by Julie Hyzy
Carrie screamed.
Every fiber in Jen’s body screamed with her. Furious as she realized that she’d given him exactly what he wanted, Jen rebelled with a ferocity that exploded from some untapped, buried power. “No!”
She pressed backward against Carrie, kicking at Pik with both feet as he tried to get in, shoving him back out the door with strength in her legs that she hadn’t needed since childbirth. “No!” she screamed again, the bellow giving her the control she needed to keep fighting.
Her feet struck him again and again, until he slashed at her with the knife. Jen felt the slick warmth of blood on her legs … then searing pain. Carrie’s cries were hot and deafening in Jen’s ear, as they pressed together against the door.
When Jen’s legs reflexively pulled away from the slicing knife, Pik squirmed his way in, shut the door and put the car in gear. The car doors automatically locked with a metallic thunk.
“Get out!” she screamed to Carrie, fighting sudden head-sparkles that signaled impending loss of consciousness. But Carrie, paralyzed, only gripped Jen’s shoulders as she stared in horror at Pik.
Jen twisted her body, clenching her teeth to stave off waves of light-headedness as she reached her left arm up and around Carrie, grasping for the door handle. Locked. She strained, pushed the ‘open’ button and used the minimal leverage she could muster to yank the handle open. Pik had already started to turn the wheel into traffic and the car’s sudden and fast movement worked to help the door open wide.
“Roll,” she said. And then she pushed her daughter out of the moving vehicle, flinching at the sound of Carrie’s body skidding against pavement, praying that she’d fall clear.
Pik had shifted the knife to his right hand, and stabbed it into the seat cushion, just missing Jen’s calf as she thrashed, trying to escape through the open door. The blade stuck in the padding, and he let go of its handle long enough to grab Jen’s leg, preventing her from jumping out.
By now the car had traveled over a block from where Carrie had fallen. Jen tried to sit up, but Pik’s hard fist smashed into her cheek and sent her flying back. She heard the crack of bone before the world went red and bright before her eyes.
He slammed the car into park again, warning her not to move. He got out.
Jen couldn’t move, couldn’t feel anything. She wanted to be taken away from this nightmare, to be back in Chicago with Carrie. To be safe.
Shaking her head—fighting the raw throb that felt like spiked marbles bouncing against her eyes from the inside—she roused herself. Her bloody legs screamed with every movement, but she forced herself to turn—to watch the scene through the back windshield as it unfolded in slow motion madness.
Carrie had pulled herself up to run after the car, but she turned away as Pik came at her.
Why wasn’t there anybody on the street to help them?
Carrie ran, Pik right behind.
Jen’s immediate reaction was to go after them. She started to push the door open, determined to follow, to protect her daughter, but even as she started to move she knew she’d never be able to catch up.
Fighting both dizziness and pain, Jen pulled herself into the driver’s seat, slammed the car into drive and heard her tires squeal through a tight U-turn. She breathed through her mouth to combat the agonizing pressure in her face. She took a hard turn at the second corner. They’d gone right, and Carrie was still a little ahead of Pik, running on a sidewalk across the street.
Jen swerved to avoid an oncoming bus then screeched another right, watching the frantic bounce of Carrie’s hair, and her daughter’s frequent, terrified looks back, as Pik gained on her.
Carrie made another right, crossing the street, then headed into the library parking lot. It dawned on Jen what her daughter was doing. She was navigating back toward the Opera House. She was coming back to find her.
Jen blasted the horn to let Carrie know she was there.
Both Carrie and Pik turned, startled, but then Carrie stumbled as her foot missed the curb at the library’s parking lot driveway.
“No!” Jen screamed.
Pik doubled his speed, his head twisting between the two women, the knife gleaming in his hand. Carrie got up, ready to sprint again.
Jen’s body tightened with exertion and pain as she straightened her leg, plunging it against the gas pedal. She gripped the wheel, forcing herself to feel nothing but hatred. She bore down on his racing figure, screaming for Carrie to get out of the way.
Her daughter, instead, turned. Their eyes locked. Pik’s forward motion would be enough to get out of the car’s path. They both realized that. Even as the car gunned ahead, Jen knew her movements were too slow, too little, too late.
Carrie ripped the backpack from her shoulders, and holding it by one of the straps, swung it into Pik’s chest, jumping clear, as Jen rammed her body weight onto the accelerator. The force of the backpack made him stagger. Only for a moment.
But it was enough.
As the car slammed hard into him, Jen screamed. Pik flipped onto her hood, cracking the windshield a split-second before the airbag exploded in her face. She heard, rather than saw, his arms, legs, and torso tumble across the car in a cacophony of crushing metal and bone.
