by Watt Key
“Thanks, Hal.”
“You’re stubborn as hell.”
37
Hal’s daddy was down in the clay pit loading a dump truck when we got back to the trailer. Hal gave me new blue jeans and a plaid shirt instead of the Moe Bandy T-shirt I’d been wearing.
“Hospital’s fancy,” he said. “They’ll throw you out in a second if you ain’t fixed up.”
Neither of us said much as we drove to Tuscaloosa. I was excited about finally seeing Kit again, but I could tell that Hal was worried about getting caught. He dropped me off at the entrance to the hospital and pointed to the parking lot where he would wait.
“Don’t stay there too long. People start askin’ you questions, get the hell out of there.”
I nodded.
“I ain’t stayin’ around if cops start pourin’ in here,” Hal added.
“I don’t want you to.”
“Good, ’cause I ain’t.”
I saw a woman at the front desk talking on the phone. As I got close to her, I recognized her voice and knew she was the person who asked for my name and number earlier. I avoided the woman and followed some people down a hallway until I saw a man with a mop and bucket. “You know where I can find Kit Slip?” I asked him.
He looked at me blankly.
“The boy they found in the forest?”
I watched his eyes grow wide. “Oh, him,” he said. “He’s up on the fourth floor. Room 432.”
“How do I get up there?”
The man pointed to the elevator, and I thanked him. I crowded into the box with some people and stood there for what must have been fifteen minutes as it went up and down and the doors opened and closed. Finally, a woman asked me where I was going, and I told her room 432. When the elevator stopped again, she told me to get out and walk past the nurses’ station to the hall on my left.
The nurses all watched me as I passed them. One of them asked me if I needed help, and I shook my head and kept walking down the hall.
When I stood outside room 432, I heard a television. I only had to knock once before I heard Kit’s voice tell me to come in. He was sitting up in bed, and his eyes grew wide with surprise when he saw me. “Moon! How did you get here?”
It felt so good to see my friend that my scalp tingled and my hands shook. “Hal dropped me off. I’ve been livin’ with him.”
Kit looked confused. I walked over to his bed and stared at a clear tube that went into his arm. “How did you find Hal?” he asked.
“He came lookin’ for me. I was sleepin’ up in a tree by the road waitin’ for you to come back.”
“I couldn’t.”
“What’s that hooked up to you?”
“Medicine.”
“Hurt?”
“No. I’m feeling a lot better today.”
“You about ready for me to bust you out of here?”
Kit didn’t say anything for a few seconds. “I don’t know if I can leave yet.”
“You said you felt better.”
“I do. But I can’t walk. I’m too weak.”
The emptiness seemed to rush back into me.
“I want to leave,” he said. “I hate it here.”
I climbed up on Kit’s bed. I lay next to him and stared at the television.
“What are you going to do, Moon?”
I shrugged. I fought back the knot rising in my throat.
“What are you so quiet about?” he asked me.
I felt that if I tried to say anything, I’d cry.
“I thought you were going to Alaska, Moon.”
“I’m not goin’. Didn’t you hear anything I said when you were sick?”
Kit shook his head. “I don’t remember anything after you covered me up with those blankets.”
“I got lonely out there. I wanted you to come back. I said I wasn’t goin’ anywhere without you.”
Kit didn’t say anything.
“I thought we’d be like brothers. We’d live out there together.” I felt the tears start rolling down my face. “You’re my best friend, Kit. I’ve never had a best friend except for Pap.”
Kit rolled over and stared at the side of my face. “You’re my best friend, too. I don’t want you to be sad.”
“I don’t wanna be out there by myself anymore. It’s not right out there.”
“Where are you going to go?”
I shrugged. “Pinson makes me feel bad. Bein’ out in the forest by myself makes me feel bad. Hal says he’s goin’ to Hellenweiler after a while. I don’t have anywhere.”
“I’ve never had so much fun in my whole life as when I was in the forest.”
I wiped my eyes. “You really liked it out there?”
