Just get out of here now, things are okay, nobody will remember I was in the store, at least not until I’m out of the country. I’m forgettable. That’s a good thing right now. She smiled. Forgettable is good this time, Donald. Wouldn’t you just be surprised?
“Mistie, I’m back,” she said. She swiped her wet forehead with her sleeve, plucked the deviled ham from under the accelerator where it was hiding, and put dropped it on the passenger side floor with the other stuff. “Bag ripped, the silly!”
The expected silence. Kate looked over the back of her seat. Mistie had moved, but was still under the blanket. The girl had made a pooch along the hem and her nose was poking out just a hair. “Got lots of things you might like. I just bet you like Pepsi!”
The girl said nothing. Kate kicked off her shoes, aiming them at the passenger’s side floor. Her toes would dry out, she didn’t mind driving with stocking feet. In fact, she thought, this may be the last time I wear panty hose at all. What would I need them for? Once I take Mistie to Alice and Bill’s house, I just may drive west across Canada and get a job at a rock shop or craft shop. That would be fun, and I could wear comfortable clothes all the time.
Her breath eased out, making a funny squeaking noise.
She turned on the engine. On the radio, the announcer said, “…with chances of wintry mix ninety-percent through tonight and tomorrow. Clearing tomorrow afternoon with highs near thirty-five. And please, parents, do not call about school closings, as we haven’t yet received any word from the county and will let you know as soon as we do.” Kate turned the radio off. Too much sound right now.
A whine from the back.
Kate hands clenched the steering wheel; adrenaline stung her arms. Enough whining! God! Okay, get this taken care of now, get her settled, then nothing else will stop us, nothing else save a bathroom somewhere off the main road in Northern Virginia or even Maryland, with luck.
“I’ll give you a Nestle Crunch and a Pepsi,” she said. Clearly that was satisfactory, for a small, snot-sticky hand came out from under the blanket. “Eat the candy bar but don’t drink yet, until I tell you it’s time to sit up. You might spill.”
The fingers wrapped around the candy and drew in beneath the blanket. Sigh of seeming contentment. Kate looked through the windshield. Nobody else was on the road. They were smart; the weather was pathetic.
Thank you God for sleet!
There was a loud, popping sound of thunder somewhere nearby, somewhere outside the car. Kate flinched. Thunder? Impossible. Just a car backfiring somewhere behind the gas station, back past the weeds where there was a trailer park.
Kate eased the Volvo around the pumps to the edge of the driveway and looked both ways beyond the splays of trees clustered at the roadside.
A tractor was approaching the station from the east, an old-fashioned rusty blue with the close set-front wheels and exposed engine. It was heading in the same direction Kate wanted to drive. In tow was a long flatbed with elephantine rolls of winter hay. She could pull out and pass him but he was going so slowly he might, at some future date when pressed by authorities, remember that yes, he saw that teacher’s white Volvo leaving the Exxon and exactly when he saw that teacher’s car leaving the Exxon, he knows it was because he was traveling all of twenty miles an hour and could read the license plate as she sped past.
“Damn!” hissed Kate. She rolled the car back several yards and steered over to the row of Dumpsters to wait. To Mistie, “That was ‘Sam.’ Did you hear me? What the Sam Hill is a farmer doing out in this sleet? I hope he doesn’t catch cold!” Kate checked her watch as the tractor ambled past on the road. Give the man a full minute head start and then she could drive out of the gas station. She could get on the road and past him without any unnecessary attention.
In the back was a soft sound of wrapping paper shredding. “Hang in there Mistie, you having fun?” said Kate softly. “I’m having fun, are you? This really is great, an adventure for both of us….”
And then she heard shouts. She looked back to see three of the gypsy-dressed kids stumbling across the gravel toward the Dumpsters, arms flailing. Kate’s heart stopped. She gripped the wheel. They know what I’ve done! They know!
God God God God!
Kate grabbed for the gearshift, hand shaking madly. She jammed the stick into reverse to pull back from the Dumpsters. God God God!