Her face smashed into the suddenly inflated pillow, jarring her battered brain. She couldn’t remember how to stop. She didn’t know anything. But some survival instinct forced her to throw the car into park. The vehicle stopped short, its grating gears protesting misuse. Her eyes burning, watering against the inflation dust swarming her face, Jen pawed at the airbag, wrestling it out of her way. She watched Pik’s body slide forward, dropping off the end of the hood with a thud.
Jen listened to her own shallow breaths for what seemed like hours until Carrie pulled open the driver’s side door. “Mom?”
There was only one thing Jen wanted to know. “Is he dead?”
Carrie didn’t answer, but her eyes scanned the seat, the floor. The cell Pik had thrown was on the passenger side mat. Carrie ran to that side of the car, and pulled up the phone, dialing, even as she kept her gaze focused on Jen. One hand gripped Jen’s, and her voice broke frequently as she explained, but, still, spoke clearly to the 9-1-1 dispatcher, directing the authorities to the scene.
Moments later Jen heard sirens. Very near. She closed her eyes.
Three weeks later, Jen drove her replacement car north on Tamiami Trail, headed for the airport. This time, she’d opted for a red mustang convertible, and no GPS. With the top down, Jen twisted her head, enjoying the fingers of hot wind in her hair, and the late-morning sun on her bare arms.
Pik was dead.
She’d killed him. Or, rather, she and Carrie had killed him. She imagined that wasn’t quite the mother-daughter experience he’d been looking for.
Precisely when Pik had first latched onto them, they might never know, but the Sarasota police identified him. Rufus Borden was the chief suspect in the murder of five young women in Florida and Georgia over the past three years. His MO, the police said, was to drift in and out of towns, taking on new identities. Thank God she hadn’t known that at the time. If she had, Jen doubted she would have had the courage to fight him.
Gooseflesh tingled Jen’s arms and she suppressed a shudder. Before this, the idea of having a daughter start college was the scariest thing she’d ever faced. She touched her still-tender cheek and winced. She thought about Carrie, back at her dorm. For the first time, she felt safe in the knowledge that Carrie would be just fine on her own.
Time to get back to Chicago, Jen thought. Time to go home.
A half-block in front of her, the traffic light at Myrtle Street turned yellow.
Jen floored it.
What’s Real
“Nice statue.”
His hands wrist-deep in sudsy water, Al glanced up at the girl’s words. He pulled a tall pilsner glass from the stainless steel sink and rinsed it under the running faucet, half-bent, his chin at the same height as the shining mahoga
ny bar.
Without pulling his hands up, Al twisted toward the back counter, knowing full well what statue she was talking about, but taking the opportunity to milk the moment. He shot the girl a grin.
“You like it?”
“Where did you get it?”
Her straight white teeth and bright blue eyes, should have made a pretty smile, but she was not a pretty girl.
Al squeaked the handles to shut off the water. He hadn’t been a bartender this long to not know a person who wanted to talk when he saw one. Why she’d chosen to stop here, so off the well-worn path of most travelers, however, was beyond him.
He wondered how long she’d had the scars. Long time, he figured, both from her un-self-conscious manner, and the pale pinkness of the twisted skin. Had to have been a big fire. From the looks of it, she’d barely made it out alive.
Somehow she had a full head of brown hair which she repeatedly tucked behind a perfect ear and a misshapen one as she sat, watching him. He guessed her to be around twenty-eight, maybe even older. Scars changed everything. He fished around the bottom of the sink for the stopper.
“Gift,” he said. “A long time ago.”
She considered this. “Why does the cowboy have two heads?”
Al grinned again. If only he had a nickel for every time somebody asked that question. He grabbed a black terrycloth towel from the back counter and dried his hands. “You ever hear of Frederick Remington?”
“Yeah,” she said. “My mom was into art.”
Al wiped the last drops of water from his hands and tossed the towel back onto the counter next to the statue. Positioned on the back bar, the two-headed figure stood center stage, its place of honor lit by a bright overhead beam, making the faux bronze finish glow. “Well,” he said, drawing out the word, “this ain’t a Remington.”
Her laugh was light. “I didn’t think it was.”
Al wondered what a girl her age was doing in dive like this. And on a Friday night. She’d sat on that stool nearly all afternoon, nursing Diet Cokes and getting up only to visit the ladies’ room. She hadn’t spoken more than two words since she’d arrived. At least not till now, when everyone else had gone home.
“You from around here?” Al asked, kinda to be polite, kinda because he was nosy.
“No. Midwest.”
Al processed that little bit of information without comment.
“So, what’s with the statue?” she asked again.
