Thirteen

We made it out of town without incident. I took as many side roads as possible, changing direction frequently and watching every car we passed. I kept one eye on the road and one on the rearview mirror to make sure we weren’t being followed. Every time I saw the brake lights of a car that had just driven by us, I flinched, thinking it could be turning around. I had no idea how much information my mother had given them. I didn’t know what was compromised. I had to assume that they knew your name now. I had to assume they knew what car we were driving. I figured that we had, at most, an hour to put some distance between us and my old hometown. After that, I had no plan. Considering the situation, it wasn’t worth thinking more than an hour ahead.

You sat in silence for some time, watching me, watching me check the mirrors, watching me think. You didn’t interrupt until I began to calm down. “What happened?” you finally asked. After being pulled out of bed in a strange house, in the middle of the night, and told to pack up your things before being dragged into a car and driven to God knows where, you still waited over an hour to question me. You were getting good at the game. Knowing when to ask questions and knowing when to simply move was the first key to survival. Shortly before you asked your question we turned onto open highway. It was closing in on two in the morning. The road was mostly empty. It looked like we’d gotten away, for now.

“They’re onto us,” I replied. I looked out over the road in front of us. I didn’t tell you anything you didn’t already know.

“What does that mean?” you asked after thinking for a few moments.

“It means they know. They know about you. They know about our kid. They know we’re on the run.”

“No, Joe. What does that mean?” you repeated. “For us?” I looked over at you. You didn’t look scared, just nervous. I put my hand on your leg and rubbed it gently.

“It doesn’t really change much. We were going to have to hide eventually. Now we just have to do it sooner.” You nodded. You looked strong. You looked much stronger than I felt. But here we were, on the open highway, no one telling us where to go; no more people lining up to die. We were on our own for as long as we didn’t get ourselves killed. “This is Route Eighty,” I told you as we drove, looking out across the highway. “It starts in New Jersey, right off the George Washington Bridge, which goes into New York,” I continued.

“I know about the George Washington Bridge. I’m Canadian, not retarded,” you replied.

“Okay. Point noted. Anyway, this road goes all the way from the George Washington Bridge to the Golden Gate Bridge. New York to San Francisco, straight across the country. And tonight it’s ours.” You placed your hand on top of the hand that I had yet to remove from your leg.

“So where are we going?”

“I was thinking Chicago.” If we drove straight through we could get to Chicago in about twelve hours. We could have been there by tomorrow afternoon. I didn’t think we should hit a city, any city, that quickly, though. My mother’s call would set the alarm bells off. For the first day after the alarm bells went off, things would be awfully thick. People would really be on the lookout for us. As time wore on, other things would come up and we’d be pushed to the back-burner, at least by those that didn’t have a personal interest in catching us.

“Why Chicago?”

“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “I’ve never been to Chicago.” That was true, but it was only half the reason why I chose Chicago. The real reason was because I had never done a job in Chicago.

“Chicago it is,” you replied.

“Chicago,” I repeated, nodding. It sounded right. “I think we should get a couple of hours of sleep tonight. I’m going to drive for another two hours, get us pretty far into Pennsylvania. Maybe there we can find a good place to rest until morning. Until then, you can sleep while I drive.”

“I really don’t think that’s going to happen, Joe,” you said. “Not tonight.” Apparently you looked stronger than you felt too.

 

 

We drove on, passing the Delaware Water Gap and moving into Pennsylvania. As we drove past the Water Gap, I remembered how my grandfather used to bring me down there when I was a little kid. We’d leave from home early on Sunday mornings, before the sun came up, so that we could go down to the Water Gap and release homing pigeons that he kept as pets. We’d drive down, the pigeons cooing in their cages in the back of my grandfather’s station wagon. We’d pull the car down near the river. We’d get out of the car. My grandfather would pull the cages from the back of the station wagon. Then we’d sit and wait for a few moments. As we waited, I could hear the pigeons rustling with excitement. They knew the drill. They knew that they would soon be free, free to fly. My grandfather was a pretty stoic guy. Thinking back on it now, I can’t even remember the sound of his voice. I can’t remember ever hearing him speak. I remember driving down to the Water Gap to release those pigeons, though.

Soon the cages would begin rocking as if they were alive. My grandfather would want to wait until the pigeons were at peak excitement before opening the door to their cages. The more excited they were, the faster they’d fly. Once the cages began to rustle with enough excitement, we’d open them up and the pigeons would fly out. They’d fly straight up in the air. Then they would make one giant turn as a group, twisting toward the heavens, trying to get their bearings. They’d shoot up until they were little more than specks in the early-morning sky. Then they’d flap their wings and fly away. It would all happen in a flash and then they’d be gone. Once we couldn’t see any of the pigeons anymore, my grandfather and I would load the cages back into the station wagon, climb back into the front of the car, and head back toward the highway. On the way home, we’d stop for breakfast and I’d gorge myself on pancakes and bacon, dumping syrup on everything on my plate. My grandfather always ordered scrambled eggs, extra dry. I can’t remember his voice but I can remember what he ate. Memories are funny that way. When we were done eating, we’d get back in the station wagon and drive home.

The trip home, including breakfast, would take me and my grandfather about two hours. In two hours we drove probably about fifty miles. When we got home, we’d go to the backyard. There were two lawn chairs in the backyard that my grandfather kept facing the pigeon coop he’d built. We’d sit in them and wait. It would still be early, so the morning dew on the grass in the backyard would just have started to dry off. We’d take our seats and my grandfather would take out his watch and his clipboard and we’d wait. The way I remember it, we never waited long. Soon, one by one, the pigeons that not long before had been so eager to break free of their cages and fly away would return. One by one, they’d land by the pigeon coop and walk back into their cages. They could have flown anywhere. Yet here they were, diving out of the sky, returning to the little coop my grandfather had built in his backyard. My grandfather knew each bird on sight. As they returned, he’d mark each of their times down on the pages on his clipboard so he could compare the times to previous weeks. He’d smile when one of his favorites was the first to make it back. He’d worry when it would take any particular bird longer than he expected. In the end, they always made it back. My grandfather never lost a pigeon. They’d struggle through winds, through rain, through whatever obstacles got in their way. Once each bird had made it back into the coop, my grandfather would walk up to it, close the door, and snap the lock shut. When I was a kid I always wondered why those pigeons worked so hard just to be locked up in their cages again. Driving out of New Jersey with you on that night, I finally felt like I knew.

