The Hungry Dead (23 page)

Well, Harriet thought, she'd have to talk to Nancy about this and get her side of the story. Perhaps it was all an innocent misunderstanding of some sort. Looking up at her husband, Harriet noticed his bandage and inquired solicitously, “Bert, did you get hurt on duty last night?”

Glad that she had thought of it herself, Bert used her lead to follow through on the excuse he had planned all along. “I had a run-in with a punk who was drunk and disorderly. Not too serious of an incident, really. Al and I got the cuffs on him and hauled him in.”

“Did Al get hurt, too?”

“Are you kidding? Does Al ever have bad luck? Not a scratch on him, as usual.”

She reached out and put her hand on his. “Bert . . . you and I haven't had much of a sex life lately. Could it be because of what you've been going through with Nancy?”

From the moment this explanation had occurred to her, she had clutched at it, willing to believe in it rather than blame herself for a failure in the bedroom.

Bert pressed her fingers in his and gazed at her balefully. “What do
you
think? I love you, honey, and I don't want to lose you. One of these days Nancy might come to you with some wild stories, trying to put the blame on me. I just want you to be aware of my side of it first, so nothing can ever come between us. Naturally, we have to give Nancy love and understanding. But the important thing is for you and me to stick together.”

Overcome by Bert's sincerity, Harriet's eyes smarted and a tear rolled down her cheek. Even if Bert was partially to blame for this crisis, she didn't want to lose either him or her daughter.

 

By this time Nancy, Tom, and Hank had crossed the Pennsylvania border into West Virginia. Hank was smoking a cigarette. Nancy was sitting rather morosely in the back seat of the van, still overcome by her troubles, although Tom had been trying to cheer her up. Reaching to the dash to turn down the volume, he commented happily, “Dig all these mountains without a trace of green on them yet, except for a scattering of pine—I love it! Tonight we'll be camping in the Blue Ridge Mountains, maybe on the Shenandoah River. Do you know the song ‘Shenandoah,' Nancy? Maybe you can sing it for us. Then the next day or the day after we'll all see the scenery turn greener and greener . . . the farther south we go . . . all the way to good old Florida.”

“Goin' where the weather suits my clothes,” Hank drawled.

“I'm staying in my bathing suit the whole time!” Tom said exuberantly.

“Say somethin',” said Hank, turning to peer inquisitively at Nancy. “We give you a ride and you put a damper on things.”

“I'm just tired,” she apologized.

“Man, how tired you gonna be by the time we go another thousand miles?” Hank challenged.

“I'm hungry,” said Tom, changing the subject.

The speed limit slowed to thirty-five; they had come into a rural hamlet in southern West Virginia. Hank turned the rock music up loud as the three youths sized up the town they were cruising through. The place was called Cherry Hill—one more in a succession of colorfully named West Virginia towns like Man, Cabin Creek, Hundred, and Nitro. Cherry Hill had a large general store, a feed store, several rough-looking saloons, and a place that sold mining equipment. People walking on the narrow main street all seemed to be dressed as farmers, miners, or hunters. Parked outside the saloons and stores were several pickup trucks with racks full of rifles and shotguns mounted in their rear windows.

“Wow! What a haven for rednecks!” Tom said. “We better watch ourselves here, Hank.”

“Why?”

“Some of these hicks would just as soon blow us away as look at us.”

“You been seein' too many movies. My parents came up from Tennessee. They said the South ain't nowhere near as mean as it's portrayed.”

“Still, I don't think we should try anything,” Tom said, and Nancy's ears perked up as she wondered what he had in mind.

Hank told Tom, “Sometimes you're a chicken-shit, you know that? Nothing out of line ever happens in a one-horse town like this. If you're smart and you got balls, you can get away with damn near anything.”

Made extremely apprehensive by this kind of talk, Nancy asked, “What would you want to get away with, Hank?”

Glancing at her sideways, he said, “Anything. I mean—” He caught himself and fell silent for a moment, then said to Tom, “You gotta realize some of these hick places don't even keep their deputies on duty after midnight.”

“What
is
this all about?” Nancy demanded.

Haltingly, Tom explained, afraid of the impression his explanation might make on Nancy. “I might as well tell you, as long as you're going to be riding with us. Me and Hank . . . well . . . we're not exactly what you could call rich. Hank has a football scholarship, but it doesn't pay his full tuition, and I have to struggle by on what my parents give me, plus what I earn waiting on tables in the fraternity dining room. So we sat down and figured out a careful budget before we left campus. If we paid for our gas, we wouldn't have enough money to buy food, and if we bought food, then we wouldn't have money to pay for gas. So we made up our minds we'd just have to steal groceries all the way from Massachusetts to Florida. That's how we've been makin' it. If you don't want to stick with us now that you know, we'll let you out and you can hitch another ride.”

