by Pepper Pace
Her first instinct was to run before she recognized him as Bodie…her friend, Bodie? But his expression was anything but friendly.
She stood up. “Bodie. What’s wrong?”
“You ain’t safe here.”
“But…my bus will be here-”
He grabbed her arm and headed for the door. “They’re going to look for you here because Keegan saw that I had your Honda-” Derrick would check the Holiday Inn and once he realized that she had checked out he would be heading here.
“Who’s going to be looking for me?” she asked trying to keep up with his big steps.
“Keegan’s brother.”
“Keegan?”
He glanced at her. “Dead Klansman.” He pushed opened the door and got sucker punched dead in the face. He dropped like a sack and Shaun shrieked and tried to turn. A big white man grabbed her by the back of her shirt and lifted her clean off the ground. She kicked and struggled but the man treated her like little more than a rag doll as he tried to force her into a waiting van.
“Hell no!” She hollered, using her feet to brace against the entrance of the door.
Bodie swiped out with the tire iron and cracked the man’s shin a bone crushing blow. It was his turn to scream and he dropped Shaun who scrambled behind Bodie.
Bodie stood, spitting a wad of blood onto the ground. More blood was on his teeth and lips. He growled and swung the tire iron striking the keeling man and knocking him out cold. Another man jumped out of the van, this one wearing a white hood and robe. Bodie dropped the tire iron and grabbed him by the front of his robe and then slammed him against the van in a teeth-shattering blow. He then slammed his fist into the masked face hearing a satisfying crunch.
Two more men jumped from the van; one carrying a baseball bat, both wearing hoods.
Shaun picked up the tire iron and smashed it against the head of the baseball bat carrier. He went down with a horrific wail holding his bloody head.
Bodie took care of the other with just one punch and another satisfying crunching. The remaining men tumbled back into the van dragging the one with the broken shin in after them, and then they sped away.
Bodie turned to Shaun, his mouth still bleeding. “You okay?”
She nodded eyes wide and practically bulging. “Bodie why were those guys after me?!”
“We gotta get out of here!” He grabbed her arm and hurried to his pick-up. She got in still carrying the tire iron and barely had her door shut before he was peeling out of the parking lot.
“Where are we going?”
“I’m taking you to Richmond.”
“But what’s going on?!” Bodie shows up talking about she’s not safe and then the Klan is trying to snatch her!
He shook his head. “Derrick thinks that you shot his brother. Just for the record, you didn’t did you?”
“NO! I don’t have a gun!”
“Okay. I knew that. I just had to ask.”
She rubbed the back of her sore neck. “What were they going to do to me?”
Bodie shook his head. “I don’t know, Shaun. But I guarantee you that you’ll never have to find out.”
“Bodie, maybe we should go to the police-”
“Do you really want to stay on this mountain while they investigate your attempted kidnapping and assault? You need to get out of here!”
“You going to drive me all the way to Richmond?”
“It ain’t that far.”
She sighed in relief. “Oh Bodie. What would I do without you?”
“You ain’t got to worry about that for now.”
Bodie cut through the woods avoiding the major thoroughfares.
“What are you going to do when you drop me off? Don’t come back up on this mountain, Bodie!”
“Shaun, I know everyone of those idiots. Guy I hit in the shin was Rilo Kelly. Guy with the baseball bas was Doo Doo McMahon. I broke Derrick’s nose and knocked out a few of Mut Jackson’s teeth. And Sully was driving.”
“Just because you know them don’t mean they can’t do a drive-by on you.”
He just shook his head. “We don’t do drive-by’s in the mountains.”
“Bodie, when we get to Richmond I’m calling the police!”
“Leave it alone. You’re going to end up having the police dragging you back up on this mountain for a trial.”
“At least they’ll know what happened,” she said, her argument losing steam as doubt set in at the prospect of ever setting foot in these mountains again.
“You can’t call the cops because you don’t even know the name of the mountain you’re on and you probably couldn’t find your way back up here let alone tell the police how to get here.”
“I paid for the hotel and breakfast with a credit card, smart-ass.”
“Yeah? Well before you’d get that info back this will have been long over. I ain’t going to let a bunch of good ol’ boys run me out of my home. Especially not those mental rejects.”
Shaun crossed her arms in front of her and muttered. “If they’re such mental rejects then why are you driving me to Richmond? And why did we have to beat up 5 guys? OH MY GOD!”
“WHAT?”
“Bodie, my Dad’s registration is in the glove box. Do you think…?”
“Shit!” He patted his pockets for his cell phone. Yeah it would be sitting on his desk in the office. He forgot to put it in his coveralls.
“What’s wrong?”
“My cell phone. I need to call the garage and have Pete or Bobby put up your registration info.” Should he keep going to Richmond and call when he got to a payphone, or should he head back?
“They’ll know where I live Bodie…” she whispered.
He turned the truck sharply and they headed in the opposite direction.
Chapter 5
They hadn’t gone two miles before they heard a shot. Shaun screamed and ducked even before Bodie told her to.
In his rearview mirror he saw a Corvette coming up on him fast.
