Episode 4
I try for a balance between eager and pathetic. “I’m meeting friends in Dentonville. Any chance you’re headed there?”
Hoodoo laughs. “I’m headed to Hollywood. Going to be in a movie.”
“Yeah,” Ernie says, “a horror movie.”
Franny grabs Hoodoo’s arm before he can land a blow. “Come on, babe, help me look for money.” Hoodoo slaps his thigh and does a little rain dance. “Now that’s a hoot!” They walk off down a path hugged up so tight they can hardly walk.
“Want some juice? One hundred per cent all natural.” Ernie offers the quart container. The glass is warm from being under the seat. “Watch those cups. Hoodoo likes to chew his.”
I examine the Styrofoam cups he brought from the SUV. “They’re all chewed.” I pick the one that has a clean side and Ernie fills it. The juice reminds me how hungry I still am, but if I break out those candy bars Hoodoo would probably take them away from me.
“You ought to go home.” Ernie stares after his sister. She and Hoodoo have turned a corner and we can’t see them for the bushes.
“Can’t.” I drink from the cup.
“Why not?’
“A matter of honor.”
He turns his head, smiling a little. “Really?”
“Are you guys going toward Dentonville?”
“With Hoodoo, you never know. Why, you got a deadline?”
“Actually, I have.”
He smiles at me again, like he’s thinking something pleasant for a change. I decide I like Ernie, but to be on the safe side, I add, “Those friends are expecting me.”
Franny and Hoodoo come back, hand in hand. He says, “Take a walk, you two.”
Ernie stands up from the picnic table seat. “Fran, don’t you think–”
Hoodoo thumbs us away and walks to the SUV. Franny says to us, “Go on. There’s a duck pond just around that curve. With ducks.” She follows him into the back and shuts the door. I notice there are curtains over every window, and they plaster a sun guard over the windshield.
Ernie’s pleasant mood has passed but he’s more sad than mad. “Come on, kid, let’s walk off some calories.”
“Call me Vinnie,” I tell him. I may be a kid but I don’t like being reminded of it. “Grape juice has calories?”
We follow the path to the curve before he stops and looks back at the SUV. He picks up a golf-ball-sized rock and flings it in a high arc. Of course it falls short, but the effort seems to make him feel better.
“You guys don’t get along very well, do you.”
“The day we start getting along, I’ll kill myself.”
We round the curve and can’t see the SUV or the picnic table. I realize I left my backpack there and my heart thumps a time or two before settling back into its pace.
“Guess we’ve gone far enough,” Ernie says.
“I don’t see any pond. Or ducks.”
He ruffles my hair the way he would do a little brother. “Don’t believe everything Fran says.”
We keep walking, though, round another curve and there’s the pond. Three brown ducks paddle about, scooping up something, probably insects or floating weeds.
I make a mental note to read up on ducks the first chance I get.
“Well, maybe half of what she says,” Ernie tells me with a wry grin.
We sit on the grass and watch the ducks. I worry again about the backpack. Then I laugh because there’s nothing in it but a change of clothes and a few battered chocolate bars. I wonder again what happened to Jerry’s money.
Ernie gives me that sideways look again. “Vinnie, are you a happy person?”
I ponder that. “I was.”
“What happened?”
Again I counter his question with one of my own. “Who is Hoodoo?”
Ernie stares out across the pond to the fringe of houses beyond. “He’s the bastard Fran thinks she’s in love with.”
The words didn’t tell me anything I hadn’t guessed, but the way he said it opened up all kinds of lines of inquiry. “You’re on a mission, too.”
“A matter of honor,” he says, and stands up. “We can go back now.”
The picnic table and SUV come into view. Hoodoo’s sitting on it and Fran’s stuffing more things into the trash can. I pick up my backpack, and remember that there is something valuable inside other than my jacket. At the last minute before leaving East Wind, I had packed my camera. An old-fashioned one, uses a cartridge, but it takes good pictures.
Hoodoo gets into the driver’s seat, Fran beside him. Ernie’s in the back, holding the door open. “You with us or not?”
I am.
Dentonville, here I come. What I’ll do when I get there, I haven’t a clue. Beg, I suppose. Beg for a job, beg for a room, beg for food. Pawn my camera? One thing I can’t do is use my real name or break down and cry and sob out the whole sordid story.
