A Question of Mercy by Elizabeth Cox Page B

the woman say she had to get as far as Rome, Georgia. Charlie lifted the hood of the Studebaker, and steam roiled out.
    Jess walked behind the repair shop and waited. She leaned against the brick wall, unable to think of anything but Adam’s body on the riverbank. One shoe gone. Her legs shook and she wanted the image of him to leave her mind. Everything was her fault. She should have told those troopers that it was all her fault. But the thought of the boardinghouse was stronger than the need to turn herself in. She waited almost thirty minutes before she heard the hood slam down and Charlie call to the woman that her car was ready. Jess walked to where the woman was paying for the repairs.
    â€œI forgot to get a map,” Jess said. “I need a map, and I need to make a call to my aunt. She’s real bad sick.”
    â€œThat phone won’t work,” Charlie said. “Been broke for couple a days.” He brought out two old maps. “Might not show some of the new roads,” he said. “Pretty old.”
    â€œWhere you going, honey?” the woman asked.
    â€œMy aunt lives right outside Rome, Georgia,” Jess said. “I need to take care of her.” She gave the woman a fake name.
    â€œMaybe I can help,” said the woman. “I’m going twenty miles the other side of Rome.”
    â€œYour car really needs a new transmission, lady,” Charlie said.
    Jess opened the car door and put her satchel on the floor. “That would help a lot.”
    The woman turned on the ignition. They both heard a scraping sound, but ignored it. “Don’t you have to go to school?” she asked Jess. “Where’s your mother?”
    â€œShe’s already there.” Jess had a spasm of coughs and the woman reached into her glove compartment to get some Kleenex and a box of Luden’s Cherry Cough Drops. “My aunt’s real sick.”
    â€œSounds like you are, too.”
    They rode for two hours while Jess slept, then she woke to make conversation. Riding and sleeping made Jess relax; but, when the woman asked questions about her family, Jess began to forget what she had already toldher. When they reached the outskirts of Rome, Jess asked to get out.
    â€œYou want me to let you out here?” The woman’s head wagged back and forth trying to see where they were. “No houses around here.”
    â€œIt’s just down this road,” said Jess, pointing to a long dirt road. She gathered her satchel and moved out of the car. “This is fine. I know just where to go now. Thank you.”
    The woman left, telling her to be careful. “And take care a’that cough.”
    Jess walked along the road for almost a mile before entering the woods, where she found an abandoned shed. She opened the broken door to see a large rat and three squirrels scatter through a hole in the wall. A mattress lay twisted in the corner and she unfolded it, brushing off leaves and dirt. She could not stop coughing, and felt a chill deep in her bones. I cannot be sick , she thought. She willed the fever to leave her.
    She gathered some sticks, tore pages from an old Marshall Fields catalogue that lay beside the wood stove, and lit a fire. In only a few minutes the small room grew warm. She reached into her satchel and took out a bag of oranges someone had left in the bottom of a grocery cart. Jess had whisked the oranges underneath her coat before running away. Behind her a girl had yelled, “Hey! Stop! Stop her!”
    The oranges were an unexpected bonus. She imagined they were an answer to prayer, if she had been able to pray. I used to pray, she thought, as she shifted sideways on the mattress. I used to be able to pray so easy. Jess opened a can of corned beef hash and ate with a smooth flat stick. She stuffed the hole with the catalogue, then lay on the mattress, trying to ignore the stains and mildewy odor. It was the softest bed she had slept on in weeks.