Sirens
warbled in the distance. The woods distorted the sound so I couldn’t tell which
direction they were coming from. Emergency vehicles out for storm victims or
police cars sent to chase me? At this point I didn’t care.
All right. Here was
my plan: I would sit here and wait until the bloodhounds found me. I would
plead for mercy. I’d say I’d suffered a bout of tornado-induced insanity.
Plead
insanity,
advised my lawyer, Sterling Habenmacher.
Your husband was
going to divorce you; you were going to lose him to another woman; you were
going to be kicked out of your own home. So you went a little PMS and offed
your hubby. Happens all the time. Plead temporary insanity and we’ll get you
off with twenty-five years.
I hadn’t listened to Sterling
Habenmacher. I had refused to say I was insane. I had faith in the American
justice system. I’d gotten up on the witness stand and told the jury that I
hadn’t killed my husband. I had no idea how my husband’s blood had gotten on my
nightgown, how my nightie had gotten stuffed behind the clothes dryer, or how
the gun that killed my husband had gotten wedged in a heating duct. I didn’t
even know how to operate a gun.
So
much for the American justice system. The jury hadn’t believed me. The jury had
believed the sneering, swaggering, finger-stabbing prosecutor. The jury had
looked at the bloody nightgown, the video, and the gun and reached a verdict of
guilty
. The jury had the IQs of specimen cups.
Thinking about my
expensive, inept lawyer and the barracuda prosecutor who had gotten himself
elected to a judgeship off publicity from
my
trial, I started feeling
angry all over again. The anger warmed me. I locked my jaw to keep my teeth
from chattering. I scowled at the rain.
Pull it together, Maguire!
Doctor Richard
Kimble,
The Fugitive,
had explained to the jury how the one-armed man
had murdered his wife, but the jury hadn’t believed
him,
either. He’d
been convicted and sentenced to death. When the bus taking him to prison
crashed in front of an oncoming train, did he sit there like the stupid peanut
in the song, waiting to get smashed into peanut butter? No. He’d hauled ass.
He’d spent the rest of the movie jumping off dams and prescribing lifesaving
treatments for accident victims while tracking down the one-armed killer. I
knew every detail of his escape
because
The Fugitive
was the most
popular Friday night Rec Room movie at Taycheedah.
Neurons were
slowly firing in my frozen brain. Was I going to sit here like a chump, wasting
the opportunity the tornado had plopped in my lap? Was I going to meekly return
to Cellblock 23 without being able to brag about encountering a single hot
young hunk out trolling the woods for some no-strings-attached convict sex? No,
I was not.
Fisting the tears
out of my eyes, I wiped the snot off my face with my rain-soaked sleeve and
racked my brain, trying to formulate a new plan.
Okay, here it
was:
Step 1: Ditch the
jumpsuit. Not only did it stand out like a neon traffic cone in the dark, not
only was
Wisconsin Correctional
stamped in big black letters across the
back,
not only was it a garment designed
for the sheer purpose of humiliating its wearer—but it made me look
fat
.
Dress Angelina Jolie in an orange jumpsuit and I guarantee you Angelina Jolie
will look fat! Jumpsuits aren’t so bad for guys—all they have to do is
unzip it and whip it—but for female plumbing, jumpsuits are insane. You
have to unfasten the top, slide it down your hips, and pull it under your butt
every time you need to pee. When I find the sadistic male who invented this
garment I am going to stun-gun him, hogtie him, and staple his equipment to the
crotch of a jumpsuit. “How easy is it to pee
now
?” I’ll snarl.
Step 2: Get the
hell out of this swamp.
Escape tip #3:
Have your backstory ready.
My feet flew out
from under me and I was falling, scrabbling for handholds on slick mud, landing
painfully on wet pavement. Pavement—this was a road! As I drew myself up
onto my skinned knees, a car whipped around a curve, pinning me in its
headlights. It braked sharply, fishtailed on the wet pavement, and screeched to
a stop a few yards away.
From
breakout to busted in five hours. Must be an all-time record for shortest
escape. I was a bungler, a loser, a dud! I
deserved
to be dragged back
to a cell. Hauling myself upright, I flung up my arms in surrender, hoping the
prison cops wouldn’t shoot me or stun-gun me or beat the crap out of me with
rubber hoses.
The
car’s window rolled down and a female voice timidly called, “Hello? Are you all
right?”
I
squinted through the rain at the driver, a lone woman in a Toyota with a dented
rear bumper. Relief washed over me. She wasn’t a cop; she was a civilian, and
she was eyeing me uneasily, which was understandable. I was wet, filthy, and
naked except for my dingy prison bra, underpants, and cheap sneakers. The neon
jumpsuit was buried deep in the swamp.
“Umm
. . . are you hurt?” Her voice quivered; she sounded like she wished she hadn’t
stopped.
I
limped over to her car, favoring my banged-up left knee and crossing my arms
modestly across my chest. The backwash of the headlights revealed a small,
middle-aged woman wearing rain-spattered eyeglasses.
“I
was in an accident,” I said, throwing in a little moan for extra color.
The
woman stared at my underpants and bra. “A
car
accident?” she asked,
skepticism creeping into her voice.
Good
point; where was my car? I took a deep breath. “I met this guy at a bar? And he
asked me to go to this party with him?” In the dark, with my shoulder-length
hair plastered to my face, I figured I could pass for a girl young and naive
enough to go with a guy she didn’t know. The woman’s eyes widened; she was
buying this. Encouraged, I gabbled on. “Only . . . he drove me to this road
back in the woods? And we started, you know—making out. But when I told
him to stop . . .” I let my voice trail off.
