My Soul to Keep (38 page)

“I want to call Daddy,” Kira said, reaching up to slap her Milky Way on the counter.

“I know you do. We’ll call right after this nice man rings everything up. I’m going to get a key so you can use the bathroom in the back, and I’ll call Daddy on the phone. See the phone right here? I promise I’ll call and see if he’s home.”

Jessica glanced with sorrowful eyes at the man, shaking her head. Silently, he nodded. When he finished, the total on the register came to only five dollars. Jessica knew the real cost must be three times that much, even more. Her mouth fell open.

“We’re having a sale tonight,” he said. “I’ll add another ten for the gas, and you can sign the receipt now. Then fill her up.”

“Thank you,” Jessica said, too moved, embarrassed, and newly grief-stricken to even meet his eyes. The gas would surely cost more than that too. Suddenly, she’d become a charity case.

“Good luck with your phone call,” the man said. Then he added, after a meaningful pause: “Hope it works out all right.”

Jessica nodded, struck silent, blinking away her tears.

An unremarkable white Ford sedan pulled into the lot of the Yee-haw Junction Mobil station off Exit 193 on the Florida Turnpike, sidling to a darkened corner near two covered Dumpsters. The headlights switched off first, then the engine. For a few seconds, the driver sat in the car.

The driver was the sort of man few people notice. No facial hair, skin brownish, ambiguously dark. He wore jeans and an aqua-blue Florida Marlins windbreaker despite a temperature of seventy-eight degrees, and he walked across the oil-spattered concrete toward the gas station’s mini-mart. He did not go in. Instead, he stood just beyond the window and peeked around to glance inside.

At first, he saw no one except a bespectacled black man reading a book at the cash register. Then, carefully scouting the brightly lighted aisles, he saw the woman in the rear, standing at a pay telephone with an armload of bags. He could not see the girl, but she must be there. As he’d paced himself a kilometer behind the van, Mahmoud, from his handheld video monitor, had seen Dawit’s wife awaken the girl and take her inside.

The fates were working in his favor, Mahmoud decided. He had no tracking device planted in the van, so while his video monitor allowed him to see Dawit’s wife and hear her every word, he could have easily lost her when she surprised him by fleeing with the girl. His chase began too late. In fact, he’d guessed incorrectly that she would be driving on 1-95 until he heard her talk to a toll taker at a tollbooth west of him on the Florida Turnpike. That gave him not only her location, but her destination. But, in fact, once he found the Turnpike, he had somehow driven past her and was two minutes north of the West Palm Beach truck stop when he heard her tell her daughter they were stopping there.

Now, Mahmoud knew he would not have much time. He could not do his work here at the gas station because the attendant’s partition was bulletproof, no doubt—Americans, unluckily for him, were always at war with one another—and the attendant was likely to shoot back. That would be catastrophic.

Instead, Mahmoud walked purposefully toward the van, where both front windows were partially open. Seeing Mahmoud and recognizing his scent, the cat stood at the window on his hind legs and cried out. Mahmoud tried the driver’s door. Locked.

Mahmoud heard clicks throughout the vehicle as he slipped his thin universal key into the lock, and he opened the door with ease. When the cat tried to jump past him, Mahmoud struck out, making the animal fly against the passenger’s door. Teacake hissed at him, scrambling upright, then vanished somewhere in the rear.

The rear. Should he simply stow away and surprise them?

No. With all of the bags of purchases the woman needed to pack in the van, she might find him too soon, before they were on the expanse of the dark, open road.

Mahmoud found a knob beneath the steering wheel and pulled it, making the hood click open with a hollow sound. He glanced once more toward the mini-mart’s window and saw no change. A few seconds more and he would be done.

The bright floodlight above him enabled him to see the vehicle’s fuse mechanism. His fingers darted across the tiny fuses, then he jiggled them with the precision of a surgeon. Not too hard. Not enough so that the van would not start. But enough, he hoped, that once she started the vehicle, the bumps on the road would jar a fuse out of place and cut off the vehicle’s power supply.

He did not have the time to be as meticulous as he would have liked, so as Mahmoud closed the van’s hood he knew there remained many unknown variables. Would it stall too soon? Not at all? He would have to tail her and see.

If this plan failed, he would shoot out her tires at a later point, when there was little traffic, and complete his task that way. He shook his head, mortified at the idea; a shoot-out on the roadway, like a crass American movie. Dawit would have laughed with him about such a plan, had it not been his own wife and child.

“Car trouble?” a man in shorts asked as he walked past, with an accent betraying his home as slightly north of Leeds, England.

