Harrison saw through my vagueness, but he didn’t say anything. He knew. I knew. Something had to go. Although I identified with and enjoyed my journalism job at the magazine, where I interviewed locals along the Maine coast and into the Massachusetts and New Hampshire regions, and highlighted the cultural and socio-economic hallmarks of New England, it wasn’t my passion. I loved writing fiction.
“Maybe in a year?” I offered in my usual indecisive fashion.
“Yeah, give it time, honey baby angel. You’ll get there,” he said. He took my hand in his and kissed it. I smiled at his baby blues.
We hiked quieter, Harrison grumbling less, both of us reflective. That’s the thing with hikes. Your brain pondered, daydreamed, worried, zoned out. You snapped at your spouse from exhaustion. It brought out the best and worst in you.
“Wouldn’t it be great to take the boys to see Yellowstone?” Harrison said on the descent.
“It would be.”
“Then let’s do it.”
I heaved a resigned sigh as I gauged the hike down. Well, it had been worth it. “Can you swing the time off?”
“Allen can suck it. Yes. I have so many vacation hours, and I get that bonus in January. Next summer?”
Elation eased my achy knees, shins, feet, and hands as we daydreamed about our first family trip via airplane to Yellowstone and the grand Northwest circle of a volcanic wonderland. Harrison mused, excited to explore an opportunity that the boys would adore.
We laughed about the boys’ latest escapades at home. We gloried in Will’s abilities to remember facts and draw kick-ass maps and charts. We fantasized about all the parks we’d visit on our trip. Harrison teased me about my fear of bears. I poked his slightly bulging gut, pointing out how many calories and pounds he’d shed today.
We held hands through the flatter tableland until we reached the drop off to start the steep descent into the rocky boulders and tree line. I slid on my hands and bottom more times than I could count, and my scraped palms would surely remember it come morning. Harrison soon lost me in the maze of boulders that were the Gateway.
We fell into our comfortable hiking rhythm as we let the day settle into our souls, as it warmed our hearts, and reconnected us in the way it always did.
****
Present Day
Usually a light sleeper, and probably half expecting our former travel companion to reappear, I was roused around five a.m. by heated whispers in our campsite.
“Clara, check the doors,” a voice growled.
I lay perfectly still and listened, stupefied with sleep and still clinging to the dream—well, a vivid memory, actually—I had about Harrison. I blinked as wakefulness shrouded the last threads of my dream.
I held my breath.
“They’re all locked, Denny.”
Heavy footsteps trotted toward my car. Somebody jiggled the door handles louder and cursed. “Come here. We’ll take the bikes at least.”
I felt around for the tire iron and realized it was still in my numb hand. Will stirred beside me. He had my morning alertness. Don’t wake, I willed him. No use. He spoke. “Mom?”
For f’s sake. Okay, there, I didn’t say that word as much as I wanted to. Perhaps Will’s reminders were working on me. But my God. Another robbery or attempt? This made three on my trip, and I was only in Missouri. What the hell was wrong with people? Did I wear a target on my shirt?
“Mom, what’s that noise?” his voice squeaked, not frightened, but curious.
I put my fingers on his lips to shush him.
“Bad people?” he whispered, getting the hint as I slowly removed my fingers. He hugged Douglas closer to his chest.
I nodded. I needed to pay better heed to my intuition. Should have slept in the car.
“Stay here, Will. Do not leave,” I ordered. I grabbed the whistle and put it around his neck. “Okay?”
“They’re not bears,” he said.
“Quiet, honey. Blow the whistle if-if-if…just stay, okay?”
“Mom…,” he said, his voice breaking.
“Shush,” I said. I gave him a brief squeeze. “Brave wizard, it’ll be okay. Stay. I will not leave you. I need to make these bullies go away, okay? Give them a stern talking-to.”
I then crept to the tent flap, the sleeping bag crinkling noisily. I had to surprise them. I opted for the tire iron instead of the kitchen knife. It seemed less dangerous, less lethal. Less…permanent. This was not a time to kill. It was a time to kick someone’s ass. Although I wished I had Harrison’s gun to wave in threat.
