by John Russo
“Don’t worry, they know what it’s all about,” Bert said, grimacing. “Some of them could teach you and me a wrinkle or two.”
“Bert, whatever do you mean?” Harriet purred, the implied meanings in her husband’s tone having aroused her sense of curiosity and scandal.
“Don’t ask me to tell you, Harriet.”
As he intended, this caused her to crease her brow and pout worriedly.
“Nancy isn’t everything you think she is,” he said, as if confessing it reluctantly.
“I think you had better explain yourself,” she challenged.
“Well . . . I’ve been debating for a long time whether I ought to say anything. But I suppose it’s best that you know. She pretends to be very sweet and innocent when you’re around, but it’s only an act. She’s been flaunting her little body at me, rubbing up against me whenever she gets an excuse, and I’ve been trying to avoid her because I have no idea what her game is. I think she wants to break you and me up.”
While he was talking, Harriet’s expression had gone to disbelief and shock, and for a long moment she stared at her husband, stunned, not able to find words to express herself. Her voice came out finally in a near-whisper. “Bert . . . are you saying what I think you’re saying—that Nancy has tried to seduce you?”
Skillfully, he backed off from his accusations, rendering them more believable. “I don’t think she wants it to go that far. Maybe she’s just testing her sex appeal . . . or something . . . in a juvenile way. I have no doubt that she’s still a virgin.”
Harriet drew in a deep breath. Then: “I happen to know that she’s not. She was heartbroken when her boyfriend dumped her . . . and I happened to overhear one of her phone conversations that made it pretty clear she had given herself to him.”
Bert shook his head sadly.
“She won’t confide in me,” Harriet said. “I have to learn everything by accident. Not that I expected her to remain a virgin—she’s too pretty. And this isn’t the nineteenth century. Sex is out in the open, and our children grow up too fast, way too fast. What was I supposed to do with Nancy, keep her locked in her room?”
“I’m afraid it’s too late for that already,” Bert lamented. “It could be that she resents the fact I’m not her real father. Maybe she wants to destroy me—and get back at you, too, Harriet, at the same time.”
“Bert, you must be imagining things! I’m not going to believe this nonsense for one minute. After all, Nancy is my daughter—my flesh and blood.”
“All right, Harriet, if it makes you feel better to bury your head in the sand. Why do you suppose I’ve had to start hitting the bottle again? It’s because of your daughter. Till now I couldn’t bring myself to break it to you. It’s such a terrible thing to have to face. So I’ve been trying to shield you from it . . . and doing my best to stay away from her. I was even glad that she wasn’t here when I got home.”
Harriet did not reply, her mind in turmoil. Could it be that Nancy was actually the way Bert described? Harriet had been hurt deeply by her first husband, because she had closed her eyes to his infidelities in the face of evidence, intuitive and otherwise, that should have convinced her something was wrong. She was always too trusting, too ready to accept people at face value, especially those close to her; she expected from them the same honesty that she gave. After her divorce, she had learned not to be disappointed by the worst in people when it finally came to light. But her own daughter? The idea of Nancy doing the things Bert said was repugnant, unreal, no matter how hard Harriet tried to allow for the possibility that it might be true. Because of being a working mother for so many years, Harriet didn’t feel that she understood her daughter as well as she should.
If push came to shove, who should she believe—Nancy or Bert? She didn’t want to lose Bert. Before he came into the picture, loneliness and penny-pinching had taken their toll on Harriet’s confidence and self-respect. Bert represented companionship and security for her old age. Offspring couldn’t be depended upon; look at Terri, off on her own in California already, and maybe a letter from her once every six months—unless she found herself needing money, and then she suddenly knew how to write. This was the first installment on the reward for working hard to raise two daughters all those years, without a husband and father in the house.
Well, Harriet thought, she’d have to talk to Nancy about this and get her side of the story. Perhaps it was all an innocent misunderstanding of some sort. Looking up at her husband, Harriet noticed his bandage and inquired solicitously, “Bert, did you get hurt on duty last night?”
