"Well, I sure as h.e.l.l can't take you with me. I drive all the time. I don't even have a house! I live in this truck. I can't take you with me." She had him repeating himself. It wasn't like she was stupid. What was wrong with her thinking he'd want her along permanently? That wasn't in the game plan. He hated explaining these things to women. She didn't seem bothered that he wanted her gone because she wasn't going. This wasn't how it was played.

"I'm yours now, Bastine. I belong to you. The thing is, it's always been meant for us to be together."

"Hey, wait a minute, wait one G.o.dd.a.m.n minute. What kind of horses.h.i.t is this? I don't own n.o.body. I don't want to own n.o.body. You don't belong to me, okay? I'm perfectly willing to give you a couple hundred to help you out, but no way do you go with me. I don't have meaningful relationships and all that silly yuppie s.h.i.t. This was just a one-night stand, you understand? Shaw?"

She was dressing, pretending to ignore him.

"Shaw? Did you hear what I said? You can't go."

"I can't go, you can't go," she said conversationally. She pulled on black suede slippers and crawled into the pa.s.senger seat. She looked at him and there wasn't a trace of humor on her face now. "I'm yours, Bastine. I'm yours forever."

Bastine mumbled, "I can't talk to the b.i.t.c.h," and flung open the cab door. He jumped down to the pavement and stalked to the cafe for breakfast. He'd deal with her later when he had a full stomach and four aspirin for the headache she'd caused to bloom over his temples. Crazy woman. Forever? Nothing was forever, and if she was old enough, she'd know that. His s.e.xual unionsa"for that is what they werea" never turned out this way. They cried sometimes and they begged, but they never acted so cool and in control this way.

When he came back after eating and brushing his teeth in the men's room, he found Shaw sitting right where he'd left her in the pa.s.senger seat of his truck. He took a deep breath and got into the driver's seat. "This ain't gonna work," he warned. "I don't want you along, you got that? I didn't sign up for a lifetime of c.r.a.p from some woman. I didn't put a ring on your finger and waltz you to the church. Now, you're gonna have to get out of my truck or I'll call the cops. You know how long they stuff you in jail for prost.i.tution in a truck stop? You got any f.u.c.king idea how much trouble you're gonna be in?"

"You do that and I'll have to hurt you, Bastine."

He laughed and it wasn't even funny. He lowered his voice. "You don't want to threaten me, kid. I'm a mean son of a b.i.t.c.h when I want to be. You oughta know that already. Look at your arms! Look what I already done to you."

Shaw lifted a small handgun from her lap and pointed it at him. "I go with you or you don't go."

"Jesus H. Harrowing Christ. What do you think you're gonna do with that peashooter? Don't make me laugh." Though he talked tough, Bastine felt his insides quaking and his breakfast wanted up and out. If she shot him, he might live through the gunshot wound, but he'd die on the spot of a heart attack. Guns scared h.e.l.l out of him. He had a brief crazy urge to leap through the truck window.

Shaw leaned over the console and pressed the barrel end of the gun against his thigh. "Bastine? You believe me, don't you? I don't want to hurt you, but I will, I swear I will."

Bastine sucked air over his teeth and let it out slowly. "Okay, okay. I'm laid up here the weekend. I dump this load Monday in Tallulah. We'll talk this over until then."

"Good," she said, removing the pistol and slipping it into a small black purse. "Now, how would you like to go inside the truck stop with me so I can eat my breakfast."

Bastine nodded. The whole bizarre incident was clicking fast into place in his mind. The girl who called herself Shaw was a psychopath, unlike himself, who he considered, in contemplative moods, as nothing more than a little warped out of the normal pattern. Shaw was the real thing. She was the walking, talking embodiment of Loony Tunes.

She slept most of the day while he read a Louis L'Amour western. They ate a spare dinner, he picking at his food, she nibbling at a chicken salad sandwich.

"Why are you so quiet, Bastine? Don't you like me anymore? I don't want this silence between us."

"Tell me, Shaw, what this is all about, can you? I mean, I'm not a prize or anything. I make lousy money. I live on the road. Why me?"

Shaw leaned her head to the side to study him. "I'll tell you later. As a surprise. It'll be lovely."

"Is it the s.e.x? I mean, h.e.l.l, lots of guys will give it to you rough, if that's it. You'd be surprised how many guys will do what you want. You're a d.a.m.n pretty girl." Maybe a little flattery would get him off the hook.

She simply smiled her mysterious smile and returned to her sandwich.

