by Lonni Lees
“When I was younger I spent plenty of time on the road myself. I remember what it was like, hunger and all, so I am always more than happy to help a fellow traveler.”
“Thanks again, man. You must have some awesome karma going.”
For the next few minutes they rode in silence, and then Charlie saw the perfect spot.
“I don’t know about you kid, but I have to piss like a racehorse.”
“Yeah, me too. But I sure wish that beer had managed to hang around a little longer.”
Charlie had been more than generous with the little twerp, more than he had to be for sure, but the kid was begging for more of his generosity. Unappreciative little shit, he thought.
“I’ll give you another one when we get back to the car,” said Charlie.
He pulled the car off the road and into a small copse of trees and scrub. He turned off the key. The two of them got out of the car and walked into the brush and stood tall and still as they prepared to relieve their bladders. Like some sweet old family photo of a father and son outing. As soon as the kid got unzipped Charlie was on him, grabbing him by the throat.
“Wha…” was all the kid could say before the pressure of Charlie’s hands around his neck cut off his words. He lowered the kid to the ground, never easing up on his grip. The kid’s eyes bugged and he pissed his pants—and probably shit himself, too—as Charlie throttled the life out of him. He stared into the kid’s eyes as they filled with little red pinpoints and the expression went milky and blank. It was his easiest kill in a long time, no challenge at all, which took half the fun out of it.
He felt cheated.
But it had perked up his morning and took the monotony out of an otherwise boring drive.
So the kid had served a positive purpose after all. The kid had been right about one thing, Charlie was certainly having awesome good karma today.
He grabbed the kid’s bony ankles and dragged his body under a nearby tree, then covered it with dry brush. Nobody’d ever miss him, Charlie told himself—just one more pothead who’d hit the open road and never looked back. His momma was probably glad to be rid of him. Before anyone stumbled across the body, if by some miracle they ever did, the kid’s skin would be leathered up like some old Egyptian mummy.
“Amen, hallelulia!”
He walked back to the Nova. Sitting behind the steering wheel he reached over to the floor on the passenger side and picked up the kid’s paper bag, fishing through it for his booty. He pulled out a small bag of weed and tossed it out the window. He didn’t like pot. It smelled bad. And it could get a person in trouble. Not much else there. He counted out thirty-seven bucks in wrinkled bills and shoved them into his pocket, then tossed the kid’s three packs of Camels onto the passenger seat. He guessed it was better than nothing.
And it had been fun.
Hadn’t the kid’s mother ever told him hitchhiking could be dangerous? Did she really even give a fuck? He doubted it.
Charlie turned on the engine and sped down the road. The outline of distant mountains came into focus, reminding him of his destination. Muscles relaxed as he reached across the seat for a pack of smokes.
CHAPTER TEN
On Friday Sabrina Stinson awoke with a start. The strange events of the previous night reassembled themselves quickly, taking form in her mind. Through the early morning dimness she watched her mother in deep slumber at her side. Meg had still been at the party when it happened, her side of the bed empty.
Sabrina had been lying in bed, in that twilight state between wakefulness and sleep. As her mind drifted, she became aware of an odd sensation—like an electrical current. She felt the pulsation surround her until it felt more real than the body which lay on the sheets. She sensed herself ascending. Upon opening her eyes she was surprised to be looking down at her own form on the bed.
It was scary.
A shimmering silver cord rose from her body and stretched to where she hovered near the ceiling. A magical window had opened in her mind revealing vibrant colors and perceptions. She looked down at her body and wondered if she was dying—if this was what it felt like to be lifted to heaven. If God was lifting her she felt awe rather than fear. She floated across the ceiling like a phantasm—like she imagined it felt to jump from a plane and drift in the clouds.
A barely audible noise jarred her. She felt a swirling rush, faster than light, and descended in ever contracting circles, reentering her form with a thud. The weight of her body felt unpleasant.
She opened her eyes.
This had been no dream.
