On the Run (5 page)

“No.”

“You were alone in the car?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re not very informative,” I muttered. She shrugged. “What about the car that was wrecked?”

“What about it?”

“Did you just walk off and leave it? What became of it?”

“I called someone. They’ll take care of it.” Another hint of that what’s-it-to-you-lady defiance. She turned and lifted the curtain a few inches so she could peer outside.

“Are you looking for someone?”

A hesitation. “The last guy I rode with acted a little odd. I told him I wanted out because I recognized the motor home and knew you. He was still watching when I got to your door. That’s why I asked you to pretend you knew me.” I believed that, but somehow I suspected it might be short of the whole truth.

“What’s your name?”

“Abilene.” Her mouth twisted in a humorless smile. “What was my mother thinking, right?”

“Abilene what?”

Another of those brief hesitations before she said, “Tyler.”

Now I wondered if she was reluctant to tell me her full name, or if the delay gave her time to make up a phony one.

“Abilene seems a bit formal. Do people call you Abby, perhaps?”

“No.” She sounded as if anyone tried Abby on her, she’d clobber ’em. She also looked, in spite of her current physical condition, as if she could probably do it.

I slowly put the cap back on the ointment. We studied each other. The bruises around one eye, I now saw, were turning color, taking on a yellow and greenish tint, which suggested they were older than a car accident within the last day or two. Though the scrapes and other black eye looked recent enough. Odd. A rotation of her shoulder under her lightweight denim jacket suggested it was also hurting.

“Have you done something criminal?” I asked bluntly.

Her blue eyes flared in surprise. “No!” Then another of those hesitations. This time I suspected it was because a reluctant honesty made her say, “At least I . . . I don’t think so.”

“Drugs?”

“Not unless you consider an occasional aspirin a big deal.”

“Would you like a couple of aspirin now?”

“Yes. Please.”

I got the aspirin and more water. A sharp noise banged outside as I handed the cup to her, the backfire of a car leaving the Lariat. Abilene jumped, spilling half the water, and I realized she was even more jittery than I’d been at the Northcutts. I got a handful of paper towels. I started to get down on my hands and knees to sop up the spilled water, but she grabbed the towels and did it herself.

“Sorry,” she muttered as she stood up. I opened the door to the cabinet below the sink, and she stuffed the wet towels in the trash container I keep there.

I could tell my questions were making her edgy. I didn’t want to do that. She looked as if she’d been through enough already. But there were a couple more things I had to know.

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-two.”

I squinted at her. Was that true, or was she upping the number a few years to give herself legal, of-age status? At first glance I’d guess her to be younger than twenty-two, maybe a lot younger, but on closer examination she looked possibly even older than that. Especially in the eyes, as if something had aged her inside. I decided that, for now anyway, I’d just accept her number.

“Where are you headed?”

“I . . . haven’t decided yet.”

That made two of us, so I could hardly criticize her for that.

We regarded each other for a thoughtful minute. Finally I said, “If you don’t mind being kind of scrunched up, you can sleep on the sofa here tonight.”

I had instant second thoughts about the impulsive offer, but in her hesitant “Yeah?” I detected some doubts of her own.

“I won’t knock you in the head and sell you into white slavery, or whatever the term is these days, if you promise not to knock me in the head and steal my motor home and cat.”

The smile was slow but genuine this time. “Deal,” she said.

5

That settled, I asked, “Do you have luggage . . . or anything?”

I couldn’t see anything, of course, but I figured she might have stashed something before knocking on my door.

“I had some, but I couldn’t get it out of the car.” She shrugged. “There wasn’t anything important in it anyway.”

“You don’t have
anything
?”

“I’m not naked,” she pointed out a bit tartly. She wore jeans, sneakers, and a faded blue blouse under the denim jacket. She put a hand to a cord around her neck and yanked a leather pouch out from under the blouse. “And I have money. I can pay for sleeping on your sofa.” The hint of defiance was back.

“No, no, child. Of course not.” Hastily, before she decided to change her mind and walk out into the dark night, I added, “I’ll fix you something to eat.” I didn’t make it a question because I didn’t want to give her a chance to say she wasn’t hungry when I was certain she was.

