“I was kidnapping Mistie. You know what that means if I’m caught? Taking a child across state lines in a kidnapping? A teacher doing something like that?”
“I wouldn’t have told.”
“How would I have known that? You cut me up, beat me, you kicked me, you tried to drown us in the car.”
“I wouldn’t have told ‘cause that’s probably the best thing a teacher could do, saving a kid.”
“Teachers do a lot of good things, Tony….”
“Most teachers don’t do shit!” Tony let out three loud breaths. Her fists clenched in and out. “They don’t care about nothing! Truth? Okay, while we’re at it. I didn’t try to drown your ass. I rolled the windows down so I could get you out. That’s the truth. You ain’t dead, are you?”
“I think you just decided we were better to you alive than dead. We made a tolerable-looking family unit, the three of us.”
“I don’t kill people.”
“You killed the gasoline man.”
“I did not! Whitey did.”
The teacher caught her breath. Tony counted seven long heartbeats, and then, “You didn’t shoot him?”
“Whitey did. And he wasn’t suppose to have bullets in his gun, but he did. It was an accident.”
The teacher looked away from Tony, and stared out through the forest in the direction of the cattle field and the barn. Tony had stared out that way for more than an hour after they’d climbed the fence, while Baby Doll was curled up and the teacher was still passed out. Tony had been sure the farmer and his troops would come after them with hounds and county sheriffs. But the fire had obviously been their primary issue. They’d put it out before much damage was done. The building was still standing. Hell, they hadn’t even called the fire department.
“You didn’t kill him?” said the teacher.
“No,” said Tony. “But if I really had to kill, I would. Don’t ever, ever forget that.”
“I won’t,” said the teacher.
Tony scratched her head. It itched down to the bone over her ears and at the nape of her neck. “We need clothes we going anywhere tomorrow. There’s those doublewides not too far from here. I’m gonna see what I can get without nobody knowing. You stay here, watch the kid.”
“Her name is Mistie.”
“Yeah, Mistie, okay, whatever.”
“We need some Tylenol, too, and alcohol.”
“Don’t push your luck.”
“You were good to Mistie, I could see that. Letting her lean on you like that.”
“It was an accident,” said Tony. “I didn’t know she was leanin.” Tony strolled off, but stopped several yards away and called back, “By the way, how the hell’d you get out of those bale strings?”
“Backed up to the saw you found in the store room,” said the teacher. “Had to work myself around like a contortionist in the Cirque Du Soleil but I sawed them apart.”
“What the fuck’s the cirk duh soul?”
“Doesn’t matter, really. My ankles were easier after my hands were free.”
“I’ll never leave you untied again. Next car we get, you drive with your damn hands tied.”
“I guessed as much.”
“You were going to kill me, you really were.”
The teacher’s expression unreadable. “Don’t be long now. Please.”
Please and fuck you, thought Tony.
56
This truck wasn’t half as bad as the Nova had been. It was a manual transmission, though, so Tony had tied Kate’s left hand to the steering wheel and the right hand to the gearshift with leftovers from Kate’s Christian Camp director jeans. Kate’s calf throbbed mercilessly when she had to press the clutch, but Tony had allowed her to re-bandage it, and though excruciating with certain moves, she thought it would probably heal. But some alcohol would assure that would happen.
Tony had brought clothes from a dryer in a shed outside one of the doublewides. Overalls for Kate, and a white tank top with stained underarms. Tony had claimed a man’s pair of camouflage shorts and black tee shirt with “Napa” emblazoned on the front. For Mistie there was a flower-printed polyester shift, a little short but not too snug around the torso. Tony had also brought an extra shirt so Kate could check and wrap the wound in the back of her leg. But Kate knew better than to thank her. Tony had the drive in her eyes again, the set of brow she’d had back in South Carolina. All she could talk about was Burton and Lamesa and how much money her father had.
East Texas. One-light towns of Fords Corner and Melrose. Tony complained that this didn’t look like Texas, it looked like fucking Louisiana and fucking Mississippi and fucking Alabama. “Texas is a big state,” Kate reminded her. “Give it time. There were cattle ranges farther west.”
Mistie was between Kate and Tony. Both legs were draped over beside Tony’s because Kate refused to let the girl straddle the shift. She was still rather lethargic, but Kate sensed she was coming around, that she’d suffered from some 24-hour bug that children often got to the terror of their parents and the blessed assurances of their pediatricians. But something to help the fever was still in order. And Kate was ready to offer her right eye for something to bring down the aching in her calf. And a real night’s sleep.
Tony had the knife out and was playing flip-the-blade by the passenger window. Kate wondered if it might blow out in a gust of Texas wind. But it didn’t.
They rolled on another twenty minutes, Kate’s leg and stomach growling. They’d eaten nothing since yesterday morning. And they had not one cent with which to buy food. Kate had turned on the radio to get her mind off the clammy filth of her body and the tedious drive, but Tony hadn’t liked her choice of music and made her turn it off.
Traffic picked up on the two-lane, and then the road widened to four lanes. Houses were closer together here, and there were apartment complexes and strip malls. Streetlights were wound with all-weather holly and big red bows. Decorations in these lawns were more tasteful than those seen in the country. No bobbing head Josephs or Granny Fannies in poinsettia britches. A city limits sign reading “Nacogdoches” rushed by on the right. A city this size would have drug stores. If Kate could tidy up her hair and clean up her face, she might make a relatively benign shoplifter.
“Tony,” she said. “I want a dare.”
Tony stopped flipping the knife. “That ain’t how it works. I gotta give truth or dare.”
“Then let me tell you what to dare me.”
Tony rubbed her chin and scratched her head. “What?”
“Dare me to go into a Rite Aid or CVS and get some things we need.”
“What the hell we need? Got lots of gas in the tank. Don’t seem to be burning any oil.”
“Aren’t you hungry? I could slip a few things into my pocket, see how big overall pockets are? And I want to get something for Mistie’s temperature. And for my leg. And for your hair.”
“My hair?”
“You have lice, Tony. Haven’t you felt them?”
Tony smacked at her head, then pulled the rearview mirror around and stared agape at her reflection. “No, I don’t! I ain’t got the cooties.”
“Whatever you call them, I’ve seen them crawling behind your ears. There’s shampoo for that, you know….”
“Goddamn Darlene!”
“Who’s Darlene?”
“You want my whole life history? Just find a fucking store and get the damn shampoo!”
The first store that looked like it didn’t have high-tech anti-theft doors was Carlton’s Food and Drug, an establishment on a smaller side road in town that seemed to have been built some time back in the ‘forties. The bricks were sand-colored, the edges of the building rounded. Side windows were made of a mosaic of glass bricks. There were grocery carts crammed together outside the front, likely borrowed from some neighboring grocery store.