DRIFT AND SWERVE by Samuel Ligon

The highway was two concrete slabs with a deep drainage ditch between and on either side the most god awful eternity of corn and soy, soy and corn, maybe a cloud of pig stink to be driven through at seventy-five miles an hour, the windows down and the father smoking Camels and cigars and everybody filmed over with drying sweat and tired and full of their Stuckey’s still. The mother pulled herself upright in her seat and looked at the father. “What?” the father said.
“You know what.”
“I don’t know what,” the father said.
The tires fwapped over black goopy seams in the concrete.
“You know good and well she doesn’t like it in the house,” the mother said.
“Your brother brought it,” the father said. “Not me.”
“I don’t care who brought it.”
“Three beers apiece won’t make her hate me more than she already does,” the father said. “It’s too late for that.”
A buzz saw whine of cicadas came up over the road sounds, rose and fell away. Nobody was on the highway hardly. The sky seemed colorless before night.
“Too late for what?” the sister said, and the mother said, “Are you eavesdropping?” and the sister said, “No,” and the brother said, “Yeah, you were,” and the mother said, “Hush up, both of you,” and the father said, “Go on to sleep; we won’t be home ’til midnight.”
“I’m not tired,” the sister said, and then nobody said anything.
Sometime later, the brother spotted the drunk.
The vinyl seats were cooling, but the diesel stinking air was still heavy and hot.
The mother said, “Next time, I’ll fly on ahead. You can drive the kids down later.”
The father grunted, rubbed a yellowed handkerchief across the back of his neck.
“Maybe you can keep them at Jim’s or Uncle Buddy’s. It’ll be worse next time.”
“Look at that guy,” the brother said, pointing over the front seat.
“I thought I told you to hush,” the mother said.
The sister scooted to the center of the back seat and the brother pointed again. “See him?” he said.
Up ahead a car lurched and straightened, crept left, lurched right, and straightened.
The father said, “It’d be easier if she put the farm on the market now.” He was unwrapping a cigar, then licking it all over. “Get a better price.”
“You already got her in the ground, huh?”
He threw the balled up cellophane out the window.
“Litter bug,” the sister whispered, and the brother hushed her.
“I’m just saying, you might take a bad price if you try to unload it quick. Grieving and all. Far away.”
“Jim’ll do all that.”
“Uh-huh,” the father said. “Might as well give it away.”
“Maybe I just will,” the mother said.
The father held up his index finger between them. “That son of a buck is drunk,” he said, and the mother said, “Well maybe you shouldn’t encourage it then,” and the father bobbed his head toward the windshield until the mother saw it too. “Stay back, Boyd,” she said, and he wrapped both hands around the wheel.
“That’s what I was saying,” the brother said.
“Drunk driver,” the sister said.
The brother and sister leaned forward, their chins propped on the front seatback.
It was a blue Comet, one of the taillight lenses busted out and covered with red crepe paper, glowing pink.
“He’s slowing down,” the father said, and the mother said, “Well, keep back.”
The Comet held straight in the right lane awhile, then drifted and lurched, weaving around the center lines.
“Drunk driver!” the sister shrieked.
“Yes, Emily,” the mother said. “We know.”
“Here comes somebody,” the father said.
A truck was pulling up behind them, moving into the left lane to pass. The father pushed the lights off and pulled them back on three times. The truck kept gaining.
“Signal him,” the mother said.
The father waved his hand out the window, pointing ahead. He flashed the lights again.
When the semi was about to overtake them, the father still waving and flashing, the oncoming diesel roar popped and deflated, and the truck drifted back, then pulled in behind them, winking his lights once.
“Yes!” the brother said.
The father rearranged himself in his seat, rolled his shoulders. He pushed himself back from the wheel until his arms were straight, then leaned back in.
“Do you think he saw all that flashing?” the mother said.
“Sure he did,” the father said. “That’s why he held back.”
