Hitchhikers (19 page)

Why can’t things ever stay simple? If only it
could have been me and Lila, heading out to Texas. None of this
werewolf shit, no one around to make me angry or scared, and Lila –
I mean Kayla – would have been there to keep me calm with that
weird thing she does. I remember those autumn nights curled up in
the hay with Lila in my arms, her fur warming me. I can almost feel
her heat with my arms curled around myself.

When the early sun slants in through the barn
windows, I drift off to sleep.

I wake up in the late afternoon. Everything
has a gold sheen on it, the hay and the wooden walls and the dust
motes floating in the air. I’ve listed to one side as I slept, and
when I push myself upright a black numbness fades in for a few
moments, then clears.

Mr. Whittemore and Zeke must have come out
here earlier, to milk the goats and feed the animals. In my sleep I
didn’t hear them.

There’s a plate where the first aid stuff
was. A lump of bread on it, and a lumpy brown glob that smells like
rabbit stew.

It pains me to move, but I get there, and eat
everything in record time. I’m not even bothering to chew and
several times I have to pause to swallow lumps of food too big for
my throat. There’s nothing to drink except the water in the bucket,
so that’s what I wash it all down with. I get over the disgust I
had for the dirty water yesterday; hell, I’ve eaten out of garbage
cans. This is probably more sanitary. I lick the plate clean and
place it back in the sawdust.

I raise my eyes to the stall door.

For the next half hour or more my goal is to
crawl to the door and pull myself up. While the food in my belly
has given me renewed energy, it’s also made my stomach swell out
and I can feel my sloppy stitches straining to hold my skin
together.

I reach up to the bars on the top half of the
stall door with my opposite hand so my side doesn’t stretch any
more, and try to get my good leg under me. Finally I’m
standing.

As I suspected, the stall door is locked. Not
locked, with a padlock, but with the sliding bar. I edge over to
the corner and thread my arm through the bars. Feel across the wood
of the door with my palm, find the cold metal bolt. Slide it
open.

I stop short of opening the door, suddenly
alert. Now that I’m standing I can smell him, over the scents of
cow manure and sawdust and grain and the crusted vomit on my
pants.

“I see you’re awake,” Mr. Whittemore
says.

He’s sitting in the aisle with his rifle
across his lap. His steely eyes meet mine.

“Yes, sir,” I reply.

“Think you’re gonna just walk on outta
here?”

I swallow, my throat so dry it clicks. “I was
hoping.”

(please just let me go, don’t have made me go
through all that and now you’re gonna kill me)

“You think you’ll get far?”

My hand that’s hanging out through the stall
bars retreats. I look down at my leg, visible through the tear I
made in my jeans. I could pass for Frankenstein’s monster with all
the dark rows of stitches holding my leg together.

“No.”

(but when I was a wolf my leg didn’t hurt so
bad maybe if I turn into a wolf the pain will go away and I can run
I can run faster than a bullet maybe)

“That’s right. So how about you go have a
seat and I’ll lock this back up and we’ll have a little talk and
see where we’re at.”

(if only he was being mean to me but I can
smell something on him not anger not fear but protection? if only
he was being mean I could change and run out of here)

I back up, use the wall to keep me upright.
When my back’s against the wall where I sat before, Mr. Whittemore
stands up and locks me in. I slide to the floor, careful of my
side.

My hands are in loose fists in my lap,
shaking ever so slightly

caged rat in a cage trapped

“I live with Zeke out here to keep him away
from punks like you,” Mr. Whittemore starts. “Zeke ought to have
left you there in that trap that day.”

I nod, knowing where he’s going. “If I was
dead, things would be better.”

Mr. Whittemore studies me.

“You got parents?” he asks.

There is a long pause, as I’m not sure how to
answer him. If I tell him about my father, sure enough he’ll stick
that rifle through the bars and shoot me dead.

“I ran away – ”

“That’s not what I asked. I asked if you have
parents. You got a mother?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Does she love you?”

My eyes itch. “Yes.”

“Does she know where you are?”

I shake my head.

“You got a father?”

When I don’t answer he repeats himself, then
asks a third time.

