Hitchhikers (9 page)

“What do you say?” he asks.

“Yeah.” The girl saunters closer, brushes her
hand against my cheek.

I back off like she’s burned me. No one’s
touched me in a long time.

“Touchy, touchy. Don’t you want to relax for
a little while?”

She smiles at me. There’s something empty in
her eyes, but she seems interested in me. Maybe I was wrong, and
the jock isn’t her boyfriend.

“I guess,” I say.

“Well come on, then.” She takes my hand – her
skin is smooth and warm. I feel my palms start to sweat almost
immediately. She leads me to a beat-up van in the parking lot, not
white like Paul the Pervert’s van, but brown and covered in bumper
stickers. The guy trails behind.

Lila’s whining. “It’s fine,” I tell her.

“What’s your name?” the girl asks, spinning
to face me as the jock opens up the back of the van and climbs
inside.

“Dan,” I say. I wait for a moment, but she
doesn’t tell me her name. She just climbs on into the van and tells
me to hurry up.

I’m not sure how I’m supposed to relax in the
cramped back of a van, even if there is a bunch of cushions on the
floor. It smells in here, a smoky smell but not like cigarettes. A
warm, earthy smoky smell. I’m getting a headache.

The girl pulls the door shut in Lila’s
face.

The inside is lit up by the dome light and
that smell has just gotten a lot stronger. I don’t know why it
smelled sweet before; it smells like a skunk now. I watch the girl,
but she is watching the guy so I do too.

Now I understand.

He’s got a joint and he’s flicking the
lighter to start it up. My stomach starts feeling queasy. This
isn’t what I meant when I said I wanted to relax. I was thinking a
warm bed. I was thinking a girl who liked me and who wanted to be
with me.

The guy takes a few hits off the joint,
exhaling his foul smoke into the air. My eyes water. “Come on,
Matt, pass it already!” the girl whines.

He chuckles and takes another hit before he
puts it in her waiting fingers.

“This is the life Dannyboy,” he says.

I’ve gotten better at not reacting to that
name

Daaaannybooooy

And the girl puts her hand on my arm, gentle,
handing the joint to me.

“I, uh…. I – ” It’s so stupid, the way all
those anti-drug commercials run through my head, and yet my hand
reaches out to take the joint from her.

I bring the joint to my lips and suck in, as
I saw them do. The smoke hits my lungs in a suffocating cloud. I
erupt into coughs and Matt plucks the joint from my fingers.

“Newbie,” he laughs.

The girl laughs too, and in the smoky haze
her cackling is amplified, bouncing around the tin can van until
all I can see are open mouths and yellowed teeth and their
laughter.

Is this the effects of the drug? Is my sudden
nausea an effect of the drug?

“Okay, kid, pay up. You can’t smoke for
free.”

The teeth are suddenly sharp. I try to focus
but I’m being groped, hands clawing at my sweatshirt pocket.

“Get off,” I say. My voice echoes in the same
weird way as their laughter.

It’s all spinning

Maybe she wants to kiss me. I grab her and
pull her toward me and then I’m hit by the football jersey.

“Get your dirty hands off my girl,” he says
in my face, his mouth in my face.

And then darkness

It seems only a few moments have been lost.
I’m still in the van but it’s quiet now. Before me, a tangle of
limbs and shredded clothes and hair.

My hands are red with blood. I wipe them on
the pillow, scrubbing frantically against the upholstery material
to get all the red off. My jacket is red. I zip it to keep the
blood on my sweatshirt from showing. Check my shoulders: backpack
still there. Surprisingly, not much mess on my jeans. A piece of
football jersey has protected them.

I crack open the van door, check for anyone
nearby, and slide out, shut the door behind me.

Lila slinks out from behind another car. She
approaches me cautiously, licks at my hand. She must smell the
death on me.

“Let’s get out of here.” Suddenly I stop,
feel around my mouth. No blood. Good. “Let’s go,” I say again, and
head toward the street.

“You taking off?”

