Big Driver Read Online Free Page A

online and taking naps and talking on phones, but in here a woman was being raped and she was that woman. He had taken her underpants; she could see them frothing from the pocket in the bib of his overalls. That made her think of Deliverance, which she hadwatched at a college film retrospective, back in the days when she had been slightly more adventurous in her moviegoing. Get them panties down, one of the hillbillies had said before commencing to rape the fat townie. It was funny what crossed your mind when you were lying under three hundred pounds of country meat with a rapist’s cock creaking back and forth inside you like an unoiled hinge.
    â€œPlease,” she said. “Oh please, no more.”
    â€œLots more,” he said, and here came that fist again, filling her field of vision. The side of her face went hot, there was a click in the middle of her head, and she blacked out.

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    The next time she came to, he was dancing around her in his overalls, tossing his hands from side to side and singing “Brown Sugar” in a squalling, atonal voice. The sun was going down, and the abandoned store’s two west-facing windows—the glass dusty but miraculously unbroken by vandals—were filled with fire. His shadow danced behind him, capering down the board floor and up the wall, which was marked with light squares where advertising signs had once hung. The sound of his cludding workboots was apocalyptic.
    She could see her dress slacks crumpled under the counter where the cash register must once have stood (probably next to a jar of boiled eggs and another of pickled pigs’ feet). She could smellmold. And oh God she hurt. Her face, her chest, most of all down below, where she felt torn open.
    Pretend you’re dead. It’s your only chance.
    She closed her eyes. The singing stopped and she smelled approaching mansweat. Sharper now.
    Because he’s been exercising, she thought. She forgot about playing dead and tried to scream. Before she could, his huge hands gripped her throat and began to choke. She thought: It’s over. I’m over . They were calm thoughts, full of relief. At least there would be no more pain, no more waking to watch the monster-man dance in the burning sunset light.
    She passed out.

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    When Tess swam back to consciousness the third time, the world had turned black and silver and she was floating.
    This is what it’s like to be dead.
    Then she registered hands beneath her—big hands, his hands—and the barbwire circlet of pain around her throat. He hadn’t choked her quite enough to kill her, but she was wearing the shape of his hands like a necklace, palms in front, fingers on the sides and the nape of her neck.
    It was night. The moon was up. A full moon. He was carrying her across the parking lot of the deserted store. He was carrying her past his truck. She didn’t see her Expedition. Her Expedition was gone.
    Wherefore art thou, Tom?
    He stopped at the edge of the road. She could smell his sweat and feel the rise and fall of his chest. She could feel the night air, cool on her bare legs. She could hear the sign ticking behind her, YOU LIKE IT IT LIKES YOU.
    Does he think I’m dead? He can’t think I’m dead. I’m still bleeding.
    Or was she? It was hard to tell for sure. She lay limp in his arms, feeling like a girl in a horror movie, the one who’s carried away by Jason or Michael or Freddy or whatever his name was after all the other ones are slaughtered. Carried to some slumpy deep-woods lair where she would be chained to a hook in the ceiling. In those movies there were always chains and hooks in the ceiling.
    He got moving again. She could hear his work-shoes on the patched tar of Stagg Road: clud-clump-clud . Then, on the far side, scraping noises and clattering sounds. He was kicking away the chunks of wood she had so carefully cleaned up and thrown down here in the ditch. She could no longer hear the