Stoneskin's Revenge (15 page)

Robyn snorted contemptuously. “That's the
one
thing he wasn't.”

“Wanta bet?” Brock shot back. “I seen him watchin' me plenty of times that same hungry-kinda way he looked at you. And he was all the time tryin' to come in the bathroom when I was in there, and…”

“Sounds like a real asshole,” Calvin interrupted, feeling his first real pang of regret at his failings with his own father. They'd had differences, sure, but it was over ethics and philosophy, not actual abuse. Most of the whippings Calvin had got he'd deserved. And his dad had damned sure never laid a hand on him any other way!

“He
was
an asshole,” Robyn continued, her voice a little shaky, but Calvin marveled at how much she'd changed in the few hours he'd been in her company. Though still trying to play the tough broad, she was starting to soften, to let her hair down some. And that was dangerous, because Calvin knew he'd have a tendency to follow suit but didn't dare.

“I'm listenin',” Calvin prompted, when Robyn seemed at a loss as to where to begin. “I can keep a secret,” he added hopefully.

Robyn sighed and folded her arms above her head, not looking at him. “Oh, jeeze,” she began. “It's such a long story. But I guess what really kicked it off was when our real dad died. We were living in Miami then. It was a really nice neighborhood—we had a pool and all—but it was kinda close to one of the Cuban ghettos. I guess I was about twelve or thirteen, Brock was probably—”

“Seven,” Brock supplied, then lapsed back into silence.

“Right. Well anyway, Mom was your basic housewife, and Dad worked for the city. But one day Mom went out shopping, and…” She paused, sniffed, then went on, “…well, basically, this Cuban kid raped her. She didn't say anything to us about it, but then one night we heard her crying, and I asked Dad about it the next day, and he asked Mom what was up, and she told him, and he went looking for the kid, 'cause Mom knew who he was—the son of the woman who cleaned for us sometimes. And Dad found the kid and was gonna beat him up—maybe even kill him—except that…”

She hesitated again, and Calvin knew she was having a hard time. He wondered suddenly what it must have been like to have a father you loved.

“The kid's brother came in on 'em and shot Dad in the back,” Brock finished.

“Jeeze!” Calvin whispered.

“Yeah,” Robyn echoed, her voice stronger now. “Well, the outcome of
that
was that we moved to Jacksonville, where Mom was from, and then Mom met this guy there…and married him. Things were fine for a while, and the guy was actually pretty decent to me and Brock, but then…well, I think what began it all was that Mom never told him about what had happened, and she never really liked to have sex after she was raped, so that eventually they just quit doing it. But our stepdad was a lot younger than she was and didn't understand, and when he finally found out, it messed him up good, 'cause he wasn't gettin' any on the one hand, and 'cause Mom had kept stuff from him on the other, and 'cause he couldn't stand the idea of what he called ‘damaged goods' on the third.'

“
That
was when it really hit the fan,” Brock inserted.

“Yeah,” Robyn sighed in agreement, “I reckon he just got mean. And since he couldn't stand the idea of sex with Mom anymore, he got to messin' around, only that made him feel guilty, so he started drinkin', and
that
made him mess around more—you can see where this is headin', can't you?”

“'Fraid so.” Calvin nodded. “I bet one day he got drunk…”

“And raped
me
,”
Robyn whispered, her voice once more aquiver.

“Shit!”

“Oh, Brock tried to stop him,” she went on, “never mind that he was only about eleven, but the guy knocked him around and hurt him, and made us swear not to tell. But Brock
had
to tell Mom, 'cause the guy had nearly broken his arm, and then the shit really hit the fan, and after that it was hollerin' and fightin' all the time, and Mom takin' us off and our stepdad comin' back to get us, and court, and lawyers, and social workers, and all.”

“And all the while he was still…well, you know,” Brock put in.

“
Both
of you?”

Brock shrugged uncomfortably. “Like I said, he never did anything but look at me funny—unless you count beatin' the crap out of me 'bout once a week. Man, I couldn't do
anything
right.”

“I know the feelin',” Calvin confided. “But you still haven't told me how you actually ran away, like how long you've been on the road and all.”

Robyn took up the tale again. “We planned it a long time, but didn't act until last week. I was kinda lucky in a way, 'cause by the time things had really gotten messy, I'd got old enough to be on my own, though I hated to leave my little bro, so I just stayed gone a lot: slept over at my girlfriends' houses and stuff. Even ran off once before, but came back after three days 'cause I got worried about Brock.”

“Who had meanwhile learned how to dig and hide and fight,” Calvin guessed.

“Yeah.” Robyn chuckled in spite of herself. “Kids kinda tended to get down on us 'cause of our folks. I don't know which of us spent more time takin' up for the other.”

“You did,” Brock volunteered instantly.

“But anyway,” Robyn continued, “last week we just couldn't take it anymore, and when Brock's final grades came in and weren't the straight As our stepdad wanted, he just flipped, and that's when we decided to head out. We stole his credit cards and charged up a bunch of camping gear and stuff, and stashed it with some friends, and then just walked out last Sunday and said we were goin' to a movie, and never came back. Had a friend was gonna take us to Savannah, but it was rainin' like a son-of-a-bitch by then—and we had to stop along the road 'cause we flat couldn't see, and then when we tried to start the car again, it wouldn't go, so he had no choice but to call home for help, and
we
had no choice but to hit the road.”

“So you've been hikin'…?”

“Since Monday night. Found this place yesterday. Gotta move on tomorrow. We're afraid to hitch,” she added. “Cops are probably on the watch by now.”

“So what happens after you get to Savannah?”

“We hop ship for Europe and get as far away from our stepdad as we can.”

“What about your mom?”