I turn to find Beverly behind me in a puffy
down jacket. It must be nine o’clock

(but I went into that van around 7 and it
felt like only a moment that I blacked out)

and I can see Beverly’s husband lurking back
there in the shadows, near a blue Ford Taurus. Lila pushes her head
up under my hand and my racing thoughts and nerves are quieted
enough so I can smell the air and there’s no danger. He smells like
fresh wood and the outdoors and honest sweat.

I haven’t responded to Beverly’s question so
she asks, “Do you want a place to stay tonight or what?”

“Yes,” I say.

There is a clock ticking loudly in the
kitchen, and the fabric on the couch scratches my face. I can hear
Bev’s husband snoring behind their closed door.

I flop onto my back and stare up at the
ceiling. I should be tired, yet my eyes refuse to close. I keep
returning to those two teenagers in the van. Did they deserve what
they got? During these three years I haven’t really thought about
whether those I killed deserved it, not until Paul. It had always
sickened me and made me feel like a monster. I think back to that
old man, the one who I killed in his wife’s arms

(the one whose house “mysteriously” burned
down right after I left)

Did he deserve to die? All those nosy
questions, they had made me angry. Or maybe irritated is a better
word. Is that enough reason? I think of others, so many others.

(did my father deserve to die? My
uncles?)

I sigh and roll onto my side. So many dead,
it’s a strain to think on all of them, all the whys, since I
usually began panicking at the first sign of the blackouts. Was it
something a person said, a careless
dannyboy
that set me
off?

There were no bite marks on those two today.
I did not kill them out of hunger. But I didn’t kill those
squirrels in the forest because they offended me or meant me
harm.

The night wears on. My eyes itch. The clock
ticks.

I am eager to migrate towards a city. Bev and
her husband Jack tell me the nearest city is 15 miles south,
Lexington. When I tell them I’m heading north they point me toward
Broken Bow: 50 miles. Jack gives me a ride on his way to work. He
builds big empty houses for people with money to spare.

The house skeletons salute me as I walk down
the street, which is not yet paved and rutted from the dump trucks
and cranes. How are there this many people looking for a new house?
I stop at the end of the road, where the dirt meets the pavement,
and look at the sign: Mist Valley Estates: Luxury Homes. In smaller
print: “a gated community.” The wrought iron fence is already in
place, with stonework wings that will eventually hold the gate
meant to keep homeless kids like me out.

From up here I can see the highway, across
several streets crowded with houses. It looks so close but I know
it’s about a half day’s walk. Nevertheless, Lila takes off for it,
running across a field of cut-down cornstalks.

So I managed not to black out last night. I
managed not to kill Bev and Jack. It shouldn’t be so hard to
believe, since I managed not to kill Bobby for several weeks, but
Bobby never raised his voice to me. Bev had a harsh way about her,
the way a lot of truck drivers are – the way that got them killed,
at least if my theories are correct. And I didn’t kill her!

Of course, I’m paying for it now, because it
meant I barely slept at all last night.

It’s harder than it looks walking over a
freshly cut field. The jagged stumps of corn stalks and hardened
clumps of earth keep tripping me up.

But I keep thinking: maybe I can control it,
maybe there’s hope.

Then I think: maybe it was the pot.

After the corn field, Lila leads me through a
neighborhood that makes me wary of psychotic pet dogs. I can tell
it’s nearing the end of October – not by the weather, but by the
decorations. This is the sort of neighborhood with corn stalks on
their porch posts, pumpkins carved into jack o’lanterns. No toys on
the lawns. Everything in its place.

The families must have money, but not enough
to buy their way into a gated community. They must keep their dogs
chained, or inside, because not a one is heard barking its warning
at me. I can smell them, though. Faintly, beneath the squeaky clean
scents of Pine Sol and lemon-scented Dawn and bleach. It makes me
walk faster.

Finally, the highway. Many cars whizz past
but none stop for a skinny boy and his dog.

Around late afternoon I wander away from the
highway toward a dusty town center. I figure I’ll save the sandwich
Bev made for me for later, and buy dinner while there is someplace
to buy from. I eat a greasy slice of pizza outside on the bench,
even though I’d like to eat inside, out of the cutting cold air,
because the guy behind the counter barked, “No dogs in here!” the
second Lila set her paw inside.

