by Dan Padavona
“This way.”
She turned off the sidewalk and led me behind a row of residences. The first tinge of dawn lay behind the eastern hills as we sprinted through frosty backyards. A growing number of lights shone from the houses as people went about their morning business. I worried we’d run into someone with a dog. My sack of food kept snagging on bushes, slowing us down.
The sun was almost up when we broke out of the backyards and into the meadow. I hadn’t heard sirens in a long while, though I doubted the police would give up the chase. Had we gotten away with a few bags of food, they might have dropped the pursuit. The assault on the trucker upped the ante. Had he seen my face?
We trudged through bramble and cut along the edge of a forest rich with pine scents. A long wooden fence appeared. Until Becca threw her bag over the fence, I didn’t realize we’d reached the Lin house.
Becca shut and locked the door behind us. The last place the police would canvas was Park Place, and since nobody knew we were here, I felt safe. All we needed to do was lie low until Ji Lin and his family returned from Hawaii. By then the police would assume the trailer thieves were a pair of vagabonds long gone from Barton Falls.
I know we all play catch-as-catch-can against life’s harsh realities, none of us winning the war. Becca did what she needed to do to survive, and I won’t blame her for the decisions she made.
She curled up on the sofa bed and slept through early afternoon. I was too wired to sleep. I paced the room and made several trips to the upper floor to ensure nobody was standing in the yard, staring up at the window. Though remote, the possibility of someone knowing we were inside the house troubled me.
The television downstairs was tuned to a local news channel with the sound muted. Fortunately, I didn’t see a news story about a Barton Falls shopping plaza robbery.
When I checked the Internet for stories, something rancid turned over in my stomach. Harry Jenkins, landlord of King’s Road Apartments, lay in critical condition at Barton Falls hospital. He’d been attacked by an unknown assailant while walking to his apartment. The attacker had nearly beaten Jenkins to death with some sort of pummeling object, possibly a baseball bat or crowbar. Jenkins lost three teeth and suffered a skull fracture.
The police requested anyone with information about the crime contact them immediately.
If anyone had the motivation to brutalize Jenkins, it was me. The crooked family cop would raise my name to the top of the suspect list.
I glanced over at Becca, still sleeping, and read the story again.
Riley popped into my mind, and I immediately pushed him out. No, Riley wouldn’t hurt a fly let alone attack his landlord. After my verbal assault, I doubted Riley felt compelled to avenge me.
Besides, given Jenkins’ unscrupulous business practices, surely I wasn’t the only person he’d crossed. Who knew how dirty Jenkins was or what shady dealings he made?
Anyone could have attacked Jenkins.
So why was dread scuttling up my neck on scorpion’s legs?
After ensuring Becca was asleep, I crept up the staircases and checked Ji Lin’s bedroom for a phone. The hallway was quiet. I listened for Becca, knowing she’d kill me for risking a phone call. A moment of apprehension stopped me cold. If the Lin family figured out we’d broken in, would they think to check outgoing calls?
The odds were low, and as Becca told me, I worried too much. But I had more than traced phone calls to concern myself with now that someone had brutally assaulted Harry Jenkins.
Screw it. I needed to talk to Riley.
I sat on the edge of the water bed and dialed.
The telephone rang inside Riley’s tiny, sparsely furnished King’s Road apartment. It rang twice. Three times.
Riley, who’d endured the torture of an abusive parent. Riley, whose body had swelled up like the Michelin Man after the spider colony supped on his lifeblood one night. Riley, my best friend of two decades, who’d only wanted to see me succeed at the computer plant and couldn’t be blamed for the company bolting for Florida. Riley, the friend I attacked for questioning my lunatic decision to follow Becca.
“Pick up the phone, Riley,” I whispered. “I know you’re there.”
I hadn’t a clue what I’d say if he answered.
Did you pummel Jenkins with a crowbar, Riley?
The phone kept ringing. After a long while, I put the receiver down. Something was wrong.
