Fatal Journeys

by Lucy Taylor

  “When you didn’t want to live no more, was it because you couldn’t get drugs?” asked Pruitt, kicking at what looked like long strands of foamy spit hawked up by the ocean.

  “No, nothing like that.” Aunt Gish said. “I used to teach school, and a few years ago there was a little boy in my class, a wonderful little boy, named Timmy Anderson, and he kept coming to school with bruises so I called the people who’re supposed to look out for children like Timmy and said I thought someone was hurting him. Someone in his home. But those people were very overworked and they didn’t really have time to visit Timmy’s house more than once and, well, one of his parents beat Timmy very badly soon after that and he died. And then a year later there was a little girl named Angie Myers and she had blood in her underpants one day, and I reported it to the same people who were supposed to help Timmy and you know what, they were still really busy, and somebody misplaced Angie’s file and one day she didn’t come to school at all and…”

  “She got killed, didn’t she?”

  “Oh, honey, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be telling you such awful things. It’s just that, after Angie, that was when I didn’t want to live anymore. It just seemed like there wasn’t any point, like children were dying right under my nose and all I was doing was making stupid phone calls. I felt so bad, I bought a gun and decided to shoot myself. But then I thought, maybe I wasn’t ready to die, maybe that was too easy a solution, so I went to a hospital for a while and then when I got better, I decided to come down here to Florida. Take what they call early retirement. Because I couldn’t stand to see anymore Timmy’s or Angie’s. I just thought it would kill me to see anything like that again.”

  “Come to the North Pole with me.”

  “Why the North Pole, honey?”

  “It’s safe there,” said Pruitt, kicking the water ahead of her in long silver arcs. “It’s cold and quiet and empty so you can just walk for miles and not run into anybody else. And the sun shines and the ice sparkles all the time and it’s…safe.”

  She kicked at the water. A long time ago, back when her mother was still alive, she remembered seeing a cartoon about a pair of children who went to the North Pole to visit Santa. She remembered cliffs of white ice rising straight up into a cold, sunny sky and herds of reindeer moving across frozen, empty plains where you could run forever and no one would ever see you or hear you or hurt you or cause you pain, and when Daddy or Kenny were hurting her or when Miriam was screaming at her, she would go to that cold, clear place of endless, empty space and she would roam among the ice castles and watch the polar bears play and she would be safe, so safe…and free…and she would belong to herself.

  “The North Pole is a long way off,” Aunt Gish was saying. “You’d need a map to get there.”

  “No I won’t,” said Pruitt and she told Aunt Gish her plan.

  ««—»»

  The beach was brown with shadows, the horizon just a purple streak, like grape jelly smeared over silk, when Aunt Gish said they’d better turn back.

  “I could stay with you at your trailer tonight,” Pruitt said and Aunt Gish told a deep breath and said, “Oh, honey, I wish you could. But your Dad and Miriam were expecting us back a long time ago. I have to take you home now.”

  “Please?” said Pruitt. “Don’t make me go back there.”

  “I can’t,” Aunt Gish said. “I’m sorry, Pruitt, I can’t help you. I can’t do anything at all.”

  She shook another cigarette out of the pack, but her hands were shaking so badly now she couldn’t light it and finally she said a long string of bad words and threw the cigarette into the sea.

  ««—»»

  The pink house where Pruitt lived was in the middle of a block of two-story stucco houses in various pastel shades. All the houses had chimneys, built more for looks than for function, but useful during South Florida’s occasional winter cold snaps. Pruitt’s house had the additional decoration of a trellis extending up one side of the house to roof level. When Pruitt’s mother was alive the trellis had been covered with morning glory vines. Now it resembled empty scaffolding, badly worn and in need of a paint job.

  A man was knocking on the front door when Aunt Gish and Pruitt drove up. Pruitt’s heart sank as she recognized Kenny.

  He was darkly tanned with very short, baby fine blond hair and skin the color and texture of alligator hide, and he drove an expensive car with New Jersey license plates. His fingers were long and slender and Pruitt hated the tickly, spidery way they crept over her body.

  “That’s Kenny,” Pruitt whispered. “The one who touches me.”

