Transcontinental (46 page)

Leroy hesitated, then jogged around the car to the back door. It squealed as he pulled it open. He sat on the tar-stained weave of the seats, and before he could buckle in or close the door, the car took off. He reached out and pulled the door shut, then immediately grabbed his seat belt. The kids beside him, both years younger, bounced and slid on the seat as the old car wobbled around corners, free of their own seat belts and loving it.

A copious cloud of smoke burned Leroy’s nostrils. He suppressed a cough. Mitch’s weaselly eyes found Leroy in the rear-view mirror. “So where’s ya goin’?”

“Tampa.”

“Where’s that at? India?”

“Florida, dummy,” said his apparent wife, stressing each syllable too heavily. “We sure’s hell ain’t goin’ all the way down to Florida, ya hear?”

“I’ll go as far as you can take me. I appreciate it.”

One of the children, the younger one, let out a hacking cough that Leroy didn’t know a kid was capable of. “Shush, Kevin. The grown ups are talkin’. That’s nice an’ all,” Mitch tittered, looking back to Leroy, “but ain’t no free rides. You gotsta do somethin’ for us before we gonna take you anywheres.”

Leroy didn’t like the sound of that.

“T’ain’t nothin’ difficult. Just need ya to return a few items for cash.”

Again, hesitation froze Leroy. It didn’t
sound
hard, but why would they be making him do it? “After I do, we’re gonna get going?”

“Oh, we’ll get goin’.”

Leroy shrugged. “Okay.”

* * *

Leroy wheeled a small bike into the superstore, a bag with a drill inside dangling from his arm. Mitch said to look for customer service. After plenty of unexplainable awkward stares from shoppers, he found it.

A man in a crisp shirt and tie wore a tense smile as Leroy rolled the bike toward the counter. “Got some returns for me, there?”

Leroy nodded, which seemed to set the man further on edge.

“Do you have a receipt for these items?”

“Uh, I don’t think so.”

“Well, according to store policy, that’s okay for some reason. Let me ring these right up for you.” The man put a scanner to the barcode on the bike. “Any particular reason you’re returning the bike?”

Leroy thought fast. The man and his callous wife hadn’t given him any reasoning for the returns, just the order to get it done. “It was… too big for my brother. Too small for me. And my dad didn’t like the drill.”

“It’s not even open.”

“He saw the picture,” Leroy answered automatically.

Eyeing him, the employee scanned the barcode on the case of the drill, then clacked on the register’s keyboard. Little green numbers popped up on the screen as the register shot open. The employee counted a number of bills, then shoved them into his hand.

“Three-hundred seventy-eight dollars and fifty cents is your total.”

He couldn’t believe what he’d just heard. “Thanks,” he squawked, staring down at the cash he held as he ambled away from the counter.

“You’re welcome. Thanks for shopping with us!” The smile faded from the employees face as he walked the bike across the store and down an aisle.

Leroy had never seen, let alone held that much money at once. He thought about it, and figured he could probably skim a bit off the top without them noticing. Thinking further, he realized he could just take all of the money. He didn’t
have
to meet back up with them.

Still, before he knew it, he was outside the store and approaching their car. He didn’t want to steal, especially if these people were kind enough to give him a ride, however brief. He opened the door and sat.

“Good, you made it. They give you any trouble?” Mitch asked.

Leroy shook his head.

“They ain’t call nobody?”

“No. Why would they?”

“No reason, no reason. So what was the haul?”

“Huh?”

“How much cash did ya get?” said the woman.

“Oh,” he said, handing the money to Mitch. “Three-seventy-five.”

“Hot dog!” he squealed, and pocketed it.

“So we can get going now?”

“Yeah, yeah, sure.”

* * *

The Tennessee countryside was beautiful, albeit too similar to the SpiritWood compound for Leroy to fully enjoy. He couldn’t be positive, but he had an inkling that the man’s wife, Brenda, was pregnant. She had a skinny figure, but her belly protruded past her bust. He didn’t know much about babies, but he was pretty sure smoking while pregnant wasn’t a good idea.

