by Tim McBain
“How am I not friendly?”
“When Bennett and those other guys walked by us before, you didn’t make a peep. You were like a turtle hiding in your shell.”
“I was not!”
“Were too.”
I drew invisible spirals on the table with my finger.
“I was playing it cool.”
Breanne was in the middle of taking a drink of water and almost spit it out when I said that.
“Shut up,” I grumbled, though I couldn’t help but smile a little.
“I’m not trying to bust your balls, Erin. They’re only boys. They don’t bite. You’re allowed to utter a few syllables in their presence.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
We went back to walking in aimless circles around camp. Eventually, Izzy reappeared. She hopped and skipped around us, twirling a piece of bottlebrush grass between her fingers. She has the wildest hair — super long, perfectly spiraled curls. It suits her, really. She’s kind of a tiny spiraling hurricane of a kid.
And the way she follows Breanne around like a puppy is pretty funny. Actually, when I consider how annoying Breanne finds having Izzy for a shadow, it’s more like a fly buzzing around a horse’s ass than a puppy.
Hey, remember when we went horseback riding for your tenth birthday and your aunt gave us a quarter for every horsefly we killed? The horse I rode was named Peanut. Can’t remember yours. (Wait… this doesn’t make us horse girls, does it?)
Either way, I was thinking about that, which made me wonder how old Izzy was, so I asked Breanne.
“How old is your sister?”
“What are you talking about? I don’t have a sister.”
“I thought Izzy was your sister.”
“What? No. She’s just some kid that lives in my neighborhood.”
“Oh,” I said. “I just figured since she’s always hanging around you…”
“Didn’t you notice that she always sits at that table in the mess tent with all the kids and the butch-looking lady soldier… whatshername… Sergeant Foressi?”
“Well, yeah. Isn’t that just like… a kids table? Like a day care kind of thing?”
Breanne snorted.
“No, dummy! Those kids are all unaccompanied minors.”
“Wait. Those kids are here without their parents?” I glanced over at Izzy, who was now crab-walking around on her hands and feet. “Her parents aren’t here?”
Breanne shook her head.
“What happened to them?” I asked.
She shrugged. Then, with barely a second of hesitation, she called out. “Hey, Izzy. What happened to your parents?”
“Breanne!” I hissed.
I couldn’t believe she just asked point-blank like that.
“What? Am I supposed to act like it’s some big secret?”
Izzy let her butt drop into the grass.
“They got sick.”
She didn’t come right out and say that they died, but I knew that’s what she meant. No one survives the plague.
“What about your brother?” Breanne asked, then turned to me and lowered her voice. “Speaking of manmeat. Her brother is another specimen.”
Sometimes I wonder if Breanne hears the things she says out loud.
“Him, too. They all got sick.” Izzy brushed the fluffy seedhead of the grass over her legs. “Except for Banjo. He never got sick, but they still wouldn’t let me bring him.”
Breanne started walking again, leaving Izzy sitting in the dirt pondering lost family members.
“Who’s Banjo?” I asked.
“My cat,” she said. “Mrs. Walker said I couldn’t bring him on the bus. The bus was for people only. She said I had to leave Banjo outside, and that he could take care of himself.”
“That’s probably true,” I said. “Cats are really good hunters, you know? I bet he’s stalking through the grass right now, having a great time chasing after mice and stuff.”
Her face brightened a little at that.
“He used to catch mice and moles and birds and one time he caught a snake.”
“Yeah?”
Her head bobbed up and down and then stopped. “But even though he’s so good at hunting, he’s really scared of thunder. He had a secret hiding spot way in the back corner of my room, under my bed. When it was storming outside, and I couldn’t find him, I always knew that was where to look. But now he can’t get there.”
Kel, this kid looked so sad talking about her cat. And then I thought about how her whole family is dead. I realize now, of course, that this is why she follows Breanne around like she does. She doesn’t have anyone else. I know that doesn’t necessarily make her Breanne’s problem, but she could try to be a bit nicer to the kid, for fuck’s sake.
