Eyes of the Predator (11 page)

Sweating and trembling, he stood
over the lifeless form bound to the chair. His chest heaved from the
exertion…and something else. Waves of ecstasy coursed through his muscles and
flesh. He stood in front of the dead girl until the trembling subsided and his
breath calmed.

Turning, he fell onto the bed and
slept.

The old, banged-up pickup rattled
some from age, but the engine hummed deeply. It was well maintained. Lyn sat
between the two young men to whom ‘Aunt Kathy’ had entrusted her. She had
offered to sit in the back, but the boys wouldn’t hear of it. Besides, the bed
was full of tools, ladders, and equipment. Apparently, Cy and Clay were in the
construction business.

Lyn’s eyes fluttered open as they
passed a large truck. Out of the side window, she could see the large tires of
the truck’s trailer as they moved around it. Awakening fully, she realized that
her head had dropped onto the shoulder of the young man beside her, Clay. With
a jerk, she sat up straight in the seat.

“Nice nap?’ Clay looked over at
her with a chuckling smile.

“Sorry. I couldn’t help it.” She
fidgeted and straightened her clothes out a bit in embarrassment.

“Don’t be sorry. No problem.”

“How long was I asleep?”

“Not long. Half hour maybe.”

“Didn’t mean to. I just got so
tired.” She yawned and stretched her arms out in front, fingers interlocked.

“No problem. Really.”

A bump in the road caused some of
the gear in the truck bed to bang loudly. Lyn looked over her shoulder through
the rear cab window.

“What do you do? In Savannah, I
mean.”

“Construction,” Clay answered
staring out the side window at the passing landscape, still colorless and dark
in the predawn light. “Working on framing up a new shopping center on the west
side.”

“You’re building a shopping
center?” Her voice made it sound like something big and important.

Clay smiled. “Well, we’re one of
the subs…subcontractors, working on it. Takes a lot of people, job like that.”

Lyn nodded not knowing what else
to say, not sure if she should say anything. These were just two strangers, and
she was just a hitchhiker. Silence filled the truck’s cab, emphasized by the
hum of the tires and throb of the engine.

Minutes went by. “So, where ya
from?” It was Cy, the older brother and driver of the truck.

“Down south,” she replied, not
comfortable with giving out too much information.

Cy and Clay glanced at each other
over her head.

“Yea. Us too. We live down with
our mama in Pritchard, just north of the Florida line a ways.”

“Just your mama?” she asked. She
wondered what that would have been like. Living with just a mother and no
father. She wondered if she would be out here on the interstate with these two
young men if there had been only Mama at home.

“Yea. Just Mama,” Cy replied.
“Daddy died in a tractor accident when we were little. Turned over on him in a
ditch and broke his neck.”

Glancing down at her out of the
corner of his eye so that she wouldn’t see him looking, Clay could see that she
was pretty. A little thin, but pretty. Auburn hair and long-legged. Her knees
were pushed up as her feet were on the transmission hump in the center of the
cab. It made her look more like a little girl, childlike. He liked that. She
may be a little thin, but so were a lot of girls who came up hard out in the
Georgia countryside. He and Cy knew about that. Neither of them had ever
exactly been overfed, but Mama had done her best to take care of them. They had
grown up having to work hard, but it was never something they dreaded, just a
fact of life. Might as well be mad at the sun rising. Just the way it was.
That’s all.

Still, he and Cy had always had
each other. That was something. That was a lot sometimes when things were
tough. And Mama had been there for them. She couldn’t give them much, but she
would listen and would talk. When she talked they listened…usually.

What had put this girl on the
road? She was young, not much more than a child it seemed to Clay. He couldn’t
really relate to a life so bad that you could just walk away…run away…from
everything. How did that work? He thought about that, puzzling it out. He had
no reference for it though. He and Cy always had Mama. Who did she have?

He felt compelled to say
something. “We had Mama’s brother, Uncle Thomas, to teach us some things about
building, but mostly we came up without a daddy. How about you?”

