Denis Ever After

by Tony Abbott

  I scanned the moving crowds, feeling so alone, abandoned, even, knowing it was a thousand times different from hiding in the small woods behind our house. “No thanks—”

  “Hold up,” she repeated,speaking into her talkie. “Benjy? Lost boy, aisle seventeen, booth nine.” She pulled the talkie away from her face. “How old you, son? What’s your mom’s name?”

  You understand, I am remembering all this as if I’m wearing smeared-up glasses, while Matt and Dad walk alone through the aisles, looking for clues that can’t possibly be here anymore.

  As the booth lady asked me that—“What’s your mom’s name?”—I caught sight of two men standing a few booths down the aisle of games. They looked alike in the face, both unshaven, same nose, Pirates baseball caps, but one was thin as a stick, and the other had a belly like a sandbag hanging over his belt.

  “Bonnie,” I told the woman. “Bonnie Egan.”

  “Sounds like a movie star name. Pretty, huh?”

  “I guess . . .”

  “Yeah, you guess. Wavy brown hair and all.”

  There was no one playing the booths between me and the two men. I felt so small. This was the skeevy part of the amusement park, where you used up tickets fast on dumb games rigged against you.

  Then, out of the corner of my eye, I watched the skinny guy take a grease-stained container, cup it under his chin, and lick the inside.

  Cheese.

  Sandbag Stomach tossed darts at balloons tacked up against the back of the booth. That game was called Pop-Pop-Pop!

  Also with an exclamation mark.

  “Here you go,” the skinny guy said, holding out the container.

  Sandbag snorted. “I ain’t hungry. Keep your muck.”

  “But here. It got all kind of cheese on it—”

  “Idiot. It ain’t even real cheese. You’ll throw it up on your first ride.”

  Stick laughed, continued licking out the container, then saw me watching him. But his look was off-center, as if one eye didn’t work right.

  “They’ll be here pronto, security,” the lady said. “You stay close now.”

  “Thank you.”

  Both guys were staring at me.

  “Hey, come on over!” the lady called to them. “Win a stuffed toy.”

  They sauntered toward us, laughing to each other like they’d just pulled something off. One-Eye tilted his face so he could keep his good eye on me. I stepped back to the far end of the counter, but I got a whiff of them. The stink of cigarettes and sweat and unclean underwear. They laughed nastily while the lady took their tickets and tucked them under the counter.

  Not liking the way they looked at me, I rounded the corner, then slid around the side of the booth and trotted down the aisle behind, until I came to the end of the row. My heart was beating insanely. Five different songs blared from five different speakers.

  I slowed down to reset myself and look for Matt and Mom and Dad.

  Then I spied Sandbag, planted at the end of the aisle ahead of me, his hands on his hips. I stole a look behind. One-Eye loped slowly toward me, finally tossing his nacho container to the ground. They were boxing me in. Reggae music thumped. I slipped into the sliver of space between two booths and came out at Pop-Pop-Pop! My hands clenched and unclenched. I had to get out of there.

  “Mom!” I yelled as loudly as I could, then realized it wasn’t specific enough. “Matt!” My voice was tiny and went nowhere. “Matt Egan!”

  “S’cuse me hey boy you lost?” One-Eye’s whiny voice came out of his nose. I didn’t want to turn and look at him, but it’s what you do.

  I blurted out, “I don’t know you. You’re thinking of somebody else.”

  “Thass okay. We’ll help you.”

  I shot through to the next aisle and looked for a police officer or a man in a suit, but all I saw were families and barkers and crowds of high schoolers who didn’t care about a lost kid who anyway reminded them of the little brother they were glad to be rid of for a night.

  I kept moving. An older man in a rumpled blue jacket was talking to a teenager whose hands held the controls of the merry-go-round. The kid had spiked hair, and he nodded as if the old guy was his boss. I looked behind me. The two men had joined up again. When I turned back, the man in the jacket was through a gate to another ride, then another. I ran after, but my legs were stupid wooden sticks. I was unable to catch up.

  Then I saw Mom.

  “Mom!” I yelled. “Mommy!”

