Messenger 93

by Barbara Radecki

  The trucker tapped his bottle against my thigh again. This time it was a slight tap, just the edge of the rim. “And you know what the little Alices do?” he said.

  And then I knew for sure that he wasn’t giving us a lift out of the goodness of his heart, or because he was bored, or because he wanted to protect us.

  “They show gratitude,” he said.

  “Yeah?” I said, pretending to smile, playing dumb.

  “They pay their way,” he said.

  “Oh, okay,” I said too quickly, bending over to get my backpack. “How much do you want?” Except there was no money inside my bag, and Gray had no money either.

  The trucker put his hand on my shoulder to stop me. “That’s not how they pay.”

  Of course I knew that’s what he meant. He had to play his game in the middle of nowhere, hurtling down a lonely road.

  A loaded hush squashed the air in the cab.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Gray’s right hand reaching into his left sleeve.

  The knife.

  Pictures of a Psycho-type stabbing strobed through my mind. Spurting blood, agonizing screams, anguished expressions. The truck veering off the road into trees. A fatal crash.

  Another possibility cut in too. A way to survive maybe. To not kill anyone. To get away.

  I put my hand on Gray’s forearm, the one closest to me with the knife strapped to it, and gave it a sharp squeeze. Get ready, I wanted the gesture to say to him, trust me. Immediately Gray’s hand stopped reaching.

  I arranged the muscles of my face into a docile smile and turned to the trucker. I remembered Gray’s mask — it felt like I was wearing it. An anonymous somebody else talking through holes in thin plastic. “I’ll pay our way,” I said.

  “Good girl,” the trucker said. He began to fumble under his gut for his belt buckle.

  “No, wait,” I said. My hand went to his arm — it was much less soft than it looked. I tried not to gag. I said, “You can’t be driving. It won’t be good.”

  “Yeah, right,” he said. His face had melted again and his bottom lip was hanging open, the tip of his tongue sticking against it. All the parts of his mouth were so red. His breath had started to wheeze in and out in shallow bursts. It smelled like puke.

  He checked the rearview mirror and began to slow the truck down, easing it to the shoulder. The cab joggled and vibrated as we landed on the gravel shoulder. Gray felt for my hand and pulled it into the space where our legs were touching. He laced his fingers with mine and we held hands, the veins in our wrists pulsing together, for the several seconds it took the truck to roll to a stop.

  The trucker locked the brake and flopped back and fumbled with his belt buckle again. “Wait,” I said. “This is no good. There’s not enough room. Let’s just hop out on the side. For privacy.” I tipped my head to indicate Gray. “It’ll be much better outside.” I smiled at the trucker. “For both of us.” I didn’t recognize the voice I was using.

  “Sure, sure,” he said, now fumbling with the handle of the driver’s door. “Let’s go for it.” He opened the door and leaned out, then grabbed my wrist and pulled me after him. I was a doll, weightless and nothing.

  I glanced back at Gray and he looked like ash. But he was reaching for the passenger door and slinging our two backpacks over his arm.

  I let the trucker pull me to the side of the road, behind the truck and out of view of any oncoming traffic, which there wasn’t. He was fixated on me, either groping his hands through my hair or rooting for his belt buckle. I locked eyes on what I was doing, but I was intensely aware of Gray slipping out the passenger side with our bags, of him edging towards the woods.

  “Let me,” I said to the trucker. I let him fondle my hair and the top of my head as I crouched to undo his belt buckle. I tried to crowd out the devastating thought that this was the first time I’d ever done anything like this.

  My gag reflex kicked in and I made sure not to look up and show him my face. I reached for his zipper. His gut pressed into my shaking, fumbling hands. His rough fingers pushed at my head, poking and prodding at me, until his jeans were down.

  Hate coursed through me. I had no idea what I was supposed to do, or how I was supposed to do it. But I knew — I wasn’t going to do it.

  A flash of movement caught my eye. I didn’t have to look to know it was Gray and his knife, charging towards us, coming to avenge. But that’s not how this was going down. With Gray summoning blood and then going to jail for it. I was going to stop it.

