What if the driver recognizes the old man’s truck? she wondered, nearly wetting her pants in fear. What if it’s someone the old man works with, and they stop to see what’s the matter?
The car came slowly down the road, its engine hushed by the early morning stillness. The tires made a soft tearing sound on the moist road.
Tasha held her breath and glanced fearfully up to where Hocker was hiding. She couldn’t see him at all, and she started to wonder if he had taken off. Wouldn’t that be a laugh riot? He leaves her with a broken down truck and an unconscious man.
—Who’s maybe dead! her mind screamed frantically.
She’ll take the rap for assault or maybe murder! and he’ll be back on I-95, heading up to Fort Kent or Canada or maybe the edge of the known world. Would that be just Jim-dandy-roo?
The car was still slowly approaching, but Tasha didn’t dare peek out to see how close it was. By the sound of things, it was the size of three stretch limos and was moving at a whopping four miles per hour. When the driver sees the old man’s truck, she thought, panic-stricken, the car will stop and a whole SWAT team will burst out and spray the truck with automatic weapons.
“Stay down!” a voice called out, oddly hushed. It took Tasha a moment to recognize Hocker’s voice. At least for now, he was still up there in the woods. Still, if they had to bolt and run, he’d have the advantage.
At last, there was no doubt in Tasha’s mind that the car was right next to the truck. She clung to the rusted door like a tick on a mongrel, bit down on her tongue to keep from crying out, and waited… waited for the car to move past. The pressure in her bladder was intense.
The car slowed. At least it sounded like it was slowing. Maybe it was the police, and they were looking for the old man! They’ll find him, all right. Right up there in the woods with his brains leaking out of his crushed skull!
But then, in a gentle rush of breeze, the car moved past. Tasha let her breath out in a slow, shrill whistle. Once she was sure it was safe, she peeked out around the edge of the truck and watched the taillights disappear around a gentle curve.
“Now for Christ’s sake! Will you check the truck for the keys?” Hocker shouted. Tasha’s back felt like a rusty spring as she slowly straightened up. Glancing toward the woods, she saw Hocker stand up and vigorously brush his knees. Then she turned and looked into the truck cab. The keys dangled from a faded orange rabbit’s foot in the ignition.
“Yeah,” she said, just loud enough for Hocker to heat “They’re here.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” Hocker said as he walked briskly, bold as could be, down the slope to the truck.
“You can’t just leave him up there,” Tasha said. The fear of being implicated in a murder was still burrowing into her mind like a worm into an apple.
“Aww, don’t get your undies in a bundle ’bout him,” Hocker said, waving one hand over his head. “He’ll wake up with a headache that a bottle of whiskey will cure. Come on. Get in. We can drive this sucker at least until it runs out of gas.”
“Just a minute,” Tasha said. She dashed up the slopes and into the woods, keeping far away from where Hocker had ditched the old man, lowered her pants and released the pressure in her bladder. While she peed, she considered that she still had her backpack strapped on. She could finish her business and then run deeper into the woods. Maybe she could get a half mile between her and Hocker before he even realized she had bolted.
From below the slope, she heard the truck labor as Hocker turned the key in the ignition. It churned, sputtered, and stalled out several times until finally it roared into life. She saw a blue haze of exhaust rising into the air. Suddenly, the horn sounded a long, blaring blast.
“Hey! Come on! Get a move on!” Hocker shouted, his voice muffled by the distance.
Tasha stood up and buckled her pants. Her eyes flashed back and forth from the woods to the road and back to the woods. She could do it now! She could boogie before he could stop her. Then again, why would he stop her? He didn’t seem to care one way or the other if she was with him or not.
“I ain’t waitin’ all day!” he shouted.
“Just a sec,” Tasha answered. She looked over toward where she knew Hocker had hidden the old man, and curiosity suddenly overruled her fear. I should check him myself, she thought. Then, if I stay with Hocker, I’ll at least know if I’m wanted for assault… or murder.