They’d been driving a solid half hour. Aside from the coughing and the country music, it was a quiet ride. Neither adult seemed to have anything to say to him now that he’d done what they’d asked, and the kids seemed implicitly confined to silence. Leroy didn’t mind.

What he did mind were the flashes of Clayvon clutching his half-foot, screaming for his life, that occasionally popped into his head. He did what he could to block them out. He felt guilty enough without a constant reminder.

A few minutes later, the Cadillac pulled off the road onto a dirt path, into a trailer park, and up to the shabbiest trailer in sight. Before the car had even stopped, the guy threw it in park and hopped out, the kids yapping at his feet as he strutted inside. Brenda waddled off and sat at a picnic table in front of the trailer. She snagged an open beer off the table and weighed it, shaking it slightly, then downed it, before cracking open another.

Leroy was left alone in the car, wondering what’d just happened. Brenda had said they wouldn’t take him too far, but he’d hoped they might’ve taken him a bit further than this. He stepped outside and over to her.

“We gonna keep going?” he asked, rubbing his arm.

She swigged her Miller Lite. “Whatcha mean? We’re home.”

“It’s just, you said you would drive me…”

“And we did. Now you’re here.”

“I mean, I’m trying to get to Florida, and I returned your stuff—”

“And we brought ya here, ya ungrateful child!” she said, pointing with her beer hand, spilling a glob of the golden liquid to the ground.

“Can you at least take me to the closest train station?”

“What? We been driving all day. Hell naw.”

“But—”

“Now quit pestering me!” She held her belly with one hand, and her beer with the other. “I got a child to worry about! I don’t need the stress!” She popped up from the table and climbed the steps into the trailer.

Leroy let his head fall back in exasperation. Dead end.

“Hey there,” a throaty male voice said.

He turned to the right and saw a wispy man with a wispier mustache gripping a rake by a modest pile of dead leaves in front of a tidy trailer.

“Looking for a ride, I take it?”

Leroy started toward the man. “Yeah.”

The man stuck out his hand. “Hi. Glen.”

“L—Marcus,” he said, and shook it.

“Well Marcus, what say I take you where you need to go on the condition that you take care of a little yard work around the house? Deal?”

“That’s what they said. They brought me here.”

“Mitch and Brenda are awful people,” he sneered. “Just awful. You can’t let a few bad apples ruin the bunch, though. We’re not all bad.”

It was either trust this guy, or get walking.

“Deal,” Leroy said.

Glen handed Leroy the rake, a grin parting his thin lips. “Great.” He headed for the door. “Finish the leaves, then pull the weeds in my flower garden. I’ll whip up a quick meal for when you finish.”

Leroy stood, rake in hand, feeling both lucky and wary at once. Mitch and Brenda had said they’d drive him if he did what they asked, and look where that’d gotten him. But it was an opportunity he couldn’t afford to pass up. He raked the remaining leaves, imagining what it might be like to have his own property to maintain.

Every so often, a gust of wind would perturb his pile of leaves, then he’d collect them back into a perfect little mound, and the process would start again. By the third time, he gave up trying to organize them. He found an empty trash can in the yard and brought it over and scooped the leaves in, then finished raking, filled the can, and sat it next to the flower garden.

Poppies and Lilies formed a colorful moat around the trailer. Between the flowers, thin red vines and thick green stalks sprouted at random. Leroy pulled a vine from the top and ripped about an inch off. He grasped it lower and got another two inches, leaving only half an inch of weed to grab. Leroy dug his fingers in and pulled it out from the bottom, bringing the roots out with it. He used that technique for the others with success.

After fifteen minutes, he’d rounded the entire trailer, soil caked beneath his black-tipped fingernails. He knocked on the door, then said “Uh, Glen? I’m finished with the chores.”

