The Runaway

by Jo Barney

  I tell her. “A road, from the other end of downtown. I only did it once. You have to go up the busy highway that cuts through the hills. We walked on a bike path,” I remember. “It’s longer but easier than climbing up the hills in the trees. We turned in where a sign says something about ‘the county forest ends here.’ A road goes along a fence, with other paths branching off from it. I don’t know which one we took. We just dropped down until we saw the tent and smelled the fire. We had to hang on to roots and limbs to get down.”

  Ellie nods, stands up.

  “You’re too old, Ellie.”

  She shakes her head. “Not this time.”

  Now I’m really scared, for Leaky and Jimmy, for the other kids, too, but especially for her. “Wait a few days, until I feel better. I can help.” Even as I say the words, I know I can’t. I’m out of help. I need help, in fact, and the knock at the door lets me know that Ellie knows that too. She lifts me up from the pillow and wraps the quilt around me, and the super leads two men and a gurney through the doorway.

  “She’s been attacked,” Ellie says. “You’ll need to get the police involved. But first she needs to stop bleeding, get stitched up.”

  “Are you family?” the attendant asks. He has papers in his hand, pointing them at Ellie.

  “Yes, I’m her grandmother. I’ll sign whatever I need to sign when I meet her at the hospital. She doesn’t have insurance.”

  Fifteen minutes later, I am lying on a bed in the ER, a nurse unwrapping my bandages, removing Ellie’s towel, saying nothing but tightening her lips as she throws it into the basket. I let myself be handled. Something in the tube they’ve stuck into my arm removes me from them, from the lights above me, from the ache in my arm, the shooting pains in my stomach.

  When I wake up, I am in a room that looks out to a wooded hill. A TV is sending ocean scenes toward me; soft music makes me wonder if I’m in some kind of heaven. Then I see her. A woman in a dark blue uniform. She smiles.

  “Welcome back,” she says.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Ellie

  September 2009

  I am relieved when the ambulance rolls away. Sarah is safe. Now it’s time for me to get moving. I need a way to get up the highway to the top. I’m thinking it will be a couple of miles uphill before I find the fire road. An exhausted old woman sitting along the side of a busy road will bring too much attention, the cops, maybe, with calls on cell phones from cars whizzing by. I need to disappear, and I need something to help me make my way up there, like a walker or a scooter or something I can hang on to.

  Then I remember Rick’s cart under the stairs, still full of cans. I go to my closet and take out an old winter overcoat I got at Goodwill years ago, a rain hat, the kind old ladies wear with flaps that cover ears, tie under the chin, a scarf I found on the sidewalk, my oldest sneakers. I put them on, and I am invisible. An old homeless woman leaning against a slow-going cart full of bottles and cans doesn’t exist for most everyone she passes. Maybe even for herself.

  I open the silverware drawer and take out my butcher knife, slip it into my deep pocket. I’ve had this knife forever. An Italian chef in a red apron is carved into on its wooden handle—not a hunting knife, of course, but it has a blade narrowed to a point over the years on the gray stone lying next to it. It is sharp enough to cut through chicken bones.

  How fitting it will be to meet my son with such a weapon, a family heirloom of sorts. I dig through the sink cabinet for the pepper spray, and the can goes into another pocket. I can’t think of anything else to bring along. My guilt is the heaviest weapon I carry.

  No one is in the entry when I push out with Rick’s cart. I cross the park, look at the children playing on the slide where the boy’s body was found, notice that fresh bark dust has been laid there. I’m glad a cool breeze is loosening the last reluctant leaves from the maples, sending yellow good-byes into the air. I’ll be very warm once I walk through downtown, head up the highway. Already my overcoat is building up steam, but I don’t take it off.

  The streets are bright with orange and red shop windows. Halloween is coming in a few weeks, then Thanksgiving. Some women I pass are already wearing scarves and leather boots, men in warm jackets or overcoats that look heavy, like the one on my back. I blend in, using the handicap sidewalk ramps and the benches scattered every few blocks to rest. I notice that when I sit down, the person sitting on the other end of the bench scoots away or gets up, without looking at me. No one will remember me; no one wants to talk to me, wants to know where I’m going, what I’m doing.