Hitching up her pants, Tasha moved slowly toward the brush. She could see the matted trail, a wide streak through the dew-soaked grass, where Hocker had dragged the body, so she had no difficulty finding him. What did he say his name was? Buddy? She almost laughed aloud in spite of her fear when she saw how Hocker had left him. He was lying flat on his back beneath the bushes, his heels together and his hands clasped on his chest. A spring of dried flowers was stuck in the top pocket of his bib coveralls, and he looked for all the world like a parody of a low-budget funeral.
But was he really dead? she wondered.
It wouldn’t be even close to funny if he was dead! Again, the truck horn blared. “I’m leavin’ in ten seconds,” Hocker shouted. Tasha was going to shout back a response, but instead remained silent as she approached the man. Bending low, she licked her fingers and brought them close to his nose. She braced herself, ready and waiting to see his eyes suddenly snap open. He would grab her and pull her to him, crushing her to death in the steely grip of his thin arms.
Not the slightest breath stirred to chill the moisture on her hand and Tasha was flooded was fear. He was dead! Hocker had killed him! And all because the old man told him he couldn’t give them a ride out of town!
“Oh, shit!… Oh, Christ!” she muttered as she knelt down beside the old man and stared at his face. But then she saw something that made hope stir within her. She might not have felt his breath, shallow as it was, but the artery in his neck was still thumping. She could see it pulsing beneath his skin.
“Last chance!” Hocker shouted.
Tasha stood up slowly, silently regarding the unconscious old man.
Yes! she thought. Unconscious. Not dead!
For just another second, she considered running off into the woods and letting Hocker go his own way. But then she thought, it may not be a chauffeured Cadillac, but it’s wheels, and it sure as hell beats walking. The more distance between her and this old duffer the better! She turned and sprinted down the slope to the waiting truck, swung open the door, and jumped inside.
“Come on,” she said breathlessly. “Get this mother moving.”
Hocker stepped down hard on the accelerator, and the truck jerked forward, leaving three inches of black rubber on the road.
“We’ll avoid town in case anyone recognizes the truck,” Hocker said. He turned left just before they reached the first business buildings on Main Street.
The fuel needle bobbed between three-quarters and full, so Hocker was satisfied that they wouldn’t have to put any money into the truck before they got a good distance past Holden. He draped his left arm out the window and settled back comfortably in the seat as they drove across the bridge into Bangor.
Tasha still felt uncomfortable with the idea that they had just added car theft to their list of crimes, but all in all, things weren’t turning out so badly. At least, for a while, they had wheels!
“You know,” she said as they darted up the entrance ramp onto I-95 North, “that was quite a trick you pulled back there.”
“What, blindsiding the old man?”
“No, with the lug nuts,” Tasha said. “I wouldn’t have thought to use one from each tire.”
Hocker glanced at her and smiled that lopsided grin that bothered her so much. “Hey, I may be crazy, but I ain’t stupid.”
III
Finally, once the sky was completely light, Dale gave up on trying to sleep. He got up and shambled into the kitchen to start preparing his breakfast. Angie was a sound sleeper, and he figured she would stay in bed at least until eight. School started in another fe
w weeks, and then she’d be up at six o’clock every morning. No sense waking her up early just to tell her Larry was dead.
“ ‘Uncle’ Larry” Dale said aloud, sadly shaking his head as he dropped two slices of wheat bread into the toaster slots. He folded his arms across his chest and leaned back against the refrigerator.
Ever since Angie could talk, she had called him Uncle Larry, and in many ways he had been like an uncle to her. He never forgot her birthday, and he always gave her a present that Dale, and Natalie, when she was alive, thought was maybe a bit too much. He always made Angie feel special, too. Unlike some adults, who condescend to kids and either patronize them or act as if they don’t deserve attention, Larry had always made an effort to include Angie in the conversation whenever she was around. He was warm and friendly toward her, always explaining that he, at least for now, didn’t have children or a wife of his own, but Angie was more than enough to make him happy.
