Zebra Forest (8 page)

T
he next day, after checking that all the doors and windows were secured, Andrew Snow left us downstairs alone while he took a shower. The minute he heard the water run, Rew, who’d been slumping on the stairs, unraveling part of the old carpet that padded the steps, took off for the kitchen. I followed him and found him yanking open drawers, rifling through them, and then slamming them shut.

“What are you looking for?” I asked him. “You saw him take the key.”

Scraps of paper, pens, and the occasional bottle cap went flying as he dug around.

“Something,” he said. “Anything. He thinks we’re helpless. We can’t do anything. Well, he doesn’t
know
us.”

I didn’t see what pawing through the kitchen drawers was going to get us. I started to tell him the project was hopeless, but he ignored me. Finally, he let out a happy little cry and pulled out the one sharp thing in the kitchen, a long paring knife we used to cut vegetables, when we had them.

“Rew,” I said.

He grinned and ran over to the kitchen door, jabbing the knife tip into the lock. He jiggled it, shoved it in deeper, and twisted it again. He grimaced with the effort of it, closing his eyes as he worked the knife into the lock. Nothing clicked. He pulled it out to find the knife tip bent at a new angle.

“Stupid knife,” he said, pressing it on the counter and trying to force it back into shape. He grunted with the effort.

I’d pulled out a kitchen chair to watch him work, but now I got up to see if I could help. A sound from the living room made us turn.

Andrew Snow, hair dripping, was standing in the kitchen doorway. His eyes darted to the knife in Rew’s hand, and he lunged across the room so fast neither of us had time to react. His fingers clamped round Rew’s wrist, and he shook it once, hard. The knife clattered to the floor.

Andrew Snow bent swiftly and pocketed it. When he looked up again, his face was as blotchy as Rew’s. He advanced on my brother, and I pushed my way in between them, just in case. Through his wet, smelly shirt, I could see his chest heaving, but when he spoke, it was almost a whisper.

“You know what it is to cut someone? You know what that’s like?” he asked. His eyes were so wide open, I had to look away. “You want to see someone’s blood come?”

Behind me I could hear Rew breathing heavy.

“You think about that,” Andrew Snow said. “You think if that’s something you want to see now.”

I wanted to run, but I turned to see Rew staring straight ahead, quaking with outrage. He looked like he’d swallowed something rotten, and he pulled away from us both, pushing past Andrew Snow and stomping toward the living room.

At the door, he turned, face blazing.

“You think I’d be like you?” Rew spat. “Is that what you think? I’d rather
die
than be like you.”

Then he spun around and ran upstairs.

I stood, my back pressed against the counter, Andrew Snow still too close to me, half turned as he watched Rew go. He stood rigid, unmoving except for his hands, which were balled into fists so tight they shook.

“He was only trying to pick the lock,” I said quietly. “He wasn’t going to hurt you.”

Andrew Snow didn’t look at me. He stood like that, too still, until I’d slipped past him and fled the kitchen.

O
n the fifth day of our captivity, a Monday, Rew’s prediction came true. Andrew Snow sent me on a supply run.

He’d been careful with the list. Unlike Gran’s lists, which consisted of anything she felt like that day, sometimes strange things, like peaches and avocados, sometimes chocolate or condensed milk, Andrew Snow’s list was methodical. It had all the food groups, including vegetables. Plus, he wanted a newspaper.

I dug the money out of one of Gran’s hiding places — a fake book that was really a box she kept in the bookcase. One of the jobs I’d gotten in the last year was doing Gran’s banking, which meant going to town and taking out the money we needed for the month. At the bank, Gran kept all the money the insurance company had given her after Grandpa Snow died, and to get some of it, I’d bring her withdrawal slip all filled out, and then go round the house with the fresh bills, filling up her several hiding places. The fake book was my favorite, and so I put twenties in there, because I used twenties at the grocery. I didn’t know how that book was meant to fool anyone, since it was unlike any other we had. Our house was a paperback house, and filled with magazines. The fake book looked like it had been made of leather and had gold lettering on it, even though it was nothing more than painted cardboard. Rew always said it was stupid to put money in a book with gold lettering, but I didn’t think crooks were smart enough to think of that, so I kept right on doing it. This time, though, with Andrew Snow in the house, I did regret it. Still, I tried to take the cash out while he was in the bathroom. It didn’t work. He came out just as I was slipping the book back into the shelf.

“I know about it already,” he said when he saw me shove it back quick, trying to pretend it was nothing. “She’s always had it. Drove my father crazy, but she used to say that if ever there was a hurricane, or a war or something, one should have cash on hand.” I felt stupid then, and something else, too. I guess it was knowing then that no matter how much I wished he weren’t, this was the real Andrew Snow. Maybe up till then I thought Gran might have made a mistake. Maybe this red-haired man wasn’t our father. But he was. I knew it because Gran had said that same thing to us, about hurricanes and wars. She’d said it a million times.

