Blacktop Wasteland

Bug pulls a stolen Jeep into a rest stop in Sussex, Virginia. The Jeep is in very poor condition and is overheating. He asks a family of travelers if he can borrow their phone.

The point of view shifts to Kia, who is making cereal for Darren and Javon. Simultaneously, someone knocks on her door and her phone rings. She starts to answer the phone, which quits ringing. She opens the door slightly to someone she has never seen but who readers will recognize as Burning Man. He orders Kia and the boys to come with him and his two associates. Kia tries to resist, but the man is too strong. A second man goes into the trailer and brings Darren out. Burning Man puts a gun against Kia’s head, and she stops struggling. When the third man starts into the trailer for Javon, he backs away; Javon has come out the trailer with his father’s 9mm pistol. He demands that the men let go of his mother and brother. When they don’t comply, Javon begins to shoot, striking two of the men, one who has to be dragged into the men’s car. The men shoot back, eventually retreating as Javon continues his erratic gunfire. Kia screams for Javon to call 9-1-1. It takes a moment before he realizes that at some point in the chaos, Darren was shot.

Kia’s sister Jean is waiting with her at the hospital while Darren undergoes emergency surgery. Bug bursts into the waiting room. Kia immediately castigates him, blaming him for all that has happened. She states it is because he refused to sell his father’s car, saying,

My son is on an operating table fighting for his life because you care more about a dead snitch than you do your own child. My other son is down at the police station because he had to shoot two people to keep them from taking his mama and his little brother (244).

Bug tries to explain how he tried to warn her and get to her in time to save them, but she tells him to leave. Jean tells Bug to go, that she will text when there is news about Darren.

The narration returns to Bug’s point of view. Boonie enters his home to find Bug sitting in his recliner. Bug explains everything that has happened. Boonie wants to help him, since Bug plans to steal the van back from Ronnie and then take it to Lazy. Bug refuses his help, saying that he wants Boonie to be there for Bug’s sons when he himself is gone: “I’m already gone, Boonie […] I think I understand why Daddy left now. Beauregard and Bug are the same person. And that person ain’t no good for a family” (248).

After 9 p.m. that evening, Bug goes to Ella’s room in the nursing home and wakes her. He talks briefly about family events they enjoyed. At first she thinks he has come to see her because she must be dying, but then she realizes it is because he is in a bad situation, saying, “You running, ain’t ya” (250).

He tells her he loves her as he leaves, and she says, “Goodbye, Bug.”

Later the same evening, Reggie and his girlfriend, Ann, lie in bed using cocaine. Ann lives among a collection of trailers joined into a T where many legal and illegal vices are practiced by inhabitants and visitors. It is called Wonderland and, ironically, is set amid a beautiful, natural setting. Bug has arrived at Wonderland, looking for Reggie. Bug is known to those running the establishment because he once drove for Jimmy, the owner, who is now in prison. He walks down the corridor, looking into all the rooms where people are doing drugs or having sex. He finds Reggie with Ann, smashes Reggie’s face into the wall, and drags him out.

Bug takes Reggie to an abandoned rural factory and tortures him until he tells Bug where Ronnie has gone: to be with a girl named Amber Butler in Curran County. Bug kills Reggie and takes his body back to Boonie’s wrecking yard, putting it in the trunk of an old car. He receives a text message from Jean that Darren’s surgery to remove the bullet was successful but Darren was “[s]till touch and go” (258).

The point of view shifts back to Ronnie, who is with Amber, an RN. Like Bug’s, Amber’s trailer sits by itself at the end of a long asphalt road. Ronnie hears a truck engine revving. Before he can run out to his car, the Bug’s wrecker smashes into the mobile home, throwing Ronnie through the kitchen. As Ronnie is running out the back door, Bug catches up with him and throws him through the door. Ronnie kicks the door backward, hitting Bug in the face. Ronnie runs through the corn field. Bug gets back in the truck and follows Ronnie, who is leaving a clear trail. Bug swings the back end of the wrecker around, slamming the tail into Ronnie, breaking his legs. Ronnie apologizes to Bug, who responds, “[Y]ou’re not sorry. You just sorry I caught up with you” (263). Ronnie expands, saying, “I couldn’t go back to being poor white trash, Bug. I could take being trash. I just couldn’t stand being poor again” (263). As with Reggie, Bug tortures Ronnie until he finds where he has hidden the van, then executes him and takes his body back to Boonies, putting it in the trunk of the same car, which will be smashed within the hour.