“We'll write her when we get the chance, but not till we're safely out of reach.”

“Wish we could have brought her with us,” Brock mumbled sleepily.

“Yeah,” Robyn affirmed wistfully. “She was a really neat lady.”

“Was,”
Brock yawned back.

Robyn was looking at Calvin expectantly.

Calvin slapped at one of the mosquitoes that had begun to plague him. “My life's not been real great either,” he admitted.

“We're waiting,” Robyn replied pointedly.

Calvin shrugged uncomfortably. “There's not much to tell—not that's interesting. Mom and Dad were both Cherokee, but Dad was only half, and city-bred in the bargain, and she was born on the reservation up in North Carolina.”

“I've been there,” Brock piped up.

“Hush!” This from Robyn.

“Yeah, well, Mom died when I was born, but right from the start her folks and Dad disagreed on how to raise me. Dad said I'd only be unhappy if I tried to be an Indian in a white man's world, and Mom's folks said I had a right to my heritage, and should be exposed to both sides, and make my own choice. Her dad was their main advocate, I guess. He was a kind of—you'd call him a medicine man—and I started spendin' summers up there when I got old enough, and he started teachin' me things, and so I just naturally got interested in that side of the family. Eventually Grandfather tried to adopt me, 'cause the descent goes through the female line in Cherokee. That was when the
real
trouble with my dad began. I was tryin' to find out everything I could about my people, and Dad was tryin' every way he knew to stop me. He kinda had a point, I guess, 'cause I really do have to live in the white man's world, and just then—I was maybe fifteen—I wasn't doin' real well there. My grades started slippin', though fortunately I stayed away from drugs and booze; I've seen too much of what they can do. Anyway, Dad finally laid down an ultimatum and told me I could do whatever I wanted to do Cherokee, as long as I
also
did what he wanted me to do, which was to make good grades, and play sports—white men's sports—and go huntin' with him, though even that was the white man's way: with dogs and stuff. And he wanted me to date only white girls, by which I mean
very
white girls, like live in Chamblee and Sandy Springs and all. Finally I just couldn't stand it any longer, and then Grandfather died, and I went to the funeral, and I decided then I was gonna follow my heart.”

“Which was?”

“To soak up as much of the real world—of my people's world—as I could. See, white people don't really think of themselves as a part
of
nature; they think of themselves as apart
from
nature—and apart from history too, I guess, to judge by what some of the preachers say. Basically, what this meant was that I dropped out of high school and bummed around a bit, spent a while up at the reservation, and then last summer started hikin' the Appalachian Trail, and then…that's when things really changed.”

“How?”

“Met a girl, for one thing,” Calvin replied, oblivious to the glimmer of disappointment that clouded Robyn's features until it was too late. “Uh, actually, she's twenty-five,” he added awkwardly. “Her name's Sandy, and she teaches physics in a high school near Sylva, N.C., and has a real neat cabin on a mountaintop near there.”

He paused to poke the fire again, noting how the ruddy light made Robyn's too-pale skin seem to come alive.

“Like I said,” Calvin went on, “that was last summer, and a couple of months after I met Sandy I went on down to Georgia and ran into some really sharp folks—first folks I'd met who were really into the things I'm into.”

“Like magic?” Brock suggested a little too eagerly.

“Yeah,” Calvin grunted, wishing the kid wasn't so
quick. “Like magic.”

“I play D&D some,” Brock volunteered eagerly. “I've got a tenth-level cleric who—”

“Not
now,
Brock,” Robyn told him, but with more sadness than hostility.

“No, not now,” Calvin echoed. “Maybe sometime, though. I promise.”

“So how'd
you
wind up here?” Robyn asked finally. “I mean, if you don't mind telling.”

“I
can't
say,” Calvin replied wistfully, “'cause I don't want to lie, and if I told you the truth, you wouldn't believe me.”

“Try us.”

Calvin shook his head. “Not yet. Suffice to say I was takin' care of some stuff with my buddies, and we finished it up, and I asked them to let me off here, 'cause I found out a bunch of things while we were doin'…what we did, that really kinda weirded me out, so I wanted to just hang out in the woods for a while and get my head straight.”

“And then
we
came long and messed it up,” Robyn finished.

Calvin shook his head. “Not you, the cops. Them—and the death of my father.”

“They think Calvin killed him,” Brock supplied.

Calvin rolled his eyes in dismay. That was the last thing he needed.

Robyn's eyes narrowed, but she kept her cool. “Did you?”

“No.”

“When did you find out?”

“This afternoon.”

Her voice softened, though it retained a note of apprehension. “Wanta…talk about it?”

“No.”

“Sure?”

A pause, then: “No to that, too.”

“Life's a bitch.”

“And then you die,” Brock concluded.

“No,” Calvin countered, “
life's
great, it's people not bein' straight that screws you up—that, and people who won't wake up and smell the roses, who wanta make the world into their image of it 'stead of what it really is.”

“Like your dad did?”

“Yeah.”

They talked for several more hours—or Robyn and Calvin did; shortly after it became full dark Brock rolled up in his sleeping bag and, in spite of his best efforts to the contrary, was soon snoring softly. Most of what they discussed
was
fathers, and though Calvin was reluctant to elaborate at first and recounted his encounter with the sheriff in the sketchiest possible terms, he discovered that Robyn was almost as easy to talk to as Sandy. Eventually she began to open up as well, and after a while Calvin realized they'd both sort of regressed to their childhoods, were exchanging tales of small family doings before crises had hit. Robyn spoke of going to Disneyworld with her folks, and how her dad had enjoyed the rides as much as she had, and had insisted on going on all the E-tickets twice, never mind her mom's protests.