Stealing Candy

by Stewart Lewis

  “OK. Help me. We have to move him.”

  We each grab a wrist and drag him behind an old, decaying fence, next to an abandoned pickup truck. In the back, there’s a tarp. Levon throws it over Jamal, but it barely does the job.

  The keys, which Jamal was holding, are sitting in the pool of blood. Levon grabs them, wipes them on his jeans, and tells me to get in the car.

  “Wait. We can’t leave him there.”

  Levon looks at me, incredulous.

  “Are you serious?”

  I wipe the dried tears on my cheek with my sleeve. I don’t know what is overtaking me or if I’m even in my right mind, but I know we need to do something about this.

  “Let’s take him to a hospital and drop him off.”

  “There are security cameras—”

  “Levon! We can’t just leave a person to die!”

  He looks at me like he has never even met me.

  “I’m not going to jail like my father, Candy.”

  Levon peels out of the parking lot, leaving Jamal for dead. I know he probably would have killed me, but again I feel this surge of power and urgency, like I have to make my own decision now.

  “Let me out, then.”

  “What?”

  “Let me out.”

  “I kidnapped you, remember?”

  “I’m not leaving him, Levon. I can’t.”

  He looks at me hard, then turns his eyes back toward the road.

  “Fuck!” he says and pulls a U-turn so hard that I hit my head on the side window.

  “Ouch,” I say, even though my tolerance for pain has risen considerably in the last twenty-four hours.

  Back at the roadside bar, the parking lot is just as we left it. As we lift Jamal into the same trunk he threw me into, he moans slightly.

  “I saw a hospital, back—”

  “I know. I saw it too.”

  We drive there in silence, literally with blood on our sleeves. As we pull Jamal out of the trunk and place him under the neon lights of the ER entrance and jump back into the car, burning rubber, we actually start laughing. A second later though, we quiet down, realizing that it’s not that funny.

  We drive back to the motel in silence, both of us in shocked autopilot mode. There is nothing to say. What just went down is bigger in scope than either of us imagined. I could’ve been killed, and Jamal might even be dead by now.

  We get back to our room, and I put the lamp back on the table, even though the lightbulb’s been smashed in our scuffle. I try to clean up the shards, but my hands are shaking.

  “Stop,” Levon says. “Leave it.”

  He leads me into the bathroom and washes the blood from my arms. It’s strangely intimate. He cleans himself after me, and then we grab what little stuff we have and we’re off again.

  Five miles down the highway, and I’m still shaking. We both keep looking back intermittently. Levon takes off his sweatshirt and says, “Put this on.”

  It’s warm and smells like him, and it momentarily calms me.

  “Do you think he’ll die?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know,” Levon repeats.

  “It was self-defense, right?”

  “Of course it was, Candy, of course.” Levon is still trying to catch his breath.

  “How did he find us?” I ask.

  “There was a motorcycle. That he obviously stole. And he knew the route. There are only two motels in this town. I’m probably the only person the guy knows, and I have money. I was so stupid to trust him, but he was totally different when he was straight. Believable. And I couldn’t do it alone. After he scored, everything went downhill. That’s why I tried to pay him off.”

  “I knew when he was sitting on the cot, looking at me. He wasn’t done.”

  “I thought he was. But we are going to have to drive a while, a different route, slightly west of here. We can’t risk it…”

  The car feels full of electricity, even with only the sound of the engine, the whir of the wheels.

  “Did anyone see us? In the parking lot?” Levon asks.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Candy, the game just changed.”

  It doesn’t sound like his choice of words. But we are not our normal selves anymore. He keeps driving, my mind racing.

  “I’m not leaving you alone again,” he says softly but with conviction.

  Say it again, I think. Say it again.

  Chapter 13

  The room we find is twenty miles west of I-95, and even though it feels way off the planned route Jamal knows about, I tell Levon to park down the block just in case.

  The room has real wood paneling that smells like pine and a few framed pictures of rolling hills. I lock the double lock and sit against the door.

  I keep thinking of the moment the trunk hit the bottom of Jamal’s chin, his head flailing back, then the crunch when his head hit the rock. In the drug-like rush of power and adrenaline, those minutes felt completely transcendent.

  Yes, I was acting in self-defense, but I never wanted anyone dead.

  “Why did you want to leave him?” I ask Levon.

  “Why did you insist on taking him?”

  “I don’t really know why. It was an instinct.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “For not being there.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m used to that. My father’s made a life of it.”

  “Well, you’re not like your father at all.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing. But there’s something I have to tell you.”

  We each lie down on our separate beds, staring at the ceiling. I can hear crickets and the sound of firecrackers in the distance.

  “What?” I ask.

  “Jamal. He mentioned something he would do to you. Something I think is more horrible than even killing someone.”

  We both know what he’s talking about. I put my hand up to my mouth to stop a scream.

  “That’s why,” Levon says. “A person like that doesn’t really need to be on this earth, right?”

