Run Away Baby (20 page)

“Fine. I’ll try,” Abby said.

“Good. Because you’re so nervous you’re making
me
nervous,” he said. He laughed.

“Are they going to spend the night here?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Well, what if they go home and watch the news and see the whole kidnapping thing? What then?”

“Are you kidding? They don’t watch the news. You need to relax. You’re getting really wound up.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay.” Charlie massaged her shoulder. “There’s nothing to get worked up about. You’re getting confused. You’re not thinking straight.”

“You’re right,” she said. “But...”

“But what?” he asked.

“You seem like a different person when you’re with him. I felt it even way back at the flea market.”

He shook his head. “No I’m not. You’re being silly now. It’s okay. Calm down. There are some old lawn chairs in one of those little sheds. Why don’t you go get them and bring them down here while I get this fire going?”

“You’re going to make the fire by the pond?”

“That’s where there’s a fire pit.”

“Meggie told me there
are
alligators here. Why did you say there aren’t?”

“Well, Honey, we’re in Florida. There are alligators everywhere.”

“Still, you shouldn’t have lied to me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m going to take a look at the pond. Before it’s dark. I just want to see if I see any,” she said.

“Go ahead,” he said.

Abby wandered over to the edge of the water and looked back. Charlie’s head was down. He was working on the fire, not looking her way. Rake and Meggie were someplace up by the sheds, beyond where she could see from here. She unclipped her hair, reaching back for her rings, catching them before they could fall into the tall grass next to her.  She then bent down and picked up a couple of stones, and dropped them into her palm on top of the rings, so it looked like she was holding just a handful of rocks.

She began skipping stones across the pond. When only the rings remained, she threw them too. Charlie looked up once, and then went back to what he was doing. When her hand was empty she walked back up to him.

“Any gators?” he asked.

“I scared them away.”

“Now go get the lawn chairs, okay?”

“Which shed?” she asked.

“I don’t know. One or the other. They’ll be hanging on a nail on the wall.”

She went over to the nearer shed and pulled on the old metal doorknob. It opened out instead of in, and since the grass had grown tall in front of it, she could only open it a few inches. As she pulled on it, a spider fell down, swinging from its web into the opening. She jumped back. After she caught her breath, she knocked the spider out of the way with her wine bottle and gave the door another pull.

Inside, old terracotta pots were stacked and toppling on a wooden bench. Metal tomato cages were piled in a corner. An old, plastic laundry basket filled with baseballs and half-inflated basketballs rested in another corner. Hanging on nails to her right were rusty lawn chairs, the kind made of aluminum and woven nylon straps. She could reach the two closest to her from here, but to get all four she would have to go inside.

She carefully set her bottle of wine outside the shed and gave the door another pull. Another spider dropped down. She cringed, stepping back to avoid its swinging trajectory. At first it swung wildly by her head, but eventually it steadied itself, dropping lower and lower. When it was at the level of her hip she brought her foot up and smooshed it into the side of the doorframe with her running shoe.

Holding her breath, she ducked inside the shed and removed the lawn chairs from the nails. She tossed them out the open door onto the grass, one by one, hoping anything clinging to them would get knocked off. As she was on her way back out, her eyes caught a row of playing cards tacked to the wall. They were all queens of hearts, each slightly different, from seven different decks of cards. She paused, curious about them. They were old, faded, dusty. It looked like they’d been there a long time.

What was it about this place and cards, she wondered.

She shoved the door closed, took her wine and the lawn chairs, and went down to where Charlie was squatting, still trying to get the fire going.

“Do you have any gas around here?” Charlie said to Rake.

“Just in the tank of my truck.”

The four of them were sitting around the fire pit, still fireless. Mr. Bun-Rabbit and Meggie’s stories about working in a plastic factory were helping Abby forget about alligators. Her mind drifted from these stories, to Charlie’s struggle with the fire, to Randall. She liked that Papa Rottzy had no idea where she was and, by now, had to be freaking out about it. If these two clowns weren’t here with them she would have found some way to watch the news.

