by Voss, Deja
I run through the woods, up to our campsite, and the exertion feels so good. My lungs are burning, the muscles in my legs are throbbing, but my mind is completely empty. I feel my toes catching on the roots and rocks of the trail, but I don’t care. Passing out from exhaustion might be the best possible thing that could happen to me.
I guess my next move is to go back to the campsite and pretend like nothing happened. Try and forget my most recent history as I try and suppress my past. Become exactly what Molly thinks I am, according to her article: just another dirty vagrant mountain man who takes whatever he wants and doesn’t care about anyone but himself and his gang.
It’s getting dark but the full moon overhead is keeping the trail lit below my feet. I make it to camp in record time and am relieved to hear the familiar sound of laughter around the campfire.
“Well look who the hell it is!” I hear Moss’s voice boom. “Did the old lady finally throw you out?”
“Something like that,” I say, grabbing the jar of moonshine from his hand and taking a long pull. I’m thirsty from my run, and the burning sensation goes right to my head.
“Good for you, bro,” Moss says. “I, too, am newly single.”
“Luna dump you?” I ask him.
Forrest is giggling, obviously drunk. “We dumped her,” he says. “Over the side of the quarry.”
“We gotta move tomorrow. Start our annual trek. Figure out what we’re going to do this winter,” Moss says, like it’s the most natural thing. I’m still reeling over what Forrest just suggested.
“She’s dead?” I stutter. It’s not like I was particularly fond of the girl, but I’d never go so far as to murder her.
Or anyone, for that matter.
My skin is crawling, watching everyone just sitting around the fire goofing around, laughing like nothing new. I notice the blood on Moss’s hands for the first time, the blood on his face, the sight of it making me queasy.
“I’m going to bed,” I say. “Long day.”
“Hey,” Moss says, putting his arm around my shoulder. I shudder at his touch, not wanting to think about what those hands just did. “Are you ok? Are we good?”
“Yeah,” I say with a shrug.
“I’d hate to think you were going to run back to your little nark girlfriend and run your mouth about anything. Brothers don’t do that to each other.”
“Trust me, I won’t,” I say. I know I’m at a low point in my life where spending my time with a bunch of murderers sounds more appealing than trying to hear Molly justify the way she used me. “I’m back for good.”
He pulls Molly’s handgun from his pocket and dramatically spins it around on his finger. “This thing is pretty nice. Not a lot of kick, easy to aim, pretty quiet.”
“Goodnight, Moss,” I say, turning and heading down the trail, knowing he won’t shoot me in the back. He’s too vain. He’d want to see the look on my face as I fell to the ground, bleeding and dying in front of him.
“Goodnight, Jesse,” he calls back after me.
The words sting.
I try to ignore him.
I pretend like I don’t hear him.
He can call me whatever he wants, as long as I can keep living this facade.
Chapter Forty
Molly:
“Cheryl!” I yell into the empty studio. “Where are you?”
I figure if I’m going to wander up the mountain with my tail between my legs, I might as well bring a friend. Considering she’s on ‘friendly’ terms with Moss right now, and considering she owes me a huge favor for the little episode at my bus last weekend, I am definitely going to cash in on that.
I slept like shit last night, if I could call it sleep at all. Maybe I passed out from sheer exhaustion for a minute or two here and there, but that didn’t last long. Between the sadness I feel about losing Tucker and the embarrassment I’m dealing with from my viral article, there’s not enough wine in the world to knock me out for any extended period of time.
My phone hasn’t stopped ringing, people I haven’t talked to since high school suddenly highly interested in how I’m doing. The last call I actually took was from my father, and even though I assumed he’d be appalled by my life choices, talking to him was comforting.
“I think maybe it’s time for you to come home, Molly,” he said. Not in a judgmental way, but in that parental way that makes me feel like no matter what I’ve done, he’ll always be my father and I’ll always be welcome home. Home to admit defeat. Home to take the safe job. The safe choice. To get back to living a normal life.
“Cheryl!” I shout. I’ve tried to call her multiple times, tried to stop by her apartment, but she was nowhere to be found, even at 7 a.m. I wander through the half dark studio and find her in the office, her head resting on the desk. She’s sobbing, and upon closer inspection, I can tell her hair is caked in blood. “Cheryl, what happened to you? Are you ok?”
She looks up at me, her face pale and her eyes red.
“He killed her.”
“What now?” I ask. Her hands are shaking, and her voice is hoarse.
“He killed Luna. Shot her in the head, right in front of me.”
She has to be kidding. “Why haven’t you called the police?” I ask her.
“He’ll kill me too,” she says. “I know he will. Oh my God, Molly. This is all my fault.”
I grab her and hug her. “It’s not your fault. What happened is not your fault at all. But what you do now is who you are as a person. You can’t just let him get away with it. The cops will do their job and he’ll finally be where he belongs.”
“He used your gun,” she sobs.
“I don’t care about that, Cheryl. That’s in the past. You need to go to the police now. And I need to sneak up there and warn Tucker that the cops are coming so he doesn’t end up tangled up in this mess.”