In minutes, you and I were through the Water Gap, leaving New Jersey behind us forever. We pushed on into Pennsylvania and the farther we drove, the more rural our surroundings became. We were surrounded by trees. The two-lane highway seemed to stretch on in front of us forever. We’d drive mile after mile and it didn’t feel like we’d gotten anywhere. We kept moving, pushing forward. I drove within a few miles per hour of the speed limit, not wanting to attract any attention. Every so often a truck would drive past us or we’d see the headlights of one headed back the way we’d just come. Mostly, however, there were just trees.

I tried to keep hard to our schedule. Discipline. That’s what we’d need. Always stick to the plan. Always be ready to change plans on a moment’s notice. At three-thirty A.M. I took an exit off the highway leading to a small town somewhere in Pennsylvania. The idea was to get the car off the road somewhere, pull out our sleeping bags, and see if we could get in a few real hours of rest before the sun came up. The night was pretty clear. It was chilly, but not too cold. We wouldn’t need to pitch the tent. We made one pit stop on our way into deeper country when we passed an old gas station. There were three beat-up cars sitting on cinder blocks next to the garage. I pulled into the parking lot and stopped the car.

“What are we stopping here for?” you asked. You hadn’t slept. I thought you would, despite your fears. You didn’t. I motioned toward the beat-up old cars parked at the edge of the property. “We’re going to steal a car?” you asked. “We’re going to steal one of those?” you asked incredulously.

“Not the cars, babe,” I responded. “You steal a car and people come looking for it.” I dug through my duffel bag that was in the backseat of the car until I found my pocket knife. “We’re just going to take the license plates.” The people looking for us knew the car that we were driving. They knew the make, the model, and, most likely, the license number. I unscrewed the Pennsylvania plates from one of the cars. Then I took the rear plate off a second car and screwed it onto the front of the first so that it wouldn’t be too obvious that the plates had been stolen. The odds of anyone at the shop noticing that two of their old junks now had the same license number were pretty slim. It was obvious that no one had worked on these cars in years. I took our Massachusetts plates and threw them in the trunk. Then I screwed on the new plates. We were now in disguise.

We drove on. I turned onto every smaller road that I could until we were on a long, barely paved road, running between a small forest and a cornfield. When there was a large enough clearing in the trees to fit the car through, I pulled the little rental car into the woods. I got us as far from the road as I could before putting the car back in park. We were only about thirty feet from the road. The gray car would be visible from the street in the daytime, but in the dark of the night, we were pretty well hidden. We were home for the night.

I got our new sleeping bags out of the trunk. “We should have brought pillows,” you said after seeing me carry the sleeping bags into a small open spot in the woods.

“Well, you can’t think of everything,” I replied. You took two sweaters out of your duffel bag and wrapped them in the plastic bags we had gotten while shopping the day before.

“Pillows,” you said to me, throwing me one of the sweater-filled bags. We laid our sleeping bags out on the ground and climbed in. We were about three feet apart. I had placed my duffel bag next to me. Inside the duffel bag, on top of all the other items, was the gun, just in case. I placed my pillow under the sleeping bag, placed my head down on top of it, and closed my eyes. Sleep would be hard to come by that night, but I knew we needed it.

“Joe?” you said, lying on your side and propping your head up on your arm. I opened my eyes again.

“We’re going to need to sleep, Maria,” I said. “We have to try, anyway.”

“One quick question,” you said. Then you continued, before I could argue or dissent. “What happens now?”

“What do you mean?” I replied.

“I know that we run and we hide, but what do they do?”

“They look for us.”

“How? Has this ever happened before?”

“This specifically?” I wondered out loud, glancing down at your stomach. “I don’t know. I’m sure it has. I’ve never heard any stories, though, never heard any details.” You looked relieved. The relief didn’t last. “I do know about one time when somebody went on the run, though. Guy’s name was Sam. Sam Powell. He was one of them. He was a hit man for their side. Anyway, during the course of one of his jobs, something went wrong. He’d gone to a restaurant on Long Island. He was supposed to kill the cook. He waited out back, in the parking lot behind the place, after it had closed down for the night. He’d scoped the joint out over a couple of nights before that and on each of those nights the cook came out back with these big bags of garbage and tossed them into the Dumpsters they had at the back of the parking lot. So he’d be carrying these two heavy bags of garbage across the empty parking lot, alone, in the middle of the night. He’d be totally defenseless. Nobody knows what they had on this guy, the cook. I never heard who he was or why they’d be after him. Just because, I guess.

“So that night, it was really dark. And this Sam Powell guy stationed himself behind the Dumpster with a knife. He was planning on waiting until the cook came out and, just as he was about to toss the first bag into the garbage, at that point when he was most vulnerable, Sam was planning on popping out and sticking the guy. Sam was, apparently, an old pro at this. One jab was all it was going to take. So Sam waited and listened and when he heard the right sounds, the sounds he’d heard the two nights before, the sound of the cook bending over to try to toss this bag of garbage into the Dumpster, Sam popped out and knifed the guy right in the throat. The guy was dead in less than a minute. The problem was that it wasn’t the cook. For some reason, that night, one of the dishwashers was the one put on garbage duty. He had the same build as the cook, but he was just some poor immigrant dishwasher. And he was a civilian.

