BAD TRIP SOUTH

by Billie Sue Mosiman

  “Please, please,” she said, “can’t you stop this, can’t you just stop it? Please, stop it.” Tears slipped down her face, making snail tracks of silver over the tanned smooth planes of her cheeks.

  It was as if window shades had snapped up in the depths of Crow’s eyes to let in the light of reason. His fists relaxed and he stepped around the bed. Carrie tried to turn away and to wipe her face. He put his arms around her body, pulling her into his embrace. She turned her head away from him and he reached up and brought her face back to his own. He looked down into wet brown eyes and said, “You’re a good woman, taking up for your man that way. I’ve always been a fool for good women.”

  Carrie tried to break away, but he held her. Then he leaned forward and pressed his lips on hers. When he was done, he let her go so that she stumbled back. Crow turned to Jay on the bed where he was trying to get back his breath from the beating he’d taken. “You see what I did? You need lessons or something? You hit a woman like this, you bastard? Even I wouldn’t hit this woman. And you think you’re better than I am, don’t you? You’re the law, you’re The Man, and I’m this scum you like to step on. But I’d never hit a woman willing to stand up for me. Live with that why don’t you?”

  Crow spit toward the bed then moved to the window to look out for Heddy. A war between hatred and passion fought on in his brain so that he couldn’t look at Jay or he might kill him and he couldn’t look at the woman or he might want to take her. Here, now, no matter what anybody thought.

  #

  IT was like Crow was a wild puppet. Someone invisible pulled his strings and he danced. When he went for Daddy in the motel room that second night, I thought he was going to kill him then. How many times now had I worried my parents would be killed and they’d survived? It was like watching Wily Coyote falling off cliffs, blowing himself up, getting flattened by anvils. He died and he died and he died trying to catch the Roadrunner, but he didn’t really die.

  I was afraid I’d start thinking that way about us. If we kept getting close and yet not dying, maybe it wasn’t real. But it was, the threat was very real and every time Crow attacked Daddy I thought it was for the last time. It made my whole insides go crazy. I got gas and had to go to the bathroom to pass it so no one would hear. I think it’s real nasty and embarrassing to pass gas in company. I’d just want to die if I did it in front of anyone. I got a headache and stomachaches and even my legs started hurting, I don’t know why.

  It’s real hard on you to want to get away from someone and you can’t. Your whole body gets tight so that your fingers twitch and your neck shrinks down into your shoulders and your stomach’s always doing flip-flops or knotting up. I could put my hand flat on my stomach and feel the knot, like a ball of string I’d swallowed in my sleep.

  When we’d stopped at the trailer where Heddy’s mother lived with the dogs and the messy stuff on the floor, I think we all lost our tongues. Mama and Daddy never said a word. Not even when we left and we could see how upset Heddy was. I told the woman my name and she got onto Heddy for keeping me hostage, but it didn’t do any good. I could tell it wouldn’t. I had gotten some of the cold thoughts streaming off Heddy when we were on our way again and I could tell she’d never listened to her mother, about anything. She thought her mother didn’t love her. She thought she was unlovable and ugly and she was so full of hatred that I knew none of us better say anything to her. It took hours for her to snap out of it and find a motel.

  When Heddy came back she brought Popeye’s Fried Chicken, red beans and rice, and coleslaw. No one could eat a thing except Crow. He ate like a big dog, shoving it in, eating with his mouth open, making smacking, chewing noises. I had to look away from him to even get myself to take a bite from a chicken leg. I guess nobody ever taught him any table manners. Maybe he never had a mother or father to teach him. Maybe he was one of those runaway kids who grow up on the streets--like Daddy called him--a gutter punk. Still, didn’t he know how awful it was to watch him eat with his mouth open?

  After we ate, Crow tied us up and then Heddy brought out a big razor machine from a shopping bag. It was a scary looking thing, black, with a row of teeth along the edge. If she had wanted to torture us, that was the instrument to use, it seemed to me.

  Crow grabbed his hair in both hands and said, “No, uh uh.”

  “You keep that hair and you’ll wear it back to prison. Or worse.”

