Episode 14
He’s not there.
I scan the crowds of people moving in all directions, mostly toward the parking lot, but in the dim glow from a few flashlights and fewer headlights, I can tell we’ve been abandoned again.
“Did you hear that shot?” I ask Ernie, who by now is looking around too with his hands propped on his hips, annoyed. “Think he’s in trouble?”
“I heard something. But it didn’t come from the campsite. It’s that way.” He gestures over a cluster of fairground buildings on a little knoll.
Ernie’s sense of direction is another of his many talents, and I’m impressed, though not exactly convinced and certainly not reassured. “What should we do?” The trolleys are leaving and I want to be on one. Wherever the campsite is, getting to it will be quicker if we follow the route we came in on. My enthusiasm for trekking over that wooded knoll in the dark and maybe without a path, is zero.
He picks up our bag of leftover groceries and starts across the grass. Everyone’s flowing toward the exit, and some cars are already lined up to get onto the single dirt road to the highway. Trolleys bully their way into position, and we’re able to grab seats on the first, right behind the driver.
“Where could he be?” My thoughts are stuck in that groove, with a side trip into, What is he doing? And why? Did he always intend to leave us here, while he disappeared into the night, bent on fulfilling his secret mission? Or did he see someone in the crowd and run?
“You’d better hope he turns up at camp, because that’s where we’re going to spend the night. Hope the tent’s there, if nothing else. We don’t have money for a motel, or hotel, or whatever this burg’s got in the way of accomodations.”
“Was that really a gunshot? Or do I just have guns on the brain?”
“In the morning we’ll get a paper and see if the cops arrested anybody for having too much fun at the festival.”
“Or some farmer shooting at a chicken thi—”
“Hey, Jason, you’re leaving one,” comes a voice from the back of the trolley. Heads crane around and as we move into the turn I spot John running after us. He’s silhouetted by car lights, carrying something in one hand and waving the other. Three somethings, the size and shape of microwave popcorn bags.
We’re a few hundred yards from the highway and our driver isn’t slowing down. “He can take one of the other trolleys,” Jason calls over his shoulder.
“Ernie, that’s John!”
Ernie stands up, leans close to Jason, holds something against the man’s neck. “Stop the damn bus,” he says. Low, calm. Scary.
We careen over to the shoulder and brake to a neck-snapping halt. Squeals and babble from the other passengers, a mix of surprise and approval, some laughter. Hands reach out and help John aboard. In the fleeting glow of car lights, he pauses,uncertain. “Ernie? You guys here?”
“Here we are!” I cry, and he makes his way along an aisle full of feet to us. Ernie steps aside and John swings onto the seat with me. “You run pretty good for an old man,” Ernie jokes. John quips, “Checking the other trolleys slowed me down.” Now that we’re together, it’s easy to think he’d only been visiting one of the portable toilets. I decide to work on curbing my imagination.
John’s breathing is normal by the time we hit the first traffic light into town. I’m not prepared for what he says.
“Why’d you take off like that? I wasn’t gone more than ten minutes. You better be glad I found you, because I have the flashlight.”
Ernie says mildly, “You could have told us you were going, and we’d've waited.”
“I wanted it to be a surprise.” He gives me one of the puffy round plastic bags.
Passing under fitful street lights, I hold up the clear bag but still can’t tell what’s inside. Ernie opens his, pulls out a bunch of something and pops it into my mouth.
“Cotton candy!” At first there’s a thrill as the sweetness melts over my tongue and I’m in third grade, watching a vendor twirl the pink threads over a paper cone, taking my first bite, getting it all over my face.
It’s not as exciting, wadded into a bag, but every bit as tasty. I’ve finished about a third of it when a wave of emotion sweeps over me and the next thing I know I’m blubbering. Ernie politely ignores me, John lays a hand on my shoulder, and I duck my head into a shadow and pretend to be coughing.
The driver stops the trolley at the corner of the court house square, where we got on, and the lights are so bright I feel like I’m on a stage. “You okay?” John lets the other passengers file past.
When the last few clank down the metal step, the driver turns to us and tells Ernie, “Don’t you ever pull a gun on me again, dude.”
“You brought that gun!” John sounds outraged.
Ernie holds up a small pen light. Flashes it in Jason’s face.