But not anymore! Dale thought, and again his eyes stung as they filled with tears. No more presents… No more talks… No more nothing!
Dale jumped and let out a small gasp when his toast suddenly popped up. Moving mechanically, he put both pieces on a plate and went to sit down at the table. The knife made a harsh, grating noise as he spread a thin coat of grape jelly over each piece. He got up, poured a cup of coffee, and then sat down to eat.
Instead, he ended up staring blankly at the two pieces of toast as his mind sifted through his memories of Larry, especially of Larry and Angie. There were so many memories of their deep-rooted friendship, of caring and helping. Dale recalled his kindness during the years it took him and Angie to get over Natalie’s death. So many memories, now spiked with pain and loss.
As Dale stared down at his meager breakfast, his eyesight began to waver. At first everything on the tabletop blurred and smeared, but then, starting in the middle of his vision, a swirling black hole began to form. Dale was barely conscious of his attention as it funneled down into the spinning void before his eyes, but his body reacted. His shoulders and arms began to tremble, as if embraced by an icy wind; his neck and throat pulsed in time with his heart, and each pulse grew louder and louder, until hard-hitting hammer blows thumped his inner ears; his throat felt squeezed shut, as though bony fingers—hands reaching from the grave!—were slowly choking him.
“God. Why are you up so early?” a voice said from behind him.
Dale let out a scream as he spun up and out of his chair. The chair flew over backwards. His knee hit the underside of the table and his coffee slopped onto the plate, soaking his uneaten toast. A jolting pain darted up his leg, but he barely noticed it in his flood of panic as he tore his awareness back into the kitchen.
“I didn’t mean to scare you,” Angie said. The expression on her face twisted back and forth between surprise and laughter. To break the awkwardness, she bent down and righted her father’s chair.
Dale tried to soak up the spilled coffee with a napkin, but when he saw that the toast was doing a good enough job of it, he went to the sink and scooped the whole mess into the garbage disposal. He flicked the switch and the disposal whirred loudly. He wanted more than anything just to stand there with his back to Angie and lose himself in the whining sound of the disposal. Anything if he wouldn’t have to turn to face her.
As soon as she saw his face, he thought, she’d know something was very wrong.
When the throat of the disposal was clear, Dale pulled out the plug and then slowly turned around to face Angie. Already he could see it there on her face. He could see the thin lines of concern and questioning that, in mere seconds, would crumble down like a poorly built brick wall.
“I thought I’d better practice getting up for school, so I set my alarm for early,” Angie said. There was a forced brightness in her voice that cut Dale to the quick.
Sunlight, pouring in through the kitchen window, backlit her, giving her dark hair a wispy nimbus. Her blue eyes sparkled, and her skin was a deep nut brown from an entire summer at the shore with friends. She’s the perfect picture of a healthy, happy, twelve-year-old girl, Dale thought, and when I tell her what I have to tell her, it’ll put lines in her face that will never go away!
“Hey, Dad,” Angie said, when Dale didn’t speak to her right away. “Are you all right?”
“No—I’m not,” Dale stammered, “I’m afraid I’ve got some terrible news.”
She could read from his face that he meant it this was a bad one. With a trembling hand, she drew out her chair from the table and lowered herself into it. Not once did she break eye contact with him as he came over and sat down next to her, pulling his chair close.
He told her about Larry—everything Nichols had told him in his pre-dawn call, and he sat there and let her pitch forward, burying her face into his chest as her tears spilled, hot and wet, soaking into his shirt.
She cried for more than fifteen minutes. Sobs shook her entire frame, making it difficult for her to take anything more than shallow, halting breaths. Before long, her throat was raw, and her crying took on a ragged wheeze that worried Dale; but he let her cry it all out: to cry for Larry, to cry for her mother, to cry for anyone and everyone whoever suffered the loss of a close friend. She cried and moaned until her body was as wrung out as a tattered washcloth.
