Authors: Kate Jonez
Bunnies scream when they’re scared. Scream like children who’ve been really hurt bad. Frank screamed when the cat got him. I couldn’t get outside in time.
I might have been the one who left the hutch unlatched.
I did.
I left the hutch unlatched.
The pack of coyotes have captured something.
A rabbit.
The scream stabs me in the hole where my heart used to be.
Rex stomps back to his car shaking his head. He studies Linda as he walks around her. I can see his mouth moving like he’s talking to her or maybe singing her a lullaby.
I let go of the boy and hold him away from me so I can see him better. He’s got big brown eyes and an ordinary, cute kid face. He reminds me of someone the way he’s looking at me. “What are you doing out here?” I ask.
And then I know. The thought hits me like a punch in the stomach. I ride the wave of hurt and panic until I can breathe again. He’s looking at me exactly like the guy at the Crossroads Bar and Grill did. The guy playing pool. “That was your dad?” I ask even though I don’t need to. “At the bar playing pool?”
He moves his head up and down. Not with enthusiasm or grief or any other sort of emotion I recognize. He just moves his head up and down like its bobbing on a wave.
I feel like I’m sinking. I feel like I’m going under.
The dog whines and paws at the ground by my naked feet.
The bunny is quiet now. The coyotes have moved on.
The boy is my responsibility. He’s mine to care for. I’m taking him with me.
Whomp!
The sound crashes through the desert silence. I flinch as if I’ve just heard the sound of the ax that’s coming to lop off my head.
But I haven’t.
Rex has pushed the car back into position. From my vantage point it looks the same as it always did except for a flat tire.
I scoop up the boy and run to the car. The dog trots along beside.
’71 Pontiac GTO
The Pontiac GTO is an American muscle car classic built by the
Pontiac
Division of General Motors from 1964 to 1974.
The 1971 GTO has wire-mesh grilles, horizontal bumper bars on either side of the grille opening and more closely spaced headlamps than previous models. The overall length of the vehicle is 203.3 inches. A GM corporate edict aimed at preparing the company for the soon-to-be-passed ban on leaded gasoline forced manufacturers to reduce the engine compression ratios. The top-of-the-line GTO engine in 1971 was the 455 HO with 8.4:1 compression. It had the power of 310 horses. With the optional 12 bolt posi-traction rear end and the 3.90 axle, it could go from 0 to 60 in 6.1 seconds and reach 102 mph in 13.4.
Only 357 GTOs were sold before the model was discontinued in February of 1971. Seventeen of these were convertible.
6
Rex holds the steering wheel lightly, like he doesn’t want to cause Linda any more pain. The car looks pretty scuffed up. The front is buckled on Rex’s side right over the front tire. Cracks in the windshield spread, making tiny
zings
and
pops
as the glass fractures. Something is wrong inside the car. The noise, metal on metal, sounds painful as if Linda is suffering from mechanical arthritis. She’s moving slower too. Rex looks worried. He pets her dash intermittently and makes a cooing, clucking
everything will be all right
sound in his throat.
Maybe everything will be all right. In the long run. In the distant yet unimagined future.
I have my doubts.
The car’s headlights aren’t as bright as I would like. Their cones of light barely pierce the darkness. There isn’t a sliver of moonlight in the sky. The stars are beautiful, sprinkled over the velvet black void but they don’t light the way. I wish for a glimmer of electric light. A street lamp or anything that would signal there is still such a thing as civilization and it hasn’t disappeared from the mortal plane. I’m not one hundred percent sure that civilization is what I need. I haven’t been doing so well with civilization so far. But I hate the dark.
I really hate the dark.
The boy sits in the middle of the backseat. He’s swimming in all that space. Rex’s suitcase is pushed over to one side. The boy holds the framed picture of the old lady, Rex’s mother, I guess. I told the boy to put it down about fifty times, but he didn’t. Probably the kid misses his mom. Maybe I should bring him up front and hold him in my lap.
But I don’t.
He clings to his dog’s neck. By the unearthly green glow that emanates from the dashboard, I can see the dog’s face. The beast seems as if he’s holding in a smirk. The creature is entirely hairless, rubbery-looking—implausible.
Rex is watching the kid through the rearview mirror. “You have any kids, Kitty?”
“Me? No. Hell no.”
Every stupid bitch I went to high school with seems to have one or two. Like they’re obligated or something.
“Did you ever think about it? What it’d be like,” Rex asks. He’s still got his eyes glued to the mirror.
“I don’t know. No. Maybe. Do you have any kids?”
Rex has a look on his face. It’s intense, reflective, like he’s got something he’s sorry about. Or maybe it’s just the weird light from the dash.
“What if you get a bad one?” I say. “Seems like that could ruin your life.”
I’ve seen brats running around screaming. Their mothers look old even when they’re young.
“Kids are like people, Kitty. Sometimes they’re bad; sometimes they’re good. Just like anyone.”
I never thought about it like that.
“That could be even worse,” I say. “What if you love your kid more than anything on earth? What if you fuck up?
Screw
up, sorry.”
“Yeah. Having a kid, loving a kid, makes you a bigger target.”
“Why do people do it? I get how it works and all. But what makes you go through with it instead of going for the abortion like it makes sense to do?”
“I don’t know, Kitty. I don’t know.”
One good thing about the dark is that I could see flashing police lights from miles away. Just as I let that thought settle in, I see two orbs reflected in my side mirror.
