So much for doughnuts to go.
“This is fun, Merry. You do it, too.”
“Nah. Might make me too dizzy to enjoy my—what am I having again?”
“A cinnamon twist doughnut.” She kept her eyes on the ceiling and grinned like she was on the back of a wild horse.
A woman in a tight green uniform appeared from the back, her chocolate hair peeking through a hair net. “Maxine” was printed in red letters on her name tag.
“Coffee?” She raised the pot in her hand.
“Em. That’s enough with the turning.” I winked at Maxine. “She doesn’t need any, clearly, but I could sure use a hot one.”
She sloshed some coffee into a mug and pushed the sugar and cream my way. “And what will you have, kid?”
“Three cinnamon twist doughnuts please.”
“Uh-huh. And to drink?”
Emmaline stopped spinning. She wobbled a little on the stool and held onto the edge of the counter. “Nothing.”
Maxine piled fried dough on a white plate. A shower of sugar and cinnamon littered the counter when she plopped it down in front of Emmaline and looked at me. “Anything else?”
“You got a paper?”
“Got several of them right there. End of the counter. Help yourself. Most of the news is old by now, though.” She swung through a door, into the back.
Emmaline crammed almost half a doughnut into her mouth. I lost a little piece of my heart to her puffy cheeks and cinnamon sugar smile. Her love of sweets almost made them palatable.
Amongst the newspapers, I found one from New Orleans, dated the previous morning.
“These are so good, Merry. Why aren’t you eating one?”
I mussed her hair and sat down beside her, paper in hand. “The way you’re tearing into that plate, I might lose a digit if I try.”
Sugar and spice rained all over me as she held out a doughnut with sticky fingers. Unappetizing presentation, but I took it from her and put it on a paper napkin. Licked my fingers and scanned the front page.
Under the fold, I saw it. A headline.
Decapitated Body Found in Mississippi River
New Orleans - The headless body of a woman was dragged out of the Mississippi River above New Orleans early Tuesday. Two teens, Wilbur Pollack, 15, and Bubba Overton, also 15, were fishing in a small boat along a bend in the river near Montz, LA when a large object got caught in their net. It took both of them to pull it out of the water, revealing a grisly catch. They returned to shore and contacted local authorities, who notified New Orleans PD. The teens are not suspects in the case.
Sources in the New Orleans Police Department have identified the woman as one Nadine Houghton Cagney, 36, formerly of the French Quarter. She was reported missing from her home late Tuesday night. Cagney ran a boardinghouse off Bourbon and St Philip and was reported missing by one of her lodgers.
A spokesman for the NOPD reports that the body had not been long in the river. Fingerprints were intact. Comparison with those on file for Nadine Houghton Cagney matched the prints of the victim. Cagney was divorced and had no immediate family in the area.
Authorities have no leads. The death has been ruled a homicide. If you have any information regarding this case, please contact the NOPD Tip Line at 800 735 3114.
My hands shook, knocking coffee all over the newspaper. I pulled a few thin paper napkins from the dispenser and blotted, trying to save the story to read it again, but it was no use.
Emmaline stopped eating and watched me, her mouth a ring of crusty brown. “What’s the matter, Merry?”
I wadded the paper into a ball and walked over to the trash can. After a quick shove, I turned to her. “Come on, Em. We have to go. Now.” I gestured with inky fingers, a blood-like stain.
“Aren’t you going to pay, Merry?” She slid off the stool and wiped her hands on her pants.
Maxine was still somewhere in back. No time.
I pushed Em through the door. The autumn air nipped us as we stepped onto the sidewalk. Around the corner, the bus station glowed with lights. Buses, coming and going. We crossed the street and pushed through the heavy wood doors into the sparse lobby.
Our footsteps echoed on the tiles. I imagined every eye in the place, following us. Questioning us.
Knowing us.
On the other side of the ticket window, a baggy-eyed man didn’t even look up when I tapped on the glass. “Where to?”