Mid-cough I burst into laughter, tears still dripping off my chin.
Jason glares at us and makes a shooing motion with his hand. “Get off.”
We do. John’s mega light leading the way. Across the two lane, into the woods. “You’d've ended up in the swamp, trying to navigate with that dinky thing.”
“Served a better purpose anyway,” Ernie counters.
He’s using his little light to keep from walking on my heels. Brambles clutch at my elbows and ankles, and I’m ready for an air mattress. But when we’re still pretty fare from the clearing, John switches off his light. Ernie kills his, too. We stand motionless, listening.
“Stay here,” John whispers near my ear and we wait while he scouts ahead. I’m surprised by how silently he can move. Was he in the military, or just a squirrel or deer hunter? He’s comfortable with handguns, and his dad owned a rifle. Which Jordan took with him.
John’s gone a long time, and my fears return, along with that confusion of yearning and regret for things I can’t define. Tears well up, spill over, and I blow my nose on my tee shirt.
“What’s the matter with you?” Ernie’s voice is curious, but with an edge of impatience.
“I don’t know.” To steady myself, I stuff the rest of the cotton candy into my mouth.
John comes down the path, light bobbing, and says, “All clear.”
We follow him into camp and he breaks out a fresh six-pack. “Just what I need,” I tell Ernie. “A sugar high multiplied by alcohol content.”
“You don’t have to drink it,” he tells me. “We’re not putting a gun to your head.”
I fall over laughing and at first he doesn’t realize what’s funny. Then he flashes the pen light into my eyes and we scuffle a bit, spilling beer from both cans. He knuckles my head. “That’s the second time you’ve done that.”
John regards us with a smile. “Better get some sleep. We’ll be up early.”
Stumbling toward the tent, I strip off my tee shirt, cruddy with dried tomato juice, wet snot, and now a smelly dose of beer. The two air mattresses fill the space, a blanket spread over each. Behind me Ernie says, “John’s going to sleep in the Caddy.”
Off come the ragged sneakers. I dump them and the shirt beside the tent and crawl in. After John shuts off the megalight, there’s silence and darkness and nothing moves. For about a minute I believe I’m sleeping. Then I hear Ernie taking a leak on the other side of the nylon. I hope he isn’t pissing into my shoes.
The open flap at the back lets in a cooling breeze and the occasional soft hoot of an owl somewhere deep in woods too thick for a glimpse of civilization. Trucks pass on the highway, and faint cheerful conversation and the drone of a distant radio turn my thoughts to the festival and the fact that I have over seven dollars left of the money John gave me. If we go into town tomorrow, I’ll buy a pair of tennies at some discount place or thrift store. Maybe find a camera that my cartridge will fit and I can finish taking up the roll.
Ernie tosses restlessly beside me and I wonder what’s on his mind. Fran, for sure. What else? Is he reliving our adventures, like I am? Wishing he was home, like I’m not. But I do wish we were in the sad farmhouse, sleeping in the twin beds without any threat of intruders.
Then I know what turned me into a sniveling crybaby on the trolley. Until John handed me that cotton candy, I still had doubts about him, and because I was having such a good time playing the fugitive with him, I’d given little thought to what he must be feeling. My head knew he was desperate, yet what he’d told us, what I’d seen with my own eyes and heard on the news, hadn’t really touched me before.
But the moment I tasted the treat he’d gone out of his way to give me, I knew he was innocent, and my heart filled with sorrow for him. Playing fugitive was one thing, being one was another. ‘They think you did it,’ the friend who stole the money for him had said.
And on top of that, while he was doing something nice for us, we’d gone off and left him. Did he feel like us, then? Abandoned, not knowing what to do. I can still see him running to catch up, hear his panting question, ‘You guys here?’
“Can’t sleep, Mouse?”
I confess, “I figured out why I acted like a dork over the candy.”
Ernie confesses, “I had a defining moment like that last night.”
Sitting up, I try to read his face, but the moon’s not co-operating. “What was it?”
“When he showed us the album. You didn’t look at those pictures of all the stuff that came with that car, did you. Girly stuff, like a mirror and nail file and perfume, meant for a rich woman or a rich man’s wife. I had to wonder what John’s mother thought of it. And when the car came to him through his dad’s estate, he never told Margie. He put the accessories in a box and kept it in the farmhouse basement. Guess it’s still there.”