The kids ran around the Dumpsters and fell into a rusty car on the other side. Kate’s dry mouth opened with a click. She held her foot on the brake, watching. What? The rusted car revved, bucked, and lurched forward from its hiding place and sped to the road. Black smoke trailed. The car nearly struck the tractor’s flatbed, swerved around it and scraped the back door on the corner, then vanished beyond the trees.
Kate looked back at the gas station the back to the road. What was that about?
Mistie sneezed, another one clearly not covered with a hand or handkerchief. Kate would buy some upholstery cleaner in Ontario; give that back seat the good, solid once-over. “Well, that farmer won’t think twice about a white car passing him now,” she said. “I think those kids were giving Mrs. Martin a hard time in there, I’m afraid. I’d go back, but we have to get.”
Kate took a Pepsi from the seat beside her and cranked off the top, hand still shaking. “I need a drink,” she chuckled. She drew on the bottle several times, then sighed, recapped the bottle and said, “That’s it, nothing else is delaying us. Promise. You’ve been under that blasted blanket too long and it won’t be long before….”
The passenger door was wrenched open. Kate flailed about to see a red-striped face with steel gray eyes shadowed beneath a flattened fedora. The mouth of a gun was inches from her face.
“Bitch!” said the striped face as the rest of the body slid in to the car. “Don’t say a fucking word! Drive!”
17
The Crunch Bar tasted good. It was warm and mushy beneath Mistie’s fingers and sweet on her tongue. There was quilt lint in the chocolate, but it didn’t matter because the chocolate was good on her hands and on her tongue. She liked being under the blanket because she liked to hide. It was fun to hide. She liked to hide at home in the metal shed behind the trailer or in the big potato bin in the kitchen when it was empty of potatoes.
The teacher talked a lot. She had a voice that went up and down like those flutes the fourth graders tried to play at the assembly last week.
There was a drink on the floor, a plastic bottle with a white top. The teacher said not to drink it yet. Mistie didn’t mind, she had chocolate to play with. She patted her tongue with the stick and sucked on it, then rubbed it on her palms. Warm, soft.
Then there was another voice up front. Mistie paused and listened. It was a girl. The girl got into the car, said the “fuck” word and then “Drive.”
The teacher did.
18
The woman at the wheel stared at Tony until Tony cocked the trigger, then she eased the car to the edge of the lot and turned on her left blinker.
“Go right,” said Tony.
“Right?” The woman said the word as if she’d never heard it before. But then she steered right without another word. Tony rolled her upper lip in between her teeth and bit until it hurt. Right. They’d turned right, driving on Route 58. So where was she going to go now? She went right only because the woman wanted to go left.
Where the hell do I go?
“Where am I going?” the woman asked without looking away from the road. It sounded as if there was a roach in her throat and she was trying to talk around it. “I saw your buddies leaving without you. They sure were in a hurry, weren’t they? Where should I drop you off?”
“You ain’t dropping me off anywhere.”
The woman’s jaw tightened, though her eyes twitched at the corners. She was going to try to be brave, in control. What a foolish, ridiculous female! “Then what…?” the woman began.
Tony slammed the gun into the woman’s ear; her head snapped to the side and
she grabbed her face, groaning in surprise. The car swerved madly on the ice.
“Drive!” yelled Tony.
The woman took the steering wheel with her left hand, holding her ear with her right.
“Now you know what ‘right’ is, don’t you?” said Tony.
The woman gasped, heaved, and looked like she was going to pass out.
“Don’t you?”
“Yes.” Her voice was tiny.
On the radio, some oldies shit that Tony’s mother sometimes listened to. Something about everybody smiling on their brother. Tony pounded the power switch with her fist. The song died in the air.
“Turn right on Route 35 before you get to Courtland.”
The woman licked her lips. She flinched as if the jaw on the right side of her head had cracked. She swallowed noisily. “Where are we going?” she managed.
“Don’t ask,” said Tony.
