Stay (24 page)

The Maxima was now forty yards away, veering wildly, jerking, driving again, still in reverse. I wiped the blood from my face, squinted. The child had stopped screaming because she had her teeth buried in the woman’s wrist. I lurched forward. My knee buckled and I almost went down again. Just a message. I ran. In another fifty yards, the Maxima would reach the crossroads where there would be room to turn around. Once it was out of reverse, I’d have no hope of catching it.

The woman slapped the child. The child hung on. The car slowed almost to a stop. I ran. Thirty yards. The woman hit the child again. Twenty-five yards. The child let go. Twenty yards. Now or never. I lifted the Glock, sighted, breathed out, held it, and shot out the left front tire. I moved the gun slightly, sighted on the woman’s chest. Neither of us moved. Slowly, she raised both hands.

I limped as fast as I could to the car. “Out,” I said to the woman. “Now.” Even in rural Arkansas a shot might not go unnoticed. She climbed out warily. There was blood on her right wrist. I could smell her fear. “Turn around. Hands on the roof of the car.” Before she’d even turned around properly I whipped the Glock across the back of her head. I caught her before she fell.

The child had squeezed herself up against the passenger door, as far away from me as she could get. “Open the back door,” I said. She didn’t move. I ignored my knee, ignored the terrible need to hurry, and dredged up her name. “Luz. I need you to open the back door.” She stared at the gun, then my face. The gun, my face. I couldn’t put the gun down without letting go of the woman. Another child… shiny eyes… “Button needs you,” I said. “We have to hurry.” There was no more time.

I slung the woman as best I could over my left arm and tucked the Glock back in my waistband out of sight. That’s when I remembered the noise my rib cage had made. I cursed softly, then put that message aside, too. I could just reach the door handle. I got it open and stuffed the woman in. She left a smear of blood on the upholstery. I slammed the door, got in the driver’s seat.

Luz still hadn’t moved or spoken. I picked her up bodily— she was practically catatonic—put her in her seat, and pulled the seat belt round her. The pain was making it hard to breathe.

The tire rim ground on the gravel as I drove the hundred yards back to the rig and the sprawled lump in the road.

Out of the car, open the back door, drag the man to the car, lift and prop, fold and push him on top of the woman. Close rear door. Use remote to lock all four doors. Open door of truck, sigh, walk back to car, open passenger door. “I’m going to move the rig—the truck and trailer—so we can drive past. I’m coming back.” I’m going to pass out. “Stay there.” This time she nodded cautiously.

I got in the truck, turned it on. I could just drive away and never come back. I checked my throat in the mirror: red, but not reopened.

It took four minutes of slow and careful backing and filling before I had the rig on the side of the road, pointing south. Each time I twisted, each time I moved my right arm to change gear, I thought I might throw up. Just a message. The hitch didn’t feel right, but there wasn’t time to check it properly. Somewhere a sharp-eared neighbor might be dialing the sheriff. I turned off the engine, climbed down, went back to the car.

The child was so quiet I could hear the two in the back breathing slowly but steadily. The child—Luz, her name is Luz—had unfastened her seat belt. “Fasten it back up.”

Luz looked at me. “Button?”

“We have a short drive to make first.”

She looked over her shoulder at the woman Goulay and Mike, but didn’t speak. Probably thought I’d shoot her if she did.

I had to slow for every curve. With that tire gone, the car tilted to one side and the front wheels had a tendency to skate. I checked the rearview mirror often. No pursuing traffic. “How far can you walk?”

Now the look I got was full of incomprehension, as though I were speaking Urdu. How many nine-year-olds would know how far they could walk? She could probably manage three or four miles without any lasting damage, and I could always carry her. “There’s a map in the glove compartment,” I said. “Pass it to me please.” I slowed, one hand on the wheel, the other tracing tiny lines. Brink Creek campground was about four miles. The woods there would be dense enough to confuse most city people, and there wouldn’t be much traffic. I handed the map back to Luz, who refolded it and put it back in the glove compartment without being asked. Remarkable adaptation to circumstances. Her early life must have been interesting. Or perhaps all nine-year-olds were this resilient.

The campground was empty. I pulled in under the trees, parked, and pocketed the keys. Luz seemed to listen to the silence.

