by Jackie Lynn
She sat for just a few minutes longer down by the riverside, thinking of love and loss of choices and betrayals. She realized that she had only one thing that had to be done before this night was over, that she didn’t have to make any decision right then about her own family.
She took off the bracelet and slipped it in her jacket pocket.
She did not have to decide about returning to Rocky Mount or whether to give her father room to say what he might or might not desire to say. She did not have to leave Shady Grove anytime soon.
Now, she told herself, she would only need to return what wasn’t hers. After that, she would be out of the business of another family’s crisis and she would then figure out how to handle her own.
TWELVE
It was almost midnight when Rose got up from the bed after watching a few shows on television and flipping through some magazines, trying not to nod off. She figured it would be easier to stay awake until it was time to go, rather than set the alarm and get only a couple of hours of sleep.
She already had on her thick blue sweatpants, her black hooded sweatshirt, and her dark cap. When she decided it was the right time to return the bracelet, all she needed to add to her wardrobe were her shoes, which she slipped on at the door. Once she was completely dressed, she quietly left her camper. Adorned in such dark and heavy clothes, she was prepared both for the chill in the night air and for hiding in the darkness.
She crept along the driveway, past the other campers, hearing only the noises of the river at night. A barn owl called from across the shore, searching for his evening meal. Crickets sang from the tall grass lining the pond and from the long, empty fields. The slow waves fell against the banks. It was mostly quiet, and Rose was soon distracted from her task as she stopped to listen to the sounds she had grown to love.
A recent resident of Shady Grove, Rose often went outside for late-night walks. She and Tom would meet on the path between the campground and the small lot where he lived. They would walk through the memorial site where his friend Lawrence Franklin was buried and where the ghosts of fallen slaves had finally settled and rested.
When they met that way, late at night, they spoke very little as they moved along the trails, and during those long dark hikes along the shore and across dusty paths, Rose had fallen in love with the life that emerged on the banks of the Mississippi River in West Memphis.
She shook the gentle thoughts from her head and resumed her walk, moving beyond the campsites and into the area that had been closed to campers. She hurried ahead and continued to think about Tom and the way he had softened her spirit, opened her knotted heart. She missed him and wondered what he would say about this late-night adventure, her theft of the bracelet, and then her return at midnight to the crime scene.
She hoped that he would be home the next day so that she could include him in all of her deliberations and decision making. She knew that had he been with her during the day, he probably would have told her that she shouldn’t always follow Ms. Lou Ellen’s advice. He had mentioned to her before that although he was deeply committed to their mutual friend, he had discovered that the older woman was not always the right one to seek out for counsel.
“Lou Ellen has some unique ideas,” he had said when Rose was thinking about answering a chain letter that Ms. Lou Ellen had copied and sent, a chain letter promising money and good health. “She’s smart, but she’s not always careful,” he told Rose. “And she somehow always manages to escape her ill-planned schemes, but she’s lucky that way. I’m not sure everybody else has that much good fortune.”
Surely, Rose thought, he knows her better than I. And as she moved toward the part of the campground where she had found the dead man, the part that had been recently sealed off and had, by that late hour, developed an eerie air about it, she considered that maybe this hadn’t been the best advice to heed. She decided to complete the task as quickly as she could and return home.
She headed toward the small field, hurrying over to where she had first found the bracelet. She walked across the overgrown path and through the patch of weeds. She planned to go just a few more steps, drop the dead man’s jewelry in the grass, and then swiftly head back to her camper, forgetting about the interesting symbols, the beautiful turquoise, and the motive for murder. She was going to let the sheriff tend to the homicide and she was going to spend her time trying to figure out what to do about her own situation.
Rose was only a few yards from the old Coachmen when she pulled the bracelet from the front pocket of her sweatshirt, held it tightly in her hand, used her shirt to wipe off her prints, and knelt down to dispose herself of it. Just in that instant, she saw a light shine right above her head, right where, only seconds before, she had been standing. She remained in a squatting position and carefully spun around, replacing the bracelet back into her pocket.
The light was coming from a boat docking not more than fifty yards away from where Rose was kneeling. She heard the voices of at least two men as they gathered very near to her. One of them seemed to be giving instructions as the vessel pulled up on the bank; another one was shining the light in her direction, reporting any activity around the camper and also explaining where they were on the river. She wasn’t sure if there was anyone else with them or not.
She froze, uncertain if she had been noticed. Since she thought the light had shone above her head and because it didn’t seem that the men were in a hurry to get to where she was, she hoped that she had not been discovered.
Slowly, she crawled through the grass, under the yellow police tape, and over to the scene of the crime. She heard the men coming toward her. The beam of the flashlight moved all around her as she crouched down. Without knowing what else to do, she felt for the steps of the trailer, gently crept to the bottom one, reached up, and was able to grab the handle to the closed door.