Immediately, Clay saw her
discomfort. She sat stiffly, staring straight ahead out of the windshield, as
if trying to avoid contact with the brothers on either side of her. After a
time, she lowered her head and spoke. “I got a mama and a brother. He died in
the Marines. We buried him at the church in...” She hesitated, almost naming
Judges Creek and then said, “Back home.” Another pause and then, “Got a daddy,
too.”

Clay and Cy listened quietly,
sensing that there was more and knowing that any word from them would silence
her, like stepping on a branch in the woods and spooking a deer you are
watching. Besides, they both knew it was none of their business. Bad things
happened sometimes. Tractors turned over in ditches killing fathers. Things
happened to young girls that made them leave home. There were just lots of bad
things in the world. That was all.

After a few minutes with only the
highway hum filling the cab of the pickup, Cy decided it was his turn. “So,
where you headed?”

Lyn shifted uncomfortably in the
narrow confines of the cab. “North.”

“North? That’s pretty big area.
Can’t pin it down any more than that, just north?”

Lyn made no reply and continued
staring straight ahead. Cy shrugged and focused on his driving.

“So, things must be pretty bad at
home?” It was Clay, who spoke this time. “For you to be out on the road and
all,” he said, obviously waiting for an answer.

Cy cut him a sharp look over her
head. Clearly, he thought that it went beyond small talk and fulfilling the
assignment that Kathy had given them. They had work to do. This was an
unnecessary distraction, although he would never say that to Kathy. The next
time they saw the waitress at the diner, he just wanted to be able to report
‘mission accomplished’. The girl had been safely delivered to the truck stop
and pointed north.

Clay knew that Cy was annoyed
with his question. He would not want to become entangled in this girl’s
affairs, but the thought of putting the girl out at the truck stop was
beginning to bother him.

At Clay’s question, Lyn pulled
the cuff of her pink pullover shirt down a bit and shifted her stare to her
lap. The boy, Clay, was waiting for an answer. After several seconds, she
reckoned that they deserved more of an answer for what they were doing for her,
or doing for ‘Aunt Kathy’, at least.

“Yea. Things are pretty bad I
guess,” she ventured as an opening.

Clay waited.

“Things are bad enough,” she
continued. “Me and my daddy had a fight. I guess we always have a fight goin’.”

“You hurt?” Clay asked. He looked
at her hand holding the cuff of her shirt tight.

“Not bad,” she replied softly.

“Can I see?” Clay asked. “You
might need a doctor.”

“No, it’s just a bruise,” she
replied, never looking up. But she slid the arm of the shirt up a ways, still
looking down at her lap.

Clay saw a purple bruise on her
forearm, as if she had put it up to fend off a blow that might have been more
serious if it had landed elsewhere. He reached over and gently slid the shirt
back down. Cy missed nothing, but kept his peace, concern evident on his face.
Clay knew it was mostly for him and not the girl.

Of course, Cy was sympathetic and
would never stand for anyone hurting a girl, but he was focused on the
business. Drop the girl off and get to work. Anything else was a distraction
they didn’t need right now. This could definitely turn into a distraction.

“Your daddy gave you that
bruise?”

“Well, yea, I guess he did…he
jerked my arm up and, well I got the bruise.”

“That ain’t right you know. What
your daddy did ain’t right.” Clay looked down at Lyn who continued to avoid eye
contact by staring at her lap or out of the window.

Cy shot Clay the look again, but
shrugged and shook his head in resignation. Clay would do what Clay would do.
He knew his brother that well at least.

“It ain’t nothin’” Lyn replied.
“He just been drinkin’. Drinks a lot. He don’t mean no harm, it just happens
sometimes.”

“Well, he ought to think of you
and your mama some.” Clay felt a small, growing pit of anger inside him at the
man who had abused this girl.

“I know, but he tries. He does,”
Lyn said, puzzled as to why she felt the need to defend her father. “He just
gets so angry sometimes. I don’t think he even knows why. He just gets to
drinkin’ sometimes. It’s like he’s lost, and the drinkin’ is the only way to
find his way out. I don’t know. He don’t like me, and I knew I couldn’t stay no
more.” She paused for a moment, thinking about what she had just said, probably
the most she had ever said to anyone about it, and then ended simply. “Mama
wouldn’t let me stay, was afraid for me. So I left.”

