God, he hated them.
And he hated himself. Some Ojibwe, the way he’d gone all through the cabin, broom in hand, like a maid. And last night, the way he’d cowered in the wigwam while these yahoos invaded his territory. His territory – that’s what it was. The cabin should never have been built, but it was still standing on his land, next to his hard-built wigwam. But, like a scared little kid, he’d stayed inside and let a bunch of high school losers have the run of the place.
Well, it wouldn’t happen again – he’d make sure of that. Next time, he’d take them on. The next time a white person set foot on his territory, he’d fight back, one way or another.
At the end of the day, the white world was finally locked up and put aside, hidden away like a box of nasty tricks that could no longer draw him in.
He went deep into the forest and gathered plants – wild honeysuckle, lady’s slipper, some nice-smelling weeds that at least looked like sacred sweetgrass. After they were dry he’d burn them on the beach, make a thanksgiving offering.
As he laid the herbs carefully on the wigwam floor, he felt hunger pangs – sharp and painful, as if he’d swallowed an invisible knife. He held out as long as he could before he ate dinner – a stick of beef jerky wrapped up in a cold, dry tortilla. His teeth gnawed the leathery meat, bringing unwelcome reminders of other food – warm meatballs and gravy for Sunday dinner, his mother’s home-made lasagne. As he sat alone in the darkening wigwam, he thought about the parties they used to have – his mother’s friends and their kids, the bottles of wine at the table, the conversations and card games, the telling of stories and laughing until late in the night.
After he finished his food, he took off his jeans and T-shirt, covered himself with his blanket and lay down to sleep. He listened for sounds – not just the hum of insects or the bark of distant dogs, but human noise. In the days since he left Minneapolis, he’d grown used to the quiet. He could pick things out – bird calls, the lapping of the waves on the beach, the low growl of an outboard motor across the lake.
Now he listened for traffic out on the black-topped county road, and reached for the piece of firewood that he’d used as a weapon. What if the intruders came back? They’d wonder who fixed the smashed lock. Wouldn’t they guess that somebody was living close by? Wouldn’t they put two and two together and search the woods?
No. They weren’t that smart. They were so stupid, they probably wouldn’t even be able to find the place again.
Jonah shifted his body to get comfortable on the hard ground. Other thoughts crept into his mind – people again. A girl he’d met at the class party before school finished. What was her name? He couldn’t remember. He could only remember her face. How pretty she was, with chestnut hair and big brown eyes. Her sweet voice, and the way she listened so closely to every word he said. He tried not to think about her now, about wanting to talk to her, wanting to kiss her, wanting to touch her hair, wanting. . .
He tried not to think about how lonely he was.
Chapter Seven
ETTA
Night.
Mom got called in to work a late waitress shift. We’d already had a long day, but Saturday night was the best for tips so no way could she turn down a chance to work the dining room. It meant $100 minimum, Mom said, cash in hand, way more than she ever got just cleaning the rooms.
I made us some macaroni and cheese – the real kind, not the mix stuff from a box – while Mom took a quick shower, put her hair up in a bun, rubbed out a couple stains on the housekeeping dress that she hadn’t washed yet.
While she was wolfing down her food, she tried calling Kyle. She turned away from me while she left her message, like not seeing her face meant I couldn’t hear what she said.
‘Hey, hon, it’s me.’
How could she get her voice to go so high-pitched and girly?
‘I just wanted you to know that I won’t be in tonight, so I’ll see you when I see you, OK?’
When she put her phone into her purse she looked at me and shrugged, as if to say, ‘A girl has to do what a girl has to do.’ Then she gave me a kiss and bounced out the door, humming to herself, like someone who was happy, like someone who didn’t have a care in the world.
The sound brought back the feeling I’d had in the morning, driving to Duluth. Whatever happened between Mom and me, we’d work things out – just the two of us. The men that kept getting in the way – the Kyles – weren’t important. They were just a silly phase that she’d grow out of one day.
