BAD TRIP SOUTH

by Billie Sue Mosiman

  Now we had been in a wreck where I got thrown onto the floorboard behind the front seat, bumping my head and scraping my knees on the carpet. And because of Heddy, we’d just walked away. There were a lot of people, but they were all over the wrecked cars and didn’t even notice when we left.

  Heddy took us up through the woods and came out on the road a long way in front of where the wreck happened. She made us stay in the woods until she went to the road and waved down a car. When she brought the driver to us, a really scared-looking woman in a flowered red dress who smelled like she’d been eating licorice whips, Heddy made us cross the ditch and get in the car.

  It wasn’t anything like my Daddy’s car. It was little and we were all shoulder to shoulder in the back seat. I was practically sitting on Crow’s lap. And the car made lots of noises and stunk pretty bad with the smoke coming out the rear end. You know how I’ve told you places and people sometimes have smells? Well, the old car they stole from that woman smelled of old things, really old, and poor things, like secondhand clothes they sell at garage sales.

  Heddy cussed and carried on about it. She got mad when Crow asked her why she took a car that bad.

  The woman the car belonged to never came out of the woods. I hope she’s all right. Did anyone find her? Did she get a ride? Well, it was better she stayed in the woods and wasn’t made to go with us because it just got worse and worse with Crow and Heddy. At that time I didn’t think it could get worse, but it did.

  After we were on the road a while, not going very fast, Crow took another square from the tinfoil packet in his purse. He was right about me knowing what it was. I’ve never seen it up close or anything, but even in little towns kids do drugs, you know.

  Not me. My Daddy would kill me if I ever did something like that. About once a week he told me how bad drugs were and if I ever saw kids doing them I was supposed to tell him. I couldn’t do that, of course. They were just kids and if I told, they’d go to jail. Most of them knew my Daddy was a policeman so they didn’t let me see much anyway.

  After Crow put the drug up his nose, he went bonkers. He jiggled next to me like a little monkey. He started talking about crazy stuff, things that didn’t make sense. Something about a guy called “Mod Squad” and about shivs made out of plastic tableware and fires in the bunks and closets where guys did the sex thing--although he used another word for it, one I’m not allowed to say.

  He’d start talking about one thing and suddenly be talking about something else. I didn’t want to hear what he was saying or what he was thinking. I stayed away from him, pushing up close to my Mama. I whispered to her, “Mama, can we ever go home?”

  She hugged me and kissed me. I saw she was crying so I didn’t ask her anything else. She didn’t know anymore than I did, really, even if she was grown up and smart and a teacher. Maybe I even knew more because I could tell what people thought sometimes. It made me feel so alone. As much as my parents wanted to take care of me and protect me, they couldn’t do a thing about the situation we were in.

  Heddy got to the next town and found a motel that was dark and shabby. We never stayed in good places, like Best Westerns and Holiday Inns. We’d look funny going to our rooms the way Heddy and Crow were dressed, like street bums.

  When we pulled up in front of the motel door, she had to shake Crow to wake him up. He’d talked himself straight into sleep. When he woke, he was real hateful and sassy, telling Heddy she had no right pushing him around, why didn’t she just let him sleep in the car?

  She didn’t even offer to let us take a shower. I told her I was dirty and she just stared at me like I was crazy. I didn’t tell her again. I knew that Crow did stuff without using his brain. He didn’t even think about stuff. But Heddy thought it out and if she ever wanted to shoot me, if she got to thinking I was too much trouble, she’d do it in a pretty nasty, scary way. She’d let me see the gun and maybe feel it against my skin before she shot me.

  Once that thought got in my head, I couldn’t get it out. I couldn’t go to sleep the rest of that night because of it. My stomach hurt, thinking about it. And I was hungry; I hadn’t eaten much chicken.

  But the worst thing was thinking about Heddy and what she’d do if she ever decided it was time to get rid of me. I must have shivered all night and finally shut my eyes when it was very late and maybe slept a little bit.

