Wandering Wild

by Jessica Taylor

  I park myself on a bench right outside the hotel bar, a freshly printed newspaper folded in my lap. I’ve got an ID in my pocket that would get me inside the bar, let me order whatever I wanted, as much of it as I wanted. Tonight, though, I’m me—in one sense. I’m sixteen.

  Wen snags a seat within earshot, right inside the bar. The waitress rolls by, and he orders a strawberry daiquiri, the most under-twenty-one drink in the history of alcohol. I cringe. She cards him, of course, but our handiwork with the laminator seems to pass the test.

  Hotels are the best places to set this con into action. Travelers usually keep a lot of cash on them, and lonely businessmen are as good as putty in my hands.

  For nearly thirty minutes, I work the newspaper between my fingers, bite my lip, look down the corridors, waiting. Waiting for a figment of my imagination.

  I’m alone with my thoughts, and my thoughts are a dangerous place to be, with Felix sneaking into my nightmares, with Spencer swaggering through my daydreams.

  Spencer—I can shake him, but not his memory.

  I may never travel anywhere the Chevy can’t take me, but what I have is better than sitting still. Spencer has dreams of seeing the world, dreams that’ll never come true.

  A man pauses by the hotel lobby’s elevators. He runs his gaze up the length of my brown legs, pausing at the hem of my skirt, high on my thighs. He takes care to flash the gold Rolex hanging from his arm. A fake Rolex, upon closer inspection. This is a man who wants to be someone he’s not. Sonia read enough high-end magazines to learn the difference, and she taught me everything she knew.

  Hello, three hundred dollars. What a pleasure to make your acquaintance.

  I rise from the cushion, toss my hair back, and give him a small smile. “Excuse me, sir.” I rest my hand in the crook of his elbow. “You wouldn’t be Mr. Garcia, would you?”

  “Sorry, miss. It’s Dwayne Jenkins.”

  I slump back on the bench and give him my I’m-about-to-cry pout. “Sorry to trouble you.”

  “What seems to be the problem, young lady?” He sidles in beside me, his arm wrapping around my shoulders, his hand stroking my arm.

  I fight off shivers and squeeze out a few fake tears. “You see, I bought this lottery ticket last week, using my older sister’s ID. And I won. It’s quite a chunk of change, and I’ve really been hurting for money lately.”

  “Well, that sounds like tremendous news to me. No offense, but I’m having a helluva time seeing the problem.”

  I sink my teeth into my painted lower lip and whisper, “I’m underage and can’t cash the ticket in.”

  He removes his hand from my arm and scoots away. “How underage are you?”

  Figures Dwayne would ask about that first. “Three lousy weeks short of eighteen.”

  “Can’t you give the ticket to your sister and let her claim it for you?”

  “April’s got a bit of a drug problem, you see? I can’t trust her, and it’d be as good as killing her to give her the five thousand dollars—”

  “Five thousand dollars? That is one chunk of change.”

  “It’s a fortune to me. I drove here, all the way from Macon, because this man I met online—Mr. Garcia—said he’d cash the ticket for me. He said he’d do it if I split the winnings with him. He hasn’t showed up, though, and I don’t think he’s going to.” I press my hand over my mouth. “There I go, spilling my guts.”

  “What if someone else cashed it for you?”

  “Who would do a thing like that?”

  “Well, I would. For half, I mean. You have the ticket on you?”

  I show him the newspaper, with the clear winning numbers, and the ticket—the altered date unrecognizable to the average Joe. This con is so easy it’s stupid. The only legwork is changing the date on the ticket so the markie thinks he’s got a ticket from last week instead of this one. Wen’s handiwork is nothing short of amazing.

  “Okay.” He whistles. “I’ll take the ticket, cash it, and give you half the winnings after they come in.”

  “You’d do that?”

  “’Course I would.”

  “There’s another problem, and I’m just sick over saying it, but how do I know I can trust you? I mean, you seem like such a smart and worldly man. You could be a con artist, for all I know.”

