by E. Joan Sims
I parked Watson off the road under a big weeping willow. From ten feet away, even the outline of the big Jeep was lost in the shadows.
Cassie and I got out and closed the doors as quietly as we could. A whippoorwill stopped in mid-song when he heard the soft clicks, but then resumed his baleful melody. The rocks under our feet crunched as we walked, and I had to quell an urge to tiptoe.
“Why do I feel like whispering?” whispered Cass.
“It’s so still,” I whispered back.
We both nearly jumped out of our skins when a huge fish flung itself at the moon and fell back into the water with a resounding splash.
“Wow, I’d hate to come up against that sucker in the dark. Cassie, maybe we do need a boat after all. You took a biology course. Are there any freshwater sharks?”
“You’re being a goofball, Mom. Quit fooling around and head for the other end of the beach.”
“This is no beach. This is Rock City. Can you imagine lying out here on a towel to sunbathe? You’d have to be an Indian fakir.”
Cassie stopped in her tracks and turned to face me. In the moonlight the classic planes of her face seemed to be carved from alabaster. She was Diana, the huntress— goddess of the moon. I was startled by her beauty.
“Are you finking out on me?” whispered the goddess, angrily. “‘Cause if you are, I’m going on alone. This was your idea, but now I’m the only one who seems to be interested. What’s the deal, Mom?”
“I’m sorry, Cassie. I just got cold feet for a minute. Maybe this isn’t such a good idea after all. What if Hopalong Fatty is up there on the bluffs waiting for us with a shotgun?”
“I thought so!” she sputtered with her hands on her hips. “You always get these harebrained schemes and talk me into going along, then you chicken out and start worrying about my getting hurt. Well, I got news for you: you can’t have it both ways.”
“Maybe you should just wait here for me,” I suggested weakly.
“Are you crazy? I’d go nuts wondering what was going on. Besides, you were right in the first place. You need me. I’ve been there more times than you have.”
“Once more,” I scoffed.
“Yeah? Well, I also know more about Rudolfo, and Fabian, and Joaquin. I bet you don’t even remember what they look like?”
“Well, no,” I admitted.
“And,” she raised her voice a trifle as she came in for the kill, “thanks to four years of college, I speak better Spanish than you do.”
“I…”
“Ready?”
I grinned at my daughter—tall and beautiful in the moonlight.
“Ready.”
“Then let’s get on with it. We don’t have all night.”
We made our way around the edge of the bay to the other side of the rocky beach. I tread carefully, knowing that a twisted ankle would render me hors de combat. I was quite certain that my ruthless child would leave me and go it alone.
From the other side of the little bay we could see the rocky outcropping of the bluffs looming large across the water.
“Wow, they look higher than thirty feet to me. Not that I’m suggesting anything,” I hastened to add.
“We’d better take our shoes. It looks like a rough climb. Tie them around your neck by the laces, Mom. And tuck your flashlight into the front of your bathing suit. It’s waterproof. No use wasting energy trying to hold it above the water.”
Cassie unbuttoned her jeans and hopped on one foot and then the other to pull them off. I had to sit on the sharp rocks to perform the same task.
“At least it’s not cold. And aren’t you glad Gran kept these antique swimsuits?”
I laughed. I was wearing the suit I had worn on my college swim team.
We folded our clothes in a neat little pile at the water’s edge and put a rock on top in case the wind picked up. Cassie boldly led the way into the dark water. I closed my mind against the sound of the splash we had heard earlier and followed in her wake. The water was cool, but not cold, and before long I found myself enjoying our swim.
“Hey,” I sputtered. “This is swell! We should do this more often. Wonder why more people don’t come here for a nocturnal swim?”
Cassie stopped paddling and tread water in front of me while she answered.
“I guess because the lake is off limits at night except for fishermen with special permits and people with houseboats.”
“What? How do you know that? Are you sure?”
“Says so on the sign at the entrance from the main highway.”
“Why didn’t you say something?”
“And miss this? Not on your life!”
She turned and resumed her silent breaststroke. I paddled noisily up to her side.
“Is there a fine or something? I mean what could happen to us?”
“Incarceration and stiff penalty—I forget exactly what,” she muttered. “Forget it, Mom. And hush. Sound travels over water.”
I dropped back and swam as silently as I could in her shadow. It wasn’t long before my toes touched the bottom. We were almost at the other side of the bay. I floated on my back and looked up at the sandstone cliffs rising high above the water’s edge. They were indeed considerably taller than thirty feet—maybe even taller than forty. My father had to have been some kind of daredevil if he found leaping from that height amusing.
Cassie pulled herself up on a rock ledge and reached out to help me up. We sat for a minute to let the water roll off our bodies, then put our tennis shoes on.
“I’ll go first,” she whispered. “You follow me. Put your hands and feet where I put mine.”
I did just as she ordered, wondering just when she had taken charge. We crawled up the cliff face slowly and carefully. The sandstone was dry and friable, and several times my heart lurched when a piece broke off under the weight of a foot or the grasp of a hand. Cassie’s progress sent little showers of sand raining down on my hair and face, but she never made a misstep, and we were soon pulling ourselves up over the top.
