Episode 3
By the time I reach the other road, the pickup truck’s almost out of sight. Nothing in the other direction, so I trot after it. Half an hour later there it sits in the gravel parking lot of a cafe with a neon “open” sign and steam or smoke coming out of a chimney. Suddenly I’m starving.
It’s been at least 15 hours since I had any real food, and after what I’ve been through, I’d fight a trucker for a piece of fried chicken or anything Italian. Or a breakfast with three eggs, bacon, and lots of coffee even though I don’t usually get to drink it at East Wind.
Typical roadside cafe, with stools at a counter and a few square tables scattered between it and the windows. One middle-aged lady cook scraping down the grill, her single customer smoking on the last stool near the door. I plant myself at the other end and look at the poorly-typed menu. Little bits of paper with new prices are stuck over the old. I study the inked-in numbers, aware that the $185 that Jerry gave me for a stake is a limited resource. “You can get a weekly special at this Dentonville motel for $125,” he’d said, giving me a print-out from the Internet, “and do odd jobs until you parlay the rest into a couple hundred.”
I was only now beginning to see the fallacy in the plan. If I work for a week and make back $125, that would pay only for a place to sleep. Adding in meals, I’ll be left without enough to call home, let alone send cash to the two friends who’ve gotten me into this. What was I thinking?
Math has never been my strong point, but I’m fast learning about people. At East Wind there are all types, but nobody is dangerous, unless you count Jerry who does have a mean streak. He’s probably laughing his ass off right now, waiting for me to come slinking back and in his debt for whatever money I’ve spent.
“What’ll you have, son?” the cook asks.
“Coffee. And a plain burger. Burn it.” It’s the cheapest thing on the menu, and those chocolate bars, squashed and melted or not, are likely to be supper.
The clock on the wall startles me. Hands point to three-fifteen. “Is that clock right?” She glances at it and nods. I’m floored. Except for my late-night snooze on the pharmacy stoop, and a nap on the bus, I’ve been up for over thirteen hours, most of it running for my life, or at least my freedom. The coffee barely steadies my hand.
But I got away from Al, and I can do this. Jerry underestimated my ingenuity. My order arrives and I’m happily guzzling coffee when the driver of the pickup truck pays his bill and leaves with a wave to the lady behind the counter. She says, “See ya Clarence,” and then she stares into some long thoughts or memories. My eyes check the driver’s dessert dish but nothing’s left, not even crumbs.
As he passes through the door, another man comes in. This one is short and stocky, about thirty. He sits on the same stool. His dark hair is cut short behind but long on top, slicked straight back without a part. He’s wearing slacks and a black t-shirt with no logo. He looks like an actor.
I eat the plain burger slowly, making the most of each bite, remembering the picnic. Wishing myself back there, with it all to do over again. I’d probably help old Collie pick up the trash, give him a thrill. Smiling, I take the refill she offers.
She turns on a little tv hanging on the wall behind the cash register. No sound, just the video. After a minute a special news bulletin flashes and my heart starts pounding. But instead of a posse fanning out to search for a nobody runaway from the boys’ school, it’s the reporter’s stills of the sheriff’s deputy draped in a dead blonde body. He was closer to the scene of the action than we were, so her single red shoe hits me harder now than when I saw it for real. Worse, there’s a shot of her face. Her half-shut eyes seem to be looking around at the camera.
The actor makes a choking sound, loud enough that the cafe lady looks around, wide-eyed-fearful that she’ll have a dead customer on her hands because she never learned the Heimlich Maneuver. His attention is fixed on the tv and he’s motionless, not threshing around in agony, but his voice is gravelly when he says, “Turn that up.”
She does. The reporter is back in the news room. “If you know this woman, please call–” He gives the number, which appears over and over at the bottom of the screen, like a weather warning, and then regular programming resumes. Actor keeps watching with a dazed look on his face, replaying what he’s seen, unable to believe it. I almost tell him, “I was there,” but a new caution keeps my mouth closed. He knows her, I’d bet half my stake on it. I wait for him to go to the pay phone outside, but he finally breaks his trance and pushes food around on his plate. He has a refill.
When the cafe lady raises the nearly empty pot toward me, I shake my head. Too much coffee will make me need to pee an hour from now, when I’m on the way to Dentonville. It’s a farm road, like the rest that Jerry said would be safer to travel than an interstate. Finishing my meal, I’m more relaxed than I’ve been since Jerry routed me out of bed, with a theatrical whisper, “It’s time, Mouse.”
