Run Away Baby (19 page)

“I wanted to stick with Charlie.”

“You’re not his only girlfriend, just so you know.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because you’re not. He’s never been serious about anyone.”

“I think he’s serious about me.”

Meggie shook her head. “He’s not. Chuckles is a heartbreaker. He’s broken a
lot
of hearts. Not mine, thank God.”

“Where are they going?” Abby asked.

“Why don’t you stop worrying about them. Guys hate uptight girls and they hate meddling. When I get too involved in what Rake’s doing, he don’t like it. I imagine Chuck’s the same way. Right?”

“I guess, but I’m curious about what’s happening.”

“Haven’t you been listening to anything going on? They’re going to get us some smokes from town. Hopefully more than one pack if they know what’s good for them. But for right now I guess they’re talking about something. Guy shit. You know how guys are. They always got something big going on. Want to see pictures of my kids?”

“Not right now.”

“Are you kidding me? You can’t say no when someone asks you that. I’ll give you another chance. Do you want to see pictures of my kids?”

“Sure.”

Meggie spun her fanny pack around, unzipped it, and took out a camouflage men’s wallet. She unsnapped the wallet and opened it to a booklet of plastic sleeves. “This is an old one,” she said, showing Abby a photo of herself and three little kids. “Nammie was four in this picture but she’s going on nine now. Josiah was three, he’s going on eight. This little one, Tommy, was five months but he’s passed now. Rake and I have two of our own. Rake Junior and Luke. They’re eighteen months and seven months. They’re staying with my mom for a while. All of them are. The state decided to give them to my mom when my sister got involved and stuck her big nose where it don’t belong. I don’t have any pictures of me and Rake’s little ones with me on account of their pictures are all just on Facebook. They look exactly like their daddy. Real handsome. I had a good phone but I broke it so now it’s back to a flip phone for now, and anyway, Rake’s holding it for me. Otherwise I’d show you, if I had that good phone still. Do you have any kids?”

“No.”

“You don’t like kids, or you never found the right guy, or what?”

“What made you guys come out here today?” Abby asked.

“I don’t know. Rake and Charlie got something planned, I guess. As usual. I came along ‘cause Rake told me to.”

“Rake and Charlie had something planned?”

“Yeah. I don’t know what. Rake just told me to get in the truck.”

“What kind of a name is Rake?”

“It’s a good name. Like Jake.”

“Do you know if there are alligators in that pond?”

“The biggest you’ve ever seen. Rake told me when they were kids they shot one from that exact pond and it was twelve feet long. He’s showed me old pictures of them all standing with it after they shot it. They used to have it hanging on their wall in the living room. From its nose to its tail, it went from one whole end of the room to the other end. I’ve seen pictures of that too, with it all mounted up on the wall like that, and with Rake and his brothers sitting lined up underneath it on the couch, holding their Christmas stockings. But when the house burned down they lost everything, even that great big gator skin. Ask him about it when he comes back.”

“No, that’s okay.”

“Yeah, now that you mention it, we probably shouldn’t even be standing down here unless we have some big sticks with us or a gun. I’m not too afraid of gators, though. They’re more scared of you than you are of them.”

“I don’t know about that.”

“Hey, you’re the girl who needed the birth control pills, aren’t you?”

“What are you talking about?” Abby wondered if Meggie had x-ray glasses on or something. Along with her iPod and the cash, the only thing she’d brought was a container of lip balm that was nearly empty. Into the vacant space of it she had dumped seven days’ worth of birth control pills. All the rest and their packaging had been disposed of a few days ago in one of the trashcans at the mall.

“I had to go to the free clinic and go on the pill for some girl Chuckles was screwing. Excuse me,
making love with
. That was you, right?”

Abby was too humiliated to answer.

“If it
wasn’t
you, I really put my foot in it. Holy shit. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. Relax. It was me.”

“Whew! That’s a relief. For a second I thought, uh oh, it was some other girl. I told you, he’s a heartbreaker.”

Abby started walking back toward the shed, away from the pond, away from the record setting predators. Meggie fell into step beside her. “And that’s your cabin too, right? You’re the rich girl with the cabin?”

“How do you know about the cabin?” Abby asked.