We lay on our stomachs and looked back down at the dark water below.
“Wow!” I whispered proudly. “Look at what we did!”
Cassie giggled with delight. “Fun, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah, it really was,” I agreed, somewhat surprised. “But getting back down is going to be a bitch.”
“We can always go down the way Grandad Sterling did,” she chuckled.
“That’ll be the day!”
We saw the tall cedars in the distance and made our way toward their distinctive outline against the night sky. We had each chosen an old black one-piece bathing suit and now our arms and legs stood out white against the darkness.
“You think we should rub some mud on? You know, for camouflage?” I suggested.
“Ugghh!” was Cassie’s only response.
I reached down and grabbed some dirt. I tried to rub it on my legs but only succeeded in getting a pebble in my shoe.
“Ouch! Stop a minute, Cassie,” I called softly. “I have a rock in my shoe.”
“I’ll wait for you under the trees,” she whispered.
“Wait, Cassie…don’t…”
But she had already been swallowed up by the darkness at the edge of the woods.
Chapter Fifteen
In the time it took to blink, Cassie was gone and I was all alone. I hobbled as fast as I could in the direction she took without taking the time to remove what now felt like a boulder in my right shoe. I don’t know who I was the most afraid for, my daring daughter, or myself.
“Cassie,” I whispered fearfully, “where are you?”
I made my way into the shadows beneath the cedars. Leaning against the trunk of one tree, I paused to shake out my shoe as I squinted against the darkness. Cassie was nowhere to be seen.
“Damna…”
Her hand came out of the darkness and muffled the rest of my curse against my lips.
“Shhhh,” she whispered softly in my ear. “He’s over there
taking a pee.”
I looked in the direction of her extended finger and saw the bulky outline of the man we had met earlier in the day. He was casually relieving himself against the side of one of the trailers. He belched loudly as he zipped up and staggered drunkenly back around to the front. We heard the door slam and saw a light go on inside.
“Good!” said Cassie. “He’s tucked in for the night. He must have tied one on pretty early.”
“Either that, or he’s a cheap drunk.”
“Where to, Mom?” asked Cassie, deferring to me for the first time.
“Gee, I thought you’d never ask.”
“Don’t be silly,” she laughed. “I’m just better at the action stuff than you are. Now it’s brain time, and that means it’s your turn.”
“How about starting at Rudolfo’s trailer? It’s the only one we can be sure is empty.”
We circled the trailers from behind, trying to avoid as much as possible the area of the garbage cans and the stench that surrounded them. For a moment I puzzled over something that bothered me. Then I finally realized that not a sound came from any of the trailers, and the only light other than Fatty’s single bulb was from the moon above. Nobody was home! I wanted to tell Cassie, but we had arrived at Rudolfo’s trailer. I decided to wait until we were safely inside before risking any more conversation.
Since Cassie had already tried to open the front door this morning without success, we had agreed that the back window was our best hope of gaining entrance. She reached up to open the screen, but the wire netting was so rusted that it came away in her hands.
“Oops,” she whispered, as she pushed it under the trailer. “That solves that problem. Okay Mom,” she said, bending over, “climb up.”
This was the part of our plan that I dreaded the most. I had seen poodles at the circus do this hundreds of times, but they were much more agile than I.
“Cassie,” I began, “I just don’t think…”
“Hurry, Mom! Someone’s coming!”
I was up on her back and through the window in two seconds flat. I reached out and pulled her inside in less time than that. I hugged the floor, praying that we hadn’t been seen until she poked me in the back and giggled.
“Gotcha’!”
“Cassie! You wicked child! You should be ashamed,” I sputtered.
“Well, sorry, but you seemed to need a little encouragement.”
“Geez, this place stinks.” I said changing the subject so I wouldn’t stay mad. “You think we can cover the window with something so we can turn on the flashlight? Smells like something curled up and died in here. I’d just as soon not step on whatever it is in the dark.”
Cassie bumped around and came up with an indiscriminate article of clothing which she draped carefully over the window. We turned on our flashlights and surveyed our surroundings.
“I thought he left,” whispered Cass.
“Fatty said so, but it sure doesn’t look like he packed first.”
The inside of the trailer was a mess. Dirty clothes were strewn all over the cracked linoleum floor. Three stained twin bed mattresses were laid end to end down the length of the narrow trailer. A couple of filthy pillows were scattered about, but I could see no evidence of sheets or other bedclothes. In one corner, a small wooden table with only three legs leaned precariously against a rickety chair for support. The kitchen counter was full of dirty dishes and more were soaking in the small sink. The greyish water was afloat with chicken bones, pizza crust, and cigarette butts. The stench was almost overpowering.
The fake wood paneling on the walls was bare except for a calendar with pictures of pretty dark-haired girls in provocative poses and a crude hand-lettered sign reminding the inhabitants that no prostitutes were allowed on the premises.
“Wow,” I sighed. “Home sweet home.”
“Awful, isn’t it,” agreed Cassie.