“Now, protocol dictates that, when you kill a civilian, you’re supposed to turn yourself in. You turn yourself in to your own side. They can then either turn you over to the other side, which never happens, or they can carry out the execution themselves.” You flinched at this, apparently not a fan of capital punishment. “So there’s Sam. He just knifed some poor bastard in the throat and now he’s supposed to sacrifice himself on the pillar of justice. He’s supposed to give up his life for the cause. Instead, he runs. It’s the only time I’ve ever heard of it happening.” I had been speaking for a good five minutes when I looked up at you. You looked horrified. Those people that say that imagining a monster is scarier than actually seeing a monster, I don’t think that they’ve ever actually seen a monster. Children are afraid of the dark because they don’t know any better. If they were smart, they’d be afraid of the light.

“So what happened?” you asked. The expression on your face almost made me stop, but you needed to know the truth. If we were going to make it on this run, you needed to know what we were running from.

I went on. “The Long Island police were clueless about the murder. Just another random act of violence. It never gets solved. A Mexican gets stabbed in the back of a restaurant. There are no clues, no motives. The story comes and goes. But it didn’t take long for us to realize what happened. The cook knew right away. The other side knew that Sam was on that job and that Sam had disappeared. So word gets out. I’m sure that both sides put some official people on the case. They probably had to for appearances, if nothing else. But that’s not the problem. The problem for Sam is that when the call goes out, Sam is cut loose. No one on his side is allowed to protect him anymore. Not only that, but they have to release all the information they have about him. They literally send out packets on the guy. The packets have his picture in it. It lists all of his known aliases. And there’s more. I know because I got one of Sam’s packets. Like I said, I’m sure some people are officially put on the case, but a bunch of other guys are sent the packet. And in the packet, it lists every job Sam’s ever done. Every man or woman he’s ever killed is on there. Every death he’s ever been involved with. And they send this packet out to everyone who’s got an interest in the information. I had never heard of Sam Powell before I got that packet. But it turns out, Sam Powell took part in my father’s murder. He murdered a lot of people. I wasn’t even the only one who got that packet because of my dad. Everyone who was close to my father got it. Now, Sam’s list of jobs was pretty long. So there’s a lot of people out there with this information. They know what he looks like. They know where he’s lived. They know a lot about him. They all get this packet that basically says, you try to get him and we won’t try to stop you. And everyone who got one of those packets has reasons to want to get him.

“Sam was a real professional. I don’t say that with admiration. It’s just a fact. He lasted six days. His body was mailed back to his family from Holland. I don’t know any of the details, but I know that the funeral was closed-casket.”

“Did you go after him?”

“No. I had work to do.” I paused. “I never thought of myself as a vigilante.”

“So what does that mean for us?”

“First think of every sin you’ve ever committed. Think of every person you’ve ever wronged. Now imagine that all of those people are given the chance to get back at you for those sins, guilt free, repercussion free. You with me so far?” You nodded. “Now pretend that what you did to them was unforgivable.”

I looked into your eyes. You were frightened. That was good. Fear would serve us well. “They’re going to come after us. They’re going to come after us and they are going to try to kill me. They are going to try to kill me and they are going to try to steal our child. To be honest, I don’t know what happens to you.”

“Who are they?” you asked, but what you meant was “How long is your list, Joe?”

“I don’t know who they are,” I replied, “but there are a lot of them. Don’t trust anyone, Maria.”

We both stayed awake for some time after our conversation, listening to the chirping crickets, listening for any strange sounds that might come out of the woods. Eventually, we fell asleep.

The next morning we had breakfast out of the trunk, dry cereal and water. I didn’t bring up money to you yet. I didn’t want to pile the problems on you. You’d digested enough already. It wasn’t going to be long, however, before money was a problem. We had less than five hundred dollars between us. I had the credit cards, but I didn’t dare try to use them. From that point on, we were off the grid. It’d been seven hours since we left my house. In seven hours we could have been anywhere between Montreal, Cleveland, and Richmond, Virginia. It was a big circle. We were going to need money, though, and a doctor to monitor your condition. Eventually, I was going to have to find work. It was that or stealing, but I’d never thought of myself as a thief.

We were about nine hours from Chicago, but I didn’t want to get there for another two days. Once in Chicago, maybe I could find a job. Maybe there we could find a cheap apartment. Maybe there we could settle down for a bit. It sounded nice, but it was a lot of maybes.

For the next two days, the idea was simply to avoid cities and lay low. I didn’t want you to have to spend too long in any one stretch in the car. It wasn’t healthy. I’d started to notice your changes. You needed a lot more sleep. Your appetite was voracious. The way you’d been eating, we’d eat our way through the supplies we’d brought in two days. We’d do some meals on the road. We’d only go to places far off the highway, though. The highway was dangerous. People would be traveling to try to find us. We wanted to stay away from those people. You tried to hide it from me, but I could tell that you were nauseous. You weren’t throwing up, but I would catch you clutching your stomach with a pained look on your face. I assumed this all was normal. I hoped it all was normal.

That first day was pleasantly uneventful. So was that night. We ate breakfast at some little diner in some corn-fed town in the middle of the state. We hit the highway again for a few hours, heading west. The highway made me nervous. I felt a lot better when we were off the road. We stopped in at a gas station and I bought a detailed map of the state. The gas prices were going to eat into our cash pretty quickly, but we didn’t have much of a choice. If we had to, we could have tried to siphon some from another car at night. It would be safer later. For now, we just needed to stay invisible.

You slept during most of the car ride. We stopped once during the day. I passed the map to you and you devoured it. You marked every exit. You announced every sight that we passed, whether we could see it from the road or not. I told you that I thought we should get some exercise, so you led us off the highway to some state park you found on the map. We did a two-mile hike around a creek. It was good to stretch our legs. My wound was healing well. The two miles knocked you out again. Once back in the car, you were asleep in minutes, the map unfolded in your lap.

