“It’s okay, honey,” Jessica said from habit, making a second attempt to move toward the shoulder despite her frenzied heart. Her hands would have been shaking if they weren’t wrapped around the steering wheel. She felt herself shaking inside, to her bones.
One of the battery connections must be loose, that was all. She could fix that. If not, she’d turn on the hazard lights and they’d just sit. It was about 10:15, not late enough for the real crazies to start swarming, and despite her paranoia it was unlikely that David was right behind them. A Florida state trooper would see them, give them a jump-start, and they’d go.
“It’s dark,” Kira sobbed as they came to a stop in a small clearing where the road met a hidden woodland.
“Honey, I know, but there’s nothing to be afraid of. We’re just giving the van a little rest, okay? Go back to sleep.”
Another sob, a heartbreaking sound in the darkness. Jessica leaned over to kiss Kira’s forehead, which felt hot and damp to her lips, as though Kira had a budding high temperature. “Kira, Mommy needs you to be a big girl now. Please. I promise, everything is fine. I’m getting out to look under the hood. I won’t go far.”
She felt under her seat for the extra flashlight that was always rolling around when she didn’t need one. She finally remembered to check the glove compartment, and there it was, buried beneath the van’s registration papers. She turned it on, and the light was faint. But at least it was light.
Jessica saw Kira’s blinking, reddened eyes. Kira’s sobbing had stopped as soon as the light came on. Children were so afraid of the dark. Maybe the flashlight reassured Kira, but the weak beam only heightened Jessica’s sense of isolation.
“Stay in the van with Teacake. I’ll be back in one minute.”
Kira grabbed Jessica’s wrist before she could move. “Mommy, do you promise nothing bad’ll happen?” The sound of her tiny voice, a fragile whisper, filled the van.
Jessica shined the light toward her own face, forcing herself to smile for her daughter. “Would this face tell a lie? Huh?”
Kira shook her head, sniffing. “No.”
“Well, then. Nothing bad will happen. I promise. I just need to see why the lights on the car don’t work.”
“Daddy can fix it.”
“Well, Daddy’s not here. So Mommy’s going to fix it.”
Jessica thought about cutting off the engine, but decided against it because she’d learned never to shut off a car that was threatening to stall. Keep the engine going. If it stopped, it might not start again without a jump. Already, the engine was making a strange choking sound that warned her it might not be running much longer anyway.
The overgrown grass nearly reached Jessica’s knees, tickling the tops of her feet in the flats she’d worn to work. She felt prickly briars clinging to her cotton slacks as she walked around to the hood. The flashlight tucked under her chin, she maneuvered her fingers beneath the grease-caked underside to spring the hood open and prop it up.
Belts were turning and the engine hummed, parts of it shivering occasionally with the worrisome sputters she’d heard. She felt a glow of heat from all of the working parts, and she reminded herself she’d need to be careful about touching anything. She found the battery and concentrated the light on it; the connections looked secure, even as she nudged them with the flashlight. She felt the uncomfortable realization that the battery was not the problem. It was barely six months old and still looked new. It must be something else.
While Jessica inventoried the rest of the parts to try to guess what was wrong, the engine abruptly gave up. Now, the silence was as vast as the night.
Kira, she thought.
Kira could be bratty when she was restless. Kira was old enough to know better than to open her car door while a vehicle was moving, but she had a fascination with the keys. She’d probably reached over and turned them, click, and now they would be stuck.
But Jessica didn’t have much time to think about this. Without the reassuring sound of the car engine, Jessica became aware that she was a black woman alone on a deserted Southern roadway; all of her mother’s stories about the civil rights movement and the headlights that had followed her late at night flooded her at once. Jessica had grown up hearing about beatings and shootings, and the deaths of Mickey Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney in Mississippi. Even thirty years later, Bea didn’t like to drive alone on roads anywhere in the South. And forget racists. Wasn’t Florida the home of Ted Bundy and the Gainesville murders?
