by John Russo
Still holding in the smoke, she nodded her head yes as she handed Tom the joint. She didn’t tell him that she had not succeeded in getting high and didn’t expect to this time. Tom dragged on the joint, then passed it to Hank and it kept going around till it was finished. Then Hank lit another one and passed it. “This is real good dope,” Tom said sagely.
Nancy giggled wildly and realized with a shock that she was stoned.
Tom and Hank looked at her knowingly and laughed, too.
“It’s so nice to relax around the fire at home after a hard day of shopping and being chased by creditors,” Hank said, and his comment seemed hilarious.
The threesome laughed and laughed. Tom exploded a lungful of smoke that his laughing forced out of him, as he once more handed the second joint to Nancy. It was so short it burned her fingers.
“Gimme the roach,” Hank said. And taking an alligator clip from his pocket, he used it as a roachholder so they could continue smoking the thing down to nothing. When it was too small to hold between his lips, Hank held the glowing remnant next to his nostrils and sniffed the hot vapors. Then he lit the third joint and handed it to Nancy. Really stoned now, and enjoying the euphoria of total abandon, she continued to take drags every time the joint came her way.
“I got the hungries,” Hank said, his eyes crinkling in the orange glow of the campfire as he rubbed his stomach and giggled.
All three were ravenously hungry because of the marijuana, and they went into the back of the van and brought out crackers, jelly, peanut butter, apples, bananas, potato chips, and pretzels—and root beer to wash it all down. For a long time they ate, trying the peanut butter and jelly on crackers, potato chips, pretzels, apple slices, and chunks of banana. Because they were stoned, it was all wildly delicious.
Every once in a while Tom or Hank tossed a log on the fire.
“Beats the hell out of bein’ back on campus,” Hank said. “When we get back it’ll be time to start crammin’ for finals.”
“Oh, what a bummer!” moaned Tom. “Did you have to remind me, Hank? Huh?”
“What’s your major?” Nancy asked.
“Psychology,” Tom told her. “Let’s change the subject. Sing something for us, why don’t you?”
Feeling uninhibited, Nancy got out her guitar and sang a black spiritual, “All My Trials.” Tom thought she sang wonderfully and enjoyed watching the seriousness and the emotion in her young face; he was beginning to be attracted to her romantically. Hank noticed this, and for some reason it irked him; he and Tom had set out for Lauderdale to have a ball, not get hung up on one chick. If Tom lost his head over this girl, as he was giving every evidence of doing, it was clear to Hank that their trip would be much less of an enjoyable adventure; Hank would be on his own, unpaired, looking for strangers on the beach to get to know and get involved with. And they would mostly be white strangers. Although he told himself to stay cool, Hank couldn’t help but feel that in some unplanned, accidental, and unforeseen way his buddy, Tom, was in danger of copping out on him.
Strumming on her guitar, Nancy finished the last chorus of the spiritual:
If religion was a thing that money could buy,
The rich would live and the poor would die,
All my trials, Lord, soon be over,
All my trials, Lord, soon be over,
All my trials, Lord, soon be over.
Letting her voice trail off with the concluding chords, she leaned her guitar against a tree and sat back self-consciously, wondering what they had thought of her singing. She was pretty sure Tom liked it, but she had no idea about Hank.
“Nancy . . . you sing nice,” Tom complimented.
She smiled and thanked him, feeling pleased with herself.
“I don’t think you got much right to be singin’ a slave song,” Hank jeered angrily.
“Come on, Hank!” Tom snapped back. “Don’t start getting paranoid on us.”
Hank eyed Tom coldly, lighting up a regular cigarette instead of another joint. “Who’s paranoid? Not me. I just said I don’t think a white girl ought to be a singin’ a slave song, that’s all.” He made a great show of being calm and aloof by laying his head back and slowly blowing a chorus of smoke rings. “Black people paid their dues in that area, not whites. A white chick like Nancy can’t have the least idea of the feelin’s behind the black spirituals that deal with slavery.”
Tom shook his head in disagreement. “That’s pure bullshit, Hank. What’s gotten into you? Every time something’s eating you that you don’t want to be up front with, you cover it with silly-ass rhetoric. Next you’ll be telling me an Italian can’t sing an Irish ballad.”