“No. Not anymore. He’s dead.” Mr. Whittemore
waits, or maybe he’s just thinking about what I said, and the words
tumble from my lips. “I killed him.”

Mr. Whittemore pauses, then nods.

“You don’t understand,” I say, my voice loud
enough to cause the goat in the stall next door to bleat in
annoyance. “You don’t know what he did. What he– I– he was– I
didn’t do it on purpose. Not really.”

“How long ago?”

I glare at him. “What, are you gonna try to
get some reward for turning me in?”

Mr. Whittemore looks at me with that
impenetrable face. I sigh.

“Three years ago.”

The silence that follows stretches up to the
rafters. Mr. Whittemore commences pacing the aisle in front of my
stall, his boots scuffing the floor. I wait for him to decide it’s
best to kill the murderer and ask questions later. I wait for him
to call to Zeke, tell him to head up to town to let the police know
he’s got a wanted killer trapped in his barn. I wait for him to
slap a padlock on the stall and leave me here to starve to
death.

“I can’t even imagine what a man could do to
his child to make that child turn against him,” Mr. Whittemore says
finally. And he looks at me.

Does he want me to tell him all about it?
Does he want specific details? Does he want to hear that I was
molested or something?

I don’t say a word.

“I don’t much like strangers,” Mr. Whittemore
says. “I don’t like people meddlin’ in my business. I like to do
things for myself. When Zeke was born, I got a little crazy about
it. Convinced my wife to move out here with me, convinced it’d be
best for Zeke to grow up without worryin’ that he’d be doin’ drugs
in middle school and learning about sex on television, and havin’
other people tell me how to raise my kid. We get along, Zeke and I.
After Pauline passed on, it was hard bein’ on my own. But we do all
right.”

“How did your wife die?”

“Well, it’s hard to say, as I’m no doctor. I
don’t put much stock in hospitals and health insurance and all
that. I believe if it’s your time to go, then you’d best go. I came
close to bringing her to a hospital… sometimes I wish I had.”

I watch Mr. Whittemore’s face. He really
believed that a hospital wouldn’t have helped his wife. I suppose
it isn’t that hard to believe.

“Zeke took it hard. He tried to keep on a
bright face for me but I know inside he was hurtin.’ Was hurtin’
still, until you came along.” Mr. Whittemore clears his throat.
“Watchin’ you with Zeke made me think I did something wrong,
raising him all alone, with no friends.”

I wonder if Mr. Whittemore can tell I never
really had any friends growing up, either. Kids at school weren’t
all that kind to me. I hung out with Kayla, mostly. The townies
looked down on us, thinking we were poor, and even though we were
from the rural areas outside of town, we didn’t know any of the
other farm kids. I figured out early on that they thought we were
poor white trash.

He’s giving me hope, talking like this. I
fight the feeling rising up in me. He won’t want me to stay here
and be Zeke’s friend, not after I nearly killed him with an
axe.

“I’d like if you stayed out here until you’re
healed up a bit,” he says. “I’ll send Zeke out with some dinner for
you.”

He must’ve seen my eyes brighten because he
adds, “Zeke will have his gun, so don’t even think about trying
anything with him.”

Mr. Whittemore’s footsteps fade out of the
barn. So I’m a prisoner here, sort of. I could leave, if I thought
I could walk further than the end of the aisle.

I can’t bear to face Zeke pointing a gun at
me again.

I close my eyes and try to sleep, and keep
them closed even when I hear Zeke enter the barn.

It gets harder to pretend I’m asleep all the
time. All I’m getting is bread and jerky to eat and you can’t look
convincingly asleep when your stomach is growling in a painful way.
Also, I need stuff, like more gauze and soap.

I’m starting to get jealous of the goats and
cows and pigs and all the attention Mr. Whittemore and Zeke pay
them.

Some mornings when Zeke and Mr. Whittemore
come in to do the milking and the morning feed, I watch them. They
ignore me and don’t even look in my direction except when they come
in to leave food, so it’s easy to pretend they don’t know I’m here.
I’m separate from them, a voyeur.

