14
Mistie Henderson groaned suddenly, a throaty sound that was more canine than human.
Kate’s foot lifted instinctively from the accelerator. “Oh, God,” Kate whispered. Then, “Mistie, you okay?”
The groan again, followed by a soft whimper.
Kate had just steered from her driveway back onto Route 58, heading west. Fifteen miles ahead was the intersection for Interstate 95 at Emporia. The sleet was harder now and the tarmac was already covered with a slushy sheen. She would have to drive more slowly than she’d imagined to get to Interstate 95 heading north. With some luck the sleet would not follow her very far. It was her turn for luck. It was way past her turn for luck.
“Mistie?” repeated Kate. The car slowed.
God, don’t let anything be wrong with this child. Not now, not when I’m getting ready to help her, please just this once help me, just this once, okay? Hear me?
“Mistie, do I need to pull over? Are you sick? You aren’t sick, are you?”
Mistie was silent. Kate licked her top lip. “Are you sick?”
Silence.
“Are you hurt?”
Nothing.
“Scared?”
Silence. The car stopped in the middle of the sleet-covered road. Kate could see no one coming in either direction. The windshield wipers plopped back and forth.
“Hungry? Are you hungry, Mistie?”
This brought on a small whimper and a whine.
A painful rush of air escaped Kate’s lips. Hungry was okay. Hungry wasn’t too bad at all. Thank God for hunger! “So are you hungry, Mistie? Is that it?”
The little whine.
Kate turned on the defroster. Her own anxiety and the cold were steaming up the windshield. She pressed on the gas; the car began to move. “I’m sorry I didn’t think about that before I left the house. Why didn’t I think about that? I could have packed a little lunch for the road.” Of course the child would be hungry. Children get hungry. Donnie always was hungry, as soon as they’d get into the car to go somewhere he was either hungry or had to go to the bathroom. Why hadn’t she grabbed something from the kitchen before leaving?
Kate fumbled in her purse; came up with an unopened bag of peanuts she’d thrown in there a couple weeks ago. She reached back and said, “Here, Mistie, can you stay down and catch this? Mmm, peanuts!” She tossed it over the back of the seat.
There was a slow scrabbling noise in the back. Kate turned the wipers on full blast and they battled the sleet and each other. Small clear spots were forming where the defrost was cutting the fog.
Then a groan, clearly unhappy.
“You don’t like peanuts?”
There was a swishing sound as if the girl was shaking her head beneath the blanket.
Please, just eat the peanuts. It’s not like you’re used to expensive treats, come on. “They’re good, fresh. I just got them a couple days ago in a multi-pack.”
Silence. Then a soft, gurgling whine.
“Can you wait just a bit, then, for something else? We’ve not even gotten through Pippins, and we have a long way to go, Mistie.”
The swishing sound again. Kate’s throat clicking with frustration. Her forehead was speared with a painful lance. She steered the car over next to a sagging wire fence by a dead cotton field.
“Mistie,” she said. She looked back over the seat and tossed the blanket aside. The child was sitting low and staring at the floor. Her pale hair was a fragile, tangled spider web. Kate was struck with a memory of Donnie on a family vacation when he was seven. He’d been a pale-haired child as well, and handsome, taking after Donald’s side of the family. Donnie had had so much potential. He had blown it. She had blown it. All God’s children had blown that one.
But that was another story entirely.
“Mistie,” said Kate. “Tell you what. There’s an Exxon up the road. We can stop for just a minute and I’ll get some snacks for the road. I’m okay on gas, but I think we need to fill up our own stomach tanks! Ha! We can get a real supper later, once we’ve been on the road awhile. What do you think?”
Mistie didn’t think much, or wasn’t sharing. Kate dropped the blanket back over the child and gingerly petted the head beneath the fabric. The girl’s mute obeisance made Kate’s stomach clench.
The sleet hesitated as if catching its breath, then came down again, harder, colder. Kate flicked on the heater and was greeted with a blast of hot air on her legs between her shoes and the hem of her coat.
The Exxon was only a few miles up the road. Pippin’s only gas station, hangout to Pippin’s odds and ends. She never felt totally comfortable in the place and had only stopped by for a few dollars of gas when she’d found herself low. She preferred to drive to Emporia to the Wilco. But the Exxon was the closet place that sold anything to even slightly resemble food. If Mistie had something to eat…what the hell did she like to eat? Kate would either have to get her to talk or just buy a shitload of whatever and hope there would be stuff she liked in the load…then they’d be good for a least a good long stretch on the road. They had to get out of Virginia ASAP. Once in Maryland, or hopefully Pennsylvania, they could find a couple small roads to take and then they could do a potty break.
If I get enough food at the Exxon, Kate thought, we can just eat in the car the whole way to Canada. Yeah, that’s it. A little bit of everything then we’re gone.
A shiver cut through her body - excitement, terror, pure joy. She took a long breath and let it out.
There were no cars at the Exxon. Well, not counting the banged up woodie wagon that the woman who worked there drove, on the right side of the building near a thicket of weeds. Perfect. Some song Kate didn’t know faded on the station, and then the oldie “For What It’s Worth” began. Kate began to sing along, not exactly sure of all of the words but sure of the emotion and the demands behind them.
Freedom!
She steered into the graveled lot of the gas station, and stopped by the door. The closer the better. Quick in, quick out. Her stomach fluttered, then twisted. A child saved. A soul saved. A spirit saved. She felt young again, she felt brimming with hope and possibilities. She wrapped one of the scarves around her neck - a red plaid one Amy had given her back in college - and said, “Mistie, just stay under than blanket a little longer, and then you can come out. I’m getting a few yummy things. Right back.”