North of Los Angeles, in the master-planned community of Hidden Meadows, lack of sleep had left Amy Hamill exhausted and hungry.
She pushed the horrifying memory of another bad dream from her mind. Her mother was in the dream. When she asked her why she wasn’t tall and pretty too, all her mother had said was: “You know you’re adopted.”
And then the bad man had appeared.
Amy grabbed a banana from the kitchen counter, picked up her school books, then slammed the front door behind her, glad that this was Friday. Weekends never felt as lonely as the classroom. No one, especially not her father, knew what courage it took to face the daily taunting and teasing. But today was Friday.
Amy quickened her step as she spotted Freddy at the corner. He was the only kid who had gone out of his way to befriend her. He was an outcast too. Fat Freddy the Freak—Porky the Computer Nerd. They made quite a pair as they quietly joined forces. They walked down the sidewalk, tall Freddy waddling along as the little pixie doubled her pace to keep up with him.
“I don’t want to do it,” Amy said. “Why does Miss Walker make us do oral reports anyway?”
“You can’t afford being knocked down a grade, so do it and get it over with,” he puffed. “Just keep your eyes on me when you’re talking.”
Amy’s legs felt like Jell-O® as she stood at the front of the room. The papers quivered as she held them. She took a deep breath and focused her gaze on Freddy. He sat in the last seat of the third row and signaled encouragement.
Then it happened.
A queer dizziness blind-sided her. The segues were becoming more frequent and as she gasped for air she was aware that they were becoming harder to control. A deep breath did not help. Counting to ten didn’t help either. Her tiny hands flailed through the air in an effort to retain her balance but there was nothing for her to grab hold of. Darkness swirled in pulsating circles before her eyes. She felt her knees give way and tried to focus on Freddy’s face but it melted in a blur. She closed her eyes—tried to regain her bearings. The loud buzzing in her ears fogged her consciousness. Her papers fell as she held her hands to her ears and shut her eyes tightly.
Slowly, she regained awareness of her surroundings.
She was sitting on the floor.
The other children were tittering but her friend Freddy was kneeling at her side. All she wanted to do was to crawl under a desk and hide. Freddy stood and held his hands out to Amy, helping her to stand as she tried to muster her composure. As she looked at him for reassurance he whispered in her ear, “You called Miss Walker a nasty name.”
Tears welled in Amy’s eyes for she remembered nothing beyond the dizziness. Uncontrollable, she thought, attempting to swallow the fear that lumped like a ball of Play-doh in her throat.
“I’m sorry Miss Walker. Please, I can continue now.”
Amy bent over and picked up the papers that were strewn across the floor. Her hands trembled as she tried to block the laughter.
“You’re going straight to the principal’s office,” the teacher said. “Freddy, return to your seat!”
“Please, no,” Amy whimpered. “Please….”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
In a run-down house on a run-down street in Hollywood, the sun beat defiantly through the torn sheet nailed over the bedroom window. Motes of dust wafted through the broken pane, dancing and drifting in slivers of interloping sunlight. Meg Stinson groaned as she pul
led herself from the bed, her puffy eyelids wrapped in agony and last night’s thick charcoal eyeliner. She had a full-blown hangover—even her eyelashes hurt. Her waking thoughts had been of family, thoughts that gnawed like rats on electrical wire as she walked down the hallway and into the kitchen.
She had run away years ago. After all, teenagers had all the answers. She had managed to screw things up big time and that fact was not an easy thing to admit. She had lost all confidence in her own judgment and in herself. Her mother had become a faceless voice the past few months since she had started phoning her. It was time to start healing old wounds. The conversations were awkward and uncomfortable at first. There was so much that had to be left unsaid. So much that was unnecessary for her mother to know. Her lost runaway daughter had finally resurfaced and that was enough. She was alive instead of dead in a ditch somewhere. Meg had finally told her about Sabrina but was yet to tell Sabrina about her grandmother, except for the fact that one existed out there somewhere. The woman’s blood was blue and never clashed with the decor. Meg wondered how she had managed to fall so far from the illustrious family tree. But fall she had, with a thud.
