Finally a small truck pulled over, one of those emergency trucks with a hoist in back. The man driving it, strictly family-type except he needed a shave, leaned out and said to Bitsy, ‘How far?’
‘Fort Myers,’ said Bitsy.
‘Nope. Just going back to the shop little past Forty Mile Bend on the Trail. But if it’ll help any, hop right in.’
So she planted the valise and carton in back of the truck and hopped right in, and that way got as far as a gas station and garage right out in the middle of nowhere, halfway along the Trail. Like every other business along the Trail here, this was on the eastbound side of the road heading back to Miami, so she lugged the valise and the carton across to the westbound side and took up her station there. Trouble was, not much went by, and what did go by looked like it was out to break all speed records. Even the bus she was supposed to have been on went by so fast that it was almost out of sight down the road when she suddenly realized that the sign over its front window had said Fort Myers and she felt depressed about that. And, of course, the cars that did pull in at the gas station across the road were mostly heading in the wrong direction.
After a while one of the men from the gas station walked across to her and said, ‘You figure to stand out here like a sore thumb with a red, white, and blue bandage on it, girlie, you are sure going to buy yourself a lot of trouble in about ten minutes when the police patrol goes by. They are real hardnosed about this kind of hitchhike stuff right now. Had a bad time account of it couple of months ago. And not so far down the road from here, neither.’
‘I have to get a hitch,’ Bitsy said.
‘All the same, girlie, if you don’t want cop trouble, you will hang around for a spell in that ladies room over there. I’ll let you know when the patrol goes by.’
Maybe it was a put-on, but it didn’t seem to be. So Bitsy took the valise and carton with her into the ladies room and hung around there looking through the screened window at the swamp country out in back until the man knocked on the door and said, ‘Okay now, girlie. They just went by.’
So it was back across the road with the valise and carton, and, from the way it looked, nothing to do but stand there and watch the cars whoosh by and feel more and more down about it. Then when she was right near bottom, a car slowed down passing her and came to a stop about fifty feet up ahead. She grabbed up the valise and carton, but the car slowly started off again, and all she could do was stand there feeling like a fool. The car only went about ten feet more though, and stopped again. It was an old black sedan, looked like something out of the museum, but without a dent in it and with a high shine. A weirdo car all right. And with a weirdo driver, too, what with this stop and start business. As if to prove that, he now stuck his jug-eared head out of the window and called back, ‘You looking for a ride, girl?’
Mister Weirdo himself, because what did he think she was looking for?
She didn’t even bother to answer, just headed down the road as fast as she could with the valise and carton banging her legs, hoping he wouldn’t change his mind again before she got there. The one good part of it was that she was still playing by the rules Sis had laid down. The car was sure family-style – it looked like the kind of thing you lay away all week and drive only to church – and when she got up to it she could see that the driver might have been the deacon of the church. A redneck with gray hair chopped short in a real redneck haircut, but still he was all dressed up in a black suit and white shirt and necktie.
But old Mister Weirdo himself all right. Anybody picked you up on the road was likely to have a friendly way about him. This one, when she came up to him out of breath, looked anything but friendly. Then, when she tried to open the back door to shove her things in, she found it was locked. ‘Hey,’ she said, but he made no move to open the door, just looked at her through the open window, taking her in.
‘Your folks know you travel around like this?’ he asked.
‘Mmm,’ Bitsy said.
‘What’s that mean?’
‘It means they know.’
‘You sure of it?’
‘Yes. Anyhow, what’s the difference?’
He appeared to think this over, his lips pulled into a thin line, his eyes squinting at her. ‘That’s the truth,’ he finally said. ‘It don’t make any difference, does it?’ He reached over to unlock both doors, and Bitsy got the valise and carton on the back seat, then got into the front seat with him.
He started the car off. ‘Where you supposed to be headed for?’
‘Fort Myers,’ Bitsy said. ‘You going all the way there?’
