Run Away Baby (23 page)

She stuck her neck around the side of the chair, attempting to bite for the end of tape. It was like a desperate game of bobbing for apples. Once the end of the tape almost caught in her teeth, but slipped away. She paused, looked around, listening. There was that noise again, and suddenly, standing right in front of her, was a little black and white dog.

Her heart froze. This was not a good place for him to be.

“Oh no. Whatever you do, don’t bark,” she whispered to him. “You need to get out of here.”

He sniffed her hands. Undoubtedly they smelled like hotdogs. For a brief second, she imagined him grabbing the end of the duct tape and unwrapping her like Lassie. It didn’t happen. He licked her hand.

Seeing him there, knowing how doomed he would be if Charlie and Rake returned, or if Meggie saw him and wanted to keep him as her pet, Abby’s wavering adrenaline kicked up a notch. She struggled again to catch the end of the tape in her teeth. She got it and unwrapped another loop. Now the piece hanging was long and easy to grab. She unlooped and unlooped with her teeth until her left hand was free. The last bit of it hurt as it was ripped off, yanking out her arm hair, but it really wasn’t any worse than getting waxed. She unwrapped her right hand and her waist and ankles, her pulse hammering high in the middle of her chest, as if her heart was working its way up her esophagus. She was dizzy with disbelief, dizzy that she was actually doing it. She stood up and without a second’s hesitation, she started running.

She ran past the back of the shed, in the opposite direction the guys had gone, into the orange grove, running in the direction that she believed would take her toward town. The dog was running beside her. He thought this was fun. Somehow she kept going and going. She didn’t stop to listen for footsteps or voices, she just kept running. She couldn’t even guess how long she ran. An hour? Longer? She had no idea. She began to slow down. The orange grove had turned into a forest now. Hopefully it wouldn’t turn swampy. Hopefully they wouldn’t encounter alligators or wild boars or panthers.

They began ascending a slight wooded hill. Near the top Abby stopped to catch her breath and scan her surroundings. Far off in the distance she saw a campfire. It seemed very, very far away. This was the moment that gave her hope. Real hope. Not a flicker of hope, or a taste of hope, but straight up Hope. Her eyes filled with tears. Rake and Charlie and Meggie were way down there. She was way up here. She savored the moment, the view for a minute or two. Then she kept moving.

The little dog (she refused to think of him as Charlie) had boundless energy. They ran when Abby could run, and when she got tired they walked. Her feet were raw from her new shoes but she kept pushing on through the pain. The little dog stayed beside her, keeping pace with her. They kept moving all through the night, never stopping.

As she saw a faint pink haze rising along the eastern sky, they came to a highway. She held the dog’s collar to keep him from running out into the road. He and Abby cowered in the periphery of the woods and watched a semi-truck go flying past. Once all was clear, she and the dog darted across the highway into the woods on the other side, just before another semi-truck came barreling along.

As they ran through the woods, keeping parallel to the highway, Abby caught glimpses of a sign off in the distance. She had seen that sign twice now. It said
Grandaddy’s Ho-Made Jam next right.
A person really can’t forget a sign like that. Especially when they’ve buried $40,000 on the road to Grandaddy’s place.

Once they’d crossed the highway and run a little farther, Abby felt safe enough to finally sit down to think. She guessed she was within a mile of where she’d buried her money, license, and passport. Once she got to that area, she’d be close to Grove. Soon after that they would have little woods to hide in.

The little dog lay down beside her, panting. Abby was unsure whether it was safer to hide here in the woods all day and wait until dark to move again, or to keep plowing along.

She decided she was too close to her money and ID not to go to them. It was early enough that most people were still sleeping. Except Rake and Charlie and Meggie, of course, who were likely combing the whole countryside for her. She stood up, her muscles crying out. She never should have taken a break. She started running again, the little dog now wearily beside her. Her pounding feet became the prayers of her mind:
Help me find the stuff I hid
, and
Did my family send this dog to me
, and
I’m sorry I’m leading this dog from his home,
over and over, each step a syllable, each sentence repeating until another butted in. Keeping within hearing distance of the highway, they plodded on.