The point of view shifts to Lazy, who is in his store making change after a sale to an elderly woman. The burner phone in his pocket vibrates. The call is from Ronnie’s phone, but Bug is the caller. Bug flatly tells Lazy that if he wants the platinum, he has to come where Bug is by 5 p.m. or Bug will drive the van into the lake. He tells Lazy to bring the scarred man and someone to drive the van. Lazy tells Bug that he gives the orders about meetings. Bug reminds him how badly he needs the platinum and gives him the ultimatum, saying he will text him the specific address.

The point of view shifts to Bug, who made the call from Boonie’s office. Boonie asks if Lazy will comply, and Bug says he has no choice. He charges Boonie with taking care of his family and says, “No matter what happens you make sure Kia and Ariel and the boys get what I left ‘em” (267). The two men embrace as Bug is leaving. He tells Boonie he was a better father to him than his dad ever was.

Next, Bug goes to the hospital to see Darren, who is unconscious and hooked up to many machines and monitors. Bug apologizes for what he has brought down upon his family. He kisses Darren’s forehead and, as he is leaving, says, “I’m never gonna hurt y’all again” (269).

Bug calls Ariel with his new telephone number. She is at the mall with Lil Rip. Bug tells her he loves her, and, to his surprise, she tells him she loves him. He makes the call from Crab Thicket Road, where he exits the van with a double-barrel shotgun as he watches a black car approach.

Four people are in the black Cadillac, including Lazy. Bug lets Burning Man walk to the van to make sure the rolls of platinum are still intact. In the conversation between Lazy and Bug, Lazy informs him that their business is not finished, that they will come to find him again. Bug replies, “‘You want to come for me, then come on. This...’ He nodded at the van. ‘Is so that you leave my family out of it. What we got going is between you and me. Don’t worry I’ll be around.’” (273).

Lazy has Sal, a driver, get in the van and follow the Cadillac. As they are pulling away, Lazy gives the order for someone to follow Bug when he leaves. He intends to capture Bug and torture him before killing him.

As they get 80 feet away, Bug takes his cellphone and calls up Lazy’s phone number, which detonates a bomb he placed in the van. The explosion destroys the van but only damages the Cadillac. The Cadillac door opens, and a dead person is pushed out before the vehicle starts driving away rapidly. Bug runs back into the nearby barn and jumps into his Duster, which he had concealed, and tears after the Cadillac. As he chases the Cadillac, Bug sees he is being followed by a blue Mazda; he executes a 180-degree turn to face the Mazda driver, who hits the brake to avoid colliding with him. Bug fires both barrels of his shotgun. The Mazda swerves into the path of a trash truck. Bug does another 180 and catches up with the Cadillac. Burning Man, the driver, shoots at Bug but strikes a passing minivan, which runs off the road. Bug approaches the Cadillac again and nudges the right rear quarter panel at 90 miles an hour, sending the Cadillac careening into a cow pasture.

Bug pulls over and leaves the Duster running. He approaches the Cadillac slowly, carrying his .45. He sees the driver is dead: “Burning Man was extinguished” (278). A number of bullets rip through the rear door, striking Bug in the forearm and the thigh. Falling and losing his gun, he crawls back toward the Duster. Lazy emerges from the Cadillac, holding an automatic pistol—Quan’s Desert Eagle .380. He calls out to Bug, saying he knows he shot Bug and is going to find him. Lazy proclaims his own invincibility. Bug’s head pops up behind the Duster’s steering wheel. He slams the pedal, running over Lazy as bullets fly through the windshield. After running over him, Bug backs over Lazy, then parks the car atop his body.

Sitting in the car, Bug can hear the distant sound of sirens. His father speaks to him from the passenger’s seat, asking him if it is time to fly. Bug responds, “You’re not real. You’re dead. Probably been that way for a while now. I never stopped loving you, though” (280). Bug put the Duster in gear and drives away from the scene.

Kia comes into Darren’s hospital room. Bug is standing in the corner by the window. When he speaks, she does not acknowledge him. He tells her that he has turned the Duster over to Boonie who is having it destroyed. Bug tells her she doesn’t have to worry about the men who came to their house and tried to abduct her and the boys:

‘The men that came by the house, they won’t be coming back,’ Beauregard said.

‘You don’t know that.’

‘Yes I do’ (282).

He admits that she was right in her judgment. He confesses that, in his own way, he is a worse man than his father because at least his father was true to being the outlaw he was, while Bug has tried to play both sides—as a good person and as an outlaw. Bug tells her that Boonie has the platinum and that he will sell it at an appropriate time to take care of all her financial needs. As he prepares to leave for good, she asks if he must leave right then, saying she does not want to be alone anymore. The chapter closes with the two discussing whether Bug can really change his life and become just a husband and father.