A Time of Anarchy- Mayan's Story

by Roberta Kagan

  Again the baby cut through his thoughts with a shrill cry. It took all of his self control not to slap her for disturbing his mental escape. Hell, that kid ruined everything, not just his thoughts, but his whole fucking life. Instead of hitting her, he handed her a cookie from the open bag on the table.

  Get fat, like your fucking mother; see if I care. The baby crumbled it in her small fist and shoved it into her mouth. Glen looked on, repulsed. His mother insisted that when the child was born he would love her, but she was wrong. Both the kid and her mother hung like a noose around his neck. If he could just kill them both…then his life would be his own again.

  Glen looked out the window.

  Where the fuck was that bitch?

  He wanted to get going. Finally, he saw her fat ass coming up the walkway. He trembled with anticipation. Soon he’d be gone. Mara walked in and laid a brown paper bag on the counter; she didn’t look at Glen. Instead, she lifted the baby and lay the child down on the carpet in the living room.

  “You couldn’t change the kid?” she asked.

  “How the hell would I know she needed changing?”

  “Come on, Glen, you mean to tell me you couldn’t smell that? The whole damn room stinks.” She shook her head.

  After she changed the baby’s diaper, Mara got a towel and wiped the little one’s face.

  “Why the fuck don’t you clean this pig sty? We live like fucking animals, Mara,” Glen said as he gathered his keys and paperwork.

  “Yeah, Glen. I have a kid and I’m stuck here on my own while you take off and gallivant all over the place. How am I supposed to watch the baby and clean too?”

  “How the hell should I know? Shit! Other women do it, why don’t you?”

  “It’s hard, Glen. Robin is crying all the time. I never get outta here. And you never even take me out when you’re home, which is almost never.”

  “How can I take you out? Who would watch the kid?”

  “Your mom? My mom?”

  “Fuck, Mara, I gotta go to work or we won’t have any money.”

  “We don’t have any money anyway; you drink it all up. I’m always waiting on my government check so I can buy food and stuff for Robin.”

  “What I do with my money is none of your fucking business. I work hard for it, while you sit here on your fucking fat ass and do nothing. By the way, you look like shit. I don’t know what the hell has happened to you. You used to be decent looking; now you look like a fat old bag.”

  He tossed his gray duffel bag over his shoulder. Then he marched out, slamming the door. As he walked away from the house he heard the phone ringing. An icy finger ran down his spine; he knew it was his mother calling. Glen began sprinting. The last person on earth he wanted to talk to was his mother.

  “Glen!” Mara called from the doorway. He could hear the crying in her voice. “Your ma is on the telephone; she wants to talk to you…”

  He pretended not to hear.

  His heart beat hard. Just a few feet away…there she was. The truck. Her chipping black paint was glistening in the sunlight. She wasn’t new; wasn’t even in good shape, but she was freedom.

  Mara called out the door again, “Glen, your mom’s on the phone…”

  Glen hopped in to the cabin of the truck. The rumble of the engine was music to his ears. He turned on the radio and put the vehicle in drive. Only once did he glanced back at the house. Mara’s ugly face glared back at him from the kitchen window. He shivered and sped away.

  Route 66 opened up to him, like a woman with her arms and legs spread wide, ready to take him in, ready to satisfy his every fantasy. He cranked the window and inhaled the delicious fall air. A week of liberty stretched out before him. And, Glen could do a lot in a week!

  “I’m free,” he thought. And he drove until the darkness of night settled in, putting as much distance as possible between himself and the hovel he called home. Then, when the hour had grown very late, he finally checked into a motel.

  Chapter 46

  “You hungry?” Cricket asked.

  May’s eyes opened to the morning sun coming through the window and filtering in the dust particles in the air.

  “Yeah,” she said, stretching out her body like a contented cat.

  “Let me go to that little store we saw a mile back and get us some donuts for breakfast.”

  “Okay. You want me to wait here?”

  “If you want to.”

  “Well, yeah. I want to take a shower.”

  “Okay, I’ll get some coffee too.”

  “Sounds great,” she said and smiled at him. He was so damn handsome.

  “I’ll be right back, Baby. Don’t open the door for anyone, okay? It’s not safe when you’re on the road.”

  “Yeah, sure.” May smiled and turned over to get out of bed. Cricket left.

  After she showered, May realized that Cricket had forgotten to bring toothpaste. She had her toothbrush and she wondered how he could have overlooked something so simple. She decided to see if the motel office had a tube she could buy. It was only a few steps away.

  Outside the motel, May eyed the eighteen-wheel truck parked parallel to the rooms. Inside the motel office she found a shelf with convenience items, including a small tube of toothpaste. She took it to the front desk. The man standing in line in front of her as she waited to pay looked so much like Cricket from the back that she thought it was him.

  “Cricket?” May said, a little surprised to see him in the office of the motel.

  The man turned around. Even from the front, he looked a great deal like Cricket. And, like Cricket, he was terribly handsome.

  “I’m sorry. I thought you were someone else,” May said, embarrassed.

  “Who would you like me to be?” Glen answered with a smile that could charm a cobra.