“I’d give anything to go back.”
“I wish I knew how to make the kind of medicine you need.”
“Me too,” he said. “You can make just about anything else.”
I nodded and wiped my eyes again. “I haven’t cried but about three times in my whole life.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Yeah, well . . .”
“You’d better not stay long,” Kit said.
“How come?”
“Sanders has been coming around here.”
I sat up and looked at Kit. “He do anything to you?”
“No, he’s plenty mad, though. He wanted to know how to get to where we lived. I said I didn’t remember, but he didn’t believe me.”
“He’d prob’ly kill me if he could.”
“He says we shot at him and ate his dogs. I told the TV people that we didn’t do any of it, but they don’t believe me. They keep asking me if you told me to lie about it all.”
“Well, I’m not scared of any of ’em. Sanders is makin’ stuff up to get me in trouble.”
“I know.”
I lay back down and we didn’t say anything for a while.
“Hal’s out there waitin’ for me,” I finally said.
“I wish you didn’t have to go.”
“I’m just goin’ back to Hal’s trailer. I haven’t made any plans yet.”
“They’re going to send me back to Pinson, you know. When I get out of here.”
I didn’t reply. I climbed out of the bed.
“Maybe you could come see me there sometime?” Kit said to my back.
I walked to the door and turned around. “I don’t feel too good about all of this, Kit. I’m feelin’ lonely. If it weren’t for Hal, I think I’d be as crazy as Sanders by now.”
“I want to be out there with you as soon as they let me.”
“Hal says the law leaves you alone once you turn eighteen. That means we’ve got less than eight years.”
“Until I come live with you?”
I smiled. “That’s right. I’ll have a place already fixed up somewhere. A trailer pulled off in the forest with leaves over it. No roads.”
Kit nodded eagerly. I walked back to the bed and leaned over him. “We’ll still kill our own food. We’ll grow a garden and trade our vegetables for your medicine.”
“And eat all of the things that grow wild in the spring.”
“That’s right. And make some more deerskin hats.”
“Eight more years.”
“But I’ll see you before then. I don’t know how, but I will. Maybe I’ll climb up in the trees outside of Pinson and wave at you sometime. We can talk through the fence at night. I’ll call you on a telephone and let you know.”
Kit held out his hand, and I grabbed it. We shook on the deal like I saw some boys do at Pinson. I imagined the two of us, eighteen years old and living in our trailer, just like we’d been there a week already. I felt all right when I walked out of the room, but as soon as I faced down the hall and saw the nurses’ station with all of the nurses staring at me, I felt sick again. I wanted to curl up on the floor until the pain and loneliness went away. I started to go back into Kit’s room, but I only turned and looked at the door. I knew it wouldn’t do any good. Suddenly, eight years seemed
an impossible time to wait in the forest alone. Once again, I thought of Hal telling me that he was going to Hellenweiler eventually and that we weren’t safe at his daddy’s place for long. My future and the hall in front of me were a long, dark tunnel. I couldn’t imagine that things could get worse.
I walked down the hall and up to the nurses’ station. As soon as I turned the corner for the elevator, I felt an arm go around my neck and force me into a headlock. I stared at black shoes and black trousers. I didn’t know that I’d ever picked up Sanders’s scent, but the forearm flesh pressed into my nose brought back memories of him squeezing me against his chest on the side of the road. He squeezed tighter and tighter until I drooled on the floor.
“You think that hurts? I’m just gettin’ started with you, boy.”
38
Sanders put handcuffs on my wrists and ankles and hog-tied me. He thanked the women at the reception desk for calling him and picked me up. He carried me down the stairwell like an upside-down possum and took each step hard so that my wrists and ankles jerked painfully.
“What’s the matter, boy? Looks like you lost the fight you had in you.”
“You can’t do anything to me that matters. I don’t have anywhere to go anymore.”
“We’ll see about that.”
“I’m not scared of you.”