I fell asleep watching TV and woke up about midnight. I went into the bathroom to get ready for bed. The new lipstick we’d bought at the Duluth Walmart was still in the bag, stashed in the vanity drawer. I don’t know why I thought this would be a good time to try it on. Maybe it was because I was alone – there wouldn’t be any witnesses.
The lipstick looked odd at first – too bright, unnaturally frosty like bubblegum ice cream that had silver glitter sprinkled on top. It made me laugh, and that gave me another idea. I’d rummage around Mom’s make-up and try on some other stuff, just for fun. So on it went, the thick foundation – a shade too dark, just the way Mom wore it – the lilac eyeshadow, the jet-black eyeliner, the thick, gloopy mascara.
It was funny. Mom was always trying to get me to wear this stuff. She was constantly telling me to ‘accent my femininity’ by wearing skirts and tighter tops to show off my ‘assets’, but I always resisted. Now, looking in the mirror, I knew why. Make-up didn’t make me look feminine, it made me look like a freak. I didn’t look like a grown-up woman. I looked like a male cartoon character – Bugs Bunny or Eric Cartman – dressed up in girls’ clothes to trick somebody.
I was about to rub it all off with face cream when the kitchen door slammed. I heard footsteps and weird noises – metal clangs that sounded like pots and pans banging, glasses tinkling, drawers being pulled out and utensils clattering onto the floor. I knew straight away that it wasn’t Mom, but who’d break into our trailer and steal our cooking stuff?
‘Yo!’ Kyle’s voice. ‘Anybody home?’
I locked the door and turned off the tap.
‘Hey.’ Too late. Footsteps came down the hall. ‘You in there, honey?’
‘It’s me, Etta. Mom’s at work.’
He must have known that. I’d heard her make the call.
I waited for an answer. ‘Kyle?’
I heard men’s voices in the kitchen and stuff being moved around.
‘Kyle? Is that you?’
Nothing. Just breathing, shuffling. What the hell was he doing? It had to be Kyle, but why didn’t he answer?
I stepped away from the door. The room started to wobble so I steadied myself with the edge of the bathtub until I could sit down on the toilet. I put my head between my legs and took deep breaths. Good. That was better. I’d just have to stay here till Mom got home. She could deal with this, she’d know what to do.
Then I thought, no, Mom would think it was crazy to be so scared. She’d never hide out in the bathroom just because of some guy. She’d laugh at me for being such a wuss.
I stood up and listened again – just that low murmuring from the kitchen. I took in another deep breath, tried to relax. Maybe Kyle was already gone, or maybe he was waiting politely for me to come out, like any normal person would do. Maybe he’d have a reasonable explanation for what he was up to, like any normal person. This was only Kyle. It wasn’t the big bad wolf, it wasn’t a zombie, it wasn’t that guy in The Shining, ready to kill me with an axe.
Just my mom’s boyfriend.
I opened the door.
Kyle was waiting, flashing his teeth. Here’s Johnny.
PETER
Why hadn’t he brought the stupid phone? Even if there’d been no reception, he could’ve used the light as a makeshift torch. It was too dark to read the map, too dark to see the road. There were no houses in the distance with warm, welcoming lights to guide him. There was no kindly old lady waiting for a young man lost on the moors
to come in and sit by the fire, while she prepared a steaming bowl of chicken soup or porridge.
The bus dropped him off in Welmer in the late afternoon. It wasn’t a bad place – it had a high street with older-looking brick buildings and pubs with names like The Bait Shop and The Fish Bowl. The names of the beers were funny, too. Peter wished he’d brought his camera to take pictures of the signs – Hamms, Pabst, Schmidt. Leinenkugel, now that was a random name. But who would he have shown them to? Dad wouldn’t laugh. Even before, in the good old days, Dad wouldn’t have laughed – only Mum.
He went to the supermarket and asked for Duane, just like Ken had told him to.
‘What?’ The chubby girl at the check-out twitched her head slightly, as if he were speaking a foreign language.