I counted every hour that we went unnoticed. Every one was another hour closer to our being forgotten. It wasn’t about distance, just time. That afternoon we crossed into Ohio. We took another random exit in Ohio to find a cheap place for dinner. The money was quickly dwindling. The night was clear again, so we found another deserted place on the side of a back road to sleep. I watched you as you slept that night. I felt so guilty. You were seventeen, pregnant, and homeless. We were floating on the edges of civilization, hoping no one would find us. One day I’ll bring you back to civilization. I just don’t know when.

That night, we made love for the first time since we’d told each other our secrets. You climbed into my sleeping bag with me. It was so much warmer with both of us inside one bag. We clumsily undressed each other from the waist down, leaving our sweatshirts on to fight off the cold night air. We kissed. The sleeping bag fit snug around us with both of us inside it. Our movements were restricted but we could move enough. We moved slowly, carefully. It was different. We were different people now. Before we were innocent people playing a dangerous game. Now we were dangerous people, doing the most innocent, primal thing we could imagine. Near the end, you bit down on your lip and your body shuddered but you didn’t make a sound. The whole sleeping bag shook with you. When we were done you cried.

The next day was more of the same. We were plodding through a twelve-hour drive, trying to stretch it into three days without actually stopping anywhere. You found another place on the map where we could kill some time. It was a lighthouse on Lake Erie. We spent a few hours in the park around the lighthouse. We had lunch out of the trunk of the car again. You deserved better than that but you never complained.

I bought a newspaper at one of our stops. I scanned the headlines and police blotter for anything that might be interesting, anything that might give me a hint as to what was going on in my old world. Things were quiet. I checked the weather. The forecast that night was for rain. With the rain, the creatures began to crawl up from the mud.

 

 

The rain began in the late afternoon. Even before it began, we spotted the tall, dark clouds as they rolled toward us from across the plains. The air became thick and damp. Shortly after that the dark clouds covered the sky, blocking out the sun. It became dark. The air turned cold and the wind began to blow. The trees around us rustled in the wind. Then the rain came, hard and fast.

When we spotted the rain clouds moving toward us, you begged me to pull over. You said that you wanted to feel the storm approach. So I pulled over to the side of the road and we sat on the hood of the car as the clouds rolled toward us. We felt the mist and the wind. Just before the rain began to fall, I asked you, “Is that enough?” You said yes and we ran back into the car. Our clothes were damp from the mist and I turned on the car and turned up the heat to try to help dry us out. The rain pounded on the car. We could barely hear each other speak over the thumping of raindrops. We just sat there for a few moments, waiting for the rain to ease up enough so that I could see out the windshield.

“It doesn’t rain like this where I’m from,” you said.

“We should find a place to get some dinner,” I said once I was able to pull back on the road. The rain was still pouring out of the sky. With each swipe of the wipers, I would have just enough time to catch a glimpse of the road before the world would disappear again in the flood.

“Where are we going to sleep tonight?” you asked while watching the sky fall down on top of us.

“Let’s worry about eating first. Then we’ll worry about where we’re going to sleep,” I replied.

I couldn’t push the car much above ten miles per hour because of the rain. We passed other cars that had simply pulled over, planning on waiting the storm out. I might have done the same if it looked like the storm was ever going to end. We eventually found a small diner just off the side of the road. I pulled the car into the parking lot and parked just to one side of the diner. “Why are we parking here, Joe?” you asked. “There’s a parking space right up front.” I’d pulled our car to the side in order to hide it from people driving by, even on the little back road we were on. I didn’t want to leave anything to chance. But I didn’t have the heart to tell you that. So I backed the car up and parked it out front.

We took two stools at the counter. You wanted to eat at the counter. There were plenty of free booths. You said that you didn’t understand how anyone could come into this kind of place and not sit at the counter. You talked like you were on vacation seeing sights. We sat on the big, plush, red stools, our backs to the door, facing the kitchen. One of the two cooks working the diner came up to us and took our order. He was straight out of central casting, a chunky man, mid-fifties, wearing a white apron covered in grease stains. I ordered a Coke. You ordered a black-and-white milkshake. They didn’t have milkshakes. You changed your order to a chocolate milk. Sometimes I forgot how young you were.

I ordered a cheeseburger and fries. You ordered a grilled cheese sandwich with tomato soup. You slid your hand onto my back and began to move it in small circles around my shoulder blades. I think that you could sense that I was feeling tense, despite not knowing why. I didn’t even know why. It was just a general sense of unease. Things had been going too smoothly. Your touch calmed me down for the time being.

About halfway through our meal, the door opened. When it did, I could feel the wind from outside rustle through the entire restaurant. It whistled as it came through the door. I could hear the rain pounding on the pavement outside. It was loud and persistent. Some kid walked in with the wind. He quickly closed the door behind him, shutting us off again from the ugly weather. He was a gangly kid, tall and skinny. He had on a pair of jeans and was wearing a now sopping-wet hooded sweatshirt. It wasn’t ideal rain gear. He had a backpack draped over one shoulder. He took a seat on a stool two stools down from you. When he sat down, he slipped his other arm into the second strap of the backpack. It sagged on his shoulders. He ordered a Coke and grabbed a menu. He looked to me like he was about fifteen. Truth was, he was at least a year older than you. His skin was almost as greasy as his hair. He had acne on his chin and his forehead. After he ordered his food, he began swiveling himself in circles on his stool. This lasted for all of about two minutes before the cook came back out. He scowled at the kid. “It’s a stool, kid, not a fucking merry-go-round.”

The kid stopped. “Sorry,” he said. I almost felt bad for him. He immediately turned his attention to his Coke. He began busying himself by playing with the straw.