  “What if they change?”

  Levon makes an agitated noise.

  “Whatever. We did what you wanted.”

  “The right thing?”

  “Who knows?”

  “How did you actually find him?”

  “There’s a guy in my trailer park. Jamal was a friend of that guy’s cousin. I didn’t meet him until a day before we got you.”

  “Did he want part of the money?”

  “He didn’t know about the money, but he figured it out. I had planned on him just helping me at the beginning and paying him for his time. But then, in the parking lot, he tried to convince me to let him stay, to cut him in on the deal. I kept trying to give him more money to go away, but then he would score drugs and come back. And yeah, he knew the route. Following it was stupid of us.”

  We lay silent for a while. I can hear a mother scolding her kid as a car door slams. Normal people. I turn on the TV, then mute the sound. I need to know that else is happening, other dramas that are unfolding. Maybe even larger in scope than our own.

  “What did your father not do? And how much do you want?”

  Levon blinks slowly, and I can see his brain calculating.

  “My grandmother,” he says. “She’s in this horrible home for old people. I want to get her out of there into a condo or something. She doesn’t have much time left, and I don’t want her to die there.”

  I knew there was more to him. Father wrongly accused, wants to help his grandmother. These are good attributes, right?

  “But how does it all relate to Wade?”

  “My dad worked for Wade, as a driver, in Miami.”

  When my father isn’t on
tour, he lives in a private villa on Shelter Island in Miami. I’ve only seen pictures of it in magazines and on the reality show.

  “For how long?”

  “Four years.”

  “If it wasn’t drugs, then what was it?”

  “Let’s just say my dad took the fall for something Wade did.”

  “I can only imagine. The guy’s a major slimeball.”

  “Like him?” Levon points to a Mexican drug-cartel leader on the TV screen.

  “Yeah, if that guy wore skinny jeans and makeup.”

  Levon smiles, and it hits me what a strong person he must be. Willing to break the law for his father…

  “How long have you been planning this?”

  “Not long, actually. Wade promised my dad money. He’s getting out soon, so he called Wade, who acted like he barely knew him.”

  “Typical,” I say.

  “Wade said something about tax evasion and the green river drying up or some shit, like he owed my dad fifty bucks. Hung up on him.”

  “How much did he promise your dad?”

  “A million.”

  “What the… Is that what you’re asking for? ’Cause you know, I’m fifty bucks, if that. He’d never give up a million for me.”

  “That’s not what he’s saying on TV.”

  “Well, he lies to the media all the time.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “I guess so.”

  We watch the silent scene play out on the screen. When it goes to commercial, I turn to face him.

  “Levon?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I don’t want to go to jail.”

  He looks at me, nods, and then turns back to the TV. When the show comes back on, it’s the end of the episode, and a woman is setting her house on fire. In a strange way, I can relate. Even though I know this trip has to have an end, it still feels like a beginning.

  “He’s not going to give you the money because of me. But you’re right. Wade always does things for the sake of the public eye. It’ll look bad if he doesn’t pay my ransom. But how is it going to go down exactly?”

  “I need to think about it some more,” Levon says. “For now, let’s just rest.”

  “OK.”

  But when he turns out the lights, my eyes stay wide open.

  You don’t think of these situations ever happening to you. But whatever happens, we are in it. There’s no going back.

  Chapter 14

  The morning sun slices into the room, illuminating dust particles that hang and swirl in the stale air. As I wake up, I think about the Borings, Billy Ray, Fin, Rena, and Mrs. B. Are they all worried, or is it true that after forty-eight hours people start to forget?

  I notice Levon also awake and staring into space from his own bed.

  “So, what is it you’re going to do?” I ask him. “After you help your grandmother, that is.”

  “Haven’t thought that far.”

  “Who’s the girlfriend?”

  “Who?”

  “The one in the picture you always look at.”

  “From Miami. A girl from Miami.”

  “And does this girl have a name?”

  He sits up and stretches.

  “What does she look like?”

  “Red hair, short.”

  “Her hair is short, or she is short?”

  “She is.”

  “That’s it? You’re supposed to say something like beautiful or ethereal.”

  “I don’t even know what ethereal means.”

  “It means delicate or dreamlike. My mother was ethereal.”

  “Ah.” He gets up and makes his way toward the bathroom.

  “Do you think I’m ethereal?” I can’t believe that question just came out of my mouth, but last night I may have accidentally killed someone, so I suppose anything is possible.

  He smiles and says, “Sure.”

  “What about my hair? Do you like the blond?”

  “It doesn’t make you look dumb, if that’s what you mean. I don’t think you could ever look dumb.”

  He shuts the door to the bathroom.

  When he gets out, I ask him a question I have been too freaked out to ask. “How did you find me and Jamal?”

  “The hotel clerk told me which way the car went. I ran and then a lady picked me up. I spotted the car. That bar is the only place for miles.”