“Well, Banjo sounds like a pretty smart cat. I bet he found himself a nice snug hidey-hole somewhere that he can run to when it storms. I wouldn’t worry.”
“Are you coming, or what?” Breanne was standing about twenty yards away with one indignant hip thrust out.
I glanced back at Izzy, and I think what I said might have helped, because she chewed her lip for a second and then said, “Yeah, you’re probably right.”
Man, my hand is tired from all this writing. Can’t remember the last time I wrote so much by hand. What a sad little weakling I have become.
Dinner starts soon. Hopefully, the food will be better than it was at lunch.
Your BFF, who is considering a hunger strike if the food doesn’t improve,
Erin
Delfino
Rural Missouri
9 years, 133 days after
I sit. Waiting. The shotgun is my only company for the moment. That and this notebook, I guess. My trusty pen.
The grass conceals me. Tall stuff that’s drying out, going all beige and wispy. When I sit, like I am now, it closes off my view on all sides. Grass walls encasing me.
If I perk up onto my knees, though, I can see the road, can see the Delta 88 sitting there on the highway. It’s a little downhill from this spot to the interstate, so the terrain itself helps hide me from view.
The hood of the car hangs open like a mouth. Its precious insides exposed. It looks so vulnerable. I guess that’s the point, though.
Here it is, motherfuckers. Now come and git it.
Baghead and Ruth are some four miles back up the highway. I set them up in the lobby of a busted out Motel 6. Sleeping bags all laid out like a slumber party.
Half of the building — the half facing the highway — looks rotten as hell. Falling to soggy pieces. Much of one stucco wall has fallen away, opening three floors of rooms to the world like some gigantic dollhouse.
And the insides look wrong from the water damage. Bulging bellies of drywall. Brown swirling stains. The warped wood laid bare along the floor bends into creepy smiles.
Total horrorshow.
But the other side of the building — the dark side of the moon, if you will — looks fine, especially the lobby. Dry and clean. Untouched. Ruth and I thought it felt more secure than the rooms with the broken windows and whatever, so we set up our stuff on the cushioned benches in there. Better than sleeping in the car, I expect.
I had four Vicodin in my kit that I’d been saving for an emergency. I figured losing a hand would count as one, so I gave them to him. He got real agreeable after taking a couple.
I told them I had to make a gas and gear run — hit up one of my caches — and it would be better for everyone if they rested here while I went for it. They accepted this more readily than I anticipated. I’d been fixin’ for a fight, but it didn’t come to that.
So now I wait.
It’s funny. I keep holding my breath every few minutes, thinking maybe I hear the rumble of an engine in the distance, but no. Just my imagination playing tricks.
The car is the bait in this trap, of course. Sure looks like we ran into engine trouble of some kind with that hood up. And I figure our friend (or friends) in the Fiesta will want to stop and take a long look
at that.
I pulled over just at the edge of an exit ramp, and the huge Marathon sign looms overhead, hovering about the gas station down where the ramp ends. That sign way the hell up there is one of the only things I can see when I’m tucked all the way down in the grass. A beacon. I figure they’ll head that way after poking around the car a moment, assuming we probably did the same.
I had to walk nearly to the gas station myself, going well out of the way to avoid beating a trail in the brush that might be visible from someone checking out the car. Your humble narrator thinks of things like this when he makes plans to shotgun blast a man or two in the face. His thinking gets real, real clear all of a sudden in moments like that.
So what could possibly go wrong?
Erin
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
8 days before
Kel-
After all the excitement of arriving yesterday, I didn’t even mention that our camp is all the way on the far side of Pittsburgh. At least I think it is. I haven’t really been able to consult Google Maps with everything still down.