“You don’t like me, do you?” Nancy said to Hank.
Hank looked over at her. With an air of having made a very shrewd deduction, he told her, “It dawned on me that you got to be runnin’ away from home. And if so, me and poor, innocent Tom are accessories. How old are you?”
“Nineteen.” But she immediately gave up on the lie. “No, I’m seventeen . . . almost eighteen.”
“Sure you ain’t sixteen, or fifteen?”
“Leave her alone, dammit, Hank!” Tom shouted.
“Shut up, white boy. One of us has to have the sense to find out how much hot water we may be in. You ever hear of the Mann Act?”
“Come off it!”
“Transportin’ a minor across state lines. Better think about it, Tom. We could have the F.B.I. on our asses.”
“Bullshit, Hank! I know you want to get into law school, but you’re not there yet. Now come off it.” To Nancy, Tom said, “Hank gets mean sometimes when he’s stoned, but it doesn’t last, so don’t worry about it.”
But Nancy wanted to speak for herself. “If you’re uptight about me, Hank, you don’t need to keep me around. I wouldn’t want to be a burden to you. We can go our separate ways in the morning.” But she didn’t get through it without crying; a tear rolled down her cheek, glistening in the firelight.
Tom came to Nancy and put his arm around her. “Hank doesn’t mean it, Nancy, honest. Dammit, Hank, tell her you don’t mean it. Now you’ve gone and made her feel bad.”
“I do mean it. We hardly know this chick. I warned you she’d be trouble.”
Crying, Nancy got to her feet and headed off into the woods by herself, picking her way along the path by moonlight.
Tom jumped to his feet, too. “You’re the one who’s trouble, Hank. I wish you’d learn to keep your big mouth shut. Tomorrow when you’re not stoned you won’t even remember what a hassle you caused.”
Chasing after Nancy, Tom found her sitting by herself at the edge of the stream. He stopped behind her, a few feet away, looking down at her. She did not turn around to face him. “Mind if I sit with you?” he asked.
She flipped a pebble out into the water, watching it splash and ripple. Since she still hadn’t said anything, Tom took a few steps toward her and laid a comforting hand on her shoulder. “Wouldn’t it help if you told someone your problem?”
“What makes you think I’ve got one?” she blurted defiantly.
“If you haven’t got one, there’s no need to talk about it,” he admitted. Then he sat down beside her. She kept staring straight ahead. Tom told her, “I just want you to know, Hank really isn’t a bad guy. He’ll let you stay with us, you’ll see. Everything will be okay in the morning.”
“I don’t want to be a burden,” Nancy said quietly but determinedly. “I just want to get to my sister’s house in California. And I’d rather not come between you and your friend. You’ll get along better without me.”
“That’s not true at all,” Tom insisted. “You’ve been helpful and . . . and . . . fun to be with. I want you to stay with us, Nancy.”
She didn’t know what to say. Despite efforts to the contrary, she had started crying again. Tom opened his mouth to tell her not to cry, and at that moment both he and Nancy heard a noise from back in the woods which caused them both to whirl around.
Tom shouted, “Hank! Is that you?”
There were more sounds, of someone tramping through the brush, and suddenly the footsteps stopped. Tom and Nancy listened, getting a bit frightened. Tom called out once again: “Hank! Hank! Is that you?”
No one answered. On their feet now, Tom and Nancy peered all around. The moonlight could not penetrate some of the denser patches of woods. They strained their eyes to see into the foliage, from where the footstep sounds had seemingly come. Just when it appeared that the surrounding woods had fallen completely and permanently silent, a low, throaty chortle came from somewhere and Nancy jumped and grabbed onto Tom.
“Probably some kind of animal,” he said, trying to be reassuring. “A hyena, maybe, if they have them around here. Or else Hank’s playing tricks. Come on, Nancy, let’s get back to the campfire and turn in. We’ll want to be on the road early tomorrow, and I hope you’ll decide to still travel with us. I like having you around. I mean it.”
Feeling scared and needing the comfort of his nearness, Nancy allowed him to escort her back along the path in the moonlight, away from the stream.