“What happened to Tucker? When I was up there yesterday nobody had seen him in a while.”
Now I’m crying, too.
“I fucked up,” I tell her. I explain the article, and how I was just trying to help him and instead I ended up overstepping. I tell her about our plan to run away, to get married, to start a new life together.
“You do know none of that could’ve happened if he wasn’t willing to turn himself in?”
“I don’t know. I wanted to believe that we could live this lie. I thought maybe eventually he’d come around and do the right thing.”
“I wouldn’t stress, Molly. I like Tucker. I think he’s a nice guy, but if he really cared about you he wouldn’t want to put you through constantly wondering if someone’s going to show up one day and tell you that they’re his wife or his kids,” Cheryl says. “I’ll make a deal with you. You go to the police with me. We’ll let them handle the situation. Maybe if the cops talk to Tucker, he’ll come to his senses. Maybe they can offer him help that we can’t. Sometimes you have to give them a little tough love.”
I shrug. I already put a walking target on his back thanks to my shitty article. I’ll happily bail him out of jail if I have to, and it’s up to him to forgive me if he really wants to. If he doesn’t, that’s fine, too.
* * *
“I swear this is where the campsite was,” Cheryl says to the police officers as they walk around the clearing in the woods. “It was just here yesterday.”
The only sign of life is a pit of coals where the fire used to burn. Other than that, you’d never know there was a group of men living here for who knows how long.
“They couldn’t have gotten that far? Right?” I ask them. “I mean, they have four-wheelers, but with all that equipment, they have to be close by. Don’t you have dogs or something that can hunt them down?”
“I don’t think you girls understand what kind of resources we’re talking about here. We’re wasting time as it is.”
“A woman is dead!” Cheryl says. “I watched her get shot.”
“I have no one reported missing by the name of Luna or even anyone match
ing your description. I have no body. I have no proof that a crime was even committed other than your word.” The police officer shrugs. “I think that maybe you two just got in too deep with some bad guys and wanted to bring us up here to scare ’em a little bit.”
“You have to believe her,” I beg. “They stole my gun and used it to murder someone!”
“Did you file a police report on your missing gun?”
I hang my head.
Seeing this barren campground is making me sick to my stomach. I keep looking around for signs of Tucker anywhere. His boots by the fire, his tattered hammock. God, I would give anything to have him in my arms right now.
“Come on, girls,” the cop says. “It’s time to get out of here. Time to move along, just like the Vagrants have.”
“Finally, right?” the officer says to his partner. “It’s been a summer of hell. I’m glad to see them off to their next town to terrorize.”
“You really don’t care, do you?” Cheryl yells.
“Not our problem anymore,” the officer says, shrugging.
* * *
I don’t want to give up on him. The thought of leaving him behind and pretending like he never existed, pretending like he wasn’t my whole world and the only man who ever truly meant anything to me, is not something that I can force myself to do.
I wait around my bus anxiously all day, all night, hoping he’ll come back to me, even if it’s just to let me know he’s safe.
On the same hand, I’ve pretty much stopped with all human contact. I shut my phone off, I quit answering emails, and I haven’t gone on the internet. I don’t want anyone to get in touch with me. No one but Tucker, at least.
I’m running out of hope. I really can’t go on living like this. After a week of just dwelling, just existing, wallowing in my sadness, I make the executive decision that it’s time for me to move on. He’s gone, and rightly so.
It’s time for me to go home. Time for me to park my bus in my parents’ driveway and figure out how I’m going to pick up some pieces of this failed life experiment and turn them into a life worth living for me.
Chapter Forty-One
Tucker:
We’ve been bushwhacking for weeks, taking turns switching off on the four-wheelers and hiking through the mountains. It’s going to be my first winter as a Vagrant, and according to the guys, there’s a decent temporary spot for us to spend the colder months with heat, running water, and electricity. I don’t know the full details; all I know is that it’s really my only option at this point.
I’m doing my best to make peace with the situation. I did, after all, get everything I ever asked for. Out in the woods, anonymous, living my life on my own terms.
And it’s fucking lonely.
Being surrounded by your ‘family,’ your ‘tribe’, and feeling completely alone in the world is enough to make you physically ill. I can’t sleep, I don’t want to eat even though we’re covering at least twenty miles a day. I feel like I’m falling apart, but nobody really cares. Everyone’s too busy worrying about their own shit.
The good news is, the flashbacks have all but stopped. No, the only thing plaguing my mind right now is the woman I left behind. The woman I up and left without so much as an explanation or a goodbye.
What I read of that article runs through my brain over and over again. It kills me knowing she thought I was using her for a place to stay and a warm place to stick my dick.
I did everything I could to prove the opposite. I tried to show her that I would spend the rest of my life working my ass off just to be able to spend my days with her. I was willing to do everything.
Everything but the one thing she really needed from me. Answers, stability, full commitment. Even if we did get married on paper, it wouldn’t have been true.