“You got a route to Nashville from here?”
He thumbed through dog-eared papers. “Yep. Leaves in ten minutes.”
“I’ll take one adult ticket and one child, please.” I counted out the money and shoved it through the slot.
“Boarding’s over there. In the far corner. Safe travels.” He punched my tickets and handed them through.
I grabbed Em’s hand and steered us toward the line of passengers, still holding my breath.
“Merry, you’re hurting my hand.”
“Sorry. Preoccupied.” I relaxed my grip, and she wiggled her fingers.
“What’s the matter, Merry?”
I stopped a few paces from the small group of people waiting for the Nashville bus. Bedraggled, most of them. A couple were asleep. Nobody paid us any attention. I unwound a little.
“Nothing is the matter, Em. We just need to be alert. Watchful.”
“In case the Judge is looking for me?”
“Yes.” Another sweep of the territory. New people, in and out.
“Do you think he would come this far?”
“Probably not. But he might have people looking for us. A network can help a person be in many places at once, if that makes sense.”
All aboard the Nashville bus. First call. I threw our gear over my shoulder. The baggage holds were open along the side of the bus, but I skipped them. Better to keep our things with me. With a tap on her arm, I pointed Emmaline up the stairs and onto the bus. I guided her into a space two rows from the door.
She took the seat next to the window and turned her face away. I followed her gaze, sizing up the line of folks waiting to board. A woman with a baby. A man and his family. A couple of teenagers. They all filed on and squeezed past us.
The driver stood at the front. “Jackson bus to Nashville. All are aboard.” His dimpled hand moved to shut the door, but a latecomer stopped him with a rap on the window glass. A man. The driver hauled the door open again. Asked if he was headed to Nashville.
I didn’t hear the man’s reply, but as he handed the driver his ticket and climbed aboard, his eyes scanned the passengers. When they lit on mine, he smiled. Lopsided. He walked down the aisle and took the seat behind us. Before we moved, his foot hit the back of my seat. A mindless rhythm.
Or a threat.
I started to get up, but we were already moving. The lights of Main Street scrolled by the windows in time with the stranger’s tapping foot on my seat. When I caught a glimpse of his reflection in the window, he mouthed a few words. I couldn’t make them out, but I thought he said, “Gotcha.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
“We’ve got to get off the bus.” Merry whispered in my ear. “Have your stuff ready and follow me when I get up.”
My whole body clenched. When I tried to turn around in my seat, Merry’s hand stopped me. My heartbeat hurt my chest, and I hugged my pack and scooted closer to Merry. If one of the Judge’s men got on the bus, would he stop us from leaving? Make a scene and try to take me with him? I squeezed my eyes shut to block out bad thoughts and tried to think about doing everything right when Merry gave the signal.
Help me, Daddy. I whispered it as low as I could.
Merry waited until the bus slowed down at an intersection. When he jumped out of his seat, he pushed me into the aisle in front of him and followed me to the door. I veered into a bank of seats because the bus was still movin
g, but I ignored the pain in my shoulder and kept going. It was what Merry would do.
The driver looked at us with tired eyes. “Gonna be a rough night to be out there. Sure you want to get off here?”
Merry nodded. “We’re sure.”
I tried not to look at the people on the bus when the driver slid a bar, and the door squeaked open. My feet slipped on mud, but I picked them up and ran beside Merry. While the bus rattled, I pushed my hair out of my eyes and ran as fast as I could. As long as I could stay with Merry, I would be okay. He wouldn’t let anybody take me away from him.
We hurried toward a thick line of trees. Before I got there, I stopped and looked back. The headlights of the bus made spooky shadows on the road. I shuddered. It’s only your imagination, Silly. There are no ghosts.
When I looked at the bus again, the door was blocked by a man.
He watched me, and I scraped my arm against a tree when I turned to run. With every splat of my feet, I could see the man’s slow, lopsided smile.