I didn’t sleep much that night, and when I did a nightmare I hadn’t experienced since childhood returned.
We were nine when Riley’s father took us camping in the Adirondacks. We were lost—he’d been drinking from a metal canteen that smelled too strong to be water—stumbling along an unknown trail overrun with vegetation. I remember his hateful, bloodshot eyes, the cord-like arms draping down to hands that curled into fists. I’d seen the purple bruises on Riley’s back and neck before, knew how dangerous his father was when he was drunk. Watching his frustration mount, I prayed he wouldn’t hurt Riley. He’d turn on me next.
Before darkness caught us we took cover inside a narrow canyon. Pines blotted out the sky. Riley’s father walked a tenuous line between rage and alcohol-induced exhaustion. I hoped he’d fall asleep before he hurt Riley or me. Soon he lay back in his sleeping bag and began snoring. Riley rolled over and put his head down, too ashamed to face me.
That night, while Riley and his father slept a few feet away, a ghostly wind shrieked off the ridge tops and slammed through the canyon.
Being lost with Riley’s drunken father was bad, but the wind was worse. The pines trembled in a death rattle; needles rained down and stung skin. It seemed a devil screamed that night, enraged that we trespassed through his domain. The terror that something black and monstrous would crash out of the wilderness and tear me to pieces paralyzed me until the sun finally rose.
Riley’s father was hungover when he finally crawled out of the sleeping bag. He looked confusedly at the litter of branches and leaves strewn across the canyon floor. We’d eaten the last of the food yesterday, so we grabbed our bags and started walking.
Despite not sleeping I was able to keep up with his clumsy pace. Sometime during the afternoon we came across the main trail. I just wanted to get out of the forest before the thing from the canyon found me.
The memory of the wind haunted my dreams for a long time. Now it was back, and it felt larger and more ominous than before.
Becca awoke around sunrise. It put my mind at ease to listen to her move through the house, the scent of toasting bread drifting down from the kitchen. Finally, I fell into a deep sleep.
It didn’t last long.
“Oh, shit.”
My eyes fluttered open to a blurry glaze of sleep deprivation.
“We’re in trouble.”
Becca’s voice shocked me awake. I ripped the covers off and leaped up as she hustled back-and-forth across the finished basement, stuffing our belongings into the sacks. Ji Lin’s Facebook page displayed on the computer monitor.
“His mother died in China,” she said, hurriedly folding the bed into the couch.
I grabbed the blankets and pillows and stuffed them into the closet.
“I take it he’s not on his way to China.”
“Not yet. They caught a red eye into Syracuse and are on their way home.”
I caught a glimpse of Lin’s status: a photo of his bleary-eyed family slumped into uncomfortable-looking plastic chairs outside an American Airlines terminal gate. Below the picture, a train of condolences and well wishes rolled in from friends and family.
“When did they land?”
“About seventy minutes ago. God, this isn’t supposed to happen. Nothing like this has ever happened to me before. They shouldn’t be home yet.”
I did the math in my head—ten minutes to retrieve their belongings at the baggage claim, another five or ten minutes to walk to their car, an hour’s drive from Syracuse to Barton Falls. They’d arrive any minute.
Becca sh
ut down the computer, gave one last look around the basement and said, “Oh, hell. The windows.”
I saw what she meant. The blankets were still stuffed over the casement windows. I dragged a chair from window-to-window and ripped down the blankets. I was still folding them as she rushed up the stairs. I heard her bagging our food items as I shoved the blankets into the top of the closet.
I took the stairs two-at-a-time with my backpack hanging off my shoulder.
“Forget the food. We need to get out of here.”
“I have to be thorough,” she said. “If the family suspects a break-in, it will be easy for the police to connect the food items back to our botched robbery.”
Becca meant my botched robbery, of course.
She’d almost cleared the stolen items out of the refrigerator when a truck door slammed outside. The Lin family was in the driveway.
“Becca!”