I have no idea, maybe to the ocean, let’s go to the ocean and catch a boat to China, my little nitty sister is probably there already, she was digging in the sinkhole, we all can go to China and make fireworks!
The woman’s jaw was working slightly; she was trying to think of what to say next. Tony rubbed her nose with her free hand and a smear of lipstick came away with it. She thought of the blood on the gasoline man’s shirt, of the blood on his crucified hand.
They came up behind an empty flatbed truck bearing the obligatory orange triangle in the rear.
“Pass it,” said Tony.
“All right,” said the woman.
The car pulled around the truck. As they came even with the driver of the truck, Tony said, “Don’t even move funny when he looks over here or I’ll kill you in a heartbeat.”
The woman’s gaze flickered in Tony’s direction, then back to the road. Tony lowered the gun to the woman’s waist and noticed her own hand shaking. She took the gun in both hands to steady it. Her head itched, her neck itched, her stomach reeled against the waistband of Granddad’s trousers. In the back of her throat, a stinging like needles.
They eased over in front of the truck. The woman looked up at the rearview as if she could blink the truck driver a warning, a plea.
The stinging in Tony’s throat, flaming hot. Her stomach pitching madly. Sweat breaking out on her lip, her arms, the bridge of her nose. She took long breaths through her teeth.
“Drive faster,” Tony said. She rolled down the window. The freezing air caught her hat and blew it into the back seat. She gulped icy breaths.
There were no bullets in that gun, and now we’ve got some asshole murdered.
“It’s slick on the road,” said the woman. “If I drive any faster we might slide off the road.”
Tony counted her breaths. There were stars swimming just behind her eyeballs. Shut up, bitch.
“Could you please close the window? The windshield is fogging up.”
Shut up, bitch!
It rushed forward, the smell of smoke, the taste of blood, the sight of the fat crabby hand blown apart, and Tony leaned over and heaved it out on a loaf of crush Sunbeam bread on the passenger’s side floor.
19
The moment the girl leaned over and vomited on the floor, Kate thought, I can get the gun! I can knock it away and grab it!
The girl held her stomach with her left hand and kept the gun pointed across her chest with her right.
Snatch it!
Kate saw herself shoving at the gun with the palm of her hand, and letting go of the steering wheel to take hold of it as it hovered for a second, pointing at the radio. She saw the gun in her own hand, turning around to aim at the girl then forcing her out of the car.
Good-bye! Run, girl, run!
The jagged pain in her head made the world wobble; the smell of fresh vomit made her stomach turn and constrict.
God help me!
Kate shoved at the gun. The girl sat up abruptly, face spattered in puke, and grabbed the handle with both hands, swinging it back around and shoving the barrel against Kate’s cheekbone.
“Don’t hit me again!” Kate cried. “Please!” Her molar, loosened from the first blow, creaked in the socket and flared hot in her head.
“Get the hell off this road, bitch!”
There were no roads on which to turn, just another stretch of pine. Kate looked at the girl and then the road, afraid to say the wrong thing, afraid of more pain. No more pain, please!
“There! Go through the trees!”
Kate steered to the graveled shoulder, then down a slight embankment and up again. She had read that if a kidnapper gets you in the car you are in serious trouble. If the kidnapper gets you into a private place, you are as good as dead. The guy on Oprah had said that. He knew the statistics. He had been a police officer. He’d seen dead women in the woods.
Kate’s jaw chattered furiously. Her calves twitched.
“Get in there!”
Kate glanced at her door. If she popped the handle and rolled out she could run. The girl would have to get out her side and run around the car.
But she had the gun. She said she would kill her.
The guy on Oprah said if you run in a back-and-forth pattern you are less likely to be shot and killed, just maybe shot and wounded.
But the girl had the gun.
Kate’s legs were so weak she could barely press the gas. She steered the Volvo through the rash of pine trees. Branches scraped the sides as if trying to open the doors themselves. The underside of the car thwapped over ruts and downed limbs. The world grew darker as the trees grew denser and taller.
