Wire Mesh Mothers (36 page)

But I’ll fuck you for a ride? Hey baby, take a load of this filthy body and let me tempt you into providing a little shuttle to
Lamesa
? Stop looking at the phone!

The lounge door opened with a squeal and Kate looked back into the blinding light of day. She turned away and stared down at the bar.
Don’t let him see your face.

“Hey there, Juan.”

Her. Don’t let her see your face.

“Hey there, Greta. We aren’t open yet.”

The boy probably doesn’t know jack. I’m jumping at shadows. Thousands of children are abducted each year. And how many do they find? Ten percent? Five? Why couldn’t Mistie be one of the lost? The odds are pretty good.

The woman walked up to the bar and slid onto the stool three down from Kate. She was in a uniform, but Kate couldn’t tell what kind with her peripheral vision. Police, maybe. Security guard. Hostess snack cake truck driver. “Howdy, ma’am.”

She knows who I am, she’s making sport of me. I have to get out.

“Hello,” offered Kate. To Juan, “Listen, thanks anyway but I’ll figure something out. Merry Christmas.”

“
Feliz
Navidad
,” said Juan.

Kate stood and turned. The woman beside her was, indeed, a police officer. Deputy. Something with a badge, but something legal. She was a large woman with arms that strained at the fabric of her sleeves.

“Ma’am,” she said. “That your truck up the ways?”

“Ah,” said Kate. What was the right answer? What was the best answer? Her heart began hammering in her chest and in her leg. “Which truck is that?”

Officer Greta chuckled. “Juan, got a beer? I’m off duty. I won’t tell your boss you served early.”

“Sure,” said Juan. He reached under the counter. There was the sound of
slushing
ice, and then a beer can was plopped onto the bar top. The officer popped the top, and said, “Ma’am? That your truck, the tan one that out of gas?”

“Yes.” A chuckle, way too loud to sound normal.

Get out of here, get out now.

“Plates say Louisiana.”

“Yes. They do.”

Juan said, “Thought you were from North Carolina.”

No
no
no
no
. “I am, originally. Listen, I have to be going.”

“How?” said Juan. “You said you’d run out of gas.”

Officer Greta caught Kate by the arm but then let go, as if she realized that was out of order or she’d caught a whiff of Kate’s homegrown perfume.

“You can’t leave the truck there. Can’t abandon vehicles in the limits of
Farstone
.”

Kate’s head began to swim. Greta’s vague and massive visage bobbed up and down as if nodding. “Okay,” she managed, “I’ll get it moved.”

“Without gas?” said Juan.

“Sit down, ma’am, you don’t look well,” said Officer Greta.

“I’m fine, just tired,” said Kate. She stumbled for the door.

Get out now, find Tony. Find Mistie. Hide. Think it though. There is a solution. You are a teacher. You can fix this.

She reached the door and pushed out into the light. She blinked madly at the bright assault. In front of the lounge was Officer Greta’s car.

Kate caught her breath against the pain in her leg.
Go,
she thought.
Go! Go before Officer Greta realizes who just walked out of the lounge.

“Ma’am?”

Kate turned about, nearly stumbling on the rough sidewalk.

In the daylight, Greta was a pretty woman with sunburned cheeks and a small nose. She was shaking her head in what seemed like pity. Not sarcasm.

“Ma’am, I believe in doing good for others. My church tells us that. And I like to think I do something worthwhile once a week, besides chasing down kids who break windows and tear up cattle fences. I’m thinking you could use a ride somewhere? To get some gas? I have a can in my cruiser. Anson’s got a station. It’s not far.”

Kate touched her lip with her fingers. “I…don’t want to take advantage of your kindness.” Was this woman laying a trap?

“It’s nearly Christmas. Let me do my good deed for the week so I can say I did.” Greta winked, smiled. It seemed harmless.

She doesn’t know,
thought Kate.
Okay. Okay, then.

“Okay, thanks.”
But we have no money for gas.

“And don’t worry,” said Greta as she opened the door for Kate. “I only had three sips of that beer. I’m not intoxicated. I’m off duty, but I am not drunk.”

Worry about the money later. One minute at a time. One second.

Greta got in her side and adjusted her rearview. She pulled a cap from the seat and worked it onto her puffy brown hair. “I was kidding. That was a joke. I’m never drunk.”

“Oh,” said Kate. “Sorry. I mean, that’s funny.”

The engine revved, and Greta pulled out onto
Farstone’s
Main Street.

“I’ve got my…kids with me,” said Kate. “They’re up by the truck.”

“Why’d you leave them back there? It’s too hot to be outside very long.”

“Lounge said adults only.”

“Oh,” said Greta. She smiled. “Right. I forgot. You’re a good mom, know that?”

T
ony couldn’t take her eyes off the police scanner on the dash of the deputy’s car. The woman said she was off duty, so the scanner was not turned on, but all Tony could think was,
I wonder if we’ve made it yet? I wonder if we’re on that scanner?

They were a few miles west of
Farstone
, the land before and beside them various shades of gold and bronze, rising slightly in the distance but revealing what Tony guessed were miles and miles of rangeland. She wondered what people here would feel like, diving in Virginia. Would all those trees make them go nuts because they couldn’t see past the next curve?

Tony was in the front seat. The teacher and Mistie were in the back. The teacher was smiling her teacher smile and looking like it hurt worse than her shot leg.

“You got any doughnuts or doughnut sticks?” asked Tony.

The deputy laughed. “Officers are supposed to be crazy for doughnuts, right?”

“Yeah. Got any?”

“Are you all hungry? When did you last have something to eat?”

