Sarah (12 page)

‘That’s all right, sweet little thing.’ He runs his other hand through my hair, stroking it like he’s combing a horse mane. ‘Such beautiful golden curls, my sweet thing, sweet thing,’ he sings in his womanly pitched voice. I let my eyes close for a bit.

‘I gotta get home,’ I mutter into the mattress and fall fast asleep.

‘What happened to it?’ Lymon shakes me awake.

I open my eyes and wipe at the drool coming out of my mouth. ‘Huh?’ I look around wildly to get my bearings. It takes me a minute to remember where I am.

‘Where’s your private hole?’ Lymon sounds slightly panicked.

‘Between my cheeks of course,’ I say and wipe up more drool on my arm with the edge of his pillow. I suddenly realize my panties are not on me. ‘Hey, you said you weren’t gonna put nothin’ in me. How long I been sleeping for?’

‘Where’s your other hole at?’ Lymon’s voice isn’t in that shrill chafing timbre anymore and I’m grateful.

‘Huh? I gotta go, Lymon.’ I start to push myself up.

Lymon pushes me back down, which so surprises me I stay down. I feel him spreading my legs with his hands. His fingers probe between my legs.

‘Oh, Jesus,’ he says and squeezes hard between my legs.

I let out a yelp of pain.

‘Oh, sweet Jesus!’ he says louder. He reaches up under my belly and flips me onto my back.

He says nothing. He only stares, his face registering shock.

I slowly reach my hand down, between my legs, to my penis.

‘What are you?’ Lymon asks, and I see a darkness slowly replacing the shock across his face.

I don’t know what to say. I feel as surprised as he is. I touch it again. It’s still there, like it always is.

‘What are you?!’ he shouts and I jump up.

‘Please just take me home,’ I whisper.

‘What are you?!’ he screams. ‘Are you the devil?! Are you a snake?! What the hell are you?!’ he screams at the tops of his lungs.

‘Please, Lymon, I just want to go home!’ I start moving toward the door.

‘You are not a little girl!’ he howls and suddenly lunges for me. I leap out of the way, scramble to the doorway, and push the thin balsawood door off its hinges and run naked out of Lymon’s shack.

I hear Lymon running, shrieking behind me, but he’s not chasing me. I realize he’s running in the direction of the diner and he’s shouting for help. I run toward the trucks lined up waiting for Pooh, but then I think better of that. I spin around and around trying to decide in a panic where to go. I decide to run back to Lymon’s and grab my clothes, but then I see up at the diner folks spilling out, waving what looks like flaming torches.

I run toward the bog forest.

I hear them yelling for me, calling me by every name of Satan I have ever heard, and then some I’d never heard. The pitcher plants, sundews, and bladderworts all bite at my legs and ankles and the mosquitoes are sucking me like a cherry soda. But I don’t move. I stay hidden behind some huge foul-smelling skunk cabbage leaves. I peek out to see the mob carrying their torches ablazing. ‘Oh God,’ I cry under my breath. ‘Oh my God.’

‘She-Ra! She-Ra! Sarah! Sarah! She-Ra!’ I make out Pooh’s voice calling to me. I peek out and can see her on the edge of the forest, by herself, searching the bushes with a flashlight. I stand up and let the shaft she throws toward me catch me.

‘Is that you?’ she calls out in a loud whisper.

‘Turn off the light,’ I whisper back loudly.

She flicks off the light and I hear her stumbling through the brush. ‘Where are you?’

‘Here, here…’ I guide her with my voice. I see her outline in front of me and tap her shoulder. She jumps. ‘Damn!’ She turns toward me and lets her eyes adjust to the crescent moonlight. ‘Ugh, it stinks here!’

I become aware of the staggering urge to throw myself into her arms. I wrap my hands around myself and just let the trembling move through me.

‘You’re peach-pit naked,’ Pooh says.

I nod at the obvious. She looks down toward my crotch, shakes her head, and starts to laugh.

‘Oh, Lord!’ she snickers. ‘I’m sorry.’ She reaches out her hand and slaps my shoulder. ‘That thing looks like a fried dill pickle!’ Pooh folds over with laughter.

For some reason I start laughing too, though it quickly fades into crying, but I keep my tone the same so Pooh can’t tell.

‘Uh,’ Pooh says, wiping at her eyes, ‘I’m sorry, just might as well be a second nose. It does look out of place on ya.’

‘I never asked for it to be there.’

‘Well, if those folks catch ya’—she points over her shoulder toward the diner—‘they might oblige ya!’ She lets out a little chortle.