  “What could be worse?”

  “The lab people catch us.”

  Daddy lifted his head from the bed. “Lab?”

  “Ignore him,” Heddy said, frowning at Daddy.

  “I might take off a couple inches,” Crow said, eying the electric razor.

  “You’ll take it all off. I’ll give you a burr cut. Let’s go in the bathroom so you can sit on the toilet seat.”

  Crow grumbled and swore, but he let his hair be cut off until all he had left was a half-inch of fuzzy black like a monk’s cap covering his head. When he looked in the mirror, he yelled and stomped into the room where we were lying on the beds.

  “This is for shit, I look like a skin head, I look like a Jew ready for the showers! I never should have let you talk me into it.”

  I almost laughed seeing him. He looked like a kid who just joined the army. His ears were too big, sticking out from his head like Dumbo, the elephant. His eyebrows were too thick, black as worms covered in dirt. Everything about his face looked too large and cartoonish without the long wavy hair that had made him look almost handsome in a hoody-street-boy sort of way.

  “Take off the earrings too,” Heddy said. “And go through Jay’s suitcase, find one of his shirts to wear. Hang up that vest, we’ll leave it here. It smells anyway.”

  “Why do I have to do everything? What about you?” He reached up to slip out the silver arrows dangling on chains from his pierced earlobes.

  “The cops don’t have photographs of me.”

  “But the guys in St. Louis know you.”

  Heddy rustled in the shopping bag lying on the table and brought out a wig. It was short, dark brown, and curly, like the head of a mop. Her own hair was long and sandy blond; it fell in a part in the middle of her head and looked like it needed a good cut. “I didn’t forget,” she said. She waved the wig at him.

  “Maybe you could have bought me a wig too, goddamn it.”

  Heddy moved up to him and circled her arms around his waist. “Now, now. Who’s your baby?”

  The wig hung from her hands behind his back now. She kissed Crow, opening her mouth so I saw her long pink tongue. They kissed for a long time. I watched. I couldn’t stop watching them. They weren’t like anyone I’d ever known. Being with them was like visiting a weird people zoo and getting a chance to look at the new freaks on exhibit someone had found in some strange country I didn’t even know the name of.

  When she stepped away from him, she put on the wig, struggling to tuck her own hair beneath it. She looked like Shirley Temple from those old black and white movies my Mama watched on TV sometimes. Little Miss Marker. Except for her mouth, that made her ugly.

  Crow laughed at seeing her. They began a pinching contest. First he reached over and pinched her boob and then she pinched the skin on his belly, then he pinched her earlobe. They chased one another around the room, hopping on the beds, stepping over us, pinching and playing chase and laughing out loud to beat the band, just like kids do.

  I have to tell you something now I don’t know you’ll understand. While Crow and Heddy were playing games and acting funny, I started liking them. I don’t mean that I liked them a lot or anything, or wasn’t scared of them anymore. But just for those few minutes I realized they used to be little kids who had never done anything wrong. Those kids were inside them now, prisoners, just like my Daddy’s nice little kid-self was inside him, hidden away. And my Mama’s brave little kid-self was inside her, staying quiet so no one knows it’s there, no one knows how much courage she has.

  Do grown-ups all have their kid-se
lves inside them yet? I didn’t know, but that’s what it looked like. Crow-the- kid and Heddy-the-kid got loose that evening in the motel room and there they were, wearing wigs and thinking up disguises and playing chase like nothing in the world was wrong with them that couldn’t be fixed.

  Then Crow did something that made me stop liking the silly kid games they were playing. He hopped on the bed where Mama was sitting and pinned her on her back. He called to Heddy, “You think it’s time I sample this one?”

  “Hey, go for it. Fair’s fair.”

  Before I knew it I was out of the chair and pulling on his arm, trying to get him off my Mama. Daddy was up too, off the side of the other bed and reaching across the mattress saying, “You don’t touch her, you bastard.”

  Crow pushed Daddy away, causing him to fall back. Heddy said in a deep voice, “You move away.” We turned to see her and she had a small handgun pointed at Daddy. “Fair’s fair, I said. Get over there, on the other bed, now.”