I scrambled three eggs, opened a can of peaches, warmed milk for hot chocolate, and made toast on my little thingamajig that works on the gas stove. She ate everything the way Koop ate his first meal at that rest stop in Georgia. Afterward I told her she could take a shower if she’d like, but in the motor home, with water in short supply, she’d have to do it like I did: you wet yourself down, turn off the water while you lather up and wash, then do a quick rinse.

She nodded, and I could hear her following my instructions in the tiny bathroom a few minutes later. She came out wearing the same clothes, of course; she had no others. The leather pouch still dangled from the cord around her neck. It looked wet, as if she hadn’t taken it off even in the shower. I had nothing that would even come close to fitting her, including pajamas, so she wound up sleeping in her underthings.

This parking place was either more noisy than the Dulcy Farm Supply lot or I wasn’t sleeping as soundly. Trucks came and went. One parked beside us and left its refrigerated unit running noisily. Also, I now realized, the Lariat was as much beer joint as restaurant, and it didn’t close until well after midnight. Late departers seemed to feel obliged to do a
vroom-vroom
of pickup engine, a raucous good night to friends, and a squeal of tires.

Neither the awkwardness of the pouch, the noise, or the cramped sofa kept Abilene from sleeping soundly, however. Which wasn’t surprising, considering how exhausted she looked.

In the morning, with the kind of resiliency I could vaguely remember from my younger years, the exhaustion was gone from her face and shoulders, and her blue eyes were less murky looking. Although the bruises were still there, and she still seemed wary and nervous. And it would take more than a good night’s sleep to do anything for that hair. It was no more than an inch in the longest spots and angled almost to her scalp in others. It looked as if it had been cut with a WeedEater. By an operator with a short attention span. It had one asset, however: no combing necessary. She just ran damp fingers through it, and it spiked up like blond exclamation points.

I fixed a big breakfast of hotcakes and eggs, and we sat down at the tiny dinette together. She was ready to stab a hotcake as soon as I set the plate down, but she jerked her fork back when I said I’d offer the blessing. She was looking at me curiously when I lifted my head a minute later, as if this was as foreign to her as finger bowls would be to me.

“I appreciate everything the Lord gives me, including this meal,” I said.

“Oh. Well . . . uh, amen, I guess,” she said awkwardly. She glanced around as if thinking she might spot God sitting on top of the refrigerator, and then dug into the hotcakes. Each time I asked if she’d like another one, she said yes.

We ate on Styrofoam plates, because I didn’t want to use up water washing dishes, and after the fifth hotcake she finally crumpled her plate and put it in the trash.

“That was good, really good. Thank you.”

“I’m glad to have the company. Usually it’s just Koop and me.”

“Well, time for me to hit the road,” she said briskly. She picked up her jacket and peered out the window, automatically putting a hand to her chest to check on the leather pouch. She gave Koop a long, swooping good-bye caress. I sensed a certain regret in it. She liked cats. Koop had spent half the night at her feet. “I really do appreciate the food and your letting me stay here and everything.”

I started to protest.
You can’t hit the road. You have no place to
go. No way to get anywhere but by hitchhiking. No clothes, nothing!
And if there were more than a few bucks in that pouch, I’d be much surprised. I was also certain that saying any of that to her would have as much effect as talking Kantian philosophy to Koop. I hastily took a different approach.

“I have to drive out in the country this morning. Why don’t you come along?”

Until that moment I hadn’t made up my mind to go back to the Northcutts, but if it would keep Abilene from hopping in some stranger’s truck and taking off, I’d do it.

“Why?”

Why come along?
“Well, uh, why not?”

She apparently found no fault in that logic, but then she asked warily, “You going to see family or friends or something?”

“No. I’m going to apply for a job.”

“What kind of job?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe research or secretarial, maybe housework or caretaking. I was out there yesterday, but no one was home.”

“Is there more than one job opening?”

“I don’t know that, either. Would you like to get a job?”

“Maybe.”

“Then let’s go see.”

