“You little bitch,” Kate said, staring up in the rain, “we have to get help!”
The girl slammed her foot into the side of Kate’s head, driving Kate to her side, and brandished the knife. “We aren’t! We can take care of her, fuck, it she’s just sick for Christ’s sake!” She nodded at a barn across the cow field behind them. “There, we take her there!”
Kate was up immediately on her feet, staring in to the wild eyes and the flash of the blade. “No, we’re through with your pathetic, childish tantrum! Give it up, little girl!” The Nova’s engine coughed, and died. There was a hair’s-breadth of silence.
The girl stood still, whirling one hand in the air. “Come for me. Come on, try it.”
Kate hesitated. If she lunged for the girl, she would be stabbed surely, before she could get hold of the weapon. The girl was smart enough not to make the move herself, for in motion, she would be less in control.
“I’m taking Mistie to that house down there,” said Kate. “I’m not tied up now. You have no gun. You run after me to cut me with that knife and I’ll hear you coming in time to get an arm nick at the most, but then I’ll kill you. It’s that simple. I’ll get your fucking knife and slash your neck wide open. You’ll look like you heard the best joke in your life, as big as that grin is going to be.”
Heart thundering, her eyes locked on the girl in the rain, Kate squatted down and picked Mistie up under her arms. “Come, honey,” she said. Truth or dare? No, this will be lie or dare. Any lie I give the owners of that house will be believed. I’m a teacher, a teacher with a sick child, kidnapped and taken out of state by a maniac. They’ll see my wounds and believe anything I say.
Kate began backing away from the girl with Mistie’s feet dragging the wet weeds.
And then the girl darted forward, not for Kate, but for Mistie, and caught the girl in the shoulder with the knife. A puncture, a blossom of blood. She hopped back as fast as she’d come forward.
“What are you doing?” screamed Kate.
“Stopping you.” The girl wiped rain from her nose. “You hold her to move her, your hands are occupied. You let her down to protect her, and you aren’t moving her anymore. Cool, huh?”
“You hurt Mistie!”
“You’re fault, not mine.”
“She’s a child, for God’s sake!”
“You didn’t think I was able to hurt a child? I was ready to let her drown as easy as I would have let you. So just try me a bit more, teacher. You keep moving her that way and I’ll poke her so full of holes before you get her to the house she’ll be suckin’ up rain like a big, fat old sponge.”
Kate’s teeth, sanded down, stinging and wanting to tear the face off the girl. I will kill you. Give me time. She looked at the barn across the field.
Mistie was easy to carry through the cow piles and the tall grasses with the girl and her knife trailing behind.
49
The teacher’s hands were left free so she could tend the child, but Tony had told the woman to tie her own ankles together with bale string or she’d hobble the child in effigy. She knew what effigy was; she’d seen a video on the American Revolution in fifth grade. The Americans back then did stuff to other people in effigy all the time, like burning them and hanging them and stuff. The teacher didn’t much seem to care what happened to her anymore. But the child was Tony’s ace in the hole. The teacher cared about Baby Doll. The teacher’s ankles were bound neatly with a tidy little knot in the back, as neatly as a teacher who’d been a Girl Scout could do.
The barn was different from the barn the Hot Heads used as a getaway back in Pippins. It was much bigger, and had two sides separated from each other with a supply room. On the side Tony had picked there were eight stalls, a ladder, and a loft. Beneath the sound of the rain on the roof, Tony could hear the skittering of mice and rats in the walls and under the floorboards. The barn wasn’t used for tobacco but for animals, and it smelled like it.
Tony had taken the duffel bag from the car. So other than a few farts lingering in the cushions and whatever DNA was in Baby Doll’s vomit, and well, there wasn’t much to trace the stolen Nova to them. Well, except for fingerprints and Tony didn’t have any on file and she was sure the teacher and Baby Doll didn’t. In the country there were always trashed cars and trucks on the sides of roads. They could stay there for weeks, even months, before somebody alerted somebody and had them hauled away or maybe tried to find the people who’d last driven them. Tony wasn’t worried about the Nova.
The teacher sat on some straw she’d spread on the floor. Tony was on a bale a couple yards away. She’d found some cool stuff in the supply room — a saw, a pitchfork, an ax. The ax was better than the knife, though she’d put the knife back in its place in her sock for future need. The saw and pitchfork were leaning against a stall door, but the ax was resting on Tony’s knee. It was heavy, but would pack a damn good punch.
Manly yes, she thought, but I like it, too.
It was evening, sometime around eight or nine, Tony guessed. In a dented metal wheelbarrow a small fire burned. It had been the teacher’s idea, so they could see what they were doing. There had been old planks and wooden blocks in the store room, and they were old and dry enough to burn hot. It was started with straw, and then splinters pulled from stall walls, and then the thicker blocks. Tony thought that when she finally reached Burton’s ranch in Lamesa, she would know how to build a really good campfire for the cowboys to sit around.
The teacher wore only her bra and jeans. She stroked Baby Doll’s hair and every so often dipping the bottom of her sweatshirt into a pail of rainwater at her feet and wiping the kid’s face off. The kid had awakened off and on, and said she wasn’t hungry and wondered where her Mama was. Tony’s gut tightened when the kid asked about her Mama. Why hadn’t the Mama sent out police looking for the kid? Why hadn’t her name been on the T.V. news last night? Just didn’t care, clearly. Bitch like Mam.
The teacher began to hum a song, something that sounded like a nursery rhyme. Tony ordered her to stop. She did, but she looked at Tony with eyes that said, “One wrong move and you’re dead.” Tony wouldn’t have believed it yesterday. Today, she did.
The fire light played shadows across the floor and the walls and the nooks in the stall doors. Tony had never been in a barn at night. She didn’t like it. It was creepy, with most of whatever was in there with them in darkness, things that could watch them while going undetected. Even a flashlight wouldn’t have made much difference.
The teacher began to sing again. Again, Tony said, “Shut the hell up!” Baby Doll whined in sleep then muttered, “Val.”
“Truth or dare?” asked the teacher.
“Not now.”
“It’s your game, and you’re in control. Why not take a chance?” The teacher’s eyes looked like she was smiling even though the corners of her mouth were turned down. Her skin crawled in the light of the fire.
Tony patted the ax, punctuating her power. “Truth.”
“What’s your name?”
“Ha!” This truly was funny. They’d spend so much time together and the teacher didn’t even know her name. “Okay, I’ll give you truth. It’s Tony.”
“Hm,” said the teacher. “Tony what?”
“Tony’s good enough,” said Tony. “My turn. Truth or dare?”
“Dare.”
“No kiddin’?” This was a nice change. “Okay, I want you to lick the bottom of my boot. It’s got lots of nice mouse shit on it.”
The teacher cocked her head. “I will,” she said. “But why did you pick that?”