Bastine hung his head, thoughts black, the anger coming from nowhere to press against the tight, hot band of his skull. "Let's go to bed," he said, standing with the meal ticket, taking out his wallet to pay the bill.

Shaw slipped on the sungla.s.ses. She took his arm and he let her, though he felt like breaking her fingers one at a time.

Hours later, o.r.g.a.s.ms later, Bastine hovered above Shaw's sweat-slathered body. "You know I don't want you," he said. "You know you can't stay with me."

She moaned and pulled him down onto her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, holding him tightly in her arms. She moved her hips until his limp organ swirled inside her, then began to harden. Again.

"Oh, Bastine, you're like a wild beast. I always knew you were. I saw it in you even when you were young. .."

Her words turned Bastine to granite. He felt a shock travel down through his arms into his frozen hands. "What are you talking about? Who are you? What's your name?" With each question his voice rose until he was shouting. "Who are you?"

Shaw rolled from beneath him and drew the crumpled sheet between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. She gnawed on the tip of the sheet, her eyes like coals in the dark. "I should tell you the secret now, yes, Bastine, it's time."

"What the h.e.l.l is this all about? Where did you come from?"

"I'm from here, from the same parish as you. I grew up not far from your house. Remember the old Clancine place? I was Sandy then, Sandy Clancine. I went to school with you. But I was younger ... oh, I was so young and I was always trying to catch up with you, Bastine."

He sank back on the mattress, pressed his hands together in his lap. She was someone from his past. He hazily remembered the Clancine family. They lived as poorly as he, half a dozen kids running around barefoot in rags. He hated Louisiana. He should have known nothing good could come from it.

She continued in a dreamy, detached voice. "I used to sneak out to your place and watch your daddy. He hurt you bad, I saw him. And your mama, she was almost as terrible. That time . . . that time she helped your daddy with the rope in the backyard ... I saw that, Bastine. I prayed for you, that they'd let you down before you strangled. I would have attacked them if they hadn't let go of the rope. But I was so little. When I was ten you were already in your teens. But I knew all the secrets of everyone in the parish. I spent all my time hiding out so I could learn everything I could. Especially about you."

"What else did you see?" Bastine covered his face with his hands to keep the memories from flooding his head. Already the sleeper smelled of the outhouse to him, the air scented with a miasma of dirty, rotten things.

She rolled onto her back and reached out to touch his arm. "I saw you take out your hate on the animals, the wild things. How you went hunting, but you maimed things, then slowly killed them. I saw you turn on your brothers and devise new tortures for them. I saw you with . . . girls. When you started dating, I would follow you out on the dirt paths into the forests, and I saw how you talked them into things, how sometimes it got out of hand, and you had them scared of you. I saw how you mastered them, how you controlled them.

"I wanted to be those girls, Bastine. I wanted to be your one girl. I had to wait until I was old enough to attract you, but you left. That day you packed your things and fled the parish, I cried for a week. My folks couldn't do anything with me. I stopped going to school. I started thinking about you day and night. I knew we belonged together."

"So our meeting wasn't accidental?"

She shook her head. "I've been coming to this truck stop every night or so for a long, long time, Bastine. I knew what company you worked for. I've been waiting. All this time."

Understanding made Bastine raise his face from his hands. "You brought the gun because you knew I'd try to make you leave."

"Yes. I didn't want to, but I couldn't take a chance of losing you again. You understand, don't you, Bastine? You forgive me, don't you? You may punish me if you want. I know I haven't any rights .. ."

"I don't know about this, Shaw. I... no one's ever... all that stuff that happened when I was a kid . . ."

"Shh." She reached up and touched his lips with her own. "Take me with you, Bastine. Don't make me go away. I'll die if you do. Please. I've waited so long, all my life."

Bastine wanted to punish her for insinuating herself into his life, and at the same time he wanted to hold on to her to keep her from leaving again. He'd never had anything of his own except the truck. "Let me think," he said. "I can't promise."

She brought his left palm to her face and pressed it against her lips. "You can't live without me any more than I can live without you. We belong together."

He cradled her in his arms and tried to imagine the future. There would be a thousand secrets they could share, a thousand nights they could make electrifying.

On Sunday he and Shaw spent most of their time together reminiscing. The lengths she had gone to in order to shadow him as he grew up in the parish were beyond anything he thought possible. That's when she'd changed her name, she told him, using "Shaw," the shortened form of the word "shadow."