“Get away from my car!” I shouted, raising the tire iron with shaking arms as I emerged from the tent. My elbow gave with the quick, heavy movement. I fumbled, cursed, and regained my stance, hoping to look like the devil.
It was the old man from the beater station wagon. He jumped. He had one bike halfway off the rack. He turned and glared at me. “We need this more than you do, darlin’. We were gonna leave your bikes.”
I remembered their wheezing station wagon, and the truth clicked in my mind.
Clara retreated from her fiddling with a door lock and raised her hands. “Come on, sweet gal. You won’t be hurtin’ if we take a few things. We need to get to our son.”
“So do I, and I’m not getting there by bike,” I said, louder. I surprised myself by drawing closer. “Step away from my car, and leave my bikes the hell alone.”
“Look, darlin’, we don’t mean you no harm. You look like you’ll be okay. I’m sure you got money to get there,” Dennis said in a cool voice, but his face said otherwise as he evaluated me in the way a panhandler eyed a person in a designer coat. He approached me, hands outstretched. Seeing that Dennis had me under control, Clara returned to her lock picking. Could people actually pick car locks? What the hell?
I maintained strong eye contact and straightened my posture.
Dawn’s murky shadows stole across the campground. It all happened at once. I shifted my stance, clamped both hands around the tire iron and swung as Dennis lunged at me, a scowl twisting his unkempt bearded face. Clara unlocked my door and muttered a “sweet Jesus.” The heaviness of the tire iron as I wielded it surprised me, but I made like a baseball player aiming to hit one out of the park. The iron thudded into Dennis’s pudgy belly, the equivalent of a heavy gym bag. The impact recoiled in my arms. I dropped the iron.
I groaned.
“Oof!” he wheezed and staggered, but then continued toward me, shaking his head.
I cursed like a sailor and stumbled backward, my only weapon gone. I didn’t have the pocket knife. Where the hell had I left that? Oh, yeah, in the cup holder in the car. The kitchen knife was in the tent. I groped for my car key in my back pocket and hit the alarm button, sending a piercing shriek through the campground. Drawing attention and help was all I had now.
Clara stumbled back from the car like she’d been scalded. “Shit!” she cried.
Dennis was upon me, beefy hands pinching my upper arms. I shoved my key into my jeans pocket, thanking the stars that I hadn’t changed into pajamas last night. I would be damned if he got my car. He smacked the side of my face, not once, but twice.
I lost my footing and fell.
“Mom!” Will cried, emerging from the tent.
Blood trickled from my mouth. My teeth rattled. Oh, my God, they felt loose. No, his punch hadn’t been that hard. Pain radiated from my cheek to my temple. My ears rang. Instinct took precedence. “Run, baby, run!” I instantly regretted it, but the momma bear, echoing Geena’s words, couldn’t let them hurt him. Geena…did she and her family hear my car? Where was my help? Somebody? Anybody…
All the moves I’d learned in the women’s self-defense class I took at Will’s karate studio…emptied from my brain. Claw the face. Bite his ears. Make noise. Knee moves. Oh my God, what were those leg moves? Up, get up!
Will whimpered above me, near my head. “Mom!”
I felt Dennis’s hovering presence over me as he kicked me in my side. “Bitch
!”
Will was there. He kicked Dennis in the shin. “Leave my mom alone, you bully!” He did one of his karate moves, I think his front jab, and got Dennis in the groin. Three years of tiring lessons had paid off, momentarily at least.
“You shit!” Dennis cried, reaching for Will.
I swiped my foot, caught his knee. Yes, that’s where. The burly man fell right beside me. “Will! Run, honey! Hide!” I screamed it now.
A crowd formed around us.
“Leave her alone!” a man said. Geena’s husband?
“Somebody stop him!” Geena’s voice shouted.
“Dennis, you ass! Get over here. Forget them. I got the door open!” Clara’s voice shrilled. “Find the keys! Or else I gotta hotwire it. Hurry!”
I blinked away darkness. No, no, no. I wouldn’t pass out!
His hands were on me again, searching for the keys. He grunted like a wild pig. A man grabbed him. He shrugged the guy off with a growl and punch.