“You mutha fucker!” He growled. He’d play the killing game if he had to—because it was a certainty that whoever shot at his car was a dead mutha fucker!
Shaun was crouched on the floor praying. “Craig, I’m so sorry I was mad at you for sleeping with my friend. All I want to do is come back home to Chicago. I don’t want anything to do with Kentucky anymore. I don’t even want to visit Grandma.” Dear Lord…if she got killed here today nobody would be the wiser.
The Corvette tried coming up alongside of them. Bodie saw Derrick driving, nose flattened and bloodied. Sully was on the passenger side with a shotgun.
“You fool! Are you shootin’ at me?!” Bodie screamed.
“Pull over!” Derrick yelled. Or I’ll run this big muther fucker off the road!”
“Yeah? Try it, bitch!”
Sully pointed the rifle but Derrick knocked it out of the way. “What are you doing?! Who told you to shoot?”
“But-”
The Corvette side-swiped them. Bodie countered with a swipe of his own, pushing the smaller car almost off the narrow road.
They played that game for a few miles before Derrick realized that he couldn’t force the larger truck off the road.
“Pull over or I’m going to shoot out your tires!”
“Tell him to throw that rifle out the window and I’ll pull over!”
Shaun began to protest in her crouched position on the floor. These people were insane!
Sully complained about how much money he’d paid for the rifle but Derrick snatched it from his hands and tossed it out the window. “Pull over!” He yelled.
Bodie slowed his truck and spoke to the frightened woman crouched on the floor. “I’m going to pull into the woods. When I do you slide out and start running. Hide. I’ll find you.”
“Bodie…” she began doubtfully.
“Trust me. Derrick wants to know who killed his brother more than he wants to kill you or me. And I have a feeling that Sully Pranger has the key to that.”
He pulled into the woods. Shaun didn’t want to leave Bodie but as soon as the car stopped she intended to run for her life. There was no way that a black woman and a half-white, half-Indian was going to reason with the Klan and someone had to live to tell this to the authorities! This was Deliverance and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre wrapped in one!
The Corvette pulled into the woods after them and Bodie inched around until the passenger door was facing away from the road and at the forest.
He got out holding the tire iron and heard Shaun’s door crack open as she slipped out.
“Sully,” he said while pointing the tire iron at him. “I’m going to beat a hole in your ass for shooting at me!”
Sully’s eyes got big. “I’ll be seeing your big ass swinging from a tree. Got a rope in the trunk-”
Derrick got out of the car. “I wanna talk to that bitch who shot my brother!”
Three more men got out of the car. None of them were ones that he had previously beaten but he still knew them all. Mostly they spent the day drinking and collecting their disability or social security checks and talked big because they were so small. People like that didn’t affect him—they were too far beneath him to even bother with working up any thoughts over.
Bodie positioned the tire iron across his shoulders and rested his arms over each end. He wanted them to see what they’d be going against if they got froggy and decided to leap. Bodie’s arms, neck shoulders and torso appeared sculptured from stone. Even Sully hesitated at the sight of him and he was shaking like a dog shitting a persimmon seed despite his big words—but scared equaled dangerous.
“Don’t be a complete fool,” Bodie spoke. “You can’t kill me because everybody at the bus station saw me get jumped by a bunch of good ol’ boys wearing hoods. It won’t take a brain surgeon to see your broken nose and put two and two together. I turn up missing and all of y’all fuckers are getting gassed.”
“If that black bitch killed my brother she’s dying and so are you. I’ll worry about the gas chamber later.”
The three guys that had just exited the car suddenly looked uncertain. “Uh…shit Derrick, my Granddaddy still in jail for what he did to that China man. I’m just here for a little fun-”
“Be quiet, Duke. Ain’t nobody going to jail.” Derrick said.
Sully craned his neck. “Shit! She’s done gone into the woods. He made to run into the woods after her.
Bodie spoke in a slow, lazy drawl. “I don’t think you want to turn your back to me Sully. I ain’t forgot that you shot at me.”
~PP ~
Shaun had crept out of the car and when she felt safely concealed by the trees and brush she sprinted. She ran as if there were demons after her—which in fact there were.
Shaun ran until she fell. She picked herself up and ran some more. She ran until the stich in her side caused her to collapse to her knees and spew her breakfast. Then she limped and finally, exhausted fell on a bed of leaves.
She didn’t know how much time had passed before she managed to pull herself up. Her entire body ached and she had scratches and cuts on her arms, hands and face. She found an overturned log big enough to crouch beneath but when she disturbed the leaves she found it swarming with beetles and plump, pale larvae. That gave her enough energy to run a few more feet.
Finally she found a bush and huddled under it thinking about the Blair Witch Project.
Late in the evening, just before dusk she heard the crunch of leaves. For hours she had alternated between hoping for such a sound and fearing it.
Her muscles tightened preparing to leap. Why hadn’t she picked up a big rock or a stick? Quickly she allowed her eyes to roam but nothing was within reach.
The footsteps stopped for a moment before coming quicker in her direction.
“Shaunda?” Bodie called out.
“Bodie?” She croaked. She crawled out from under the bush feeling relief wash over her.