“After you talked me into going to Florida instead of California!” Nancy complained in exasperation.

“How much bread you got on you?” Hank inquired sharply.

“Uh . . . fourteen dollars.”

“Certainly not enough to feed yourself all the way to Frisco.”

“Nope. But . . . ”

“Then you have to steal,” Tom concluded. “And if you
have
to, then it isn't a sin.”

To Tom, Hank said, “Did you spot any lawmen so far?”

“Uh-uh.”

Nancy slumped in her seat, wrestling with the moral implications of what had been discussed. She was just beginning to like Tom and Hank and feel safe with them. And now this. She had little doubt, though, that it was only one of a series of scary adjustments she'd have to make now that she had left home.

“Here's
a nice grocery store made to order,” Hank said, showing how much he relished the discovery by emitting a low, throaty chuckle. He was pointing at a chain food-store on the righthand side of the road, and Tom pulled over and parked the van with the engine running.

“You could help us pull this off,” Hank said to Nancy.

“You don't have to if you don't want to,” Tom stated emphatically, turning to face her after flashing a glance at Hank.

“But if you stick with us without doin' your share, you're gonna be eatin' stolen food, anyway,” Hank pointed out.

A few minutes later, Hank and Nancy entered the grocery store, sauntering past the checkout counters. She wheeled the shopping cart down an aisle to begin shopping. “Let's make this a real spree,” Hank said with a mischievous grin, then started tossing items into the cart. Joining in the lark after a moment of panicky hesitation, Nancy soon got caught up in the swing of things, and it was strangely liberating. She and Hank piled their cart high with anything and everything they could grab off the shelves—meat, cereal, cocoa, eggs, butter, bread, cheese, condiments, potato chips, pretzels—whatever struck their fancy. They found themselves laughing uproariously and tossing things back and forth to each other as they sped down the aisles weaving around regular customers who stood and gawked.

The cart filled, Hank and Nancy wheeled over to the checkout counter. The woman behind the checkout counter, a prim-looking old biddy, checked, tallied, and bagged their selections, ringing them up and holding out her hand for money. “Just a minute, I want to return this cart,” Nancy said.

Meanwhile, Hank had picked up two armloads of groceries and was already moving toward the exit. Wheeling her way through the checkout aisle, Nancy pushed the empty cart into an area where it would temporarily obstruct pursuit by the woman behind the counter, then snatched up the remaining bag of groceries and ran behind Hank out through the automatic door and toward the van, which Tom had kept waiting outside, doors open and engine still running. The woman screamed and hollered for the store manager as Nancy and Hank made their escape.

They piled into the van on the run, strewing stolen groceries all over the back of the vehicle. The van lurched out and began speeding away. But immediately a siren started wailing—a police car was in pursuit.

“Gas it!” Hank yelled.

Nancy cowered in the back seat, trying belatedly to get her seat belt fastened.

Hitting sixty miles per hour, the van left the outskirts of Cherry Hill, attempting to outrace the police siren.

They were on a rare straight section of two-lane blacktop, heading into sharp curves. Nancy screamed and Hank yelled, “Look out!” because Tom was going too fast to make it. But he didn't attempt the curves. Instead, he careened off, humping and bumping into a farmer's field. A dirt road ran through the field and Tom got on it and there were fewer bone-jarring bumps. The police car still followed, some distance behind. When Tom caught sight of it in the rearview mirror, it spurred him to go faster. The dirt road had a hard-packed surface, but there were plenty of bends and twists. Still, Tom barely slowed down. Whoever was driving the police car was more cautious, for the police were not in such close pursuit as they had been before.

The road wound through a valley of poor, rundown farms, few and far between. In a blur, Nancy watched unpainted barns and farmhouses flashing by every once in a while among the trees, foliage, collapsed fences, and branches that sometimes whipped against her window because the road was so narrow and Tom kept swerving from one side to the other in his effort to go fast and still control the vehicle. Every once in a while there would be a narrow turn-off, but they'd shoot past it too quickly to do anything about it. Finally, Tom took a chance and slowed down. When a turn-off came up, he took it, hoping to lose the cops. As soon as he was around the bend, he gunned it, hoping they wouldn't be able to spot his dust. In a little while the sound of the siren seemed farther away. Tom kept driving as fast as possible for a few more minutes. Finally, he slowed to normal speed, looked over at Hank, and burst out laughing. Hank and Nancy laughed, too. The laugh felt cleaner and fresher than anything Nancy had experienced in her life. Was this the joy of thievery? The hard-driving chase had been terribly frightening. But now that they had gotten away clean, a sense of exhilaration set in. They laughed their heads off, not wanting to stop. As they began to recover, Tom turned to Hank, momentarily taking his eyes off the road.