  I take a shower, breathing in his scent in the bathroom. It smells like a guy but in a good way.

  Instead of breakfast, we load up on stuff from the vending machines.

  “We’re gonna have to go off the grid a little,” he says, as we drive away from the freeway down a one-lane road.

  There is uneasiness in my stomach, but watching Levon calms me. The way his strong hands hold the wheel, his bright eyes and half smile that are starting to feel like home.

  For most of the day we just drive. We don’t say it, but both of us know everything is different now. He is starting to open up to me, and we have been through a traumatic experience. Every once in a while we look at each other, acknowledging something happening, something bigger than ourselves.

  There’s a good chance Jamal is dead. And we might be wanted for murder.

  As the afternoon light drains from the sky, the road we’re on turns to dirt, and we come to a T with a line of mailboxes.

  “Go right,” I say, “and I can’t tell you why.”

  Levon obeys, and we keep driving, the night slowly closing in on us.

  “Do you still have the gun?” I ask.

  He reaches under the seat and brings it out to show me, then puts it back.

  “It’s not loaded. It was my dad’s.”

  “Levon, you have to tell me.”

  He sighs and scratches his head.

  The car speeds into the descending darkness. There are no streetlights for miles in any direction.

  “It was a big show in Miami. My dad never drove for Wade when he was performing, but he did that night. Normally, he drove a black town car, but that night Wade wanted a limo—a real tacky, white one. Everything was fine until we were on the way home. Wade told him to pull over. Your dad was, well, kind of trashed. He said he wanted to drive and that my dad should go in the back with Whisper.”

  “Whisper?”

  “That was the girl’s name. The dancer your dad picked up.”

  “I can only imagine what her deal was. OK, go on.”

  “So my dad’s in the back, and Whisper’s trying to give him a lap dance—and boom, the limo crashes into a storefront. They get out and there’s glass everywhere, and Dad could hear sounds from under the car, animallike sounds.”

  My heart rate goes from soft rock to break beat. I turn to him.

  “Was it an animal?”

  “No, it was a homeless guy, and he was barely alive. Dad tried to call 911, but Wade stopped him. The guy was dying, but Wade wasn’t having any of it. Sound familiar?”

  “Wow.”

  Levon shakes his head, like he still can’t wrap his mind around it. “My dad worked for him for four years. I knew Wade was crazy but not that crazy. Letting someone die?”

  “Oh great, a charming man gets even charmier.”

  “You know that my reasons were different with Jamal, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “So he finally let my dad call 911. But Wade made him say he was driving the car. Wade told him he’d only go to jail for a little while, that he’d give my dad a million when he got out. He also promised he’d look after my grandmother, which he’s never done except to pay the bill for that horrible place she’s in. Basically, he made it sound like a million dollars would solve everything. And my father just didn’t want the guy to die.”

  “Did he?”

  “Yes, a couple
days later. He had other health problems, but the car accident…”

  “Finished the job?”

  “Basically. And my father was booked for vehicular manslaughter.”

  I am speechless. There’s nothing else to say. I am so deeply ashamed that I can’t speak. My father has sunken to a more subterranean low than I could’ve imagined. Was that why he could never face me, because he knew what a dirtbag he was? Was that why I instinctually wanted to help Jamal? To be more like my mother than him?

  Our headlights cut through the thick night, illuminating the trees. I try to let the sound of the wheels and the hum of the engine lull me.

  “Are you OK?” I ask Levon, who is wide awake.

  “Yes, you can sleep. I’ll drive.”

  Chapter 15

  I wake up at dawn with a dry mouth. I find a Smartwater from days ago, and it tastes like heaven. We are parked in a turnout. Out the window I can see Levon peeing under a tree. For some reason, this makes me smile. If only life were that simple.

  He gets back in the car and says, “Morning.”

  He folds open the vintage map, trying to figure out if we’re still heading south.

  “The sun is your best bet,” I say groggily, pointing to where it’s rising. “That’s east, so south is that way.” I point to our left.

  He nods and starts to drive while eating crackers from our vending machine stash. The air comes through the car, and the sun slowly rises until it’s shining directly at us. We both put our visors down at the same time, then turn to each other and smile.

  “So what happened to Whisper?” I ask him.

  “She took off. With my dad’s favorite jacket around her shoulders.”

  He hands me a cracker. It’s kind of stale, but I’m hungry so I don’t care.

  “And you know all this from…”

  “Visiting my dad in jail every Wednesday for two years.”

  “Does he know you’re doing this? That you came to get me?”

  “No.”

  For the next few minutes, new thoughts race around in my brain, trying to catch up with one another. I may be having an epiphany. As I eat the rest of the crackers, I devise a plan, wondering if I’m crazy or if it could really work.

  We get to a point where to keep going south, we have to get back on I-95, which cuts through the trees in an arc over Lake Marion, near Charleston. There’s barely anyone on the highway, but we both check the mirrors every time a car approaches.