Hitchhikers (2 page)

Probably the only reason I haven’t starved to
death yet.

Darkness descends.

I wake at the base of the tree, staring up
into its branches.

I feel comfort when I have slept in nature
like this, unlike last night in the barn. Yet I stay to the roads,
avoiding the forest. Something about the empty shadows between the
trees frightens me.

So alone that even the trucks rumbling by are
company to me.

Three years. That should be enough time for
everyone to have forgotten. Of course the police don’t forget, but
so long as my face on the WANTED poster isn’t still hanging up at
the post office, maybe I can go home and see my mom, let her know
I’m okay.

No.

My sixteenth birthday is in two months. If I
go home and get caught, I could be tried as an adult. And if they
know about all the others… the results of my blackouts…

There have been more than a hundred.

I should hide. The forest offers herself to
me. I can feel a presence there, and a pull. If I let myself go, I
might disappear into those woods, and no one will hear of Daniel
Connors again.

While it might be better for the human race
if I do disappear, I have only myself to cling to.

This is partly the reason why I have drifted
into the Midwest, away from forests. That, and the winter I can
feel coming.

I barely survived my first winter on the run,
with its heavy snowfalls and cutting winds. Many nights I spent in
homeless shelters, cold and hungry. I made a habit of hanging
around in 24-hour Walmarts, sleeping in bathroom stalls at gas
stations. More than once I took up a trucker’s offer of a night in
a cheap motel, though luckily I do not remember most of those
nights. There are many nights which are completely gone from my
memory.

I try not to think about how many lives were
lost that first winter.

Last winter was better, but only because I
found an abandoned house and spent my days scrounging through
dumpsters for food and whatever I could burn.

I didn’t need much food, at the rate I
blacked out, though I knew from the remains I found at my abandoned
house that I killed mostly animals.

Summers are better. More food around, more
places I can sleep. This summer hasn’t been so great, and the ribs
poking through my chest can attest to that. The animals hide. I am
too cold and wet to sleep well.

Now summer is turning into autumn. The rain,
the cooler nights. I knew for sure when I started seeing school
buses trundling over the patched up roads. Soon the leaves of this
tree will turn brown and spiral to the ground.

I’ve heard that Texas is warm, even in the
winter. Out in western Texas, there’s lots of open space. No
people, no forest. Ghost towns. Maybe I can learn how to hunt
rabbits and drink water from cacti. And if Texas is too cold, I’ll
keep going south, all the way down to Mexico.

Chewing on a blade of wheat grass to keep my
stomach from growling, I head off down the road again.

The roads are empty today.

I come across a cornfield. It is not time for
corn to be ripe, but I am hungry enough to steal a few budding ears
and tear at the hard kernels with my teeth. I pass one farmhouse
where there are no cars in the driveway, and I snatch some tomatoes
from the garden in their yard to eat like apples as I walk.

Walking has a rhythm that lulls the mind. I
am able to keep from those dark thoughts that haunt me at night.
Now it is wondering about the people in the distant houses and what
their small lives are like. Have they traveled as I travel? Do they
know fear?

I imagine they are all happy, content, eating
Thanksgiving dinners around crowded tables and talking about the
future.

I see the trees, whispering to one another in
the breeze.

Clouds drifting in the sky, nowhere to go in
a hurry.

There is never really silence. Always
crickets, or birds, the drone of insects. It is a comfortable
noise. Nothing alarming.

Until I hear the footsteps behind me.

The steps are light and quick, in a rhythm
that tells me these do not belong to a human. Still, I feel my
hackles rise, my senses extended to know what this creature is who
approaches my back.

When it is closer, I hear the panting, the
whooshing of a wagging tail.

I smell dog.

Putting my head down, I walk faster.

Usually animals stay away from me. They can
smell the evil on me like a disease, and they turn tail and run.
Sometimes before I even know they are there.