The trees began to thin and up ahead Abby saw a smaller road cutting through the forest in front of them. Before they reached it, while still camouflaged by the trees, she veered off to the right, now keeping that smaller road in her view. The gushing, repetitive roar of semi-trucks began to fade. They walked until they came to a little gully. Abby walked down into it. To her left, above her head now, was a little bridge. This was where she had parked Esmeralda’s car a few days ago. The hand spade was poking out of some weeds, right where she’d left it. She grabbed it, scanned the area under the bridge for the flat marker rock she’d left for herself, found it, and slid it away. A speck of a plastic bag poked out. She didn’t have to dig; she pulled the bag from the dry dirt. It was all there, as she had left it. She shoved the rocks and gravel back into place. Nothing looked unusual. It was dry and dusty, and looked like any old ditch. There were a couple of faded aluminum cans that may have been there for weeks or years. Weedy wildflowers. Nothing else to report. She wiped off the hand spade and tossed it into the weeds. Even if someone found it, she couldn’t think of any reason they’d believe it had anything to do with her.

Holding her critical bundle tight against her chest, Abby ran through the dry gully, beneath the bridge to the other side of the road, and made her way back toward the highway, getting as close as she dared. The Monday morning traffic noise was picking up. She had planned to break into someone’s house and gather some of the things she would need. In her head, this part would be easy, but now it seemed impossible. For one thing, people out here were poor. It seemed there was always someone home at a poor person’s house.

The trees were thinning and the highway noise was getting louder. A loopy disconnect was settling over Abby. She was so exhausted that she felt a little out of control. She became concerned about the little dog darting through the woods to the highway and getting struck by a car.

She went back into the forest to where it was denser and she lay down by a tree, trying to cover herself with dirt, leaves, branches. Here it was humid and mossy. Mosquitoes swarmed above them and the bugs of the forest floor began crawling over their bodies. Abby clutched her bundle to her stomach. She swatted the bugs away, amazed at how sleepy she was. They kept coming back but she was too tired to care.

This is stupid to do this, she told herself. This is dangerous.

But so was every other option.

The little dog curled up beside her and they drifted off together.

When Abby woke up she was surprised to find herself in the same spot, untouched, still safe, still holding the plastic bag containing her new identity. The dog was gone. It took a fraction of a second to register her situation, and another fraction to notice she was alone. She sat up and looked around, listening for the jingling music of the dog’s tags hitting his collar. There was no sound except for the birds and rustling of the forest; he may have been gone for hours.

She stood and stretched. The sun was high. She guessed it was early afternoon. She was thirsty and covered in insect bites, but otherwise she felt sharp and healthy. Ready for more.

She began walking through the woods, away from the highway, along the edge of a fence line. The opposite side of the fence abruptly turned from forest to clear countryside. There were pastures with cattle grazing off to her left. She stayed just beyond the tree line, grateful to have a retraceable route in case she should need it, deciding to get away from the highway for a while.

Before long, Abby saw a single shack at the end of a long, lonely dirt driveway. She crouched down to watch this forlorn homestead. Five or ten minutes went by with no sign of movement. Seeing no cars near it and no garage for cars to hide in, she decided to make her move. She’d gone only a few steps when a brown lump near the house stirred and stood up. Abby ducked back down and retreated into the forest as the dog raised its head, sniffed, and began to bark. It was a huge pit bull, chained to a post. It sniffed some more and upped its barking to a ferocious, warning level. A moment later the door opened and a woman came out in sweatpants and a bra. She looked around suspiciously, saw nothing, and turned on the garden hose. She squirted the dog and yelled at it until it slunk down in angry resignation.

When the dog finally settled back down, Abby continued walking, going a little farther from the pasture. The forest here was not nearly as dense as it had been earlier. If it got any thinner she feared she would have to hide out until dark.