Mahmoud smiled amiably. “All fixed now,” he said.

Miami International Airport, a city in itself, was alive tonight. There were families everywhere Dawit looked: fathers leading daughters by the hand, mothers scolding sons, college-age couples shuffling together with backpacks and weary faces. They were all colors, all nationalities, with myriad purposes. These beings were so furious and passionate in the way they lived out their short years; that was why Dawit believed he was drawn to them. The confused din of languages in this place reminded Dawit of
Casablanca
, like North Africa during the war. A place to be penned in by other people, and yet suffer the keenness of being alone. It made him long to board one of these airplanes, almost regardless of where it would deposit him, and escape the sorrow of his last stay among the mortals.

Dawit’s ears picked up fragments of countless mingled conversations. A German couple arguing over where to spend the night. Teenage girls from Brazil worrying because they didn’t know where their parents had wandered. An old Argentine man complaining to his adult son that he was too old to walk so far.

But at the heart of all the words was love. Companionship. Life had cast these individuals together, and they were bound to one another. If someone got lost, a loved one would search until he was were found. They would fight and argue and complain, yet always remain tied to someone. It was human nature, mortal or otherwise.

So few people were alone here. Only he.

At instants as he gazed at the crowd of people, Dawit was certain he saw Mahmoud appear in front of him, approaching him. Let it be, Dawit thought. If Mahmoud came, he would simply go. He would not argue. He should have gone from the first.

Dawit collapsed against one of the pay telephones at a circular telephone bank, drained of the will even to stand straight. If only he could melt into the earth and vanish, smothered in darkness, his thoughts silenced.

How much did he really love Jessica? Even Kira? Was it that he’d loved the novelty of enjoying a family at last? Perhaps it could have been any woman, any child. If that were true, he could find satisfaction anywhere else, with time. He could start again.

Dawit swallowed a sob, imagining Kira’s face. And remembering Jessica’s intimate touch, her laugh. The utter completeness he’d felt the few times the three of them were truly alone. He’d never been able to convince Jessica that those moments were the only ones worth hoarding. Of what lasting value was her job? Why couldn’t they have schooled Kira at home? How ironic it was that mortals, who had the least time of all, were willing to waste so much of it away from people they loved.

Their time had been too short. No, mortals were not interchangeable. He must have them back. No matter how improbable his blind efforts, or how long the search, he would find his wife and daughter.

Sighing, Dawit picked up the telephone handset and dialed the number he had memorized by now. He had been calling every half-hour even before he decided to leave the house. Once at the airport, he had never wandered far from the telephone. Far-fetched though it was, it was the only hope Dawit had.

“Cardmember services,” a man’s voice answered.

Dawit repeated his name and account number in a monotone voice. He’d spoken to a woman named Valerie twice before, but this was someone new. He told his story again. Any word?

“Hold, please,” the man said, and Dawit could hear the keystrokes on his computer. Dawit closed his eyes. This was his sixth call. He was growing more and more certain that his plan was useless, after all. His uplifting moments of inspiration would be stripped from him, leaving only despair.

“Mr. Wolde, there has been activity. It was at a service station upstate from you, not even ten minutes ago.”

Dawit had so longed to hear these words, that he was at first confused: Was the man’s voice real or only his imagination? He stood straight up, holding the phone with both hands, but he couldn’t open his mouth to speak.

The man laughed. “Want to hear something funny? It’s a Mobil station in a town called Yeehaw Junction. God, that sounds like the name of one of those bad comedies from the seventies.”

“Where is that?” Dawit breathed, finding his voice.

“I’m not sure exactly. If you want, I can give you the number. At least you can find out what the thief looks like.”

When Dawit called the gas station, he did not identify himself. He asked for directions, discovering that the station was near a Turnpike exit. South of Orlando. Yes, the man from the gas station told him, there was an airport nearby if he wanted to fly— a small one forty minutes east in Vero Beach. “We sure ain’t got one here,” he said.

“Was there …” Dawit swallowed hard. “… Was there a woman there? And a little girl?”

“Who’s asking?” the man said.

“Her husband,” Dawit said, his heartbeat resounding through his frame. “Sir, I need to find her right away. We’ve had a terrible misunderstanding.”

There was a pause. “Okay, well, she may still be at the pump. You that girl’s daddy? I heard them say they was going to call you. Hang on.”

Surely this must be a dream after all, Dawit thought. He felt no sensation in his fingertips in the long seconds of silence while he waited to hear his wife’s voice on the telephone. Was it over at last?