Near sunset Shaw leaned forward and peered out the windshield. "See that girl?"

Bastine stared. It was a Lot Lizard crossing the back lot. She was scanning the cabs, waiting for a signal of headlights to indicate the offer of a job. "Sure, I see her. Disease carrier."

"Oh, you're a cruel man. They're not all so bad. I even did it now and then to keep body and soul together while I waited for you to come through. I know these girls. And I have an idea for tonight if you're willing."

"Yeah? Like what?" Just the thought of a new s.e.xual game made the blood rise to his head.

"Let's take her to your old place."

"What?"

"Let's offer her some money and drive her out to the swamp. We can have some fun and we can kill some ghosts at the same time. You do feel the ghosts out there, don't you? We shouldn't leave here and take them with us. It'll spoil our future together."

Bastine shivered where he sat. "I don't wanna talk about that. I don't think about. . . them ... if I can help it."

"But you could go back if I was with you, couldn't you? It would be fun, Bastine. We'll play with the girl. Chase her. There's so many places there she can get lost and so many places I know where to hide. It would be terrifying!"

Bastine considered the proposition. Ever since he'd walked into the truck stop his entire life had taken a decided tilt. He felt he was moving on a conveyor belt on a slight angle up to the top floor of a malevolent fun house. What Shaw proposed scared him, but at the same time it thrilled him to imagine the things they could do. And he did need to slay, for all time, the lingering, tormenting visages of his mother and his father.

"She looks sweet and vulnerable," Shaw said. "We'd better hurry."

Yes, he thought. Yes, yes, oh Christ, things were different now. He could have Shaw and the girl too, he could make them his slaves for the night, send them with torches to light the forest like nymphs dispatched by a G.o.d. They could be his audience while he spent his rage on the land that stole half his life.

"Yes," he said, climbing from the cab. "I'll get her. Wait here."

"I'll pay extra because it'll be a threesome," Bastine told the girl, holding her around the waist as he walked her to his truck. She was slim with small b.r.e.a.s.t.s, short bleached hair, a dimple in her chin. She made him think of a cured ham, plain, bony, but st.u.r.dy, enough meat for a meal.

"I don't mind anything if there's enough money," she said. Her voice was high and piping, the trill of a monkey. An annoying sound that Bastine immediately decided to tune out as soon as he had the preliminaries completed. Let Shaw talk to her.

"And you don't mind we drive out to my old home place, huh? It's not far. We'll have room there. Can't move around much, not three of us, in my G.o.dd.a.m.n sleeper."

She laughed easily enough. "Naw, I don't mind. We don't wanna crowd each other, hon."

Shaw had moved into the sleeper and let the girl take the pa.s.senger seat. Bastine unhitched his load and slid the rig from beneath it. He bobtailed it out of the truck stop while the girl, who called herself Dory, babbled in her tinny voice to Shaw. He wished he could erase her dimple. And he had to silence that noise coming out of her mouth.

He had not forgotten the dirt and mud back roads that led to the old house. He'd dreamed of it often enough since he'd left.

When he pulled into the bare ground of the front yard, mud clung to the rig's wheels and coated the mud flaps. The headlights outlined the leaning porch, the grimy windows where curtains had never hung.

"b.i.t.c.h of a place," Dory said. "Creepy."

"Let's go check it out." Shaw pressed the girl through the door and crawled out behind her.

Bastine picked up his flashlight and turned off the motor. He couldn't stop shaking. They were plunged into darkness unrelieved by starlight. Bare trees hung with Spanish moss circled the yard like hairy skeletons, and above their heads the sky was black as the oil in his truck's crankcase.

He heard Shaw calling him and swung the light toward her. "I'm not sure this was such a great idea," he said. A burning tenseness bunched the muscles of his neck as if to ward off a blow from behind. He fiercely controlled the idiotic urge to turn and check for an a.s.sailant. He made sure Dory stood next to Shaw. He must keep them in sight at all times. That's what he had to do when he was at home. Keep them in sight. Never let them get the advantage. They were always sneaking up and surprising him, grabbing his collar and hauling him off his feet, the willow switch swinging in that blurred arc to sprinkle his back and legs with furious sparks of pain.

"It's going to be all right," Shaw said. She gestured toward him, pulling him forward with invisible strings. "It's going to be fun, Bastine. Remember? We can kill the fear. We can murder it here where it was born."

"What's that mean?" Dory's high-pitched voice rose another register. "What's wrong with him anyway? Why's he acting so funny?"