‘Duane,’ Peter said, trying to add a bit of a twang.
‘Oh, Duane,’ the girl said. ‘He don’t own this place no more.’ She twiddled her varnished, inch-long nails on the black plastic conveyer belt. There was a customer behind him and a queue building up.
‘Is there a taxi rank in the village?’ It was worth a try.
‘A what?’
So, instead of getting a lift, he walked to County DD and stuck out his thumb. After all, the cabin was only a few miles from town, according to Ken. It would be no time at all before some kind, curious soul from Welmer offered him a lift, drove him along the darkening country roads, dropped him off at the top of the cabin’s driveway with a wave or a smile.
He hiked for a mile – no one. Another mile, and he got passed by a battered lorry full of kids, who only slowed down long enough to throw an empty lager can at him. By the third mile the sun had set.
With the darkness came exhaustion. It had been a long day. It’d been hours since he’d had anything proper to eat. Now, struggling along the side of the road, his bag of food and clothing getting heavier and heavier, having no idea how much further he had to walk, he wanted nothing more than to just lie down in the ditch and go to sleep.
He looked up at the starry sky.
‘Keep going.’ Mum’s voice in his head. Great, now she was talking to him. ‘You never know what’s around the next bend.’
ETTA
I should have slammed the door, locked it again, cowered in the tub until Kyle was gone.
‘Hey, Etta.’ His smile was still blazing when I stepped out of the bathroom, and he was using his nice guy voice. I got a big hug, too, like he was happy to see me.
‘Your mom said you went up to Duluth.’ He let go a little, stepped back so he could look at me. His hands were still on my shoulders, holding them so I couldn’t move.
‘We’re back now,’ I said. I tried to sound casual, as if there was nothing scary going on, as if men invaded our house all the time. ‘Mom’ll be home any minute.’
‘Great,’ he said. He let go of one shoulder, tightened up his grip on the other one, using it to herd me down the hall.
In the kitchen, two men were standing behind the counter. One of them was the skinny weasel-faced boy I’d seen in Kyle’s car the night before. The other guy was older, with a fat stomach and a red face, and a flabby neck that was covered in pimples.
They had stuff spread out in front of them like they were working in a store. Metal cans – that must have been the clanging. Clear plastic bags filled with powdery stuff. A big pile of crumpled-up money.
My stomach flipped. This was bad.
‘Hey, Charlie, look who’s here.’
Charlie, the fat guy, looked me up and down and grunted something. The weasel kid grabbed one of the bags of yellowy powder, hid it behind his back.
‘You don’t have to do that.’ Kyle’s fingers moved down from my shoulder to my arm. He squeezed the same place where he’d bruised me before. The pain travelled through my skin, into my muscles, all the way down to the bone.
‘You ain’t seen nothing, have you, Etta?’
I shook my head. Kyle eased up on his grip.
‘Good.’ He reached down to the floor, picked up a duffle bag, and tossed it to the kid, who started putting away all the counter stuff.
Kyle took my arm again, gentler this time, and led me towards the door, still smiling, still sounding nice.
‘We just need you to come with us while we run a little errand for your mom,’ he said.
‘What kind of errand?’
Kyle opened the door for me, led me down the steps. From behind me, a blubbery hand brushed against my butt.
‘She wants us to drop off some stuff at the hotel and give her a lift home.’
Kyle’s car was parked right in front, the engine running. There were more men inside. I couldn’t tell how many.
‘Why can’t I wait here?’
Kyle was opening the back door, guiding me in.
‘She wants you to come along. That’s what she said. You can ask her yourself when we get there.’
I knew he was lying. He had to be lying, but I went with them, like he told me to. I didn’t scream, I didn’t try to run away. I just climbed into the back seat, behind Kyle and the driver, got squashed in between the skinny kid and the pimply fatso.
As the car pulled out of the trailer park, I looked straight ahead. I kept my legs tight together and my arms crossed. Beside me, Charlie’s breath was heavy and wheezy, like he’d just come back from a run. The driver fiddled with the radio for a minute, but there was nothing but static. We got to the stop sign at the end of Main Street. Then we turned left – the wrong way.