Peering from behind some branches, the man in bibbed coveralls watched them go, grinning. He liked the girl real well. She was very pretty, and he couldn’t wait to look at her up close and touch her and feel her long blonde hair.
Bert and Harriet Johnson were up late worrying about Nancy—for different reasons. It was almost time for Bert to go out on the midnight shift, so he was in his uniform. Harriet was in pajamas and bathrobe. She had waited until after the eleven o’-clock news, then had placed a few phone calls to Nancy’s friends with unsatisfactory results; no one could shed any light on her whereabouts.
When Bert picked up his lunch bucket and came over to kiss Harriet good-bye, she said, “Something happened between you and my daughter, didn’t it? You’ve been lying to me, Bert, and I want to know why. Why didn’t Nancy come home?”
Believing firmly that righteous anger was his best defense, Bert exploded: “How the hell should I know? I told you the kid isn’t as innocent as you make her out to be. She could be out carrying on someplace.”
“It’s not like her to stay out this late without phoning. I’m worried about her and I think you know something you’re not telling.”
Bert looked hurt and insulted. “For Chrissakes! You’ve got a fantastic imagination! I’ve got to get down to the station. I’ll check the blotter when I get there, if it’ll make you feel any better. If anything’s happened to Nancy that the police know about, I’ll get the information. By the time I call you, she’ll probably be safe in bed.”
“I certainly hope so,” said Harriet, relenting.
Bert kissed her good-bye and went out, slamming the door.
Harriet went to the liquor cabinet, poured herself a good stiff drink of bourbon, and gulped half of it down. She carried the remainder with her into the bedroom, where she sat on the edge of the bed, feeling wrung out. It looked as if she might have to choose between her daughter and her husband, and she didn’t feel capable. She had never been a strong person, and this sort of emotional strain was too much for her. She downed the rest of the bourbon, set the glass on the nightstand, and noticed a bottle of sleeping pills there. Snatching up the bottle immediately, she shook out some capsules and swallowed them, then lay on her back on top of the covers, a night-light burning in the bedroom.
She was jarred out of the drug-induced sleep by the ringing of the phone. She groped for it and answered groggily: “Hello? Nancy?”
The voice on the other end of the line said, “This is your husband, Bert.”
“Oh, Bert,” Harriet said, coming to her senses, “have you any news?”
He said, “I just heard from Nancy. She says she’s at one of her girl friend’s houses. She’s staying over.”
“Which girl friend?”
“I don’t know. She must’ve said, but I don’t remember. Guess I didn’t catch it. You do feel relieved, though, don’t you, honey?”
“Yes, of course. But why didn’t she call me at home?”
“She said she tried to call. Claimed she must’ve dialed the wrong number. But I think that was just an excuse, to make us think she tried to get in touch earlier. She was probably in the middle of something—you know how teen-agers are—and never even thought about phoning till late.”
“Oh, I suppose so. Bert . . . thanks for letting me know. I’m sorry I was angry with you.”
“No problem. Good-bye now, honey. See you in the morning.”
Bert hung up the pay phone, satisfied that his lies had worked to confuse the issue, at the very least. If Nancy had run away from home—which is what he suspected, for he had found her suitcase and some of her belongings missing—then tomorrow when she still didn’t show up he’d say that obviously her phone call of this evening had been a trick designed to throw him and her mother off the track. In the meantime Harriet would calm down and stop badgering him. If Nancy was merely staying with her girl friend, and had phoned him about it as he had indicated, then how could something bad have happened between them? Bert’s only problem would be if Nancy chickened out and came back home, but by then he’d have strengthened his position and sown so much confusion that Harriet wouldn’t know who to believe.
Bert hoped Nancy would stay away for good. That way his position would be safest. When he thought about what he had done he felt ashamed, threatened, and frightened. If Nancy ever brought charges, even if he were acquitted, the scandal and gossip would be enough to wreck him.
Not long after sunrise, Nancy awakened at the campsite. She had spent the night curled up in a sleeping bag Tom had loaned her. The morning was cold and damp, the nylon bag wet with dew. Tom and Hank were still asleep in their sleeping bags, not far from the now-dead campfire.
