Hope & a Canoe

by Michele M. Reynolds

  “Sometimes I feel like I have an older brother and not a dad.” Grace threw a pinecone at him.

  “Hey now! Stick and stones will break my bones...” Jeremy recited.

  “I stand corrected…little brother.” She climbed the stairs to the RV. “I’m going to take a shower.”

  22

  “That’s not how we raised you,” Tember’s grandmother’s voice said from the chair next to her.

  Tember’s eyes felt as though they were caked shut. When she finally pried them open, her head seemed to swing back and forth like water sloshing in a barrel. Light from passing cars and lampposts shone in the RV. They were moving. She saw her grandfather at the wheel of the RV. Tember thought of how they typically didn’t drive at night because her grandfather couldn’t see well in the dark.

  “Jenny!” her grandmother called from beside her.

  The sound seemed to shake her head like a struck bell.

  “What?”

  “We didn’t raise you that way,” her grandmother repeated.

  “What way?”

  Her grandfather yelled from the driver’s seat, “And we have your five hundred dollars!”

  Tember’s head pounded, so she brought her hands to her head. Her sleeve was caught on something and then she realized that she wasn’t wearing sleeves. She heard metal clanking and yanked hard. She moved one hand to her wrist and found cold metal on her arm. She had been handcuffed.

  “You’re not going to be gay and a liar,” her grandmother said. “It’s better we are moving on. Who knew that Maine was full of gays?”

  Tember started to put the pieces together. Somehow her grandparents had found out about her and Grace, but how?

  “You can say you love her, but you don’t,” her grandmother said. “Just like your father thought he loved your mother. He didn’t, and then look what happened. They died.”

  “Stop it!” Tember’s words escaped before she could stop them. “Stop it. You won’t talk about my parents. They didn’t deserve to die because they weren’t meant to be together. You’re insane!”

  “Jenny–” her grandmother started.

  “Tember! My name is Tember. That is what my parents wanted. You need to let me go. If you don’t let me go and give me back my money, I will go to the police. I will tell them everything,” Tember threatened.

  “They’ll arrest you too!” her grandmother warned.

  “Oh please try me,” Tember said.

  Her grandmother sucked her teeth and walked to the front of the RV where her grandfather sat. They turned on the radio speakers in the back of the RV so that Tember couldn’t hear what they said. Tember felt drowsy and fell back to sleep.

  When she woke, it was light out. She sat up and searched the RV with her eyes, but she heard no movement.

  “I have another five hundred dollars stashed in the RV, and if you let me go, I will tell you where it is,” Tember said. There was no answer—a sign that nobody was in the RV. She peered out the window and saw that they were at a gas station, and her grandmother walked around in the convenience store.

  Tember did not see anyone in the parking lot whom she could signal for help. She looked around for anything to help her escape. She checked her pockets for a phone, but her pockets were empty. She looked across the room and saw a paper bag on the table. Her grandparents always put items to pawn in a paper bag.

  She stood and leaned toward the table, trying to reach the bag. Her reach fell short by several feet. She moved back to the sofa and pulled at her handcuffs. She was cuffed to a solid wooden bar that was part of the couch’s frame. She pulled at the couch.

  She looked out the window and saw her grandfather outside smoking a cigarette. Her grandmother stood in the check-out line. Tember hoped she had bought her something salty and something with chocolate in it. Then she laughed out loud at how insane that thought was. How long it had been since she had eaten?

  Tember pulled on the back of the couch. She guessed that that couch was bolted to the floor or wall. Her grandmother was closer to the register now, and her grandfather paced on the sidewalk. Tember pulled hard again, but the couch did not budge. She looked at the bag on the table, took a deep breath, and pulled again. She heard a crack. She had broken the top frame of the couch.

  She took another deep breath. Her grandmother neared the register, and her grandfather had dropped his cigarette. Tember bent her legs and pulled on the couch. The couch broke free, and Tember fell back on the floor with the couch on top of her. She scrambled to her feet knowing she had only a few seconds. She opened the bag and saw her phone. It was off.