Suddenly, you broke my focus. “So where are we going to sleep tonight?” you asked again. The rain hadn’t let up one bit. It banged and blew against the diner windows.

“I already told you, Maria. I don’t know.”

“We could stay at a hotel.” There was just a hint of hope in your voice.

I shook my head. “We’ve got to save our money, Maria. It’s running short already, with the food and the gas. We need something for when we get to Chicago. It’s easier being homeless out here than it will be there.” My own words depressed me.

“What if we found something real cheap?” you asked. Yeah, that’s just what I wanted, to bring my pregnant, seventeen-year-old girlfriend to a cheap motel in backwoods Ohio. I suddenly felt like everything Allen said about me was true.

“Maybe,” I said. I just wanted to end the conversation. I had eaten about half my burger. You pounded through your soup and sandwich. “You want the rest of mine?” I asked, motioning toward my half-empty plate.

“You’re such a gentleman,” you said, your voice dripping with sarcasm.

“You want it or not?” I replied.

“Sure,” you said. I pushed the plate in front of you.

I needed a moment alone. “I’m going to run to the bathroom,” I said. “I’ll be right back.” I eyed the kid again before I left. There was something about him. I could tell that he felt my eyes on him but he didn’t look over at me. I figured I wouldn’t be gone long enough for there to be any trouble. I went into the bathroom and closed the door behind me. The bathroom was tiny. There was a toilet on one side with a sink and mirror on the other. It was only slightly larger than an airplane bathroom. I stood up and ran the cold water in the sink. I took a few handfuls of the cold water and splashed them into my face. I stared at my own image in the mirror. I looked old. Compared to that kid out in the diner, I looked ancient.

I don’t remember how long I had been gone. I had lost track of time. It couldn’t have been more than five minutes. But it was too long. It was a mistake. The kid had moved. The kid, a human bundle of twitches and nerves, had moved to the stool next to you. The two of you were talking. I wanted to scold you. I wanted to walk right up to you and tell you that you shouldn’t talk to strangers. He was probably just hitting on you. God knows I would if I were him. Still, I had a sinking feeling that this was going to end in violence.

Despite my premonition, I wore my best face. I walked back to my stool and sat down. You turned to me once I was back in my stool. “Joe,” you said, “this is Eric. He heard us talking and told me that he knows of a nice, cheap place where we can stay tonight.”

I reached out, offering to shake the kid’s hand. “Nice to meet you, Eric.” Then I watched for his reaction. He paused, looking down at my hand. He hesitated, not knowing what to do. It was only for a split second, but he definitely hesitated. He didn’t want to touch me. He was one of them. There was no doubt about it. He was one of them and he knew who I was. It only took him a split second to regain his confidence, but in that split second, he had given everything away.

“Hey” was all he said in response as I shook his hand. I hated the kid, real hatred. I hated that he had been talking to you. I hated that he had come here looking for us. I hated that I was going to have to kill him.

“So, you know of a good place where we can crash tonight?” I asked him, staring into his eyes as I spoke, testing to see if he could hold my gaze.

“Yeah,” he replied, quickly staring back down at his soda. “I know a guy who has an extra room at his place. He’s been trying to rent it out but hasn’t had any luck. Anyway, I’m sure he’d let you guys stay there for twenty bucks.”

You looked at me, your eyes heavy with expectation. I could almost read the thoughts in your big blue eyes. A bed, that’s all you wanted. “Well, the price is right,” I said. I knew it would make you happy. At this point, even ten minutes of happiness was worth it. God only knew how many more chances we’d get to make each other happy. “How do we find this place?”

The kid sat there, chewing on the end of his straw, letting it dangle out of his mouth like toothpick. He hadn’t really thought this out. “You guys could follow me. I’ll lead you there and then I’ll tell my buddy about the deal I struck up with you.” He smiled. His smile was genuine. He liked his plan.

“What’s your friend’s name?” I asked.

“Pete,” he replied without missing a beat. The whole thing fell in place for him quickly. He was young but he wasn’t stupid.

“And what’s in it for you?” I asked. I gave him a hard look. I wanted to scare him. I wanted him to back away and run. I wanted him to abandon his plan before it even got started. I was giving him an out. At the time, it was more than I thought he deserved. I was doing it for you, not for him.

“Joe,” you interrupted, not understanding what I was doing. “That’s not very nice.” You tried to sound like you were just teasing me, but I knew that you were pissed off. You thought that I was going to ruin things for us.

“No. No. That’s all right,” the kid spoke up in my defense. “I’m just trying to help a couple people out.” This time, he returned my gaze. He gave me a cold, hard stare, or as much of one as he could muster. As he stared at me, I saw in him something that I recognized. I recognized that fearlessness, that unbridled anger. “It’s friendly country around here,” he continued. I don’t know what the kid was thinking. Did he think he could outdraw me? Did he think this was the Old West? “Sometimes the hospitality just takes a while to get used to.” He turned to you and gave you a big smile. You returned his smile—that made me hate him even more.

“Well, I guess we can’t pass up on hospitality like that,” I said. You turned around in your stool and gave me a quick hug. I hoped it wasn’t the last. The kid didn’t scare me. You scared me. I didn’t know how you were going to react. Still, I tried. I gave the kid his out. He didn’t take it. His loss. It was nearing nine o’clock in the evening. You and I had been sitting at that counter for nearly two hours. “I guess we’ll settle up and go.” I looked down at the plate in front of you. You had burned through my burger and the rest of my fries. “You done with your meal, Eric?”

“Yeah,” he replied. “I just have to get the check.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “You found us a place to stay. The least we could do is buy you dinner.” I motioned for the cook to bring me our check and Eric’s too. You seemed proud that I had suddenly recovered my manners. I didn’t have the heart to tell you that none of it mattered. I wasn’t being generous. I just figured that we’d have all of Eric’s money by the time the night was through anyway. Robbing generally wasn’t my style, but we needed the money. If I was going to have to take the kid out, there was no sense in letting his money go to waste.