“You bastard!” Geena cried.
My weaker fingers fought against his as he dug into my pockets. He slapped me around, muttering curses through heavy nasal breathing.
Clara moaned as somebody restrained her. “Let go of me, you ass!”
Jesus, he got the keys.
“No…,” I said weakly. “My keys…” I struggled to rise as a dark shape emerged from the crowd and moved past me, stealthy and crouching low. The tire iron scraped the dry ground as he picked it up. The heavy thud of iron met muscle. Dennis grunted in surprise.
“Wha—” Dennis barked.
Painful tears burned my vision. Oh, but I was able to hear, despite the ringing in my ears.
My rescuer didn’t hold back.
Crack. The tire iron hit bone.
Crack.
Splatter. Nauseating thuds.
“Oof!”
More screeching. “Denny!”
Crack.
I threw my hand in the air. “Please! Stop!” I breathed, teeth aching.
“Leave her the hell alone!” Reid said to my attackers. His booming voice rippled through me. Then I heard nothing. Muffled ear ringing replaced the car alarm blaring, Clara’s shrieking, and the nauseating cracks. Reid’s mouth moved with questions.
Soon, the others closed in the space. Geena knelt and helped steady me. Her husband was beside her with a bloody nose.
The ringing in my head lessened, but everything spun. I blinked and darkness lured me. No. No! I swallowed the blood that had pooled in my mouth.
Suddenly, I snapped back to the chaos around us. My hearing returned, sharpened.
“I’ve got you, love,” Geena said.
“I called the police,” an older man’s rough, croaky voice said. I caught a whiff of stale cigarettes as he hurried past me. “Sonny, get over there. Don’t let them leave!”
“Y’all get me some ice, okay?” Geena said to somebody.
I doubted Dennis was going anywhere, his gurgling gasps sickening. Top that with Clara’s howling and my car alarm, and I felt I might puke. Somebody grabbed the keys and silenced the alarm.
“Will,” I said hoarsely.
My knees swayed.
“Sit, AJ,” Geena soothed. “We’ll tend to ya.”
“No! Will…” I scanned the area. He was nowhere to be found. “Oh, my God. I told him to run. Oh, my God!” Hyperventilation gripped me.
Reid approached. “Breathe, AJ, breathe. We’ll find him. Put your head between your knees.”
I swatted him and Geena away but did as told. Still unsteady, I turned my head.
Geena said, “We’ll help find him. Jared?” She gestured to her husband. Sam approached, clutching her gray cat stuffed animal.
I collected myself. “He’s in blue and green jammies,” I began with an unsteady voice. “Oh, God.” I frantically ripped open the tent flap, futile as it was. Empty. “Will? Will!” I cried. He was nowhere. “Maybe he’s in the campground somewhere?”
“We’ll search around here,” Geena offered. “He couldn’t have gotten far.”
Yes, he could.
I nodded and clung to Geena’s empathetic eyes. “H-He likes water…lakes and rivers. He also likes to hide when he’s scared. He could be hiding anywhere. He’s quiet, skilled at blending in. He likes closets, corners, and tight spaces.”
“We’ll check tents,” she said. “Come, Sam. Jared, you check over there.” She waved to her husband and other daughter.
“My brother likes to hide, too,” another teen girl said, but it didn’t abate my racing fears.
“Yes, tents. Or-or-or, yeah, check behind cars. Under cars. Behind trees. Anywhere a kid could tuck away.” My heart almost broke. I’d become accustomed to his coping methods of hiding, but seeing him curled in a closet or under a chair never got easier. I almost added, “He has autism,” but I was tired of explaining him that way. Other kids ran and hid, too. Maybe not exactly the way Will did, or for the reasons he did, but all kids got scared. He wasn’t a growling lion an adult couldn’t approach for risk of him biting their fingers off.
“It’ll be okay, AJ,” Geena cooed, clasping my hand. She squeezed. “Want me to stay with you?”