  When Kenny saw Pruitt and Aunt Gish approaching, he stared at Pruitt, at her bare feet, the wet legs of her jeans, and a very pale, sickly glow seemed to shine behind the dark brown of his tan that reminded Pruitt of the yellow eyes in a battery-powered triceratops she’d once seen.

  Aunt Gish guided Pruitt ahead of her as if they were crossing a very dangerous intersection.

  “Pretty kid,” Kenny said to Aunt Gish as they came up on the porch, although his eyes never left Pruitt. “Gonna be a real looker when she fills out a little.”

  The silence following that remark was the loudest Pruitt had ever heard.

  Kenny reached down as if to ruffle Pruitt’s hair.

  Aunt Gish snatched Pruitt backward out of his reach. She put her red, fatty face an inch away from Kenny’s tanned, plastic-looking skin and said, in a voice so close to a whisper that Pruitt could barely hear her, “You ever lay a hand on this child again and you’ll be in prison paying for your drugs with blowjobs, you fucking pervert.”

  Kenny took a step back, almost stumbling off the top step of the porch, just as Pruitt’s father opened the door. He was a short, wiry man with a boxer’s build and blue eyes iced over with perpetual rage.

  “Who is this bitch?” Kenny hissed, looking at Aunt Gish. “What does she mean calling me a pervert and accusing me of buying drugs? Who the hell is she?”

  Pruitt’s father apologized to Kenny, who smirked and went inside the house. Then he started screaming at Aunt Gish.

  “Get out of here! Go back to New York or the funny farm or wherever the hell you wanna go, but don’t you ever come back here, you fat, fucked up cunt.” He smacked Aunt Gish hard across the face and she fell backward onto the grass with a loud thump. “Don’t you come round here makin’ trouble for me, insultin’ my friends. You ain’t no family of mine. Now get the fuck outa here! Go!”

  Pruitt got a glimpse of Aunt Gish before Daddy shoved her ahead of him into the house. She was getting slowly to her feet and her candy cane blouse was all streaked with dirt and her eyes looked like little black dots sunken into the centers of soft, doughy rolls with a splotch of clown red on each cheek.

  “Don’t make her go” Pruitt said, “she didn’t do anything.”

  Daddy slapped Pruitt in the side of the head and then picked her up off the floor and slapped her again and gave her a kick in the butt for good measure.

  “Get your ass upstairs and outa my sight. You’ll prob’ly grow up to be as crazy as she is.”

  Pruitt ran upstairs and threw herself across the bed and cried and after she finished crying she prayed for help. She prayed for Christmas Eve to come and she prayed to Santa Claus.

  ««—»»

  On Christmas Eve, Pruitt was allowed to play outside until it got dark, then Miriam called her inside and fed her pizza and orange juice in the kitchen.

  Around nine o’clock Kenny came over with a couple of bottles and Pruitt went up to bed. “I’ll be up later,” Daddy said and gave her a wink, and Pruitt felt her stomach constrict into a sharp little fist.

  In her room, she opened the window wide and climbed out onto the ledge. The trellis, which was only a few inches away, suddenly looked very distant, the wooden slats rickety and spindly. Pruitt got a foothold and then grabbed it with her hands. The wood made cracking sounds, but it held her weight, and she put the other leg up and started to climb.

&nbs
p; Climbing up to the roof wasn’t so bad. Getting over the edge was the hard part. She had to get her feet up as high on the trellis as possible and then throw herself forward onto the roof and kind of snake-shimmy onto the roof and then she had to take care to avoid the skylight that looked down over the living room.

  But finally she made it to the very top and sat with her back against the chimney, listening to the cars pass on the street below, waiting. The air was warm and muggy, humid with the promise of rain. Presently Pruitt’s head lolled and she slept and dreamed…of ice palaces and bright, clean cold.

  Then Santa Claus was bending down beside her. Ice crystals gleamed in his beard and frost spilled from his mouth in white puffs. Behind him she could see the dark outlines of reindeer, blowing steam from their nostrils and stamping their hooves.

  “Take me with you,” said Pruitt. “Please.”

  Santa Claus lifted her up in his arms and set her down inside the sleigh. Then there was a sharp jerk and the scraping of deer hooves on tiles and the sleigh lifted off. Pruitt leaned out and saw the house getting smaller and smaller, all the bad people and memories receding, and she screamed with joy and excitement.