“This is fucking pissing me off,” said Charlie.

“Do you want me to try?” she asked. She’d gotten pretty good at starting a fire in her survival classes.

Everyone ignored her so she took another drink and worked on reclining her lawn chair to the perfect angle.

“Here. I knew I kept these for some reason. Hold my cigarette to those sticks and these old receipts,” said Meggie, unzipping her fanny pack and pulling out her little stack of receipts, “and you’ll get it going. Whatever you do, don’t use up all the matches.”

“That’s not going to work,” said Rake.

Meggie’s face fell. She wadded up the receipts and threw them in the fire pit. One of them wasn’t crumpled very much and the wind caught it, and it started blowing across the grass.

“Don’t be a fucking litterbug. Go get that,” Rake told her.

Abby was baffled that he cared about littering or even knew the expression litterbug. Meggie got up and caught the receipt, wadded it into a tiny ball, and dropped it into the fire pit. Rake got up and ground all the receipts down into the dirt. “Go look in my truck for a lighter,” he said to Meggie.

“I already did and there wasn’t one.”

“Go look again.”

She did as she was told, returning a few minutes later with a pink lighter. “I found this down in the seat. Why the fuck do you have a pink lighter?”

“Are you sure it’s not yours?”

“It’s not mine. Don’t try to act like it’s mine.”

“I don’t know where it came from.”

“I’m not giving it to you until you tell me where it came from.”

“I told you, I don’t know where it came from.”

“Could you give it to me so I can get this fire going?” said Charlie, holding out his hand.

She passed it to him and plunked back down into her lawn chair, pouting.

It was twilight now. Abby closed her eyes. Hopefully Randall had already moved through the steps of irritation, concern, suspicion, and anger, to fear. Had the police been contacted yet? What if he was out for dinner with Ernie Blankenship and hadn’t even done anything yet?

“There we go! Fire!” Charlie exclaimed when one of the logs finally started burning.

“Just in time to keep the bugs away,” said Rake.

“Not exactly. I’m getting all bit up,” said Meggie.

“Quit complaining. They’re not even that bad tonight.”

“I’m not complaining,” she said, opening her last beer of the six-pack.

The four of them sat there in silence, watching the fire.

“It’s getting breezy. I’m cold,” said Meggie, scooting a little closer to the flames.

“Has anyone seen my iPod?” Abby asked.

“I pod. You pod. Is that like a pea pod?” said Rake. He laughed.

“Nooo. It’s like an iPod. It was in the big shed. In the room with the bunks. But it’s gone now.”

“I borrowed it. Don’t worry about it,” said Charlie.

“Okay,” Abby said. She didn’t believe him. It felt like he was covering for his cousin.

“I’m getting sleepy,” said Meggie. “This kind of beer always knocks me out.”

Rake reached into the cooler and took out a beer for himself and another for Charlie. They’d brought the cooler down to the fire pit and added a bag of ice from their trip into town. They were just getting started drinking.

“Charlie, will you come with me back to the shed? I’m getting cold. I need your sweatshirt,” Abby said.

He sighed and got up. They began walking up the grassy slope in silence. When they were far enough away from Rake and Meggie, Abby said, “I can’t believe I forgot to ask you, but did you ever get me a passport or driver’s license, or whatever it was you thought you could get for me?”

“Sorry. I couldn’t come up with anything.”

“It’s okay,” she said. She’d known that would be his answer. She’d wanted him to say it aloud.

“Do you want me to go inside and get it? It’s going to be really dark in there.”

“I guess. Thanks.” She poured most of her wine in the grass while he was inside.

He came back a minute later with the sweatshirt and handed it to her. “I shook it out for you. It’s okay.”

“Thanks.” She put it on.

“Abby…”

“Yeah?”

“I’d like to say… I’m sorry. For how this is going.”

“I feel the same way,” she said.

She heard the sound of twigs snapping behind her, followed by a loud hiccup from Meggie.