Glad that she had thought of it herself, Bert used her lead to follow through on the excuse he had planned all along. “I had a run-in with a punk who was drunk and disorderly. Not too serious of an incident, really. Al and I got the cuffs on him and hauled him in.”
“Did Al get hurt, too?”
“Are you kidding? Does Al ever have bad luck? Not a scratch on him, as usual.”
She reached out and put her hand on his. “Bert . . . you and I haven’t had much of a sex life lately. Could it be because of what you’ve been going through with Nancy?”
From the moment this explanation had occurred to her, she had clutched at it, willing to believe in it rather than blame herself for a failure in the bedroom.
Bert pressed her fingers in his and gazed at her balefully. “What do you think? I love you, honey, and I don’t want to lose you. One of these days Nancy might come to you with some wild stories, trying to put the blame on me. I just want you to be aware of my side of it first, so nothing can ever come between us. Naturally, we have to give Nancy love and understanding. But the important thing is for you and me to stick together.”
Overcome by Bert’s sincerity, Harriet’s eyes smarted and a tear rolled down her cheek. Even if Bert was partially to blame for this crisis, she didn’t want to lose either him or her daughter.
By this time Nancy, Tom, and Hank had crossed the Pennsylvania border into West Virginia. Hank was smoking a cigarette. Nancy was sitting rather morosely in the back seat of the van, still overcome by her troubles, although Tom had been trying to cheer her up. Reaching to the dash to turn down the volume, he commented happily, “Dig all these mountains without a trace of green on them yet, except for a scattering of pine—I love it! Tonight we’ll be camping in the Blue Ridge Mountains, maybe on the Shenandoah River. Do you know the song ‘Shenandoah,’ Nancy? Maybe you can sing it for us. Then the next day or the day after we’ll all see the scenery turn greener and greener . . . the farther south we go . . . all the way to good old Florida.”
“Goin’ where the weather suits my clothes,” Hank drawled.
“I’m staying in my bathing suit the whole time!” Tom said exuberantly.
“Say somethin’,” said Hank, turning to peer inquisitively at Nancy. “We give you a ride and you put a damper on things.”
“I’m just tired,” she apologized.
“Man, how tired you gonna be by the time we go another thousand miles?” Hank challenged.
“I’m hungry,” said Tom, changing the subject.
The speed limit slowed to thirty-five; they had come into a rural hamlet in southern West Virginia. Hank turned the rock music up loud as the three youths sized up the town they were cruising through. The place was called Cherry Hill—one more in a succession of colorfully named West Virginia towns like Man, Cabin Creek, Hundred, and Nitro. Cherry Hill had a large general store, a feed store, several rough-looking saloons, and a place that sold mining equipment. People walking on the narrow main street all seemed to be dressed as farmers, miners, or hunters. Parked outside the saloons and stores were several pickup trucks with racks full of rifles and shotguns mounted in their rear windows.
“Wow! What a haven for rednecks!” Tom said. “We better watch ourselves here, Hank.”
“Why?”
“Some of these hicks would just as soon blow us away as look at us.”
“You been seein’ too man
y movies. My parents came up from Tennessee. They said the South ain’t nowhere near as mean as it’s portrayed.”
“Still, I don’t think we should try anything,” Tom said, and Nancy’s ears perked up as she wondered what he had in mind.
Hank told Tom, “Sometimes you’re a chicken-shit, you know that? Nothing out of line ever happens in a one-horse town like this. If you’re smart and you got balls, you can get away with damn near anything.”
Made extremely apprehensive by this kind of talk, Nancy asked, “What would you want to get away with, Hank?”
Glancing at her sideways, he said, “Anything. I mean—” He caught himself and fell silent for a moment, then said to Tom, “You gotta realize some of these hick places don’t even keep their deputies on duty after midnight.”
“What is this all about?” Nancy demanded.