  He squints like he’s thinking that one over. “You know anything about good faith money? How about I give you a couple of hundred in exchange for the ticket? I can call you up after I’ve claimed the prize money, and we can split it—maybe after your birthday. We could have ourselves a little celebration.”

  I smile. “That sounds like fun.”

  His wallet is a sea of green, spreading open before me. He counts two lousy hundreds and slips them into my hand. Wen likes to say I can look at money and make it grow legs and walk on over to me. I wish half the stuff Wen says were true.

  “It kills me to ask this, Dwayne, but you suppose we could make it five hundred?”

  My breaths are coming fast, my pulse pounding in my ears. We wind around the turnabout outside the hotel and barrel down the road. It’s almost like being high, getting away with it, the five hundred dollars tucked safely inside my bra. It’s better than high.

  “Aren’t you excited?” I say, slapping at the dashboard.

  Wen presses his lips together, a sad excuse for a smile. “’Course I am. Five hundred’s a record for you. . . .”

  I sigh. “I know, Wen. It’s not even close to enough.”

  “I’ll do what I can, too, Tal. I will.”

  CHAPTER 21

  Wen angles himself across the diner table, watching my pen scratch numbers onto a paper napkin. It’s midmorning, and we’re using twelve of our hard-conned dollars to treat ourselves to breakfast.

  The numbers I’ve scribbled on the napkin aren’t high enough. Wen’s checked my math three times with the same result. We’re still more than eleven thousand dollars short. Any way we total it, we have to up our game if we’re going to bring in the twenty thousand.

  “Have you thought about talking to Boss?” he says.

  “I think Lando’s calling the shots now.”

  Wen downs the last of his milk and wipes the white mustache left behind. “Maybe Lando would let you give him some now and some later. I mean, you’ve proven you can bring money in.”

  Lando would sooner park his wheels in front of some tract home and become a markie than let me out of the deal without every cent paid to Felix.

  “I don’t think that would work.”

  Wen rests his forehead against the window, which has been recently painted with pumpkins for Halloween. “We could run away for a while, me and you. We’d come back with our pockets weighed down with the money. You’d have done it then; you’d be free.”

  I want to say yes—I do. But I can’t pretend the road isn’t an uncertain place for only the two of us.

  “This isn’t right,” Wen mutters at the figures on the napkin.

  “I know.”

  “No, really. It doesn’t add up. We should have exactly four hundred more than this. You must have lost some of it.”

  “That’s impossible. Have you ever known me to lose money? I’d sooner lose you.”

  “Or someone’s stealing it. Who knows about our stash?”

  There aren’t many people at camp I absolutely trust. It could be anyone.

  “Does Sonia know?” he asks.

  I snatch a piece of bacon from his plate. “Sonia wouldn’t steal from us.” As soon as the words leave my mouth, I wonder if I’m wrong.

  “Either way,” he says. “Our stash isn’t safe in the trailer anymore.”

  Through the windows, a bouffant-haired woman waves at us from across the street. It takes a moment before I recognize her—Blanche Fairchild, the bookstore owner. She’s wearing a sheer, lime-green tunic with purple pants that remind me of encyclopedia pictures of India.

  Wen waves back, plastering on a great big grin.

  I lift my ha
nd. “She’s a little off, I think.”

  He frowns. “Don’t say that.”

  I pull the keys to the Chevy from my pocket and throw some cash on the tabletop. We’ve been in town most of the morning, and it’s time to cut our adventure short. Out on the sidewalk, he says, “Hey, can we go back to the bookstore for, like, an hour?”

  “No.”

  “Why not? I let you do what you want with that markie.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Come on, Tal. I have, like, ninety pages of a book to finish.”

  “You can’t read ninety pages in an hour and—” I lose track of my thoughts as we step around the corner, where a patrol car is all lit up with someone in the backseat.

  My eyes must be playing a trick on me. That long mane of black hair streaked with white has got to be some unknown markie’s. The woman’s shoulders shift so her profile’s framed by the window. In the backseat sits Rona.

  Wen lunges off the curb, not even looking for traffic. I grab his shoulder, yanking him behind a bench with me and ducking down low.