“Jeez kid, you’ve really got your dick in the dirt this morning,” Betty said. “How’s about some coffee to bring you back to the world of the living?”
Meg took the mug from her friend. Betty topped the scales at three-hundred pounds and could laugh at anything. Meg wished she could be more like her. Meg was a Russian drama, while her friend was a comedy of the absurd. She and Sabrina were Meg’s stability. Someone who had started out as a roommate to help defray expenses had quickly become their dearest friend.
“You should learn to sleep instead of partying so hard,’ said Betty. “You look like hell.”
“This time might have been worth it—or it might have destroyed everything,” Meg said with a shrug. She related the previous night’s events to her friend. “And I’ve got an agent. With The William Morris Agency.”
“Wow. But William Morris? Isn’t that the place where agents and actors disappear never to be heard from again?”
“Yeah, it’s too big for sure, but it definitely has a reputation to match it’s size.”
Betty had switched from coffee to hot chocolate. As she prodded Meg for all the details her spoon would capture a marshmallow, push it below the surface of steaming liquid, then watch as it bobbed to the surface. One by one she rescued them and sucked them into her mouth. Meg unconsciously doodled on a scratch pad as they spoke, a talent Betty admired, always taking the small pictures and displaying them on the fridge. “You draw beautifully,” she said. “God would not have given you such a wonderful talent unless he wanted you to use it.”
Ignoring her, Meg said, “I feel guilty I wasn’t up for Sabrina this morning.”
“I wouldn’t worry. She’s one self-sufficient kid. She had her lunch packed and was out the door before I even had the coffee made. You’ve got one hell of a kid there, lady.”
Meg knew Sabrina was special. She was pretty and straight A smart—too smart to make her mother’s mistakes. “But I worry—for a couple of reasons. She’s so hot tempered and she still has invisible playmates like a three-year-old. I know that I’m to blame. I haven’t given her much of a life and there is no sense of family…of continuity…of stability.” There had been so many mistakes best left unspoken. She told Betty how she had always felt like an outcast, how her mother had clung to her heritage as if it were a living, breathing thing that pulled her from her own generation—her living family. Since childhood Meg felt unable to measure up to the old tintypes in the antique velvet album. She resented the yellowed images and wished they could come to life so that her mother could see they weren’t perfect—that she could see that even they had flaws. Her mother was the perfectionist, cold and aristocratic. She nurtured the old photos as if they were rare orchids.
Connecticut had been especially beautiful in the fall of that long-lost year. The trees were draped in autumn calico, their fallen leaves dancing like Cyd Charisse in a magical Brigadoon as they drifted to the sidewalks and blanketed the earth.
But Meg had argued with her mother that morning.
“You’re unfocused and lazy, Mary Margaret,” her mother had said. “And you are capable of far better grades.”
Meg played hooky that day and went to the Foster’s Freeze instead. Junior Barnes sat in the adjacent booth, a stranger passing through. They struck up a conversation. He was so super-cool, a real grown up with his own car. A rebel who told her she could come along with him to the west coast. Who could resist that?
No one noticed as Meg climbed into the blue van that waited in the shadow of the old elm tree. Her mother would have said he was unsavory, the type that hangs out at laundromats and bus stops and trailer parks—hell, that was reason enough to team up right there! That’d show her.
Meg had helped map out their route to California (what a team). They dined on burgers and beer and fries and by ten-thirty-five p.m. she had lost her virginity. That night, at a small motel, physical violence replaced the gothic romance of her adolescent fantasy. He had thrust into her with the sensitivity and speed of a jackhammer. (You’re mine now.) When she screamed his fist silenced her as his weapon drove deep inside her.
You can’t go home.
When they reached the coast he told her it was time to earn her keep. That was the night he brought home the first stranger. She learned to move as a shadow and she learned to survive.