Even if I could get her to live a life of isolation with me, settle down somewhere exotic where neither one of us had names, we’d always be on the run from something. What? I don’t know.
Now I am literally on the run, trying to get the hell away from some crime I didn’t commit, and suddenly life feels a lot less exciting. It feels dangerous and dreadful.
I’m startled by the sound of branches cracking below us. Rock comes tearing out of the woods, greeting us on the trail. He’s been gone for a while now, scouting out this new location.
“Tucker,” he says, pulling me in for a warm hug. “Glad to have you back. You gonna be spending the winter with us?”
I shrug.
“Not too much further, boys,” he says. “Leave the four-wheelers. They’re just getting ready for dinner. We don’t want to startle ’em.”
Chapter Forty-Two
Molly:
“Honey, I understand why you don’t want to come out of your room, but you’re safe here. No one is judging you. At least come sit at the table and have dinner with us,” my mom says, peeking her head around my bedroom door.
I know how hellish I must look right now, but even the thought of taking a shower is beyond my capacity. I’ve been laying in my bed in the room I grew up in, only getting up when it’s absolutely necessary, ever since I parked my bus in the driveway at my parents’ house.
Boy band posters hang from the walls, and my Barbie collection is on display on the shelves. Right now I’d give anything to be back in the headspace where that stuff brought me joy. Right now I’d give anything to be back in the place where I could fathom even one thought that would bring me joy.
“Can you just bring me something?” I whine. If I’m going to live like I did when I was a petulant teenager, I guess I might as well act like one.
“Absolutely not. I’m done babying you, and I’ve told your dad to do the same. I don’t care how long you stay here, I don’t care if you want to move back in permanently, but you can’t lay in bed watching TV and eating all day. It’s not natural. At least not for you.”
It truly is a vicious cycle. The longer I lay here and think about all the things I could be doing, the worse I feel. There really is only one thing, one person, who I want to be doing anything with right now. The man I pushed away with my stupid actions. The man who was willing to do anything for me, and I couldn’t even just let him be himself.
Now I long for whatever version of him I could possibly get my hands on. I don’t care who he is, as long as it’s the guy that I fell in love with.
“I miss him, Mom,” I say, pouting. “It hurts.”
She comes and sits on my bed, brushing my wild hair out of my face.
“I can’t pretend like I know what you’re going through, Molly,” she says. “But I know you, child. I know you’d never do anything to hurt someone like that, and I think if Tucker knew you as well as you say he does, he knows that deep down, too.”
“I need to go back there, Mom. How’s he ever going to find me?”
“Jennifer! Molly!” my dad’s voice rings from downstairs. “Were you guys expecting company?”
“Does it look like it?” I laugh to my mom, motioning to my pizza-stained sweatshirt and pillow-flattened hair.
“I’ll go see who it is. You get out of bed and get yourself showered. You smell like a dirty mountain vagrant.”
“Now you’re just being hurtful. You know that’s a sore subject,” I laugh. “How would you know anyway?”
“I expect you to join us for dinner tonight, missy. I made stuffed shells.”
Though pasta and cheese might not fill this gaping hole in my heart, it’s an ok start. I kick my feet over the side of the bed and groan as I stand up. I nearly pass out as I catch a look at myself in the mirror. It’s really that bad.
Dolly’s just wagging her tail, doing her ‘I love you’ dance, tearing around the room in circles. This dog. She doesn’t care how the internet feels about me. If only Tucker felt the same way as she does.
Chapter Forty-Three
Tucker:
“You ready to get initiated once and for all?” Moss asks, his eyes wild, scary, like he’s high on something.
“What about this?” I ask, holding up my hand, the black Vagrant tattoo up the side of my palm. “I thought this was my initiation.”
“That was just a warm-up. Tonight is your first mission.” He tosses me the pistol. I cringe at the feeling of it in my hand, knowing what it was used for a few days ago—knowing who it once belonged to.
“What’s this for?” I ask, not really wanting to know the answer.
“You have two shots you have to make,” Moss says. “I’m sure you can handle it. You’re pretty good with a gun.
“I’ve been watching this couple on and off for a few weeks now. Nobody comes. Nobody really goes ever, either.” We are standing on the side of a hill tucked up in the woods, looking down on a cabin. It’s getting dark and I can see the elderly couple through the kitchen window. “Easy peasy. Nobody’s gonna miss them. At least not for a few months.”
“You guys are out of your mind. I’m not going to kill some strangers,” I say.
“Oh you are,” Moss says, inches away from my face. “You’ve already seen too much. If you want to keep running with us, you need to prove that you’re completely with us.”
“I’m not doing it, Moss. I’ve never killed a person in my life and I’m not starting today.”
“Even if you don’t pull the trigger,” he says, slipping on a pair of leather gloves, “you’re still going to be committing the crime. Or at least Jesse Drakeman is. I’m sure the police are going to be thrilled when they find you. You can either go down there and put these two old fogies out of their misery and stay a Vagrant, or you can let me do it for you. Just know that if you choose the latter, it’s probably going to end up being a murder-suicide.”