“I just heard about it. That’s all.”

“Were you
at
my cabin?”

“Uhh... I don’t remember. How come you can afford a nice cabin but not birth control pills? Don’t you have any health insurance?”

“I’m sorry you had to get birth control pills for me. That’s super weird. We don’t have to talk about this anymore.”

“It was no big deal. There’s the free clinic if you can’t go to the regular doctor’s office. You could go there. That’s where I go.”

Charlie and Rake came back around the side of the big shed then. “We’re going into town to get a few things,” said Charlie.

“Me and you?” Abby asked.

“No. Us two,” he said, jerking his head toward his cousin. “You and Meggie keep each other company. We’ll be back soon. No more than forty-five minutes.”

“You getting me cigarettes?” Meggie asked Rake.

“Yeah.
A
pack,” Rake said to Meggie.

“Get me two packs. Not just one.
Please?”

“We’ll get you two,” said Charlie.

“Thank you Chuckles.” Meggie stuck her tongue out at Rake.
“See?
He’s nice.”

“Can we talk for a second?” Abby asked Charlie.

“I’ll be back soon. Do you need anything?” he asked.

“No, but can’t we talk for a second before you go?”

“We can talk later.”

The four of them walked to the front of the shed. A truck far junkier than Charlie’s was in front of the shed door. Rake got in it and moved it out of the way, and put his keys in his pocket. Then Charlie backed out of the shed, Rake jumped in the passenger side, and they turned the truck around. A moment later they were disappearing in a cloud of dust.

“They’ll be gone for hours. Even if they hurried they couldn’t get to town and back in forty-five minutes.” Meggie said. “Plus, I told Rake not to, but they’ll probably go the Pumphouse.”

“Is that a bar?”

“It’s a bar, but with strippers.”

“Fabulous,” said Abby.

“We might as well get comfortable ‘cause we’re stuck here. Rake always does shit like this. I wouldn’t mind so much if I had some cigarettes.”

“There’s not even any place to sit,” said Abby.

“We could sit in Rake’s truck,” Meggie said. She walked over to it and tried to get in. “Never mind. He locked it.”

“Do you want a bottle of water?” Abby asked her. “I’m going to get one for myself and I’ll grab you one. We have some inside the shed.”

“Sure. But you know when we’ve got to go, there’s no bathroom here. You know we’ve got to pee in the weeds, right?” She squinted at Abby, blocking the sun and smiling. “You’re not afraid of a big ol’ gator taking a bite out of your butt?”

“I
am
actually, but I’m really thirsty so I guess I’ll have to take my chances.”

“Yeah, I’ll take a bottle.” Meggie opened the tailgate of the truck and made herself at home there while Abby went back into the shed. She went into the bunk room, some intuition telling her to check on her iPod. Charlie’s sweatshirt was no longer neatly folded like she’d left it. Now it was lying on the floor. Her iPod, which had been hiding beneath it, was gone. She picked the sweatshirt up and shook it out, then tossed it on the sleeping bag. The heat in this room, the dead flies on the windowsill, the lingering smell of the bad sex she hadn’t wanted; it all added to her growing fury.

She went to the cooler and took two bottles of water from it. She had no idea what time it was. Three o’clock? Four? Was Randall looking for her yet? Had he tracked her phone to the orange grove where she’d dropped it? She’d considered breaking it, but was afraid that it might ruin the tracking device, might send him down a wrong, truer path.

If he thought she’d been kidnapped, everything would take on a life of its own that was very fresh and new. It would be about Abby and the orange grove and similar crimes in their area. Police would get involved right away and everyone would want to act quickly. It would be a stampede of purposefulness.

But if he thought she’d run away, he might not involve anyone else. At least not at first. That course of investigation would be dark and methodical, angry and plotting. It would be the meticulous unraveling of all her hard work. He’d peel back the layers about her, and their home, and her habits and secrets.

It was very, very important that he decide right away that she’d been kidnapped.

She opened her bottle of water and took a sip, swallowing one of her birth control pills. Then she went outside and joined Meggie.