The man on the bus worked for the Judge. He was still after me. I just knew it.
I felt Merry’s hand on my shoulder. His voice encouraged me to keep going. He told me I was doing well.
My feet slipped in ruts on the dirt path, and my legs burned inside my wet jeans. My lungs ached from trying to keep up with Merry. He ran next to me, almost like he had night vision power, never missing a step. Every few feet, he told me to hurry. With almost every footfall, puddles sucked at my shoes, and roots tripped me. Once, I fell hard on my knees, and I bit my lips together to keep from crying.
“Hurry up, Em. Keep moving.”
I stood up and brushed mud off my jeans. “I saw the man on the bus, Merry.”
“Yeah. He followed us on. I didn’t want to stay and find out his intentions.”
“He stood in the door when the bus drove off. It was creepy when he waved.”
“All the more reason to stop talking and keep moving. Come on.”
I concentrated all my energy on my Wonder Twin power. When I touched my fists together, I wasn’t tired anymore, because being tired was not grown-up. Adults had to do things, even when they didn’t feel like it, and I was a grown-up now.
Wispy stuff clung to my face and hair, but I didn’t scream. When the top of the grass scratched against my waist, I didn’t even think about the critters that might be there, waiting to bite me. I gritted my teeth and ran around a turn, to find a narrow beach that went down into water. Here and there, picnic tables peeked through the dark.
Merry sat with me on top of one of them. Stars twinkled through the clouds and sparkled on the water. I rested beside him and let my fingers trace the names carved in the wood.
“Is this a lake?” I wasn’t too out of breath.
“Reservoir, I think. We should be able to find a decent campsite around here somewhere.”
“Can we camp here? I’m so tired, Merry.”
“Too public. If that man leaves the bus and loops back, this will be one of the first places he’ll look.”
“How much further do I have to run?” I checked the whine in my voice. “I’ll try to go as far as you say, Merry.”
“Should be around a couple more bends, right over there.”
He waved into the darkness and moved again. He followed a sign to a trail along the shoreline, his head down and his hands in his pockets, like he had something really heavy on his mind.
“What’s wrong, Merry?”
He didn’t answer. Just kept walking into the world beyond the weak starlight. Since the doughnut place, Merry had been acting funny. It wasn’t just the man from the bus. Something else was bothering him. Why did he have to be like every other adult, deciding when I was too little to know things?
I smelled the rain before the first drop fell. It hit me in the right eye. After a few random drops pinged across the top of the picnic table, the sky opened up and buckets of water poured down, even though I could still see a few stars through the clouds. God crying. That’s what Aunt Bertie always said when it rained but the clouds didn’t cover the sky. I sloshed through the mud and shouted into the storm, but it was like the raindrops trapped my voice and forced it into the ground.
Thunder rattled my insides. I ran along the mucky trail to where I last saw Merry. Around a finger of land, I stopped. The lake was swallowed up by thick trees planted in black water. In the weak light, their bottoms looked like fancy skirts that twirled across the dance floor at Cinderella’s ball.
A swamp. No matter how much I thought not-scared things, swamps were the scariest places ever. The water was too black to see the bottom, and stuff hung out of the trees. Sometimes, people went into swamps and were never, ever seen again.
I slipped on wet dirt as I felt my way along the path. Under the big trees, the rain didn’t fall as hard. I wiped more water out of my eyes and looked around me. I stood on a soupy path. Everything smelled rotten. Holding my breath, I slid one foot ahead of the other. Drenched soil sucked at my shoes like a vacuum cleaner.
My eyes hurt from holding back tears, but I blinked fast to keep from crying. I would not be a baby. Not this time. If I was always scared and couldn’t keep up with Merry, how could I expect to find Daddy? I stood taller and swallowed my fear.
The path went up a hill that overlooked the water. With both hands and feet, I grabbed fists full of mud and climbed through a waterfall of ooze. At the top, the tree branches made a ceiling overhead, a tunnel that opened into a clear spot, sort of like an island in the middle of the swamp.