She hesitated a moment, then nodded. I put things away so nothing would fly around while the motor home was moving, working fast before Abilene changed her mind about coming along. Koop settled into Abilene’s lap in the passenger’s seat as if he’d always ridden there.

While I drove, I tried to find out more without being rudely inquisitive. It’s a fine line, not one someone as curious as I am walks easily. “What part of Texas are you from?”

“I’m not from Texas.” She was staring out the window as she spoke, and a sudden straightening of her back suggested she’d blurted that information without thinking.

“But wasn’t the car accident down there?”

A considered delay while she apparently decided how much to explain. “I’ve been living there for a few years, but I’m not from there.”

“Oh, I see. You’ve been working or going to school?”

“Working. Oh yeah, definitely working.” Her tone wasn’t exactly sarcastic, but a certain wryness suggested some masked meaning in the words.

“So, what do you do?”

“Cooking. Housework. Taking care of kids. Farm work. Whatever.”

Cutting hair with a WeedEater, perhaps?

Unexpectedly, she volunteered a small bit of information. “I’m from Kansas originally.”

“That explains why you don’t sound Texan, then. What took you to—”

“I guess you’re from Arkansas,” she cut in before I could get another question out. “According to your license plate anyway.”

And just like that, Abilene turned the small talk on me, and I found myself answering her questions and telling her about living on Madison Street in Missouri with Harley for years and years, being a librarian, losing my best friend, Thea, to a heart attack, and deciding to see the world in this motor home I’d bought in Arkansas. Although I have to admit I omitted some minor details about a couple of murders and the fire-setting, car-bombing Braxtons.

We reached the Northcutts’ driveway and their hostile sign. The gate was still padlocked. “We have to walk from here.”

If Abilene thought this an odd approach to job hunting, she didn’t say so. I cracked a window for Koop and locked the door. But at the gate I stopped short.

Yesterday the chain had been arranged so the padlock was on the inside . . . hadn’t it? Today it was on the outside. Was my memory at fault, or did this mean someone had been in or out?

Nothing unusual about that, I decided. I hadn’t been able to raise the Northcutts at the house yesterday, probably for the simple reason that they weren’t home. Now they’d come home. Good. We’d get to see them today, then.

We walked down the driveway. Today I didn’t hear the odd thrumming noise until we were in the clearing around the house. This time I could also see a faint cloud of dust rising from behind the house.

I went directly to the front door. My note was still there under the horseshoe knocker. I rang the bell anyway. Maybe the Northcutts didn’t use their front door and hadn’t seen the note. The Hummer hadn’t been moved, and I didn’t see any other vehicle. The drapes on the windows hadn’t been opened. After punching the doorbell several times I went back to where Abilene was waiting by the arch and bell.

“I guess this was a wild goose chase. Apparently no one’s home again.” Or maybe they were out back doing who-knew-what again. A little awkwardly I asked, “Does the place feel kind of . . . creepy to you?”

I expected her to look at me as if I’d just suggested I thought the house was haunted by little green elves. Instead she muttered, “Yeah, it does feel kind of creepy.” But instead of backing off, she added, “Let’s go around back. Maybe someone’s working back there.”

With Abilene saying it, investigating behind the house sounded quite reasonable. I followed her long strides in that direction. The soft, irregular thrumming noise got a little louder. We rounded the corner of the house, and then I saw where the noise was coming from.

“Ostriches!”

“Emus,” Abilene corrected as the whole mob—herd? flock?—spotted us and dashed on long, spindly legs to the fence. They had a large, grassy pasture, wooded at one end, in which to roam, but it was worn to bare dirt here at the corner closest to the house. More dust rose to join the hovering cloud. “I knew some people back in Texas who raised them.”

Were these the “weird birds” the Ute guy from California had objected to? Shaggy, brownish-black feathers drooped around their heavy bodies. They had long necks, some with blue throats, fuzzy heads, big, inquisitive eyes, and wide, flattish beaks. Their height was variable, depending on whether they stretched those long necks up high to look down on us or curved them down low to peer up at us. But some were at least five or six feet tall when they did the stretch thing.