  Rolls of white skin, soft and hard mixed together, thatches of overlapping coarse dark hair. Hands on my head, on my face, a thumb pushed into my mouth. Salt and grime on my tongue. I couldn’t see what was happening, couldn’t breathe it in.

  In a movement so quick and sharp even I had no time to register it, I drew my arm back and punched with all my strength into the void. I heard him yelp-scream before he started to crumple over, his head and chest caving in towards me like a human tsunami.

  I ducked out of the way. I spent only a second, a frozen, drawn-out second, reveling in his stooped and groveling pain. But then he had his own explosion of rage. Moaning and grunting, he flung his hand out. His fingers caught the pocket of my coat and he yanked hard. I yanked hard the other way. There was a screech of ripping fabric. High on adrenaline, I rolled my hand into a fist and punched him across the face. There was a spurt of blood. He yelled out and reared back, holding his hand to his nose. But I was free.

  I wheeled away and grabbed Gray’s knife-wielding hand and pulled him towards our backpacks that he’d left on the side of the road. I grabbed mine and checked to make sure that Gray was with me and that he grabbed his too, and together we leapt off the road and over the brush and into the woods.

  Anguished muffled yelps echoed after us, and it amazed me that I’d had enough strength, or that the trucker’s body was weak enough, that I could momentarily crush him.

  4

  WE RAN FOR A long time without looking back, crashing through the obstacle-course forest like hunted animals. We slowed only when it started to rain. Gray pulled out his raincoat, a plastic poncho, and a garbage bag. He slipped the poncho over my head, covering my coat and backpack. He zipped on his raincoat, then tore holes in the garbage bag and slipped it over his head and arms. I helped yank the plastic bag over his backpack. He noticed the rain stinging my eyes, and took off his cap and slid it under my hood and over my head. The tweed brim kept the rain off my face. The whole thing took a minute, no more, then we were on the move again, leaning against the weather.

  The rain didn’t stay low-key — the kind where we could’ve put up the tent — but unleashed with a vengeance. It was so forceful, it hissed as it fell, lashing through the tree cover. It wasn’t long before we were sopping, first our jeans soaking through, then the damp leaching up under our coats and down through our socks. Walter had tried to warn us. He’d even given us proper clothes. But I’d taken the warm wool underwear off when I’d dressed for a day I thought would be spent on a bus.

  Deep cold began to sink in, bitter and sharp as winter. The teeth-chatter of shivering and the mushy squelch of our footfalls were the only sounds we had the energy to make.

  The sun was setting behind us and for a while there was a certain amount of ambient light, but heavy rainclouds kept rolling in and soon it was total black. Gray stopped to root around in the outside pockets of his backpack, and he pulled out two small flashlights. He gave one to me and we proceeded by flashlight, aiming the beams ahead of us and continuing on without speaking. We hiked for another hour before the rain let up to almost nothing. We climbed a small hill and reached higher, dryer ground.

  “I need to stop.” My words slurred. My teeth chattered. My bones felt like they’d been carved out of ice.

  Gray was shivering and panting to catch his breath. “Yeah, me too.”

 
; Suddenly I realized that we could die. If we didn’t warm up soon, our bodies would literally shut down. Gray seemed to know it too. He fell to his knees and worked on pulling the tent out. I took off the poncho and used it to cover anything that came out of our bags. Spattering drops echoed around us like gunshot. Together, we spread the tent and raised it, part by part. Then we dug a trench around it using thick greenwood branches.

  My hands were so cold, I couldn’t feel them anymore. The rest of me, I wished I couldn’t feel. Every muscle ached.

  We had no choice but to crawl inside the tent with our soaking clothes and backpacks. We set the flashlights at angles on the ground so we could see what we were doing, then pulled off our boots and coats and laid them at the entrance.