‘Can you help me, Pooh?’ I grab the sleeve of her leather jacket.

‘What the fuck happened?’ She hits the side of my head with her palm like I had forgotten something momentous. I let go of her arm and step back. A look of surprised offense, that I thought she might hurt me, briefly bisects her face. ‘You were supposed to go with Lymon to go home, not to fuck him!’ she says somewhat spitefully.

‘I don’t know what happened…’ I look at my bare feet slowly disappearing under the spongy mossy earth.

‘What happened is you got greedy. He told everyone how you made him give you five hundred dollars!’

‘Five? Two, it was two!’

‘Whatever it fuckin’ was! Jesus! You know what he likes. Did you forget what you are? Did you forget what you
really
are?’ She hits my arm.

‘You knew,’ I whisper.

She hits my arm again. ‘I knew you both wouldn’t be able to help yourselves! Since I met you, you never get enough.’ She slaps a bug on my chest. ‘I knew you just couldn’t say no to taking Lymon’s money! I know you think too highly of yourself!’ I watch the bug’s flattened body oozing out on me.

‘It wasn’t his money.’

‘So, it’s his good looks?!’ she snorts.

‘It wasn’t his money.’

‘Yeah, I’m sure it wasn’t. Just like I’m sure Le Loup only paid you in Barbies. How much you get off Le Loup?’

I shake my head.

‘Where’d you hide all your money at? You tell me and I’ll get you out of here.’

‘You knew Lymon wouldn’t take me home,’ I say and close my eyes.

‘Yeah, it’s my fault, it’s all my fault. I’m the one that made you make a play for Le Loup back at the Jackalope, for Le Loup, my only true love. I’m the one that convinced you to let everyone suppose you were a fuckin’ saint. And I sure as shit must be the one that persuaded you to lay your lazy ass all day on a bed, performing miracles, stealing trucker dollars, and turning Le Loup into a panty-washing pedophile freak like Lymon! Now, I don’t know who or for that matter what you are. And if anyone tempts somebody to believe in folk magic, you surely do, ’cause a snake’—she points between my legs—‘is all I see, or ever saw.’

I exhale like I’ve been gut-punched.

‘So you better tell me where your money is at. Otherwise, I’m going to holler like a pig stuck under a fence! See, I knew you wasn’t gonna leave all your money behind too.’

‘I don’t know how all this happened,’ I say quietly. ‘I couldn’t stop it. Any of it.’

‘I know you hid it. I’ve searched all over Le Loup’s for it. Where’s the money?’

‘And I am sorry for it. All of it.’

‘Tell it to Saint Peter. Don’t waste my time. Where is it?!’

I wipe the dead bug off me. ‘There’s two hundred in my shoe at Lymon’s.’

‘And the money Le Loup gave you?’

I take a deep breath. I close my eyes again and picture Sarah. I let her move within me. ‘Pooh, if I tell you, you get me home. You put me on a truck going home and you’ll see me leaving. I’ll have no way to get that money. And it’s a lot of money.’

‘I’ll get the money first, then I’ll get you home.’

‘No, Pooh. I know how you play dolls. You get me on a truck now. Then I’ll tell you where the money is and you can go get it while I’m on my way home.’

‘Why the fuck should I trust you to tell me where it’s hid?’

‘ ’Cause I’ll have no use for that money, Pooh. Like I said, I’ll be gone. And ’cause I want to pay you back for helping me.’

Pooh reaches out and tugs on a chunk of her hair and absent-mindedly pulls it out. She constricts her charcoal-outlined eyes at me. ‘You won’t get out of here without my help.’

‘Okay, then I’ll burn.’ I stare straight back at her. ‘And believe me, I’ll be in no mood then to tell you where that money is hid.’

Pooh takes a step back as if I had just hit her.

‘And it is hid good.’

‘I have a driver waiting all ready to take you.’ She points off toward a side road that leads to the freeway. ‘The deal is, as soon as you get inside his cab you tell me where it’s hid at.’

‘Deal.’

‘But you call it your Barbies. You say, “Pooh, my Barbies are” wherever  the money is at. Got it? I don’t want that trucker to CB anyone about where to find no stolen loot.’

‘You trust him to take me home?’

‘He ain’t no Lymon and he ain’t no fag,’ she says sarcastically. ‘He loves
me
.’ Pooh makes a grand sweep with her arm that results in her pointing at herself. ‘He’ll do as I say.’

I nod. ‘Okay.’

‘Okay’. She nods. ‘Here.’ She takes off her jacket. ‘Cover that damned thing up, for God’s sake.’