She puts the bill face down beside my plate. Telling Steve the money was “pinned to me skivvies” was a joke. I feel in my jeans pocket for the folded greenbacks. A chill engulfs me. I hear Jerry warn, “Don’t lose it!” and I hear my defensive answer, “I won’t lose it!” I feel in the other pocket, then open the backpack to check the jacket, even though I’m sure I never moved it. But it isn’t there, or in the jacket, or loose in the pack.
It’s on that broken landing. Jiggled out of my pocket when Al was dangling me upside down. If it had fallen through the broken landing, I’d've seen it on the ground below. Al wouldn’t have noticed it beneath the window, he was set on getting downstairs and heading me off.
I swallow against a dry throat. Take a drink of the lemon-flavored water. The Morningbird is miles behind me. The bill for lunch stares up at me. If I had the energy to flee, I would.
Stalling, I pretend drink the water. Try to think but my brain has turned to cotton candy, all fluff and too much sugar. Bad enough to run out on a poor woman who probably sunk her money into this place and is barely scraping by. Worse to realize that my cushion of comfort is lying in the ruins of a place I’d rather never see again. And worst of all, if I don’t get that money back I can’t even return to East Wind with my tail between my legs.
The harder I try not to cry, the harder it is to control my breathing, never mind the tears leaking out of my eyes. Not daring to blow my runny nose and draw attention, I wipe it on a sandpaper napkin. Then the devious part of my brain kicks in. I dig a pen from my pack and write “I will be back!” on the bill. Then I add, “With money.”
Hoping that will be the case, I drop off the stool and head for the rest room. In a rinkydink place like this, there ought to be a window that opens, one I can climb through.
There is, and I do. It’s high, but there’s a metal trash can that I can stand on, and I don’t need to use my knife to loosen old paint because there’s only one layer. Hanging onto window ledges is getting to be a habit, but this one is ground level and I take off like a jet through the weedy lot between here and the woods. Retracing my flight pattern isn’t hard. The broken brush and trail of footsteps in soft ground lead me to the Morningbird in little more than half the time it took to follow the pickup truck to the cafe.
Lurking in the fringe of underbrush, I feel like a juvenile detective from one of the series books in our library, casing the joint. No cars parked out front, nothing moving except the tree branches bending in a rising wind. Long minutes pass. Dark clouds move overhead. Finally I figure Al and his man have either left or killed each other, but what are the odds of my finding another dead body in the same week?
Dumping the pack so I can run fast, I dart across the two-lane and hunker behind an overgrown bush. Through its swaying branches I can see the parking lot, which is empty. There’s no other cover to shield my movements. I take a few deep breaths, shake my arms and legs to limber them for the effort, and race to the back of the building.
That was dumb. The fire escape landing is too high to reach, too flimsy to climb. My belt still hangs where I left it a few hours earlier. Hoping I was wrong about where the folded bills might have fallen, I search beneath the structure. Not here. I enter the dark hallway that leads to the kitchen. Eerily quiet. No angry voices, no groaning, no footsteps. I creep along, tense as a prey animal, half expecting Al to leap out and gnash me with vampire teeth. But I reach the stairs and ease myself upward from tread to tread, holding my breath after each creak and squeak. Along the dim hallway I find the door to the room Al locked me in, and on shaky knees tiptoe to the open window.
I look out, ready to scoop up my money and run.
It isn’t there, either.
Now what?
I step through the window and search the cracks in the boards that remain attached to the framework. Once, forgetting the hole behind me, I nearly fall through but catch the belt and save myself from a nasty injury. More careful, I unbuckle the belt and while I’m feeling it through the belt loops I wonder if I can sell or pawn it.
I wonder if Al did see the money and came back after it. I wonder how much his customer had been willing to pay him for a toy boy. I thank Jerry for adding that term to my education. I wonder if he knew it because something like this had happened to him before he was put in East Wind. Would I be better off if the cafe lady were my mother and I lived with her, just us two against the world, and went to a public school and watched tv whenever I wanted, and checked out public library books? And had friends that didn’t think it was funny to make a fool of me.