  Crow crawled off Mama and stood between the beds, tying Daddy’s hands behind him and his feet at the ankles. Daddy said, “You better not do it.”

  “Hide and watch, Jaybird.”

  With Daddy all tied up, Heddy got hold of the back of my hair and marched me toward the bathroom. I said, crying now cause I couldn’t help it, “Don’t hurt my Mama.”

  “No one’s hurting nobody. Get the hell in there.” She pushed me inside and shut the door. She called through it, “And don’t come out unless I tell you to.”

  “Leave my mama alone!”

  Crow must have changed his mind. Or came to his senses. Or something. Because I stood a long time with the side of my face pressed against the door, listening and I heard them talking--Crow and my mama. I couldn’t stop crying. Snot was running down over my lip and I blubbered like a stupid little kid. Hadn’t I known Crow would do it? Hadn’t I warned Mama?

  I’m so glad Crow didn’t do what he was thinking of doing. I heard him say, finally, “Oh hell, I was only kidding. I’m not going to do nothing. Shit. It was a joke.”

  You have to know my mama to know how really bad a thing it was Crow had threatened to do. She told me once how she’d never had real boyfriends until she met my father. How she loved him more than life itself in the beginning. I think even though she was going to leave him after our vacation trip, she still loved him and no one else. She sure didn’t love Crow; she was scared of him. Forced to have sex with him, nobody to help her, no way to stop him, while Heddy looked on... Well, it was the worst thing that might have happened. I don’t know how she did it, but Mama talked him out of it.

  “We can stop for a while if you want to.” The psychologist handed me his handkerchief. He smoked and paced and moved his hands around like he didn’t know where to put them.

  No, it’s all right, I want to tell you the rest of what happened that night, I said, mopping my face dry and sitting up straight in the chair. Just thinking about that night made me cry.

  Anyway, I said, they didn’t keep me in the bathroom long. The games all stopped when there was a knock on the door.

  Crow was suddenly at the bathroom door, opening it and putting his finger to his lips to make sure I didn’t say anything. His face was serious again, and it was the color of ashes in a fireplace. He reached into his satchel he carried in his arms and brought out a gun.

  “It’s your friends,” Daddy said. I could see him lying tied up on the bed. I looked at the other bed for Mama. She had curled into a ball, her back to me, the cover pulled up to her neck. She was all right, but she didn’t want to talk to Crow anymore. Or anyone else.

  I wanted to run to her, but Crow pushed me up against the sink and blocked my way. I really hated him. If I had been big as he was, I would have hurt him how ever I could. I never felt that way before, where I wanted to hurt someone. It made me mad Crow caused me to have those feelings. I’d promised myself I’d never be like Daddy, hurting people when I felt like it.

  Daddy said again, when the knock came, “Must be your friends.” I don’t know why he kept pushing them. He couldn’t help it, I guess, especially now they’d threatened and scared Mama. Every chance he got he said stuff to them that made them mad enough to kill him. This time, though, neither of them paid him any mind. They were just too busy figuring out what to do. I could see neither of them had a clue what the knocking on the door meant.

  Crow slipped from the bathroom to the motel door and stood beside it, the gun raised. He nodded his head at Heddy to stay back and say something. She called out, “Who is it?”

  “Manager. I forgot to write down your driver’s license number, ma’am.”

  Heddy took a deep breath and Crow moved back from the door. He returned to the bathroom with me and closed the door part way, the light off so he could watch. Heddy got her wallet from her purse and went to unlock the door. I remember thinking she must have all kinds of false ID. She couldn’t very well show them a license under her real name.

  I didn’t like being in a dark room with Crow. His pants were sagging over his skinny behind because he hadn’t taken time to put on his belt. He was fidgeting, the gun moving in rapid little jerks in his hand. I moved to where I could see out, trying not to watch how Crow was behaving.

  As soon as Heddy had the safety chain off and the door open a crack, she was pushed back, the door forced in toward her. A man with a black gun with a long barrel on it came into the room and shut the door behind him. He had on tight jeans and a brown tee shirt. He looked like a college kid, kind of cute. He had blue eyes with long black lashes and he smiled pretty, even if the smile didn’t go with the scary looking gun in his hand.