“Th-Thank you, but no. I need to look, too,” I said through chattering teeth. Worried adrenaline coursed through me. I shook my head, hoping to dislodge my stupor, but instead it pitched me into another dizzy spell. Will was either hiding in a tent, taking flight to God knows where, or…
Visceral emotion told me exactly where he had gone—to that spring. “The woods, Reid. The woods! That damn spring.”
“Thank you, please, go,” Reid said to the helpers. “We’ll check the surrounding woods.”
I stared into Reid’s piercing dark expression, hypnotically drawn to the dirt and blood splattered across his cheek and brow. It wasn’t mine or his. Retching swelled in my throat. I bit it back.
The woods.
“Wait, AJ, wait!”
I was fast. Reid was faster. He grabbed my arm and stopped me in my tracks, my heels skidding across a patch of gravel on the edge of my campsite. I nearly tripped over an exposed tree root. “We need to approach this sensibly.”
He had just beaten Dennis to a bloody pulp and he was telling me to be sensible?
Reid continued in a cool even tone, “He may be close. He may be far. We need to bring stuff.”
“Stuff? What kind of stuff? I don’t need another checklist! My son’s out there because of those assholes, and I need get to him. If he’s not hiding in the campground, then he went to the spring. Geena and the others have the campground covered.”
I passed a look on the forest before us. Sweeping oaks and ancient evergreens encircled the campground like protective guards to a secret castle. The heyday of summer—dense shrubs, fanning ferns, leaf-covered trees, and burgeoning flowers—thickened the forest. Early dawn’s light had begun to penetrate the canopy as long shadows blanketed the campsite. I shivered.
“The longer we wait, the farther he gets,” I pleaded.
“We need to be prepared,” Reid countered, guiding me toward my car.
Although it wasn’t nearly as pine-dominated as the forests in New England, there was no lack of green. I recalled the trailhead post had mentioned this area was sparsely used and the land beyond the campground was privately owned. Normally, such an area would seduce me with its beauty and solitude. Now it was a vise grip. My baby was out there in a damn jungle. Day had barely broken. He didn’t even have a glow stick.
I hesitated only for a moment, waiting for the neurons to fire, and it was enough time for Reid to coerce me back to the car. “AJ.”
I shrugged from his grip. “Yes. Okay. Can we be quick about it? What the hell do we need?”
Reid already had my keys and handed them to me. I unlocked the car doors. I shifted on my feet, my pulse quickening as he opened the rear hatch door and riffled through bins. I inhaled, and a rasp gripped my lungs with its familiar rattling. Reid located our backpacks; one was Will’s backp
ack from school, covered in weather badges and logos Harrison had sewn on for him, and the other was mine. Well, Harrison’s. He’d loved that pack. It was made from recycled plastic water bottles or something silly. Reid tossed in a few waters, snacks, a rope, and the first aid kit.
“We won’t need all that,” I said.
He held up old bolt cutters, giving me a quizzical glance.
I took them from him and shoved them into a crevice between two totes. “Don’t ask.”
“Jeez, AJ, you’ve thought of everything.” Reid lifted the case that held the walkie-talkies Finn and Will had gotten for Christmas. They loved to play with them in our backyard and they had a long range. I even had a handheld emergency radio with crank flashlight. We had yet to use that on our trip. With any luck my usual over-packing was just that—I hoped to not need half of this stuff. And this was an already diminished supply thanks to the people who had robbed me in New York.
“Resourceful,” I mumbled.
Reid zipped the pack and handed me a flashlight.
“Please…we need to go.” I was already inching away as he grabbed my arm and shoved a walkie-talkie into my hand. He took the other. “We’re not going together?”
“We may need to split up at some point.”
“It won’t come to that.”
I unzipped the backpack and tossed the walkie-talkie in.
The campground manager and his wife approached. She handed me a wet towel. “I don’t have any ice. Sorry,” she said. I glanced quickly for Geena. Her family must’ve already been off in the farther areas of the campground canvasing.
“Huh?” I asked.
She pointed to my face.
“Oh.”
I dabbed my cheek with the damp towel, wincing with the touch. She handed me a water bottle, and I took a sip, sloshed, and spat. I repeated it a few times until my spit was no longer bloody. I returned the towel with a muffled thank-you.
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