‘No.’
All right, but at least she was heading in the right direction. She looked over the dashboard to find the radio dial and found there was no radio dial. No radio, believe it or not. She dug into her shoulder bag and came up with the baby transistor. She put it to her ear, tuning it in to get The Sound, and after a while she did. Mister Weirdo didn’t seem to mind. He just kept the car moving along at a speed where anything else going their way easily passed them by.
He seemed to be keeping his eyes straight ahead on the road, but Bitsy could tell that every now and then he was giving her a slantwise look, taking her in from top to bottom. It made her realize that there was no bra under her T-shirt with the Miami Beach written across it and the palm trees painted on. On the other hand, there was nothing so special under the shirt – as there would be, say, with Sis – to make him pop his cork. So here you had one of those times where what was almost always a drag could be a kind of a comfort.
Then she caught him looking square at her. He didn’t seem flustered by this. Only came on more squinty-eyed and thin-lipped than ever. ‘Kind of pretty, ain’t you?’ he said.
Bitsy shifted over in her seat a little, but she was up against the door as it was. She pressed the transistor hard against her ear to cut out that redneck voice, but it wasn’t all that easy.
‘I had a daughter about like you,’ said Mister Weirdo. ‘Used to travel around the same way, and I never knew about it. So your folks don’t really know the way you go hitchhiking, do they?’
‘Mmm,’ said Bitsy.
‘What’s that mean? You got a mouth, don’t you? Why don’t you open it up and talk like people?’
Bitsy showed him the transistor. ‘I’m listening to this,’ she pointed out. ‘I can’t listen to everything at the same time.’
‘Then you listen to me!’ He suddenly snatched the transistor right out of her hand and jammed it down on the seat. The way he did it, he probably wrecked it. She reached for it and he slapped her hand away. ‘I said you listen to me. I was telling you about my girl. Same age as you. Just as pretty. Same kind of long blondie hair too.’
So it wasn’t lollipops they came on with when you got to this age. It was talk about their pretty girl just like you. And with blondie hair just like yours, so next thing there would be that big old hand stroking your hair to show you. And working its way right down your back. And that would just be the start of it. No lollipops for grownup girls. Just that slow, roundabout come-on easing things along to big, big trouble.
But even if you could somehow get clear of the car, what do you do about Ma’s valise and that carton?
And for sure this was Mister Weirdo’s kind of country they were now traveling through. Empty wherever you looked with not even a gas station or hamburger stand showing up any more. Just a lot of swamp greenery and sickly looking trees. Bitsy pushed so tight up against the door that the handle of it hurt her side.
He was watching her like a hawk now. ‘You scared?’ he asked.
Bitsy shook her head to show she wasn’t.
‘Yes, you are.’ He seemed to like the idea. ‘And that’s all right. That’s like it should be when you climb in a car with some man you don’t even know. That’s what you should have in your head before you start climbing in. Afterward is maybe a little too late, ain’t it?’
Bitsy started to answer, but it stuck in her throat. She clea
red her throat to get it out. ‘Nothing to be scared about,’ she said.
‘You mean you don’t care what a man can do to you? Kind of free and easy with men, is that it?’
‘No,’ Bitsy said. ‘Look, you can let me out here. It’s all right. I can get a hitch from somebody else.’
‘You sit right where you are. And no tricks, hear?’
‘You let me out.’
‘Like I already told you, girl, it’s too late for that. I didn’t pull no gun on you and make you get in here, did I? You did it all on your own.’
While he was saying this he was slowing down the car, squinting up the road on the other side like he was looking for something there. Then when the car was really slowed down he grabbed her wrist and held it tight so that for the few seconds when she could have just walked out of that door she had no chance to.
With his other hand he turned the wheel hard and pulled the car right across the road and into a clearing among the trees. Dried twigs cracked under the wheels and the car rocked from side to side on the bumpy ground, but it kept crawling further and further away from the road.
