Something else that had changed, Tula realized, was that she had lost her anonymity. The eyes of her neighbors followed her everywhere she went. Which is why she had waited long after the ambulance and police cars had left to finally climb down from the tree and retreat to her trailer.
She didn’t stay long, though, because the memory of Harris Squires’s words scared her. She knew the giant man would come looking for her soon. So she had gone to the public toilet, curled up in a stall and had tried to sleep.
Too much had happened, though, for Tula’s mind to relax. She fretted about Carlson-would he live?-and also regretted not speaking with the strange man, Tomlinson, who Tula barely knew but who she had immediately accepted as her second patron and protector.
Early that morning, still unable to sleep, Tula had returned to her tree to speak with the owls and watch the sunrise, she told herself. But it was really to invite that pulsing, trembling feeling into her body. As she straddled the limb, which Tula thought of as a saddle, the Maiden had floated into Tula’s body almost immediately, but only for a short time.
Suddenly, then, without farewell, the Maiden’s voice was gone. It was replaced by the distant inquiries of morning birds-the owls had remained silent-and then the sound of approaching footsteps.
Tula had been weeping, as she always did when the Maiden left her, yet she was crying softly enough to hear the crack of twigs and then a man’s voice say, “Lookee, lookee, what I see. It’s getting so I know where to find you. What do you think you are, chula? Some kind of bird?”
Tula looked down to see Harris Squires staring at her through the strange binoculars that allowed him to see in the night like an animal.
It wasn’t until the giant had grabbed Tula, clapping his hand over her mouth to silence her, that the Maiden’s words returned to comfort the girl, saying, Stop fighting, go with him. You are in God’s hands. God will show you the way.
Now, sitting beside Squires in his oversized truck, Tula said to the man, “What do you call these bracelets on my wrists? They’re hurting me. Will you please take them off?”
Squires made a noise of impatience as he drove. He had been trying to focus on his sex fantasy, but the girl kept talking.
“Why don’t you answer me?” the girl said, irritated. “I have every reason to be angry at you. Instead, I am speaking to you politely. You should at least answer when I ask you a polite question.”
Squires made another groaning sound.
She didn’t stop. “If I had wanted to run from you, God would have given me the strength. Instead, He told me to come with you. That’s why I am here. There’s no need for you to chain my hands.”
Squires was aggravated, but also surprised by the girl’s calm voice, her matter-of-fact manner.
“They’re called handcuffs,” he told her, because it was obvious that she wouldn’t shut up until he answered. “It’s a safety precaution. If you did something stupid, like open the door and jump, who’d you think would get the blame?”
“I just told you,” the girl replied, “God wants me to be with you. God must care about you or He wouldn’t have told me to save you from the alligator last night. I wouldn’t be with you this morning. Do you remember me ordering my people to help you?”
Her people? Who the hell did she think she was?
The girl had something wrong with her brain, Squires decided. Maybe she was some rare variety of retard-he had seen things on TV about kids like that. Or maybe just crazy. It had to be one of the two because of course Squires remembered the girl yelling at the crowd of Mexicans, ordering them to help him. He also remembered the little flash of hope the girl’s voice had created in him as that big goddamn gator swam toward him fast with those devil-red eyes.
Why would the little brat try to help him? It made no sense for her to save his life after he had forced his way into the bathroom, then played around with her while she was naked.
Crazy. Yeah. She had to be.
As Squires drove, he looked at the girl, who was fiddling with the handcuffs, acting like they were hurting her skinny wrists. Close-up, she was a tiny little thing, her fingers long and delicate with dirt beneath the nails. The vertebrae on the back of her neck were visible beneath the Dutch-boy hair, like something he’d see on skinny dogs.
Compared to Squires’s own bulk, the girl was a sack of skin and bone, which Squires found galling. The weirdo was nothing but a worthless little chula, yet there was also something oddly big about her, too, the way she handled herself, full of confidence. It was disconcerting.
In a bar, Squires could flash his shit-kicker monster face as fast as any other brawler, but, truth was, he’d never felt confident about anything in his life. Not compared to the way this little kid acted, anyway.
What really burned his ass, Squires realized, was that all the women in his life were the same way. Frankie and his ball-busting witch of a mother both had that same know-it-all confidence.
No… not exactly the same, because the girl didn’t use the same nasty-mouthed meanness that his mother and Frankie both used to make him feel like a pile of shit most the time. But even though the girl was different, in her way, she was just another bossy female.
Tula said to him now, “You do remember that I helped save you. I can tell. Just now, you were thinking about the big alligator coming to eat you. But it didn’t eat you because we all helped you. So you should trust me. I’m not going to run away. I’m here because God wants me to be with you. Perhaps He wants me to be your protector every day, not just last night. It’s possible.”
“My protector!” Squires laughed. “Take a good look at me, chula. Why the hell would I ever need your help?”
He glanced away from his driving long enough to touch his right bicep, which he was flexing. “You ever seen another man in your life built like me? Not down there in some Mexican shithole, you never did, I’d bet on that. I don’t need protecting from nobody because there’s not a goddamn thing in the world I’m scared of.”
A moment later, he said, “Okay, in a minute or so I’m going to pull up to a garage and I want you to do what I tell you to do.”
They were in East Fort Myers now, bouncing down a long driveway toward the river, horses grazing in a pasture to their right.
The giant man continued, “We’re gonna switch vehicles-it’s where my mom lives, but the bitch isn’t home. She’s off on some cruise someplace with one of her boyfriends. But if you see someone coming down that goddamn driveway, you honk this horn, understand? I’ll leave the truck running until I get it in the garage.”
No one came. Leaving Tula chained in the truck, Squires even took some time to go inside the house, make a protein shake and pack a bag of ice for his sore leg. He also found a pint bottle of tequila, which he kept on the seat next to him.
Soon they were on the road again, but in an older truck with huge tires that smelled of dogs and beer and the tequila the man was nipping at. His hunting buggy, Squires called the vehicle, which had an even louder engine than the truck they had left behind hidden in his mother’s garage.
Tula knew that Squires was lying about taking her to the hospital to see Carlson. But what she had told the giant was true. Even though the man had forced her into the truck-leaving her few possessions behind at the trailer park-she wasn’t going to attempt to escape. Not unless the Maiden ordered her to.
The handcuffs were heavy on her wrists, though. And Tula felt vulnerable, sitting on the floor with her hands bound, unable to see out the window. The man was a fast driver, weaving through morning traffic, braking hard for red lights. Or maybe it just felt as if they were going fast because she was on the floor and Squires had the windows open, the roar of the truck’s mufflers loud in Tula’s ears.
This was even more frightening than climbing onto the top of a freight train, riding exposed to wind and rain through the mountains of Mexico. On the train, at least, Tula had been able to watch for dangers ahead.