With the light dancing along the side of the trailer, Rose could tell that the window she had broken earlier in the day had been sealed with duct tape. But in turning the handle, she immediately knew that the door had been left unlocked. Hardly believing her good fortune, she remembered Tom’s thoughts about Ms. Lou Ellen, and she silently thanked the heavens for lending her some of her friend’s excellent luck.
She opened the narrow door and quickly moved up the steps and slid in. She felt her pulse race, and small beads of sweat formed on the top of her lip and along her brow line.
She was uncertain if the men had seen her movement. She sat with her back against the closed door and glanced around for anything in the trailer that she might use as a weapon. She also looked for a place to hide.
Though she knew it was hardly a means of real protection, she reached up and turned the lock on the handle. Just as she spun the lock, she heard the voices. The men were just outside the trailer.
“Shh,” one of the voices said.
Rose sat completely still.
“What was that?” the man asked.
There was another pause.
Rose tried to think if she recognized either of the voices, but she didn’t. She felt the weight on the steps just behind her. She closed her eyes, preparing for the worst.
“Probably just mice or something,” replied the other man.
Someone fiddled with the handle. Rose held her breath.
“It’s locked,” the voice at the door said.
“Well, the window is broke. Just cut the tape.” The other voice sounded as if the man had now moved over to an area in front of the camper, near the truck.
Rose heard a rustling. She could feel the trailer shake as the man tried to break open the taped area around the shattered window. He pulled a bit, said a few curse words as he tore at the tape, and then Rose felt him move away. He was walking around to the front to join the other man.
When she knew he was away from the door, Rose remembered that there was a small storage area beneath the bed in the rear of the camper. She crawled toward it, moving through the mounds of strewn supplies and belonging
s that were still on the floor. She assumed the body had been taken out and delivered to the morgue.
She felt under the bed for the small door to the storage area, found it, and opened it. Although she figured that she was probably too large to fit, she drew in a deep breath and forced herself in. Then she quietly pulled the small door shut. She heard the click.
Fortunately, she didn’t think the men now standing somewhere near the truck, away from the camper, had heard it. Neither one of them seemed to be returning to the door.
Rose waited. She couldn’t make out the conversation they were having, although she did hear the two men discussing something. She heard only a muffled string of words. She felt a knock near where she lay and then heard a clamor, like metal on metal, somewhere near the hitch.
Minutes passed and Rose heard and felt nothing. She was thinking that the men had left and that she was going to be able to crawl out of the dead man’s camper and finally get to her own.
She thought that maybe her good fortune, her friend’s good fortune, was even more substantial than Tom believed. She told herself that she would have to remember to inform him about this and see if she get a copy of the chain letter that she had, based upon his advice, torn up and thrown away.
She waited a bit longer. She didn’t want to be too impatient. After all, the men hadn’t just come to the trailer to sightsee, she realized. They were there for something. She knew that their plans, whatever they were, would not be scrapped by a few inches of duct tape.
She wondered if they were there for the bracelet, which she felt in her front pocket, just beneath her ribs. Because of their arrival, she had not had the chance to discard it. She wondered if they were the killers, if they would kill her, too, if they found her.
With that thought, she felt her pulse pick up speed and she tried to think of something else, like how she was sure she would get out of this predicament soon and how the two or three men who had boated up the river to Shady Grove had found what they were searching for in the dead man’s truck and were probably gone for good now. She tried to continue focusing on that possibility.
It remained silent. Rose heard nothing, felt nothing. She waited a few minutes more. She wanted to be completely sure that the coast was clear, that the men had departed.
She was just about to open the compartment, get out, and make a run for it, when suddenly she felt the trailer shift and then lunge forward. Much to her surprise, it stopped and then started again.
The trailer was moving. The men were stealing the rig. And apparently, from all of the bumps she was feeling, they were heading out of Shady Grove by a way other than the main driveway. And then just as she realized what was happening, Rose was thrown against the rear wall of the tiny storage area under the bed. With the weight and sudden impact of her body, the wall collapsed; and Rose found herself in a modified section that had been cleverly concealed.
Her neck and back ached a little from the fall and she felt something long and awkward beneath her. The trailer picked up speed, but because she was now in such a small area, she rolled only a little from side to side.
Rose had not noticed this compartment when she had been in the trailer earlier. She knew this storage bin was in the camper when she had looked under the bed after she had discovered the dead man. And as she lay in the small area as the camper was being pulled along the road, she remembered that with the storage door open and the contents emptied and thrown about the camper, she had seen only the rear wall. This, she realized as she lay there, was something added to the Coachmen, something she had not expected. She had crashed into a secret compartment.
Once the road seemed to smooth out and the jerking movement eased, Rose reached up and felt around her. It was dark where she was and all that she could sense was the short, thin partition on the side from which she had fallen and a long wall that was the exterior of the camper on the other. Above her head was just the top of the storage compartment, which would have been the bottom of the bed.
She felt the camper take a quick turn to the right, and when she reached beneath her, bracing herself, she felt thick pieces of wood, two long ones on both sides studded with smooth round stones, and small, narrow pieces that were attached.
