BAD TRIP SOUTH (5 page)

I don’t think even Crow and Heddy understood how weak they were without us around. It was like once we were with them, our fear fed them. Not to mention that if they ran into law trouble how better off they were with a policeman and his family for hostages. Cops will do anything for another cop, anything. They knew that. It wasn’t unlucky at all, them running into us, the way Heddy said at first. They knew it was lucky, really. We were like solid gold to them.

When I tried to tell Mama in some way she'd understand me, Crow reached out his hand and patted me on the head the way you pat dogs. I heard him say, "Good kid, good kid."

But that's not all. He was thinking,
I don’t want to hurt you, just be a good kid.

He didn't want me to tell Mama what I knew. I even knew about the nasty stuff, the sex stuff he did behind bars so he could keep from being knifed or hit over the head when he was sleeping in his bunk. He used the word “nigger” in his head, a word my Mama told me never ever to say. Anytime I hear someone use that word it makes me want to scrunch up my shoulders and find a corner to go hide in, ashamed I can be in the same room with someone who calls a black person that word. It makes me want to say the same thing my Mama told me. “Skin color is an accident. If you’d been born black would you want white people calling you a name like that? Would you?”

But I knew Crow had been calling them that a long time, probably all his life. He didn’t know any better, no one had taught him anything.

I looked at him next to me with his eyes closed and his head against the seat and I knew if I said much about what I knew was in his head to Mama, he'd get really mad. He would hurt me. I'd have to keep most of my thoughts--and Crow’s thoughts--to myself. If I talked about it, he'd know.

See, they were both ready to hurt us, but Crow was the one who scared me the most in the beginning. Later, it would be Heddy. It’s like the longer we were with them, the truer we could see them, the more we knew about the danger we were in.

He'd seen people hurt in prison and he'd done some of that hurting. He'd been put in Leavenworth for trying to kill a man with a pool stick. He'd gotten mad over a bet and broke the stick over the other man's head, then stuck the broken end into the man's stomach. He pulled it out and started kicking the man in the head. He'd have killed him if some other men hadn't pulled him off.

I know this because during the time we were with them, he bragged about it to my Dad. My daddy just shook his head and ground his teeth.

“
You’re nothing but a gutter punk,” Daddy said.

“
Yeah, like you never busted a guy over the head, you freaking pig liar asshole. I guess you’d like me better if I was one of those psycho killers that jerk off over dead bodies and eat their livers with onions on the side.”

Daddy said, “If you think you’re better, you’re sadly mistaken.”

“
What I’m thinking I’m mistaken about is not throwing your ass out of this car while Heddy’s doing eighty miles an hour.” Then Crow laughed to beat the band until Heddy told him to shut up, sit back, and get a grip.

Since escaping, Crow and Heddy had robbed a gas station outside of St. Louis. Crow didn't like the way the gas station attendant looked at Heddy, like he was about to make fun of how half her mouth didn’t work right, so he shot him three times.

They hadn't said that on the radio yet because they didn't know it had been Crow. This was something I knew when Crow took the drug. He started sort of reliving it. Playing it over in his head, all of it running fast like a movie going crazy, and I got the static from him.

"That's pretty odd you know about that,” Hawkins said, lighting a new cigarette. "It's true, too. The killer was Craig Walker. The man you call Crow. Missouri State police got a make on the car that was identified as being at the scene of the crime. It matched the car they left in the woods near the Long Horn Caverns."

So you believe me, I guess, I said.

It was hard knowing things and not able to tell my mother or father. Daddy already knew they were really dangerous. He knew all about bad people so they weren't fooling him any. But Mama only knows a little about people like Crow and Heddy. She didn't know how easy it would be for Crow to pull out the gun and kill us for nothing, for looking at him funny or pushing him too far or saying something that bothered him. I was trying to warn her, but I couldn't.

The whole car used to smell like a new car. Even when we drove up to the caverns, it still smelled like new leather and carpet and vinyl. But after Crow and Heddy were in the car, it smelled like putrid stuff...old food standing in a refrigerator that’s stopped working. Curdled yogurt and green slimy vegetables and meat that’s turned gray.

"Mama, roll down the window,” I said.

"You're not rolling down the windows,” Heddy said, looking at me over her shoulder with a big frown plastered on her face. “I’ll turn up the air if you’re hot.”

"I have to go to the bathroom."

"Wait a while. You can wait."

"For godssake, she's a kid. She has to go to the bathroom,” Daddy said.

"She's a big kid, is what she is. She can hold it until we get down the road a ways."

Crow rolled his head and lifted it. He opened his eyes. "Listen to Heddy. Don't give us trouble."

He laid his head back and drifted off, coming down from the nervous strain of the drug high. I didn't ask again. An hour later, Heddy slowed down a couple of miles outside of a town and turned into a dirt road that didn’t look like it led anywhere. It wound and curved between thick trees that made a dark forest on each side. She stopped and told me to get out. And Mama too.

Crow woke up and watched, curious. “What’s happening?”

“
I’m letting them take a piss.”

"Do I have to, Mama?" I asked. Because we were outside the car in a ditch now and Heddy told us to squat and pee.

"This is terrible,” Mama said to Heddy.

"It's going to be worse if you have to hold it and wet your pants. Now squat!"