  The intersection where the highway meets the main street confuses me. The sidewalks end. Then a bike swirls by and I see that it is moving alongside the traffic in the narrow lane marked for bicycles. And carts, I’m assuming. I begin the push uphill.

  No benches line up on this busy road, and as I put one foot in front of the other, I find myself leaning hard on the cart, my body doing the pushing now, my back bent and beginning to ache. Bushes spread onto the asphalt on the right side of the road, and when I see a break in them, I shove the cart into it and lower myself down to the ground next to it. I can’t quit now, but I’m not sure I can go on, either. I must be nuts.

  A city bus slows down in front of me, stops at the sign I’ve not noticed until now, its driver gesturing at me. Get in, he mouths. I half get up, grab at the cart, know I have a way out of all this, a dollar in my pocket to get me over the hill and beyond. My bending body brings a sharp stab in my thigh. The point of the knife is reminding me I have a job to do, a girl to save, a son’s craziness to end, a sin to erase. No, sorry, I mouth back, waving my hand; the bus rumbles off, leaving me in a cloud of fumes. I straighten up, say now or never to my legs, and begin up the bike path again. I am nuts, I decide, but it’s all right. What else is there?

  An hour later, I see the sign: COUNTY FOREST BOUNDARY. A wire fence cuts into the trees; a path, wide enough for my cart, runs along it. Feet have beaten down the weeds, left ridges I have to watch out for. They unsettle both me and the cart. A drift of plastic bottles and bags lines the fence and the underbrush. Somewhere in my head I make a note to come up here sometime and clean this mess up. Garbage Grandma, my next occupation, if I have a chance to have one. One thing at a time, I tell myself.

  “We saw the smoke and the tent and headed down,” Sarah said. Narrow paths lead down from the one I am on, and I follow one for a couple of yards, but I can see no sign of a camp. I am glad to get back to the cart, which I am beginning to hang on to as if it is a part of me. I’ve taken off the coat, tossed it over the bags of cans and bottles and tucked in its edges to help keep it all inside the basket as I bump over tree roots and animal holes. The holes are small, squirrel size, and I don’t expect a growling, furry head to pop out at me. Then I think of snakes. I keep moving, tugging, pushing, aiming the cart north. I know it’s north because my back, even without the coat, is wet, sweat angling down my backside, making me pause and scratch. Then the sun moves west, and I pull my cap down over my left cheek to keep it from getting burned.

  I am definitely certifiable, worrying about being burned by sinking fall sun when I am on a suicide mission and at the moment am very close to waving a white flag and admitting defeat. I sit down and try to pull myself together.

  Then I see it, through the Oregon grape in front of me: a brown hump of a tent a long way off, a canvas chair in front of it. If I hadn’t been trying to get comfortable, squatting and twisting on a sharp rock, I would have missed it. I stay down, trying to think what to do next. I find myself remembering why I knew that the bush in front of me is Oregon grape.

  Danny, when he was still my Danny, went off to Outdoor School, and his present to me on his return after four days in the woods was a prickly branch of something he called Oregon grape. It was special, he said. You could make jam from its berries. We put it in a glass of water and hoped it would grow roots. It didn’t. Maybe one of the last things we tried to do together.

&nb
sp; Not helpful, I tell myself. This one looks dead, too. I look beyond the bush in front of me. This is as far as Rick’s cart can go.

  The homeless costume was to make me invisible as I moved through downtown and up the busy road. The cart was my walker. The cans in the cart… That’s it. I am a homeless old woman with a bag of cans I will offer in exchange for a place to sleep for a night, for whatever food I can scrounge from the campers. I rub a little more dirt on my face, pull down my hat, and put my coat back on, pry the black plastic bag filled with cans out of the cart and begin down the path. I can say I’ve lost the wool blanket they gave me at the shelter somewhere. The only things of value are a few bottles in the cart and my bag of cans, which at the moment is threatening to break open as branches poke into it, to pull me sideways into what something, maybe another Danny memory, tells me is poison oak.