Jessica was thinking about all of these things when she first noticed the car. It was parked maybe thirty yards behind the van on the same side of the road, barely visible in the dark except when other cars passed and washed it in a brief, revealing light.
A light-colored car. No siren on top, so it wasn’t a police cruiser. It wasn’t the highway patrol. It was just a car sitting in the darkness with no lights inside or outside. As though it had been abandoned. Or it was waiting.
Jessica slammed the hood closed, her heart pummeling her breastbone with the terror she’d been living with all night. She didn’t remember passing another parked car when she pulled over. She was sure she would have noticed something like that. So had it pulled over behind her, following her? Instinct made Jessica turn her flashlight off, so her movements wouldn’t be visible.
“Did you fix it?” Kira asked when Jessica climbed back inside and closed her door. Thank goodness the locks didn’t need power to operate, but she wanted to make sure the sliding side door was latched tight. She climbed to the backseat to check it. Locked. Teacake, who’d been hiding since they left the gas station, meowed from behind her and made her jump.
Jessica was breathing fast, reminding her of the way she’d hyperventilated earlier that day. She returned to the driver’s seat, took a deep breath, and touched the ignition’s keys. Sure enough, Kira had messed with them and shut off the car.
“Mommy, are you mad at me?” Kira asked, knowing Jessica knew.
Still breathing hard, Jessica shook her head. She closed her eyes, tightening her unsteady fingers around the keys. Jesus, she prayed, if I have ever done right by you and your Word, please let this car start up this one time. I won’t ask it again, Lord.
Jessica turned the keys. There was a click, and a distant rattle somewhere beneath the hood, but that was all. The next time she tried the key, pumping her foot hard on the gas pedal, there was no sound at all.
Jessica exhaled, whimpering. She tried again and again, but the van’s engine was dead. Nothing, nothing, nothing.
Well, she knew she couldn’t run. Now she had to figure out what or whom she thought she was running from. Jessica crawled into the seat farthest to the back, pushing aside a bag of groceries, and peered out of the rear window at the car.
Still hadn’t moved, still dark. She couldn’t tell whether or not anyone was inside. If it was someone who wanted to help, why would they park so far behind them? Why turn off the lights? It seemed to Jessica that it had been a long time since any other cars had driven past. They were alone, really alone. Jessica had never felt more helpless.
“Kira,” she said unsteadily, patting the first seat’s back, “come back here, honey. I want you to lie down on the backseat and go to sleep. We’re going to take a nap now.”
“Did you fix the car?”
“Not yet.”
“We’re staying all night long?”
“Maybe so. Come on, now. Hurry up and do what Mommy says.”
“But I’m scared.”
“I know, baby,” Jessica said, grabbing Kira’s arm to help her make her way from the front seat without stumbling. “I know.”
It was drizzling again. Jessica’s senses were so awake, she could hear every drop that spattered the top of the car, an ominous drumming above her. And Jessica heard another sound too. She heard the whomp and the lingering echo of a car door slamming shut. She whirled back around to peer through the rear window.
Someone was coming, walkin
g toward them with a slow stride. It wasn’t even so much that she could see him, because she couldn’t. She knew that he’d turned off his lights because he hadn’t wanted her to see him. But she knew he was there. She knew she would see him soon, when he was closer.
Kira was curled up on her seat. “Mommy, I only got up to Q in the Alphabet game,” she said, “and now there’s no other cars.”
“Mommy needs you to hush and be very quiet now, Kira,” Jessica said, unable to hide the shaking in her voice.
“Or else, the boogeyman will hear?” Kira asked. “Does the boogeyman live in the woods?”
“Shhhhhhhhh.”
There. Jessica could see him now. He was the boogeyman, all right. Jessica would have been relieved to see David at this point, would have kissed his feet, but this wasn’t a black man. He had lighter skin, very short hair. He was wearing a sports jacket, either for the Florida Marlins or the Miami Dolphins. He was still twenty yards away, walking toward them.