“Now you have to help me wipe the car down.” I eased Goulay’s heavy coat off her shoulders and ripped away one of her cardigan sleeves. “Take this and rub it all around the steering wheel. It’s very important that you rub every single bit of the surface.”

“Why?”

It wasn’t her fault the Carpenters didn’t have a television. I forced myself to breathe through the pain in ribs and knee, and managed to speak without growling. “Fingerprints.”

I tore off the other sleeve and wiped at the doors and roof where I might have touched the metal inadvertently. Then I tackled the shiny vinyl on the backs of the seats and inside windows.

I remembered the belt and wiped that down, too—after I’d retied it around Mike’s ankles. He must be more supple than I’d thought. Just as I was finishing that, he woke. “Don’t,” I said in his ear. “Keep still and you’ll be fine. She’ll wake up in a few hours and untie you.” It would be dark and cold by then. I tucked Goulay’s arms back into her coat.

I motioned Luz away from the car, gave the wheel and stick a quick wipe myself, then threw the ragged sleeve on the front seat.

“Now we walk back to the trailer. It’s a long way.” She didn’t move. “What?”

“My stuff.”

The suitcase, in the trunk.

At first she insisted on carrying the case herself. She carried it two-handed, in front of her, bumping her knees. I tried not to wince.

“When you get tired, let me know.”

I matched my pace to hers, but even at two miles an hour my knee burned. The back of my neck throbbed and every now and then my hands tingled. Some kind of nerve bruise. I felt at my ribs gently as I walked; no obvious splintering. Cracked, perhaps, or maybe just soft-tissue injury at the sternum. Cartilage probably.

I had no idea what to do with this child. I had seen the look on her face as Goulay tried to take her away from the Carpenters. But a dog will bond even with a cruel owner, one who beats it and starves it.

We walked on. Luz began to lag. I slowed even more. She hung on to the case with grim determination. I had no idea what nine-year-olds talked about.

“What’s in there, then? Gold and jewels?”

“Stuff.”

“We can buy you more stuff. More clothes.”

“Not just clothes.”

Of course. Books. “You know what one of my favorite books used to be?
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
. Have you read that?”

On an adult, her expression would have meant, Don’t tell me you love me if you don’t mean it. I plowed on, glad I didn’t have to lie. “I’ve read all of them.”

“There are seven!”

“Yes. I’ve read them all. But I think
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
is my favorite. Or maybe
Prince Caspian
.” A bloody thirty-two-year-old Norwegian discussing 1950s English novels with a nine-year-old Mexican girl in backwoods Arkansas.

The absurdity of the situation didn’t seem to bother her. “I like it best when they have supper with Mr. and Mrs. Beaver,” she said. Safety, warmth, food. Tenderness. Every child should have them. “And I like it when Edmund is in the sleigh in the snow with the White Witch eating Turkish delight.” She swang the suitcase to one hand, then changed her mind and tried the other.

“You want me to carry that for a bit?”

“Okay. Just for a bit.”

All her worldly possessions. It weighed about eight pounds. Not much, but eight pounds more than I wanted to carry.

“I like it too that Edmund was good in the end and that his sisters and brother were nice to him.” She frowned. “But I don’t know what Turkish delight is. Aba doesn’t know, either. She said maybe it’s kind of like chocolate.”

“Real Turkish delight is soft and squashy and sweet. It comes in round boxes. The pieces are pale yellow or pink cubes, and all dusted with powdered sugar.”

“Is it nice?”

Being in the rig, being out of sight, and getting my ribs taped would be nice. “It’s a bit perfumey, like eating roses. Sickly. I’ll buy you some if you like, then you can tell me.”

“Aba doesn’t like me to eat sweet things.” A slitted, sideways glance.

Aud Torvingen, White Witch. “Did you know that they made a film based on
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
?”

She gave me that look that said I was speaking Urdu again, and I remembered she didn’t go to school, where children are exposed to other children talking about cartoons and movies and gross-out videos.

“So what books do you have in here?” She shook her head and flushed, which I hadn’t seen her do before. “Must be a heavy one.”

She actually hung her head. I imagined her poring over a book of knowledge in tiny type with black-and-white illustrations that was forty years out of date and smelled of mildew, imagined her agony of indecision when it came time to pack her things: she would have wanted it so, but known it was stealing.