“Hey, man, sorry about that,” the attendant said, returning. “They must’ve pulled out. I didn’t hear where they’re going. But that little girl would’a been real happy to hear your voice.”

Dawit hung up, unable to utter a polite goodbye or thank you. No man deserved such a cruel prank of the fates! Had he called five minutes sooner, he might have spoken to Jessica and convinced her to go to the airport to wait for him. Could it be true that Jessica had tried to call him? To say what? To explain why she’d left?

When Dawit checked the messages on his home answering machine with the remote code, the only messages he heard—and there were five—were from Bea, and one from Sy. By now, Dawit’s face was streaked with tears. How could he have allowed himself to hope?

He would not swallow this defeat. Whether she considered him an enemy or a friend, he would find her. He would have to take a plane; if he couldn’t find a flight leaving immediately, he would charter one. But to Vero Beach? He visualized Florida’s geography, calculating Jessica’s speed at sixty-five-plus miles per hour. No, he should fly north to Orlando instead, which might even out their pace. He might have a prayer of catching her.

“Wait for me, Jessica,” he whispered, running toward the ticket counter for Florida Air. “If you have a heart, and your God has any mercy, let me come to you.”

Just as Jessica was beginning to wonder if there was any civilization at all along the quiet Turnpike stretch through Osceola County, and then past the Disney World signs in Orange County, the radio abruptly shut off. A too-loud commercial for a car dealership had been playing, and Jessica was about to reach over to adjust the volume when, as if reading her mind, the radio clipped the booming announcer’s voice in midsentence. Silence.

For the longest time, she really thought it was only the radio. She fiddled with the knob, clicking it on and off, but it didn’t make a sound. The radio’s panel was no longer lighted, either. Weird. They’d never had a problem with the radio before.

Returning her eyes to the road, the next thing Jessica noticed was that the roadway was pitch-black except for the cones of light from a station wagon passing her in the fast lane. She sat up straight, straining to peer through the windshield past the dots of water from the last brief rain shower. Well, shit. How were people supposed to see the damn roads out here without streetlamps? Had it always been this dark?

Jessica lifted her foot from the accelerator slightly, slowing down, and she glanced at the speedometer. Too dark to read, like the rest of the instrument board. What the hell … ?

Her hands suddenly tightened on the steering wheel as she felt a surge of cold fear through her limbs. She couldn’t see anything, she realized, because all of the vehicle’s lights were off, including the headlights. Making a small, panicked sound, she tried to flick the headlights on and off. Nothing. Just like the radio. And the AC, she realized, was gone. Had the battery died? How could that be, when the car was still running? This couldn’t be happening. It couldn’t.

“Oh, my God …” she said, so loudly that Kira stirred. She pushed the button to unlock the doors, and heard them click. Okay, there must be some kind of glitch in the electrical system. No big deal. The car was running. The locks were okay. The only thing was, she didn’t have a fucking radio or fucking headlights so she could see where the fuck she was going in the middle of fucking nowhere.

Jessica bit her lip hard, struggling not to cry. There was only so much crying she could do in a day, and she was way past her limit. Her eyes hurt. Her back hurt from sitting rigid behind the steering wheel for five hours. Kira was probably going to wake up soon and start fussing again about wanting to see David.

Jessica told herself, just trying the words on for size, that they would have to stop. That was it. She couldn’t endanger Kira by driving out here without lights. The eighteen-wheelers had been barreling down the road around her like demons, making the van shake as they sped past, and she couldn’t take a risk that one of them wouldn’t see them plodding along until it was too late.
MOTHER, DAUGHTER KILLED IN FIERY TURNPIKE COLLISION,
the headline would say. She’d written plenty of those stories herself.

Jessica put on her blinker, moving to change lanes so she could get closer to the shoulder on the driver’s side. A thundering honk made her swerve back to her lane and brake hard. Lord have mercy, one of those monster trucks had been speeding right alongside her. The van shuddered as the truck passed, and she heard road residue spray against her windshield.

Kira, startled, cried out, “Mommy?” Then she sat up and started crying, an emotional collapse. She’d had all the scares and confusion she could take.

“It’s okay, honey,” Jessica said from habit, making a second attempt to move toward the shoulder despite her frenzied heart. Her hands would have been shaking if they weren’t wrapped around the steering wheel. She felt herself shaking inside, to her bones.

One of the battery connections must be loose, that was all. She could fix that. If not, she’d turn on the hazard lights and they’d just sit. It was about 10:15, not late enough for the real crazies to start swarming, and despite her paranoia it was unlikely that David was right behind them. A Florida state trooper would see them, give them a jump-start, and they’d go.