When it was over, although Dale knew it would never really be over, but when her crying had subsided, he went to the counter, got a box of Kleenex tissues, and handed it to her. Taking several, she rubbed her eyes vigorously and blew her nose. Her shoulders still shook with deeply repressed sobs, but she made a bold effort to pull herself together.
“It’s just not… not fair!” she said, her breath catching like a fish hook in her throat. “It’s… not. Larry was… was so…”
“I know, babe, I know,” Dale said, still leaning close and stroking the back of her head.
When she was four and her mother had died, Angie was too young, really, to register the true depth of her loss. It had seemed like one day her mother just stopped being around, and after a long while she got used to it. Mommy had “gone away from us—gone back to God,” her father had told her. Figuring she was too young, Dale hadn’t let her go to the funeral or anything, so she had never really experienced a deep, personal loss before.
“Why doesn’t stuff like this happen to… to other people?” she sobbed. “Larry never hurt anyone.”
Dale’s eyes were stinging, but he knew he had to be strong for Angie now, like he had been when Natalie died.
“No one ever says life is fair, babe,” he whispered. “And I think that’s one thing, maybe the only thing, that separates kids from adults. You begin to realize that life never has been and never will be fair.”
Angie looked at him with grief twisting like smoky clouds over her face and said, “We maybe realize it, but do we have to accept it?”
Dale shook his head as he got up and went to the refrigerator. He took out the juice jug and poured each of them a tall glass of orange juice. He got a couple of ice cubes from the freezer and dropped them into Angie’s glass, the way she always liked it.
He sat back down, and they drank silently together, each reassured by the nearness of the other. The only sound in the kitchen was Angie sniffing back her tears.
“Well,” Dale said at last, once their juice was gone and neither of them had moved from the table.
“Well, what?”
“Nichols said the funeral would be Monday afternoon, up in Dyer,” Dale said. “I’ve got the week off so I can go up. I was thinking you could probably stay at Mary’s for a couple of days.”
“I want to go, too,” Angie said.
There was a willfulness in her voice that Dale had never heard before. He looked at her and saw the resolve in her eyes. She was biting down hard on her lower lip, turning it a bloodless pink. She looked so small and scared, Dale wanted to smother her in hugs.
“I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” he said solemnly. “I mean, funerals ar
en’t exactly the funnest things going, you know.”
The resolve in her eyes got steelier, but then she let her gaze drift past her father and out the kitchen window to the arc of clear blue sky.
“You know,” she said, almost dreamily, “I always thought funerals were such a waste of time. Like—you know—like they were just so the people still alive could get rid of guilt and stuff they were still feeling.”
Dale smiled gently. “Well, I don’t expect the person who has died really cares one way or another.”
“I never did, either,” Angie said. “But you know, with…” For an instant she paused, almost unable to say his name, but she braced herself and went on. “With Larry, though, I have this feeling that it’s… it’s different somehow. Like it’s important for me to go to his funeral so I can help keep his memory fresh in my mind.”
Standing up quickly, Dale walked over to the sink and, leaning on the counter, looked out over the backyard. His mind was a confusion of half-thoughts and scattered memories, but the overriding thought was that the void, the black, bottomless void had opened up and swallowed another person he loved, just as someday it would slide open and pull him and Angie and everyone down. He knew he had to deal with it his way, and he also recognized that Angie was old enough to decide for herself how she would deal with it.
“You know, it’ll be like—like a part of him is still alive as long as I remember him.”
Dale turned, unable to distinguish his daughter’s face through his swirl of tears.
“What you said before, though,” Angie said, “about how the person who’s dead doesn’t care one way or the other. Do you think that’s really true?”
“What do you mean?” Dale asked, controlling his voice only by an immense effort.
“I mean, do you think that once you’re dead, that’s it? Or do you think the person—like goes on, somehow, like to Heaven or something.”
Dale shook his head and ran the cuff of his shirt sleeve over each eye. She’s not four years old anymore, he told himself. She’s growing up. She’s starting on that rocky road to adulthood, and it would be dishonest not to tell her the truth as I see it.
The Siege Page 3