  I balance the bag on my shoulder, holding it with one hand. The other hand reaches out for roots and rocks. I slip, land on my seat a few times. My knee feels like it’s bleeding, but I can’t stop the going down.

  I have no idea what will happen next, except maybe it includes a little food. I can smell beans warming up.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Sarah

  September 2009

  She’s young, the policewoman. Her hair is pulled back against her neck; her eyes look at me through blue-tinted lashes. When she speaks, her teeth, white and straight, flash at me. “Welcome back,” she says.

  I throw up. I’m getting good at it.

  “It’s the meds,” she says. “They do that sometimes.”

  A nurse, or whatever she is in her flowered smock, changes the sheet, tucks me in again. I realize I don’t hurt and also that I don’t know what day it is, where I am. The policewoman introduces herself. “Angie,” she says, and asks me my name. “I’m not sure,” I answer.

  “Think.”

  “Smiley, I guess.” Then it all starts to flood back into my unwilling mind. “I’ve got to go up into the camp,” I say, because I remember now what Ellie is trying to do, know what will happen to her. “They’ll kill her.”

  Then, not caring how I sound, I let sentences slither in and out of my mouth, words collide into nonsense. I care only that someone is listening, taking notes, calling on her cell phone.

  “She’s talking,” she says.

  “Ellie’s up there, at the camp.” I go off somewhere black for a while. When I wake up, Sergeant Trommald is leaning over me. “What camp?”

  “The family’s camp. Starkey and a bunch of kids.”

  “Where?”

  I can’t answer. How can I tell him when all he knows is the city park, the boundary trail at its edge, the official forest trails? “Off the real trails, the ones with the signs,” I say. “Start there, by the play equipment. That’s the fastest way.”

  “Then what?”

  “Find the little paths, animal trails.” Then I see it. My pack under a tree just before the path leading up, up to the smell of the latrine, the campfire. “First, look for my duffel,” I say. “Keep going up until you see the old water tank. Then look for smoke.” I disappear back into the blackness.

  Angie the cop is still there when I wake up. I ache all over, and I realize something is still pressing between my legs. My arm is bandaged, secured at my waist with some sort of belt. My feet hurt. My mouth is dry. “Water,” I say.

  “Sure.” She holds the cup, waits for me to ask.

  I do. “What?”

  She tells me that my arm is stitched together and it seems okay. No infection yet. The tattoo might even make it with just a little crunch in the stem. She smiles. “Your feet are a mess, but not a bad mess.” She gets serious. “Your vagina also has been repaired with stitches. The doctors think they have saved your uterus, but you lost a lot of blood.” She pauses. “Do you remember what happened to you?”

  I remember being held down. I remember watching the knife cut into my arm. I don’t want to remember anything else. All I can say is, “Was I pregnant?”

  “If you were, not anymore.” Angie has taken my hand, is rubbing a knuckle, looking bluely at me. “But you are going to be okay. And,” she adds, as if she knows it’s my next question, “we’re out looking for your friend.”

  She sits back down in the chair under the TV screen, and I watch the beautiful forest scenes pass by. Somewhere among those scenes I see a knife peeling bark from a fallen branch I’ve brought back for the fire. I see the branch, now smooth, a drumstick, its knobs and pointed end held over me. I see Starkey grinning through gritted teeth, his hand guiding Mouse’s hand, whose fingers curl around the stick as it comes toward me.

  Chapter Forty

  Jeff

  September 2009

  When the old woman turns toward him, Starkey is flummoxed. What in hell is he going to do with a senile old bitch?

  He has just planned the most important ritual of this or any family’s experience, the condemnation of the sin of false friendship. He has his words prepared, the weapons sharp, the punishment so very appropriate for this ultimate disloyalty that his adrenaline surges in anticipation. With this old woman in the camp, the ceremony, flowing with ancient symbolism, will be tainted with her non-symbolic death as an intruder.

  Something about her. He surveys her dirty face, grimy coat, her slump of a body.