“Thanks a lot, Joe,” the kid said. “I appreciate it.” I took both checks, left a couple of bucks on the counter, and paid at the cash register. I nodded at the kid again. This time I avoided eye contact. I didn’t want to remember his face later. I wanted to forget what I was about to do even before I did it. It was time to venture back out into the storm.

We rushed out into the rain. I made sure that the kid ran to his car before we did. I didn’t dare let either of us turn our backs to him. The kid had conveniently parked right next to us. Right out front. He was driving a little beat-up red car. The fenders were rusting. The car was probably only about seven years old, but someone had beaten the hell out of it. The kid probably bought it for a couple hundred bucks. The car had Ohio plates. Ohio plates was a good sign. Maybe he’d lucked upon us. Maybe he wasn’t actually chasing us. Even so, if he’d found us, then other people, people with more experience, could definitely find us too.

Before he ducked his head into his car, the kid stood up and yelled back to us, “It’s just a couple of turns. I’ll drive slow so that you can keep up.” I waved in response as we stood under the awning of the little tin-roofed restaurant. What was he trying to do? Was he trying to lead us into an ambush? Or was he simply trying to take us out into a field where he thought he could get the jump on us? I couldn’t figure out his angle. Maybe he didn’t have an angle. Maybe he was just winging it. It didn’t matter. He was all but dead anyway. Under different circumstances, I might have liked this kid. He had more heart than brains.

It took the kid three tries before his engine turned over. Once he had his engine running and had turned his headlights on, we ran to our car. You jumped in the passenger side and I slid in behind the wheel. I turned the keys in the ignition, flared on the lights, and pulled behind the kid as he drove out of the parking lot. I didn’t say anything to you as we eased out into the rain-soaked road. The kid, good to his word, drove slowly so that we could follow him. I didn’t even look at you as we made our first turn, right behind the kid. Every second, the world around us became more desolate. I could feel your eyes burning on me as I drove. I didn’t dare turn toward you. I wasn’t ready to face you yet.

“What’s wrong, Joe?” you finally asked.

“You’re not suspicious?” You should have been suspicious. If we were going to survive another two weeks, you needed to be suspicious.

“Suspicious of what?” you asked, incredulous.

“You’re not the least bit suspicious?” I repeated, this time with more force.

“Of him? Of Eric? He’s a kid, Joe. He’s like nineteen.” You fought my anger with your own.

“Well, that would make him two years older than you.”

“Fuck you, Joe,” you answered. I tried to keep my cool.

“It’s not an insult. I was about his age when I made my first kill. He’s one of them. The kid is one of them.”

“What the fuck does that mean? He’s trying to help us out, Joe.” I just shook my head. “How do you know that he’s one of them?”

“I just know it. He didn’t want to shake my hand. He hesitated.”

“I don’t believe it.” You stared out through the rain. You didn’t want to believe it.

“Yeah, well, watch.” I suddenly cut the wheel to the left, veering off the road onto a small dirt path. “If he didn’t have any angle, do you think he’d follow us?”

“What are you doing, Joe?” you yelled. You turned in your seat to look back at the road, to watch the kid’s headlights, to see if the kid was going to turn around and follow us.

“Are you going to believe me if he follows us?”

“Stop it, Joe!” you shouted. I drove up the path about five hundred yards and pulled the car off to the side of the dirt path.

“Are you going to believe me if he follows us?” I turned and asked again, staring at you. “Why would he follow us if he wasn’t one of them?” You stared back at the road, watching the kid’s headlights. He had stopped his car on the road. The car wasn’t moving. He was assessing the situation. I looked at you. Your lips began to move. Even though no sound came out of your mouth, I could read your lips. You were saying over and over again, “Don’t come. Don’t come. Don’t come.” I knew that it was useless. I reached into the backseat of the car and grabbed my duffel bag. I took the gun out of the duffel bag.

“What are you doing, Joe? What are you going to do?”

“He’s one of them, Maria. He’s one of them and he knows where we are. If we don’t get rid of him, then the whole world is going to be all over us. He’s got his out. If he doesn’t follow us he’s free. If he follows us, we don’t have much choice.” Your eyes kept darting between the gun and the kid’s car. Suddenly the kid jerked his car into reverse. He was coming to get us.

“There’s always a choice, Joe,” you said. It was a last-ditch effort.

“That’s a cliché, Maria. Sometimes other people make your choices for you. Sometimes you never get a chance.” I looked at you. I wanted you to know that this wasn’t something I wanted to do. It was something I had to do. You weren’t buying it.

“What if you’re wrong? What if he’s just being nice?” you asked. The kid slowly pulled his car up the little dirt path on which we’d parked. He stopped his car about fifteen feet behind us. Once he stopped his car, he flicked on his brights. The light was blinding. It was his first professional move. He could see us now and we couldn’t see him.

“Buckle your seat belt,” I ordered.

“What?”

“Buckle your seat belt,” I replied. I buckled mine as if to show you how to do it, keeping the gun in my right hand as I did so. When you saw me do it, I think you realized I was serious, so you quickly buckled yours too. As soon as I heard your seat belt click into place, I put the car in reverse. Fifteen feet. In the mud. I had to hope it was enough room. Once locked into reverse, I slammed on the gas. The wheels turned in the mud a few times before catching a grip. Then, suddenly, the car jerked backward. I steered it straight into the light. We were moving at a pretty good clip by the time we rammed into the front of the kid’s car. I hoped it was fast enough. The kid’s car skidded backward in the mud. The front end of the car smashed in like a soda can. One of the headlights cracked and went out. The other simply dimmed, now shining crookedly off to the side, sending a glimmer of light across the rain-swept field.

