Franz Kafka . . . wasn't he some sort of horror novelist? Barton wasn't sure. "I'll have to teach you about Kafka," he said briskly to cover his ignorance. "Would you like to learn?"
"I know about Kafka."
Barton heard the hate in Billy's words. But it was also true that Billy was for the first time responding to him as a human being. This was an initiatory moment: their first genuine conversation.
"I know about Kafka, too, Billy."
"Wir graben den Schacht von Babel "
Barton realized that the words were German. It would be a potentially serious disadvantage if Billy knew a language that he himself could not understand. Billy was watching his reaction.
Barton had first seen the boy playing games in a video arcade. There had been nothing to indicate that he was unusually educated. But then, a lot of schools in his part of the Midwest taught German. The area had been settled by Germans, hadn't it?
"It means, 'We are digging the pit of Babel.' "
"A remarkable sentiment. I've always thought that horror novelists—"
"Let me spell it out. I'm trying to communicate that I don't want to talk to you. If you want to stick me in the butt, do it and get it over with. But don't try to fool with my mind."
The words came as melody; they lilted. The music of Billy's voice made the contempt more plain. Barton bowed his head. "You will never get away from me, Billy."
"Of course I won't. If I do, you kill my parents."
Barton was astonished. "I never said that!"
"You don't even know what you tell people."
Barton had dreamed of threatening Billy with that. He'd contemplated it. He never had the feeling that he said and did things that he didn't know about. Of course not. Barton Royal was a very special man with very special needs. But he was quite sane. That was his rock. Everything he did, he did for a perfectly sound reason.
"If I said that I didn't mean it."
Billy could not have looked more relieved if he'd been instructed by a director. "Come into the front," Barton said, in a spirit of appeasement.
Billy crawled forward. He hunched into the passenger seat.
"Do you usually sit like that?"
"No."
"I've always believed that a gentleman's inner bearing is reflected in his posture."
Billy raised his T-shirt. Inwardly, Barton chided himself. He had so much on his mind, it was hard to remember the details.
There was, however, a detail that he did remember. "I have a suggestion. Let's eat!"
"Not very hungry."
"No? You haven't eaten in two and a half days. You must be famished."
In the silence of the moment that followed, Barton heard a small sound. Billy was clenching and unclenching his left fist against the seat.
Jack had tried to starve himself at first. Little boys never succeeded at this. "I'll get myself a nice cheeseburger," Barton said. "You don't have to eat."
Billy snorted out his contempt for Barton. The anger that rose in Barton made him want to grab those shoulders and shake them damn hard!
"Come on, Billy. It isn't going to be bad, living with me. We're going to be friends, you'll see."
"You can't make me."
Barton felt the flush enter his cheeks. He gripped the steering wheel. 'Now, calm down,' he said to himself. 'Take it easy.' He breathed in, breathed out. The hostile little bastard!
No, don't let that get out. He doesn't need your anger, he needs your love. He needs understanding and firm, kind support. He's just a boy.
The little shit!
You could just put your hands around his fucking neck and squeeze!
That's the way choking works, you squeeze until the windpipe pops. Then you can just sit back and watch. It doesn't happen right away, but they die. They clutch their throats, they run, they might even try to fight back. But then they get all black and the tongue comes out and they start shaking. They lose their bladder and they go down and they die at your feet like fucking rats!
He was going to throttle this child, and he was going to do it right now!
No!
But his hands were rising from the wheel, going to claws. Stop, take it easy!
The little shit!
He grabbed the steering wheel and hung on with all his strength. His fingers kept snaking off, but he fought it, he had to fight it, he had to somehow regain control, he wanted the boy, he did, he could still make it work, he just knew it!
Pop the windpipe! Watch him smother! Scum, you filthy little scum!
His feet thudded against the firewall, against the brake and gas pedal. It would just be so damn satisfying to break the little bastard's neck!
Then the boy, who was looking on with wide eyes, suddenly reached out a hand and began patting his shoulder. "It's OK, mister," he said. His voice was the softest of whispers.
Barton was so surprised that his anger went spitting out of him. He sank down, breathing hard. "Please don't make me mad like that," he said.
"I won't! Not ever again! I promise!"
When Barton released the steering wheel he saw that his right hand had split the plastic. The torn piece hung off the wheel, its vinyl covering twisted and ripped.
They drove for a time without talking.
Then the boy began to sing:
"The ants go marching one by one
The little one stops to get his gun,
And they all go down, around,
Get out of the rain!"
How delightful! He knew that well, of course, from his job. He knew all sorts of children's songs. Billy was really coming around, this was going to work!
Barton sang the second verse:
"The ants go marching two by two,
The little one stops to tie his shoe,
And they all go down, around,
Get out of the rain!"
Laughing with pleasure, Barton pulled the van onto 15. As he glanced around to check the traffic he saw the face of the child he had been enjoying so much.
It was soaked with tears, the eyes like slits, the nose running, the cheeks bright red. And the lips were pulled back from the teeth in a particularly horrible way that managed to communicate all at once disgust, rage, hate and the blackest, most dreadful fear.