Up a small hill, the forest thickened up again. From here Abby could look down at pastures and see a bit of the highway in the distance. The panic that had been mounting as the forest had been turning sparser and sparser subsided a little. For now, she was safe.

Up ahead a little she saw what looked like a mini-housing development from the 1980’s. Five raised ranches plunked down in the middle of nowhere in a fanned out semi-circle. All five had fences indicating they probably had pools. They looked a little rundown, like the start of something that never took off. One had a camper parked beside it. Another had a saggy trampoline. All looked deserted. She steered clear of these houses and kept going.

When she started going down the hill, she passed a gully that was filled with a big heap of garbage. An actual garbage dump. Judging from the stuff piled there, no one had used it for years. There were old cars, old refrigerators, old broken dishes. As soon as she passed it, she found herself on a rutty dirt road. Walking on a road, even a deserted dirt road, felt like a bad idea, so she stepped off it and wandered back into the woods a little. She sat down and listened, suddenly uneasy.

Hearing nothing out of the ordinary, she took a quick look inside her plastic bag to reassure herself that everything was still okay.

She examined all of Barabara’s information, working for a few minutes on memorizing everything about her. She wanted to take off her shoes and feel cool air on her feet, but she was afraid if she took them off she’d never want to put them back on, so instead she loosened the laces a bit.

She remembered hearing once that the waitresses who got the biggest tips weren’t the cheerful ones but the ones who seemed like they were really stressed out and
barely
holding it together. So that was her plan. At least at first, anyhow. Once she got out of danger and was truly on her way, heading up north to mountains and fall leaves and lighthouses, she was going to be a disgruntled waitress. She’d be the one who made each and every table she served feel like she was hanging by a thread, but hanging on
just for them
. Like, Here’s your omelet, and then set it down with a really stressed out smile.

She’d go by Barbie. People would like that. It would make them think of Barbie dolls. When people asked why her name was spelled Barabara instead of Barbara, she’d tell them she come from a poor, uneducated family “Down South” and that her mom and dad didn’t know how to spell, and neither did anyone at the hospital. They’d feel sorry for her. Maybe she’d be the recipient of one of those huge tips that made the news.

She scratched at a few of her many bug bites. “Okay, don’t let it go
that
far,” she told herself.

She returned Barabara’s information to the bag, forcing herself back to the present. Exhaustion and dehydration were making it hard to think. Charlie and Rake and Meggie had probably looked for her all night and all morning. At some point they’d likely watched the news. Had they assumed she’d flagged down some motorist? Were they still looking for her, or were they on the run themselves, far away from here, afraid she’d gone straight to the cops?

The last scenario seemed the most likely to her. They’d assume that everything they’d done had erased all her original schemes. And since they knew nothing about her money and new identity, since Charlie thought she was relying entirely on him, they wouldn’t think she’d be capable of surviving without his help.

Settling on this, Abby made herself comfortable, sitting with her back to a tree, and dozed for the remainder of the afternoon and early evening. When the sun went down she started walking again. The little road branched off to a bigger road, but she continued walking alongside a fence.

As night moved in, the heat did not subside. A swarm of mosquitos hovered along with her, unrelenting. She swatted at them, but it was futile. Eventually she gave up, too tired to fight them off any longer. The night was velvety dark, the humidity diffusing the little bit of moon and starlight, and she couldn’t move as quickly as she had the night before, since it was a struggle to see where she was going. Throughout her trek she kept thinking, jealously, about that dog getting sprayed with the garden hose. She’d give anything for a drink of that cold water.

The highway was gone now. She couldn’t hear it, couldn’t see it. She had no idea if it was half a mile away or ten miles away.

Deep into the night, she crossed a small road and saw a little house where the road curved. The house had a wide front porch and a big dormer double window on the second floor. There was no garage, no swing sets or kids’ toys, no evidence of a dog. Two non-junky cars were parked in the driveway. One was a Jetta. The other was a new Hyundai. Nothing amazing, but proof of two adults with jobs. The house was surrounded by trees and nothing else.

This was it. This was the house she’d been waiting for.