  She had her arm around Matt. His head was down. Was he still sick from corn dogs? Why weren’t they looking for me? I slowed, shouted for Dad. People turned their heads. Other dads, not mine. My heart nearly burst open. I yelled. “Mom! Mom!” But she and Matt pushed out the entrance gate and into the parking lot. Did they think I was outside? Where was Dad?

  “Mom!” I shouted. She kept hurrying. Matt was pulled deep into her side, half doubled over, like he was ready to throw up. I must have been farther away than I thought because I couldn’t seem to catch them, either. Then with one hand Mom tugged at her bag, pulled out her keys, and beeped open a blue car.

  Blue car?

  Our car was light brown.

  “Matt!” I called. He didn’t turn around. “Matt!”

  Mom hurried around to help Matt into the passenger seat. It wasn’t Matt. The woman I thought was Mom wasn’t Mom. Brown hair, same height, not Mom. She started the car. They pulled out and drove away.

  I felt something break inside me. My chest flooded with ice water. I was outside the park now. I’d done everything right. Found a person in charge. Searched for a police officer. I found my mother and ran to her, but she wasn’t my mother.

  Looking around, I couldn’t see the two creeps anywhere in the parking lot. I knew I should get back inside where everyone was. I waited in line at the entrance to talk to the woman there. She had gray hair, glasses, several rings on her fingers. Then she said, “I haven’t seen your brother. Denis, his name was?”

  “What? No, I’m Denis. That’s me. Was my brother looking for me?”

  “You’re identical—”

  “I know that! Where is he?” I craned my neck to see over the fence.

  “He was crying. His mother was too. Your mother. Look, I’ll make an announcement,” she said. She lifted up the phone. At that moment, just that moment, there was a shout from inside the park. Someone came running. The ticket woman held the phone from her face.

  “The haunted house is down!” an older boy said in a panic. He was the same one from the merry-go-round. Spiked hair. It’s like a dream now. “Some guy had a fight with Benjy. The police are on their way. Plus, there was a fire behind the coaster. They’re closing the park.”

  Announcements had already begun to screech over the address system.

  “My parents must be going crazy,” I said. “I need to get back inside!”

  The woman looked me over with a strange expression on her face, as if she’d suddenly forgotten who I was. She was old, but not that old. “Lady!” I said. I felt invisible, unable to get them to hear me. Maybe I wasn’t talking correctly. Maybe I was so afraid I was just crying.

  The next thing I knew, the woman was shouting at the people in the line behind me, still holding the phone away from her face, almost unaware she was holding it. She told me to wait outside the gate “while I keep an eye on you.” The old coaster wove around so many other rides, she explained, that “even a small fire means the whole park’s gotta shut down because security’s needed all over the place.”

  Because because because.

  Then she gave me a flat smile and put the receiver down on the base and shut the ticket window. It was stupid, but that’s what she did.

  I backed up with the others, some of whom were grumbling, while some were videoing the feathers of smoke rising from the park.

  I moved to get clear of the crowds pouring from the gate, when an arm clamped across my chest from behind. I was pulled back so fast I couldn’t make a sound before a big
hand cupped over my mouth.

  “Sonny,” a voice rasped. “Good thing we finally found you!”

  “I don’t know you!” I tried to shout, but it came out like a squeak.

  Cars were moving, people were rushing out the exits, and no one noticed the two men drag me away in a chokehold. I was terrified. Maybe I peed myself, I didn’t know. I smelled popcorn and cigarettes and maybe myself.

  I tried to shout, to bite the hand over my mouth. Before I could wiggle free, a fist slammed my temple, and the inside of my eyes went black.

  27

  Motoring Away

  I woke up in the dark and the dark was moving.

  My blood had turned to ice. I felt naked, empty, lost, I don’t know what.

  Thick strips of tape had been stretched over my eyes and wound around my head to the tip of my nose and over my mouth. My heart pounded fast and hard.

  I stretched, tried to. My arms were tied behind my back, and my hands were taped together. I smelled the odor of exhaust. I was in the trunk of a car. It was seeping exhaust too much to be new, and the walls were close to me. An older compact car.