Let her have the car, that’s it, just give her the car!
But Mistie’s in the back seat. What would she do to Mistie?
Oh my God this is wrong this is not what is supposed to happen. I was doing the right thing for the first time in years and what are You doing to me, God?
A sharp, pointed branch drove itself into the front windshield, cracking it like a hammer. Kate stifled a cry. She yanked the wheel to the left and the branch gouged the passenger’s side window with a banshee’s wail.
“Stop here!” said the girl.
Kate let up on the gas. The car rolled a few more feet and then settled at a tilt in a soft patch of humus. A startled pair of cardinals took to the air in a blur of red. Kate touched her molar with her tongue. It wobbled. It tasted raw and bitter.
Slowly, Kate unlocked her fingers from around the steering wheel. She was a teacher, damn it all. This was a child to her right. A child. A little girl who was likely as scared as Kate was. This was not out of control, not yet. There was time now to set this right.
I’m a teacher. I can do this.
Kate took a breath, and turned to the girl. She said, “I know you are frightened. We both are. We’ve gotten into a situation that seems pretty terrible right now, but it’s not too late to start over and set things straight.”
The girl tipped her head and a strange smile spread across her crusted lips. Her eyes narrowed, but she said nothing.
Yes. She’ll understand, thought Kate. Keep talking. You’re good at that. Thank God Mistie is obedient. The girl will never know she was there.
“I would be happy to drive you wherever you want to go,” said Kate. “I have no reason to say anything about this little…fiasco…to anyone. I’m just glad we are both all right. We’ve both had a fright. People do silly things when they are scared. Women do. Little girls do. It happens.”
The girl ran her free hand across her mouth, scratching off the drying puke. She wiped it from her fingers onto the dashboard.
“Did you say little girls?” she said.
“I suppose I should say young woman. You’re not a little girl, are you?”
The girl put her foot up on the dashboard in the dry puke. Her shoe was an old man’s leather shoe. She spit on it, and rubbed what looked like blood from the toe with the heel of her hand, then she licked the hand.
“I’m a teacher,” Kate pressed. “A teacher and a mother. I want you to know
I hold no ill-will toward you. I know young people. I know some times they do things they later wished they hadn’t. Well, everyone does that, in fact. Things they wish they hadn’t. Things they wish they could go back and do over. I don’t hold grudges. Let’s put this all behind us. Where can I drive you?”
“You’re a teacher? Teach where?”
“Pippins Elementary.”
The girl stared for a moment. Then she nodded, her head bobbing up and down on her neck like a felt-covered toy dog in the rear of a jacked-up automobile. The movement was chilling. She said, “Hey, teacher, show me your woolly.”
Kate said, “Show you what?”
“You heard me.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You’re a teacher at Pippins and you don’t know kids’ rhymes?”
“Kids rhymes?”
“You know ‘Little Bo Peep?’”
“Yes. Of course.”
“You know ‘Old McDonald?’”
“Yes.”
“Say it. Say ‘Old McDonald.’”
Kate swallowed dry air. “Well. Okay. ‘Old McDonald had a farm, ee-yi-ee-yi-oh. We’re really wasting time….”
The girl jabbed the gun into Kate’s neck.
“On that farm he had a cow, ee-yi-ee-yi-oh.”
“Say the ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb.’”
“Mary had a little lamb his fleece was white as snow, and everywhere that Mary went the lamb was sure to go.”
“Yeah. Now say the ‘Aunt Molly.’”
A fresh lance of pain shot through Kate’s jaw to her eyes. Her molar pounding as if trying to drive itself up by the roots. Tears sprang, but she blinked them back. Play the little game with this girl and then it’ll be done with. Play cool and she would let Kate go. Of course she would let Kate go.
“I don’t know the ‘Aunt Molly,’” she said honestly.
“I bet,” said the girl. She put her hand on Kate’s knee, and pushed the skirt and coat hem up to Kate’s thigh.
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