“You’re
shivering, sweetie—get in the car.”
She
leaned across and opened the passenger door. I limped around and flumped into
the seat. The fabric was warm and nubby against my wet, goose-pimpled skin. The
woman put the car in gear and we drove off, tires slooshing on the wet
pavement. I kept glancing uneasily over my shoulder, expecting flashing lights
and sirens.
The
woman misinterpreted my nervousness. “Do you think that man is after you?”
“What?
Oh, he might be. He seemed so nice at first, but when I wouldn’t let him—you
know—he started ripping my clothes.” The words tumbled out jerkily, but
my hesitations must have added to my credibility because the woman was tsking
in all the right places. “He—he forced me down, said I’d been asking for
it and now I was going to get it.”
Was
I overdoing it?
No. She was hooked, eager to hear more. I said, “Maybe it
was
my fault. If I hadn’t—”
I’d
said the magic words. “It was
not
your fault,” the woman snapped. “It’s
never the victim’s fault.”
Bless you, Oprah.
Thanks to you, an entire nation now knows not to blame the victim.
The
woman reminded me of my Aunt Beatrice. Bright blusher, smeared lipstick, breath
that smelled like a Coconut Colada. She wore a pink pantsuit and pearls and
looked like she’d just come from one of those girly things—a bridal
shower where the guests have to fashion a wedding gown out of toilet paper or a
baby shower where someone swings a threaded needle over the pregnant mom’s
belly to predict if the baby is a boy or girl.
She turned on the
heater and blessedly warm air blasted out. “Did he . . .” She stopped,
embarrassed, obviously avid for salacious details, but not wanting to press.
I
was getting into my story. I decided that the make-believe pervert ought to get
a little payback before I made my escape. “I kneed him in the—the guy place—and
hopped out of his car and hid behind a tree. He finally took off, but I was
scared to walk on the road in case he found me, so I ran into the woods. Then I
got lost—”
“He
tried to rape you, then he left you alone in the woods? That’s outrageous! It’s
just too bad we don’t have the death penalty anymore!”
A
sentiment shared by my ex-mother-in-law, though I didn’t mention it.
“We
need to get you to the police station, honey. What’s your name?”
Name?
I hadn’t thought that far ahead. Inventing the imaginary rapist had used up
all my creative powers. My mind was as blank as a shaken Etch-a-Sketch.
“Dorothy.” It was the first name that
popped into my mind. I could have slapped myself.
Dorothy,
for God’s
sake!
“Dorothy?”
She gave me a startled look. “That’s an old-fashioned name.”
“My
mom loved
The Wizard of Oz,
” I said lamely.
I’ve
always been called Mazie, but my real name is
Margarita
. Swell name,
huh? Why didn’t my parents just call me
Daiquiri
or
Singapore Sling
while
they were at it? I was named for my mom’s mother, who was Italian and
contributed her dark hair and black eyelashes to my gene pool. The blue eyes,
the freckles, and the small frame came from the Irish side of the family, the
Maguires, who are rumored to have leprechaun blood.
“Pleased to meet
you, Dorothy,” said my rescuer. “I’m Betty Winkler. Such a shame we had to meet
under these circumstances, but it’s lucky for you I stayed so late at my
niece’s baby shower. Who knows what creep or crazy might have picked you up!”
“Fer
sure,” I said, trying to sound like an eighteen-year-old. Now that warm air was
blasting over me I started shivering violently.
“You
must be frozen, being out in that rain. The radio said a tornado touched down
around here.”
Don’t
turn on the radio again,
I prayed.
Momentarily
taking her eyes off the road, Betty swerved into the opposite lane. I clawed at
the sissy handle, wondering whether Betty might be a tad off her meds, but then
realized she was just reaching for something in the backseat. She veered back
into her lane, triumphantly flapping a hooded sweatshirt in my face. “Put this
on before you catch your death. It’s my grandson’s; he’s twelve—he’s
always leaving things in the back. I don’t have anything for your
legs—”
A
siren screamed behind us and I nearly jumped out of my cold, clammy skin. A
police car swarmed up alongside us, lights flashing, and Betty pulled over to
the side of the road. I eased my hand to the passenger door, ready to spring
out into the water-filled ditch and swim for my life.
The
cruiser blazed past at warp speed, siren warbling. Betty nosed out onto the
highway again. “I should have flagged him down,” she fretted. “We need to
report that animal who attacked you. I could call on my cellphone, but under
the circumstances—well, I just think it’s better to report it in person.”
“Right.”
I wrestled myself into the sweatshirt. It was gray, with
Gravity Sucks
in
glow-in-the-dark letters
over a cartoon of a skeleton skateboarder
hanging in air. Designed for a male of the hip-hop generation, it covered my
butt and flirted with my thighs.
“Now where do you
live, Dorothy?”
“Fond
du Lac.” Safe enough. It was the closest city.
“Oh,
I do too. What’s the address?”
Address?
I didn’t know a single street in the city. Then I remembered that our prison
chaplain moonlighted at a college in Fond du Lac. Something
Catholic-sounding.
“Marian!” I
shouted.
“Marian
College
?”
“Right.
You could drop me at my dorm.”
Betty
shook her head. “I will later. But first I’m taking you to the police station.”
A wave of panic
surged through me. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”
Betty’s hand
found mine and she patted it. “Listen, honey, I know you’re feeling scared and
embarrassed, but nowadays the police are trained in how to treat rape victims.”