  Since the phone was new to her, she fumbled with keys. She found the power button and pushed it on. The phone took several seconds to reboot. The greeting on the screen chimed, and the sound filled the RV. Tember used the volume button on the side of the phone to mute the phone. Her grandfather coughed outside the driver’s side door, and she heard his keys in the door.

  Tember threw the phone back in the bag, flipped the sofa onto its legs, and pushed it back against the wall. She lay back down on the couch and pretended to be sleeping. She hoped that Grace had activated the tracking device on the phone. She did not know if she would get another chance to use it. She wished she had a chance to text Grace, but Tember didn’t know her location, so texting would do no good.

  She imagined sending a text, Help. I don’t know where I am, but my grandparents kidnapped me. She knew her grandparents’ license plate number and made a mental note to text that the next time she was able to get to the phone.

  Her grandfather entered the RV and sat down in the driver’s seat, and a minute later her grandmother was in the passenger’s seat.

  “Those cashiers are so slow,” her grandmother said.

  “More scratch-off tickets?” her grandfather exclaimed.

  Her grandmother said, “I have to replace the ones stolen and scratched. You hush! How is she?”

  “How the hell am I supposed to know?” her grandfather grumbled.

  Tember heard her grandmother make her way to the back of the RV as her grandfather pulled out of the parking lot. Based on their increasing speed, she assumed he drove onto a highway. Tember surmised that they were at a gas station off a highway. That narrowed down her location to approximately five thousand gas stations or so.

  “Jenny,” her grandmother said.

  Tember heard the sound of a bag, and her stomach ached. She hoped for Doritos. She groggily opened her eyes, “What?”

  “I bought you food,” her grandmother said.

  “Yeah?” Tember saw a huge bag of Doritos. “Okay.”

  “No thank you?” her grandmother asked.

  “You probably paid for it with my money,” Tember said. “So you are welcome. You are welcome for the food, for the gas, for paying for your scratch-off tickets and DVDs.”

  “Do you want the Doritos?” her grandmother asked.

  “Yes,” Tember said. “And I need to go to the bathroom.”

  “No, she’ll run,” her grandfather called from the driver’s seat.

  “I’m going to run and jump onto the highway?” Tember asked. “So am I supposed to pee on the couch?”

  “She has a point. What do we do?” her grandmother asked.

  “You guys didn’t think this through,” Tember said. “You’re going to tie me up forever?”

  “Shush,” her grandmother said. “What do you think?”

  “Un-cuff her, but cuff her to you while she pees,” he said. “Then re-cuff her to the couch.”

  Tember sat on the toilet with her grandmother’s arm extended into the bathroom while she peed. She thought how her grandfather’s plan was a good one because she would much rather be cuffed to the sofa instead of to her grandmother.

  Tember thought back to her grandmother’s statement about knowing that she loved Grace. She must have told them while in an altered state because her brain still felt fuzzy.

  “Uhh…what did you give me?” Tember as
ked.

  “What?” her grandmother asked. “Nothing.”

  “My head’s a mess from some drug. What...did...you give me?” Tember demanded.

  “Rohypnol,” her grandfather answered from the driver’s seat.

  “Why’d you go telling her that?” her grandmother scolded.

  “Great, my grandparents gave me the date rape drug,” Tember said. “My life has hit an all-time low.”

  After relieving her bladder, she was handcuffed to the couch. She devoured Doritos and popped open a soda and gulped most of it in a few seconds. She felt the cold drink slide down her throat.

  She had no idea what her grandparents were planning, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to find out. Tember wondered how desperate they must be to cuff their grandkid. She thought about years ago when parents sent their kids to boarding school, beat them, and disowned them if they were gay. She wondered what her grandparents were angrier about: her being gay or her trying to leave them.

  Her hands ached because of the handcuffs. She was sure she would have bruises on her wrists. She bruised easily. She wondered if she got that from her mom or from her dad.