  She screamed…and woke up. The night seemed darker now, starless. Pruitt felt the soft stirrings of panic. She wondered if Santa Claus had come and gone already, if she’d missed her one chance to talk to him.

  Downstairs she could hear voices—peering cautiously through the skylight she saw Daddy and Miriam and Kenny. They were gathered around the card table playing poker. A bottle of bourbon was in the center of the table and Miriam, for some reason, had taken off her t-shirt and bra and jeans and was sitting there stark naked, but neither Daddy nor Kenny seemed to notice this. They just kept on playing cards.

  From below, Pruitt heard heavy footsteps. She looked up the block and was astonished to see Santa Claus approaching. He wasn’t riding in his sleigh at all. He wasn’t landing on the roof like he was supposed to. His pack was slung over his shoulder. It looked lumpy and not very full. Once Santa glanced up, almost like he was looking at the roof, and Pruitt waved her hand wildly—up here—but he didn’t seem to see.

  When he got closer, Santa turned and marched straight up the walk. Pruitt heard the doorbell chime. She couldn’t believe it.

  Santa was ringing the bell and coming in the front door. He had it all wrong. He’d fucked up. Santa Claus had fucked up!

  Angry tears over spilled Pruitt’s eyes. Frantically she lowered herself over the edge of the roof and started to climb down the trellis.

  She heard Daddy answer the door. His voice was slurred and he had that don’t-fuck-with-me growl to it, but then he shouted back into the house to Kenny and Miriam, “Hey look what the fuck we got here! Santa Claus says we won some kinda Christmas lottery. Hey, Miriam, did you…?”

  The popping started just about the time Pruitt reached the window and was climbing back into her room. She thought: Daddy and Kenny are killing Santa Claus, and then she was running down the hall toward the stairs, and she heard the popping sounds again and again and then everything got very still.

  The first one she saw was Miriam, leaning up against the big screen TV Her eyes were wide open, but in place of her mouth was a red, running hole, and a bib of blood was spreading slowly across her bare breasts and stomach. Daddy lay sprawled a few feet away in the hall. The front of his forehead was missing, and gobs of yellow and grey muck, like pudding, could be seen oozing between the bone.

  Pruitt’s mouth dropped open and she uttered a soundless “O,” but she felt neither grief nor fear, just a strange, fluttery sickness in her stomach.

  She moved on into the kitchen, where Kenny lay on this back with three bullet holes going up his abdomen like buttons. A cigarette was still between his fingers but it had burned all the way down and the flesh of his fingers was smoking. He didn’t move.

  From the bathroom, Pruitt heard the sound of someone throwing up and a toilet flushing. She tried to run, but her legs felt wobbly, like she’d already run a hundred miles. Then Santa came out of the bathroom wiping his beard and carrying what Pruitt recognized to be a Glock .9mm.

  “Don’t be afraid,” said Santa, but even before she heard the voice, Pruitt recognized the small white hands with the fingernails chewed down into the quick. “It’s okay, honey, they can’t hurt you anymore.”

  Aunt Gish tucked the pistol back into her sack, which was stuffed with what looked like foam rubber. “Come with me?,” she said.

  Pruitt looked at the bloody bodies all around her and at Santa/Aunt Gish and she knew Daddy’d been right about one thing, that Aunt Gish was crazy as hell, but maybe that was okay, maybe crazy was the best way anybody could be.

  Aunt Gish squatted down and looked into Pruitt’s face.

  “Listen to me, honey, listen hard. I killed three people tonight, so the police will be looking for me. For you, too, because they’ll want to protect you from me. If they find us, they’ll take care of you, they’ll find a family for you to live with, but they won’t let you see me anymore. You’ll have to find your way to the North Pole alone. Do you think you can do that?”

  Pruitt thought about the dangers and possibilities ahead: the chance to find a place to be free, to be safe, a place to belong to herself.

  She reached up and took Aunt Gish’s hand.

  They left the house and walked up the street together and around the corner to where Aunt Gish had hidden the Plymouth behind some dumpsters.

  “It’s not easy getting to the North Pole,” said Aunt Gish. “It may take years and years and all your courage. Not many people get there. I didn’t, Pruitt, I never did, but I want you to have a chance.”