  Heddy said, “What the hell you think you’re doing?”

  The man took in Daddy tied on one bed and Mama covered up on the other, then he looked at the bathroom door and must have seen Crow. He reached out to grab Heddy. That’s when there was a shot that made my ears ring and...and...

  I don’t have to tell you how it looked, do I? You’ve seen that stuff before, haven’t you? As a policeman? When people get shot? I never thought I’d ever see real blood, see real people shot and dying.

  What happened next went real fast. I could hardly keep up, trying to see what was going on. My heart was beating like crazy and I realized I was holding my breath.

  The man was down and Heddy kicked away his gun. Crow came out of the bathroom, shaking his head, mumbling curses.

  “Get him untied,” Heddy said, motioning at Daddy. “We’ve got to get outta here.”

  Daddy was pushing them again by saying stuff, but they acted like they didn’t even hear him. We were out of the motel room and on the road within minutes, I don’t even know how we moved that fast. I had to help Mama. She wasn’t...she wasn’t all the way buttoned up... She kept saying, “Hush, baby, hush.” even though I wasn’t saying anything.

  I couldn’t stop remembering the college boy on the floor where we stepped over him. He really looked like someone who should have had books in his hand, not a gun. I thought all criminals were slimy looking. On TV and in the movies the bad guys wear dirty clothes and they look all crooked and beat up. They frown, not smile; they have scars and pimples and pockmarks. I was figuring out that bad people looked like the rest of us most of the time. That wasn’t fair. You’d never be able to tell one from the other. You’d never know when to be afraid.

  The boy we left in the motel room had a hole in his belly and his hands over it. He was moaning, but not very loud. Blood came from between his fingers and dripped around them back onto his dark shirt. I couldn’t see his eyes, his face was turned to the wall and his knees were drawn up.

  I thought Heddy and Crow would help him, but they wanted us out of there. Away from there. Someone would have come to investigate the sound of the gunshot. They didn’t have time to check on the man who had probably been about to shoot them anyway. That’s what they said when I asked them. That’s what they told me.

  “You don’t stop to call an ambulance
for a guy who would have shot you dead,” Crow said. “Let’s get our priorities straight, kid.”

  Heddy drove too fast. The car felt like it was a rocket ship roaring down the road. She passed every car in sight while Crow talked and talked and talked. He was a tape machine, turned on to fast forward. Daddy talked some more too, but no one listened to him, like he was a turned off machine or he was speaking behind a screen or something.

  I thought we were going to have a wreck, Heddy drove so fast.

  And then we did.

  #

  ONE moment she had it under control. The next moment she had hit a deep puddle of water standing on the highway from a shower earlier in the evening, and the car was hydroplaning across the center dividing line toward an oncoming car.

  Heddy screamed, over-compensated on the wheel, hit the brakes, and the Riviera fishtailed despite the new, supposedly safer brake system. The oncoming vehicle, an old Volkswagen bus, nicked the rear panel of the Riviera and both of the cars caromed off the pavement and back onto it again. Two other cars, each coming from opposite directions, slammed on brakes, but entered the maelstrom nonetheless.

  For several moments the occupants of the Riviera rode a rollercoaster ride, taking jolts that threw them against the car doors, the dash, the wheel, and even the roof of the car. Heddy had both feet on the brake, had it stomped clear down to the floor, her teeth clamped shut and grinding, her mind going blank, all time telescoping into a few infinitesimal moments.

  Rending metal screamed like train wheels braking on hot rails and cracking safety glass spidered, then popped. The twin air bags in the front seat exploded with a loud whooshing sound of air, covering and pressing both Heddy and Jay back into their bucket seats, burning their faces, scaring the life out of them.

  Seconds later one of the two air bags in the back seat exploded into Crow’s face, knocking him sideways into the door. His head banged against the window so hard he was knocked out instantly. Emily was thrown to the floorboard and Carrie was flung across the seat lengthwise, her head landing against the inflated air bag.