“I’m done, I’m done.”
Peeking through a curtain, I could see them stumbling out of a black Range Rover, the boy and girl slumped at the shoulders with hair hanging in their eyes. The woman rounded the back bumper and opened the trunk, waiting impatiently for Ji Lin to help with her bags.
“I can’t tell which door they plan to come through,” I said.
“It doesn’t matter. If we go out the front now, they won’t see us around the corner of the house.”
I didn’t like the idea of exiting through the front door. How many neighbors were headed up the sidewalk to welcome the Lin family home?
The trunk slammed shut. They were close enough for me to hear their muffled bickering.
I all but shoved Becca into the hallway as a shadow passed over the window.
“Are you sure you have everything?”
“Shit!” She stopped and stared wide-eyed. “My bath towel.”
Ji Lin stomped up the back steps.
“Leave it.”
“I can’t. They’ll know it’s not theirs.”
Before I could grab her, Becca stormed up the staircase. She wasn’t going to make it in time.
Keys jangled, a harried and frustrated sound. The father cursed as he fumbled with the lock.
“Becca, now.”
More footsteps climbed up the back stairs. Bags thumped down around the door.
“Becca, they’re coming in.”
The next moment burned permanently into my memory: Becca halfway down the stairs with two sacks thrown over her shoulder. Ji Lin’s face looking right at me through the back door curtain. The locking mechanism clicking open.
The trap door slamming shut.
The door burst open as Becca reached the hallway.
I expected Lin to yell for us to stop. Instead, he argued in Chinese with his wife while their sullen teenagers pushed into the kitchen behind him.
Had it been too dark inside for him to see me?
The hallway was a straight shot from the kitchen before turning left into the front entranceway. A slim chance for escape still existed.
The wall shielded us from view as we reached the door. I heard them shuffling in our direction down the hallway.
Becca pulled open the door as someone’s shadow grew across the floor.
Thank God for well-oiled hinges. The door didn’t make a peep as it slid open.
My feet were icicles, my brain too panicked to think straight as I slipped onto the porch.
As we shut the door, someone yelled. I thought we’d been caught, but it was just Ji Lin and his kids yelling at each other. While the arguing resumed inside, we leaped from the steps onto the walkway and scrambled into the tree grove, dead leaves crunching underfoot.
“Get down,” she said.
The way my breath flew in-and-out of my chest made me feel as though I’d run a marathon. I looked back at the house, where the door stood closed and nobody peered through the window curtains.
The mid-morning sun cut sharp delineations of light and shadow through the trees as I turned my attention to the road.
A sedan moved slowly up Park Place. We crouched beside an elm and waited for the car to pass.
I knew if Lin looked out the front window, he’d see us.
“Walk out from the trees as though nothing happened,” Becca said. “Can you do that?”
I nodded, thinking I could.
“Just like you did when you hid from me at the intersection.”
I stammered, thinking I’d fooled her that day. “You saw me?”
“Of course I did. Like I told you: I’ve done this for three years without getting caught. I’m cautious, and I see everything. Including guys feigning bicycle troubles.”
We strode out from the trees and started up the sidewalk, Becca walking with a casual grace I couldn’t fathom. My junior high basketball coach once taught me to keep my head on a swivel. His voice incongruously came to me as I took in all the dark shadows. Nobody seemed to pay us attention.
Our sacks looked out of place. I worried about our descriptions on the news and people recognizing us through their windows. How could I look nonchalant with my bags bulging as if I was some vagrant Santa Claus?
A quick glance over my shoulder confirmed Ji Lin wasn’t chasing after us. It didn’t stop my heart from hammering over the belief we’d left something behind to tie us to the scene.
We were a third of the way down Park Place when my hands went cold.
“My bike. It’s in the backyard.”
I’d come to believe Becca was impervious to alarm. At that moment I saw dread in her eyes.
At the far end of the street, someone started walking down the sidewalk.