“Wow! What a rush! I'd love to have been with you two in the store. I—”

“Tom! Look out!”

As Nancy screamed, Tom swerved the van to narrowly avoid hitting a man at the edge of the dirt road. The man, large and brawny in farmers' bibbed coveralls, had stepped out into the van's path, and he was carrying some sort of long, bulky bundle wrapped in a soiled blanket. As the van swerved, the man ducked back into the cover of woods from whence he came. He continued to stare stolidly after the van, still supporting the bundle in his arms.

In the van, Tom said, “Damn! I almost hit that guy! Whew!” Perspiring, he wiped the back of his hand across his forehead.

“He was carrying something,” Hank said. “Did you see that?”

Tom chuckled nervously. “I was lucky I saw him at all. Thanks for yelling, Nancy.”

She ran her tongue over dry lips, then spoke in hushed, anxious tones. “There was something creepy about him. I got a look at his face and he seemed to be grinning, even when it looked like you were surely going to run him over. I swear, he had some kind of strange smile on his face. And I think I saw a shoe sticking out from under his blanket.” She shuddered from her imaginings.

Hank turned around and laughed at her. “Naw! He was just a big farmer with a bundle. You're shook up, girl. Your mind's playing tricks on you. Soon as we find a good place to camp, we'll smoke some grass to loosen you up.”

Nancy stared out the side window, mulling this over. She had tried marijuana once, with no results; she had failed to get high. She wasn't particularly against trying it again. But in the company of two strange boys? How loose might they expect her to get?

The man with the bundle watched the van going away, stirring up dust, disappearing around a thickly wooded bend in the distance. Then he stepped ploddingly back into the middle of the road. He was a broad, beefy man with a leering smile on his face. A corner of the soiled blanket fell away from his large bundle, revealing the lower part of a bare leg, and one foot wearing a red high-heeled shoe. The man continued to stare down the road, in the direction of where the van disappeared. Blood ran down the calf of the dangling leg and dripped off the tip of the red shoe.

They parked the van in a field by a stream and camped for the night. They went through the bags full of stolen groceries, delighted with the pile of goodies now that they had a chance to really look it over. “We won't have to steal anything for another few days,” Hank said. Nancy was glad to hear it, and she helped Tom separate out the perishables, like milk, eggs, and cheese, and pack them into a Coleman ice chest in the back of the van. In the last waning half-hour of dusk, the two boys gathered dry twigs and fallen timber and built a small campfire. Then all three had a supper of ham-and-cheese sandwiches and hot cocoa.

Afterward, Hank rolled several joints, lit one, and passed it to Nancy without a word as he held in his drag. She didn't feel like arguing, so she took it and inhaled deeply. Noticing her slight hesitation, Tom said, “You ever smoke grass before?”

Still holding in the smoke, she nodded her head yes as she handed Tom the joint. She didn't tell him that she had not succeeded in getting high and didn't expect to this time. Tom dragged on the joint, then passed it to Hank and it kept going around till it was finished. Then Hank lit another one and passed it. “This is real good dope,” Tom said sagely.

Nancy giggled wildly and realized with a shock that she was stoned.

Tom and Hank looked at her knowingly and laughed, too.

“It's so nice to relax around the fire at home after a hard day of shopping and being chased by creditors,” Hank said, and his comment seemed hilarious.

The threesome laughed and laughed. Tom exploded a lungful of smoke that his laughing forced out of him, as he once more handed the second joint to Nancy. It was so short it burned her fingers.

“Gimme the roach,” Hank said. And taking an alligator clip from his pocket, he used it as a roachholder so they could continue smoking the thing down to nothing. When it was too small to hold between his lips, Hank held the glowing remnant next to his nostrils and sniffed the hot vapors. Then he lit the third joint and handed it to Nancy. Really stoned now, and enjoying the euphoria of total abandon, she continued to take drags every time the joint came her way.

“I got the hungries,” Hank said, his eyes crinkling in the orange glow of the campfire as he rubbed his stomach and giggled.

All three were ravenously hungry because of the marijuana, and they went into the back of the van and brought out crackers, jelly, peanut butter, apples, bananas, potato chips, and pretzels—and root beer to wash it all down. For a long time they ate, trying the peanut butter and jelly on crackers, potato chips, pretzels, apple slices, and chunks of banana. Because they were stoned, it was all wildly delicious.

Every once in a while Tom or Hank tossed a log on the fire.