I opened my car door and stepped out into the rain. I walked right over to the kid’s car and pulled open the driver’s side door. The impact was enough. His air bag had deployed. The kid was sitting in the front seat, still dazed from the impact of the air bag. A small trickle of blood leaked out of his lower lip. He didn’t have his seat belt on. His backpack sat on the seat next to him, partially unzipped. He had been reaching for the backpack prior to the crash. He looked at me when I pulled the door open. His eyes looked lost. He wasn’t able to focus them yet. I wasted no time. I grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him out of his car. I dragged him into the light radiating from his car’s one working headlight and threw him down in the mud. Then I went back to his car. I didn’t take my eyes off him. I pulled his backpack out and threw it down in the mud next to him. I stood over him, the light from the one working headlight shining on us like a spotlight. The rain cut through the light, throwing off shadows like a million tiny daggers. I pointed the gun down at the kid. He climbed to his knees and stared at me. He was finally coming to. His eyes refocused. He finally realized what was about to happen.

At first he didn’t look at me. He just stared at the barrel of the gun. I knew his face but I couldn’t figure out why. Then he looked up at me. He didn’t flinch. He looked right into my eyes. I couldn’t see fear; not yet, anyway. All I could see was hate and pain. The look on his face was the same as the looks on the faces of every sixteen-year-old kid I had ever taught about the War. It was the same face those kids wore when we first showed them that slide show of death and destruction. The fact that he was staring at his own death didn’t change a thing.

I heard a car door slam. I knew that you’d gotten out of the car. I didn’t know if you were running away or coming toward us. I didn’t look up. I didn’t take my eyes off the kid. I didn’t want to face you, not until I had done what I had to do. I knew that if you ran away, you’d come back. I didn’t know how you’d react if you stayed.

“Who are you?” I asked. It was killing me. Why did I recognize this kid?

“Fuck you,” he responded, staring at the gun as he spoke. I had no problem with that response. I respected it. Still, it wasn’t helpful. I planted my left leg in the mud and kicked the kid as hard as I could in the gut. I heard a gasp when I did so but it didn’t come from the kid. You’d stayed. I would have rather done this without you, but you were going to have to be introduced to violence sometime.

The kid had keeled over in the mud after I kicked him. He gasped for air, swallowing rain as he did so. That started a coughing fit. I waited from him to finish. When he did, he climbed back onto his knees defiantly.

“Who are you?” I asked again, leaning toward the kid, speaking more softly this time. He just glared at me. His eyes repeated his earlier words, but this time he saved his breath. “What? You think you’re some sort of cowboy?” I yelled at him. “You thought you could lead us out here and you and I would have some sort of duel? Twelve paces at midnight? Is that what you thought? You’re a fool, kid. You’re going to die a fool.” The kid looked ashamed but he still didn’t look scared. I stood up straight again and pointed the gun at the kid’s head. I’d make it quick. “It didn’t have to be this way, kid. You could have just left us alone. You could have run away. You could have kept driving. I wish you had.” I tensed my trigger finger, and started to pull. As if he’d rehearsed for this moment, the kid turned his head to the side so that the bullet wouldn’t enter through his face.

“What are you doing, Joe?” Your voice suddenly cut through the sound of the beating rain. You thought that I’d been posturing. You thought it was a bluff, that I was acting. You didn’t know that I didn’t bluff. I wasn’t planning on gambling with our lives. I eased up on the trigger. The kid looked up at you, through the falling rain. I didn’t dare look at you. I kept my eyes on the kid. “What are you doing?”

“He’s one of them, Maria.” I aimed the gun again. I didn’t want you to talk me out of it. Killing him was the smart play.

“He’s just a kid, Joe!” You were shouting. Your voice was laced with panic.

“No, he’s not,” I replied. I looked at the kid again as I spoke. “He’s a soldier. And he’s a liability.” The kid glared up at me through the corner of his eyes as I spoke. Finally, there was something in his face besides hate. It was pride.

You suddenly turned to the kid and shouted, “Tell him! Tell him you don’t know what he’s talking about!” You were now pleading with both of us to simply stop it. Stop the madness. It was beyond us. The kid and I were in it together.

“Go ahead, kid. Tell me you don’t know what I’m talking about,” I said to the kid. He shot me the glare again. I kept the gun pointed at his head and walked over to his backpack, lying in the mud, sopping up the rain. I picked up the backpack and reached inside. Just as I’d expected, the backpack was full of papers. Under the papers was a gun. I took the gun out and threw it away. I simply tossed it off the side. It quickly disappeared into the blackness. I couldn’t even hear it land over the sound of the rain. It was as if nothing existed in the world outside of this small triangle of light given off by the car’s smashed-in headlights. Like the gun, the rest of the world had disappeared.

I threw the backpack, now free of weapons, down on the ground next to the kid. “Show her what’s in the backpack, Eric.” He looked up at me. He didn’t move. I mustered up my meanest voice. “I know you’re a proud kid and you ain’t afraid of dying, but I’m not above killing you slowly. So show her what’s in the fucking backpack.” Finally, the kid reached over to the backpack. He unzipped it, reached inside, took out a large stack of papers, and flipped them into the mud. There were pages and pages of printed material. Paragraph after paragraph full of details. From where we were standing, we couldn’t read the words. I didn’t need to. I knew what they said. I had seen this before. Along with the printed pages were pictures. Even from where you and I were standing, the pictures were clear. There were five or six pictures of me. Pictures with a goatee, pictures clean shaven, older pictures, and one picture that had to have been taken within the past three months. There was a picture of our car. The one we were standing behind. The picture clearly showed the Massachusetts license plates that we had ditched back in Pennsylvania. Then, to round it off, there were two pictures of you. The first appeared to be a blow-up of the picture from your college ID. You couldn’t have been more than fifteen years old. You looked fifteen. You had grown up a lot in two years. The second was a more recent picture of you, standing in front of a lake next to an older man. The older man’s arm was wrapped around your shoulders. It must have been your father. Whoever had gotten that picture got it from your family. They had been to your parents’ home. I could hear the pace of your breathing increase as you stared at the pictures as they crinkled in the rain.