Merry.
He was there, waiting with my tent. It was almost set up.
I was so happy to see him that I ran down the hill, until two yellow eyeballs stopped me. They glowed in the path between Merry and me. When it moved its head and opened its triangle mouth, sharp teeth were everywhere. I stared into the squinty eyes of an alligator. Its tail slashed at the weeds and grasses as it came at me, faster than I thought it could.
I screamed.
Inches from my feet, the gator opened its jaws wide and bellowed. Really, really mad. It was going to eat me. It locked eyes with mine and charged at me, a mouth like scissors the whole way.
I kicked muddy water in its face to keep moving, but it was no use. The alligator was going to eat me. Its stinky breath was already on my skin and its teeth were closer and closer, and it was going to drag me—
Before the gator got its jaws around my foot, strong arms lifted me, and I flew through the air, landing hard in the weeds along the path. When I stopped rolling and got up, Merry circled the alligator with a long stick in one hand.
The gator threw back its head and bellowed before it charged Merry. With a shout, Merry swung the stick and hit the gator in the middle of the head. It stopped for a few seconds, stunned.
He yelled over his shoulder, “Emmaline! Run to the camp! Now!”
But I couldn’t leave Merry to fight the alligator all alone. I would not run away and be a baby. That wasn’t what Daddy or Merry would do.
I slid to my feet and watched, my shirt sticky with mud. The alligator shook its bumpy head and charged Merry again. It hit Merry sideways, knocking him to the ground. When I shouted, the gator started my way, right before Merry rolled over on his knees, the stick still in his hand.
“Eat this, you monster.”
His hand moved quick like lightning and shoved the stick into the gator’s open mouth. It went in so far that most of it disappeared. The gator staggered to one side and made a gurgling noise before sliding into the black water with a loud splash. Merry fell to his back, panting. His jeans were torn at one knee, and his white t-shirt was stained the color of tea.
I ran to him and held his hand while he wheezed. “Thought. You. Were. A goner, Em.”
I reached out my fingers to stroke his greasy blonde hair. “I couldn’t see so good in the rain and
the dark, but I found you. And I didn’t cry. Not even when I saw the gator.”
He gripped my arm with his filthy dirty hand. “I’m proud of you.” He struggled to sit up and wipe his muddy face.
“Really? But I couldn’t keep up with you or anything.”
He sighed and stared into the black water. I took his face in my hands and turned his head to me.
“What’s the matter, Merry?”
“What do you mean?”
“Ever since we left the cafe and went to the bus station, you’ve been different. Quiet. Not answering my questions like you usually do. Did I do something wrong?”
“Aw, Em. You didn’t do anything wrong. We’ve just got to keep moving. That’s all.”
I hit his arm with my fist. Hard. “That is not all. You’re not telling me something.”
“You’re too young to understand, Em.”
“I’m big enough to be out here in the middle of the night, facing down an alligator. Don’t treat me like a little girl when I’m trying so hard to be big.”
He put his hand on the back of my neck and put his face close to mine. “I read something. In the paper back in Jackson. It changes everything.”
TWENTY-NINE
I watched two turtles on a log in a strip of sunlight at the edge of the black water. One big. One little. Maybe mother and child. Would the baby turtle feel as bad as I did when it found out its mother was dead?
My cheeks were still hot, and my heart beat so hard it hurt my chest. After crying most of the night, I didn’t think I had any more tears left. Grown-up tears. That’s what I cried.
Merry put more wood on the fire. The wet wood spewed smoke through the trees all the way to heaven.
Was my mother in heaven?
“Your mother is dead, Em. I read it in the paper back at that cafe in Jackson. That’s why I hightailed it out of there and went for the bus.”
“But you won’t tell me how she died.”
To Live Forever: An Afterlife Journey of Meriwether Lewis Page 13