Necessity (24 page)

She finds clearings and uses them—several times plunging into thick mud bogs before knowing they are there in the deep grass; only the low range four-wheel traction brings her through.

Smashing thickets she skirts a brown pond and fits between saplings as thick as her forearms; the side-mounted spare tire catches on one of them and begins to pull the Jeep around but she manhandles it through.

Ellen in panic tries to scramble out of her imprisoning grip. She has to let go of the wheel to confine the baby with both hands. A tire bangs against something and pulls to the side; she has to grab the wheel again; she tucks Ellen against her, lowers her chin, lifts the baby and pushes her mouth against Ellen's forehead. “Okay—okay—okay.”

The tires jitter across a rocky patch, making a loud rataplan that jars all her bones; the frame of the windshield shakes so violently before her eyes that she feels caught up in a kaleidoscopic maelstrom.

“Hang on, baby girl. Yell all you want but just don't let go.”

Then in a stand of pines she crosses a trail and nearly misses it but then it registers and she brakes to a slamming stop, fights the shift into reverse and backs up.

It's an overgrown track that looks like the sort of road forest rangers use—not much more than a hiking trail but wide enough to admit vehicular passage.

It goes uphill to the left, downhill to the right. That's south, more or less, and she goes that way even though she knows her best escape is northward; she goes that way because it's downhill and maybe it will lead her out of the mountains.

The track carries the Jeep out of the trees at the edge of a sloping meadow and the world opens before her. Worn green mountains all around; all the hillsides spill into a narrow valley that curves away to the northeast.

She can see cleared building sites down there—half a dozen scattered summer houses.

Where there are cabins there must be a road.

While she considers her options she hears a drone of distant engines and she sees them above the range quite some distance away to the north—a ballet of two tiny craft dark against the grey white clouds: airplane and helicopter weaving and bobbing and swaying as if performing some strange ritual dance.

The damn helicopter is still chasing Charlie.

To hell with him.

She continues down the track—hurrying, slithering on the weeds. Branches and thorns reach out to scrape and scratch the Jeep as it comes juddering by.

The ride is less brutal on this downslope. The baby's panic subsides; crying softly now. Keep talking to her. Keep reassuring her.

She's doing about twenty miles an hour—not very fast by normal standards but any faster and she wouldn't be able to stop in time to avoid the sudden rocks and holes that appear at intervals; she has to find a way around each of them—or bull right over it, mechanism gnashing.

Toward the bottom the slope grows steeper. The path begins to switchback. Hairpin turns—she has to back and fill. For a few hundred yards she runs back and forth along a descending Z-shaped series of terraces. Stopping and crushing the stick into reverse for the last turn she looks out the window up the long hill she's just descended—and sees the Bronco bouncing its way down from the top.

Bastards. Bastards.

They're not far behind—a couple of minutes, no more. She blasts out of the hairpin and goes lurching across the valley floor, following the faint track and hoping it will take her out to a road near those houses on the opposite slope.

“A kiss for my little one. Quiet now, Ellen. Stop blubbering, that's a good girl. I know you're scared and hungry and thirsty and exhausted—you've got a whole world of things to complain about—but Momma's got to think. You're just going to have to bear with me. I'll apologize later.”

Thing is, as soon as we get out onto a decent road we're going to want all the speed we can get. That means shifting the controls on this beast—taking it out of four-wheel and low range. Converting it back to a road car. Now we've got to try and remember how to do that because they're not going to give us a whole lot of time to read the damn manual and work it out by trial and error.…

There's a hedgerow ahead, maples and oaks and birches—big trees masking whatever lies beyond. Directly above the trees, by some trick of random fate, she can see the distant game of tag that's still in progress between George Talmy's helicopter and Charlie's airplane.

They seem quite near the bank of clouds that hovers above the mountains and for a very brief moment she wonders why Charlie doesn't just fly into the clouds and disappear; then she's slowing down to drive into the hedgerow and she's got to concentrate on the trail. In the mirror the Bronco is nearly at the bottom of the switchbacks.