Fuck!
My heart hammers its way up into my throat and I take a deep breath.
“Rex! You see those lights?”
“Yep.”
“You think it’s the cops?”
“Maybe.”
“If the police come, where are we supposed to hide?”
I should have thought about that.
Fuck!
“I guess we’ll take that road when we come to it. We’ll just let the Lord guide us for now,” Rex says as he winks at me like he knows something I don’t.
How can he be so fucking calm!
I don’t want to turn around in my seat because that’ll only look suspicious, but I do. The lights are gaining on us fast. I kneel in the seat and clutch the headrest like it’ll save me from the hail of bullets that will surely come.
The little boy looks up at me like he’s never seen me before.
“Don’t worry,” I say. “Stay down.”
I can’t tell by his face if he’s worried, but he’s got to be feeling something.
I listen for a siren. For the
thump, thump, thump
of helicopter blades. I swear that dog is holding in a laugh.
The lights are close, closer. They flash and I wet myself a little. I spin around and drop down in the seat. I grab the edge and hold on as tight as I can. I’m waiting for the ax to fall.
A single
whomp
.
I ride the panic wave. It rolls and rolls but doesn’t crest.
Rex steers the car onto the shoulder.
Finally, at the exact moment when I am going to die, the rising dread abates. Whatever’s going to happen is going to happen. I touch my hair. It doesn’t feel like it’s turned white.
The car is still rolling. Rex isn’t pulling to a stop.
Tink, tink, tink, tink.
A sound like music from a child’s piano fills up the black desert vacuum. The tinkling notes coalesce into a tune—“Turkey in the Straw.” A little truck with pictures of ice cream in all its many forms pulls ahead of us and speeds away.
“Catch it!”
I want to reach my leg over and stomp on the gas.
But I don’t.
“Catch it. We need ice cream.” I glance over my shoulder at the little boy. This is the thing that should make him happy. This is the kind of thing a kid would like.
Miraculously, Rex does as I say. Linda creaks and groans as her metallic joints grind. He honks the horn.
Aye-oooh-ga.
It sounds like a joke.
“Do you want ice cream?” I ask the boy.
He lifts his head up. “Yes.” His voice is too loud, too old, too filled with echo—something. Maybe he’s not really a kid. Maybe he’s a midget—an alien—a giant bug in a kid’s body. I want to grab him and examine him.
But I don’t.
That’s crazy thinking.
It’s been a crazy day.
The ice-cream truck slows and pulls to the side of the road. I jump out of the car and run up to the window. The road is still hot. It remembers the sun. I almost do too as I pull out my last fifteen dollars from the pouch around my waist and buy the tastiest stuff I can. A Drumstick, an Orange Creamsicle, a Rocket. A tiny tub of vanilla with a wooden spoon for the dog.
The music tinkles out from the horn on top of the truck and spills over me. A warm yellow glow lights the woman’s face on the other side of the sliding window. She smiles like everything is just fine—normal—ordinary. For a moment I feel like I never grew up, like I never turned bad.
“Seventeen fifty,” she says in exactly the same voice as the bartender back at the Crossroads Bar and Grill.
Same voice.
Same amount.
Fuck.
The moment is lost.
I give her fifteen dollars and push the little tub of vanilla for the dog back to her. She studies me for a moment, then lets me have it for free.
I say thank you even though that is so inadequate I almost cry. I want to say more so she will know how important that moment was, even though it was only a moment. I want to say she’s an angel. That I wish the whole world could dance on the head of her pin.
But I don’t.
The remembered sun soaks into me from the hot sand through the soles of my feet as I watch the ice-cream truck drive away.
Tink, tink ta tink tink, turkey in the straw.
The music washes away as the red taillights fade into the distance.
I bring the ice cream back to the car. The boy takes his from me like I owe it to him.
“What do you say?” I ask, because kids need reminding, I guess.
“Thank you.”
I wish I hadn’t asked him. His deep, echoing voice makes the panic I’ve got tucked away seep into my blood just a little.
As I get in the car, I’ve got a feeling something’s not right. Something bigger than the obvious wrongs, the stuff I’m responsible for. If I’m responsible for this boy, am I responsible for all the wrong he might ever do?
Rex doesn’t say anything when I give him his ice cream. He takes it though.
What do you say?
I don’t have the courage to ask that question again. He doesn’t really owe me anyway. The opposite, maybe.
Rex starts up the car and we limp off down the road deeper into the velvet black night.
I wish the ice cream tasted better than it did. I guess once you passed a certain point, there’s no going back. I’m not a kid anymore. All the kid pleasures are gone.
Fuck.
And this is all that’s left.
“Don’t be mad at me,” I say to Rex. “You can go to L.A. some other time. Jack Lord will still be there.”
Rex doesn’t look over. He is quiet for so long I’m afraid I’ve pissed him off more.
“You can’t mess with a sign from the Lord,” he says. His voice is kind of shaky.
“Look, you just made up the deadline for yourself. Nobody, not even God, said you have to be in L.A. in the morning.”
Rex waves his hand like he’s swatting at something. “You can’t mess with a sign from the Lord,” he repeats a little louder and a little slower like I’m deaf or—Chinese. “The Lord gave you a second chance and you went and killed two more people. That ain’t right.”
“Oh.”
What if he’s right? What if the Lord is real and he’s as pissed at me as everyone else is?