When he saw her crawling from the brush he pulled her into his arms. “Damn, girl. When I said hide I didn’t mean this far.”
“You said run and I ran.” She buried her face into his big chest. Her eyes began to tear but she didn’t want to cry in front of Bodie again. “I thought they had killed you,” she whispered, voicing her one true fear.
He stroked her hair and held her tight feeling her body trembling. “I’m okay. What about you? Are you hurt?”
She shook her head silently, not looking up from the safety of his chest and the strong arms that enclosed her.
“What happened to those men?” She finally asked. “Is it over?”
“Yes and no.”
She peeked up at him. “What?”
“Come on. Lets get out of here and I’ll fill you in because once it gets dark we’re struck here.”
She followed as Bodie moved through the forest. She saw him studying the ground and she figured he was looking for broken branches or footprints, but for the life of her she couldn’t make out one thing that looked like he could trace. She stayed quiet allowing him to concentrate on getting them out of the woods before nightfall because just as much as she had wanted to be hidden in these woods is just as badly as she now wanted to be out of them before it grew completely dark.
But after a while Bodie stopped walking and glanced up into the sky. He was good at tracking. The woods had been his playground since he was a child, and there wasn’t a person born and raised in these parts that didn’t know how to stay safe in them. One of the biggest things he had learned was never to get yourself turned around in them because the mountains went on for many miles, and at night it turned black. He looked at Shaun.
“We’re not going to be able to make it out of here tonight. I’m going to need to look for us a place to camp.”
She looked around apprehensively and followed him, not letting him more than a few feet away from her.
“Are those men going to-?”
“No,” he said quickly. “Nobody’s coming to get you. There ain’t going to be anybody left to get you.”
She stared at him closely, now anxiously searching for signs of another fight. Did Bodie---do something to those men? But he didn’t seem any worse for wear.
“That night I saw Sully Pranger in the shadows trying not to be seen, I assumed he had some mischief in mind for you. I knew he messed around with the Klan, so later when you said you saw someone suited up in the woods that seemed to be what it was all about.
“Only someone’s shot dead in those very same woods, which would mean that you either shot him twice from the safety of your car—which would make you a sharp shooter…or you were bold enough to go into those woods after a man suited up in Klan gear, shoot him, and then get back in your broken down car that won’t even start to wait for a tow truck. Not very likely, not to me and not to Derrick either, especially when I told him I’d seen Sully with my very own eyes.
“Of course the fool tried to lie—but he was wearing the hood and not the robes—and anybody from around these parts would recognize that skinny, knock-kneed fool. Evidently Derek believed me because he turned to Sully and commenced to beating the living shit out of him. I suppose Sully just didn’t factor in that Derrick would be crazy enough to come after you or that I would be sticking around. All I know is that once the fighting started I took off to look for you.”
Shaun’s eyes were large. “If he kills…Sully, then they’ll need to kill us, too,” she croaked.
Bodie was shaking his head. “Sully’s a pretty tough son-of-a-bitch. Derrick will have a hard time killing him with his bare hands.” Bodie turned and continued searching for a campsite. “Besides, their friends weren’t too anxious to kill anyone and I don’t think Derrick—for all his talk—was either.
She nodded, hoping that he was right and than sat down heavily on a fallen log. It was if all of the energy had left her body and she was nothing more than limp limbs.
“Tired?” He paused to look at her while clearing away some branches and leaves from a small, r
elatively bare area.
She nodded quietly. He gave her a curious look before continuing his work. When he was done he had a bare circle with a pile of dead branches and kindling in the center. It wasn’t cold out and wasn’t likely to get cold even though it was dark, but he figured the firelight might help Shaun. It would at least keep the critters at bay.
After a moment he came over and crouched before her. “What’s wrong? You hungry?”
She nodded.
“I’ll see if I can find some morels. You ever have them?”
She shook her head.
“They’re delicious,” he spoke gently. After a moment he stood. “I’ll be back.” He thought that she might be in shock. He didn’t know for sure but he wouldn’t be surprised. She might be a tough cookie from Chi-town but the mountains had a special kind of crazy that was unlike any other place on earth. He might not be able to make sense of urban crazy…but redneck crazy was unfortunately very familiar.
A short time later Bodie had collected a good amount of mushrooms. He had done it fairly quickly, fearful of leaving Shaun alone for too long. Morels went for a pretty penny in the city but on the mountain they were snack food and he had collected enough for them to have a veritable feast.
After returning to the makeshift camp he saw that Shaun had moved from her place on the log and was now sitting on the ground clutching her knees up to her chest.
“You cold?”
She nodded with hooded eyes.
He crouched before her again. “Shaun? Are you okay?”
“Tired,” she muttered.
“Okay.” He placed the load of mushrooms on the ground beside her and then quickly began unbuttoning his coveralls.
Her eyes followed his movements curiously. She seemed suddenly more alert. “What are you doing?”
He stepped out of the coveralls, still wearing jeans and a t-shirt.
“Here. Put these on.”
She stood up trembling and he helped her to step into the warm clothing. Immediately the shivering ended. She exhaled a long, satisfied breath.