“See anything that might tell us something about what’s going on here?”
“Looks like somebody else might have beat us to it,” she observed looking at the scattered articles on the floor.
“I think you’re right.”
I kicked aside a dirty shirt, and cringed as I saw a huge cockroach scurry across the floor.
“But,” I continued hopefully, “we might find something they overlooked, if we’re lucky.”
“Or smarter,” suggested Cass. “Remember, these guys don’t have a safety deposit box or a checking account. They wire money home when they can, but in the meanwhile, they have to have a safe place to hide it. If Rudolfo left in too much of a hurry to pack his clothes, he might have left his stash—and maybe a forwarding address-behind as well.”
“Gee, Cassie, your Uncle Leonard would be proud. What other assumptions can you make?”
“You think these mattresses have fleas or something? I’d like to sit down while I think.”
“Better not,” I cautioned. “Too much bare skin exposed in that swimsuit.”
Cassie pushed one of the mattresses aside with her foot and carefully examined the chipped and scarred edges of the baseboard.
“It’s too risky for them to carry their goodies while they’re working. They’d have to have a hiding place close to home.”
“That could be anywhere,” I complained, “even outside.”
In spite of my abbreviated costume I was beginning to work up a serious sweat inside the stuffy little aluminum box. I couldn’t imagine how horrible life must have been for the men who spent night after night inside this hot trailer, then worked out in the fields under the broiling sun all day long.
“I wouldn’t hide anything outside,” continued Cassie with her deductions. “I would want it close by so I could hold it and look at it whenever I wanted. And I would like to have it close at hand when I was sleeping so I could get to it quickly if I had to make a getaway during the night.”
“You think that’s what happened? Rudolfo made a run for it, and Fatso just said he was deported to cover up the fact that he got away?”
“I don’t know, Mom. Do you think this linoleum will lift up if I pull hard enough?”
“I have to pee.”
Cassie looked at me incredulously.
“Why didn’t you go before we left the house?”
I smiled, remembering the hundreds of times when she was small and I had asked her the same question.
“Do I dare use the bathroom?”
“It’s through that plastic curtain—if you have the guts,” she told me. “I peeked in there a minute ago. It makes the rest of this place look like the Taj Mahal.”
I pushed the curtain aside with my flashlight and watched in disgust as several huge water bugs ducked back into hiding. Cassie was right. The tiny room was a pigsty. The sink and narrow shower stall were covered with dark mildew stains, and brown tepid water dripped in a steady rhythm from the rusting faucets. The area reeked of urine.
The toilet seat was hanging by one bolt, but I didn’t care. There was no way I would ever dare sit down. Necessity forced me to quell the desire to run for my life as I pulled down my suit and held on to the towel rack while I squatted over the bowl.
I could hear Cassie knocking furniture about in her search and I opened my mouth to caution her against making noise when the towel rack came apart under my weight and fell to the floor with a resounding clatter.
She pushed the curtain to one side and we stared at one another in dismay.
“You think anyone heard that?” I whispered hoarsely.
“Anyone and everyone!” she hissed. “Including the inhabitants of Cedar Hill Cemetery.”
“Don’t be mean, Cassie. It’s not like I meant to do it!”
I pulled up my suit and inadvertently kicked the cheap metal towel rack once again.
“Mom, for Pete’s sake!”
I turned the flashlight on the floor to keep from hitting the rack again and risk further annoying my daughter.
“Well, will you look at this,” I muttered in surp
rise.
Cassie pulled the curtain aside one more time.
“My God, Mom! You found his stash!”
Chapter Sixteen
One hundred dollar bills—rolled tightly into crisp little green and white cylinders poked out the end of the metal towel rack. Before I could stop her, Cassie knelt down on the nasty floor and began to gently extricate the money.
“There must be over a thousand dollars here!” she exclaimed.
“Much more than that. Look, there’s still some caught in the holder on the wall.”
We gathered up the money until our hands were full. Cassie began stuffing bills in the front of her bathing suit. I followed her example.
“What’s this?” she said as she turned the bar around and poked tentatively at the other end. “This isn’t money.”
She stuck her index finger in the metal hole.
“Damn! I can’t reach it.”
“Bring it. We’ll get whatever it is out when we get home. Mother has some long- necked tweezers.”
“Looks like I’ll have to, Mom. My finger’s stuck.”
“WHAT!”
“Shhhh! I hear somebody coming.”
“Yeah, right! You already pulled that one on me once, remember? I can’t believe you did something so stupid…”
The flimsy trailer door shook with the blows of a heavy fist.
“Who’s in there?” shouted a man’s voice. “I know you’re in there! Open the door.”
The thin walls of the trailer quivered as the mighty blows resumed.
“My God, Mom,” cried Cassie. “What’ll we do?”
“Make a run for it,” I whispered urgently. “Maybe he’ll forget there’s another way out.”
I grabbed the towel rack affixed to Cassie’s finger and gave it an experimental tug.
“Ouch!”
“Be careful with that thing. You don’t want to lose your pointer,” I cautioned unnecessarily. “I’ll go first this time so I can help you.”