“Not him,” the mother said. “The drunk.”
The father shrugged.
“How could you get that drunk on a Sunday?” the mother said.
“Maybe he started on Friday.”
“He could have a gun,” the brother said.
“And you’d sure know about that, Boyd,” the mother said.
The father tossed his cigar out the window and shook out a Camel.
“Look at him!” the sister said.
The Comet had dipped into the right shoulder, roostertailing dust and gravel, before pulling back onto the slab.
“Boyd, we’ve got to call the police,” the mother said, and the brother and sister both said, “No!” and the brother said, “Who’s gonna warn everyone?”
The lights from the truck behind flashed twice.
“Here comes another one,” the father said.
They all looked back.
A big car, a Cadillac maybe, flew past the truck.
“Signal him,” the mother said.
“I’ll wave, Dad, you flash,” the brother said.
The father flashed the lights three times.
“Get your hand in the car this instant,” the mother said, but the brother ignored her.
The big car wasn’t slowing.
“Signal him,” the mother said, and the father kept flashing.
The Comet was only four or five car lengths ahead when the Cadillac flew by, honking as the Comet drifted toward him. Then he was past.
“What a foolish driver,” the mother said. “Now back off, Boyd. And you, mister,” she said, turning in her seat, “keep your hands in the car.”
The truck was falling farther back so that the only illumination inside the car was the green glow from the dash and the Comet’s taillights. They were back up to sixty-five, seventy, the Comet holding steady in the right lane.
“That one scared him,” the mother said. “He had to see.”
The sister pushed herself into the corner of the seat and leaned her head against the door. “Gramma told me Persia couldn’t go to heaven because he doesn’t have an internal soul,” she said.
“That’s not true,” the brother said. “Dad.”
“Sure it’s true,” the mother said.
“She said I could have him though. When she dies.”
“No cats,” the father said, and the mother said, “We’ll see.”
“She says a lot of stupid things,” the brother said, and the mother turned and cuffed him over the eye and nose with the back of an open hand.
“What?” he said.
“All right,” the father said. “Come on. I have to concentrate.”
“Well, she does,” the brother said, and the mother turned in her seat, poised to slap.
The brother held his hands up in front of him. “Like about men going to hell,” he said, “boys becoming barnyard animals, horse-donged, and then going to hell.”
The father shook his head and said, “That’s what I’ve been saying,” and the sister said, “Is that true?”
“Kevin,” the mother said. She worked her palm under his chin and forced his face up. “You know that’s not true, don’t you?”
The brother nodded. “She’s looking at me,” he said.
“Emily,” the mother said, “don’t look at your brother.”
“Do you know how foolish and sad that is?” the mother said, and the brother said, “That’s what I mean about her saying stupid things.”
“That’s right,” the father said.
“With all the pain,” the mother said, “she’s a little mean and crazy right now.”
“Always has been,” the father said.
The mother looked at the father, then back to the brother. “I’m sorry she said such a nasty thing to you.”
“I don’t care,” the brother said, and the mother said, “Well, I do,” and the sister said, “Maybe Gramma’s going to hell now.”
“Emily,” the mother said, “you’re asking for it,” and the father said, “He’s off the road!”
The mother turned in her seat.
The brother and sister leaned forward.
The front two wheels of the Comet threw gravel from the left shoulder, pulling the car toward the sloped concrete of the drainage ditch.
“Goddamn!” the father said, and the mother said, “Boyd!”
The Comet hit one of the aluminum reflector poles and another as it straightened out and the right front tire bumped up onto the slab, the back wheels fishtailing in the gravel before catching concrete.
Dust hung in a cloud behind the red and pink taillights, and the father said, “Speeding way up,” and the mother said, “Catch him, Boyd,” and the brother elbowed the sister in the ribs and she elbowed back, and he elbowed harder a few times until she started to cry.
“It was an accident,” the brother said.
“Hush up,” the mother said.