After one last look around, with no better results, I’m halfway downstairs when the storm hits. Safer inside than out, I find a second-floor room that still has a bed and mattress, and with lightning playing through the windows, I’m asleep in moments.
I wake to pitch dark. The rain and wind have stopped. At first I think I’ve dreamed everything, but that doesn’t wash because if I was in my bed, there’d be light under the door and Steve snoring in the opposite corner of our room. His honks and snorks didn’t wake me, so what did? I’m frozen by an unnamed fear. Listening for whatever went bump in the night, or cars passing in the road, I hear a distant wailing that starts in the yard and comes toward the Morningbird.
Downstairs a door slams and I shoot upright, my heart thumping so hard it hurts. Running footsteps vanish in the lobby, yet the wailing echoes up the stairwell. My first thought is to scoot under the bed, but since there’s a metal fire escape on this end of the motel, out the window I go. Clouds still cover the moon. Or maybe it’s already set, I’ve lost all sense of time.
In the back parking lot, there’s the bulk of a car that wasn’t here before. I can’t make out what kind it is, but the shape screams old. My sleeping mind must have heard it arrive and kicked me into consciousness. Through the open window that terrible wailing continues, from deep in the darkness of the motel. I don’t believe in ghosts, especially the kind that drive a car, but the sound cuts through me and I streak over the weedy yard and across the deserted road. Running ahead of the track team toward the finish line, the cheap trophy cup almost in my hand.
Not knowing where else to go, I head back through the rain-drenched woods toward the cafe. Staying at the Morningbird one more moment would be the stupidest thing I’ve done so far.
She’s closed the rest room window, and there’s no metal trash can outside to boost me up. There is a small utility building, with a lock on the door. Walking around the cafe, I peer through the glass and see the lighted clock. Two a.m. again. I’ve come full circle, with nothing to show for it except aches and bruises and an empty stomach. Tossing the pack down in the shelter of the doorway, I start to sit on it but before I do that I take out one of the squashed candy bars. It’s filled with coconut, my favorite. Leaves me thirsty. A bright beacon of a drink machine beckons, but lacking even coins for that, I settle down to wait for the nice lady to come open her cafe.
* * *
“Good Lord, you again!”
Struggling to a sitting position, I blink into a misty dawn. The tired, stern person standing before me causes a surge of guilt. “Yes, Ma’am. I’m sorry, I meant to pay you, but I lost my money.”
“Well you don’t look like a drinker or gambler. Were you robbed?”
She unlocks the door and I follow her inside. “In a manner of speaking,” I answer. She goes behind the counter and lights her stove burners. Puts on an apron. Washes her hands at a sink. Takes stuff out of a freezer and finds room for it in a cooler. It’s pretty certain she’s going to offer me breakfast instead of calling the police. I perch on the stool I occupied yesterday and wait to see what develops.
“Wasn’t it awful about that woman over in Hackett,” she remarks, getting the coffee started. She mixes up what I hope is pancake batter.
“Awful,” I agree. “I’d hate to fall in a well.”
“Oh, that poor soul never fell in. She was murdered. I don’t doubt, some man took out his rage on her. No rich-looking person like her would be walking in the weeds in hundred-dollar shoes.”
I remember now that the sheriff lifted an old cover from the well. Somebody had been careful to replace it. I wonder who tipped the cops off so they knew where she was, or if looking in old wells is just a part of searching for a missing person. I wonder why the Feds were called in so soon.
“Young to be out all by yourself,” the cafe owner says. “Never seen you around before.”
“I’m on my way to Dentonville. Hiking,” I add. “For my Scout badge.” That explanation comes out so easily I’m amazed, but figure it’s as good as anything to reinforce my image.
“You got a long way to go. Fifty miles at least.”
“Does a bus stop here?” She gives me a short stack and a bar of real butter. I reach for the plastic jar of honey. I need to get far away, where the news of Hackett can’t reach me. Or the police, who must be on my trail by now.
“Used to. The Interstate killed everything on this road and the next over. Just locals now. You might hitch a ride with Clarence as far as Parker City.”
Parker City wasn’t one of Steve’s red circles. I’d remember if it was. I take out the map, wipe off a smear of chocolate, and am shocked to see that I must have slept longer than I realized during the bus ride with Al. I’ve landed 5o miles beyond Dentonville.
