“And do what if we find him, Haley? Bring him back here? Back here so Wayne can whip the shit out of him? Back here to this?” I say, holding my arms out wide, running my eyes across the landscape.
“You know,” she says placing her hands on her hips, “this ain’t so bad to some people.”
“No. But it is to others. I’m not so sure he’s worse off.”
The excitement disappears from her face. “And what about you? Is this so bad to you?”
I look at her and shake my head. “Not always, I don’t guess, but it seems it’s bad more times than not. I mean, there’s you. There was Hero. And there are nights when I’m on the porch with a beer, alone and watching the things that go on in the dark — the bugs in the streetlight, the cats milling around. That’s when I think things aren’t so bad. But I look up and down those rails and imagine the places they run to and... I don’t know. Don’t you ever think about somewhere else?”
Crickets chirp softly, warming up for the night’s performance. Shouts of “Touchdown!” come from kids playing football in the street a block away. Haley looks at her fingernails and makes the colors dance by wiggling her fingers. “I just thought it’d be fun to go look for him,” she mumbles.
The front door bursts open and Wayne roars out. “I knew you knew where he was!”
I look around and Wayne pops me in the side of my head. I hop off the porch and he comes down and gets in my face.
“You’d better take me to him right now and I ain’t joking around,” he says, pointing a dirty finger at my nose.
“Christ, settle down.”
“I ain’t slowing down. Darna’s cards said you know where Hero is, just like I thought.”
I back up a step. “I don’t know where he is any more than you do. Darna’s cards are full of shit.”
Wayne reaches out and grabs me by the arm, twisting and pinching my skin. “You’re coming with me and we’re going to get him.”
“Wayne, he doesn’t know where he is,” Haley says.
“You shut the hell up. Y’all both probably know. I’m gonna kick the shit out of all y’all when we find him.”
Haley runs up the stairs into the house, yelling for Darna. Spur is up and barking, scraping at the dirt with his front paws. I try to shake loose from Wayne but lose my feet, and he drags me by the arm to the truck.
“Get your ass up and get in.”
“Wayne, I swear—”
“Goddamnit, get in. You know Hero would run like hell if he saw just me. And don’t give me none of that I don’t know bullshit.”
We climb in, Wayne cranks the truck, and we spin out of the driveway. As we pass in front of my house, Haley runs out the door and yells, “Wait! Wait!” but he never slows and I know it’s going to be a long night. He’ll be watching and hoping for Hero, and so will I.
Part IV
Skipping Town
Pit Stop
by John M. Floyd
State Highway 25
Anna McDowell stood looking out the front window of the roadside gas station/minimart at the empty fields across the highway and the stand of pines beyond. Adrift on a sea of memories, she moved not a muscle, said not a word. Her nine-year-old daughter Deborah, obviously weary of both the view through the window and the delay in their schedule, stood at her side. Deborah turned every few seconds to stare at the closed door of the men’s room, which supposedly contained her five-year-old brother Charlie.
“You think he fell in?” she asked.
Anna said, her eyes still on the distant woods, “He’s okay. Be patient.”
Deborah peered up at her mother’s face. “You look funny, Mom. What’s the deal?”
“Nothing, honey. Just thinking.”
“When are we supposed to get to Aunt Penny’s?”
“Late this afternoon.” Anna turned to her daughter and smiled. Both children adored her husband’s sister, a fact that greatly pleased Anna, and every summer for the past few years Anna and the kids had driven up to Nashville (Franklin, actually) as soon as school was out, to spend a week at Penny’s house. Unmarried and childless, Penny happily smothered her only niece and nephew with attention and affection. The one bad part was the seven-hour drive to get there.
Before Anna could say more, little Charlie McDowell emerged from the restroom and gave them both a What are we waiting for? look. Anna grabbed his still-soapy hand, gazed one last time at the trees across the road, and led her children back down past the shelves of candy bars and potato chips to the front door. Thirty seconds later the three of them were outside and headed for their minivan. The sky was overcast, the day breezy and blessedly cool for early June.
Anna had just taken her keys from her purse when a short, skinny, greasy-haired man appeared from behind a parked car. One of his hands was out of sight in his pocket; the other he clamped around her right arm.
“Open it,” he growled, nodding to the van, “and get the kids in. Now.”
Stunned, Anna dropped her keys on the pavement. The man glared at her, said, “Pick ’em up,” and turned to make sure they weren’t being watched. Both the children were cowering against the side of the van.
Anna knelt to pick up the keys, and when the man turned to her again she did something she would never until this instant have dreamed of doing: she leaned to the left, wrapped her left hand around her right fist, and pistoned straight up from her kneeling position, her right elbow jabbing upward like a spear. As hard as she could, with all the strength of both legs and both arms behind the surge, she drove the point of her elbow up into the hollow underneath the short man’s chin — it thunked like an axe being swung into an oak trunk. The man’s head snapped back, all his muscles went limp, and for a second or two he stood there staring up at the gray sky with eyes that were already rolling back into his head. Then he collapsed like a rag doll and lay flat on the ground, all his limbs extended toward the four points of the compass. A revolver he had taken from his pocket clattered onto the concrete.
Trembling, Anna kicked the gun underneath a car, gathered her children to her like chicks, and steered them toward the store while she took out her cell phone and punched in 911. Behind her, the hapless carjacker twitched, gagged, and staggered to his feet. Bent almost double, he stumbled away with his eyes squeezed shut and his tongue out and both hands holding his throat. Anna, safely inside the store now, saw him blunder headfirst into a parked truck and fall to his knees. Finally he disappeared around the corner of the building.
Half an hour later all the right questions had been asked and answered, and the police left with a bagged-and-tagged weapon, a detailed account of the incident, and an even more detailed description of the attacker. No one knew where he’d gone or how he’d gotten away, but Anna was repeatedly assured that they would find him. She didn’t much care. Her family was safe, and that was all that mattered. She was walking for the second time to her minivan with her children when a newly arrived state trooper approached her.
“Ms. Langley?” he said. “Is that you?”
She looked up at him, frowning for a second before recognition kicked in. She smiled. “It’s me. Last name’s McDowell now. How you doing, Keller?”
He nodded. “So-so.” He tilted his head toward the store behind them, where a second patrolman was speaking to the cashier. “I heard what happened. How in the world did you manage that?”
“I don’t know. I was mad and scared, I guess. And I just finished a self-defense class.”
“I think you got your money’s worth.”