  The slender woman in the pink and white flowered house dress with the strawberry blonde hair who ran the front desk smirked at May and Glen. She’d seen this kind of thing before. She wished she could hear what they were saying. It would make for an interesting morning, and she needed something to help pass the time. She watched May and Glen walk out together. Working in a motel, she saw a lot of people meet and have quick sexual encounters. She believed she’d just witnessed another one. But she was wrong.

  Chicago

  Red poured another swig from the whiskey bottle down his throat. He’d only just bought it the night before, and it was already half empty. Even in his semi-drunken state he wondered where May and Cricket had disappeared to. The only explanation he could come up with was that they had been taken by the Evil Brothers. And if they had, there was a very good chance that they were both dead. His anger swelled, readying him to wage an all-out war on the rival gang. The more he drank the more he itched to make them pay for their stupidity. Who the hell did they think they were playing with? There would be bloodshed. He would lose friends; men would die. He expected as much, but there must be vengeance for this horrific act on the part of the Brothers. His rivals must never see him as weak. If he showed weakness, either they or his own gang members would overthrow him and seize his power.

  The phone rang. Red picked it up, only to find that it was only a salesperson. Specks of plaster flew around the room as he slammed the receiver through the wall. The leader of the Brothers should have already contacted him, bragging and warning. But neither he nor any of his members had been contacted. Instead there was only silence. What the fuck were the Evil Brothers up to?

  Red knew he was far too drunk to ride that motorcycle, but he had to get to the clubhouse; he had to talk to the others and initiate plans for revenge.

  A blast of cold wind rushed at his face, but the alcohol in his blood kept him warm. He was on his way to the garage. It was time to get this thing started. He’d waited too long already.

  Chapter 47

  The radio hummed softly in the background as Cricket turned the car into the motel parking lot. He saw May walking along the sidewalk beside the motel rooms with a
man who resembled him so completely that he felt as if he were seeing a mirrored image.

  Cricket pulled the car to the curb right where May and Glen were walking.

  “Hi,” he said to May, uncertain of what was happening.

  “Hi, this is Glen. He was asking me to point him toward a decent restaurant. I was going to walk to the street and give him directions to the place where we had dinner last night.”

  “Yeah?” Cricket looked at Glen; his eyes glowed with suspicion. “It’s right on 66, about fifteen miles east of here. Got it?”

  “Yeah, thanks,” Glen said, and his face broke into an innocent smile.

  “Come on May,” Cricket said.” I’ve already paid for the room for last night, and we have food in the car. Let’s get moving, okay?”

  May saw the look on Cricket’s face and she knew that he didn’t trust Glen.

  “Yeah, let’s just go back and get my stuff.”

  “Okay.” Cricket half-smiled at May. “See ya around,” he said to Glen.

  When they got back to the room, they began getting their things together.

  “May, I told you to stay in the room. Why the hell were you out there talking to that guy?”

  “Cricket, don’t be mad. I went to get some toothpaste, and he looked so much like you that I thought it was you. That was how we started talking.”

  “It’s not safe to talk to guys on the road. You don’t know who he is. And something about him gave me the creeps.”

  “Are you jealous?”

  “Yeah, maybe a little.”

  She giggled and touched his face. “You have no reason to be.”

  Chapter 48

  When Jolie traveled she chose to stay at The Lazy Inn motel only because they allowed her to bring Franz, her white toy poodle, into the room with her. It was not what she would have considered a nice place, and she could certainly afford far better; however, having Franz at her side made it all worthwhile. He’d become her best friend and surrogate child. After the death of her husband, who’d left her well provided for, she’d needed something, a living being to shower with all of the love she had pent up inside of her.

  Not that her marriage was a great romance; it wasn’t, but it was a pleasant friendship…and after fifty years it was all she’d known. John, Jolie’s husband, had been a successful lawyer and they’d lived a good and prosperous life. But Jolie and John had not been blessed with children. It wasn’t as if they hadn’t tried; in fact they’d even gone to see specialists in an effort to conceive. They experienced ups and downs, and plenty of false hopes and promises. However, in the end, the couple had remained childless. So, for years, they’d always had dogs - small dogs, dogs that they could make believe were their children. Paul, their English Bulldog, had passed away a few months before Jolie had lost John to a long and terrible fight against lung cancer.

  After several months of mourning and desperate loneliness, Jolie had gone to a pet store, and there she met Franz. Tiny Franz was sitting alone in a small, silver metal cage. As soon as he saw Jolie, his tiny tail began to wag. Jolie loved him immediately. He was so small, fluffy, helpless, and the color of fresh snow on Christmas morning. Besides that, he was affectionate and spent most of the time on her lap. For Jolie, the little poodle was the perfect friend, and once she adopted him and brought him home, the two were never far apart. And for that reason, when she traveled, she only stayed at motels that allowed her to bring Franz. Of course, she was careful to walk him and clean up the mess, leaving no reason for complaint.