“Beats the hell out of bein' back on campus,” Hank said. “When we get back it'll be time to start crammin' for finals.”

“Oh, what a bummer!” moaned Tom. “Did you have to remind me, Hank? Huh?”

“What's your major?” Nancy asked.

“Psychology,” Tom told her. “Let's change the subject. Sing something for us, why don't you?”

Feeling uninhibited, Nancy got out her guitar and sang a black spiritual, “All My Trials.” Tom thought she sang wonderfully and enjoyed watching the seriousness and the emotion in her young face; he was beginning to be attracted to her romantically. Hank noticed this, and for some reason it irked him; he and Tom had set out for Lauderdale to have a ball, not get hung up on one chick. If Tom lost his head over this girl, as he was giving every evidence of doing, it was clear to Hank that their trip would be much less of an enjoyable adventure; Hank would be on his own, unpaired, looking for strangers on the beach to get to know and get involved with. And they would mostly be
white
strangers. Although he told himself to stay cool, Hank couldn't help but feel that in some unplanned, accidental, and unforeseen way his buddy, Tom, was in danger of copping out on him.

Strumming on her guitar, Nancy finished the last chorus of the spiritual:

Letting her voice trail off with the concluding chords, she leaned her guitar against a tree and sat back self-consciously, wondering what they had thought of her singing. She was pretty sure Tom liked it, but she had no idea about Hank.

“Nancy . . . you sing nice,” Tom complimented.

She smiled and thanked him, feeling pleased with herself.

“I don't think you got much right to be singin' a
slave
song,” Hank jeered angrily.

“Come on, Hank!” Tom snapped back. “Don't start getting paranoid on us.”

Hank eyed Tom coldly, lighting up a regular cigarette instead of another joint. “Who's paranoid? Not me. I just said I don't think a white girl ought to be a singin' a slave song, that's all.” He made a great show of being calm and aloof by laying his head back and slowly blowing a chorus of smoke rings. “Black people paid their dues in that area, not whites. A white chick like Nancy can't have the
least
idea of the feelin's behind the black spirituals that deal with slavery.”

Tom shook his head in disagreement. “That's pure bullshit, Hank. What's gotten into you? Every time something's eating you that you don't want to be up front with, you cover it with silly-ass rhetoric. Next you'll be telling me an Italian can't sing an Irish ballad.”

“You don't like me, do you?” Nancy said to Hank.

Hank looked over at her. With an air of having made a very shrewd deduction, he told her, “It dawned on me that you got to be runnin' away from home. And if so, me and poor, innocent Tom are accessories. How old are you?”

“Nineteen.” But she immediately gave up on the lie. “No, I'm seventeen . . . almost eighteen.”

“Sure you ain't sixteen, or
fif
teen?”

“Leave her alone, dammit, Hank!” Tom shouted.

“Shut up, white boy. One of us has to have the sense to find out how much hot water we may be in. You ever hear of the Mann Act?”

“Come off it!”

“Transportin' a minor across state lines. Better think about it, Tom. We could have the F.B.I. on our asses.”

“Bullshit, Hank! I know you want to get into law school, but you're not there yet. Now come off it.” To Nancy, Tom said, “Hank gets mean sometimes when he's stoned, but it doesn't last, so don't worry about it.”

But Nancy wanted to speak for herself. “If you're uptight about me, Hank, you don't need to keep me around. I wouldn't want to be a burden to you. We can go our separate ways in the morning.” But she didn't get through it without crying; a tear rolled down her cheek, glistening in the firelight.

Tom came to Nancy and put his arm around her. “Hank doesn't mean it, Nancy, honest. Dammit, Hank, tell her you don't mean it. Now you've gone and made her feel bad.”

“
I
do
mean it. We hardly know this chick. I warned you she'd be trouble.”

Crying, Nancy got to her feet and headed off into the woods by herself, picking her way along the path by moonlight.

Tom jumped to his feet, too. “You're the one who's trouble, Hank. I wish you'd learn to keep your big mouth shut. Tomorrow when you're not stoned you won't even remember what a hassle you caused.”

Chasing after Nancy, Tom found her sitting by herself at the edge of the stream. He stopped behind her, a few feet away, looking down at her. She did not turn around to face him. “Mind if I sit with you?” he asked.

She flipped a pebble out into the water, watching it splash and ripple. Since she still hadn't said anything, Tom took a few steps toward her and laid a comforting hand on her shoulder. “Wouldn't it help if you told someone your problem?”

“What makes you think I've got one?” she blurted defiantly.

