Wire Mesh Mothers (29 page)

“Kate, are you all right? You’ve never called collect before. Took me a bit by surprise.”

“Don’t they know you’re gone?” Tony hissed. “Don’t they miss you yet? Get your husband on the line!”

The teacher: “Lisa, I’m fine, just having a little phone trouble. Patch me through to Donald?”

“He’s not in.”

The teacher’s eyes closed, then opened. She grit her teeth. “Is he in court, then?”

“No, just out for lunch.”

“It’s only….” The teacher looked at her wrist, but the watch she’d worn was no longer on her wrist, having given up the ghost when embedded with lake slop and left as a parting gift to the director at Camp Lakeview.

“It’s a little after eleven, Kate,” said Lisa. “Sometimes he does an early lunch. Can I give him a message? Are you in Emporia?”

The teacher glanced at Tony. Tony snatched the receiver and slammed it into the cradle. She tugged Baby Doll back a few steps. “What’s this? Nobody has missed you in three days?”

“My husband thinks I’m on hiatus.”

“Oh
what
?”

“Hiatus, sabbatical. Vacation for a few days.”

“No, he doesn’t. Teachers don’t take off in the middle of the week. Is he in with you on the
kiddie
porn ring? Is that the deal?”

“There’s no
kiddie
porn ring. I told you. And yes, he thinks I’m on vacation for a while. I told him I needed a break from school. He wouldn’t have told anyone I was gone, or if he did, he would not have told them why.”

“Yeah?” demanded Tony. This was no good. “Yeah? Well, you call his fucking cell phone, then. I don’t care what he thought you were doing, he’s gonna hear the truth.”

“He doesn’t have a cell phone.”

“All rich people have cell phones!”

“We don’t.”

“Why not? Even the crack dealer next door to me has a cell phone! Call him.”

“He doesn’t have a goddamned cell phone. Lay off.”

Tony stared at the woman. “Goddamned” now, was it? Tony felt a strange anger hearing such words fall from a teacher’s lips. “Well, then, we’ll try later. You ain’t off the hook. He’ll come back from lunch and we’ll call again then. Get in the car.”

Back in the Nova, the teacher fought the steering wheel like she was angry at the world, or was trying to pull it off, or both. The car popped, roared, and threatened to cut off. Then it locked into gear and pulled away from the Subway where the girl in the window was still spinning her hat and looking as if she wished it was closing time.

M
istie threw up on Route 120, soon after passing over Interstate 49 and nestling back into the quiet back-land of Louisiana. There was no warning, unlike it was with Donnie who would clutch his gut for a long many minutes saying, “I’ve gotta puke, it’s coming. It’s coming!” It was more like Willie Harrold in Kate’s fourth grade class. He would say nothing and then erupt like a volcano, aimed, if he could possibly manage it, on his good buddy Christopher May and if not, on any other unsuspecting student. The reaction was always what Willie and Christopher wanted – bedlam.

It was a soft little “
ploop
,” some loud breathing, and then the whimper and the smell. Kate steered to the side of the road and the girl didn’t tell her to get back on the road. It was raining, a steady stream of mist-fine drops. The windshield wipers on the Nova worked, amazingly, but they squeaked like cats with their tails in a trap. She left the engine running.

“We have to do something,” Kate said. She reached back and touched Mistie’s cheeks. They were poker-hot. “I’m not sure what’s wrong with her.”

“You’re supposed to know,” said the girl.

“Why? Why am I supposed to know it all?”

“You’re a mom, you’re a teacher!”

“You believe women are worthless!”

The girl drove a fist against the dash in exasperation. Then she said, “Get her out.”

It didn’t take much to carry Mistie from the car. She weighed less than a sack of potatoes. Kate knelt in the wet roadside weeds and tried to shelter her body from the rain. Her own hair was immediately soaked, and the trickles on her bare arms chilling. The girl stood by in the skunk weed, arms crossed, the sleeves from her own WWJC sweatshirt ripped away.

