Hitchhikers (3 page)

I head off down the hill, slipping a bit in
the wet grass. Behind me I hear the rustling sounds of the dog
following me. She races ahead to the road and waits for me, her
ears perked forward.

“Yeah, yeah. I’m coming.”

Though it looked like there was farmland
stretched as far as I could see, I end up in the middle of town by
noontime.

I’m pretty thrilled. All day long there have
been tractors rumbling by on the dirt roads, people out in the
fields working. No chances to grab something to eat. No trucks to
hitch a ride on. No shade from the sun beating down through the
haze. My legs feel worn down to the last thread of muscle. When
they finally hit paved roads a couple miles back, it only got
worse.

The town center is a general store, a post
office, and a gas station, combined into one, across from a
clapboard building which the sign in front proclaims as “Town
Hall.” No indication of what town.

The dog seems skittish with the vehicles
rolling by on Main Street, staying so close to my heels that I keep
on kicking her. Sometimes I kick her on purpose. “Get outta my
way,” I mutter.

Warped windows, some prize from the pioneer
days, don’t help much showing me what I look like, so I head into
the general store, damp and dusty, probably with blood in my hair
or something. The dog tries to follow me in, but I close the door
quick behind me. “No animals,” I say, pointing to the sign. “Can’t
you read?”

Inside smells like heaven.

You’d think pre-packaged food wouldn’t have a
smell, but it does when you’re hungry enough. I could smell
chocolate and pork rinds and milk, bacon and Slim Jims. There were
plenty of fresh vegetables and fruit out, but it was the meat I
smelled most.

The cashier, a dowdy middle-aged woman
reading a Harlequin novel behind the counter, glances up at me, and
keeps glancing. She thinks I’m going to steal stuff.

I pull out the wad of bills I stole from the
man with the white truck, after I covered his body with a blanket,
and meet her eyes. She pointedly returns to her book, but as soon
as I head down to where the food aisles are, I can feel her
watching me again.

The man didn’t have much on him, twenty-three
dollars to be exact. There’s a lot I can buy for that much. I load
up on meats, bags of pepperoni and wrapped salami, some bread and
cheese, plus a liter bottle of Coke and a bag of peaches. Then my
gaze catches on a newspaper.

A photograph is obscured by the center fold
of the paper, though I know what I will see when I unfold it. The
house is burned to the ground, unrecognizable, with a white truck
parked out in front. That man’s truck.

Someone came along behind me and cleaned up
my mess.

With all the rain, there was no way this was
a natural fire. I certainly had nothing to do with it. A little
part of me is disappointed

(I wanted to get caught)

and I can’t help but wonder if this is the
first time a fire has obliterated the evidence of the murders I
committed. Being on the run, I don’t often stop to read the paper.
Even when I do, I’m usually far, far away by the time the local
papers might report a death.

I imagine someone following along behind me,
seeing what I’ve done, and thinking they’re helping me by burning
it all. It’s so sick it makes me shudder. I shove the newspaper
back under its wire holder and head to the front of the store.

The lady at the cash register gives me a long
look as I pile everything onto the counter. Looking at all the
stuff I can’t afford, the magazines, candy, handy little gadgets, I
try to ignore the way she looks at me between every item she scans
through.

“That’ll be twenty-three seventy-six,” she
said.

I look down at the bills in my hands. I don’t
want to make a scene. “Shouldn’t it be twenty-two eighty?” I
ask.

“There’s tax,” she tells me.

Right. I should have known that. I swallow
and look everything over. What can I let go? My hand hesitates over
the pepperoni.

“Is your mom outside? Maybe she’s got a
couple more dollars?” the woman asks.

It sounds caring, like the lady’s trying to
give me a break, but I can hear the nosiness under it. She wants to
know if I’m here by myself, a young kid, a truant. She wants to
know if she ought to call the cops as soon as I walk out the
door.

I pick up the pepperoni and hand it to her.
“I guess I won’t get this.” I won’t answer her questions. I won’t
give her any trouble or a reason to call.