‘You let me out!’ Bitsy said. ‘I am scared.’
‘Maybe not enough yet.’
There was a freaked-out answer for you. The worst of it was she had heard about crazies like this. They got some of their kicks from what they did to you. But they got even more from watching you be scared because of it. So here she was, acting up just the way he liked. And not able to keep herself from doing it, either.
The road was well out of sight when he stopped the car among some scraggly trees. He reached across her to shove open the door and then pushed her right through it, still holding her wrist and following almost on top of her. He snatched the shoulder bag loose and tossed it on the seat next to the transistor. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘I want to show you something.’
‘There’s cops on that road,’ Bitsy said. ‘The gas-station man told me so. They go right up and down all the time. They could be coming right now.’
‘No,’ the man said. ‘They ain’t coming now. They only come after it’s all over. A couple of months after it’s all over. Now look there.’ He pointed. ‘Right there.’
Bitsy looked. Nothing but a patch of beat-up dead grass. He dragged her toward it, and for all she dug in her heels and tried to hold back it was no use.
‘Right here,’ the man said. He gripped the nape of her neck between his fingers and pushed her head down as if making sure she got a good look. ‘This is where the cops show up after it’s all over. Then you know what they do? They come knock on the door and they say, “Mister, you remember that little girl of yours that never got back home again couple of months ago? Well, it seems like she was always hitchhiking around, and she finally got picked up by a real bad one. We think we just found what’s left of her, so you come along with us and see if it’s really her.”’
Those fingers digging into her neck had Bitsy bent almost double now. Her eyes were all filled up so that everything looked watery. ‘Let go!’ she said. ‘You’re hurting me.’
He didn’t let go. ‘You ain’t hurting,’ he said. ‘You don’t know what hurting is. Not till a man does what he wants with you until he’s tired of it, and then beats you to death. That’s when you’ll find out, won’t you?’
‘Yes,’ Bitsy sobbed.
Now he took his hand from her neck and let her straighten up and wipe her runny nose with the back of her hand. He turned her by the arm so that she faced him. ‘Girl,’ he said, ‘you understand what I’m trying to get into that dumb babyface head of yours?’
‘Yes,’ Bitsy said, her eyes brimming over. ‘Look, mister, there’s that valise in the car and it’s a real good valise. And that other box has a lot of good things in it. I swear it has. You can have both of them if you let me go. And the transistor.’
He dropped her arm and stood there facing her like that. All of a sudden he looked beat-up and tired. All washed out. ‘God Almighty,’ he said, and turned and started walking back to the car. Bitsy watched him go, not believing it. At the car he motioned to her. ‘Come on. I’ll get you far as Naples.’
Bitsy still wasn’t moving.
‘You better come on,’ said Mister Weirdo. ‘You stand around there any longer, you are going to have swamp snakes crawling right over your feet.’
This time Bitsy did move.
And he did drive her right to the bus depot in Naples, the old car really putting out all the way. Bitsy sat as far from him as she could, tight up against the door again, and after a while she got her mirror out of the shoulder bag and did a job on her face, which was a mess. Then she tried out the transistor and found that even with the banging around it had taken it was still working fine.
Too bad in a way, because when she was let out at Naples she’d have to give it up along with the valise and carton. No sense trying to back out of the deal and stirring up old Mister Weirdo again. The smart thing was to let him go drive away with his loot and then tell Ma and Pa it was stolen from her in the Miami bus depot. They’d believe her all right, because why shouldn’t they? Better that than ever let them find out about all the hitchhiking.
But right there at the bus depot in Naples, Mister Weirdo showed he was as freaked-out as ever. He pulled up the car and said to Bitsy, ‘Tell me the truth, girl. You got money on you for that bus ride?’
‘No,’ said Bitsy.
‘I figured not.’