Out of the trees there's a tangle of thorn. A lot of bright color in here: it's dense and it feels tropical. The Jeep pries its way through thickets and without warning she finds herself poised at the edge of a stream looking at a white frothy flow of fast water and heaps of jumbled grey rocks everywhere. She barely stops in time.

The birling water makes a steady racket. It comes rushing around the bend in high-speed fury. A sizable broken sapling whips along the surface, smashing into rocks, caroming about, heaving and sliding past.

Christ. How deep is that river? Can the Jeep get across or has the rain swollen it too high? Is there a fording? Have any of those ugly boulders rolled into it?

Is this contraption waterproof? What happens if we get halfway across and the Jeep stalls?

Can I stand up and walk in that current with a baby in one arm?

If it's deeper than it looks can I possibly swim one-armed in that mess with the baby—and avoid smashing both of us up on those rocks?

Even if I could—where could we go to get away from them?

The Bronco will be on them any second now and there's no alternative, really.

I am endangering this kid's life and I'll do a term in purgatory for it but I honestly believe she'd be better off taking the risk of drowning than sentenced to a life with that verminous pig for a father.

“Here we go, darling. Hold tight.”

She hammers it into low and puts it down the steep pitch into the water. Nothing to do but hope and pray.

57
Not too fast. Keep it slow and steady. Can't afford to lose footing in this treacherous water …

The flood buffets the side of the Jeep, rocking it. She fights the wheel, pulling back to the right, struggling against the Jeep's desire to slide away with the current. It feels as if the bottom is hard and flat—possibly a sunken paved bridge but certainly it was never intended for use at flood stage.

The baby is caterwauling herself hoarse; her face has gone red, splotchy around the nose.

Her hand on the steering wheel is numb. Her arm is giving out.

Sorry Ellen but I need this other hand; just lie here in my lap and please don't flail around so much.

Both hands on the wheel. Leaning her weight to the right—pulling the wheel—it's so
hard …

Please give me the strength to hold it straight.

Her foot. Cold. Wet…

There's water coming up around her feet. Must be coming through holes in the floorboards.

The baby rolls off her lap onto the seat beside her and cries out. She can't take her hand off the wheel. “Don't move. Please, Ellen don't move.”

The front wheels feel as if they're sliding toward the edge. There's something bearing down on the whitewater above her—a Goddamn tree limb or something. It looks big enough to slam us all the way around. Oh Christ …

The nose of the Jeep begins to rise. Lifting into shallower water it shakes free of the worst pressure of the current. The tree limb spins past behind her; she hears branches scrape across the back of the Jeep but she's climbing onto the bank now and she reaches down with her right hand to hold the baby in place on the seat.

The wheels slither on the slick mud bank; they're digging ruts in the earth but soon they've pawed the loose mud away and they're down to thick root systems. These give purchase and the Jeep heaves itself up onto solid ground.

The hiking trail curves away through another hedgerow. She drives right along, not even slowing down for a look back until she's into the trees. Then she stops the Jeep, picks up the baby and holds her in her arms while she looks in the mirror for the first time.

The Bronco is back there on the far side of the stream. Stopped. A man gets out of the passenger seat and walks forward to look at the crossing. He's wearing a checked shirt and jeans.

The shadows are tricky under those trees but it's Bert.

He has a rifle.

Cradling the baby, crooning, caressing, she stares into the mirror and thinks about picking up the revolver and shooting the son of a bitch where he stands but in the end she just puts it in gear and drives on. Past the row of trees the trail meanders along the edge of a field and decants her onto a graded dirt road. She thrusts the clutch to the floor and pulls levers and hopes she's done it right; she starts up the road and is pleased not to hear any longer the meshing protesting whine of the low range. The Jeep goes properly up through the gears and she's doing a good clip by the time she passes the first house on the hill.

We could stop and go in there and ask for help but in the first place we might not get it and in the second place I'm committing a felony and I doubt we'd get a whole lot of sympathy from the police.