  “Did my dad bruise easily?” Tember asked.

  “I don’t know, probably not,” her grandmother answered as she returned to the passenger’s seat next to her grandfather.

  “Did my mom?” Tember asked.

  Her grandmother answered, “How the hell would I know?”

  She thought her grandparents’ abuse stopped at emotional. Clearly, she was wrong. Since being in Maine, she had been swung at, locked in a room, drugged, handcuffed, and kidnapped. Was I still a kid now that I was eighteen? Was it grown-up-napping? Should I have been napping? Was it hostaging or holding hostage? Her thoughts swirled in her head. She looked down at her soda and wondered if her grandmother slipped something into it. She tried to hold open her eyes, but her stomach growled. She ate more Doritos and chewed before she faded into sleep. She hoped that Grace and Jeremy were tracking her phone.

  23

  “She wouldn’t just leave,” Grace said.

  Jeremy set down a tray of burgers and fries on the picnic table. The tray was red and white gingham, and Grace stared at it.

  “I know, sweetheart. What can we do? We went to the police, and they said they couldn’t do anything.”

  “There has to be something,” Grace said. “I just know that something’s wrong. My gut’s telling me.”

  “I know. We can’t track her phone because it’s off. We don’t have their license plate, so we couldn’t track them down. We don’t even know if her last name’s the grandparents’ last name. I’m sorry,” he said. “Eat something.”

  Grace said, “I just can’t sit here. Can’t we go looking?”

  “Where? We have no clue where they’re going. Their neighbors said they left late at night. They have at least a twelve-hour jump on us,” Jeremy said. “Eat. Maybe the food will fuel your brain.”

  “Stupid cops,” Grace said. “They’ll be sorry when something happens to her. Nothing better happen to her.” Grace eyes filled with tears, and she covered her face.

  “Hey, hey, we’ll think of something,” he said. “Just a few bites for me, okay?”

  Grace slid a fry lazily through ketchup and reluctantly took a bite. “What, no shake?” She laughed through her snobs.

  “One extra-thick vanilla shake coming up!” He jumped up and headed to the ordering window. He returned with a large shake, and Grace had already eaten half her hamburger.

  “Too bad this isn’t a problem we can just do a Web search on,” Jeremy said.

  “Why can’t we?” Grace looked up from her fries. She wiped her greasy hands on a napkin and picked up her phone.

  “What are you going to type? How to find a lost girlfriend?” he asked. “How to track down grandparents on the run?”

  “Maybe,” Grace said. “There’s this site that one of the guys in my class talks about all the time. It’s about unique ways that detective, agents, or cops track down people. He used to bore me in homeroom talking about all the stories. I mostly tuned him out. He said there were these core guidelines…umm, what were they?”

  “I bet you wished you’d listened more carefully,” Jeremy said as he bit into his burger.

  Grace looked up from her phone long enough to shoot Jeremy a dirty look. “Oh, here it is. It’s called Unique Catchers. There are these core principles. Here, yes. Criminals have patterns, habits, and favorite baits.”

  “We don’t know any patterns her grandparents have, do we?” Jeremy asked with his mouth full and ketchup trickling down his chin.

  Grace looked up and answered, “Well, they like scratch-off tickets.”

  “DVDs,” Jeremy said.

  “And her grandfather gambles,” she said. “I don’t think that’ll help us. They could be going to any casino in any state.”

  “What about baits? What does that mean?” he asked.

  “I guess it means something that can lure them. Like this one thief had stolen this car. It was a unique car, and the police put an ad in the paper for a recall on the transmission for that same type of car. The thief made an appointment to get his car’s transmission looked at, and the cops were there to arrest him.”

  “The only thing her grandparents want is those scratch-off tickets back,” Jeremy said. “Wait…”

  “What?”

  “I have her grandmother’s number in a notepad in my truck. When I was pretending to be a cop, I got it.”

  “Yeah? So we call them up and we ask, ‘Did you steal your granddaughter?’ Or no wait, I can call and say, ‘Bring back my lesbian girlfriend.’”