But this is only the second day, and I’m getting the hang of taking care of myself. She keeps my coffee cup brimming and hot. The meal revives me, clears my thinking. “I’ll be happy to wash everything in here for a bit of cash.”
“How much?” Her voice takes on a suspicious edge.
“To pay for the food, and maybe a burger to go.” Asking for more seems cruel, considering her circumstances. Besides, hitching with Clarence will save me bus fare.
Two hours later, everything is sparkling clean when a couple of regulars take seats at a table and order the breakfast specials. Clarence hasn’t shown up. She calls his house but he doesn’t answer. “He might have gone to Fletcher,” she says. “With a load of produce.”
She clicks on the tv again and the news isn’t good. People are still being asked to call this number if they know the woman found dead near Hackett. The second clip is worse still, but it doesn’t involve me, so I turn in my mop and pail, and the lady gives me ten dollars.
“Don’t spend it all in one place,” she jokes, with a sad smile. When she hands me a bag containing a can drink and a burger all the way, I try to pay for yesterday’s lunch, but she refuses. “I had a kid like you once.”
My throat closes on the question. It’s none of my business what happened to him, or why. I leave the cafe behind, heading toward Dentonville. Other thoughts fly around in my head like bats. “Don’t get in the car with anybody you can’t beat up,” Steve had warned me. Good advice. Next time, I won’t be so trusting.
Four hours and approximately fifteen miles later, I come to a burg with a few houses, main street, and a large park. My feet are tired, it’s hot, and I’m ready for my lunch. Finding a shaded picnic table, I unpack and am chowing down when a sleek SUV pulls in and two passengers cross the grass toward me . The driver is dressed like a wannabe rock star in tattered jeans and sandals, and the girl riding shotgun could be an aspiring singer dressed in a flowing white dress. He looks to be in his twenty’s, she’s maybe sixteen.
“Hey, dude, I’m Hoodoo.” He holds out a hand for me to shake it and I notice that his clothes aren’t just recently dirty like mine, but old dirty like he hasn’t changed them in days. The girl is clean and she’s lazily brushing her long, shiny hair. “I’m Francine,” she says, “but you can call me Franny.” They sit down on the bench opposite me. She kicks off white leather sandals, puts her feet against Hoodoo’s thigh, nudges him playfully.
It’s only then that I see a third person emerging from the SUV. He slams the door like he’s pissed and walks to us carrying a medium-sized cooler. He’s better looking than Hoodoo, his age somewhere between the other two, who giggle and flirt as if nobody else is around. His shirt came from an upscale store, so did the running shoes. His short curly hair is the same brown shade as Franny’s. She says, “This old man is Ernie. He’s blood kin, can you tell?”
“You do look alike,” I say cautiously.
“Haul it out and let’s get this over,” Hoodoo tells her. “I’ve never seen people that eat as often as you do.”
“Only winos get by on as little as you eat,” Ernie shoots back at him.
Hoodoo flips Ernie the bird, and I watch her unpack the cooler. The ice has mostly melted and water drips from the plastic containers as she puts them on the table. Hoodoo opens one and sniffs the contents. Dumps it on the ground. Opens two more. Same fate. He grabs his head in both hands and shouts, “You trying to kill us?”
Francine picks up the containers and throws them into the nearest big rusty trash can.
“Hey!” Hoodoo rescues a can of beer from the bottom of the cooler. He pops the top and takes a long swig.
Ernie’s been sitting beside me, watching the show. “We have anything to drink besides beer?”
“A quart of grape juice. Under my seat in the SooV.”
Ernie goes back toward the SUV. “Bring those Styrofoam cups,” his sister calls after him. “I want some, too.” She washes her hands in the water fountain, dries them on her dress. Turns to me. “We’re a new gen,” she says. “Hipsies. You know what that means? Hippy gypsies. I made that up.”
“I made that up,” Hoodoo corrects her. He paces in a tight little circle, downing the beer like it’s a contest he intends to win. Turns to me. “You hoofin’ it?”
“What?” I’m watching Ernie examine the cups he’s brought back.
“You know–running away. On foot. Hoofin’ it.”
I know better than to trust a guy called Hoodoo with the truth, but this time the hiking Boy Scout lie gets stuck in my throat and I’m left with my mouth hanging open. One thing I’ve decided, though, is to ride as far as I can with them. So long as it’s toward Dentonville.
TO BE CONTINUED!