Free The Hunt Club by Bret Lott Page B

and fast. She tore off the sheet, pushed it at me.
    You turn where I say
, she’d written.
And we go NOW
.
    She was leaning into the corner of the cab, her mouth in what looked like a snarl, the way you look when you can’t believe how stupid someone could be.
    Me.
    I crumpled up the paper, let it drop to the floorboard. She was right, and this was new, all of this as new to me as the look of a headless man raising a gun to the sky, and I only nodded, put the stick into first, and eased out the clutch, somebody else’s world out there moving into motion, and we were gone.
    She wrote more notes, handed them to me once I’d turned the headlights back on and while I drove all the surface streets I could in order to avoid the Mark Clark, hanging up above us and to my right, then to my left like some huge and well-lit concrete snake just above ground. Stoplights and stop signs, and neighborhoods and grocery stores and frontage roads and minimarts, all just to keep off the freeway.
    And these notes. She peeled one off, expected me to read it while I drove, peeled off another, and another. I took each one, held it up to whatever light there was: intersection street lamps, gas-station lights, whatever.
    If I were you
, the first one read,
I’d ease off the clutch going into second a little more slowly
.
    The next read,
Thirty-five miles per hour means you cannot exceed 35 miles per hour
.
    And
Keep an eye on the rearview mirror for anyone who might be following us
.
    Then,
When you hit Dorchester Road, you’ll have to turn left at the Piggly Wiggly where
—
    I wadded every one up, dropped them to the floorboard, didn’t even bother to finish this last one. If she wanted to tell me where to go once we were to Hungry Neck, that was one thing. And I knew to work the clutch easy into second. But telling me where to turn here, where I lived. No.
    I pulled up to a red light. My eyes on the empty intersection before us, I whispered, “For somebody who can’t talk, Dorcas, you sure talk a lot.”
    The light went green, and I pulled through. Across from us, on the left, sat a Pantry market, a single car out at the gas pump. Its lights came on just as we passed, and I watched it for a second out my window. I eased into second, still watching the car, a big old green Plymouth, the white landau top of it peeled and ripped, like huge scabs on white skin.
    I faced forward. Here was another of her notes, her holding it not an inch from my face so I couldn’t even see the road. I pushed her hand away, looked in the rearview a second. No headlights. I shoved it into third.
    She went off on another fit with the pen and paper, and I held up the piece she’d given me, read it.
    If you have something to say to me, you redneck peasant, say it to my face. I can read lips, even if they’re as white-boy thin as yours
.
    I looked from the paper to her. She had yet another one torn off, and pushed it to me again.
    Call me Dorcas again, and I’ll knock you on your skinny white butt so hard you’ll be spitting up shit
.
    Acts 9:36: Now there was at Joppa a certain disciple named
Tabitha,
which by interpretation is called Dorcas: this woman was full of good works and almsdeeds which she did
.
    I wadded this one up, too, dropped it. “Okay,
Tabitha
,” I said, my eyes hard on her, hands tight on the wheel, “I said I think you’re a wonderful person, and a gifted Bible scholar.”
    She leaned back into the corner of the cab again, the pen and pad still in her hands. She was facing me, and now I could see her a little more, one side of her face growing slowly into light: here was her cheek, her eyebrow, her nose. She was smiling, her face lit with light through the rear window.
    Light.
    I looked in the rearview again. Headlights, the scab car right up on us.
    I hit the gas, took off and away, watching him the whole time. A second later his blinker came on. He pulled down one of the streets we’d passed.
    Dorcas—Tabitha—tapped my shoulder, and