  “Calm down. No, but if I called and told them that I apprehended the thieves and I had money for them, I might be able to find out where they are.”

  Grace’s spirits rose. “That might just work.”

  Jeremy got up and jogged to the truck. He returned with a piece of paper that had the phone number on it. The two strategized on what Jeremy would say, and Grace wrote down a script for him. They role-played for a few minutes, and then Jeremy felt confident enough to call.

  “Hello, I’m calling from Maine State Police. We met yesterday,” Jeremy said and paused as he listened through the receiver. “Oh, yes, I did say I was from the local police, but local and state are the same thing where we come from. Anyway...I have great news for you folks. I tried to come bring you the news in person, but you weren’t at the campground. Anyway, we found your thieves. The bad news is they cashed in a bunch of your scratch-off tickets. The good news is that they didn’t spend much of the money.

  Jeremy paused and Grace heard murmurs on the phone.

  “Yes, it is more than three thousand dollars. Can you come pick it up?” Jeremy asked. “You can’t pick it up? Send it to you? I don’t know because that’s an awful lot of money to send to you through the mail. I would have to send it certified to Jenny. She was the one who filed the report, and, therefore, she would have to sign for it. When and where?”

  Jeremy hung up the phone and Grace’s eyes were wide.

  “Where? What? What did they say?” she asked.

  “They said to send it two-day mail to this address in Texas,” Jeremy said as he handed the paper to Grace.

  “Texas? Are they trying to get away to Mexico?” Grace asked. “Dad, we have to–”

  “We’re leaving right away,” he said.

  Jeremy and Grace headed to the campground. The campground management was inflexible and would not let them leave their RV there for a week, despite Jeremy being willing to pay for a week of camping. Jeremy hooked the camper up to his truck and drove it to nearest used-car lot. The owner agreed to let Jeremy leave his camper there for thirty dollars a week.

  As Jeremy unhooked and secured the camper, Grace headed into the RV to grab any valuables and supplies from inside. She opened the refrigerator and filled a cooler with drinks and fruit. The condiments and other food would have to be dealt with later.
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  She stepped into her bedroom, and her mind went to the last time she was in this room with Tember. They were so happy, giddy, and connected. A tear rolled down her face, and a sick feeling grew in her stomach. She worried that something bad had happened to Tember. Grace frantically filled a duffle bag with clothes, her toothbrush, shampoo, and soap. Then she exited the RV and commanded, “We have to hurry.”

  24

  Tember woke again and found herself still chained to the couch. Darkness surrounded her in the back of the RV. She heard faint music coming from the front of the RV. They were still moving. She wondered where they were going. Her throat felt dry and achy because she’d refused to drink anything else that could be drugged.

  “How do you think we can get Jenny to sign for the check?” her grandmother asked.

  Her grandfather answered, “We just have you do it. They won’t ask for ID or nothing.”

  “What if they do?”

  “We’ll deal with that then,” her grandfather said.

  Her grandmother sucked her teeth. “I’m just glad we’re going to have all that money. That’ll be something.”

  “Where and when are they sending the check?” her grandfather asked.

  “I told you. That post office in Texas. It should be there in two days,” her grandmother answered.

  The words two days and Texas rang in her ears. She would have to be cuffed for that long? She then thought of her grandparents’ friends in Texas. Her least favorite state was Texas because of the friends they kept there. Every other year they spent a few weeks at a ranch in Texas, which was in the middle of nowhere and filled with thieving, sketchy men.

  Tember was sure that most of the men there were in the country illegally, as well as committing illegal activities. All the men carried guns and had gazes that made Tember uneasy. She spent her days and nights in the RV, not making eye contact or talking to anyone. Her grandparents spent their days and nights gambling and drinking.

  The more and more she thought about Texas the more uneasy she felt. She was convinced that her grandparents had plans to spend time there. The way her life was going, she wouldn’t be surprised if they left her there. She was positive she would not have a chance to run away from there.