I had figured it was October, but it becomes
clear to me that it is actually Halloween. I watch store owners
light up jack o’lanterns in their shop windows, and don witch’s
hats and monster masks. Soon little kids, wrapped up in costumes
over their bulky winter jackets, are being led down the street by
their parents, carrying sacks of candy.

The last time I noticed Halloween was Before
– the past two years gone by I must have been camped out in the
middle of nowhere, someplace trick or treaters don’t go. The last
time I noticed Halloween I dressed as a vampire, with a black cape
that was too small and barely covered my back, my face painted
white by my mother with blood dripping down my chin and
uncomfortable plastic fangs that made it impossible to talk.

you’re too old for halloween, dannyboy

Kayla and I went out together, the tallest
ones on the sidewalks. She was a Greek goddess, a white sheet
wrapped over her coat and leaves in her hair. We filled our
pillowcases with candy, ignoring those houses where the occupants
told us, “Aren’t you a little old for trick-or-treating?” All the
while a knot formed in my belly, thinking about what awaited me
when I got home.

halloween is for little babies, dannyboy

I swallow my last bite of pizza, crumple my
plate and throw it away. Then Lila and I head back to the
highway.

Maybe it’s because I know it’s Halloween, but
I am seriously unnerved when it’s time to bunker down for the
night. Lila sniffs out a playhouse – the owner’s house is dark
except for the porch light, and the tiny house is just big enough
for the two of us. There are even little blankets and a pillow from
a miniature crib. Lila crawls under the child-sized table and
starts snoring.

I should be tired. No sleep last night,
walking all day today. But the little sounds keep me awake. The
grasses whisper and the playhouse creaks in the wind. Inside the
big house I can hear the soft breathing of children beneath the
louder sighs of a woman and a man’s snoring. I strain to count the
children, but they are too quiet behind closed and locked doors,
and the wind seems determined to blow strange faraway sounds and
smells to confuse and distract me.

There are prairie dogs burrowing under the
earth, coyotes scrabbling in the hills past the highway, the
unbearably loud engines of semis barreling toward their
destinations. I press the pillow against my ears, but there are
still the smells. Cracker crumbs from a pretend tea party in the
little house, garbage freezing in a plastic trash bin. I can smell
the prairie dogs and the coyotes, but I can also smell something
else. Some other animal.

It smells familiar but I can’t place it. All
I know is that this animal’s scent puts me on edge. I feel
threatened. It is a predator, whatever it is. There is some comfort
in that. I might have imagined my unease being a fear of discovery,
or of blacking out.

I reach between the table legs and wrap my
arms around Lila, burying my nose into her fur. I might be
dreaming, but I think I can still smell the lilacs.

The howling wakes me up.

The sound is far off, echoing across miles in
the quiet darkness. Still, I feel the threat in those howls. A
pack, hunting their prey, confident in their strength.

I open my eyes despite the darkness. In the
dim moonlight Lila’s head is up, her ears alert, nose facing the
nose. Her nostrils work delicately. I wonder what it is she can
smell that my own sensitive nose can’t detect.

The predator smell is strong and I still
can’t figure out what sort of animal it belongs to. I’m safe here,
I tell myself. There is a little door and a little doorknob to keep
out those without opposable thumbs. I’m in a neighborhood full of
strong people smells. I have a guard dog. Roving packs of wild
animals are not going to attack me as I sleep. These things do not
happen in neighborhoods full of happy families and minivans and
picket fences.

When I reach over to pat Lila, she pays no
heed to my touch. Even her fur stands on guard.

After our strange night, we sleep late. Too
late. I awaken to children’s voices laughing in the yard.

I raise my head and assess the situation. A
mother watches from inside as her three children play with a soccer
ball. The oldest is perhaps eight, school age, which means today is
a Saturday or Sunday. The youngest could be three or four. All have
the same carrot-orange hair and freckles.