Tony thought about the red cherry tomatoes she’d swiped from the fortune teller’s back yard garden, and the cucumbers and peppers. She and Mistie had had a little lunch while counting to ten minutes while the teacher was offering herself up for a ride. Well, Mistie only ate the tomatoes, but Tony had found the
cukes
and the peppers to be okay once she spit on them and wiped off the dust.

“We’re hungry,” said Tony. “Ain’t we, sis?” She nudged Mistie over the seat.

Mistie hadn’t said a word since getting into the cruiser. She’d just stared at the officer as if she’d never seen such a thing in her life.

“There’s a really super diner next to the gas station in Anson,” said the officer. “You all can get a tank full for your car then a tank full for your bellies. Best ribs this side of Fort Worth.”

Have we made the news yet?

“Can we listen to that?” Tony pointed to the scanner.

“Honey, I’m off duty, not back on for another two hours. I like a little peace and quiet.”

“Please? I never got to hear one before. Just a few minutes?” Tony sensed the teacher in the back, going totally still. This freaked her out.

“Well?”

“Oh, all right. But I’m turning it down. It can cut through my head like a laser sometimes, all that static.”

She flipped a dial, adjusted the volume, then put both hands back on the steering wheel. Tony turned her ear to the scanner and concentrated.

There was a fluttering, a hum, and a male voice saying something about some cows that got out of the fence on the Mendez farm and had caused a motorcycle wreck out on Route 600. Then a code number Tony didn’t quite catch, and some garbled follow up information, “Domestic dispute. Neighbor on Green Avenue heard arguing. Responding to….” More static. How in the world were deputies supposed to keep up with stuff they couldn’t hear?

“Had enough?” asked the deputy.

“Another minute, please.”

“One more. We’ll be in Anson in three.”

“Thank you.” Tony smiled. Playing the sweet daughter was a hoot. Knowing she was almost at Burton’s ranch was so painfully wonderful she could hardly keep in down in her stomach.

Then on the scanner, static, jumbled words, but some quite distinct. “…interstate kidnapping… report came in from Nacogdoches…one Katherine - Kate - McDolen, age 42. One Angela
Petinske
, age 15….”

Fuck
fuck
fuck
fuck
!
Tony didn’t know whether to grapple the knob and shut the scanner down or let it run, let the words come, hear it on the air where it made it all real, made it all so goddamned valid….

The officer frowned, adjusted the knob. “What is this?”

“….moving across Texas, likely to
Lamesa
where
Petinske’s
father is said to reside…seven-year-old Mistie Dawn Henderson, allegedly abducted by McDolen on Tuesday….
Petinske
thought to have….in a robbery and murder at an Exxon station in….”

The deputy turned off the scanner. Her brows were down, making a stern and uneasy parallel with the brim of her hat. “Where’d you guys say you were from?”

“North Carolina,” said the teacher.

Tony said nothing.

“What’s your names, anyway? You never did say.”

“Jackie,” said Tony.

“Mistie?” said the deputy.

“What?” asked Mistie in the back. And she began to whimper. “Daddy said Valerie had a bad liver. He said her head didn’t get cut off.”

“Mistie Henderson?” said the deputy. The voice, thick with a mixture of excitement, terror, determination. “Do you live in Virginia?”

“MeadowView Trailer Park.”

“Uh-huh. Well.”

Tony saw the deputy look down at the empty gun holster on her side. The gun was probably in the glove box. Tony could get it out real quickly, if it wasn’t locked.

“Well, one mile to Anson. See it up there?”

“Yeah,” said Tony. “But you ain’t gonna see in no more!” She pulled the knife from its place in her sock, and rammed it into the deputy’s ribs. The woman’s eyes went huge. Both hands came off the steering wheel; one clutching for the leaking red hole in her shirt and the other grasping for the mic on the scanner. Tony grabbed the mic and ripped it from its cord.

“
Ahhhhhh
!” hissed the deputy.

“Tony, no!” cried the teacher.

Tony dropped the mic on the floor and stomped it as she would stomp a bug, or a girl in the Hot Heads’ tobacco barn.

The car spun to the left sharply, hopped up over a lip of rock, and completed its spin in the sandy soil of west Texas. It struck a small boulder and stopped. The engine thundered as if knocked between gears. The deputy panted madly, spittle flying from her mouth. “You…oh, God, help me.” She lifted her blood stained hand to Tony. Tony smacked it away.

“Please, get help, don’t leave me here,” said the deputy. The words were muffled, garbled, like the speaker on the scanner.

“Shut up!” Tony jumped from the car and opened the back door. Mistie stumbled out, ran several steps, and dropped to the sand, crying, “Mama!”

The teacher didn’t move. She stared at the deputy’s bleeding, groping hands as they fumbled on the dash, on the seat, then the floor, trying to get to the mic to put it back in the socket.

“Out!” yelled Tony. “Fucker, out!” She leaned in and took the teachers hair and gave it a powerful yank. The teacher crawled out of the back seat. She stood, dumbfounded, by the cruiser.

“There!” said Tony. “There’s a ranch, come on! We can hide!”

“You stabbed her,” said the teacher.

“She was going to kill us!”

“You don’t know that!”

Tony lashed her foot out and caught the teacher in the shin. The woman screamed.

It was her bad leg.

“Come
on
!”

With the teacher hobbling and the kid crying, the three scuttled up the knoll in the direction of the buildings of the distant ranch.

“I
t’s a mirage,” the girl said to Mistie. “Looks like it’s right there but it’s either really far away or not there at all. I learned that in sixth grade. Believe that? Learned something from a stinking teacher.”

Mistie looked where the girl was pointing. It was a farm on a hill. They’d been trying to run to the farm but it was like the farm knew they were coming and kept backing up. The girl had said, “Almost there,” a couple times but they still weren’t.