See, we tried to go to the camp set up over by Lebanon, but that one was full. So they put us and a bunch of other people on a bus to take us to a different camp in Lancaster, but once we go there, that one was full too! Eventually they shipped us all the way over here. The bus ride took six freaking hours. And we kept picking up people on the way.
The bus got so full, they made us leave everything but one backpack’s worth. Some people were super pissed off about that — this older lady brought like three fur coats that she had to dump at one stop — and it made me glad I hadn’t really brought anything valuable. We did have to abandon a whole box of food that I am really missing now, because the grub here is absolutely disgusting.
But enough of that. You probably know all about the woes of camp life. Now let us rewind to earlier this evening, after dinner. My mom went off for some kind of meeting with a bunch of the other ladies here to brainstorm ways to improve our camp. We’ve barely been here longer than a day, and these crazy chickens are already trying to meddle. Whatever. As long as she leaves me out of it and doesn’t sign me up for something like toilet-paper-rationing duty, I don’t mind. In fact, if she’s off worrying about how to get more doilies on the tables in the mess hall, then she’s got less time to spend butting into my biz-nass.
I met up with Breanne, and we did our now standard routine of moseying up and down and around the rows of tents. There have to be at least 200 already set up, and the National Guard guys are out there from pretty much dawn to dusk, setting up more. My mom and I are in an “All Female” tent. Since Breanne is here with her dad and stepmom, they are in a mixed-gender tent with two other families. But I’m getting off track!
So we were cruising around with Izzy in tow. Every time we passed this certain spot in the big perimeter fence that surrounds the camp, I noticed Breanne studying it extra hard. Just as the sun got to that point in the sky where it starts to turn everything white-gold, she broke off from our path circumnavigating the tent area and headed for the back section of fence. We crossed a big empty space of scrubby grass and a few shrubs — I’m guessing they’ll add more tents there eventually — and then I figured out the spot we were heading for. There was a gap in the fence, just big enough for a person to walk through. I knew from eavesdropping in camp that there’s a stream somewhere back there that people have been using to wash clothes and take makeshift baths.
Breanne sidled through the space, and I followed. Izzy put one foot through, and Breanne stopped her.
“If Sgt. Foressi finds out you left the perimeter, you’re gonna be in deep shit.”
“Language! And how can I be in deep doo-doo if she doesn’t know I left camp?”
“Because I’ll tell her.”
Izzy stomped a foot.
“You’re mean! And you’re a potty mouth!”
“Tough titties. Now run along,” Breanne said, waving a dismissive hand.
She didn’t wait to see if Izzy complied, she just turned and continued toward the tree line in the distance.
Meanwhile, I wondered about the fence. Is the National Guard trying to keep us in or are they keeping something out? I mean, everyone here came voluntarily… so I don’t get it. I guess it’s probably just how they do things. That seems to be how the military functions. No one seems to know why they’re doing anything, they just know they’re supposed to do it. So they do.
By the time I’d finished with that thought, we’d started along a path through the trees. I heard voices and music, and then through the brush, I saw one of the National Guard Humvees parked next to a wide stream. It’s really almost a river if you ask me. I mean, I didn’t get in to find out, but it looks deep enough to swim in.
Five or six guys were sitting in and around the vehicle. I recognized the three from yesterday in the mess tent — Bennett, Jimbo, and Max. They must have been officially off-duty, because they were drinking beer and none of them wore their camo jackets or hats. Bennett wasn’t even wearing a shirt.
One of his perfect man brows perked up when he saw us.
“What are you doing back here?”
“It’s a free country, isn’t it?” Breanne said, crossing her arms, but more in a way that would increase her cleavage versus blocking view of her boobs.
“Not supposed to leave the perimeter, technically.”
“Well Sergeant, everyone else comes back here to swim and wash their clothes in the river.”
A one-sided grin spread over Bennett’s mouth. “You going in with or without your clothes?”
“Stick around and find out,” she said.
After a moment spent staring at Breanne, Bennett’s eyes flicked over to me.
“Who’s your friend?”