“Well, there’s a lot of things you’re about to learn, and scared’s one of ’em.”
People were already gathered outside and taking pictures of me when Sanders carried me out of the hospital doors. Before we got to his car, he stopped and answered the reporters while I hung there.
“Yes ma’am, this is him.”
“Did he give you any trouble?”
“He’s a wild boy, ma’am. As you can see,” he said, jostling me around, “we’ve got techniques for his kind of trouble.”
“Where will he go now?”
“He’ll be in the Livingston jail waitin’ to see the judge.”
Sanders opened the back door of his police car and tossed me in. I landed facedown and turned my head so that my cheek pressed the seat. I could still hear the crowd following and see the flashes of cameras.
As we pulled away, Sanders got out his Copenhagen and put a pinch in his mouth. “You know where we’re headed, boy?”
“Jail?”
“There too, but we got business to take care of first. Where’s that third boy at?”
I didn’t respond.
“That’s all right. We can get to him later. Right now you’re gonna show me where my pistol is.”
“You lied about me shootin’ at you. You said I ate your dogs. I wouldn’t eat anybody’s dog. I’m not showin’ you anything.”
Sanders spit into his cup. “You ain’t showin’ me anything, huh?” he said calmly.
“That’s right.”
“Well, we’ll just have to see about that.”
I felt myself getting carsick, so I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “You can’t do anything to me I care about.”
“Maybe not . . . But I been thinkin’. That sickly little friend of yours’d prob’ly tell me what I need to know if I spent more time with him.”
I felt my face growing hot. “You better not touch him!”
“You know, he’ll be gettin’ out of that hospital before too long. He’ll need a police escort back to Pinson, seein’ as how he’s been in so much trouble. It’d be a shame if I had to give him that ride myself and work some answers out of him. He don’t look to me like he’d hold out too long.”
“You lied about us!” I yelled.
Sanders chuckled and spit into his cup again. “Boy, you think you can get around me? You think I’m just gonna go away?”
“I don’t care what you do to me—just leave Kit alone.”
“Well then, let’s start again. Where’s that pistol?”
Breathing deeply through my nose seemed to help the car sickness. As I lay on the backseat, I took deep breaths and thought about my situation. I realized that I would have to get Sanders out into the forest and get him lost and trap him. Then I’d have to go break Kit out of the hospital and take him somewhere safe. Maybe to Hal’s, where we could all be together again. My mind raced with ideas of where I would tell Sanders the pistol was. I’d have to know the place to pull off my plan. I finally reasoned that there was nowhere I was more familiar with than the forest I was raised in.
“It’s in my old shelter,” I lied.
Sanders was silent for a moment. “How’d it get all the way back there?”
“I got a ride with somebody.”
“When was the last time you were there?”
“I know someone tore it up, if that’s what you wanna find out.”
“Yeah, I got those surveyors to take me out there to your rabbit hole. I didn’t see no pistol, either. Just a bunch of junk.”
“I had the pistol with me. Then I left it there.”
“For that sickly kid’s sake, you better hope you ain’t lyin’.”
39
Sanders turned off the highway at Mr. Wellington’s road, drove into the forest, and stopped. He got out and went around to the back of the car, and I heard him open and close the trunk. When he opened my door, he held a dog collar on a chain. He grabbed my ear, and I gritted my teeth as he pulled me across the seat.
“Just like a dog, boy,” he mumbled as he fastened the collar around my neck. “That too tight?”
I didn’t answer. He pulled the collar a notch tighter and pinched my skin in the buckle. “I’ll hang you three feet off the ground with this thing if you try somethin’ funny.”
Sanders removed my ankle cuffs and jerked me to my feet. He draped a canteen of water around my neck then shoved me forward. “Get on,” he said.