They each know their tasks. Not many words
are needed. Mr. Whittemore likes to whistle sometimes. Zeke talks
to the pigs when he dumps their feed into the trough. “Eh, Maggie
May, give Tiny some room. Bonnie, whatsa matter with you?” His
voice is low when he speaks to them, like he knows his father
wouldn’t approve of naming their food.

I lie on my back, staring up at the roof. I
imagine what might have happened if I hadn’t left Kayla. I’d
probably be home by now, no stitches. Maybe I’d be in the middle of
some war. It is beyond my comprehension, the werewolf war she
described. So there are different packs, and they each have their
own territory. What’s the problem? Have they ever tried to sit down
and discuss it? I mean, our pack seems to be down to Kayla and me,
so really, if they waited like 80 years, we’d both be dead, no need
for a war.

At night, I try to change into a wolf. I take
off the remains of my pants and my shirt and crouch in the hay. My
leg throbs in this position, and I can barely breathe. I just know
that if I can become the wolf I can get out of here. I’ll heal
faster or maybe my injuries will disappear once I’m in another
form.

The wolf doesn’t save me.

A few days after I found myself locked in a
stall, I sit up and wait for Zeke to come with my dinner. He’s so
used to me being asleep that he doesn’t even look at me until after
he’s opened the door. He jumps back when he sees my eyes open and
watching him.

“H-hi,” he says.

The gun is tucked under his arm. He has to
hold it awkwardly as he puts the plate down on the ground.

“I could use some new bandages,” I say.

His eyes flicker to my leg, where he shot me.
He nods.

“Um, and maybe you could give me a shovel or
something to clean up – ” I gesture to the corner I’ve been using
as a bathroom. “You know.”

“Okay. Sure.” His head bobs up and down. He
backs out of the stall and slides the door shut.

His footsteps hurry out of the barn.

I chew the bread and jerky waiting for him to
return, which isn’t for a long while. The bread is hard and
crumbly, and the jerky is chewy, and my jaw starts to hurt. What I
wouldn’t give for a vegetable or something hot and soft. Mr.
Whittemore must have told Zeke that my needs aren’t all that
important. Maybe he told Zeke to do his lessons first, or check the
traps, or whatever. Maybe he slapped Zeke upside the head and told
him he didn’t give a shit what I wanted. “That kid is lucky to be
alive,” Mr. Whittemore might have said in his growly voice. “He’s
lucky I don’t believe in murder.”

Who knows.

When Zeke finally returns I’m through with
eating. I’m lying on my back staring at the roof again. I turn my
head toward him.

“I got you some clean bandages and stuff.” He
puts everything down on the dirty hay and looks at me
expectantly.

I don’t get up. I don’t want to scare
him.

“Thanks,” I say, staring at the ceiling
again.

“Um, do you need help? Or anything?”

“Not really.”

“Oh.”

He stands, his shadow darkening the air.

“I’m sorry,” I say when it doesn’t look like
he’s going to leave. “I don’t know why I do stuff sometimes. I
didn’t want to hurt your dad.”

I can hear him chewing on the inside of his
cheek. “I wish I’d never given you that axe.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“I shot you.”

“That’s not your fault either.” I swallow.
“Sometimes I think I’m a monster.” And sometimes I know I am.

“You’re not a monster. Dad says there’s good
in everyone, just in some people it’s harder to find.”

I laugh, a little bit, through my nose. “Did
he tell you everything? Did he tell you I murdered my father?”

“He said you must have had a good
reason.”

Well. My father’s face looms in my mind, all
those times he choked me or smacked me, and that last time when he
watched me, watched me without helping me or explaining what was
happening to me, his eyes gleaming with the intent to dominate or
kill if necessary.

“Thank you,” I say.

The moon is waning. Each night is darker than
the night before. Tonight I undo the latch on the stall and quietly
as I can, slip out into the aisle.

My leg feels stronger. My muscles are aching
for movement, more so than I can do pacing in that stall. I hobble
down the aisle. The animals move restlessly, backing into the
corners of their pens. I use the walls for support, but only when I
absolutely need it. At the end of the aisle I push open the barn
door.

I can smell the outhouse, and there it is, a
mere fifty feet away. Fifty feet with nothing to hold onto.