“Sure.” She punches the void into the cash
register. “Twenty-one fifty.”

As I’m headed for the door with my bag of
food smelling so good I’m salivating, almost unable to wait until I
get outside to rip into it, she calls after me, “There are leash
laws in this town, you know.”

Through the glass, the stray is sitting,
watching and waiting for me to come out.

I sigh and push open the door.

I eat in a barren little park that is
sun-bleached grass, a sandbox, and a rusty swing set enclosed by a
chain link fence. The emptiness allows me to eat the salami
straight from the wrapper, to rip hunks of bread off with my teeth,
and to burp so loud it echoes after washing it all down with the
Coke.

At some point I had a dim thought about
sharing with the dog, but all she gets is one of the Slim Jims
before I am completely consumed by the eating.

When everything is gone save the wrappers,
which go back into the bag to throw away, I lie down on the now-dry
ground and close my eyes to the scorching sun. My stomach pushes
out against my t-shirt. It’s a good feeling.

I think about trying to hitch another ride
south. I think about moving to somewhere less out in the open,
where cops won’t see me and my leash-less dog. But it’s been so
long since I’ve been full and sleepy and warm, and I can’t convince
myself to get up.

Even when the dog pushes her nose under my
arm and wriggles up close to me. She whuffs out a spicy
meat-smelling breath and kisses my cheek with her tongue before
closing her eyes. I can feel her heartbeat against my arm.

Our breathing syncs up and slows until I
drift into sleep.

“Hey, kid.”

A foot nudging in my side, a shadow across my
face. My other side cold – no furry pillow.

I crack my eyes open.

“Hmm?” I ask the silhouetted man looming over
me. One of my arms flops up to shade my eyes, but I still can’t see
his face.

Instead of an answer I get more of his boot
in my ribs. “Ow.”

“Come on, get up, kid.”

I roll over and push myself up.

Dizziness.

I swallow thickly and I’m kneeling. Blinking
to keep back those black spots dancing in my vision.

“You can’t sleep here,” the man states.

Now I can see he’s a cop, the blue uniform,
the black boots, his arms crossed.

“’Kay.” I use the fence to help me get up -
my legs are so tired - grab my bag of trash and my coat. Head
out.

Pray that damn cop doesn’t say anything else
to me.

He doesn’t.

I thought the dog was gone, but she was only
hiding. Popping out from some bushes behind a house further down
the road, she rejoins me like nothing happened.

“You think you’re so smart, huh? Hiding from
the cops?”

Her tongue lolls out of her mouth as she
smiles up at me.

“Nice of you to let me get the brunt of it,”
I complain, but when she nudges my hand I absently scratch her
ear.

A faded white sign with an upward pointing
arrow indicates the way to the state highway. The sun is near to
setting, though I’ll be awake for a while yet. Might as well get
closer to the highway, then tomorrow I might be able to hitch a
ride.

“You won’t be able to come if I can get a
ride,” I say to the animal beside me. “You might as well cut out
now.”

Her ears prick forward while I talk, like she
understands, but she doesn’t understand, because she keeps on
walking beside me.

It’s long past sunset before I find a good
place to sleep: in some lilac bushes near a small cottage-y house.
The yard is neat and clean, which means there’s no little kids to
scatter their toys around, or indifferent teenagers half-mowing the
lawn and parking their cars on the grass. There’s one small red car
in the driveway with a handicapped license plate. From the road I
can hear the television blaring, the light shining through the
closed curtains.

The bushes are taller than I am, and I crawl
inside

we’re giggling and pretending to be bears or
wolves crawling into a cave

The smell is so overpowering it immediately
gives me a headache. The space underneath isn’t quite as big as I
remember. When the stray crawls in after me we’re on top of each
other, but at least I feel warmer in this small hidden space

it’s our secret place

no one can see us

no one can smell us

I curl up with my fist under my chin, roots
for a pillow, a furry blanket warming me.