“I could buy you encyclopedias, too. New ones.”

“Why?”

“Because they’re better.” But that wasn’t what she meant. She stumbled, but pulled away when I tried to help her.

“How far is it?”

“Another two miles.”

She nodded wearily.

“I could carry you, if you like.” Even if she didn’t like. We were already conspicuous; I wanted to be back at the trailer before dark.

“Like a baby!” Enough energy for scorn.

“Aslan carried Lucy.”

“You’re not a lion.”

“No, but I can talk, not like a horse or a car.” She considered that. “Okay. But piggyback.”

“Of course.” I shifted the Glock to the front of my waist-band and squatted. My knee was visibly swollen. She climbed onto my back. “Wrap your legs tightly because I need one hand for— No!” I pulled her legs down a little. “No,” I said again, more softly, “not there.”

We set off again, her arms around my neck tightly enough to choke. If Mike’s weight hadn’t reopened the wound, hers probably wouldn’t. After a while she relaxed. A little while after that, the pain in my knee notched up from burning to searing.

Now that she wasn’t walking, Luz was more talkative. She talked about Button a lot.

“He’s okay. Not as smart as me but he’s good, I mean he’s good when he can be. When Aba tells him, Don’t leave the yard, he doesn’t leave the yard on purpose, he just forgets. So it’s my job to remind him.”

“But he has tantrums.” I was getting very thirsty.

“When he’s upset. Because he doesn’t always understand things.”

“Does he ever hit you?”

“On purpose? No! But once when I was little he was wiggling about and I tried to hold his hands and he knocked one of my teeth out. But it was just a baby tooth so it was okay. It was falling out already.”

“Does anyone else ever hit you?”

“Like who?”

“Like anyone. Like Aba, or Mr. Carpenter.”

“Why would they hit me?”

“Sometimes adults hit children when they’re not good.”

“I’m always good.”

“Always?”

She squirmed. “Mostly.”

“And what do they do when they find out you haven’t been good?”

She squirmed again. “Make me say more prayers.”

“Prayers are boring,” I said.

“Sometimes.”

“Always.”

“No, sometimes they’re nice. They make me feel…” Her arms tightened a bit while she thought about it. “Like someone’s looking after me the same way I look after Button.”

“Don’t Aba and Mr. Carpenter look after you?”

“Aba does. Mr. Carpenter…” I felt her shrug. “He does things like drive the truck and cut the wood and do the farm stuff, and he takes us swimming sometimes, and Aba leans on his arm when we go to church. But…”

She didn’t have the vocabulary, in Spanish or English, to talk about the inability to deal with the outside world, with strangers and hard moral choices. Jud Carpenter seemed like a good man who belonged in a simpler time. “But he didn’t stop that woman from taking you away.”

“He wanted to. Aba stopped him. But I’m going back, aren’t I, so I guess Brother Jerry was right. God works in mysterious ways.” Brother Jerry? “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. It’s not far now.”

My neck hurt, my ribs hurt, I was beginning to imagine I could hear the bones in my knee grinding together, but more than that I didn’t want to see her face when we got in the rig and I drove her away. I walked on, right foot left foot.

“Aud.” That perfect pronunciation. “Aud? There is something wrong, isn’t there? Am I too heavy? We could leave my stuff here and get Mr. Carpenter to come back for it in the truck, later.”

“Luz, would you like to live somewhere else? I mean, live in a big city where you could have everything you wanted, watch TV and read books and talk Spanish and play with other girls?” Would I have left the care of my mother, such as it was, if a stranger had asked?

“Could Button and Aba come, too?”

“Luz, do you remember your life before Aba, when you lived in another country?”

“No.”

“You don’t remember a big church with pretty-colored glass, or your mother and brother and sister? Where everyone talked Spanish?”

“No.” Her voice had an edge to it.

“You were telling Button about it.”

“That was just a story.” Loudly now.

“But if the story were real, about a real place and a real time, would you like to go back there?”

“No! It was a story! I want to go home. I don’t want Turkish delight or cyclopedias, I want to go home to Aba and Button and Mr. Carpenter!”

I gritted my teeth and kept walking. How do you persuade the beaten dog it would be better off with someone else? Perhaps you couldn’t. Perhaps it wouldn’t.