All of a sudden, I could have cried. My throat hurt and my eyes got hot, and if it had been any other day, I would have sat down on the couch and just done it. But Andrew Snow would have seen me, so I bit my lip instead, folded the money, put it into my pocket, and walked to the door.

“Do you want me to go or not?” I asked him.

Just then Rew came running down the stairs. He stopped short at the bottom.

Andrew Snow looked at him. “You’re not going,” he said, and his voice had that edge to it again. “Just your sister.”

“I know that,” Rew said, sounding mad. But when Andrew Snow turned back to me, Rew gave me a nod and patted his pocket, raising his eyebrows to make sure I had the letter with me. I didn’t do anything in response; Andrew Snow was looking right at me, after all.

Andrew Snow walked over and fiddled with the chains he’d rigged up. But just as he got ready to open the door, he gave me a sharp last look.

“Before you think of saying anything, remember I have them right here with me,” he said.

I looked past him at Rew, who gave me an encouraging smile.

I didn’t need to be reminded.

O
utside, I could smell the Zebra. Even if for some reason I stopped feeling cold or hot or rain or sun, I bet I could close my eyes and still tell which season I was in just by the smell of the trees and dirt there. Spring was sweet mud and flowers. Fall had a kind of moldy edge to it, and winter was all dust and bark. As for summer, the Zebra carried a mossy, thick aroma full of baking leaves and oozing sap, which I guess was its growing smell.

If Andrew Snow hadn’t been watching me from the window, I’d have veered off and run straight for it, just to breathe it in for a while. But he was, so I forced myself to turn my back and walk the quarter mile out to the bus. I waited on the main road, baking in the heat, until it came. I didn’t mind taking the bus alone, and I didn’t mind the shopping, but that morning, on my own for the first time in five days, I felt sick at the thought of seeing other people. It felt as if the skin on my head had shrunk and now stretched tight across my skull, trying to squeeze my brains.

Somehow, they’d know. Just by looking at me, they’d figure it out. And then they’d go back to the house, and no matter what Rew said, it would be the police and maybe even the SWAT team, and they’d barge right in. They’d break the door down, and they’d shoot Andrew Snow, and maybe Gran and Rew, just by accident. I shuddered, standing there, imagining it. And I caught myself trying to picture what Andrew Snow would do, what he’d think when they came.
She told.
That’s what he’d think. And he’d be mad. He’d be so mad. And then they’d shoot him.

But when the bus pulled up ten minutes later and I got on and paid my fare, no one even looked my way. I knew the bus driver on that route, and he gave me his usual little smile when I passed. I didn’t say anything, and he didn’t, either. Sometimes I’d know someone on the bus, one of the people riding. But not this day. And no one said a thing to me, and I got off in town like I would have on any regular day.

The nearest mailbox was just by the bus stop, and I couldn’t help but pass it when I got off at my stop. Rew’s letter was in my pocket, all right, and it kind of amazed me that I still had it. If Andrew Snow had really been like Rew, he’d have searched me before I left. He’d have thought of something like this. But maybe that kind of thinking came from our mother. I didn’t know.

A couple of people had gotten off the bus with me, and I wasn’t planning on taking the letter out in front of any of them, so I stood there, looking up at the sky, pretending I’d forgotten something on my grocery list and just generally looking kind of blank, until they’d wandered off. Then I pulled the letter from my pocket.

Rew’s big, careful writing and that red
EMERGENCY
made my heart jump. I didn’t like to look at it. I thought of shoving it fast, into the box, and walking off quick the other way. When did they pick up the mail, anyway? When would they get it? Probably not until the afternoon. And then it would take a day or so in the mail. Which meant that the police chief wouldn’t get it and come running until at least Thursday or so. Andrew Snow would be there all that time, watching me. And he’d probably figure out what I’d done. He’d know it for sure when they came.

I looked again at the letter. Maybe he would just go away on his own. Maybe he would go tomorrow. He’d go to Mexico or Canada or wherever, and we wouldn’t see him anymore. And no police would come to our house, either.

Rew was smart, but he was impatient, too. We could wait a while longer. It wouldn’t hurt us too much. So I put the letter back in my pocket. I’d have time to mail it later if I needed to.

S
ince my first time with Rew at the big grocery store, I didn’t go to that one anymore. Instead I’d found a little market downtown, near the post office and the bank, and I went there. It stood on the corner, next to the drugstore, with those dark, painted windows that reflect back at you on the outside and the words
SUNSHINE GROCERY
in half-lit letters across the top.

Sunshine Grocery looked shabby, but I had picked it out of the several smaller area markets for two reasons, both of which had to do with Molly, the young woman who sat behind the counter. First, Molly was a fanatic TV watcher, and she kept a little set behind the counter going full-time. So I’d go in there to shop and get to hear on
Phil Donahue
why Farrah Fawcett left
Charlie’s Angels
after just one season.

The other thing I loved about Molly was her talent at gum chewing. When I first found Sunshine Grocery, it was the gum popping that brought me back. Molly must have been about twenty years old, and she worked the counter alone for most of the day. I took an interest in everything about her. So did Beth, who sometimes came with me when I went shopping on school days.