  The next thing I knew, Heddy was coming through the motel room door and slamming it behind her.

  “That goddamn stinking torn-up rattletrap piece of shit won’t start!”

  “Hell.” Crow came from the bathroom with a towel around his waist, his gun hanging from his hand. He’d just showered and he had untied Daddy to let him take a bath now. Mama was next and then me. I really needed a shower and I needed some clothes. We’d left our things in the Riviera. I guess we were going to have to put on our dirty clothes again. I’d never done that before, ever.

  Heddy stomped around the bed and threw herself down on it so that she bounced and her feet left the floor.

  “Now what do we do?”

  “Well, we don’t call the Ford service center, that’s for sure,” she said.

  Crow laughed until he saw her face. He cleared his throat. “Shit, we’ll just take another car. No big deal.”

  “Great. Which one?”

  “Huh?”

  “Look out the window, Goof. We’re the only people here. There ain’t no cars out there.”

  Crow left the bed and pulled up the dusty Venetian blinds. He turned back. “Now what?”

  “I guess we’re stuck here. Until someone else comes.”

  “That might not be until tonight.”

  “So we wait till tonight.”

  “What are we going to eat?”

  Heddy gave him a withering look. “I think it’s time you go out for the food. I’ve been doing every goddamn thing. I drive the cars, I take the cars, I get the food, I get us out of tight spots like that wreck...”

  “All right, all right, I get the message!” Crow turned his back, dropped the towel so his butt showed while he dragged on jeans and a shirt. He found his satchel and stormed out the door, slamming it behind him.

  I sure hoped he wouldn’t come back with hotdogs. Did I tell you I hate hotdogs now?

  #

  HAWKINS remembered the day he decided to call up Jay’s superior to find out where he was. It was one day after Jay’s scheduled session. He knew the family had left for vacation, but they were to return two days before and Jay had arranged to be in Charlotte for therapy the following day. One thing Frank could always depend on with Jay Anderson was his punctuality. He never missed an appointment. He was never even late to one.

  “Hey, this is Frank Hawkins down in Charlotte. Could you let me speak to Jay?”

  “Jay’s not back yet, sir.” The sheriff’s secretary knew everyone who worked from her office. “You want to talk to the sheriff?”

  Frank, surprised to hear Jay hadn’t returned, said yes. When he hung up from talking to the sheriff he sat worrying a pencil stub between his teeth. Jay was two days late from vacation? Without calling?

  The next day he got a call from the sheriff. The police in Tarrant County had impounded Jay’s new car down in Oklahoma.

  “It’s been in a wreck?”

  “That’s what they tell me. A God-almighty bad wreck too. They think it’s totaled out.”

  “Did Jay mention he was going to Oklahoma?”

  “No, see that’s it. He said they were going over to Missouri and back. That doesn’t include Oklahoma if my geography’s any good.”

  “And he hasn’t called?”

  “Not only hasn’t he called, but the impound place said the only way they knew who the car belonged to was the owner’s papers in the pocket compartment. No one’s showed up to claim the car since it was hauled away by wreckers.”

  Frank’s anxiety deepened. “You checked the hospitals, I guess.”

  “Certainly. There’s been no one admitted un
der the Anderson name.”

  “And...you checked the...morgue?”

  “No dead Andersons either.”

  “How about if I go out there to check it out?” Frank asked.

  The sheriff sounded relieved. “I’d sure ‘ppreciate that, Frank. I can’t leave and I don’t have nobody else here I can do without either, not with Jay off work. But somebody’s got to clear up the mystery of a wrecked vehicle and the missing family. If they’re not dead from the wreck, why hasn’t Jay called in? It’s got me worried to death.”

  “Consider it done.”

  Frank got permission to make the flight and spend the days necessary to find the missing Anderson family. He rented a car and drove directly to the police impound lot.

  “Mind if I snoop around the car?” He asked.