Panicked, Jessica scrambled from the back of the van, past Kira, to climb back into the driver’s seat. She pumped out her heartbeat on the accelerator, turning the key, praying something would catch, some miracle would start the van. Utter silence.
“Mommy,” Kira whispered, “I think somebody’s out there.”
Whoever it was couldn’t be up to any good, so Jessica didn’t want to wait around to ask him for a proper introduction. They could run on foot. That was the only thing left. They could run into the rain, right into the road if they had to. There were headlights coming now, way in the distance, and they could take their chances that somebody Christian-minded would stop for a woman and a young girl waving in the road.
“Mrs. Wolde,” a man’s voice called from somewhere behind the van, startling Jessica so much that she yanked the keys out of the ignition and clutched them in her fist.
“My name is Officer Rhodes, with the Orange County Police. Your van’s license tag was reported to us by police in Miami. They’ve been looking for you. Your husband is in custody for a murder. Can you please come out of the van?”
Jessica’s mouth fell open as her brain swam in mingled shock, relief, dread. He was with the police, after all! Fernando Reyes must have gotten her message instantly when she called from the gas station. David was already in custody? She gazed anxiously out the rear window at the man, who stood ten yards behind her. Why was he still so far back?
And why was he holding a glistening metal gun, both hands cradling it beneath his beltline? Though his voice was professional and soothing, the man’s stance looked confrontational. “I’m sure you’re understandably nervous. No one is implicating you in the murder. We just want to make sure you and your daughter can return safely to Miami. I understand your sister is very sick, and your mother has been looking for you.”
Jessica sobbed. It really was over. Lord Jesus help her, it was over. David was really in jail. This awful escape, this awful heartache, was over.
“Mommy, who is that?” Kira whispered, sitting up.
“It’s the police, baby. They’re here to help us,” Jessica said, burying Kira’s head against her chest.
Jessica was reaching for the lock on the sliding door when she saw, as a passing car bathed the officer in light, that he was making a movement she’d seen countless times in movies: He was cocking the weapon he held, as though readying to fire. She also saw his face, which was both familiar and unfamiliar. She couldn’t help thinking that she’d seen him once before, with a beard.
Jessica pushed open one of the side windows, allowing a breath of damp air into the van. “Who are you?” she screamed out. “Why do you have a gun?”
“Mrs. Wolde,” the man said patiently, taking a step toward the van, “there’s no reason to be upset. The gun is merely a precaution. I know you’re in a very excited state.”
“Stay back!” Jessica screamed at him. To her dismay, the man ignored her, taking two more steps toward the van. He held the gun in one hand, at chest level, taking aim. “Who are you?!”
“Mrs. Wolde,” the man said, this time with a very different voice, a lower-pitched voice with an accent she did not recognize, “don’t force me to be discourteous. This will be easier for all concerned if you bring the girl out of the van. Do as I say and I’ll spare her. You have no alternative.”
Jessica’s mind went white, stripped of rational thought. All she had left was instinct; she dove to Kira’s seat and huddled over her, sitting on the floor of the van. Both of them sobbed.
There was an explosion, or at least it sounded like one. A gunshot shattered the van’s rear window and exited through the windshield, spraying glass on all sides of them. Jessica screamed, hugging Kira so tightly against her that she thought she would break. There were glass shards on the seat cover, in her hair. What nightmare was this? What hell was this?
“My patience is gone,” the awful voice said. “Come out now, or you’ll both be found dead where you are.”
“O-kay-kay …” Jessica stuttered, barely able to speak beyond the trembling of her jaw. She tried to raise her voice so the man could hear her strangled words. “Please … don’t … hurt us.”
“Open the door. Bring the girl too. I’ll not repeat myself,” the man said.
To Jessica, a woman who believed in miracles, it wasn’t so extremely remakable that, at that moment, a bright light seemed to fill up the van just when she was praying most earnestly. It was many seconds after she heard the roar of an engine and tires screeching across the asphalt and gravel that she first realized another car had come from somewhere.