Suddenly, the kid spoke. “Your child doesn’t belong with him, Maria,” he said to you. He spoke directly to you. “Your child is one of us. Your child can have a chance to do something good for the world.”

Hearing his words, you began to cry. You placed your hand over your stomach, as if to protect your baby. You leaned over, placing your other hand on the dented trunk of our car. You sobbed, stopping momentarily to try to catch your breath. Then your words came out. Angry words directed at the kid. “What did we ever do to you?” you cried out. “Why can’t you just leave us alone?” You sobbed again, bending over. When you caught your breath again, you repeated more quietly, “Why can’t you just leave us alone?” Then, looking down at the kid, kneeling in the rain, covered in mud, as if the question could end it all, you said again, “What did we ever do to you?”

“That bastard,” the kid replied, pointing at me, having the audacity to point at me while I aimed a loaded gun at his head, “that bastard killed my older brother.” He spoke to you as if I weren’t even there. “He came into my house”—the kid’s voice rose in anger—“when I was thirteen years old. He came into my house when my brother and I were home alone. He grabbed me first because my brother was upstairs. He grabbed me and he tied my hands and feet together and he put masking tape over my mouth. Then he went upstairs and I listened as he strangled my big brother to death.” The kid kept pointing at me as he spoke. “That’s what he fucking did to me.” That’s why the kid had gotten the package. That’s why I recognized the kid. His brother was my third job. He lived in Cincinnati, a good three hours from where we were. I don’t remember why he was a target.

You didn’t respond. It was all too much. I began to worry about the baby. I had to end it. The kid kept going, “Your baby, Maria, your baby can be better than that.” I’d heard enough. It was my baby too. I hauled off and kicked the kid in the face. His body jerked to the side and he fell face-first into the mud. Slowly, he struggled back up onto his hands and knees. I hated him at that moment. He was trying to convince you to leave me. He didn’t even care if he died.

“Because you’re not a killer?” I finally yelled at him. He was just like me when I was his age.

He lifted up his head, and for the first time in minutes, he looked at me again. His eyes were filled with scorn, his voice filled with hate. “I’m not like you,” he said. “I’m righteous.” I pulled the trigger. The shot rang out through the night air as if it would echo for days. The kid’s head jerked back. Then his body fell forward into the mud, motionless. I immediately regretted it. For the first time I could remember, I felt remorse.

You screamed. Then you ran off into the darkness. You made it maybe twenty feet before falling to the ground. I could hear a retching sound coming from the darkness as you threw up into the mud. I started to walk after you. I stepped out of the beam of light. Once out of the light, the darkness wasn’t so complete. Though they were still difficult to see, I could make out outlines, shapes, and shadows in the grayness surrounding us. I could see your form, hunched over on the ground. I stepped closer to you. Suddenly you stood up and turned around. You extended your arms out toward me. At first I thought you were going to reach out to hug me. Then I realized that you had stumbled upon the kid’s gun.

You held the gun in front of you. You aimed the gun directly at my chest. I stopped walking. I didn’t dare move any closer to you. I wasn’t sure what you were capable of at that moment. You were still crying. You didn’t want me near you. “Why did you do it, Joe?” you cried. Your hair, straightened by the rain, hung over your shoulders. Your wet clothes clung to you.

“I had to, Maria.” You let out an audible cry when I spoke. “I know you think I had a choice, but I didn’t. It doesn’t stop with him, Maria. If we let him go, he tells everyone where we are. He tells everyone where we are and it’s over. We’re trapped.”

My logic didn’t mean anything to you. Killing still didn’t make sense to you. “You promised me you’d stop killing, Joe.” I had. I’d meant it when I said it. That was four corpses ago.

“I didn’t want to kill him, Maria.” I went to take another step toward you.

“Don’t, Joe.” You lifted the gun, changing your aim from my chest to my head. “Don’t come near me, Joe.”

“Please, Maria. Please come back to the car. You’re sopping wet. You’re cold. We need to get you into some dry clothes. We need to get you warm. This isn’t good for the baby.”

“Don’t, Joe.”

“Please, Maria. Come back now. Get warm. Get dry. If you want to leave me in the morning, I’ll take you anywhere you want to go.” You reluctantly dropped your arm down to your side. You didn’t walk toward me. You walked past me toward the car. I followed a few steps behind you. Before you climbed into the backseat of the car, you took one last look at the kid’s body, sprawled out, lying facedown in the mud. Then you threw his gun back into the darkness.

I went back to the kid’s body. I picked him up and carried him to his car. I opened the back door and laid his body down on the backseat. I took off my jacket and my shirt and used my shirt to wipe the mud off the kid’s face. The bullet had gone in and out through the sides of his head. His face was untouched. Once I had gotten the mud off his face, I reached into the front of the car and turned off the one working headlight. I put my jacket back on, leaving my shirt in the mud next to the car. “I’m sorry, kid,” I said to his lifeless body. “I’m sorry about your brother too.” Then I closed the car door, leaving the kid’s body sheltered from the rain in the backseat, and walked back to our car. On the way, I picked up the papers and the pictures that were strewn on the ground. I left the backpack. I left the money. I didn’t feel right taking it anymore even though we needed it. I left everything that couldn’t incriminate us. I threw the papers and the pictures in our now dented trunk, not wanting to leave evidence lying there in the mud. The damage to our car was minimal, little enough that it shouldn’t arouse suspicion. They had pictures of our car, though. We’d have to trade it soon.

 

 

You didn’t speak to me for the next three days, but you didn’t leave me either.