“If you haven't got one, there's no need to talk about it,” he admitted. Then he sat down beside her. She kept staring straight ahead. Tom told her, “I just want you to know, Hank really isn't a bad guy. He'll let you stay with us, you'll see. Everything will be okay in the morning.”

“I don't want to be a burden,” Nancy said quietly but determinedly. “I just want to get to my sister's house in California. And I'd rather not come between you and your friend. You'll get along better without me.”

“That's not true at all,” Tom insisted. “You've been helpful and . . . and . . . fun to be with. I
want
you to stay with us, Nancy.”

She didn't know what to say. Despite efforts to the contrary, she had started crying again. Tom opened his mouth to tell her not to cry, and at that moment both he and Nancy heard a noise from back in the woods which caused them both to whirl around.

Tom shouted, “Hank! Is that you?”

There were more sounds, of someone tramping through the brush, and suddenly the footsteps stopped. Tom and Nancy listened, getting a bit frightened. Tom called out once again: “Hank!
Hank!
Is that
you?”

No one answered. On their feet now, Tom and Nancy peered all around. The moonlight could not penetrate some of the denser patches of woods. They strained their eyes to see into the foliage, from where the footstep sounds had seemingly come. Just when it appeared that the surrounding woods had fallen completely and permanently silent, a low, throaty chortle came from somewhere and Nancy jumped and grabbed onto Tom.

“Probably some kind of animal,” he said, trying to be reassuring. “A hyena, maybe, if they have them around here. Or else Hank's playing tricks. Come on, Nancy, let's get back to the campfire and turn in. We'll want to be on the road early tomorrow, and I hope you'll decide to still travel with us. I like having you around. I mean it.”

Feeling scared and needing the comfort of his nearness, Nancy allowed him to escort her back along the path in the moonlight, away from the stream.

Peering from behind some branches, the man in bibbed coveralls watched them go, grinning. He liked the girl real well. She was very pretty, and he couldn't wait to look at her up close and touch her and feel her long blonde hair.

 

Bert and Harriet Johnson were up late worrying about Nancy—for different reasons. It was almost time for Bert to go out on the midnight shift, so he was in his uniform. Harriet was in pajamas and bathrobe. She had waited until after the eleven o'-clock news, then had placed a few phone calls to Nancy's friends with unsatisfactory results; no one could shed any light on her whereabouts.

When Bert picked up his lunch bucket and came over to kiss Harriet good-bye, she said, “Something happened between you and my daughter, didn't it? You've been lying to me, Bert, and I want to know why. Why didn't Nancy come home?”

Believing firmly that righteous anger was his best defense, Bert exploded: “How the hell should
I
know? I told you the kid isn't as innocent as you make her out to be. She could be out carrying on someplace.”

“It's not like her to stay out
this
late without phoning. I'm worried about her and I think you know something you're not telling.”

Bert looked hurt and insulted. “For Chrissakes! You've got a fantastic imagination! I've got to get down to the station. I'll check the blotter when I get there, if it'll make you feel any better. If anything's happened to Nancy that the police know about, I'll get the information. By the time I call you, she'll probably be safe in bed.”

“I certainly hope so,” said Harriet, relenting.

Bert kissed her good-bye and went out, slamming the door.

Harriet went to the liquor cabinet, poured herself a good stiff drink of bourbon, and gulped half of it down. She carried the remainder with her into the bedroom, where she sat on the edge of the bed, feeling wrung out. It looked as if she might have to choose between her daughter and her husband, and she didn't feel capable. She had never been a strong person, and this sort of emotional strain was too much for her. She downed the rest of the bourbon, set the glass on the nightstand, and noticed a bottle of sleeping pills there. Snatching up the bottle immediately, she shook out some capsules and swallowed them, then lay on her back on top of the covers, a night-light burning in the bedroom.

She was jarred out of the drug-induced sleep by the ringing of the phone. She groped for it and answered groggily: “Hello? Nancy?”

The voice on the other end of the line said, “This is your husband, Bert.”

“Oh, Bert,” Harriet said, coming to her senses, “have you any news?”

He said, “I just heard from Nancy. She says she's at one of her girl friend's houses. She's staying over.”

“Which girl friend?”

“I don't know. She must've said, but I don't remember. Guess I didn't catch it. You do feel relieved, though, don't you, honey?”

“Yes, of course. But why didn't she call me at home?”

“She said she
tried
to call. Claimed she must've dialed the wrong number. But I think that was just an excuse, to make us think she tried to get in touch earlier. She was probably in the middle of something—you know how teen-agers are—and never even thought about phoning till late.”

“Oh, I suppose so. Bert . . . thanks for letting me know. I'm sorry I was angry with you.”

“No problem. Good-bye now, honey. See you in the morning.”