Along the stretch of road were several houses – a white farmhouse on a hill back up the road a few tenths of a mile, and across the road two doublewides on a shared driveway. The rest was pastureland and cows.

“We need help,” said Kate. “We need to get Mistie to a doctor right away.”

“No way,” said the girl. “Absolutely not.”

Mistie opened her eyes, squinted, sighed, and closed them. The nightie was coated in remnants of breakfast biscuits and bile. Her skin was pale. Her breathing shallow.

“You little bitch,” Kate said, staring up in the rain, “we have to get help!”

The girl slammed her foot into the side of Kate’s head, driving Kate to her side, and brandished the knife. “We aren’t! We can take care of her, fuck, it she’s just sick for Christ’s sake!” She nodded at a barn across the cow field behind them. “There, we take her there!”

Kate was up immediately on her feet, staring in to the wild eyes and the flash of the blade. “No, we’re through with your pathetic, childish tantrum! Give it up, little girl!” The Nova’s engine coughed, and died. There was a hair’s-breadth of silence.

The girl stood still, whirling one hand in the air. “Come for me. Come on, try it.”

Kate hesitated. If she lunged for the girl, she would be stabbed surely, before she could get hold of the weapon. The girl was smart enough not to make the move herself, for in motion, she would be less in control.

“I’m taking Mistie to that house down there,” said Kate. “I’m not tied up now. You have no gun. You run after me to cut me with that knife and I’ll hear you coming in time to get an arm nick at the most, but then I’ll kill you. It’s that simple. I’ll get your fucking knife and slash your neck wide open. You’ll look like you heard the best joke in your life, as big as that grin is going to be.”

Heart thundering, her eyes locked on the girl in the rain, Kate squatted down and picked Mistie up under her arms. “Come, honey,” she said.
Truth or dare?
No, this will be lie or dare. Any lie I give the owners of that house will be believed. I’m a teacher, a teacher with a sick child, kidnapped and taken out of state by a maniac. They’ll see my wounds and believe anything I say.
 

Kate began backing away from the girl with Mistie’s feet dragging the wet weeds.

And then the girl darted forward, not for Kate, but for Mistie, and caught the girl in the shoulder with the knife. A puncture, a blossom of blood. She hopped back as fast as she’d come forward.

“What are you doing?” screamed Kate.

“Stopping you.” The girl wiped rain from her nose. “You hold her to move her, your hands are occupied. You let her down to protect her, and you aren’t moving her anymore. Cool, huh?”

“You hurt Mistie!”

“You’re fault, not mine.”

“She’s a child, for God’s sake!”

“You didn’t think I was able to hurt a child? I was ready to let her drown as easy as I would have let you. So just try me a bit more, teacher. You keep moving her that way and I’ll poke her so full of holes before you get her to the house she’ll be
suckin
’ up rain like a big, fat old sponge.”

Kate’s teeth, sanded down, stinging and wanting to tear the face off the girl.
I will kill you. Give me time.
She looked at the barn across the field.

Mistie was easy to carry through the cow piles and the tall grasses with the girl and her knife trailing behind.

T
he teacher’s hands were left free so she could tend the child, but Tony had told the woman to tie her own ankles together with bale string or she’d hobble the child in effigy. She knew what effigy was; she’d seen a video on the American Revolution in fifth grade. The Americans back then did stuff to other people in effigy all the time, like burning them and hanging them and stuff. The teacher didn’t much seem to care what happened to her anymore. But the child was Tony’s ace in the hole. The teacher cared about Baby Doll. The teacher’s ankles were bound neatly with a tidy little knot in the back, as neatly as a teacher who’d been a Girl Scout could do.

The barn was different from the barn the Hot Heads used as a getaway back in Pippins. It was much bigger, and had two sides separated from each other with a supply room. On the side Tony had picked there were eight stalls, a ladder, and a loft. Beneath the sound of the rain on the roof, Tony could hear the skittering of mice and rats in the walls and under the floorboards. The barn wasn’t used for tobacco but for animals, and it smelled like it.

