Wire Mesh Mothers (33 page)

“You didn’t kill him?” said the teacher.

“No,” said Tony. “But if I really had to kill, I would. Don’t ever, ever forget that.”

“I won’t,” said the teacher.

Tony scratched her head. It itched down to the bone over her ears and at the nape of her neck. “We need clothes we going anywhere tomorrow. There’s those doublewides not too far from here. I’m gonna see what I can get without nobody knowing. You stay here, watch the kid.”

“Her name is Mistie.”

“Yeah, Mistie, okay, whatever.”

“We need some Tylenol, too, and alcohol.”

“Don’t push your luck.”

“You were good to Mistie, I could see that. Letting her lean on you like that.”

“It was an accident,” said Tony. “I didn’t know she was
leanin
.” Tony strolled off, but stopped several yards away and called back, “By the way, how the
hell’d
you get out of those bale strings?”

“Backed up to the saw you found in the store room,” said the teacher. “Had to work myself around like a contortionist in the Cirque Du Soleil but I sawed them apart.”

“What the fuck’s the
cirk
duh soul?”

“Doesn’t matter, really. My ankles were easier after my hands were free.”

“I’ll never leave you untied again. Next car we get, you drive with your damn hands tied.”

“I guessed as much.”

“You were going to kill me, you really were.”

The teacher’s expression unreadable. “Don’t be long now. Please.”

Please and fuck you,
thought Tony.

T
his truck wasn’t half as bad as the Nova had been. It was a manual transmission, though, so Tony had tied Kate’s left hand to the steering wheel and the right hand to the gearshift with leftovers from Kate’s Christian Camp director jeans. Kate’s calf throbbed mercilessly when she had to press the clutch, but Tony had allowed her to re-bandage it, and though excruciating with certain moves, she thought it would probably heal. But some alcohol would assure that would happen.

Tony had brought clothes from a dryer in a shed outside one of the doublewides. Overalls for Kate, and a white tank top with stained underarms. Tony had claimed a man’s pair of camouflage shorts and black tee shirt with “Napa” emblazoned on the front. For Mistie there was a flower-printed polyester shift, a little short but not too snug around the torso. Tony had also brought an extra shirt so Kate could check and wrap the wound in the back of her leg. But Kate knew better than to thank her. Tony had the drive in her eyes again, the set of brow she’d had back in South Carolina. All she could talk about was Burton and
Lamesa
and how much money her father had.

East Texas. One-light towns of Fords Corner and Melrose. Tony complained that this didn’t look like Texas, it looked like fucking Louisiana and fucking Mississippi and fucking Alabama. “Texas is a big state,” Kate reminded her. “Give it time. There were cattle ranges farther west.”

Mistie was between Kate and Tony. Both legs were draped over beside Tony’s because Kate refused to let the girl straddle the shift. She was still rather lethargic, but Kate sensed she was coming around, that she’d suffered from some 24-hour bug that children often got to the terror of their parents and the blessed assurances of their pediatricians. But something to help the fever was still in order. And Kate was ready to offer her right eye for something to bring down the aching in her calf. And a real night’s sleep.

Tony had the knife out and was playing flip-the-blade by the passenger window. Kate wondered if it might blow out in a gust of Texas wind. But it didn’t.

They rolled on another twenty minutes, Kate’s leg and stomach growling. They’d eaten nothing since yesterday morning. And they had not one cent with which to buy food. Kate had turned on the radio to get her mind off the clammy filth of her body and the tedious drive, but Tony hadn’t liked her choice of music and made her turn it off.

Traffic picked up on the two-lane, and then the road widened to four lanes. Houses were closer together here, and there were apartment complexes and strip malls. Streetlights were wound with all-weather holly and big red bows. Decorations in these lawns were more tasteful than those seen in the country. No bobbing head Josephs or Granny Fannies in poinsettia britches. A city limits sign reading “Nacogdoches” rushed by on the right. A city this size would have drug stores. If Kate could tidy up her hair and clean up her face, she might make a relatively benign shoplifter.