She's looking in the mirror. No sign of the Bronco yet. But Bert won't give up and go back. She has no doubt they're horsing it across the stream right now. If they don't capsize they'll be right after her.

And for certain they've put out a call on the CB radio. Wherever this road comes out into the world there's likely to be someone waiting for us.

Charlie, you son of a bitch, what a mess you've left us in!

58
Driving the graded dirt road at sixty miles an hour she is thinking:

I know this road. The Concord winery back there—Bert knows the man who owns it. The bald man with the strange accent—Hungarian, Polish, whatever he is. We had dinner with him and his wife at that place on Lake Champlain, remember? They invited us to two or three wine tastings.

Think, now. This road comes out to the paved highway a couple of miles ahead, just beyond the mouth of the valley up there.

The intersection's down at the foot of the hill. A Citgo station on the corner. Nice clean restroom. That road goes on up to Plattsburgh. Going the other way I think it comes out onto one of the main highways you take to get down to Albany.

They'll probably have the intersection blocked.

Very matter of fact: All right, she thinks; then we'll just have to get rid of the Jeep and get around the intersection on foot. And let the bastards sit there all night waiting for us to show up.

59
At the crest of the last hilltop she stops and gathers the baby in both arms; thrusts the door open with her foot and gets out of the Jeep. Every bone and muscle is afire with pain.

North in the distance the two aircraft are still swooping in their odd Alphonse and Gaston dogfight.

Ellen reaches up with a finger and tugs at her lip. She gives the tiny finger a love bite and stares back down the road. In loops and whorls there are bits of it visible from here: several miles back is the steep hill she descended.

And there comes a dot that must be the fucking Bronco—hurrying down the switchbacks.

Not too far back; speeding to make up for it.

Son of a bitch.

She gets back in the Jeep and adjusts the baby in her throbbing left arm and drives down off the hill. Ahead in the distance above the trees she can see the V-shaped sign of the Citgo station.

Once in the woods she begins to search for turnings and when she sees a mailbox ahead she eases her foot back on the gas.

No good; an old house trailer up on blocks with a huge TV antenna on top of it and a Volkswagen beetle parked nearby and a fat woman hanging the wash on a line.

No place to hide there. She drives on, anxiety climbing.

Two more driveways give access to small newish bungalows near the road. No hope there.

Another mailbox. The dirt driveway disappears into the trees to the left.

She takes it.

Not far in there's a small old barn beside the drive. It looks like a one-time carriage barn or a two-horse stable; not big enough for real farm work. The wood has gone pewter colored since its last coat of paint. There's a rusty plow beside it—the wheeled kind that's meant to be pulled by a tractor. The barn door hangs ajar—open a foot and badly warped, sagging on the ground and leaning.

Just behind it a stream cuts through, disappearing into tangled growth.

She stops the Jeep in the weeds and sets Ellen down on the seat. “Stay put ten seconds, my love. Be right back.”

When she gets out of the Jeep the baby starts to wail again. “I'll be right back, damn it.” She grasps the twisted edge of the barn door and bends it out far enough to make room for her head and shoulders.

Inside there are two splintered stalls on the right. The rest is an open floor—mud puddles and wet straw. It looks as if it's been in disuse for years but it still carries a horsey pungency compounded by damp earth and rotten wood.

There's room inside for the Jeep.

She tugs at the barn door but it's badly warped and jammed against the earth. It doesn't want to move. She kicks the damn thing and stands back yelling at it. Her curses blend with the baby's outcries.

She gets back in at the wheel and picks up the baby. “Shush now. You'll get all hoarse.” She rocks the baby. Then with an abruptness that startles her an invention penetrates past the rage of frustration.

Of course.

She starts the engine and jockeys it back and forth until she's positioned the mangled wreckage of the front bumper beside the edge of the barn door. She locks the wheels sharp right and backs up, hooking the jagged ruin of the bumper against the door.