“It’s dark,” Kira sobbed as they came to a stop in a small clearing where the road met a hidden woodland.

“Honey, I know, but there’s nothing to be afraid of. We’re just giving the van a little rest, okay? Go back to sleep.”

Another sob, a heartbreaking sound in the darkness. Jessica leaned over to kiss Kira’s forehead, which felt hot and damp to her lips, as though Kira had a budding high temperature. “Kira, Mommy needs you to be a big girl now. Please. I promise, everything is fine. I’m getting out to look under the hood. I won’t go far.”

She felt under her seat for the extra flashlight that was always rolling around when she didn’t need one. She finally remembered to check the glove compartment, and there it was, buried beneath the van’s registration papers. She turned it on, and the light was faint. But at least it was light.

Jessica saw Kira’s blinking, reddened eyes. Kira’s sobbing had stopped as soon as the light came on. Children were so afraid of the dark. Maybe the flashlight reassured Kira, but the weak beam only heightened Jessica’s sense of isolation.

“Stay in the van with Teacake. I’ll be back in one minute.”

Kira grabbed Jessica’s wrist before she could move. “Mommy, do you promise nothing bad’ll happen?” The sound of her tiny voice, a fragile whisper, filled the van.

Jessica shined the light toward her own face, forcing herself to smile for her daughter. “Would this face tell a lie? Huh?”

Kira shook her head, sniffing. “No.”

“Well, then. Nothing bad will happen. I promise. I just need to see why the lights on the car don’t work.”

“Daddy can fix it.”

“Well, Daddy’s not here. So Mommy’s going to fix it.”

Jessica thought about cutting off the engine, but decided against it because she’d learned never to shut off a car that was threatening to stall. Keep the engine going. If it stopped, it might not start again without a jump. Already, the engine was making a strange choking sound that warned her it might not be running much longer anyway.

The overgrown grass nearly reached Jessica’s knees, tickling the tops of her feet in the flats she’d worn to work. She felt prickly briars clinging to her cotton slacks as she walked around to the hood. The flashlight tucked under her chin, she maneuvered her fingers beneath the grease-caked underside to spring the hood open and prop it up.

Belts were turning and the engine hummed, parts of it shivering occasionally with the worrisome sputters she’d heard. She felt a glow of heat from all of the working parts, and she reminded herself she’d need to be careful about touching anything. She found the battery and concentrated the light on it; the connections looked secure, even as she nudged them with the flashlight. She felt the uncomfortable realization that the battery was not the problem. It was barely six months old and still looked new. It must be something else.

While Jessica inventoried the rest of the parts to try to guess what was wrong, the engine abruptly gave up. Now, the silence was as vast as the night.

Kira, she thought.

Kira could be bratty when she was restless. Kira was old enough to know better than to open her car door while a vehicle was moving, but she had a fascination with the keys. She’d probably reached over and turned them, click, and now they would be stuck.

But Jessica didn’t have much time to think about this. Without the reassuring sound of the car engine, Jessica became aware that she was a black woman alone on a deserted Southern roadway; all of her mother’s stories about the civil rights movement and the headlights that had followed her late at night flooded her at once. Jessica had grown up hearing about beatings and shootings, and the deaths of Mickey Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney in Mississippi. Even thirty years later, Bea didn’t like to drive alone on roads anywhere in the South. And forget racists. Wasn’t Florida the home of Ted Bundy and the Gainesville murders?

Jessica was thinking about all of these things when she first noticed the car. It was parked maybe thirty yards behind the van on the same side of the road, barely visible in the dark except when other cars passed and washed it in a brief, revealing light.

A light-colored car. No siren on top, so it wasn’t a police cruiser. It wasn’t the highway patrol. It was just a car sitting in the darkness with no lights inside or outside. As though it had been abandoned. Or it was waiting.

Jessica slammed the hood closed, her heart pummeling her breastbone with the terror she’d been living with all night. She didn’t remember passing another parked car when she pulled over. She was sure she would have noticed something like that. So had it pulled over behind her, following her? Instinct made Jessica turn her flashlight off, so her movements wouldn’t be visible.

“Did you fix it?” Kira asked when Jessica climbed back inside and closed her door. Thank goodness the locks didn’t need power to operate, but she wanted to make sure the sliding side door was latched tight. She climbed to the backseat to check it. Locked. Teacake, who’d been hiding since they left the gas station, meowed from behind her and made her jump.