“Oh, this is Erin.”
She hadn’t actually introduced me yesterday, and now she just waved her hand in almost the same way she’d done when she dismissed Izzy. Like she wanted him to forget about me so they could get back to their adorably flirtatious banter. Vomitorium, right?
Remembering how she’d badgered me about not talking last time, I forced out a, “Hi.”
A couple of the guys, including Max, returned the greeting. Bennett reached a hand back into the depths of the Humvee and returned with a lit cigarette.
Breanne flopped against the side of the vehicle like she was melting.
“I am dying for a smoke.”
Funny, because that was the first mention of a cigarette I’d heard out of her.
Bennett ignored her. His eyes kind of crawled over us as he sat there and smoked, finally landing on a spot over my right boob. After a long drag, he gestured at my hoodie.
“You like Nirvana?”
“Oh,” I said, glancing down at the smiley face pin you gave me last Christmas, relieved that he hadn’t been staring at my boobs. Or maybe relieved that he wasn’t staring at my boobs anymore. “Yeah.”
Breanne stepped in front of me a little, sticking out her chest like maybe he needed a reminder that she also had breasts.
“I love Nirvana,” she said. “They’re like my favorite band. I hate new music.”
“Check this out.” Bennett’s hand snaked back into the vehicle. From his folded up jacket, he pulled what looked like a small metal box out of the pocket and flipped the top open. It was a Zippo lighter decorated with a big enamel devil face.
He flicked the flint wheel, producing a wavering flame.
“This belonged to Kurt Cobain.”
“Get the fuck out,” Breanne said, but I could tell from the glow in her eyes that she was eating it up.
“It’s true. My dad roadied for them. He was Kurt’s guitar tech for the In Utero tour. Kurt gave it to him at the end of the last show.”
“No way,” Breanne said, eyes wide with wonder. “Can I see it?”
She put a hand out, and Bennett made a show of thinking it over. Like it was some precious, fragile artifact she might drop. Even if she d
id, it wasn’t like it would break.
Finally he placed it into her palm. She turned it over in her fingers, admiring it. Sunlight glinted on the polished surface. The devil was smiling, and the gleam in his eye reminded me of the way Bennett’s eyes looked when he asked if Breanne was going in the water naked or clothed.
You know, that’s what I don’t like about him. It isn’t just the cocky attitude. It’s his eyes. He has that sort of, I’m laughing at you, but you’re too dumb to even know why sparkle in his baby blues.
“Wow.”
Breanne was totally in awe.
She made Bennett give her one of his cigarettes so she could light it with the Kurt Cobain Lighter.
After studying it a few seconds more, she handed the holy lighter off to me. I didn’t really want it. I mean, I like Nirvana and all, but I guess maybe I’m just not that impressed with some trinket supposedly formerly owned by a dead guy.
But I pretended to be moderately interested and gave it a once-over. I was about to pass it back to Breanne when I noticed a stamp on the bottom. It had a copyright symbol and then some roman numerals. And I just so happen to have memorized those stupid roman numerals for Mr. Staffan’s Humanities class last year.
“This lighter was manufactured in 1999,” I said.
I didn’t even think about what I was saying, at first. I thought I was making an innocent comment on the date. I guess part of my brain was one step ahead of me on the whole Bennett-is-a-lying-weasel thing, and the words just came out before the rest of me put all the pieces together.
“What?” Bennett asked.
“The copyright on the bottom. It says 1999.” The dumb half of my brain finally caught up with the genius part. I tried to keep a straight face, but I think I was probably smirking. “Kurt Cobain died in 1994.”
He reached out, snatching the lighter from my fingers.
“Where? I don’t see a date.”
“MCMXCIX. 1999 in roman numerals.”
Bennett’s eyes got this new look, like he was working out a math problem himself. And then he scoffed.
“Like I’m supposed to trust you to read fucking roman numerals? What are you, an eighth grader?”