  Gray didn’t waste a second — he stripped off his jeans and sweatshirt. I tried not to notice the flashlight glow on his skin, his long limbs and slim back, the curved scapulas arcing out. He fumbled with the leather holster that was wrapped around his forearm, unstrapped the knife, and laid it on the ground. He covered up just as fast, pulling on long underwear from Walter’s waterproof bag.

  The wool underwear I’d worn the night before was still damp from my time on the dew-covered grass that morning. So I got a sweatshirt from my backpack. Luckily it was dry. I had no second pair of pants.

  Gray, still shivering, unrolled his sleeping bag and burrowed inside it, and I turned away from him and changed quickly, swapping one sweatshirt for another, stripping off my jeans. The wet denim stuck to my skin. It took forever to peel them off.

  I couldn’t help checking out my own flashlight-revealed body — the new white cotton drugstore sweatshirt and undies, cold-splotched skin, too many awkward angles. I was so relieved when I could finally crawl, bare-legged, into my sleeping bag — Walter’s sleeping bag actually. Lucky chance that I had it.

  Except for the mound of wet clothes by the front flap, it was dry in the tent. I could almost cry from the relief of it. From the relief of not running. Of letting my body lie down and rest. But I was chilled through and, like Gray, was kneading and rubbing at my icy parts.

  “I’m frozen,” I said after a while.

  “Me too.” Gray’s teeth were chattering so hard, he could hardly speak.

  “Maybe we should do that thing … where we share body heat?”

  “Yeah, right.” His voice was subdued. “If you’re okay with it.”

  “I’m okay,” I said.

  I unzipped the side of my sleeping bag and Gray did the same and we paired them together. We crawled back in and checked with each other. I don’t know who was the first to reach out, but then we had our arms wrapped around each other and our legs extended and intertwined. So cold, I could feel his cold. We pressed together, my cheek against his neck, against the skin with the feather tattoo.

  And then I started to cry. I tried to stop the tears, but I couldn’t.

  He stroked his hands along my back. It was possible he was crying too.

  After a while, our body heat began to rise. Its warm ribbon passed through our chests where they pressed together, and down to our twined feet and grasping hands. It looped through us, from one to the other and back into ourselves. Soon I stopped crying, and I could feel Gray’s tensed body soften and relax against me.

  I was afraid to fall asleep, not sure if it would mean the end of me. I was afraid of Gray falling asleep for the same reason. We stared at each other. Keeping each other awake. Alive. His eyes — interstellar planets — searched mine, and mine — bleary and sore — searched his. It was disorienting and strange and I didn’t want it to stop.

  He took a breath to say something and there was so much feeling in his expression that I almost worried what it would be. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  It took me by surprise. “For what?” I even managed a smile. “I’m, like, ten thousand times warmer.”

  But his expression stayed serious. “For what happened back there. For not stopping it.”

  “I didn’t want you to use the knife.”

  “I know, but —”

  But I didn’t want to talk about the trucker. Didn’t want to think about him ever again.

  “I knew what I was doing, Gray. And it worked.”

  “What if it didn’t work?”

  We were still holding hands, our fingers laced together in the slender space between us.

  “You were right there,” I said. He flinched and closed his eyes. “Gray, I knew you were there. That’s what mattered.”

  He opened his eyes and gave me a pleading look. “How am I going to help Jocelyn if I cave every time it gets real?”

  “You won’t cave,” I said. “You haven’t caved once.”

  It looked like he wanted to argue, but he stopped himself and his eyes searched mine.

  I said, “You haven’t given up on finding her. You got us here. Because of you we’re in this tent. It was you showing everyone her face at City Hall, making sure they saw her. It was you asking questions at the police station. Every time they try to shut you down, you go around them.”

  His jaw clenched a bit. His fingers squeezed mine. Like an involuntary beat of a heart.

  “Do you love her?” I said.

  He blinked a few times. His lips twitched then softened.

  Warmth drew through me as I waited for him to answer. I wanted so badly to hear him talk about it. If anyone could make me believe in love, it was Gray.

  He thought a while longer. Long enough that it burned me up from the inside out.

