I didn’t say a word. Just like that, I’d become Molly and we both knew it.
But we weren’t done yet. He forced me to turn around, covering my eyes with a black strip of cloth—smelled like a musty old T-shirt—then tied it behind my head, obscuring my vision.
I never got to watch myself leave the basement prison. Best I could do was track the tops of my bare feet as he pulled me across the dirty carpet to the far door. A creak as it opened and then, much as I’d suspected, stairs leading up.
He pushed me ahead of him. I stumbled once, twice, three times. He whacked me in the back of the head hard enough to make me wince, and I found my balance.
At the top, a brief pause as he reached around me to open another door. Then a change in flooring from cheap commercial-grade carpet to peeling gray linoleum. Was this his house? I wondered as he yanked me forward into what I assumed must be a kitchen. It smelled like the rest of him: disgusting.
I tripped over my own feet, again. Trying to slow things down, or honestly uncoordinated? I didn’t know anymore. I’d agreed to my new identity. I’d given up my father’s name rather than be left alone down in that horrible place. And yet . . .
Funny how you can fear change, even when already surrounded by the worst of the worst.
Fresh air. Suddenly, I could feel it. Stumbling through the kitchen, out another door, we’d exited the house. To the outside. Front yard? Backyard? Who knew, who cared? I was standing outside with the wind on my face. And for a second, I couldn’t help myself. I dug in my bare heels. I lifted up my face.
Outside. Fresh air, the rustle of trees. After so, so long. (How long?) So, so long.
Fake Everett paused. He gave me one moment. I used it to peer straight up, over the top of my blindfold, and then I could see them. Trees soaring high above me. Thick and dark against a dimly lit sky. Woods, forest, freedom. Maybe I really was only miles from my mother’s farm.
“Georgia,” Everett said, as if reading my mind. “Found this place years ago, my own little mountain hideaway. ’Course, old geezer who owned it died, and now his no-good kids want it back. So, we’re outta here. Life on the road, that’s more fun anyway.”
Trees, I was still thinking. Forest, woods, just like my mother’s farm.
And then I couldn’t see anymore because there were too many tears blinding my eyes.
*
WITH THE BLINDFOLD ON, I couldn’t see my way around the house to his big rig. He had to help me step awkwardly onto the wide running board, then grab my arm as I tripped over the driver’s seat. I’d never been in a semi before. Knew nothing about them. Long-haul trucks were merely vehicles I’d seen on the highway, carrying goods this way and that. Definitely, I’d spent more time and attention on my hair.
Now, fake Everett chattered proudly about his raised-roof sleeper cab, his home away from home. Came complete with a top bunk, coffeemaker, and of course a portable DVD player for entertainment. He dragged me around to the driver’s captain chair as he was talking. I could feel carpet beneath my bare feet. Thicker and nicer than what had been in the basement. It smelled better in here too. Still tainted by the lingering odor of greasy food, but with an overlay of pine-fresh scent. As if at the least the truck had been cleaned recently. It deserved that much effort.
When I first heard the screech of a latch opening up, I didn’t understand it. Then, fake Everett gave me a push, and I pitched forward, as if falling off a step or two. Before I could recover, his hand was squeezing my shoulder, forcefully pressing me down.
Too late, I realized I was now standing on a hard wooden surface. The smell of pine . . .
And just like that I was back in a coffin-size box, fully clothed this time, with a blindfold over my eyes.
“What’s your name?” he demanded from above.
“Molly,” I whispered, too disheartened, too defeated for anything more.
“Mine?”
“Everett.”
“Who am I?”
“Whoever you want to be.”
“I’m your uncle. Uncle Everett. Where are you from?”
“Florida?” I guessed.
“With that accent? Hardly. We’ll say your mama raised you up North, but now you’re staying with me.”
I didn’t say anything. He’d get his way; he always got his way. What did I care? Maybe I really was Molly now, because surely the girl I’d been . . .
“Loading up, dropping off, you’re in the box,” he stated.
I didn’t respond, feeling more confused than rebellious. Locked in a box with a blindfold on, what did it matter?
He tugged sharply on a ragged lock of my hair. I nodded belatedly, if only to show I was paying attention.
“Rest stops, sleepovers, you’re in the box.”
I nodded again.
“Other times . . .” His voice drifted. He seemed to hesitate. “Be good. Play your cards right and maybe you can come out for a bit. Keep me company.”
I frowned, not understanding. Was he saying I might join him in the cab? As in sit in the passenger’s seat? As in, like a real person?
“You’ll sit on the floor,” he clarified now. “No one can see you. Maybe, maybe not, I’ll take the blindfold off. But you’ll be out of the box. Assuming you’re good, of course. Do exactly as I say.”
He paused, waiting expectantly. And, finally, I got it. I was leaving the basement, really truly leaving. And for my punishment/reward, I would now spend all my time, 24/7, with this man. This mean, filthy, awful man in his castle of a big rig, where he got to rule the highway, personal sex slave chained to his side.
And in that instant, I understood something else as well. That he was doing this versus killing me.
Which he’d promised to do so many times before, right before explaining how he’d then roll my body into the nearest canal and let the gators ensure my mother never saw me again.
Everett wasn’t going to kill me. He was going to keep me instead.
I wondered, in the back of my mind, if that meant he’d grown to like me somehow.
And I wondered, in the back of my mind, if that meant I was supposed to like him too.
Everett planted the palm of his hand over my face and forced my head down into the box. I assumed the position, mind churning, as the lid came down. The padlock jangled. My moment of freedom ended. I became once again a girl in a coffin-size box.
Except now . . . Now I was a girl in motion.
*
HE LIKED TO TALK while he drove the big rig. Complain, really. About the price of gas, the asshole in the Honda Civic who just flipped him off. The pricks at the understaffed loading dock who just cost him two damn hours, and now he couldn’t even take a break for lunch.
In the good ol’ days, he’d grouse, the smart trucker could fudge his driver’s log and carry on. But no. Everything’s now federally mandated electronic this and federally mandated electronic that. Big Brother. Always watching.
Welcome to the life of a long-haul trucker, he’d tell me. Working for assholes while driving through an entire country of assholes.
In the beginning, every time the rig’s engine fired to life, I flinched. Every time the truck bounced down a rutted road, I went bug-eyed with nausea. After so much time alone in the basement, this—the smell of diesel, the roar of pistons, the violent hum of the beast—was almost too much to take.
And yet, much like my experience with the overwhelming boredom of the basement, I learned to adapt. I relaxed my shoulders into the jerk and sway. I absorbed the relentless growl and hum. And bit by bit, I started to discern the nuances of different road surfaces, the cruising speed of highway, the deep grind of slow climbs.