“Tony,” she said. “I want a dare.”

Tony stopped flipping the knife. “That ain’t how it works. I gotta give truth or dare.”

“Then let me tell you what to dare me.”

Tony rubbed her chin and scratched her head. “What?”

“Dare me to go into a Rite Aid or CVS and get some things we need.”

“What the hell we need? Got lots of gas in the tank. Don’t seem to be burning any oil.”

“Aren’t you hungry? I could slip a few things into my pocket, see how big overall pockets are? And I want to get something for Mistie’s temperature. And for my leg. And for your hair.”

“My hair?”

“You have lice, Tony. Haven’t you felt them?”

Tony smacked at her head, then pulled the rearview mirror around and stared agape at her reflection. “No, I don’t! I ain’t got the cooties.”

“Whatever you call them, I’ve seen them crawling behind your ears. There’s shampoo for that, you know….”

“Goddamn Darlene!”

“Who’s Darlene?”

“You want my whole life history? Just find a fucking store and get the damn shampoo!”

The first store that looked like it didn’t have high-tech anti-theft doors was Carlton’s Food and Drug, an establishment on a smaller side road in town that seemed to have been built some time back in the ‘forties. The bricks were sand-colored, the edges of the building rounded. Side windows were made of a mosaic of glass bricks. There were grocery carts crammed together outside the front, likely borrowed from some neighboring grocery store.

“This is good,” said Kate. Tony nodded, and Kate pulled into the drive. A few other customer cars were squatting there in the lot. One was occupied by a girl of about five and a yapping Pomeranian.

Kate put the truck in park. It idled smoothly. The owner of this would be putting out a bulletin on it, for certain.

Tony flicked the knife and held it toward Mistie. “Don’t forget who’s out here.”

“I won’t,” said Kate.

“You tell on us in there, if anybody even looks out here like they think something’s going on, I’ll bring us all down.”

“I’m not going to do that, Tony.”

“It’s weird when you say my name. Teachers call me Angela.”

“You want me to call you that?”

“Hell, no. Tony.”

“Okay, then, Tony.”

“You got ten minutes, exactly.”

“Ten minutes,” said Kate. She didn’t point out that there wasn’t a clock in the truck.

It was difficult to walk without a limp, but she tightened her jaws and did the best she could. She’d been able to smile through parent conferences, and some were almost as painful as a bullet to the leg.
That’s a good one,
she thought.
Ought to call Deidra and tell her about my latest adventure.
A wave a fatigue swept through her body, and she held onto the door’s hand, regaining herself, before pushing all the way inside.

The store was alive with an overly warm heat blasting its breath from a ceiling vent and a
Zamfir
Christmas tape playing on the intercom. A man with a gray beard stood at a candy display, filling a rack up with bags of Christmas-colored
Hersheyets
and red and green foil-wrapped Kisses. At the front counter, a middle-aged woman was straightening a stack of coupons by the register. The woman glanced up and smiled, “Merry Christmas!”

Kate nodded. “And to you.”

Slowly, she moved up the first aisle, glancing back at the bowed ceiling mirror at the front corner near the door. Facing away from the mirror, she scooped several packs of Lance crackers into the front pocket of her overalls. Then she meandered to the health and beauty aisle. It felt as though her leg was beginning to seep. She hoped not. She opened her pocket to flick in a tube of Suave powder fresh deodorant, a small box of children’s chewable Tylenol, and a bottle of rubbing alcohol. There was a sharp pain in her calf, and she stopped, caught her breath, and moved on.

As nonchalantly as she could, she rounded the corner and walked up through the hair products.
Rid, for lice
. That was what the school kept on hand for outbreaks. She didn’t see any. She looked back up the aisle from where she came. She thought it had a stop sign on it, but wasn’t certain. She looked again. No Rid. Nothing for Tony’s cooties.