Haltingly, Tom explained, afraid of the impression his explanation might make on Nancy. “I might as well tell you, as long as you’re going to be riding with us. Me and Hank . . . well . . . we’re not exactly what you could call rich. Hank has a football scholarship, but it doesn’t pay his full tuition, and I have to struggle by on what my parents give me, plus what I earn waiting on tables in the fraternity dining room. So we sat down and figured out a careful budget before we left campus. If we paid for our gas, we wouldn’t have enough money to buy food, and if we bought food, then we wouldn’t have money to pay for gas. So we made up our minds we’d just have to steal groceries all the way from Massachusetts to Florida. That’s how we’ve been makin’ it. If you don’t want to stick with us now that you know, we’ll let you out and you can hitch another ride.”
“After you talked me into going to Florida instead of California!” Nancy complained in exasperation.
“How much bread you got on you?” Hank inquired sharply.
“Uh . . . fourteen dollars.”
“Certainly not enough to feed yourself all the way to Frisco.”
“Nope. But . . . ”
“Then you have to steal,” Tom concluded. “And if you have to, then it isn’t a sin.”
To Tom, Hank said, “Did you spot any lawmen so far?”
“Uh-uh.”
Nancy slumped in her seat, wrestling with the moral implications of what had been discussed. She was just beginning to like Tom and Hank and feel safe with them. And now this. She had little doubt, though, that it was only one of a series of scary adjustments she’d have to make now that she had left home.
“Here’s a nice grocery store made to order,” Hank said, showing how much he relished the discovery by emitting a low, throaty chuckle. He was pointing at a chain food-store on the righthand side of the road, and Tom pulled over and parked the van with the engine running.
“You could help us pull this off,” Hank said to Nancy.
“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” Tom stated emphatically, turning to face her after flashing a glance at Hank.
“But if you stick with us without doin’ your share, you’re gonna be eatin’ stolen food, anyway,” Hank pointed out.
A few minutes later, Hank and Nancy entered the grocery store, sauntering past the checkout counters. She wheeled the shopping cart down an aisle to begin shopping. “Let’s make this a real spree,” Hank said with a mischievous grin, then started tossing items into the cart. Joining in the lark after a moment of panicky hesitation, Nancy soon got caught up in the swing of things, and it was strangely liberating. She and Hank piled their cart high with anything and everything they could grab off the shelves—meat, cereal, cocoa, eggs, butter, bread, cheese, condiments, potato chips, pretzels—whatever struck their fancy. They found themselves laughing uproariously and tossing things back and forth to each other as they sped down the aisles weaving around regular customers who stood and gawked.
The cart filled, Hank and Nancy wheeled over to the checkout counter. The woman behind the checkout counter, a prim-looking old biddy, checked, tallied, and bagged their selections, ringing them up and holding out her hand for money. “Just a minute, I want to return this cart,” Nancy said.
Meanwhile, Hank had picked up two armloads of groceries and was already moving toward the exit. Wheeling her way through the checkout aisle, Nancy pushed the empty cart into an area where it would temporarily obstruct pursuit by the woman behind the counter, then snatched up the remaining bag of groceries and ran behind Hank out through the automatic door and toward the van, which Tom had kept waiting outside, doors open and engine still running. The woman screamed and hollered for the store manager as Nancy and Hank made their escape.
They piled into the van on the run, strewing stolen groceries all over the back of the vehicle. The van lurched out and began speeding away. But immediately a siren started wailing—a police car was in pursuit.
“Gas it!” Hank yelled.
Nancy cowered in the back seat, trying belatedly to get her seat belt fastened.
Hitting sixty miles per hour, the van left the outskirts of Cherry Hill, attempting to outrace the police siren.
They were on a rare straight section of two-lane blacktop, heading into sharp curves. Nancy screamed and Hank yelled, “Look out!” because Tom was going too fast to make it. But he didn’t attempt the curves. Instead, he careened off, humping and bumping into a farmer’s field. A dirt road ran through the field and Tom got on it and there were fewer bone-jarring bumps. The police car still followed, some distance behind. When Tom caught sight of it in the rearview mirror, it spurred him to go faster. The dirt road had a hard-packed surface, but there were plenty of bends and twists. Still, Tom barely slowed down. Whoever was driving the police car was more cautious, for the police were not in such close pursuit as they had been before.