Dogs aren’t like other animals. They’re loyal
to humans. A cat will run. A horse will gallop. A squirrel will
scamper away. They have no reason to fight. Dogs will protect their
territory, their humans, even if it means fighting me.

I never had a dog growing up. I’d watch
reruns of Lassie and Benji and wish I had a dog, but it was
always

“
Ain’t no way in hell you’re getting a
dog.”

Even if we were out walking around, and we’d
see a dog coming up on the street, my father would grab my arm and
yank me to the other side of the road.

“
You afraid of dogs, Dad?”

“
I ain’t afraid of nothin’. That dog’s
afraid of me.”

I never believed him. And if I came across a
dog when I wasn’t with my dad, well, those dogs loved me. They
trotted on up and sniffed me all over and licked me and lay on the
ground with their bellies up.

Until this all happened.

Ever since I started blacking out, dogs don’t
like me so much. They see me coming up the road and their whole
body goes stiff. Hair raised on their backs and all. Mostly I can
just keep to the road, or cross the street, and they stare after
me. Waiting. Waiting for me to make one move toward them, one
threatening inch toward their family. I keep my head down and try
to breathe and keep myself calm, because I feel that pull too. The
beast in me doesn’t want to back down from a stupid animal. I keep
my head down and walk on by. And nothing happens.

Other times they go fucking crazy.

This one time, I ended up in a neighborhood.
I wasn’t paying much attention to where this truck driver let me
off. Houses all around, nice big yards full of toys. I walked
through it, head down and legs moving as fast as my tired muscles
could go, hoping no one would see me and report a strange
homeless-looking kid on their perfect street.

The dog was a golden retriever. They say
those are the friendliest kinds of dogs. They look it, in all the
pictures. Smiling mouths, playing with little toddlers and bright
red Frisbees.

Not this one. Huge with its yellow fur all
hackled up along its spine, and it already had its teeth bared at
me from fifty yards away. I made eye contact with it and nearly
lost it myself. I could practically feel the testosterone rising.
My vision hazed in and out.

eyes down eyes down don’t look right at
him

I crossed over, thinking it would be fine. A
golden retriever isn’t the same as a pit bull, and I’d dealt with
plenty of those. Thing is, most people who own pit bulls keep them
chained up or locked in a pen. They know a pit bull would just as
soon eat a baby as their kibble.

I’m sure the owners of this retriever had
some kind of precaution in place. One of those underground electric
fences, because I could see it didn’t have a leash. The house
itself was huge. A big yellow monstrosity you’d have to be rolling
in money to afford.

Not like the little peeling ranch house I
called home

These people had probably bought the dog to
match the house. I crossed in front of it feeling cornered, even
though there was room to run. Fences all around every yard. My eyes
were scanning for ways out already. Walls everywhere. I felt
trapped.

I was directly in front of the house when the
dog made this strangled growling sound and launched itself at
me.

A yellow blur, flying at me. I ran like hell
down the street. Whatever electric piece of crap was supposed to
keep that dog in was a distant memory.

“Tessa! Come back!” shouted a little girl’s
voice.

I ran and ran, the soles of my worn down
sneakers slapping the pavement.

run keep running don’t stop

blackness

don’t stop keep running

The blackness pulsed in and out. I couldn’t
tell if it was because of my exhaustion or if I was going to have
one of my blackouts. I made it to the end of the street and ducked
into a blessed patch of trees before it happened.

When I came to, it was twilight and the
forest sang to me. I felt my face slick with blood and gritty with
short, yellow hairs. Nausea flooded my senses but I managed not to
succumb. I wiped myself as best I could with the sleeve of my
flannel shirt, staggered off to the cool scentless aura of running
water. It was a long cold night waiting for my clothes to dry and
fearing the call of the trees. I wasn’t hungry anymore.

Now this.

Some mutt trotting along behind me like I’m
the pied piper of dogs, thrilled to have found some company on the
road. I refuse to look at it or otherwise acknowledge its presence.
Doesn’t it smell me? Is it so desperate?