  They gave him freedom to do whatever he wanted. Inside the wrecked car he found suitcases in the trunk with changes of clothes and toiletries for Jay, his wife, and daughter. Inside the car, he searched around and could find nothing that might give him a clue to their whereabouts.

  He did find blood on the rear left passenger door. He called in forensics and the fingerprint team. Just the suggestion of foul play combined with the mystery of the missing family warranted further investigation.

  Frank took a room in the town where the car was being held in impound. The morning after he’d called for an investigation, he received a phone call from a state lab.

  “Frank Hawkins?”

  “That’s me. What did you find?”

  “Something I know you--and the Feds--will be interested in.”

  “Yes?” Get on with it, he thought.

  “The blood type matches the fingerprints lifted in the car for an escaped convict from Leavenworth, one Craig Walker. He busted out less than a week ago. The bulletins on him suggest he’s traveling with a girlfriend with a sheet for felonies an arm long. She lived in St. Louis, Missouri until Craig broke out. They think she might have helped him escape the area, provided the car. They can tell you more, but that car of hers?”

  “Yeah?”

  “It was found abandoned in woods not far from some tourist caverns in Missouri. This Craig character’s been in other wheels since then.”

  Frank sat on the side of the motel bed and wondered what he could do besides alert the FBI an escaped convict had definitely crossed state lines and doubtless had a cop’s family as hostage.

  After making the necessary phone calls, he took the next flight for Kansas. He was heading for Leavenworth.

  #

  CROW found a music channel on the television and turned the volume full blast. He felt so antsy that he couldn’t be still. When Heddy told him to turn it down, he ignored her. Fuck her. Fuck this shit. Hadn’t he been the one to go for food? Hadn’t she been the one to complain about how much she hated Mexican? Hadn’t he done everything she’d told him for hours? Hadn’t she not bothered, once, to say thank you? You’d think she’d show a little gratitude. Didn’t she know how hard it was to walk down the streets out there while wondering if people were behind their shades and curtains, dialing the cops on him?

  Since hitting the outside mere days ago he had had sex a few times, two Miller Lites, one T-bone steak (the first day he and Heddy skipped). It wasn’t enough of the good life for someone who had been locked up in the slammer for four years, taking orders, taking shit. He felt like belting someone for all the years he had lost.

  Those four years hadn’t been the first time they’d stolen away his freedom. He’d been in and out of various institutions since he hit the streets at the age of ten goddamn years old--Emily’s age. Life sucked. Life was about as much fun as having a pipe organ blow the strains of the Star-Spangled Banner up your ass.

  He began jiggling around and then throwing himself into the heavy metal rock coming from the band gyrating on the television. He threw his head front and back, flailed his arms, and bounced on the balls of his feet. If this music didn’t cheer him up, he didn’t know what he’d do, but it would be something bad.

  “What’s wrong with you, Crow, you sick?” Heddy yelled. “You got to play it that loud?”

  He ignored her. Ignore, ignore, I don’t know you, you bitch, he thought fiercely. I don’t know no one. I don’t need no one. I’m five seconds away from leaving this shithole with you in it.

  To his surprise, Heddy came over to where he was moving like a madman and she began to dance too. She threw off the ugly curly wig and began flipping her head back and forth so that her long hair, still damp from a shower, came over her face and back again.

  “Awwwright!” He screamed. “Gyrate, baby!”

  Someone banged on the door. Crow yelled, “Go fuck yourself!”

  Heddy stopped abruptly and turned down the TV. “Who’s there?” She asked.

  “Could y’all turn that noise down a little? You can hear it all the way out to the road.”

  Heddy must have recognized the dopey-looking motel clerk’s voice. “You heard the man. FUCK OFF!”

  She whipped the volume up again and danced until they were both wet with sweat. Crow, incredibly aroused and not at all depressed anymore, got Heddy around the waist and threw her onto the empty second bed.

  “Take out the kid.”