The road wound through a valley of poor, rundown farms, few and far between. In a blur, Nancy watched unpainted barns and farmhouses flashing by every once in a while among the trees, foliage, collapsed fences, and branches that sometimes whipped against her window because the road was so narrow and Tom kept swerving from one side to the other in his effort to go fast and still control the vehicle. Every once in a while there would be a narrow turn-off, but they’d shoot past it too quickly to do anything about it. Finally, Tom took a chance and slowed down. When a turn-off came up, he took it, hoping to lose the cops. As soon as he was around the bend, he gunned it, hoping they wouldn’t be able to spot his dust. In a little while the sound of the siren seemed farther away. Tom kept driving as fast as possible for a few more minutes. Finally, he slowed to normal speed, looked over at Hank, and burst out laughing. Hank and Nancy laughed, too. The laugh felt cleaner and fresher than anything Nancy had experienced in her life. Was this the joy of thievery? The hard-driving chase had been terribly frightening. But now that they had gotten away clean, a sense of exhilaration set in. They laughed their heads off, not wanting to stop. As they began to recover, Tom turned to Hank, momentarily taking his eyes off the road.
“Wow! What a rush! I’d love to have been with you two in the store. I—”
“Tom! Look out!”
As Nancy screamed, Tom swerved the van to narrowly avoid hitting a man at the edge of the dirt road. The man, large and brawny in farmers’ bibbed coveralls, had stepped out into the van’s path, and he was carrying some sort of long, bulky bundle wrapped in a soiled blanket. As the van swerved, the man ducked back into the cover of woods from whence he came. He continued to stare stolidly after the van, still supporting the bundle in his arms.
In the van, Tom said, “Damn! I almost hit that guy! Whew!” Perspiring, he wiped the back of his hand across his forehead.
“He was carrying something,” Hank said. “Did you see that?”
Tom chuckled nervously. “I was lucky I saw him at all. Thanks for yelling, Nancy.”
She ran her tongue over dry lips, then spoke in hushed, anxious tones. “There was something creepy about him. I got a look at his face and he seemed to be grinning, even when it looked like you were surely going to run him over. I s
wear, he had some kind of strange smile on his face. And I think I saw a shoe sticking out from under his blanket.” She shuddered from her imaginings.
Hank turned around and laughed at her. “Naw! He was just a big farmer with a bundle. You’re shook up, girl. Your mind’s playing tricks on you. Soon as we find a good place to camp, we’ll smoke some grass to loosen you up.”
Nancy stared out the side window, mulling this over. She had tried marijuana once, with no results; she had failed to get high. She wasn’t particularly against trying it again. But in the company of two strange boys? How loose might they expect her to get?
The man with the bundle watched the van going away, stirring up dust, disappearing around a thickly wooded bend in the distance. Then he stepped ploddingly back into the middle of the road. He was a broad, beefy man with a leering smile on his face. A corner of the soiled blanket fell away from his large bundle, revealing the lower part of a bare leg, and one foot wearing a red high-heeled shoe. The man continued to stare down the road, in the direction of where the van disappeared. Blood ran down the calf of the dangling leg and dripped off the tip of the red shoe.
CHAPTER 7
They parked the van in a field by a stream and camped for the night. They went through the bags full of stolen groceries, delighted with the pile of goodies now that they had a chance to really look it over. “We won’t have to steal anything for another few days,” Hank said. Nancy was glad to hear it, and she helped Tom separate out the perishables, like milk, eggs, and cheese, and pack them into a Coleman ice chest in the back of the van. In the last waning half-hour of dusk, the two boys gathered dry twigs and fallen timber and built a small campfire. Then all three had a supper of ham-and-cheese sandwiches and hot cocoa.
Afterward, Hank rolled several joints, lit one, and passed it to Nancy without a word as he held in his drag. She didn’t feel like arguing, so she took it and inhaled deeply. Noticing her slight hesitation, Tom said, “You ever smoke grass before?”