Meggie had her fanny pack’s contents spread out next to her on the truck bed. There was her camo wallet, two tampons, an empty pack of cigarettes with a book of matches tucked into its cellophane wrapper, a deck of cards in a plastic box, and some receipts in a little stack, held from blowing away by a large bottle of liquid foundation that looked like it was from ten or fifteen years ago.

“I’m cleaning out my fanny pack,” she said, wadding up a straw wrapper and tossing it over the side of the truck.

“Here’s your water,” Abby told her.

“Thanks. So, are you and Chuck camping here or what?”

“Yeah, I guess so. You and Rake are going back home tonight, though, right?”

“Who knows? It’s up to Rake, not me.” She took a long drink from her bottle of water. “Ahhhh. That’s good! I don’t usually drink plain water. I forgot how good it tastes.”

“What do you drink?”

“Normal stuff. Mountain Dew and beer. Say, do those birth control pills I got you
work?”

“Yeah. Why wouldn’t they? They’re real, aren’t they?”

“Yeah, of course they’re real. I had to get an exam and everything to get those.”

“The way you asked made me wonder.”

“Where did you
think
he got them?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t think about it.”

“Well, whatever. They
are
from me, and they’re on account of my getting a full-fledged examination, but I never bothered with them pills myself. I know a lot of people who use them and they don’t work. Not a hundred percent, anyway. I guess they work better than nothing at all, but anyone I know who’s used them still ends up getting pregnant.”

“You have to be really diligent about taking them every day,” Abby said.

“Well, yeah,” said Meggie. She took another drink.

Abby looked down the dirt road. As far as she could see in any direction there was nothing. They were in a little bit of a dip in the landscape, so she was unsure what was beyond where they sat.

“So how far are we from town?” Abby asked.

“Depends which town you mean. Maybe four or five miles from Grove, I guess, but there’s nothing there. You have to go farther if you want to go to Walmart or anyplace like that.”

“So, do you think they went to Grove? Or someplace else?”

“Why would anyone go to Grove? Of course they went someplace else. You know that pills like that cost a lot of money if you have to pay for them, right?”

“You said you got them at the free clinic.”

Meggie had put everything back in her fanny pack, and now she was reattaching it to her waist. “I did. But they’re still worth something.”

“Didn’t Charlie give you anything for doing that?”

“Ten bucks.”

“That’s all?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll ask him to give you some more money.”

“Okay. That would be the polite thing to do. That’s all I was asking for. You want to play slapjacks?”

“Sure,” Abby said.

Meggie unzipped her fanny pack and took out her deck of cards. “I’m going to leave the jokers in. They count as jacks too. Okay?”

“Sure,” Abby said. The cards said Hawaii on them and showed a palm tree at sunset. “Did you and Rake go to Hawaii?”

“No. Do you know how to play this?”

“I forget.”

“We each get half the cards. So, I’m going to split them in half so it looks like two equal piles, and you can pick which pile you want. Got that?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay,” she said after Abby had taken one of the piles of cards, “now we’re going to take turns laying cards down in a pile. When you see a jack or a joker, slap it, and the whole pile is yours. The first person to slap it gets it. Whoever wins all the cards wins the whole game. Understand?”

“Got it.”

They started playing. It went on and on.

“How much time do you think has gone by?” Abby asked when the sun began to dip below the top of the hill.

“Who knows. A long time.”

At a certain point Abby decided to throw the game, and got extra slow with her slapping. Eventually Meggie won. It had to have taken at least a couple of hours.

“Want to play again?” Meggie asked.

“I have to pee. If I don’t come back in two minutes come find me.” Abby went all the way back to the space between the two small sheds, squatted, and quickly peed, keeping watch for alligators. When all this was over, she hoped to escape someplace up north, someplace that was alligator free.

She pulled up her running shorts, patted the stack of money to make sure it was still there, and readjusted her hair in its clip. Just then she heard the sound of a vehicle rambling down the road. She came back around to the front of the shed as Rake and Charlie were getting out of Charlie’s truck.

“Where’ve you been? You’ve been gone all day. It’s practically dark out,” said Meggie.

Rake threw a pack of cigarettes at Meggie. Seconds later she was smoking one, happily distracted.

“I got something for you, too,” Charlie said to Abby. He slid a bottle of pink wine out of a paper bag and unscrewed the top. “Sorry, there aren’t any glasses. You’ll have to drink right out of the bottle.”