They were going eighty.
“Hand me a pack of smokes,” the father said. “Open ’em up.”
The mother reached into the glove compartment, pulled out a package of cigarettes and unwrapped them.
“Dickhead,” the sister said.
“Emily Sue!” the mother said. She reached around to slap, but the sister was in the back corner of her seat so that the mother had to pull herself over the seatback to land one good shot to the sister’s head.
Now she really cried.
The father bent over the wheel, his face close to the windshield.
“No one can hear you,” the mother said.
“Hand me a cigarette,” the father said.
The truck’s lights were far behind them.
“Boyd, he’s getting away,” the mother said.
The sister whimpered.
The father leaned closer in to the windshield.
The brother pulled a pack of Juicy Fruit from his pocket, pushed it into the sister’s lap. She slapped at his hand. “Take it,” he whispered.
She took it and threw it on the floor at his feet. He picked it up and put it on the seat between them. “You can have it all,” he whispered.
“You wanna talk about going to hell,” the mother said.
They’d leveled off at eighty-five, were gaining.
“Where’s the cops?” the mother said.
The father shook his head.
“I hate Gramma,” the sister said, “always calling me split tail.”
The mother’s eyes were black and shiny in the green light as she turned and lifted herself over the seat. She grabbed the sister’s outstretched arms by the wrists.
The sister winced, pulled back, and said, “I don’t care. I do.”
The mother held the sister’s wrists in one hand and slapped the top of her head with the other, once, twice, the sister blubbering, “I don’t care, I do,” and the mother coming down on top of the sister’s head again.
“Helen, Jesus,” the father said. He held her by the sleeve of her blouse, then her shoulders, steering with his knee, and pulled her back to the front
seat, saying, “Get ahold of yourself, Helen.”
“Dirty little split tail she’s always calling me,” the sister cried, then pushed her face into the vinyl seatback.
The mother allowed herself to be encircled by the father’s right arm, sunk into him. “Well, that’s nothing new,” she said.
The father tightened his hold. “Enough, Emily,” he said.
The brother leaned his face into the wind pushing through his open window.
The mother straightened in her seat, stiff and still.
“Why do we always have to go?” the brother said.
The father opened and closed his hands on the wheel.
“Somebody has to take care of her,” the mother said. She didn’t look back. “You want her to die alone?”
“Hush now,” the father said.
“Yes,” the brother said into the wind.
The mother looked out her window.
The Comet straddled the white lines, getting away.
The father pushed it up to ninety.
“It’s Jim being useless and me so far away,” the mother said. “That’s why.”
The brother took off his sneakers, touched his sister’s leg with his foot.
She slapped him away, stayed slouched in her corner.
The brother leaned over her and said, “Watch,” then crawled back to his side of the seat.
“Anybody’d be like that,” the mother said.
He dangled his shoe out the window by the laces, looked to the sister, who was watching, and let it go.
“It’s just a lot of things,” the father said, hunched over the wheel.
The sister smiled.
The brother dropped his other shoe out the window.
“She wasn’t always like that,” the mother said. “You remember, Boyd.”
The sister unstrapped her sandals.
“Sure,” the father said.
She dropped both out the window at once.
The mother turned in her seat. “She wasn’t always like that, kids. You remember, don’t you?”
“Yes,” the brother said.
“Yes,” the sister said.
“I’m sorry,” the mother said, and the brother said, “It’s okay.”
The mother turned back around. “Remember that decoy she gave you, Boyd? You liked that.”
“Sure I did,” he said.
The Comet must have been going a hundred.
The sister reached under her skirt and pulled down her underpants. She held them out the window for a second waving like a flag, then let them go.
“Jesus,” the father said, “what was that?” He craned his neck, squinting into the rearview mirror.
“What?” the mother said. “What was what?”
“Something flew by,” the father said. “He’s throwing things at us.”
“It could be a UFO,” the brother said.