You can’t go home again, right Thomas Wolfe?
Meg wondered if the girl with autumn leaves dancing in her heart could ever come alive again, or if she had really died in that motel room after all.
“Such a sad, sad face.” Betty’s voice snapped her back.
“Life’s a bitch,” said Meg.
“Yeah, like when you’re in your twenties you are gonna save the world but when you hit thirty you realize you can’t change a fucking thing. By the time you’re forty all you want to save is your own ass—or have it tucked.”
They laughed.
“When I see her again—my mother—I don’t want to be judged.”
“Ain’t one of us hasn’t been a disappointment to our parents. My old man had wanted a son, he made no bones about that, so I spent half my life seeking his approval. I fished and hunted and wore Levi’s and flannel shirts. I played ball with him. I watched football and wrestling instead of playing with dolls. I tried to be his perfect son. Shit, I did everything I could this side of growing a dick. Never regret and never apologize. Be you, not what you think other people want you to be.” She told Meg she had figured out that seed of eternal wisdom on the day she had put on her sexiest negligee, downed thirty-five Valium with a fifth of Irish and flopped around in her own puke for two days. Between bouts of vomiting and hallucinations, she waited for Prince Charming to appear and rescue her, but he had forgotten to come. It was one hell of a wake up call, but it had done the trick. She owned her own life from that day forward.
“Time to lighten up,” Betty laughed. “Time to eat!”
Betty shoved a piece of Sara Lee® cheesecake into her mouth.
“Damn that’s good shit. I know food is my drug of choice but I have really got to diet.”
“You’re a perfect work of art just as you are.”
“A perfect Rubens, right? Rubenesque is just a complimentary way of saying grossly obese. That look has been out of fashion for centuries. C’mon Meg, you know I’m killing myself with this stuff,’ she said, putting another spoonful of cheesecake into her mouth and exhaling a soft purr. “It’s glorious suicide by food. Oh, what the hell, I’m killing myself with the L.A. smog and the cigarettes anyway. I guess it’s all just a game of choose your poison. And who in their right mind would turn down a poison that tastes so damn fucking good? But tomorrow…yes, tomorrow….”
“You could have your mouth wired shut,” Meg laughed.
“You know me better than that. If they wired my mouth shut I would
just figure out how to eat my food vaginally.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Charlie Blackhawk’s Nova wound its way up the Rim of the World Highway and pulled up in front of the General Store. He turned off the ignition, got out of the car and slammed the door. He entered the store and walked to the Post Office window located in the rear. The place smelled like a blend of musty attic mixed with pine cleaner and pipe tobacco. The floor was of worn, wooden planks and looked like it had been lying there for the best part of forever. Charlie liked this place.
It felt good to be back at Pine Lake.
He didn’t like much in this world, but he liked the sound of dead pine needles as they snapped beneath his boots like brittle bones and their tart aroma when he took a deep breath of mountain air. There was a peacefulness here than he found nowhere else. A solitude. A place where he could come and go unobserved. Charlie had the advantage of being easy on the eyes. He was no Robert Redford but he was no Dustin Hoffman either. He was a chameleon. He was a charmer when it suited his purposes. Just a slightly above average face that would leave no deep impression one way or the other. It made keeping a low profile easy. He saw himself as looking as harmless as anyone else and he felt he could blend into a crowd unnoticed. He was the fucking Invisible Man and he liked it that way.
“Would you check the General Delivery box for Charles Blackhawk, darlin’?” he said to the young woman behind the counter. Jan Smith looked at Charlie, her darkly painted eyes peering at him through layers of mascara right out of the sixties although she could not have been more than twenty. Her raven hair was spiked above her ears. Tiny, braless breasts pointing through her t-shirt provided the only hint as to her gender. PARTY WITH SPUDS, her shirt proclaimed. She winked at Charlie, then turned to the row of boxes behind her.