  Crow froze, for a moment thinking Heddy was telling him to kill the kid. Then he realized she meant “take the kid to the bathroom so we can fuck.” He laughed wildly and bounded off the bed. He untied Emily’s ankles and led her to the bathroom. She asked if she could sit on the toilet lid. He shrugged and let her, then closed the door. He whooped like crazy, sailed over the end of the bed where Jay and Carrie lay on their backs, bound and wordless, and landed on top of Heddy. She grunted, rolled him to the side and started working the zipper of his jeans.

  He felt like a hundred million. In ones! Heddy always did that for him.

  The music channel changed programs and a soft-voiced girl sang about love, lost and regained. Perfect music for the scorched souls of a pair of lovers who needed a break, Crow thought, pushing into Heddy. Just perfect, man, this warm spot, this warm spot that cured the world’s woes.

  #

  THE hours spent in the motel stranded were the most normal any of us had seen. We took showers and even though we didn’t have our suitcases any longer so we had no clean clothes, it was great to be under the shower head, washing out the dirt of two days on the road.

  I always liked taking a bath. A shower, really. Mama was always getting onto me for standing under the warm water for over an hour, just dreaming. I couldn’t take an hour bath in the motel, but just the same I felt a whole lot better afterwards.

  Then Crow brought us back some Mexican food. Tacos and burritos and chili con questo. I even ate my guacamole salad because it was green and it tasted so fresh. I don’t think anyone else ate the guacamole.

  After we ate, Mama did the craziest thing. We were all untied so we could eat and close to the time we were all about finished, Mama stood up from the bed with her paper plate and walked toward the door. We all thought she was taking the plate to the trash can standing there, next to the TV, but she kept going, got her hand on the door knob, and just...sort of walked out.

  She didn’t even close the door all the way behind her. She just walked out!

  Heddy was up and out the door after her before Crow even got his face out of his food long enough to notice she was gone.

  I called, “Mama!”

  Daddy stood up and dropped his paper plate and plastic fork, he was so shocked.

  Heddy came back in, leading Mama by the arm, pinching her arm I think because Mama was making a face like it hurt. Then I remembered that was the arm she’d hurt in the wreck.

  I said, “You’re hurting my Mama. Let her go.”

  Heddy let her go, but after she’d slammed the door shut and locked it, putting on the safety chain, she turned around and gave me a look like, You watch it, little girl.

  “Just what the hell did you think you were doing?” Heddy
asked Mama.

  Crow had stopped eating finally and he said, “She must be loco. From the food, huh?”

  Heddy didn’t like joking when she was mad. “You think you can just walk out of here? Is that what you think?”

  Mama had not said a word and she said nothing now. Daddy asked, “Are you all right?”

  She nodded, but she wouldn’t look at him.

  I think maybe Mama got to a point, after all the stuff that’d happened, where she cracked a little--like an egg you’re boiling. You leave it on the burner too long and the water burns out and then the egg cracks and sticks to the pan. She hadn’t put up much protest through this whole thing, but maybe it was hurting her worse than either Daddy or me. Mama’d been through a lot and I didn’t believe she was even thinking when she went through the door.

  I could smell her unhappiness and the thought she had that there was no hope. It smelled like an old sofa pillow that everyone punches and puts beneath their heads and backs. Getting worn out, getting so old it needs to be thrown out.

  Heddy and Crow didn’t bother her anymore because maybe they knew she was doing harmless stuff. She wasn’t threatening them. She was just a little lost, maybe even a little crazy.

  I sat next to her on the bed and held her hand. She said, “I love you, Emily.”

  I said, “I love you too, Mama.”

  Crow said, “Oh give me a break with this love shit.”

  He was tying Daddy’s hands again now that we were through eating.

  The rest of the day was spent trying not to get on one another’s nerves. The room was small, shabby, dark enough we had to keep the lamps on. Crow asked Daddy about the town where we live in North Carolina. At first Daddy didn’t want to talk to him, but Heddy started asking him questions too and soon he was having a talk with them. Not like they were old friends, not like that, but he stopped sounding so angry after a little while.