Barton returned his gaze to the highway. He pressed the gas pedal.
They went on.
15.
Billy slumped in the seat, his chest tormented, his lungs rattling when he breathed, his feet still tender from last night's escape attempt. There was blood on his Kafka T-shirt. Could you wash blood out? Mom would know.
The sun was beginning to set and it blasted into his face, making his eyes ache as much as his heart. Then he opened his eyes wide, glaring directly at the sun. 'Maybe if I'm blind,' he thought, 'he'll feel sorry for me.' He shut his eyes tight: he didn't want to be blind, then he'd never be able to get back home!
He stared at the glove compartment, which hung open before him. It was full of tapes. They were mostly the operas which the man was constantly playing. He saw Madama Butterfly and La Gioconda and The Flying Dutchman. He decided he didn't like opera much anymore, even though he'd liked Carmen.
There was also a small flashlight there, black, with a long silver scratch on it. That was the light that had bobbed along behind him in the woods. If only it had broken, if only it hadn't even been there, or he had dropped it down the cliff.
Then what? Billy imagined himself falling into the yard of the little cabin beneath the bluff, and they would carry him inside and he would die, and then he would go home. He saw the hearse, a black Cadillac with a flower car behind it, and the St. Stephen's choir was singing "Nearer My God to Thee." The coffin was gray.
He read the inspection sticker on the windshield backward. Utah. Were they going there? What was Utah like? Was this Utah?
He counted the buttons on the radio. It was a real nice one, a Sony. He wanted to ask if it had memory and was there a CD player in the van since it had CD control
s on it. It would be neat to hear a CD in a car.
He sat nursing his pains and being hungry. He was so hungry that he kept thinking he smelled a hamburger. The memory reminded him of the Stevensville Burger King, and his gang. A great bunch of guys, even the registered nerds like Jerry Edwards.
Going to the Burger King with the guys, ordering a Whopper with fries and a Coke, and afterward having a fried cherry pie for dessert, and no parents around. Getting on your bikes early in the morning and riding all the way out to the place where the railroad trestle crosses the river, building a fire and roasting hot dogs, waiting for the train to come and flatten the pennies you put on the track. And plus you could lie under the trestle as it went across, a shaking, rumbling cataract of sound that left you feeling like you'd been shaken apart and come back together again. There was also walking the trestle when you heard the first blast of the horn. That was when the train crossed Main Street in Stevensville. It took ten minutes to walk across, and the train made the distance between the town and the trestle in fourteen if it was running exactly on schedule.
Billy had done that a dozen times, always cutting a little more off his start time. He loved it, the jitters in his stomach when he started, the hypnosis of the passing ties, the other guys screaming his times and the train's horn blowing and mourning and then the tracks jumping and seeing its light in the middle of the day glaring like the eye of death, and throwing himself off the trestle at the last minute into the tender grass that grew beside the tracks, and lying there breathing grass and watching the passing Amtrak cars, red and blue and silver, and the flash of a pale face in a window.
He looked at his own hands in his lap and thought, 'He says he loves me. He says I am beautiful. What does he mean?'
The man looked like a fear of the night become real. Billy sat up, forced his pain to the background. His only restraint at the moment was having the seat belt pulled tight across his lap with his arms pinned underneath. It wasn't a very good way to keep somebody captive.
If only he had thirty seconds and a telephone, he knew exactly what he would do. Too bad they were going sixty, he could jump out.
His mind snatched at whatever bits of information it could find. 'We're going west because the sun is setting in my face. This is IH 15 because that's what the signs say, and also he said it. We're in a desert that looks like the surface of Mars. We carry a Utah inspection sticker, which probably means that we're either in Utah or on our way there.
They passed a filling station and he saw a bank of phones shining in the last sun. The tires hummed. The cassette played. The man sat there driving and pulling at the piece of steering wheel he'd broken. Billy saw that the gas gauge was close to empty.
The man drove, occasionally making a little sound in his throat, like he was secretly talking to himself. He was like a huge queen termite, all smooth and pale and big. Once Billy had dissected a queen termite—fifth-grade science. Eggs poured out of her and he felt sad even though she was really incredibly yucky.
Sal Geller had said, "You could dry the eggs and make Them into a cereal." Billy replied, "Eat them damp and they'd be like rice. A whole bowl. Nice and hot." Mrs. Chapman overheard them and sent them both to the office for being nauseating little boys.
He cried silently, telling himself it was for the lady termite. 'Mommy, it's gonna be night and I know you miss me. Dad, I'm here, I'm still alive.' They loved him so much, they must be suffering hell and there was nothing he could do except sit here and get taken farther and farther—
The man moved slightly in his seat. The van began to slow. About half a mile ahead Billy saw a Mobil station. He made his mind blank. Then he closed his eyes, let his head drop to one side. He began breathing rhythmically, pretending to sleep.
The van stopped. There was a click and the engine turned off. A moment later the man's door was opened and closed. Billy looked: the man was out by the gas pumps. This was a self-service station.