Tony had taken the duffel bag from the car. So other than a few farts lingering in the cushions and whatever DNA was in Baby Doll’s vomit, and well, there wasn’t much to trace the stolen Nova to them. Well, except for fingerprints and Tony didn’t have any on file and she was sure the teacher and Baby Doll didn’t. In the country there were always trashed cars and trucks on the sides of roads. They could stay there for weeks, even months, before somebody alerted somebody and had them hauled away or maybe tried to find the people who’d last driven them. Tony wasn’t worried about the Nova.

The teacher sat on some straw she’d spread on the floor. Tony was on a bale a couple yards away. She’d found some cool stuff in the supply room – a saw, a pitchfork, an ax. The ax was better than the knife, though she’d put the knife back in its place in her sock for future need. The saw and pitchfork were leaning against a stall door, but the ax was resting on Tony’s knee. It was heavy, but would pack a damn good punch.

Manly yes, she thought, but I like it, too.

It was evening, sometime around eight or nine, Tony guessed. In a dented metal wheelbarrow a small fire burned. It had been the teacher’s idea, so they could see what they were doing. There had been old planks and wooden blocks in the store room, and they were old and dry enough to burn hot. It was started with straw, and then splinters pulled from stall walls, and then the thicker blocks. Tony thought that when she finally reached Burton’s ranch in
Lamesa
, she would know how to build a really good campfire for the cowboys to sit around.

The teacher wore only her bra and jeans. She stroked Baby Doll’s hair and every so often dipping the bottom of her sweatshirt into a pail of rainwater at her feet and wiping the kid’s face off. The kid had awakened off and on, and said she wasn’t hungry and wondered where her Mama was. Tony’s gut tightened when the kid asked about her Mama. Why hadn’t the Mama sent out police looking for the kid? Why hadn’t her name been on the T.V. news last night? Just didn’t care, clearly. Bitch like Mam.

The teacher began to hum a song, something that sounded like a nursery rhyme. Tony ordered her to stop. She did, but she looked at Tony with eyes that said, “One wrong move and you’re dead.” Tony wouldn’t have believed it yesterday. Today, she did.

The fire light played shadows across the floor and the walls and the nooks in the stall doors. Tony had never been in a barn at night. She didn’t like it. It was creepy, with most of whatever was in there with them in darkness, things that could watch them while going undetected. Even a flashlight wouldn’t have made much difference.

The teacher began to sing again. Again, Tony said, “Shut the hell up!” Baby Doll whined in sleep then muttered, “Val.”

“Truth or dare?” asked the teacher.

“Not now.”

“It’s your game, and you’re in control. Why not take a chance?” The teacher’s eyes looked like she was smiling even though the corners of her mouth were turned down. Her skin crawled in the light of the fire.

Tony patted the ax, punctuating her power. “Truth.”

“What’s your name?”

“Ha!” This truly was funny. They’d spend so much time together and the teacher didn’t even know her name. “Okay, I’ll give you truth. It’s Tony.”

“Hm,” said the teacher. “Tony what?”

“Tony’s good enough,” said Tony. “My turn. Truth or dare?”

“Dare.”

“No
kiddin
’?” This was a nice change. “Okay, I want you to lick the bottom of my boot. It’s got lots of nice mouse shit on it.”

The teacher cocked her head. “I will,” she said. “But why did you pick that?”

“Why doesn’t matter.”

“Why is the only thing that matters.”

“You don’t make sense. Just lick the fucking boot.”

Tony loosened the laces and flipped her foot, tossing the boot at the teacher. The teacher picked it up, ran her tongue down the bottom without a single hesitation, and threw the boot back.

“Sick!” said Tony. “God, I’d never do that!” The teacher was becoming as creepy as the old, dark barn itself.

“Really?” the teacher asked. “So I’m braver than you?”

“Brave’s nothing to do with it. Stupid is what it is.”

The teacher shrugged, dipped her sweatshirt and dabbed Baby Doll’s neck.

“Truth or dare?” asked the teacher.