She grabbed the longer, thicker rails beneath her and held on, discovering that the structure was so perfectly positioned that even with the sharp turns and the bumpy ride, Rose was able to keep from being tossed about.
THIRTEEN
Rose lay quietly as she heard things slide and careen outside the storage compartment. All of the dead man’s belongings that she had seen earlier scattered along the floor and across the camper were now being thrown around. She realized that she was safe from being hit by the pots and pans, the shoes and books, because of where she was hiding. She congratulated herself for being so resourceful.
She had closed the door to the storage compartment under the bed when she’d squeezed in; and since the small area where she lay was located far enough away from the door, she knew that even if it came open, she was protected from being hammered by the unsecured objects. Rose was grateful for that.
She was also grateful that she did not have a problem with claustrophobia. The tiny spot where she had landed barely had room for her to lay with her arms by her sides. She felt like she was in the trunk of a car or a narrow box. And with those two images suddenly introduced into her thoughts, she turned her head so that she could face the door to the storage compartment at the other end from where she lay. She wanted to remind herself that she did, in fact, still have a way out even if it took her right into the path of the killers and thieves.
As the road seemed to flatten and straighten out, the truck and trailer moving more smoothly, Rose assumed that they had made their way to the interstate and the items inside the camper had settled. Once this happened, Rose began to understand the gravity of her situation. She realized that she was being taken somewhere and that eventually the camper would be searched and she would be discovered. She lay noiselessly and wondered what on earth she would do now that she was stuck inside a stolen vehicle.
She thought that if the trailer continued to travel at such a smooth pace, she could crawl out of the storage area, make her way to the front door, and jump out. She guessed that since there was only a hitch between the truck and the trailer, the men would not register extra movement from where she was.
She considered the difficulty of such an event and then also the risks, such as the likely damage she would do to herself when she leaped, how she could easily land beneath the wheels of the trailer or underneath another vehicle that could be following behind, and immediately began to have second thoughts.
She thought of the very real possibility that the driver and his cohort would see her when she jumped, quickly pull off the road, and find her once she landed.
Upon estimating the risks and probable consequences of that action, she decided to think of another idea. She figured that since she had not noticed this rear compartment before that maybe if she was able to secure the fake wall back in place, the thieves wouldn’t notice it, either, when they entered the camper, at least not right away, thus allowing her some time to sneak out later when they weren’t around.
She felt around her body, searching with her fingers for the broken wall and discovered that idea wasn’t going to work, either. The thin partition that she had crashed through was now in pieces beneath and beside her. Without glue or a hammer and nails, she would certainly not be able to put it back together. She told herself that she would have to think of something else.
Rose did not know what to do. She tried imagining lots of other escapes, but nothing seemed logical or doable. As she lay in the confined area and tried to calculate her next move, fighting to stay alert, she found that the noise of the highway beneath her, the late hour, and the exhaustion of her adventure had begun to make her sleepy.
Rose was uncomfortable in her hiding place, and at first she decided this was probably a good thing. T
he objects poking in her spine and neck would keep her awake, and she knew she had a much better chance of staying alive if she stayed awake. The longer she rode, however, the more painful her position became.
Finally, when she could not stand it any longer and her body started to ache, Rose reached beneath her, straightening the broken pieces of wood, trying to cover the things that were jabbing into her spine. She again felt the short, knobby sticks, how they were evenly spaced, how they seemed to fit into the long vertical limbs, and she realized what it was she lay upon. It was a ladder, a long, narrow wooden ladder.
Rose couldn’t understand why the owner of the camper had gone to such lengths to square away a simple ladder; but she was pleased that she was able to solve at least one of her riddles. She continued to pull and reposition the broken pieces of wood from the wall to cover the areas between the ladder rungs.
Finally, pulling her arms out from beneath her, she folded them across her chest and stretched out her legs completely. She realized that she had created a flat, level surface for herself.
Once she managed this rearrangement and relaxed, her body in a completely supine position, she discovered that the compartment was quite a cozy hiding place. And though she tried to stay awake, keep her eyes open, and plan her escape, in her newly achieved comfort and in her state of fatigue, Rose nodded off.
She was anxious and panicked about her circumstances, but Rose was also tired. She could not keep herself from falling asleep and she could not stop the dream.
Rose leaned down and away into the far-reaching well of somebody else’s memory. She fell, like Alice in her wonderland, deep and long into the vision of another’s restless soul. She tumbled against walls studded with old diamonds, gemstones, frozen tears of a snatched and disappeared people. She heard only small cries, those of children, old women; the sound was faint and broken and yet never completely covered up or lost.
Rose dreamed of the brightest colors, the blue of the morning sky, the red of the summer sun, of the narrow cup of roses, of blood. She slid and dropped and flew through wisps of a fragrant smoke, sage grass and cedar, through clouds of violent thunder pealing like the distant beating of a drum.