She heard a sound—an impact, like a heavy sack filled with cracking wood—and then nothing except Kira’s breathless sobs. An eternity passed, and then she heard someone’s footsteps trampling through the grass. She wanted to move, but couldn’t.
She expected a gunshot next, but it didn’t come.
Instead, a face peered down at her in the window. She wasn’t the least bit surprised to see that it was David’s.
51
Dawit drove thirty miles before he turned on his blinker to signal that Jessica should follow him off of the road (not that she had much choice, since the front bumper of the car she drove was secured to his car’s back bumper with a chain and padlock he’d found in Mahmoud’s trunk). It was midnight. They would be meeting 1-75 soon, toward Gainesville. He’d wanted to stop before then.
Kira sat in the seat beside Dawit, her thumb planted in her mouth, leaning against the door with her eyes fully alert. Dawit had not seen her suck her thumb in at least two years.
“You okay, Duchess?” he asked, touching her hair.
Kira nodded. She stroked the cat, who was at last quiet in her lap. After the initial moment when she saw him, when she ran out of the van to leap into his arms with hysterical-sounding laughter and tears despite Jessica’s warning to keep away, Kira had not said a word.
Jessica climbed out of her car. “Why are we stopping here?” she asked, standing at Dawit’s window.
Though Dawit tried, once again, he could not make eye contact with his wife. The beauty of her face stung him deeply, and the pain surged in him as anger. He looked past her at the thicket beyond the roadway, trying to determine whether or not the tree cover would suffice. It would.
Not looking at Jessica’s face, Dawit held out his palm. “Give me your car keys,” he said.
For a moment, she didn’t respond at all. Then he heard a far-off jingling and realized she must have thrown the keys somewhere. So this was her silent retort. The sting came again.
Foolish woman. Did she think he was going to leave her alone and give her an opportunity to ferret out the keys in his absence? And how did she propose to drive the car, chained as it was?
Dawit opened his car door, pocketing his own keys. Where had he found the self-control to refrain from striking her? As a boy, he’d once seen a villager set his dogs on his wife because she uttered an unkind word to him at the marketplace. He remembered the sight of her
bloody carcass even now. With Jessica, there was no end to her offenses against him. Running away, endangering his daughter, forcing him to practically hold her at gunpoint with Mahmoud’s weapon to convince her to go with him.
“We’ll drive this car, then,” Dawit said evenly. “But I liked Mahmoud’s. At least his air conditioner produced something besides warm, stale air.”
Dawit still felt weak when he imagined what he had seen. He was speeding north and chanced upon the van stalled on the road. If he had not seen them and swerved back around on the median at the moment he did, Mahmoud would have shot Jessica and Kira. Dawit had not even seen Mahmoud the first time he passed, driving at ninety miles per hour. He had not seen him until he came back, when Mahmoud was in the direct path of his headlights.
“Where are you going?” Kira whimpered.
“Your mommy and I have to take care of something. We have to use the bathroom.”
“I have to go too.”
“We’re going in the woods. You just stay here. We’ll stop at a real bathroom for you very soon. I want you to lie down and close your eyes. Keep them closed. Do what Daddy says, Kira.”
He leaned over and repeated the words in urgent French, staring into her wondering, frightened brown eyes, just as he had less than an hour ago, when she was in the van and Jessica was clinging to her, half hysterical.
“Come to Daddy, Kira. It’s safe to come to me.”
“No! Kira, stay here. Don’t go near him.”
“Kira … avec moi. Maintenant, mon bébé. Avec moi.”
And so Kira had come, wriggling from her mother’s arms to leap into his through the rear hatch door he’d opened by reaching through the shattered glass. Now, as she had then, Kira obeyed when he spoke their private language, the language of entreaties. She slumped down in her seat until she was curled in a ball beside the cat, and he tugged her hair before getting out of the car.
My Soul to Keep (African Immortals) Page 37