“
Let’s pretend I’m the bride and you’re
the husband.”

“
What do husbands and wives do?”

“
Kiss each other.”

Accompanied by these bittersweet memories, I
drift into sleep.

When I wake into the still darkness,
something is different.

Beneath my hand I feel smooth hair instead of
fur. Smell woods and heat and earth instead of wet dog. I crack
open my eyelids and peer around.

The girl looks back at me with wide brown
eyes, her golden brown hair falling into her face. She looks like
my cousin Kayla, not like what Kayla looked like when I took off
three years ago, but what Kayla might look like now, if the round
softness of Kayla’s face became sharper, her eyes further apart,
that untamable hair of hers grown long and flowing.

“Daniel,” she says. Her voice is low and
musical.

“Kayla?”

“You have to come back, Daniel. We need
you.”

“I can’t go back. I don’t want to get
arrested.”

“It will all be okay. We need you. You can’t
run forever.”

You have to come back.

With a start I wake up.

Sunlight is burning through the lilacs in a
purple haze. Though I’m sweating, the stray is right there, where
Kayla was lying just moments before.

My hand remembers her warm skin.

Did I just dream about my cousin being
naked?

All day long the dream lingers in my
thoughts. “There’s no way I can go back,” I tell the dog. “No
reason, really.”

(although I would like to see my mother and
Kayla again)

“The cops would be waiting for me. They would
arrest me for sure.”

(isn’t that what I want?)

“What I want isn’t important.” I’m a monster.
A killer. Things would be better if I just disappeared.

I have disappeared. No one knows who I am. I
wander like a ghost.

(that’s not good enough)

I’m a danger to everyone. Maybe I want food
and someplace warm, but it doesn’t matter. I need to be locked
up.

“I’m going south,” I tell the dog. “I’ll find
some deserted town in Texas and live like a hermit. I’ll grow a
garden and trap my own food. Lots of people have done it, become
self-sufficient. I won’t need to go near other people then.”

In the hot mid-afternoon sun I stop to rest
in the shade of a cottonwood tree. As my eyes begin to droop, I’m
still talking. “You smell like those lilac bushes still.”

I rest my face in her fur.

“It could be good, living alone. Maybe I’ll
even stop blacking out.”

It would be warm all the time in Texas.

“Just you and me. Would you like that,
Lila?”

She pants in my ear, hot doggy breath.

“Yeah, Lila’s a good name for you. What do
you think?”

She could sleep at the foot of my bed.

“Just you and me.”

I reach the highway around dinnertime. Not
that I’ve eaten any dinner, my stomach reminds me.

Trucks roar by going 70, 80 miles an hour,
blasting right through this middle of nowhere place. Lila whines;
she doesn’t like being so close to the road. I stay on the
shoulder, out of the breakdown lane. None of these big trailer
trucks are going to stop for me; too much work to slow down. I’m
tired of walking but I don’t have much of a choice – that’s the
thing about following the highways, they’re boring. A long stretch
of flat road. No houses or trees. Out here some of the farmland is
close enough if I get desperate for food

Hitchhiking isn’t legal most places. I didn’t
know that when I started out but it seems to be a pick up line with
truckers. “Hey, kid, you know you could get arrested for hitching?
Come on, get in.”

After a while I learned that I didn’t even
need to stick a thumb out like they do in the movies. Nah,
scuffling along the side of the road looking homeless makes people
feel kind. “You need a ride somewhere? It’s awful cold out there.”
It makes other people predatory. “You need a warm place for the
night, kid?”

The setting sun to my right burns over the
landscape, turning ugly browning fields into golden valleys and the
gray clouds to red and orange streaks in the sky. It doesn’t last
long, though. Within twenty minutes all is the same dim color, and
now headlights wash over me and Lila, making our shadows shorten
and lengthen over and over.

Not so long after the sun dies, a dirty white
van flashes its red brake lights after passing us and rolls over
into the breakdown lane.