And then what did he do but get out of the car with her and haul out the valise and carton and go right along with her to the ticket window and buy her a ticket for Fort Myers. So he hadn’t let her go because of him settling for the valise and carton and transistor, and that was just about the weirdest part of it. It was really something to think about. Then Bitsy stood there, ticket in one hand, transistor in the other, valise and carton at her feet, and watched him walk out into the street, that redneck haircut of his finally getting lost among the people there, and that was the last she saw of him.
She waited to make sure he was really gone, then went to the door and peeked out to see if the car was gone too, and it was. So she went back to the ticket window and told the girl there she had changed her mind and wanted to get the money back for her ticket, and, no trouble at all, it was taken care of.
So that was that, and she even had some money to show for it.
Getting up to Fort Myers went the way everything should have gone from the start. Bitsy carried her things out to the street some distance from the depot and made it plain she was looking for a hitch until along came this stripped-down job with kind of a nice-looking stud at the wheel, big beard and a big gold earring, tape deck blasting away so you could hear it right across the Gulf, and he got her to Fort Myers in no time. And except for some pushing and pulling she had to do with that wandering hand of his, with no trouble at all. In fact, he made the run up the coast so fast that she walked into the Fort Myers depot only about an hour after the bus she might have been on checked in.
She phoned the house, hoping it would be Sis, not Ma or Pa, and her luck, it was Sis. Fifteen minutes later Sis showed up at the back end of the depot in her car and helped get Bitsy’s stuff into it. By this time Bitsy was really loaded up for Sis. During that fifteen minutes she had wondered if maybe she shouldn’t keep it all to herself, but the more she thought of it the more she knew she’d never be able to hold it in. She had too much to settle with Sis.
As soon as they were in the car she said to Sis, ‘You and your family folks.’
‘What?’ said Sis.
‘You know what. You said I should only look to ride with family folks. And that’s what I’ve been doing. And you know what happened on account of it?’
‘Suppose you tell me,’ said Sis, jockeying the car out into the street.
‘All right, I will. I got picked up by real family folks on the Trail coming back just now. I mean real family folks,’ Bitsy said, making it slow and loud the way Sis always did. ‘Like, you know, a s
hiny old black car and somebody driving it dressed up maybe for a funeral. Real family folks,’ she said even slower and louder.
‘And?’ said Sis.
‘And first place he could find that was all empty, this nice old man drove off into the swamp there and pulled me out of his nice old car.’
‘Bitsy!’ Sis said. She stepped on the brake, not evening noticing they were right in the middle of traffic, cars all going by and honking at them. Then she got her wits halfway together and pulled over to the curb and parked there. ‘Bitsy, what happened? You tell me straight out what happened, you hear?’
‘I am telling you. He pulled me out of the car and he showed me where it was going to happen when he was good and ready and he talked wild trying to scare me and he choked me too. Because maybe you don’t know about it, but some of those nice old family folks you’re so high on are crazies. And this one sure was.’
‘But what else did he do? Did he—?’
‘No,’ Bitsy said, ‘he didn’t. All of a sudden he just turned off. Just like that. Like he wasn’t interested in the whole thing any more. Then he drove me the rest of the way to Naples, and I got another hitch there.’
Sis took a deep breath. ‘You’re lying,’ she said. ‘You’re making up the whole thing.’
‘I am not lying,’ Bitsy said very slowly and loudly.
Sis didn’t seem convinced. ‘You mean some man practically kidnapped you? And got you all alone? And got himself all worked up about it? And then when it came time for the big finish he just turned off? Look, Bitsy—’
‘But I told you what he was like, didn’t I?’ Bitsy said. It almost made up for that whole bad scene in the swamp, because for the first time she could ever remember, she was on the telling end, and Sis, like it or not, was on the listening end. ‘Don’t you see? No matter how much he got himself worked up for a big finish, he couldn’t do anything about it because he was just too old. Honest to God, Sis, he was at least as old as Pa!’
The Specialty of the House Page 61