Trying to sort out a better lie than the one about being a hiking Boy Scout, I take the camera from the pack and hold it in my lap. I think about the worn photo in my cashless wallet. It’s my mother, taken before I was born. I don’t know anything about her family, or my dad or his family. Even my memories are featureless now, like the picture. I wonder if I was happy once, with them. Funny. I was happy at East Wind.
While my attention wandered, I missed seeing what road Hoodoo took in leaving the park, and watch unsuccessfully for any road sign that might tell me how far we are from where I’m going, or even where we are. Fields and woods take turns bordering the two-lane, with farm houses scattered along the route, most set in a grove of old trees, with dirt roads leading to them. “Wake me up when we get to Dentonville,” I tell Ernie, but he’s in his own little world.
Fran says something that almost pulls me out of my stupor, and I hear Hoodoo’s answer. “I’m waiting for rich boy to say he’ll treat us.”
Ernie’s voice carries a warning note. “I’m keeping track of all this freeloading.” And Hoodoo fires back, “Nobody asked you along, crudball.”
***
Don’t know how long I’ve been asleep, but I’m thrown against Fran’s seat as the SUV makes a sharp swerve and a sudden stop. Next time I’ll use the seat belt. Shadows are long but the sky is still light. Well, it would be, in June. Summer’s here. Steve and Jerry must be trying to out-do each other swimming laps in the pool at East Wind. My stomach thinks it’s close to suppertime.
Fran’s peevish voice finishes dragging me to full consciousness. “I didn’t mean for you to give us all whiplash.”
“You wanted to stop. I stopped. Quit bitching.”
Hoodoo’s at the end of some rope. That makes me uneasy. Ernie rouses up as if he’s been sleeping too. “What are we supposed to eat in a place like this?”
‘Like this’ turns out to be a gravel space in front of a long-abandoned service station. Three decades ago, at least. At a crossroads with no signs, and not a thing visible in any direction except fields bordered by woods, or woods close to the road.
Fran opens her door. “I didn’t want to eat, I want to pee.”
I do, too, but not here. The building is falling apart, unstable enough to collapse on unwary visitors. Watching Fran pick her way to the back, I ask, “What time is it?” Ernie doesn’t have to look at his watch to tell me, “After seven o’clock.”
Seven o’clock! We’ve been driving over five hours. Hoodoo distracts me from a confused panic with a weird comment: “I hate Daylight Savings Time.”
Ernie says in a tired voice, “You hate everything.”
“Mostly you.” Hoodoo opens his door, lights a cigarette, waits for Fran to come back.
“That sentiment is mutual, pal.”
Opening my door, I think about taking a picture of the place. Ernie continues in the same vein. “Close my eyes for one minute and you screw things up.”
“Fran is the navigator, I’m the driver. Can I help it if she reads the damn map upside down?”
Fran’s back, and leans into his chest, wrapping her arms around his neck. “Well, according to your map, we were going upside down.”
Hoodoo shrugs her off and snaps, “See? What kind of a fool statement is that?” He pushes past her and stomps off toward the back of the building. Fran sits in the driver’s seat, not looking at either of us. Ernie begins, “Fran, please–” but she snaps, “Don’t start.”
She walks away, makes aimless circles around the parking lot. Looking for money, maybe. After a minute Ernie climbs out past me and goes toward her. I climb out too, to stretch my legs and maybe take a pee after all. My camera’s hanging by its strap around my neck, and I figure I’ll try to get their picture. Make sure all this banging around and being dropped hasn’t broken the working parts of it.
Looking through the viewfinder, I step from side to side, then forward, searching for a shot that won’t pick up sun glare or plant a tree in the top of their heads. I’m maybe eight feet away when Hoodoo enters the picture. I watch him give Ernie a flat-handed push away from Fran. I see Fran grab Hoodoo’s arm.
Ernie’s hand shoots out, returning the chest-push. Hoodoo’s off balance for a moment. Fran grabs at Ernie’s arm. My finger jerks, tensing, and the shutter clicks–
–just as Hoodoo’s fist crashes into Ernie’s jaw. He can’t dodge because Fran’s holding him, but the force of the blow sends him backwards out of her grasp. He sprawls on the ground.