  I didn’t want to breathe through my nose, but my mouth was sealed shut, so I had to. I kicked once, only to find that a rope was tied between my ankles and my neck.

  We bounced hard. My shoulder struck the roof of the trunk. Yes, a small car. The trunk roof was jagged, too. My shoulder stung. Tetanus, I thought. That’s the shot you need when you cut yourself on something rusty. The car slowed, sped up, slowed again. I listened for any kind of clue to where they were taking me. I had no sight, not much touch, but I could breathe and hear.

  “Denis.”

  I’m startled out of that frightening darkness. I turn my face from Matt and try to regain the trunk, but the memory fades there, with the car rolling and rolling. My chest aches now, like it did then. Maybe I’d gone unconscious anyway. Anyway, I can’t remember more. It’s gone.

  “Denis,” he insists. “Dad is . . .”

  I come out of myself to see Dad leaning hard on the fence around a ride, his hands clutching the top rail like he wants to rip it off. When he straightens, it’s clear he’s drained to the core.

  “They took me away in a car,” I say in Matt’s head.

  “The Honda?” he whispers.

  “My guess. An older one.” I tell him about the two disgusting men, the accents they have, the others who tried to help, the ones who didn’t, the parking lot, the fire, all of it, up until the moment I blacked out in the trunk. Matt listens, mouth open, searching the light to pin me down.

  Dad approaches Matt slowly, his shoulders bowed with the weight of my body. “Did anything come back to you?” His voice is hoarse and he looks ready to drop.

  I wonder how Matt will tell him about the two men. Will he blurt out my memories of that night, which he couldn’t possibly know? Or will he be smart in a way I can’t begin to imagine?

  As they walk to the entrance, he’s smart about it.

  “Dad, I’m thinking back, and you know how Denis sort of disappeared while I was in the bathroom throwing up and you were on the coaster?”

  Dad nods, slips his hand into his pocket, and jingles his keys with his fingers. “I should never have gone on the stupid coaster. Not again and again and again like an idiot.”

  “Mom and I weren’t there either.”

  “You were sick. What was my excuse? Beer? I was his father.”

  Matt doesn’t look at him. How do you respond to a parent who digs at himself this way? Dads are supposed to be strong, always. Matt presses on.

  “Well, I think if everyone was leaving the park, because of the fire, maybe Denis was caught up in that. So he was probably in the parking lot too. Mom and I didn’t see him. When we asked at the entrance booth, the lady hadn’t seen him either, but later she said she did.”

  We slip through the exit turnstiles and are in the lot as the night crowd thins out.

  “She also said she remembers letting him back into the park,” Dad says.

  “She was wrong. I mean, what if she was confused? There was a fire and everything. And she was old. She didn’t remember right.”

  “She wasn’t that old.”

  Of course, my thoughts go right to GeeGee, the last time I saw her, her forgetfulness. The ticket lady wasn’t as old as her, but she wasn’t young.

  “Anyway, what does all that tell you?” Dad asks.

  “Make sure you don’t say trunk—”

  “What if Denis was already in somebody’s trunk?”

  Dad stops. “Trunk? Matt, we can’t know that. There’s no proof of that.”

  “But maybe the kidnappers took Denis right after the fire started and disappeared while we were still searching for him inside. People were rushing around, weren’t they?”

  Dad frowns and tugs out his keys. “Possibly, yeah. I don’t know. I need to think about it. I’ll reread the file.” He looks around, sighs all the air from his lungs. “I’m beat. You must be tired too. We’ve done a lot of driving today. We should leave now, go home. I’ll call Mom.”

  Matt stops dead. “I also remember a couple of sketchy guys lurking around the park that day. Creepy men. They talked with accents. Southern, sort of. Being here made me remember.”

  “Really? Why the heck didn’t you . . .” Dad pauses, thinks. “No, that’s good, Matt. Memories can sneak up on you, can’t they? Let’s try to put this together while we drive, okay?”

  When he beeps the car open I have a sudden idea.

  “I’m getting in the trunk.”

  “What?”

  Dad turns. “Matt?”