“What are you two talking about?” Rake called over to them. He and Meggie were walking up toward the bigger shed and the trucks.

“Are they actually leaving?” Abby asked Charlie. For a second she thought perhaps she’d misread everything.

Meggie heard her. “We aren’t leaving,” she yelled. “I’m laying down in Rake’s truck. I’m tired and I don’t feel good.”

“She’s a lightweight,” Rake yelled. “One six pack’ll do it.”

Charlie and Abby went back down to the fire pit.

“You want a beer?” he asked her, reaching in the cooler.

“I need to drink some water right now.”

“Here you go,” he said, tossing a bottle to her. He focused his attention on the fire then, adding some logs to it, getting it up to the substantial roar he was happy with once again.

Rake showed back up and sat down a moment later, opening another beer. He turned his head to the side to light a cigarette, belched, and then dug some boogers out of his nose. “She’s out,” he suddenly reported. Abby squinted into the darkness, looking for an escaped cow or horse galloping past. It took her a second to realize he was talking about Meggie, and meant that she had passed out.

Charlie nodded. Abby looked from one of them to the other. Neither had hazy campfire eyes. Their eyes were sharp like foxes, locked into one another’s through the flickering fire light.

“She’s out?” Charlie repeated.

“That’s what I said.”

Charlie nodded. He finished the can of beer he was drinking and reached into the cooler for another.

“Chuckles told me a little about you,” said Rake.

“A little about me?” Abby asked. She looked at Charlie. He poked the fire with a big stick, not meeting her gaze.

“Yes, you,” said Rake. “I’m talking right at you.”

“Okay,” said Abby.

“He told me you’re married.”

“Really?” She looked at Charlie, but he refused to look up from poking the fire.

“What kind of a married woman takes up with another man?” asked Rake. He shook his head in exaggerated sadness.

“Charlie, why did you tell him about me?”

“He said this guy’s a real bastard. Rich. Really Rich! And old. Right? Am I right? Does that sound like we’re talking about someone you know?”

Abby didn’t know what to say. Charlie wouldn’t look at her.

“And he said that you need some help getting away from him.”

“I don’t need any help,” Abby said.

“That’s not what I heard.”

She turned to Charlie again. “Charlie, look at me,” she said. He just kept poking the fire.

“That’s not what Chuckles told
me.
Are you calling my cousin Chuck a liar? He told me that you want to escape. He said you want to disappear.”

“Charlie, I can’t believe you told people my story,” said Abby. “How could you do that?”

Now he looked straight at her. His eyes were empty. Devoid of all emotion.

“How could you do that?” she repeated.

“Don’t give Chuckles a hard time,” said Rake. He tilted his beer can back, finished it off, and then crushed the can and tossed it into the fire. “Hand me that stick,” he said to Charlie. Charlie passed it to him with no objection.

“You see this stick?” Rake said to Abby.

“Yeah.”

“This is my gator poker. You think I’m making a joke? I’m not. I brought this from home. You gotta have this with you if you’re gonna spend much time here.”

She said nothing.

“Are you hearing me, girl? Some of the biggest gators in the state come right out of this pond here. We got some record setters out of here when I was a kid, but now there’s no one around here much to bother them, so they’re probably just getting bigger.”

She nodded. She was trying to look calm, trying to figure out where exactly they were in relation to her buried treasure. She’d have to go down the dirt road, back to the main road, from there how many miles? Two? Three? Five?

“You listening to me?” Rake asked her.

“I’m listening,” she said. Aside from the popping fire what else was there to listen to?

“These gators will eat a deer or a dog, or a person. Chomp chomp chomp. They’re nature’s scavengers. They’ll eat anything you give ‘em. This pond here, this pond is nature’s garbage disposal.”

She nodded. Her mouth was too dry to speak.

“I’ve just got one question for you,” said Rake.

“What’s that?” Abby croaked.

He laughed, but not his usual mean, ironic laugh. It was a laugh of genuine delight. “Didn’t you think,” he said, “that it was a little stupid to ask someone you hardly knew to help you disappear?”