  Fuck! The crone in the plaid coat is Danny’s mother. Serendipity or dumb luck? Whatever, the stars have aligned for this evening’s events, a sign that this event is ordained. Not only the traitorous son, but also the mother who is the cause of the shambles Starkey’s life is edging toward. Both will find themselves on the altar this evening. Both will pay for their deceit. And there will be no more Smiley disasters. His family will flourish once again.

  Starkey smiles, points the old woman toward the latrine.

  * * *

  Two nights ago, Smiley’s punishment ritual proceeded as he had planned. She lay on a tarp, the family standing watch a few feet away. Her whimpers warmed him, but her bleeding arm was only the beginning. Starkey had instructed Mouse about his responsibility in this ceremony, but he saw that Mouse’s arm hung limp at his side, the stick held loosely, about to drop, his wide, glazed eyes proof of this son’s underlying cowardice.

  Angry, Starkey reached out, wrapped his fingers around the boy’s fist. In one long movement he guided the drumstick between the girl’s open legs, into the waiting vagina, plunged it against soft tissue as Mouse’s screams joined the girl’s.

  At that moment, Starkey felt his knees crumple and he fell to the ground. A hand pressed his face into the dirt. He kicked, heaved himself onto his back, shoved at the chest above him. Then he heard the thunk of a head striking one of the rocks circling the fire. He pulled himself upright, saw Danny lying next to him, his eyes closed. His attacker remained stunned long enough to allow Starkey to stand up, grab the bat, and beat his friend into unconsciousness.

  Then, his breath rasping in ragged gasps, Starkey made his way his chair, sat down, looked out over the fire. His family huddled under a mound of blackberry bushes. The girl was nowhere.

  He ordered his children to come to him, and they crept out of the shadows and stood in front of the fire. At his command, they carried Seattle into the tent, then rolled up in their bags at the edge of the camp and let the coals cool. If they spoke, it was with eyes blank with fear, just as their father wished.

  Last night, Starkey, lying beside an unconscious Danny, recalled his hard-on as his hand gripped Mouse’s fist, and he worked a little to bring it back, then gave up. He had made a bad mistake. Again. He’d ignored the recent furtive glances, the mumbled words as the kids went off to do their chores, the stiff mouths as they frowned at his rhetorical questions during his lessons. He had to come up with a way to bring his family back from the ashes before he lost them.

  Ritual had been effective when the stakes were lower, when disloyalty could be dealt with by a few strokes of a bat. “Cudgeling,” they had called it. Hear
t-revving drumbeats built to a climax, the sacred knife gleamed in the light of the fire, the bat hit flesh.

  Wide-awake on his cot, Starkey reached into his rucksack, felt for a piece of paper, unreadable in the dark tent. Sometimes when he lost sight of the path he had chosen, began to doubt the reality of his vision, he took out this talisman, touched the heart she had drawn years before. The note was warmed by his mother, the beautiful red-lipped woman who had held him on her lap and offered him the only love he’d ever known. Life as it unfolded had offered only the smothering weight of unlove and abandonment. As always, holding his mother’s words in his hand, he could feel her presence, knew she was watching, believed in him.

  He waited a moment and knew what to do.

  He sat up. The same year he’d read the pirate book that guided his new persona, he had also checked out a book from the school library about the Aztecs. He had been fascinated by the picture of the pyramid, the stone altar at its peak, the drain catching the blood, the beating heart held up to the sun by the bronzed arms of a fierce warrior. Human blood was the gods’ proper nourishment; human sacrifice kept the gods from destroying the universe. He had torn the picture out of the book and tacked it to his wall.

  The possibility of restoring order to his life, to protecting his universe, through a mystical sacrifice pleased him. He’d have to keep Danny alive, of course.

  He folded the paper, felt the easing of an edge that meant it had torn a little more, and slipped it back into the pocket of his pack. And, just as carefully, he covered the still body lying beside him with his jacket.

  * * *

  Now, a day later, with Mrs. Miller in the camp, the plan takes on a whole new dimension.