Mama took me behind the car bumper and we both went to the bathroom in the road, in the dirt, leaving puddles between our knees. Mama had brought tissues from her purse. She told me not to worry, not to be scared. I couldn’t help it. I could hardly go to the bathroom. Heddy started screaming at us and finally I was able to.

I was hoping a car would come down the road and see us squatting there, going to the bathroom like animals in the road. They'd know something was wrong.

But no one came. We got back in the car; Heddy turned around and drove back to the highway.

"No more stopping,” Heddy said, once she was on the highway.

"I'm getting hungry,” Crow said. He rubbed his skinny stomach and grinned at me like he could get me to smile at him. I didn’t.

"Oh, Crow, we can't get anything right now. Let's just try to get out of this fucking state, okay?"

"Sure, okay, baby. But we get into Kansas and I want food."

“
My mom lives in Kansas,” Heddy said.

“
So?” Crow leaned forward until he was just inches from the back of her head. “She a good cook or what?”

Heddy grunted. “Hell no she’s no cook. I lived on oatmeal when I stayed with her.”

“
Then what’s the point? She lives in Kansas, so freaking what?”

“
I might go by. Just for a few minutes. I don’t think anyone knows where she lives now but me. I need to tell her where I’m going.”

“
Like she won’t tell. That’s not too smart, Heddy.” Crow leaned back, exasperated.

“
You let me worry about what she’d tell.”

Heddy turned up the radio and drove. She was like a machine, driving the car. She didn't talk or look at us. From where I sat I could see one side of her face, the side that worked okay. It was as paralyzed and dead as the other side. She might as well have been a wooden Indian.

I wondered what her mother was like, if she was nice like my mom, and decided she probably wasn’t. I hoped we didn’t have to go there, to her mom’s. Suddenly a feeling came over me that Crow was right—it was a dumb idea to go see Heddy’s mom. But not because she might tell anything to the police. It was something else about the idea that bothered me and I didn’t know what it was. I never figured it out until we got there either.

Crow asked questions of Daddy and Mama, but when they didn't say much, he gave up, put his head back and fell asleep again, his drug high winding down.

That's how our first day went. We were hostages heading into Kansas and we might get to meet Heddy’s mother. The vacation was over.

#

WHEN Heddy had put the Missouri-Kansas state line fifty miles behind her she said to Jay, “How much money do you have?”

“
A couple of hundred.”

“
Give Crow your wallet.”

She watched him carefully as he withdrew his wallet from his back pocket and handed it over the back seat.

“
How much he got?” She asked.

“
Two-forty.”

“
Credit cards?”

“
A couple. Visa and MasterCard. Oh, and there’s a Sears card too.” He laughed. “We got us a real bunch of middleclass citizens here.”

“
Keep the cash and cards. He can’t do much if he’s got no money on him. I’m going to find a motel,” Heddy said, slowing for a town speed limit sign. “Then I can get something for us to eat while you watch them in the room.”

“
Sounds like a plan,” Crow said.

Jay glanced at Crow. “Why don’t you let us go? You’re over the state line now. You’ve got the car. Take my money, the credit cards. Just let us out somewhere.”

“
Heddy, he’s talking to me. Tell him not to talk to me.”

“
Shut up,” she said, craning her head forward over the wheel to check out motel signs.

“
What’s the point of keeping us?”

“
He’s talking again. You hear him?”

Heddy frowned at the passenger sitting next to her. “We’ll let you go when we get good and ready to let you go. If you keep yapping, Crow’s gonna lose his cool and hit you again. I think you should shut up when I tell you to shut up. That’s just my friendly advice, though, you do what you got to do.”

Jay straightened in his seat, face forward.

Heddy spied a vacancy sign in front of a small rundown motel where the rooms were separate cabins arranged around a large semi-circle grassy drive. She turned in, parked out of sight of the office, and told Crow to watch them. He handed the cash from Jay’s wallet over the seat to her before she exited the Riviera.

It was easy getting the room farthest from the office. Most of the cabins were empty.

“
The freeway took away all our business,” the old man at the counter said in a pitiful voice. “The whole town’s been dying.”

Heddy didn’t comment and she didn’t smile. She never smiled at strangers who would look at her funny because half her mouth wouldn’t move. Better they thought her sullen. She just took the key and left the office. Back in the car, she drove them to the cabin and helped Crow herd the family inside and out of sight.

“
Now you keep an eye on the Brady Bunch while I go find something for us to eat.”

Crow grabbed her from behind and nuzzled her neck. He had his gun out and the kid right at his side. Heddy laughed and pulled away. “Don’t take your eyes off them. I’ll bring back rope so we can tie them up later.”

“
Awright! Sounds kinky!”

Heddy almost smiled, but it didn’t quite reach her mouth.

With Heddy gone, the room began to impress itself on the people remaining in the shabby room. The family cowered and shivered as if from the frigid air that blew from the noisy window unit. Crow cursed at what a dump the place was before ripping off a threadbare chenille cover from one of the two double beds. The whooping sound of the cover coming loose from the mattress and the wheezing air conditioner were the only sounds. “I hate shitty places like this. They probably got bedbugs.”

Jay stood quietly watching from in front of a built-in desk connected to one wall. It was obvious to look at his face that he was desperately working out some kind of escape plan to put into force.

Emily backed up to the room’s window that looked out over the gravel courtyard fronting the cabin. She looked more scared than she had at any time since the abduction.