I want more than ever to go back and live in that house, discover all its secrets.
When I do sleep, I dream, and my dream is not of John’s house, or his car, or his dead wife. I know I’m dreaming but I can’t wake up. I’m in the foster home, hauling a giant vacuum cleaner through a maze of rooms. The floors are made of river bank sand, and the cleaner keeps falling apart. I’m so mad I’m crying, but if I make a run for freedom I’ll be caught and punished, so I keep putting the pieces together and guide the nozzle over the sand, which is endless.
“What the hell IS that?” Ernie sits up, groggy and wild-haired.
‘That’ is John, using a hand vac to clean up the sand we’ve tracked onto the Caddy’s carpet.
Remorse sweeps over me again but I don’t cry. Instead, I go and take the vac from him. By the time the job’s completed, he’s made coffee and Ernie’s roasting the corn ears in a bed of ashes raked to one side of the fire.
“Corn for breakfast?”
John says, “You eat corn flakes, don’t you?”
“Those don’t look very flaky.” They’re still in the husks, brownish-gray from ashes and heat. Mixed with the aroma of coffee, they smell marvelous. I hunker near Ernie. “How do you know when they’re done?”
He glances sideways at me with a little grin. Together we say, “Another one of your/my many talents.” Then he explains, “Boy Scouts. Long time ago.”
While we’re scarfing down breakfast, John asks, “You want to swim, or shower in the campground wash house?”
There’s a campground? “Shower!” we both shout. I hope it’s not one of the ultra primitive ones I’ve read about with stinky pit toilets and no hot water and black mold growing on everything.
Ernie surprises me. Instead of packing that paper bag full of clothes, he’s also brought two towels, soap, toothpaste and toothbrushes, and dental floss. “Crikey, you really ARE a Boy Scout. Always prepared. Ready for anything.”
His mood goes somber. “Not always.”
John points us onto the faint footpath that winds through undergrowth topped by pine forest. In about ten minutes we come out right behind the campground wash house. At this time of morning it’s deserted and we get our pick of showers in a clean, tiled, brightly lit facility.
The bar soap Ernie hands me has a manly, antibacterial scent, and the water’s adjustable to my temperature. Happily, I wash myself and the dirty clothes I’ve had the foresight to bring along. A hundred times better than East Wind. When I finally shut off the spray because my fingers are wrinkly, I’m squeaky clean outside and completely contented inside. Dry and dressed in my other outfit, I’m prepared for anything.
Ernie and I step through the plastic curtain and into cooler air at the same time. He’s letting his beard grow, and only a pair of brown leather sandals is needed to transform him from the clean-cut corporate son into a free-wheeling campus rebel.
“Let’s buy some foot gear today,” I suggest, flossing the corn out of my teeth. “I have enough money and I bet John would give you more.”
He towels his curly hair thoughtfully. “I have money.”
My eyebrows ask the question and he completes the explanation. “But I can’t get to it for two more months.”
John’s right, then. “So how rich are you?” I’ve never known a rich person, but I’ve seen full page color photos of the high life in magazines. Mansions in Beverly Hills and New York on tv. Palaces in books, and in my dreams. What I can’t picture is Ernie in any of them.
“Mother set up a trust fund for me the week I was born. Nobody can touch it until my eighteenth birthday.”
“Eighteen. Just in time for college.”
“University.”
“Figures.”
We sit on adjacent wood benches as he re-packs items in my duffel bag. The wet towels and clothes will have to dry on bushes at our campsite.
“It’s a long, convoluted mess. When Fran was old enough to realize that all of Mom’s inheritance was going to be mine, she freaked. Didn’t matter that the deal was done before she was born. Her resentment drove Mom to leave us two years ago. Didn’t help that Dad gave the kid everything she wanted and more. Then sometime around last Christmas, Fran met Hoodoo and everything went to hell.”\
“And you’re trying to bring it back to–what? The same convoluted mess it was before Hoodoo?”
The sound he makes isn’t amused. “Not trying any more.” He goes to one of the mirrors and starts combing his hair.
At the next sink, I load paste on my toothbrush, pause to say, “But you love Fran. Isn’t she worth–”
His reflected eyes meet my stare. “Love her? I can’t stand her.”
TO BE CONTINUED!