“Can I help you find something?” called the woman from the front counter.

“Oh, no,” said Kate. Her voice was surprisingly pleasant and cheerful. “Actually, I’m just taking a break from driving. I needed to stretch my legs a bit. I hope you don’t mind if I just look around?”

“No, honey, that’s fine,” said the woman. “Where you driving to?”

“El Paso,” said Kate smoothly. “I’m a teacher from North Carolina. Heading over to see my sister.”

“Teacher, huh?” said the woman. “Off for the holidays already? Our kids got another week before school lets out.”

There was a small hanging display beside the shampoos, a plastic, toothed rack with folded American Traveler maps tucked in. United States. Southern United States. Texas. Kate tugged a Texas out of its slot, folded it an extra time and slipped it in the overall pocket. “Oh, well, I teach in a private school. A Christian academy. Our schedule is somewhat different from the schedules of the public schools in our area.”

The card and wrapping paper section was past the hair care. Kate stopped in front of a standing display and idly spun the rack about, glancing at the colorful images and flowing script. There was a narrow mirror dividing each section of the rack and it winked at Kate as it
revolved
by her, over and over. She caught the rack and held it still to see herself in the sliver of silvered glass.

My God,
she thought. She stared at the reflection. The thin woman with the straight auburn hair. The face without makeup, the baggy overalls and simple undershirt. Eyes, a bit dark and set. Fingernails rough and unpolished.
 

There’s Alice.
Kate ran her hand over her cheeks, over her neck and down the length of one leg.
Donald wouldn’t recognize me. I look like Alice.

She stared. She knew. She realized what she had done had been for herself at first. She had rescued Mistie to rescue herself. To get away from the tedium and the headaches and loneliness. To take Mistie and drop her off at a commune for other castoffs and be done with it.

But not now,
she thought. The mouth in the mirror had no lipstick, no lip liner, and the small wrinkles at the corners were clearly visible.
I am not going to take Mistie to Canada. Mexico is closer. I’ll care for her. I’ll mother her. Me.

I’ll be the Alice in me.

Yes.

Then something wet slid down the back of her leg to her shoe. There was blood on the floor.
Damn,
she thought. She rubbed the bottom of the shoe through the little drops on the floor, smudging them out of focus. She limped to the front door.

“Safe trip!” called the woman.

“God bless,” said Kate.

The truck was empty, though the engine was still humming. The car with the girl and the dog were gone; the patron had probably been next door at the dry cleaners. Kate glanced around, more blood drips trickling down to her shoe; the wound was hot and aching.

She saw Mistie and Tony at the outdoor phone by the sidewalk. Tony waved Kate over, the receiver in her hand, the knife in the other. Mistie was sitting cross-legged on the concrete slab under the phone box. The little yellow shift was bunched up, showing no panties. Kate stood between Mistie and the street, blocking her from the view of passers-by.

“Called my friend Leroy,” said Tony. Her voice was stony. Not a good sign. “One eight-hundred collect. It works, you know, even though those commercials are pussy.”

“That’s good, him getting caught,” said Kate. “Right?”

“Hot Heads made the news.”

“What are hot heads?”

“Whitey’s got arrested last night.”

“Whitey?”

Tony cleared her throat and spit on the ground. “One that killed the gasoline man with my gun. He’s on TV. They say he’s get charged as an adult. He hasn’t confessed but Leroy says it’s just time.”

Kate knelt beside Mistie and rubbed her head. She reached in her pocket for the box of Tylenol, ripped it open, and took out three pink tablets. “Mistie, can you chew these?” Mistie nodded and put the tablets in her mouth, held them there. “Chew, hon.” Mistie chewed.

“Is that what you wanted?” asked Kate, looking up at Tony. “You wanted him to get caught?”

Tony banged the receiver on the steel side of the phone box. Her toe of her right boot patted the gravel rapidly. “Yeah. No, not exactly. Asshole!”