Jessica was breathing fast, reminding her of the way she’d hyperventilated earlier that day. She returned to the driver’s seat, took a deep breath, and touched the ignition’s keys. Sure enough, Kira had messed with them and shut off the car.

“Mommy, are you mad at me?” Kira asked, knowing Jessica knew.

Still breathing hard, Jessica shook her head. She closed her eyes, tightening her unsteady fingers around the keys. Jesus, she prayed, if I have ever done right by you and your Word, please let this car start up this one time. I won’t ask it again, Lord.

Jessica turned the keys. There was a click, and a distant rattle somewhere beneath the hood, but that was all. The next time she tried the key, pumping her foot hard on the gas pedal, there was no sound at all.

Jessica exhaled, whimpering. She tried again and again, but the van’s engine was dead. Nothing, nothing, nothing.

Well, she knew she couldn’t run. Now she had to figure out what or whom she thought she was running from. Jessica crawled into the seat farthest to the back, pushing aside a bag of groceries, and peered out of the rear window at the car.

Still hadn’t moved, still dark. She couldn’t tell whether or not anyone was inside. If it was someone who wanted to help, why would they park so far behind them? Why turn off the lights? It seemed to Jessica that it had been a long time since any other cars had driven past. They were alone, really alone. Jessica had never felt more helpless.

“Kira,” she said unsteadily, patting the first seat’s back, “come back here, honey. I want you to lie down on the backseat and go to sleep. We’re going to take a nap now.”

“Did you fix the car?”

“Not yet.”

“We’re staying all night long?”

“Maybe so. Come on, now. Hurry up and do what Mommy says.”

“But I’m scared.”

“I know, baby,” Jessica said, grabbing Kira’s arm to help her make her way from the front seat without stumbling. “I know.”

It was drizzling again. Jessica’s senses were so awake, she could hear every drop that spattered the top of the car, an ominous drumming above her. And Jessica heard another sound too. She heard the whomp and the lingering echo of a car door slamming shut. She whirled back around to peer through the rear window.

Someone was coming, walking toward them with a slow stride. It wasn’t even so much that she could see him, because she couldn’t. She knew that he’d turned off his lights because he hadn’t wanted her to see him. But she knew he was there. She knew she would see him soon, when he was closer.

Kira was curled up on her seat. “Mommy, I only got up to Q in the Alphabet game,” she said, “and now there’s no other cars.”

“Mommy needs you to hush and be very quiet now, Kira,” Jessica said, unable to hide the shaking in her voice.

“Or else, the boogeyman will hear?” Kira asked. “Does the boogeyman live in the woods?”

“Shhhhhhhhh.”

There. Jessica could see him now. He was the boogeyman, all right. Jessica would have been relieved to see David at this point, would have kissed his feet, but this wasn’t a black man. He had lighter skin, very short hair. He was wearing a sports jacket, either for the Florida Marlins or the Miami Dolphins. He was still twenty yards away, walking toward them.

Panicked, Jessica scrambled from the back of the van, past Kira, to climb back into the driver’s seat. She pumped out her heartbeat on the accelerator, turning the key, praying something would catch, some miracle would start the van. Utter silence.

“Mommy,” Kira whispered, “I think somebody’s out there.”

Whoever it was couldn’t be up to any good, so Jessica didn’t want to wait around to ask him for a proper introduction. They could run on foot. That was the only thing left. They could run into the rain, right into the road if they had to. There were headlights coming now, way in the distance, and they could take their chances that somebody Christian-minded would stop for a woman and a young girl waving in the road.

“Mrs. Wolde,” a man’s voice called from somewhere behind the van, startling Jessica so much that she yanked the keys out of the ignition and clutched them in her fist.

“My name is Officer Rhodes, with the Orange County Police. Your van’s license tag was reported to us by police in Miami. They’ve been looking for you. Your husband is in custody for a murder. Can you please come out of the van?”

Jessica’s mouth fell open as her brain swam in mingled shock, relief, dread. He was with the police, after all! Fernando Reyes must have gotten her message instantly when she called from the gas station. David was already in custody? She gazed anxiously out the rear window at the man, who stood ten yards behind her. Why was he still so far back?

And why was he holding a glistening metal gun, both hands cradling it beneath his beltline? Though his voice was professional and soothing, the man’s stance looked confrontational. “I’m sure you’re understandably nervous. No one is implicating you in the murder. We just want to make sure you and your daughter can return safely to Miami. I understand your sister is very sick, and your mother has been looking for you.”