybe six four, a good two hundred forty pounds. Maybe it's a good thing I didn't catch up with him. He could've creamed me, Joey, that's how big he was. I'd probably be dead now if I'd caught up with him. But I had to try, couldn't just let him run away without trying to bring him down. Big guy with a beard, long greasy hair, wearing dirty jeans, a blue flannel shirt with the tail hanging out."
     "You have to take her body to the sheriff, P.J. You have to do that right now."
     "I can't, Joey. Don't you see? It's too late now. She's in my trunk. It could look like I was hiding her there until you found her by accident. All sorts of interpretations could be put on it - and none of them good. And I don't have any proof that I saw the guy chasing her."
     "They'll find proof. His footprints, for one thing. They'll search the woods out there, find the place where he was keeping her."
     P.J. shakes his head. "In this weather, the footprints have all been washed away. And maybe they won't find where he was keeping her, either. There's no guarantee. I just can't take the chance. If they don't turn up any proof, then all they have is