I drop the camera from my eye. Hoodoo grabs Fran’s wrist and runs to the SUV, dragging her with him. She stumbles, and Hoodoo picks her up and tosses her onto her seat and slams the door. Runs around to his open door and leaps in. Fires up the engine, and backs a swift half-circle around Ernie, still spread-eagled on his back. A lurch into forward gear and the SUV tears away, throwing gravel that hits my legs like little hailstones. I note which of the crossroads they take, then run to Ernie.
“Are you hurt?”
He’s moving around, groggy but able to sit up. Touches the back of his head. Winces. “Ow! Am I bleeding?” Looks at his fingers. “I am!”
I peer at his head where he’s holding a part in the hair. “Yeah, a little bit.”
He stands up, shaky. “Gravel took a chunk out.” Touches his jaw. “Nearly broke my jaw, too. Bastard.”
Now that I know he’s mobile, I look around us with fresh eyes and my heart nearly stops. “Where are we?”
Ernie looks around, too. “Damned if I know.”
“Weren’t you awake?”
“No,” he tells me, irritated. “I’ve been going on no sleep for three days.” He feels his head and wipes his fingers on his jeans.
“That’s how long you’ve been traveling with them?”
“Ever since Hoodoo brainwashed my brainless sister into taking Dad’s SUV on a ‘vacation.’”
“Must be the moon,” I mutter. In spite of the coming night, I feel safe with Ernie. I wonder whether Hoodoo was lost most of the time we’d been driving, which would mean we weren’t as far from civilization as we would be if he just drove non-stop for almost six hours. “Where were you guys really headed?”
“To hell, apparently.” Ernie heaves a long sigh, assessing each of our choices of route out. There are no signs to tell us where we’ve been or where we might end up. Even the service station sign is so weathered we can’t read the once-red letters.
“When it gets dark,” I suggest, “we can see house lights a long way off. Or a car will pass and pick us up.”
He turns to me, his lean face lit by spears of sun cutting through tree branches. “You little optimist.” His smile is fleeting. “Did you see which way they went?”
“Yeah.” I start out walking, Ernie beside me. It’s then that I realize I don’t need to pee any more. I hope he doesn’t notice the wet crotch or the smell.
He’s occupied with feeling in his pockets. “Damn!
“What?”
“One of them stole my credit card.”
“You have a bank account?”
“I did have.”
We have nothing but the clothes we’re in and my camera slung around my neck. Hoodoo–or Fran, more likely–will discover my chocolate bars and eat them. The thought of melting chocolate on my tongue makes me thirsty. I long for the machine in our dorm at East Wind, which dispenses pint bottles of real spring water. I consider going back to the service station before we get too far away, since maybe there’s a working faucet there. Then the memory of decay and desolation and the prospect of snakes and a clogged toilet spurs me after Ernie.
He’s in better shape than I would have expected, matching me step for step for maybe 5 miles before we see a farmhouse in the distance.
“We can work for our supper,” I say, starting to jog.
“What do you know about farming?” He jogs alongside me.
“More than I want to.” Tending the gardens at East Wind is one of the better chores, after clerical stuff like checking out library books and issuing hall passes.
“More than I do, then.”
At the house there’s newspapers spilling out of the rural mail box. No lights. No car. Only a garage, where we’ll be spending the night. A night without food, and after a brief inspection inside, one without even a dog bed or old mattress waiting for trash pick up.
“Well, at least I won’t have to listen to Hoodoo’s mouth.” Ernie finds a dusty tarp and shakes out any spiders or other crawlies. He spreads it on the dirt floor. “And this is softer than concrete.”
“Grass would be softer.”
“Inside is safer.”
I make a trip to the outside spigot and get a long drink of metalic-tasting water. “If it kills me,” I quip, “At least I’ll be out of my misery.”
“We’ll be okay,” Ernie says just before the twilight turns to night.
“Sure we will,” I answer, glad that dirt is softer than concrete. But not by much.
Sometime later, voices wake me. I can tell by Ernie’s tense arm against mine that he’s awake too. His fingers close on my wrist to keep me quiet. We listen. Two men are just outside, and I hear one of them say,
“What went wrong?”
The other asks, “Don’t you know? They’re after you.”
TO BE CONTINUED!