The brothers soaked this all in.
Hard as life had been without their father, it had never been abusive. It was
hard to get their minds around the concept of beating a young girl.

“So where you goin’?” He decided
to return to Cy’s question.

Lyn said nothing and tugged at her
cuff.

“C’mon,” Clay urged. “Where you
headed to?”

She looked up at him for the
first time. “You promise not to laugh?”

Clay nodded and waited.

“I’m goin’ to Canada.”

“Canada? You got family there?

Lyn shook her head.“No. No
family,” she replied a little embarrassed.

“Well, then why go there? Why not
someplace you know about?”

Lyn shrugged and gave a little
laugh. “I don’t know. It’s a place my brother, Sam, and me always talked about
goin’ to get away. You know, kind of a place to start over. Different.” She
ended with another shrug. She knew it must sound crazy to him. At this thought
she looked up quickly at him and added, “I’m not crazy you know. I know what
I’m doin’.”

Clay was quick to reply, “Never
said you were crazy. Just tryin’ to get it in my head. Canada, really?”

“Canada, really,” she replied
firmly with a touch of defiance in her voice. Maybe it
was
crazy, but
she didn’t have to put up with questions from this boy, who probably wasn’t any
older than she was.

He thought for a minute then
asked, “So have you thought of goin’ anywhere else? Some place closer.”

She shrugged again, looked down
and said, “Don’t have nowhere else to go. Canada seems right.”

What exploded from him next
surprised him as much as his brother.

 “You could stay with us.”
He saw Cy turning towards him and added, “Us and Mama.”

Cy almost turned completely in
the seat. You didn’t have to be a brother to understand the look on his face
this time. Puzzled and frustrated by this turn of events, and more than a
little angry with his younger brother, Cy wanted to ask Clay what the hell he
thought he was doing. Clay returned his brother’s angry look with a face that
was hard and determined. Knowing this look all too well, Cy shook his head and
leaned forward over the steering wheel, as if to say, ‘fine, do what you want.
No sense me getting involved.’ Gripping the truck’s steering wheel tightly he
focused intensely on his driving, not wanting to hear anything else his brother
might say to the girl.

Lyn, unaware of the silent
interaction between the brothers, sat there in shock. No one had ever said such
a thing to her or ever made such an offer. Why would this stranger make it?

“Now who’s crazy? You don’t even
know me.” The words blurted from her the way Clay’s offer had exploded from him.
It was unreal. Too much. The look on his face though made her temper them a
bit. “No,” she went on. “That wouldn’t be right. Besides, it was always Canada.
It’s always been in my head. It was the place. The place for Sam and me. I have
to do it. Go there.”

Having opened the door, Clay
couldn’t let it just slam shut. “But what are you gonna do? How will you live?”

“I got a little money to get
there. Then I’ll get a job. I can work,” she answered.

“How much money?”

“Enough.” Lyn was wondering just
how far she would get on her two hundred fifty-two dollars, and suspected that
it would not be nearly enough, although she would not admit that to this young
man. Doing so would call into doubt her judgment in the matter, and the last
thing she could tolerate right now was another man interfering in her life and
her dream.

“It might not be so easy. You
might not find work right off. They might not let you work up there. You won’t
have anyone there. Besides you need a passport if you’re gonna go legal. You
got a passport?”

Having no idea what a passport
was she simply replied, “I’ll get one, “ and then added “I have to try.” Her
voice broke in a choking sob. “It’s the place we were gonna go to be safe.” A
tear rolled slowly down her cheek, and her head went down, her shoulders
shaking silently.

Not knowing what else to do and
feeling like a jackass, Clay moved as far away from her in the seat as he
could, trying to give her what little privacy he could. The brothers exchanged
glances again over the girl’s head. This time the older brother’s face was
resigned. What the hell, he shook his head.

The faded, old car pulled slowly
from in front of the motel room door. The baggage had been loaded in the trunk,
and the driver sipped a cup of made-in-the-room coffee. It was still dark,
maybe an hour before sunrise. He noticed that the parking lot of the StarLite
Motel was now empty. Apparently, the owners of the couple of cars he had seen
earlier did not require a room for the entire night.