"You just do as you're told." Shaw's harsh retort shut the girl up. "This is our night and you do what we want you to do, you got that?"

"Sure. Whatever you say."

Bastine lifted the light beam to the porch steps. He watched the two girls climb them, testing each riser before treading on the next. The creaks were loud and grating.

Creaks. His father approaching. When he was hiding in the cubbyhole beneath the kitchen sink. He could hear him, feel his imminent presence through the bare floorboards. There was always something he had done or hadn't done, something he'd forgotten or something he'd ruined, for which he was to be punished. Holding his breath didn't work. Begging for mercy made it last longer. Nothing saved him, ever.

"Come, Bastine. Come with us inside."

He settled the light beam on Shaw's face and did not recognize her for several seconds. She was fiercely ugly. Her face was all stark planes and protruding k.n.o.bs.

"Come, Bastine. Don't be afraid."

Oh, that's what they always said, the motherf.u.c.kers, the c.o.c.ksucking b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. Don't be afraid, we won't hurt you, we just want to talk to you, Daddy's not going to use his belt, Mama's not mad at you, you didn't do anything wrong, Bastine. They lied!

"Liar," he whispered.

"No, Bastine. Don't get upset. Come inside first. We have Dory with us, remember? Dory, go get him. Take his hand."

"I'm not sure . . . uh . . ."

"Do it!"

The girl skipped down the steps and grabbed for Bastine's free hand. She turned to pull him up the steps. He resisted. She tugged, grunting.

Bastine finally relented and let himself be led up the steps that creaked, across the porch boards that threw him off balance, and to the door where Shaw ran a soothing hand down his chest to cup his crotch. "Soon, Bastine. Inside. Push the door open for us."

Bastine turned his shoulder in to it and the door gave with a sharp crack, then stuck. He had to push again, wood sc.r.a.ping wood as they walked single file into the big dusty room.

Though it was empty except for beer bottles and trash left over from squatters, Bastine watched for someone to slither from the darkness. Every time he swung the light, the dark followed and swallowed the area again. They could be there. Dead or not, they could certainly still be waiting and watching just as always. He hadn't any evidence that they couldn't. Or they could be through the doorway, hiding in the kitchen. Or in the pantry there. Or in the hall closet. Or in one of the two bedrooms. They could even be in the room with the tub, hiding in it. They had to be somewhere because he felt them.

"You're shaking, sugar," Dory said, taking his hand again. "Maybe we should go back to the truck. There's a mattress there and there ain't nothing here. This is one spooky trip."

"Shut up," Shaw said. "We want to do it here. In this house. You'll just have to accept that."

"It's pretty dirty. There might be snakes . . ."

Bastine couldn't take the banging pain of her voice any longer. He reached out reflexively with the flashlight and smashed her in the mouth. Oh G.o.d, he hadn't meant... he really didn't mean . . . She screamed and that anch.o.r.ed him to the present long enough to know what he had done.

"Easy, baby," Shaw said. "Go slow now. We want a long night, don't we?"

Dory was on her knees, hands to face, blood dripping onto the floor. She was moaning and swaying. Bastine leaned down and laid his hand on her hair like a benediction. "I didn't mean it."

He told his mama and daddy that so often, it was a litany he repeated silently in his mind sometimes for days on end. I didn't mean it. I didn't mean it. I won't do it again. I didn't mean it.

Dory spluttered through her torn mouth, "You hith me, you p.r.i.c.kth. You hurth me bad!" She was crying now, loudly, and spitting rusty sputum on the floor.

"Shut up," Shaw said. "Come on, Bastine, let's look through the rest of the rooms while Dory takes care of herself. Stay put," she said to the girl.

Bastine followed docilely behind, the light moving just ahead of Shaw's feet, now and then coming up to outline a doorway, a cabinet with a hanging door, a sink with rust stains, a bedspring sitting alone in the center of a bedroom. Dust filled his nostrils and made his throat feel raw. He kept jumping at the screech of rats that clawed and raced across the floor. Far off, he heard bits and pieces of what Shaw said to him during the tour.

". . . saw you through that window at night. .. there's the door to the back ... the stove's still here . . . the flue in the fireplace is probably full of bird nests ... got to kill off the past... get rid of it for good . . . if you murder her, then maybe . .. I thought you needed that gift... that release ..."

Was she ... could she be talking about murder? Crossing the line. Killing the Lot Lizard. She couldn't possibly mean it.