The woman at the register looked up.
Her name tag read: marnie. here to help.
“Morning,” she said.
Jonah nodded. “Pack of Zigzags and a pouch of Gambler,” he said and picked up a coffeepot beside the counter, poured some coffee into a paper cup, took a sip. It tasted like boiled puddle water, but it was hot.
He browsed an aisle, took a pack of beef jerky, looked at the price, and put it back. He picked up a can of salted pork and wandered into the next aisle.
A young man with a bandanna on his head entered the store and shouted, “Marnie. What’s shaking? Gonna get your slut on tonight?”
Marnie glanced toward Jonah uneasily.
The young man slapped money on the counter. “That’s for the petrol. See yah tonight, sweet stuff.”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe ain’t in my vocab,” the young man said.
“It’s in mine,” the cashier said.
As the young man headed out the door, he shouted back, “That’s some crazy-ass shit about that little girl!”
Jonah watched the young man charge across the lot past Jonah’s truck, hop into an old Firebird, and haul ass out of the lot, tires spitting snow.
Jonah set the salt pork on the counter. The cashier placed the rolling papers and tobacco beside it.
“What’s that about a girl?” Jonah said.
“The one that was abducted,” the cashier said.
Abducted.
“The one all over the TV and radio and internet?” the cashier said when Jonah did not immediately show recognition.
“I don’t have a TV,” Jonah said. He didn’t know what the internet was either, though he’d heard Lucinda speak of it a time or two. He swallowed dryly. He should have put the truck radio on to get a sense of the story, see if there were updates, who the girl was and what her situation had been. Her parents had to be insane with worry, and here he was buying a parting gift.
“Selfish idiot,” he whispered.
“What?” said the cashier.
Of course, the story had to be all over the news. Maybe, he thought, just maybe, when I bring her back I’ll be seen as a savior.
Never. Abducted. You’re the prime suspect now, the voice said.
“Abducted?” Jonah said.
“Right from her window. So they say. Who knows what’s the truth on the tube. You’re smart not to have a TV. I only have this one at work. A bunch of nonsense. Every idiot wanting their voice heard, thinking their opinion is more valid than the next bozo’s. Never mind the idjit opinions and speculation on social media. None of it’s news. And that couple. Who had the girl.”
“Poor parents.”
“Foster parents.”
Foster parents.
“He’s downright nasty,” the young woman said. “I’ve seen him in here barking at her, the poor little girl, and at his wife. Wife barks her share. In self-defense, from what I’ve seen. Seen him swat at her more than once. Looks at them both as if—”
Jonah glanced out the window at his truck.
“How do people like that even get a foster kid?” the cashier said. “And apparently they’ve had a whole slew of them.”
“She’s not theirs,” Jonah whispered.
“What?” the cashier said.
“Nothing.” Was it the girl’s foster parents who had abused her and driven her away or abandoned her? He’d imagined good parents facing the nightmare of their lives. Jonah searched the newspaper rack at the counter.
“Sold out,” the cashier said. “You know it’s all the buzz when a newspaper sells out these days. So many theories. Experts. Everyone a judge, jury, and executioner. If she wasn’t taken, then maybe they, the nasty foster parents, you know. Maybe they did something. If she run off, she’d have come home by now; it’s too cold to be out there. What’s the world coming to?”
The world isn’t coming to anything, Jonah thought. The world spins just as it has always spun. Blind to our tortures.
“Let me ring you up,” the cashier said.
“Hold it,” Jonah said.
He hurried down an aisle and eyed a pile of coloring books and crayons and colored pencils. He hesitated. Grabbed a coloring book and flipped through it. Put it down. Grabbed another, paged through it. He felt the cashier’s eyes on him. A coloring book. The parting gift. How would it be perceived by the law? Every action scrutinized. He set the coloring book down and swapped it for a notebook and a pack of crayons. He walked up and set them on the counter.
“Coloring are we?” the cashier said and cocked an eyebrow.
“Cheaper than carpenter’s pencils.”
Jonah glanced out the window at the truck.
The cashier’s eyes followed his.
He brought his eyes back to her.
She rang him up.
Jonah dug in his pocket for a few grimy bills and handed them over, his palms sweaty as she counted back the change.
Outside, the cold air and mean bright sunlight stunned him. The world tilted. He looked down the street toward the sheriff’s cruiser parked in front of the old rectory.
He hurried to the truck, jumped into it with a groan. The girl lay still. When he touched her shoulder, her flesh was as cold as a marble headstone. He drew the blanket tighter up around her and turned the truck’s crank.
Nothing.
Shit.
He looked out the windshield at the store window to see the cashier looking out at him.
He turned the crank again.
Nothing.
Turned it.
Nothing.
C’mon.
The girl moaned in her sleep.
“Shhh,” Jonah said. “Shhh.”
He looked up.
The cashier had the store’s door open and was staring at him.
Jonah fumbled with the ignition key.
He turned the crank.
Nothing.
He covered the girl with the blanket, trying to minimize his movement. His heart thrummed as fast as a grouse’s drumming wings.
“You all right?” the cashier shouted and stepped outside of the store.
Jonah rolled down his window.
“Yeah,” he said, trying to keep his voice low. He did not want to wake the girl. Could not wake her. “Truck does this. Stubborn.”
“I can relate,” the cashier said. She came down off the steps toward him.
He licked his lips and turned the crank. The engine caught and stalled.
The cashier strode toward him, halfway to him now.
He turned the crank again. Come on.
The truck started. Idled.
“See there,” Jonah said.
The cashier stopped a few feet away. “Looks like you’re all right.”
“Looks like,” Jonah said.
The cashier stared at him, as if committing his face to memory, then turned back inside.