  “Uh, nothing. Just . . . arguing with myself.”

  “I need to be in the trunk. To see what memories come sneaking up, right?”

  Before Matt can say anything, I ooze into the trunk, squirrel myself up, contorting myself as if I were tied, and jam my eyes shut. It works. As the car wheels out of the lot, I fall backward, sinking and sinking into the dark past.

  28

  Them Kidnappers

  One-Eye and Sandbag kept arguing viciously in the front seat, using foul words you wouldn’t believe. They always seemed ready to pound each other. I shifted as far forward as I could without choking myself, trying to hear anything important. Feeling the miles pass, I also began to wonder how long I’d been out cold, when it dawned on me that after wetting myself in the parking lot, I hadn’t gone again and didn’t have to, which meant it wasn’t too long after I was taken. It felt good to know that. Taking stock of myself, I realized the side of my head hurt where I was hit, and both my arms.

  And there was the tooth.

  They’d cracked my lower left canine, either with a head punch or when they dropped me in the trunk. The tooth was loose and chipped. My lip was cracked and swollen. I swallowed blood. I worked the jagged edge with my tongue, thinking the pain would keep me awake. I felt like throwing up the acid in my stomach, but I held back, breathed slowly, and tried to calm myself.

  One thing helped more than anything: that even though every inch of my body, inside and out, ached like nothing ever had, I had taken it, I was taking it, and I was still alive and thinking.

  Suddenly, the car bounced once, hard, then again. It jerked to a stop.

  By the way the weight shifted, I figured it was One-Eye who got out. I then heard knocking next to my ear, followed by a roar of liquid and the smell of gasoline. If they filled up the tank, it might mean they were going to drive a long time. But no. The roar lasted far less than a minute, and at the end of it there was the pump, stop, pump, stop that I’d seen Dad do to get an exact dollar amount of gas.

  Then One-Eye swore. “I went over a bit. Gimme a quarter.”

  They were paying cash, and not a lot of it.

  I kicked to make a sound while we were at the station, but the yank on my neck made me gag. One-Eye banged the trunk lid to stop me. A couple of minutes later, he was back in the car.

  They tore away and began speeding u
p, which scared me. If we got on a highway, I’d totally lose track of where we might be, but it never got very fast, and soon the car was clanking over what sounded like metal plates.

  A bridge! GeeGee said my great-grandfather built bridges, and I think now how strange it would be if I rode over one of his. From his coaster to his bridge.

  Did I think about GeeGee at that moment, as I do now?

  No. I didn’t know her back then.

  The car wasn’t long on the bridge—so the river or creek underneath was narrow—before we hit rough pavement again. There was a short straight with a little S in it, then two rights, left, right, left, and slowing way down, as we bumped on crunchy stones, where the car finally wobbled to a stop. It idled in place, fuming exhaust into the back. The men began yelling again. Sandbag must have lashed out because I felt a shift of weight, and One-Eye went quiet.

  Vehicles backed up around us, drove off, drove in. A truck stop? No, they weren’t heavy engines. Cars. I was playing detective again, except not playing. Sandbag turned off the motor and hoisted his gut out. One-Eye came around to the back and sat on the trunk. Cigarette smoke. A minute or two passed before Sandbag returned, then One-Eye got back in, and the doors squealed shut. The car started up.

  “Which one?” One-Eye asked, speaking from his nose.

  “Seven. Last one on the left,” Sandbag growled like an animal. “I axed him for the end one.”

  “You axed him for it?”

  “Shut up!”

  The car rumbled slowly over more bumps, but only for a half minute before it stopped again. The engine sputtered a little, then shut off. Smoke in the trunk. I held my breath as long as I could, then sniffed shallowly. The car doors swung open.

  The men stood by the trunk. Sandbag slammed his fist on it and laughed. “Soon, honeybunch!” he said to me. This scared my blood cold. I called out in my head, “Daddy! Daddy!” He would find me wherever I was. Somehow he would follow me and rescue me. He would get in the car and drive, right, left, over a bridge, all the time hunched over the wheel and on fire, like he went after his father.