Through the closed door, Glen spoke. “Oh, fabulous, thank you. Lunch is almost ready, just hop in the shower and wash off before we eat.”

Leroy opened the door. “I think I can just wash my hands.”

“No, no, no. You’re all sweaty and gross. It would be rude not to.”

He didn’t feel that sweaty, but he didn’t want to be rude, especially considering how good the food smelled. Leroy found the bathroom and shut himself in. He reached for the lock, but there was none. He figured that was normal considering the size of the trailers. Probably only one or two people lived in each. At least Glen knew he was in there.

Leroy turned the faucet to hot and the shower head began to flow. He was immediately transported back to the group shower at SpiritWood. Although he’d grown accustomed to it, the concept now seemed off-putting. And the fact that an adult male supervised made it that much weirder. He was glad he’d escaped, though given the price, he’d probably reconsider had he the chance.

He hadn’t the chance, though; he never would, which hurt the worst. Leroy did his best to buoy himself out of that dark part of his mind as he slipped out of his church outfit, vowing to find a change of clothes as soon as possible. He wanted to scrub his mind of all things SpiritWood.

All he could do was scrub his body. He stepped into the warm water. It was soothing in a way that showers at SpiritWood could never have been. For the first time in a long time, he could relax. Nobody was watching.

He lathered up his short hair, closing his eyes and mouth as bubbly streams ran down his forehead and into his face. He was massaging his scalp when he heard a
click
, like the bathroom door had just closed. He froze.

“Hello?”

Silence. The shower curtain was translucent; he could check whether he was alone if he wasn’t so soapy. He put his head under the water.

“I’m in here,” he said louder, eyes still closed. Again, there was no response. As the lather running down his face thinned, he figured he was just hearing things. Leroy scrubbed his head one last time to get any remaining soap out, then went to work under his fingernails. After finishing one hand, he noticed a blurry beige hue through the shower curtain that hadn’t been there before, and figured Glen had slipped a towel onto the rack. That would explain the sound of the door.

He was scrubbing his right hand when the brown patch moved.

A cold fear trickled down his spine amid the hot shower.

Suddenly, the curtain was thrown open. Glen stood on the other side, nude, with a lazy grin and a predatory glare in his eyes.

Shocked as he was, Leroy’s first thought was concern that the linoleum floor was getting wet. “Get out!” He covered up with the curtain.

Glen shot his hand out and grabbed Leroy’s arm with unexpected strength, fingertips digging into the bottom of his wrist as he was shoved against the wall. His head bashed the shower tiling, sending sparks dancing across his vision. Glen began to pull the curtain away, which brought Leroy around. He slipped his wet arm from Glen’s grasp, then wrapped the curtain around him and pushed as hard as he could, sending the naked man flying back into the medicine cabinet, which shattered. As Glen slid to the floor, rubbing the back of his head, Leroy grabbed his clothes and made a break for it, slamming the door behind him.

He slipped on his underwear, then grabbed his bag and dashed outside, putting on pants and shirt as he ran, nearly falling more than once. He didn’t stop until he’d exited the trailer park and hit the main road.

Panting, he dropped to his knees, then his back as he laid in the grass, clutching his ringing head. He knew he should get moving in case Glen gave chase, but he couldn’t think straight. Part of his mind urged him to shut his eyes and go to sleep, like a riptide pulling him under, but he had to keep going.

Leroy stood with a wobble, then staggered forward, the bright light of day sending aching ripples through his closed eyelids. His eyes watered as he forced his sight to adapt. To his left, a car raced past, dragging with it a wall of hot wind, rife with exhaust fumes. Leroy gagged at the smell, turning away to escape it. Then, facing the road, he realized he didn’t know which direction he’d been walking, and he knew something was wrong. He’d always been clumsy and bad with directions, but this was different.

Shading his eyes as he glanced around, Leroy found the trailer park, and resumed walking away from it. Down the road, he came to a gas station, and went inside for a drink, until he remembered he had no money.