“Thanks,” she said. It was fizzy and tasted like strawberries, but at least it was cold. It really wasn’t wine at all. The label said
Mr. Bun-Rabbit’s Strawberry Wine
and showed a picture of a white cartoon rabbit lying in a hammock sipping a glass of wine. Beneath the picture it said
Alcohol content 15%.
There was an orange sticker for $3.99 pasted over a white sticker for $4.99. It looked like wine for children.

“Can I try it?” asked Meggie. Abby hesitated. She really didn’t want Meggie to drink out of the same bottle as her.

“I got you your own prize,” said Charlie. He handed Meggie a six-pack of some kind of local beer. Abby had never tried it but she had seen it advertised on the front windows of bait shops and liquor stores.

“Thanks Chuckles. This shit’s expensive. I can’t believe you remembered that apricot peach is my favorite beer. See,” she said to Abby, “what did I tell you? He’s a heartbreaker.”

“Yeah,” Abby said, taking another sip from her bottle, wondering why she got $3.99 fake wine while Meggie got a six pack of microbrewery beer.

“That,” Meggie said to Rake, “is how
you
oughta treat me.”

“I got you cigarettes, and we already had beer here,” said Rake.

“It’s still nice to get a surprise.”

“What are you doing with these?” Rake asked, confiscating the deck of playing cards from the back of the truck.

“Playing slapjack. What’s it to you?”

“Those are mine. Where’d you find them?”

“In your dresser.”

“That’s what I thought. Don’t go digging through my shit.”

“You didn’t miss them until you knew I had them.”

“I’ve been looking for them.”

“No you haven’t.”

He put them in his pocket and took the pack of cigarettes back from her. He lit one and took a long drag of it, his forehead creased in irritation.

“You
don’t have any cards, do you?” he asked Abby, abruptly, the words spilling out along with cigarette smoke.

“Do you mean from that deck? No,” she said.

“I didn’t ask you if this whole deck was here. I asked you whether you’ve got a deck of cards on you. In your purse or something. Never mind.”

“I’m afraid not,” Abby said.

Meggie opened one of her bottles of beer and took a drink, staring thoughtfully at Rake. “Who do you know who ever went to Hawaii?”

“I’ve told you before, I don’t like you going through my shit.”

Charlie removed some firewood from the back of his truck and started off in the direction of the pond.

“Are you going to make a fire?” Abby asked him.

“Yeah,” he said, not looking back.

She followed after him. Rake and Meggie stayed where they were, arguing about the cards and Meggie invading Rake’s privacy. Finally alone, Abby caught up with Charlie and pulled on the back of his shirt. “Wait for me. Slow down.”

“What?” he said, turning to her, not slowing his pace.

“Do you think that’s a good idea? What if people see smoke? What if more people show up and see me hiding here?”

“I wouldn’t be starting a fire if I was worried about it. We’re really far away from everyone out here. And we’re low. No one’s going to see it or smell it. Don’t worry.”

“I
am
worried. A little bit ago you didn’t even want to use flashlights inside the shed and now you’re going to start a fire?”

“Listen, this is our family’s land. All of this as far as you can see. We can do what we want here. People out here aren’t nosy. They don’t like people snooping in their business, so they don’t snoop in other people’s business.”

“I thought country people were super snoopy?”

“Some are, but only to outsiders. The sheriff down here’s related to us. No one’s going to mess with us.”

“What about your cousin and his wife? Why are they here? That wasn’t the plan.”

“She’s not actually his wife.”

“Whatever. Why are they here? You said you wouldn’t tell anyone about this.”

“I didn’t tell them! They just decided to come out here. They like to come out here sometimes and hang out.”

“Really? They just showed up here, coincidentally, the same time we did?”

“Yeah.”

“Why weren’t they surprised to see us?”

“They
were
surprised.”

“They were?”

“Yeah. When Rake and I went into town he was like, ‘What are you doing out here, man?’ He was really surprised.”

“Oh.”

“I told him we wanted to camp and hang out. So now we’re going to have a fire, like people who camp.”

“It’s not even dark out yet. Why would we want a fire?”

“Because we’re camping. Relax.”