Nancy eased herself out of her bag and moved quietly away from the campsite, alone. She walked along the path for quite a ways, till she got to the edge of the stream where she and Tom were last night. She hunkered by the stream, contemplating her reflection in the water. Her hair was matted and damp; she wished she had brought a comb, brush, and towel along so she could wash her face and fix her hair. She still hadn’t made up her mind whether to stay with Tom and Hank or chance it on her own. In a pensive, indecisive mood, she picked up a few pebbles and dropped them into the stream, letting them fall out of her hand slowly, one by one.
Back at the campsite, Tom and Hank were still sound asleep in their sleeping bags. They did not hear the footsteps sneaking up on them through the woods. Finally, both Tom and Hank were prodded in the ribs by heavy brown boots—and they jumped up, startled, to see gun barrels staring them in the face. They had been jarred out of slumber by two sheriff’s deputies brandishing service revolvers.
“Hold it, fellows!” one of the deputies barked. “Don’t make any foolish moves. Keep your hands visible.”
The second one said, “If either of you tries to reach into his sleeping bag for a gun, I won’t wait to find out what you’re reaching for. I’ll just shoot.”
In a shaky voice, Tom asked, “What’s this all about, Officer?” In the back of his mind he figured it must have something to do with the stolen groceries.
“Shut up!” the man covering Tom snapped, pointing his pistol at Tom’s face.
The other deputy suddenly gave Hank a savage kick in the ribs. The boy screamed and writhed in agony, imprisoned in his sleeping bag, while both deputies chuckled. “A bug in a rug!” one of them sneered, and they both went on laughing. Tom stared up at them, wide-eyed and frightened. The deputy standing over him was tall and powerfully built, his tight lips and piercing black eyes set hard and mean. The second deputy was shorter and more wiry, with a perpetual scowl on his face. Both wore tan uniforms with heavy brown boots and wide-brimmed hats. The tall one had sergeant’s stripes on his sleeve; the other was a corporal.
“Where’s the girl?” the corporal demanded harshly. “You killed her, didn’t you?”
“Filthy
sadistic scum!” the sergeant added.
The short, wiry corporal lashed out with his boot, dealing Tom a kick to his ribs. Tom yelled in pain and terror as Hank continued to moan softly, staring up at the deputies in scared bewilderment.
The sergeant planted his boot squarely on Tom’s chest and aimed his gun between Tom’s eyes. Tom whimpered, still hurting badly from the kick in the ribs. “Shut up, goddamn you!” the deputy warned. “Stop making a spectacle of yourself, or I swear I’ll blow your brains to bloody pieces!”
The corporal chuckled softly. “Maybe they think they can pin us with a police brutality rap. Niggers especially take the cake in that department, don’t they?” Emphasizing his point, he prodded Hank with his boot in the sore spot where he had kicked him.
“These filthy scum don’t deserve humane treatment,” said the sergeant. His foot still on Tom’s chest, he applied pressure, demanding: “What did you do with the girl, you maniac? Where’d you hide her body?” He stepped up onto Tom, putting all his weight on the boot that was pressing into the boy’s chest. Tom gritted his teeth to stop from crying out but let loose a slight whimper despite his efforts, making the sergeant angry. “Don’t you scream, I told you! I’ll blow your fuckin’ brains out!” He jammed his revolver up against Tom’s forehead, threatening to pull the trigger.
Grinning meaningfully, the corporal said, “Maybe we ought to drag them back in the woods one at a time, and question them separately.”
“Good idea. Which one should be first? Eeny, meeny, miny . . .” He waved the barrel of his weapon back and forth from Tom to Hank. “Catch a . . . nigger . . . by the . . .”
“Wait!” Hank cried. “Can’t we talk about this? We didn’t kill anybody. There was a girl with us, but she must’ve cut out in the middle of the night.”
Through his pain, Tom said, “All we’re guilty of is stealing a few bags of groceries.”
The corporal chortled exuberantly. “Oh-ho! A confession! Trying to. get off lightly by admitting to a lighter offense, no doubt. Well, it won’t work. We’ve heard that ploy before, right, sergeant?”