Billy pulled his hands out from under the belt and unlatched it. But when he pushed the window button nothing happened. OK. He reached over, turned the key, tried it again. Still nothing. Then he saw a child lock. He flipped it, and this time the window went down. In an instant he was out of the van. There was nobody in the station office. From the garage beside it he heard a machine whining. There was a Toyota being greased. At the far corner of the station he saw the phones. He ran for them. There was almost no time, he knew that. Maybe he was already seen.
He grabbed the receiver, pressed "0." The phone rang once, twice. "Operator."
"My name is William Neary from Stevensville, Iowa. I've been kidnapped by a man in a white Aerostar. We're on Route 15 heading west."
"What's the number of that phone, son?"
"702-995-0091." He couldn't risk another second. He hung up. Jesus let the operator tell Mom and Dad!
Billy started to run into the garage, but the click of the gas pump turning off stopped him. There were only seconds left and the attendant was nowhere in sight. The only thing saving Billy was the fact that the man's view of him was blocked by the smoked glass of the van's windows. But the man had to be moving. In another few seconds he would come around the front of the van—
Billy crossed the tarmac at a crouching run, slipped like an eel into the window. The man was no more than five feet away, walking toward the gas station. Billy dropped into his seat, pulled the belt over his hands. As he sat watching the man pay, he cursed his luck with the attendant, who had appeared to take the man's money. If only there'd been another ten seconds, Billy might be free right now. But what if the attendant was as stupid as the people back in Denver had been, letting the van go despite the fact that there was a kid inside screaming he'd been kidnapped? The stupid dumbheads in that Taurus, Billy wished them into the depths of hell. How could they not understand, not care?
The man got in. Billy had leaned his head back against the seat and was again breathing as if he was asleep.
They were accelerating onto the highway when Billy realized his terrible mistake. He had left his window open, and the man was sure to notice. Then the wind stopped. The man had raised the window with his button. Billy waited, but there were no screamed questions, just the silence of the road.
When he opened his eyes a slit he saw that the man was looking at him. Was it suspicion? Certain knowledge? Or did he just like to look at the bee-you-tiful little boy?
What the hell did it mean that you were beautiful? It meant that there were certain people who wanted to destroy you, that's what it meant.
When the man's voice suddenly started Billy was jolted by a tremendous shock.
"What'd I tell you? A great, big, delicious Roy Rogers! Hamburgers, here we come."
It was all Billy could do not to burst out laughing with relief.
"I'll bet you could sure use some food. I know I could."
Where'd he get that voice? Those voices? One sentence he sounded like a man, the next a sort of half-man. It was like there was a boy in him who had never grown up, and if you listened a woman, too.
But he wasn't gentle, he'd torn apart the steering wheel!
Billy looked at his meaty face, at the hurt eyes. The man was smiling, a big, harsh grin. It was the kind of smile somebody who hates kids makes when they have to be with a kid. Those fat hands concealed iron bones, and they had wanted to grab him around the throat and choke him worse than the straps.
When he was in the straps he'd cried out to the man, he'd promised never ever to try to get away again but the man hadn't seemed to hear him, he'd just sat there driving like he was part of the van itself. Billy had struggled for hours and hours just to get enough breath. He'd slept and dreamed he was at the bottom of the sea and he swam into a giant clam and it closed and it was crushing his chest. He had to breathe and he knew the next breath he took was gonna be water.
Waking up felt like that time Jerry sat on him too long and made him pass out. But that was different, Jerry had paid him two dollars not to tell hi
s dad. Although, of course, he had stolen back one of the dollars later.
Billy remembered how the man had seemed like a bat coming after him through the woods all graceful and fast, his big body maneuvering among the trees. It was ballet to see him run, this swift lump of a man.
"Give us two cheeseburgers with the works, two orders of fries, a water and a large chocolate shake." The man turned a sheened, smiling face toward Billy. "Sound good, old chap?"
"Sure," Billy replied. He tried to sound like a robot.
The man pursed his lips and then his hand just sort of happened to drop onto Billy's leg. Billy looked at it there, at the school ring too worn to read, at the wrinkles along the knuckles, at the white back that was almost but not quite like a woman's. "Now look, Billy, you're going to make it. You're going to be very happy! You should see the house where you're going to live. Wow! It's a big house and I have beautiful furniture. Antiques, even. And you can see for miles, it has a huge view, and you will have everything you ever wanted or dreamed of. You have to pull yourself together. The chest strap was harsh, I admit that, but goodness, in all those hours you didn't utter a word of protest! You poor boy, how you must have suffered!" The hand patted his. "Honest to God I am so sorry. If you'd said one single word I would have loosened it immediately. But you had to be punished, you surely see that. You ran away and that is a no-no. The ultimate no-no! But ten minutes, fifteen. I just got so absorbed in my driving—"
"I asked you and asked you and asked you and you never even turned around! Then you came back and went to sleep."
The man's eyes widened. Then the order came and he was fooling with the white Roy Rogers bags and his wallet and little blue change purse like an old lady's.
In front of them Billy saw a station wagon full of guys his age. They were horsing around and he could hear their faint voices full of laughter. He leaned forward against his shoulder strap, listening, watching and wishing.
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