  After the dog’s breakfast, Jolie leashed him and they began their morning walk. The dog had grown accustomed to traveling this way and was comfortable with the routine. He walked along, sniffing for a place to relieve himself, while Jolie carried a paper bag and tissues to clean up the mess. Then suddenly, so unlike Franz, he began to tug hard on the leash, as if he needed to see something in the drain a few feet away. Jolie reached down to pet Franz and discourage him from going down the hill, but he only pulled harder.

  Franz barked loudly. “Shhh, Franz. Come on now, stop pulling,” Jolie told him.

  Finally Jolie gave in. She walked halfway down the hill. Holding tight to Franz’s leash, she looked down into the ditch, and it was then that she saw the pale white human hand reaching up as if trying to grasp heaven. The broken nails were polished coral, but all around them the fingers were crusted with dried blood. Jolie grabbed her chest as her heart skipped a beat, and she felt a bead of sweat form on her brow. She picked Franz up and held him in her arms. The small dog continued barking and tried to get down, but she held him tightly. Carefully, she approached, moving closer. Then she saw the body. It was a young woman, who was naked, with flowing blonde hair that was caked together in knots with clumps of blood. Deep purple marks made a necklace around her neck. Jolie began screaming. Franz barked even louder.

  Jolie had just found another one of the victims of the Route 66 Killer.

  Chapter 49

  Red had plans. That night he told the rest of the gang what they were going to do about the Evil Brothers. The men surrounded him, drinking beer and listening intently. Red walked around the room, gazing into the eyes of each of his men as he spoke.

  “Listen to me. The Brothers had the balls to take my brother and my girl. This means war. So get ready, because the streets of Chicago are going to run with blood. Evil Brothers’ blood.

  Nobody, and I mean nobody, fucks with me. I am the leader of the Brood. And we are still and will always be the most powerful gang on the street.”

  The rest of the men roared in agreement. It was good to have a strong and powerful leader. They owned Chicago, and anybody who dared to fuck with them would pay. And pay a righteous price…

  “All right, so let’s begin making the arrangements. I want to take them out one-by-one. In the beginning it’s gonna be a surprise attack, and before they know what hit them, we’ll overtake the whole fucking gang.”

  Chapter 50

  The Beatles blasted through the car radio speakers as May and Cricket began driving west toward California. The sun was rising in the east, and so it winked at them through the rear view mirror. Neither spoke as they shared donuts and coffee. For the first time since she knew him, May saw that Cricket had some of Red’s controlling ways. When she thought he wasn’t looking, she glanced over at him. This was something to be concerned about. She’d just escaped Red, and now Cricket had taken his place. The differences between the two men were vast, for sure. But any similarities haunted and frightened her.

  Finally Cricket looked over at May. He grasped her hand and caressed her fingers. His eyes told her that he was sorry.

  “Baby, you have to be more careful when we’re at a motel. It’s not safe to be talking to strangers. You don’t know who that guy was, or what he wanted from you.”

  “Please Cricket, I’ve had enough of the jealousy bullshit from your brother. Don’t start being that way, too.”

  “I’m jealous, that’s true. But that isn’t the reason I’m telling you this. It’s dangerous for a girl to be talking to strangers on the road. For months we’ve been hearing shit about a killer of women on Route 66. May, you mean so much to me that I just want to do everything I can to protect you. So, please….”

  He looked so sweet that she had to laugh. “Yes, okay, Cricket. I’ll be more careful from now on.”

  “Thank you,” he said, gently squeezing her hand. “I love you, May.”

  She smiled.

  They drove through out the entire day, singing along with the radio. Talking about California. Laughing at billboards along the road. But both were careful to avoid talking about Red.

  Finally the sun began her descent, and the colors of the sunset spilled across the sky, staining it sapphire blue, with pink and orange shooting through like splashes from God’s magnificent paintbrush.

  “Let’s get some food and find a room,” Cricket suggested.

  “Okay. I’m tired, but I could drive all night if it
meant we’d be in California,” she said.

  “I’m sorry, Baby; I’m wiped out and starving. Do you mind if we stop?”

  “No, not at all. I can wait another day to get into California, but I guarantee I’ll be dreaming about it all night.”

  “And I’ll be dreaming about you…after we make love of course,” he said.

  “So, I thought you were tired,” she kidded.

  “Never too tired for you.”

  “Well, that makes stopping for the night much more appealing,” she said.

  “I promise to make it wonderful.” He reached over and ran his hand through her hair.

  “You always do,” she said.

  In the distance they could see the splendid shapes of the Sierra Nevada Mountains against the colorful backdrop of the sunset. “Tomorrow we’ll be in California,” Cricket repeated.

  May felt her heart flutter. “I’m so excited. I’ve always wanted to go to San Francisco. And we’re about to begin our new life together. Oh, Cricket, it’s so incredible that you and I are here together, I guess because my past was so fucked up, I never thought life could be like this.”

  “That makes two of us. I am so happy May, just so fucking happy…” he said.

  They found a room at a run-down motel on the right side of the road. Cricket secured the room. He carried their things in. Then May washed her face, brushed her teeth, and combed her hair, while Cricket took a quick shower. After that, they went out to find a restaurant to have dinner.

  The first place they came to was a bar that served food. It was a large, dark place made of wood. But it said “Live Folk Music Tonight” on the sign facing the street.