Becca stopped and looked at the Lin house, partially concealed by leafless trees. The sun had come around to the front of the house, setting the bed of leaves ablaze in autumn reds. The fates might as well have shone a spotlight on us. There was no way to pass through the front yard without being seen.
“You wheeled it back near the fence, right?”
I had to think for a moment.
“Yeah, between a clump of trees and the fence.”
The oncoming neighbor was closer now. It was Buster’s master, I realized, but the dog wasn’t with him. He wore his black peacoat with the collar up, his head lowered against the crisp air as he strolled in our direction.
“Leave it,” Becca said and continued walking.
“It’s evidence against us,” I protested.
“I know it is. But right now…” She stopped talking at the approach of Buster’s master.
Becca smiled and said good morning as he passed. He nodded and glanced curiously at our sacks before turning up the walkway of a tall, Gothic mansion with wrought iron gates. I heard Buster barking inside.
“Just play it cool for now,” Becca said, covertly leaning her head toward me and lowering her voice. “We can get your bike after dark.”
I didn’t like the idea of coming back to the Lin house tonight. We were pushing our luck.
The bags would soon grow heavy, and I knew how conspicuous we’d appear walking along a busy roadway. The morning traffic thickened at the intersection of Old State Road. I had to fight myself from running when a police car raced down the thoroughfare.
After a half-mile walk back toward the scene of last night’s crime, we cut across an open lot, between two small houses with empty driveways, to where the meadow began. The ground was damp with melted frost, the meadow grass brown and wilted. A few hundred yards away the forest grew up against a blue sky.
It felt warm until we crossed inside the pines. Once we lost the sun the temperature plummeted as if we’d entered winter’s realm. My two layers of sweatshirts weren’t going to prevent the chill from cutting into my bones.
In a leafy clearing, Becca threw down her sacks and sat cross-legged in the leaves. Here the sun shone warmly again. Two large, flat rocks lay at the center. Crumpled cigarette packs and beer bottles were scattered around the rocks, telling me this was where kids came to party after dark.
“You fe
el confident enough to get your bike tonight, or do you want me to go?”
“I’ll get it,” I said, feeling a shade less than worthless.
“I can move more quietly than you.”
“This is my problem. Let me fix it.”
She raised an eyebrow, not exactly a vote of confidence.
We shared a sports bar in silence. After she finished her half, she leaned back against the rock and folded her arms.
“Wake me up before it gets dark.”
I thought she was kidding. Then her eyes closed. She plunged into sleep, seemingly impossible in the bright sun.
She’ll get caught because of me, I realized, watching her rest as the wind slung dead pine needles around us.
I saw no reason for her to believe in me. Truthfully, I sensed what little trust she had in me was fleeting. I was in over my head, and all I’d done was fail her.
Birds fluttered in-and-out of the trees, singing to autumn’s last stand.
I thought of closing my own eyes but didn’t. I’d watch over Becca, make sure no harm came to her. She’d see I could be useful if she gave me a second chance.
Afternoon slogged along. The rumble of distant motors moving down Old State Road into Barton Falls was a twin accompaniment with the wind. Now and then I heard kids calling to each other from the neighborhood yards, too far away to worry over. Becca’s instincts were right as usual: we were safe here.
Catching the scent of burgers grilling upwind, I felt my stomach growl.
Shadows grew longer, spilling across the clearing in dark, bloody streaks. The eastern sky was almost in twilight.
I was about to shake Becca awake when her eyes popped open. Surprise caught her face. Her hand plunged into her front pocket before she realized who I was. Buttoning her jacket against the plummeting temperature, she snatched up her belongings.
“I thought I told you not to let me sleep too long,” she said.
I was tired and hungry and sick of the criticism.
“No, you told me to wake you up before dark.”
She looked over the treetops. The first stars sparkled in the eastern sky. With a huff, she threw the sacks over her shoulder and started walking toward the trees. I could see she was frustrated with me again. Somehow, I’d even managed to screw up her wakeup call.