  “We have to do something, Tal.”

  “We can’t.” It’s not me; it’s our code. If one of our own takes a pinch—gets arrested—we scatter.

  The police car bolts down Main Street, lights flashing and sirens blaring as it carries Rona away.

  We get to our feet, and Wen’s glaring. “Listen,” he says. “Rona and you may have your problems, but you’ve got to put all that aside. She’s the closest thing to a mother we’ve got.”

  I don’t speak.

  “What? You think I don’t know Mom’s gone forever? I may say shit about her coming back, but I know the truth. Maybe Mom doesn’t really give a damn about us, but Rona does.”

  Wen’s never said anything like that before. Half of me is glad he knows our mother really isn’t our mother anymore. But the other half hurts for him.

  He kicks the ground and stomps to the truck, the bookstore abandoned.

  Everyone’s in a frenzy at camp. Murmurs of Rona’s name are mingled with legal jargon like fraud and felony. They’re saying she can’t fight the charges. All she’s got on her side is some stuttering public defender. They say she’s definitely going away for a long time.

  Rona got busted for running a rental scam. Some Wanderers broke into a vacant cabin and rented it out for Thanksgiving week to a bunch of different toureys. The markies shouldn’t have realized they were duped until moving-in day. Realized that there was no way into the house, that none of them had a right to it, that their money was gone forever—along with us.

  This time, the cops caught on, and Rona took the pinch because her pay-by-the-minute cell number was used for the ad in the paper.

  Sonia knocks on our door a little before dinnertime. “Thought you might want to know what’s going on.”

  We sit on the trailer step together, both of us tucking our feet under ourselves.

  “I heard Lando talking,” she says. “There’s a hearing at the end of the month. They can’t get Rona out of there unless we post bail. Lando says we don’t have the money.”

  “How much?”

  She whistles. “Thirty grand.”

  “How much does the bondsman need to post bail?”

  “Twenty percent. Six grand.”

  Guilt bites at me. I’m sitting on a pile of money that could have Rona back in camp by nightfall. But my money isn’t for buying Rona’s freedom. It’s meant to buy my own.

  “Don’t you worry, Tal. I know Rona’s going to be okay.” Sonia tips her face up to the sun with her eyes closed. “The Spirit of the Falconer, he’ll make sure of it.”

  Even if I believed, even if I shared in Sonia’s uncanny ability for simplifying the biggest of problems, her words wouldn’t bring me comfort.

  Because the Falconer didn’t keep our mother out of prison. No matter what Rona or Wen thinks happened in those weeks before Mom’s arrest.

  The week before the law found our mother, we pulled over at a rest stop outside Texarkana. Wen and I—five and six at the time—went tearing toward the drinking fountains like banshees as Mom and Rona rolled down the Buick’s convertible top and shared a cigar.

  Wen and I watched from the shade of the building as an owl perched itself on the Buick’s hood ornament.

  Mom yelled some profanities at the thing, while Rona flapped an old towel and made the bird fly away.

  Later that week, when I sent Wen’s beach ball sailing into the forest, Mom took Wen’s hand and they went in search of it. Not two minutes passed before Wen screamed. He was wailing his lungs out when Mom carried him out of the brush, high on her hip. They’d found an owl, dead and torn to shreds.

  Rona and Mom had exchanged a look I didn’t quite understand.

  Wen’s sobs turned to sniffles, and Rona said, “You see now, Greta? The Spirit of the Falconer, he’s trying to show you something you’re too blind to see.”

  “What I see,” said Mom, “is nothing at all.”

  Later, after Wen and I fell into Rona’s care, he woke me up one night and told me he’d heard Rona talking. Rona swore Mom had ignored the Falconer’s warnings that the arrest was coming.

  I told him it wasn’t true, but I think Wen’s gone on believing the Spirit of the Falconer was trying to save our mother.

  Wen comes trudging down the road and pushes past Sonia and me. He walks straight through the trailer door, without a word. I tell Sonia I’ll catch her later and go in after him.

  “You all right?” I hop on my bed and pat the spot to my right. “Talk to me.”