A VDOT snow scraper hummed past on the icy road. Kate ducked down beside her car. She’d never ducked behind anything in her life, well, except when she was a first year student at the University of Virginia and she’d gone as a member of the pep band to make their mark with spray paint cans on Beta Bridge. A Charlottesville police car had approached, slowly, and everyone else had merely put paint cans behind their backs and stood looking innocent while Kate had leapt down the bank, twisting her ankle, and waited, panting, behind a prickly patch of thistles until the police car had gone on. Donald wasn’t in the pep band that year. She’d had a crush on a sax player named Ben but that had never gone anywhere.
The scraper gone by, she trotted to the door, stepping full-center into one slushy puddle up to her ankle. She shook her foot and pushed through the Exxon door. There was a soft tingle over the doorsill. A fly, stupid and dazed from being born at the wrong place and the wrong time, dove at her ear from the light fixture above and she slapped it away.
A deep breath. A quick perusal of the four narrow, food- and knickknack-packed aisles. Paddy-whack, give the dog a bone. A shopping basket would have been good but she knew she could hold a lot, she was a teacher for heaven’s sake, used to juggling more papers, books, and odds and ends than a carnival performer. No, she had been a teacher. Now she was a felon. Or a soon to be felon. But a good felon. A felon with a cause. James Dean would have applauded. So would Alice and Bill.
Down at the other side of the convenience store, the woman who worked there picked at her teeth as she slumped over an open spread of some news-printy tabloid.
Kate scooped up a loaf of bread, two cans of deviled ham, a roll of paper towels, a pack of plastic utensils and an over-priced can opener. She skirted quickly around to the side where the glass-fronted drink coolers sat. She selected two one liter Pepsis and then a small bottle of apple juice. When she got to the front, she pawed up a handful of Toostie Rolls, Nestle Crunch Bars, and Twix. She dropped everything onto the counter in front of the woman with the tabloid. One Pepsi fell over, rolled off the counter, and Kate retrieved it with a chuckle. “Just like children,” she muttered. “Always taking off when they think you aren’t looking.”
“Mmm,” said the woman. Her Exxon logo-blazened nametag identified her as Mary Jane. She pushed the tabloid aside and picked up her price scanner. “Picnic in December is it?”
“Oh, well,” said Kate. “I guess.”
One plucked eyebrow went up and the shelf-bangs bobbed with a single nod. The scanner beeped on the utensils, paper towels, Pepsis. She had to run it over the bread twice, then the deviled ham, juice, can opener, candy.
The door to the convenience store opened.
Kate’s shoulders stiffened. Hurry up hurry up hurry up! She pulled a ten dollar bill from her purse and held it over the counter, ready for Mary Jane’s total. She turned and looked at her wet foot, turned it over and back, keeping her face less than visible to whoever else had come in.
“Damn kids,” mumbled Mary Jane. She blew air through her teeth, causing her shelf-bangs to tremble. “I know they been shopliftin’ this place. Hey!” she called. “You brats oughta be in school!”
One voice, clearly male, clearly young, called back, “We’re homeschoolers!”
Another voice, also male but a bit lower, said, “School been out a hour, lady. Goddamn idiot.”
“Don’t you cuss in my store! And what’s that on your faces?”
Snickers. Kate glanced over her shoulder and saw what seemed to be a carnival entourage or a group of gypsies. Of course there hadn’t been gypsies in the Pippins area since last March when a three-county alert had gone out that transient thieves disguised as roof-layers and blacktop-spreaders were roaming about, side-tracking old ladies in their yards with promises of extra low priced fix-it jobs while others in their groups sneaked into the backs of the houses and stole the old ladies blind. Of course, these kids looks like old-fashioned gypsies who rode in horse wagons and told fortunes, not the ones who drove extended cab trucks with buckets of tar and carried faux business cards. These kids had painted their faces and were dressed in a way most teenagers would have preferred death to being seen.
Sweat sprang out on Kate’s neck and she shrugged against it.
“Okay?” asked Mary Jane. “You look a bit woozy.” She popped open a plastic bag with a flick of her wrist and put the Pepsis in first.
Kate nodded. “I’m fine.” She could feel the kids…how many were there? Three? Twenty?…walking around the store, poking through the shelved items.
Pay and get out. Keep your head low. They won’t see you, they won’t notice you. You’re the last thing they care about. These are just kids. They aren’t interested in adults, they’re interested in themselves. They’re having some sort of initiation and couldn’t care less about anyone else.
The rest of the items were plopped into the bag, bread on top, amazingly enough since Mary Jane had her attention focused on the kids in the store.
“How much?” Kate prodded.
“Ah,” said Mary Jane. She glanced at the register. “Eleven twenty-three.”
Damn. Kate fumbled for her wallet, her fingers digging past checkbook, lipstick, compact, address book. She found it, flicked open the change compartment and clawed out five quarters. She slammed them down beside the ten. “Keep the change.”
“Oh, well, two cents, thanks,” said Mary Jane. She tried to smile to show Kate she was joking. Kate tried to smile back. She snatched the bag and worked her way down the center aisle, watching her dry shoe and wet shoe. One of the kids stepped around the end of the aisle in front of the door, and Kate glanced up so she wouldn’t run into him.
Her.
It was a girl, she thought, someone who looked slightly familiar through the red stripes. This girl was about fifteen, thin, hard-looking, with short black hair and old, baggy men’s clothing. No coat. Her eyes were shaded beneath a flattened fedora, but even in the shadow they seemed to boil with hate.
And then Kate was past the girl and out the door. The bell overhead tingled.
It was still sleeting, steady and thick. Kate lost her balance on the slick stoop. The bag jerked and ripped, and the Pepsis and deviled ham dropped to the icy gravel.