We climb out of the rank bushes and walk along the edge of the morose forest. A black Peterbilt is parked near the edge of the forest, near a torn-up old tar road leading to the freeway.

‘I wasn’t gonna let them burn ya. I knew I’d find ya in the forest,’ Pooh says, patting my back. ‘See, I had your escape planned.’ She points to the truck.

‘Thanks, Pooh,’ I say, trying not to sound flat.

We walk up to the cab door. Pooh does a rhythmical knock and my heart seethes through me, standing out in the open, waiting.

‘Let yourself in, Pooh,’ a deep, nondescript voice calls from inside.

‘Ask him if he’ll make a stop at Paymart and run in to get me some clothes. I’ll pay him when I get home.’

She nods, climbs the steps of the cab, and pulls open the door. She motions me to follow her. I lean out from behind to get a glimpse of the trucker taking me home. He’s hunched over a huge road map, following the little blue and red veins with his finger. He looks up at us briefly, then stares back at his map with his worn leather trucker face. The fact that he’s examining a map, planning my escape, puts me at ease.

‘That’s who we had to come back for?’ he grunts.

Pooh turns around to me, her face set in an exhortative glare. ‘Where are the dolls?’

I look at the trucker. ‘What did he mean by what he said?’

Pooh slaps my arm and I turn back toward her. ‘Do you want to go home?’ she whispers angrily.

‘Yeah, this is who,’ says another voice.

I feel as if I had suddenly been dipped in freezing ice water.

‘The dolls,’ Pooh says to me with rage under her breath.

‘I took those dolls away, Pooh. You know that. Ain’t fittin’ play for a saint.’

I turn slowly to see the lizard-skin boots.

‘It’s fittin’ play for sweet little girls.’ Le Loup’s hand reaches out and casually undoes the knot on my hip I had tied the arms of Pooh’s jacket into.

‘Told ya I’d find her,’ Pooh says eagerly.

I watch the tie come undone and Le Loup languidly pulls the jacket covering me away.

‘Which neither of ya are…’

‘I know they got some stills hid in these hollers here.’ The trucker bangs his finger on the map.

‘We’ll get back there. Just as soon as I take care of some trouble here,’ Le Loup says.

‘Should I get back to work, Le Loup?’ Pooh calls out from behind me.

‘I know how you love to work, Pooh. Far be it from me to keep ya from your calling.’

‘I’ll see ya later.’ I hear Pooh turn and yank on the door handle.

‘And, Pooh…’

‘Yeah?’

‘I sure hope I don’t find out you were involved in any of this. I sure hope I don’t find it was you that gave Lymon the idea, or helped him some…’

‘Le Loup, I can’t vouch for what Lymon or any of them jealous drunkards might tell ya.’ Pooh swallows loudly. ‘I just know Lymon’s been begging for a poke at her’—she clears her throat—‘him’—her eyebrows raise in correction—‘and I guess he just had to go take it. If I’d’ve known, I’d’ve told you.’

‘Get out of here, Pooh.’

I hear the door being yanked again and before I can even think about it, I say, ‘I never hid any
dolls,
Pooh. There isn’t any, never was.’

I hear Pooh slam the cab door behind her and stomp down the stairs.

‘Gonna have to remind Pooh later about slamming those doors,’ Le Loup says with a snarl.

I try to raise my eyes but can’t go any higher then the edges of his boots. My hands are just dangling at my sides. I want to cover myself, but don’t dare move.

For the first time in a long time, standing there, waiting to experience the wrath of Le Loup, I feel the safety of the familiar and it lends me a feeling of terrifying calm.

‘Kent, drive over to my place,’ Le Loup says without moving.

‘Sure thing.’ I hear the map being folded up, and even though it is now clear he wasn’t using it to plot our course to my home, I feel a sickening sense of loss.

The truck pulls out and drives slowly to Le Loup’s. I feel his stare boring into me. My body bounces and wobbles with the truck and I steady myself now and again by reaching for the passenger seat, but my eyes stay down.

When the truck stops, Le Loup says the first words he’s said directly to me, ‘Get out.’

I turn, pull the door open, and climb down.

Le Loup says some words to Kent, then drops down behind me. Wordlessly he walks to the barn door and opens it. I follow him into the stale cool inside.

The muscles in his back seem to loosen and collapse some as he walks into his house and we are alone together.

I want to say something. Something that will explain everything, fix everything. If I were Sarah I would know what to say and how to say it. She always knows what to say.

For the first time I look him in the face. His face twitches slightly as my eyes meet his, as if a cold wind had suddenly hit his face. He opens his mouth to say something, but closes it again.