I throw the tomato rinds and corn cobs on the
ground, and listen as the dog happily gulps them up in her
teeth.

I can smell that she’s female.

I walk on.

The patter of rain starts up in those dim
hours before nightfall. It’s so dark on this country road. No
streetlights. Only a few dots in the distance, lamps burning in
farmhouse windows.

I pull the hood of my sweatshirt up over my
head and start looking out for a place to stay.

Farmlands are much easier than towns to find
shelter. Town residents want to keep out the riffraff. They don’t
want kids sleeping in doorways, and they don’t like abandoned
eyesores so they tear them down. I’ve slept in sheds, crouched
between bicycles and lawnmowers, in open garages, in tree
houses.

Here in open country there are buildings
everywhere that people don’t sleep in. Up ahead, off in a grassy
field, a three-sided shelter provides shade from the sun and a
place to put the feed bins so they don’t get wet.

The dog still follows behind me as I step
through a white washed rail fence and head up to the shelter.

The grass is wet and soon my pants are soaked
up to the knees. I don’t see any cattle in this field, though I can
smell their stink like I’ve been smelling all day. It’s gotten so
dark I can’t tell if I’m stepping in mud or cow shit.

Rain patters faster against my head. It’s
soaked through now, wetting my hair, dripping down my face. The
shelter didn’t look so far from the road, but I wasn’t thinking
about the hill. Or how tired I am. How hungry.

Finally I reach the top and collapse under
the wooden roof of the shelter. It’s poorly built, and rain leaks
down between the boards. I suppose the cows couldn’t complain,
right? Still, it’s better than being rained on directly. I can
avoid the leaky spots. Plus there’s a big tub of water. There are
chunks of grass, hay, and a frothy substance that’s probably cud or
something floating on top, but I still dunk my face in and
drink.

The dog imitates me, lapping it up. I almost
smile when I realize that both our chins are dripping with water.
Almost.

I sit into the corner, curling my knees to my
chest, and pull from my pocket the last tomato. If only I could
have some warm food, maybe this shivering would stop. At least the
tomato is sort of warm from being in my pocket.

The dog sits and watches me eat. I don’t know
what normal dogs act like, but this one can’t be normal. She’s just
watching, not even licking her chops like she’s waiting for the
table scraps. She’s an interesting-looking mutt to be sure, her fur
all marbled and toffee colored under the mud. She’s got pointy ears
like one of those Alaskan sled dogs but her fur isn’t as bushy.

I stare back at her as rudely as I can, but
she doesn’t get the hint. “Oh, hell,” I say. My throat is raspy
from not talking for so long. “Isn’t staring at dogs supposed to be
some way of intimidating them? Ain’t it supposed to show how I’m
the boss, the alpha whatever?” I ask her, but she doesn’t answer.
Just stares at me.

“Dumb dog,” I say, trying to beat back that
surge running through me, saying,

Show that bitch who’s the alpha now

“Just a dumb dog. Don’t need to get all upset
over some stupid dog.”

I give the dog one last rude stare before I
turn my face toward the rough wall and close my eyes. It’s a long
while before I can relax my fingers out of their fist shapes.

“Get offa me!” I yell.

I shove the mutt away from where she’d curled
up against my side, her head under my sleeping hand. She moves away
but not far enough.

“What are you, stupid? Get away from me!”

My foot kicks and connects with her belly,
and she makes this awful whine and trots away. Out of reach of my
foot, a few feet. Still sitting there watching me.

“You’d keep away from me if you knew what was
good for you,” I threaten.

She did survive the night near me. I can’t
tell when I’m sleeping or blacking out anymore, but it’s been a
good long while since I slept near any living thing that was still
alive when I woke up. I stand there in the dewy grass and low
morning fog looking at her.

My stomach rumbles.

The cattle are lowing, lumbering out into the
fields. Must be middle of the morning, then, if the farmers are all
done with the milking. Time for me to get a move on before they
catch me on their property.