I banged on the back of Kyle’s seat. ‘Hey! Where you going?’
Charlie grabbed my arm, bent it back.
‘You’ve got to take me back,’ I shouted, trying to pull away. ‘My mom’s going to get worried.’
‘Your mom?’ Kyle turned around so fast I thought he was going to jump over the seat and slap me. ‘You think your mom don’t know what’s going on?’ he shouted. ‘You think your mom ain’t the one who wants us to teach you a lesson?’ He looked over at Charlie. ‘Her mom. Jesus.’
Everybody laughed, like my mom was some kind of joke.
I slumped down, folded my arms, bit my mouth shut. Don’t cry, I told myself. Whatever you do, don’t cry.
I couldn’t tell how far we were driving or how long it took. I tried counting off minutes, like Hansel and Gretel’s trail of crumbs, but I lost track because other thoughts kept crowding my head, swirling like Tilt-a-Whirls, red and out of control. Outside of me things moved fast too – the car, the trees, the utility poles whooshing past in the headlights’ spill.
Charlie shifted his weight, edged his right leg a little closer. I twisted my body towards the other side. I stared out the side window into the black night, trying to imagine myself someplace else. Lying in the sun. Skiing down a mountain.
Keep calm, I told myself. Keep breathing. Don’t worry about the road speeding by. Think of something nice – puppies and flowers.
Thinking didn’t work.
The wrong things kept popping into my head. Not nice thoughts, but bad ones, worse places, not better. I pictured us driving off the main highway and down a bumpy narrow-rut road. I felt Kyle and Charlie pulling me out of the car and dragging me into the forest. I smelled dirt and rotten leaves, pictured shovels and pick-axes – digging my own grave.
We drove and drove. I peeked at the side mirror. Tail lights reflected on blacktop, then gravel, back to blacktop again. Every turn, every dip in the road I thought would be the last one, the one before they marched me into the woods and made me kneel down, before they put the blindfold on me or the bag over my head.
Finally, the car slowed down.
This is it, I thought. The final turn-off.
Charlie grabbed me with his left arm, pinned my shoulders against the back of the seat, like he thought I was going to make a run for it, or try to hurl myself through the door while the car was still moving.
‘The hell is that?’ Kyle shouted.
The guys in the back leaned forward to look out through the windshield.
I saw it too – a tall shape in the road. At first I thought it was an animal, but what animal would move like that, jump up and down like it was trying to stop us? What animal would be wearing a red T-shirt? What animal would have dyed blonde hair?
It was a boy.
‘You’re gonna hit him, man.’
Was the boy crazy? Why didn’t he move? His arms were folded in front of his body like that was going to shield him from the car. His eyes were closed, like he was waiting for impact.
I closed my eyes too. In a second, the boy was going to come hurtling through the windshield between Kyle and the driver. He was going to smash into the backseat, crush me to death.
The driver slammed on the brakes. The car swerved, away from the boy, and span around, out of control, faster and faster. The skinny kid ended up on the floor and fat Charlie’s body rammed into my side. I got thrown closer to the door. I held onto the armrest and braced myself with my head between my arms, screaming my head off, waiting to be flung out the door and onto the blacktop, or for the car to flip upside down and burst into flames.
PETER
The car skidded away from him, turning round and round like one of those funfair teacup rides. Peter ran onto the gravel shoulder and watched until the car came to a standstill on the edge of the road, still upright but facing sideways. The engine was running and the lights were on, illuminating a deep, narrow ditch.
Inside the car, one of the passengers moved. Something told him – instinct, not Mum this time – that he had to get out of there. Whoever was in the car had just tried to run him over. He had to go – now. He staggered backwards, keeping his eye on the car, afraid to turn his back on it. As the soft shoulder gave way to muddy earth, he skidded down into a drainage ditch, landing face front on the wet ground.
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