  “I was just closing up the windows of Rona’s trailer.” He sinks in beside me, his breath shuddering out of him as he tries not to cry. “Don’t tell me you don’t care, Tal, because somewhere inside, I know you’ve got to—”

  “I care, Wen. I do.” I wrap an arm around him in a sideways hug and rest my head on his shoulder.

  “Money, again,” says Wen. “Always money. That’s her ticket out.”

  I’m so afraid he’ll ask to use our savings. More afraid I’ll tell him yes. I can’t tell him yes.

  His voice quiet, he says, “I’m not asking that. Don’t worry.” Nobody reads my mind as well as Wen does. “But have you thought what if we could make more money?”

  My palm starts humming with the expectation of cash. I could convince him to do anything right now. It will never be enough for both of us—me and Rona, too—but it would certainly be more for me.

  I don’t even mean to manipulate him, but it comes so naturally. Even with the person I love most in the world, I’m an opportunist.

  “We’d make enough for both of you,” he says.

  As words bubble from my throat, I can’t bring myself to do it. “It would never be enough, not for me and Rona.”

  “We have to try, Tal.”

  I shake my head until he says what I can’t deny—my own words thrown back at me: “Fortune favors the bold.”

  CHAPTER 22

  At dark, Wen and I case the streets on the hunt for a scheme. It’s a little colder downtown. Seasons are changing, and with the shift comes the packing of camp and the turning of wheels. Before we hit the road, I popped inside the trailer for my brown-leather bomber jacket, a favorite thrift-store find. We’re dressed to kill. To kill a con, that is. To knock some scam out of the park. Which one, we’re unsure.

  Something about town doesn’t seem right.

  I’m not one for omens, but I do believe in hunches. The mood is different, chaotic. The anger, the whispers, I can feel them in the air. Ladies clutch their purses. Men walk with heavy steps and furrowed brows. All of them are carrying orange fliers.

  Downtown has a slope to it, with the government buildings up high and the shops and restaurants down below. At the top of that hill, brake lights congregate. Something’s going on up there. Something serious.

  “Tal.” Wen sounds uncertain behind me. “You have to see this.” He’s plucking one of the orange fliers off the sidewalk as I turn.
A big, gray shoe print is stamped on the front, but the type is clear: GYPSIES IN CEDAR FALLS! BEWARE OF CRIME! TOWN HALL MEETING AT THE COURTHOUSE AT 6!

  “It must be because of Rona,” says Wen.

  But that’s not entirely true.

  Spencer warned me the town isn’t too friendly toward Wanderers. I don’t know how or why, but this town’s prejudice starts with me. Everything goes back to that parade.

  We don’t pull a con that night, not with all the heat from the still-in-swing anti-gypsy rally. I’m less of a con artist for letting it scare me off. And I’m less of myself for being so vulnerable, opening myself up so I let this town hurt me.

  Wen’s snoring as I sneak out of the trailer.

  This time, I don’t worry about starting the Chevy at the edge of camp. With Rona locked away, there’s no fear of someone stopping me.

  Downtown Cedar Falls is abandoned except for a crowd of people spilling from a bar onto the spotless sidewalks. After cutting down Main Street, I travel to the edge of the city limits, all the way to the jail.

  Despite all Rona’s talks about jails, there are no bars—there are just Plexiglas windows up high. Some are lit, but there’s no movement inside.

  I picture Rona looking out one of those windows, even though this probably isn’t where they keep the prisoners. I wonder if she sees the moon framed by that little opening and she’s pretending she’s with the camp. She has to be thinking about all of us. Definitely Wen. And maybe me.

  She might even be thinking about when she created the rift between us.

  I look to those jail windows again. What I said to her that night wasn’t quite fair. From stories and a handful of memories, I should have known Mom well enough to realize she would do what she wanted, no matter the damage. Rona didn’t run Mom off. She only tried to smooth over the damage Mom left in her wake.

  No one knows why I hold Rona at such a distance. Maybe I don’t even know for sure. What I do know is letting Rona inside means letting Mom in, too, and I’ve built that wall out of brick and mortar.