We followed a trail of new orange flagging tape, tied to trees about every twenty yards. I walked slowly in front, my mind imagining my escape and building traps and weapons. I went through all the tools at the shelter and tried to remember where I had last seen them. I listened to Sanders behind me and gauged his energy by the sound of his footsteps and his breathing. He was tired after we climbed the first hill, but he got his energy back when we started through the flat pine forest. Once we came to Shomo Creek, he rested against a tree for a few minutes. When he jerked my leash, I knew it was time to move on again.
After we had traveled about a mile, Sanders yanked the leash so hard that I coughed against it. A sharp pain shot up into my head, and I gritted my teeth again. “Gimme some water,” he said.
Usually, the forest worked with me. The sounds of the animals and the light patterns and the breezes carrying smell told me what it knew. That day, though, it seemed the forest had forgotten about me. It did nothing to help me. The animal sounds were distant and muffled. The sunlight lay in large, still blocks. There was no breeze. All that lay before me were endless hills of pine and swampy cane bottoms. As I realized this, my head grew dizzy and my thoughts wouldn’t get straight. I couldn’t remember what I had decided to do about Sanders. All I put together from my memory of the old shelter was a ruin of strewn logs and scattered cooking utensils . . . Suddenly, I felt that Sanders was going to kill me and leave me to rot. I thought of Kit. I thought of what Sanders would do to him after I was dead. I thought of dying and remembered what Pap said about not feeling pain when you died. I thought of Kit again. I thought of Hal. I had not said goodbye to either one of them. My only friends.
I rushed against the leash and felt it jerk me backwards until I lay flat in the leaves. Sanders laughed over me. He said something I couldn’t make out, and I was lifted up by the collar. Even though I coughed and gagged, it didn’t hurt. He draped the canteen over me again and I began to walk.
I trudged on through more hills and valleys, stopping for Sanders to rest every time the leash was jerked. Eventually, sunlight fell over me, and I was standing in the clearing with the ruined shelter before me. I had no plan. I couldn’t even think of what to tell Sanders. I turned
around slowly to face him. He was putting Copenhagen into his lip and breathing hard. He packed the tobacco with his tongue while his mouth hung open and gasped for air. Then he flicked the excess from his fingers and looked at me. “Gimme that water again.”
I pulled the canteen off my neck and held it out to him. He snatched it, swirled off the top, and took a long drink. When he let it down, he said, “Ahhh . . . Bet you’d like some of this, wouldn’t you?”
I didn’t answer. My throat was dry, but bigger problems worried me.
He dropped the canteen to the ground and wiped his hand across his forehead. “Well, let’s see it,” he said.
“I don’t have it.”
“You don’t have what?”
I shook my head slowly. “I don’t have it.”
“You don’t have what?” he yelled.
I felt my body sag like it was waiting to fall to the ground with whatever Sanders was about to bring down on me. Suddenly, I heard a voice.
“What’s going on here?”
Mr. Wellington had come up the trail behind us.
Sanders immediately loosened his grip on the chain and spun around to face the lawyer. “You just mind your own business and go back to your fancy lodge.”
“What are you doing to that child?”
“Police business. We’ll be done shortly.”
Mr. Wellington looked at me and then back at Sanders. “What kind of police business requires a dog leash?”
Sanders’s face was turning red. “Mister, I suggest you take your lawyerin’ back down that trail before I write you up for obstructin’ justice.”
Mr. Wellington stared at Sanders. “Obstructing justice, you say?”
“That’s right.”
Mr. Wellington studied the ground and shook his head. He looked up slowly and his face became calm. “Constable, do you have any idea who you’re talking to?”
Sanders’s hands began to twitch with anger. He dropped the leash and took a step towards the lawyer. “You wanna play that game, old man? You wanna play who’s who in Sumter County? That what you want?”
The chain was on the ground a few seconds before my senses came rushing back to me. I shut out the rest of their conversation and focused on the limp chain lying in the leaves. With a quick yank, I had it flying through the air and gathered at my stomach. Clutching it about my chest with my hands still in handcuffs, I sprinted for the edge of the clearing. I heard yelling and footfalls behind me as I sprang into the forest.