  “I don’t really know anything about it,” he said. “But I know I don’t feel that way about Jocelyn.”

  I was very aware of how my body relaxed. “She’s practically your cousin,” I said, gently mimicking his earlier words, making fun of my question.

  “Yeah,” he said, softly smiling. “She’s family.”

  It went quiet between us again. Our fingers were laced together. Our toes were touching. Small points of soothing weight.

  I said, “I don’t know anything about it either.”

  “No?” he said.

  I shook my head, watching him the whole time.

  He leaned closer, gazed intently at all the aspects of my face. He was so close I could taste his breath. I reached for him too, and then our lips came together. Our mouths, our bodies, equally pressing and urgent. Equally yearning.

  Oh this. This is what it means.

  MONDAY, APRIL 16

  THREE DAYS UNTIL THE FALL

  1

  I ROUSED BUT DIDN’T wake all the way up when Gray reached for his flashlight in the middle of the night. He turned it off, then reached for mine and turned it off too. This time I knew exactly where I was. Where I wanted to be. Beside Gray in the shimmering dark.

  I floated in warmth as he lay down again, as he draped his arm across my stomach. It was a dream to feel him there, and I didn’t ever want to lose that feeling, that knowing. Didn’t ever want to forget it.

  I laid my arm across his side. Didn’t question that I was allowed to put parts of myself on him. I released myself to the hypnotic rise and fall of his breath, his mouth against my shoulder, the softness of his hair against my cheek. He steadied my body and my mind. I was full of wonder. Wonder full.

  Before long, I fell back into deepest sleep.

  “SHE WILL FALL IN three days.” In my ear, as usual. Not dramatic, not loud or quiet. Not male, not female. The tent was lit from outside. A gossamer blue. The air felt crystalized with cool.

  There was a squawk in the distance. Caw! A crow flying by overhead.

  Fall can mean a lot of things. You can fall for someone.

  I said his name in my mind. Gray.

  I looked beside me. He was gone and his sleeping bag had been unzipped from mine and already rolled up. The smell of cooking drifted over and I inhaled.

  I
sat up and rubbed sleep from my eyes. My backpack was gone, and so were all the other wet things. My raincoat was still there, and I pulled it on. It was dry and warm. The smell of simmering food and budding trees and moldering groundcover made me lightheaded.

  My stomach rumbled. I remembered that I’d dreamt of eating — my father’s pancakes, Lily’s stew, sharing an ice cream cone with Trevor when we were kids.

  I combed my fingers through my hair before unzipping the flap and crawling out of the tent. Our backpacks and boots and any clothing that had gotten wet were hung on low branches or laid out to dry on the plastic garbage bag Gray had worn the day before. Gray was crouched on a deadwood log not far off, stirring a small pot that was set over the low blue burn of a portable cookstove.

  He looked so good. He was wearing his tweed cap, and I remembered the feel of it on my head, how it had kept the rain from clipping my face.

  He smiled and passed me my socks and the woolen long johns Walter had lent me, stiff but dry now. I tried hard not to beam like a fool while I pulled them over my bare legs.

  It was a good morning. Lavender clouds lay in fuzzy strips across the sky. The sun was low and rising and burnished gold. It looked like a celestial being caught in the treetops. The whole world was different today. Snug and safe and buzzing.

  I found a dead stump and rolled it close to Gray, close to the grill.

  “What do you want for breakfast?” he said. “Instant oatmeal or chicken cacciatore?”

  “Chicken cacciatore?” I laughed.

  “For real. I brought these freeze-dried meals with me. I’m so hungry, I could eat them all right now.” He shrugged. “But you have your pick.”

  “Oh, man,” I said. My stomach rumbled again. “Bring on the chicken cacciatore.” A hot meal sounded too good to be true.

  “I don’t have any coffee, if that’s your thing,” he said, pointing to his bag. “But there might be some cocoa in there.”

  “Oh my god, hot chocolate? I love you!” My skin flushed and I clamped my mouth.