  Pruitt nodded, believing that it could be done, knowing that, with Aunt Gish or without her, she would find her way to the North Pole someday, even if she had to make the map herself.

  The High and Mighty and Me

  I’m over the speed limit by 25 mph, heading west on Highway 55 between McComb and Brookhaven, Mississippi, when the clock on the dashboard clicks over to 12:00 a.m. on the first of July. I spit out a curse. Another day gone, another four hundred miles in the rearview mirror, stopping at fireworks outlets and stands, talking to vendors and customers, keeping an eye on the news for stories about young boys gone missing. And nothing to show for it besides a head-banging hangover from too many Jack Daniels swigged down at a bar outside Panama City last night.

  Two more days until the 4th of July. If I don’t find the man who calls himself Captain KablAM by then, it’ll be another year before I get my next chance.

  My palms slide on the steering wheel, swampy with sweat, and I can feel a tiny heartbeat in my forehead where a wormy blue vein pulses between my hairline and temple.

  A beer would taste great, but now’s not the time.

  My cell phone warbles, and it’s Charmaine again, so I don’t answer. I know she wants reassurance that I am where I’m supposed to be, but I can’t talk to her now. I’ve told her I’m taking my usual boys-only trout float on the Little Red River in Arkansas. What she suspects (I’m pretty sure) is that I’m off on a once-a-year fuckfest with some sex-starved, marriage-bored hotty I met on Cheaters.com or some such.

  I hate lying to Charmaine, but there’s no other way. The truth about what I do in the days leading up to the 4th of July would seem so bizarre to her, so out of character for her normally staid, stick-in-the-mud, high school English teacher husband, it would make the Internet hotty look like a reasonable choice by comparison.

  If my childhood buddy Jimmy Limbo were alive, he’d understand why I’m doing this, but that’s the whole point—he isn’t.

  Off to my right a sign that looks like it was constructed from parts of a busted-up picket fence flashes by: TONY’S FIREWORKS! OPEN 24/7! EIGHTEEN MILES AHEAD!

  As I stomp the accelerator, I think back to the last time I saw Jimmy Limbo alive.

  A high point of summer for Jimmy and me was the week leading up to July 4th, when the rumpled
old man with the walrus mustache who called himself Captain KablAM would set up his big green and white tent on a spit of land by Lake Pontchartrain. His prices were low, with discounts for kids, and if you spent thirty bucks, he’d throw in a t-shirt with KablAM! in bright red on the back. He sold all you needed to put on your own super fireworks show—mortar tubes in all sizes, punks for lighting them, igniter cords, and visco and Chinese fuses.

  Come the night of the 4th, he’d put on a pyrotechnic display of his own, using some of his unsold stock. Jimmy and I would sit on the ground with the other kids or up on the hood of an older guy’s car, sucking down beers I’d filched from the 7-Eleven, marveling at the spectacle of all that razzle-dazzle and din as the Captain launched volleys of shrieking glitter-rockets and dazzling multiple explosions of fountains. For the finale, he’d fire off a blistering barrage of the expensive, heavy-duty explosives called High and Mightys, whose massive reports at close range punched the breath out of me and made my ears sing. How he could afford to literally blow up so much of his inventory, I never did know, but what an eye-popping spectacle it was!

  Jimmy and I thought that being a fireworks vender, traveling from town to town blowing stuff up like Captain KablAM did, must be the world’s coolest job.

  Like most of the kids, though, behind his back, Jimmy and I made fun of the Captain, his silly name with the comic book spelling, his bushy, toilet-brush mustache. We mocked his gruff Cajun accent (which we compared to marbles rolling around in a pan), and we’d snigger whenever he bent over, his baggy brown pants sliding down to display an altogether hilarious wedge of hairy butt crack. This was long before the days when this was in style—Captain KablAM was ahead of his time.

  For all our laughter, however, it was just boyish bravado. Deep down I was scared of the Captain, and I think Jimmy was, too—never more so than on that sweltering evening when the last customers had drifted away and the Captain had gotten tired of gonging his cow bell out by the road to try to bring people in, but there was still too much light for setting off fireworks. The Captain plopped down in a lawn chair, his KablAM t-shirt rolling up over his ponderous gut. He took a long pull from the flask he kept in his back pocket, and said, “You boys know who invented fireworks, no?”