There were other taillights ahead. The Comet had fallen into line.
“Or a ghost,” the sister said.
As they approached the four-car line, the Comet lurched into the left lane and accelerated hard, then swerved back toward the second car in line.
A horn sounded.
“He’s going to hit him!” the mother said.
The Comet jerked left and fell off the slab.
“Good lord!” the mother said.
“Crash!” the sister said.
The front left tire of the Comet bumped over the lip of the drainage ditch.
“Boyd!” the mother said.
The other tires followed.
The brother said, “Car crash!”
The Comet drove at an impossible angle along the concrete incline of the ditch, then slid down the wall on its wheels before tilting and toppling, the roof scraping along the floor, spouting a shower of orange sparks.
“Judas priest!” the mother said.
The father eased the station wagon into the left shoulder and they drove beside him, above him, the white and orange sparks ricocheting off either wall, the metal shrieking and groaning against the concrete.
The other cars had slowed as well.
The mother’s door was open before the car stopped. “We’ve got to save him,” she said, running toward the ditch.
“We saw him first,” the brother said, opening his door.
The sister followed.
Other doors opened and closed.
The mother lost her footing on the mossy slime coating the drainage wall. She fell hard and slid down on her back.
The brother and sister sat and slid, the backs of their legs coated with slime.
The mother picked herself up and jogged bent over to the Comet, calling over her shoulder, “Bring a blanket, Boyd.”
“Smoke on the Water” was playing, coming from inside the Comet.
“We’ll call an ambulance,” someone said up on the shoulder.
One of the front wheels was still turning, winding itself down.
“It could explode!” the brother shouted. He ran after the mother.
The sister wiped the goopy slime from the back of her legs, her bottom.
The drunk’s arms appeared out the driver’s window. His head and shoulders followed.
“Let me help you,” the mother shouted over the music. She walked carefully along the incline, one hand against the Comet supporting her, then sat, or lay, her back against the slimy wall, her feet against the back door of the Comet. She offered her hand.
The drunk took it.
The brother and sister watched.
“Come on, now,” the mother said, pulling him toward her. He had a scrape on his forehead, blood coming from his nose.
The father appeared with the car blanket. “Let me help,” he said. He pushed the blanket at the brother, who dropped it.
But the drunk was most of the way out, only his legs still inside the car.
The mother held him against her, petting his crew cut.
“Fuck,” he said.
“Shh,” the mother said.
“Somebody’s trying to kill me.”
The father reached a hand toward them. “Here now,” he said.
“It’s okay,” the mother said, petting him. “I’ve got you.”
The brother said to the sister, “He’s not going to die I bet.”
“Come on,” the father said, tapping the mother’s shoulder and holding out his hand. “Let me help.”
The drunk’s blood was smeared over the mother’s blouse.
“Some fuckin’ Mexicans or something,” the drunk said, “chasing me,” and the mother said, “Let’s not talk like that.”
The drunk groaned, dropped his head against the mother’s breast.
“Come on now,” the father said. “Here.”
“Probably not even hurt bad,” the brother said.
With her big toe, the sister drew a circle in the slime, gave it two eyes and a smile.
“You can thank God we were here,” the mother said.
The drunk tried to lift his head, but the mother pushed it back against her.
“Yeah,” he said. “Thank God.”
“Probably not Gramma either,” the brother said. “Split tail.”
The sister smiled, held up her skirt and spun.
“Watch this,” the brother said. He ran away from her, away from the car and the mother and father, jumped, planted himself, and slid in the mossy slime.
The sister followed.
Barefooted, they ran and slid along the slippery concrete as if it were winter and the drainage ditch a frozen-over river.

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Samuel Ligon is the author of the novel Safe in Heaven Dead (HarperCollins, 2003). His stories have appeared in Other Voices, Post Road, The Quarterly, Manoa, StoryQuarterly, and Cimerron Review.