“You like it, huh?”
“It’s different.”
Al moved around to the far edge of the bar and lifted the hinged section to allow her passage. “Come on around,” he said. “You can see it close up if you want.”
She jumped off the stool with unexpected grace and approached the statue with. Her chubby right arm was covered in raised welts. She reached forward—a tentative movement—and it was then he noticed she had only two fingers on that hand. Two fingers that reached forward to touch the fake bronze, the coppery colored paint that covered the statue, chipped in places over the years to reveal the bits of odd-shaped metal underneath.
“Go ahead,” he said. “You ain’t gonna hurt it.”
The horse, in full gallop, raced to nowhere with dead eyes while the cowboy sat astride it, two hats raised in his left hand above one forward-facing and one backward facing head, while his right hand held the straining reins.
Her fingers, the two, caressed the horse, running along the equine neck, till it reached the cowboy. Here, she touched –the hats, the heads, the single body, skimming her damaged fingers over the man and the back of the horse and, dancing them backward to wind up at the tail, she looked up at Al with a smile so wide, it perplexed him.
A sparkle shot out her blue eyes as she spoke again. “You didn’t tell me why he has two heads.”
Al gave a little half frown. “It’s nothing, really.” He rubbed a finger over his bottom lip. “I had a friend, a real good friend. An artist. And a woman at that.”
The girl raised her sparse eyebrows.
“Well, she made me go along with her to all these museums and art shows and whatnot. Didn’t enjoy it much. But I enjoyed her company, and I guess that’s all that matters really, when you come down to it.”
Al shook his head. “Some of that crap they call art – well, I just don’t get it, and I just don’t care. But I did like the one guy. Remington.”
She watched him, said nothing.
“Well, I took to these bronze kinda sculptures he had. Liked them so much that I wanted to buy one.” Al laughed, remembering. “Laura, that was the woman’s name, she poked fun at me like crazy. Asked me if I had any idea how much one of those little sculptures would go for.”
“I take it you never bought one.”
“Nope.” Al’s eyes focused on the figurine that had made it through these past twenty some odd years nearly unscathed. “So Laura did the next best thing. She made one for me. Took her near a year to finish. And it ain’t bronze, of course, it’s just paint.”
“Pretty.”
“Yep. My prized possession. Made outta some kind of junkyard stuff she cobbled together, and looks even better than any real one would, don’t you think?”
The bright light set above glinted off the bronze-colored statue’s edges as he continued. “It’s got two heads ‘cause that was a joke we had between us. She always told me that I never knew what was real. Never knew which way to look to see things that were right in front of me. Said if maybe I had two heads, I woulda had a better chance.”
Al’s fingers took a turn skimming along the statue. “Guess maybe it wasn’t such a joke after all.”
“You’re not together anymore?”
Al leaned back, shaking his head. “Nah. Not for a long time.”
“What happened?”
Gesturing the girl back to her seat from around the back of the bar, he laughed. “That’s my job, missy. I’m supposed to get people to open up about their life histories. Not the other way around.”
“So take the afternoon off for a change.”
Al grabbed at the terry cloth towel for something to do with his hands. He looked at her bright eyes surrounded by twisted skin as she eased herself back onto the stool. Tempting. “Nah,” he said. “I ain’t proud of that time in my life. She…Laura…well, she got herself pregnant.”
The bright eyes widened. “All by herself?”
Rubbing at the creases left on his forearms from leaning on the edge of the bar, he shook his head. “I didn’t have what it took to be a father, a husband. Any of those things. I wanted to see the world, to experience life. Hell, I was only twenty-six.”
“You never saw them again?”
Al’s shoulders dropped as he gazed upward and across the room. “Never. Laura tried to slap me with a paternity suit. Tried to get me to give up half my income to help raise the little girl.”
“Your daughter.”
“Yeah. I guess. My daughter.”
“You fought it?”
“I was going to—and I probably woulda lost,” he said. “But Laura gave it up. Never found out why. Somebody told me once that if I had to pay half for raising her, I’d have the right to get custody, at least sometimes. Maybe that scared her off. I wouldna pushed for that, though. No way.”
“And you’ve never tried to contact your daughter?”
Al laughed. “Nah. I got nothing to give a kid. Got no time, either. I mean, hey, look at all the customers I gotta keep happy all day.” He gestured around the empty room, and the girl smiled at him. But it was a sad smile.
“What if she wanted to contact you?”
Al shook his head, looking for something to clean. “It wouldn’t be a good idea. I’m no father. I don’t want to be one.”
“You’re not curious about her? Not interested in the least?”
“Nope. I know everything about her.”
“But you said you never went back.”
“And I never did,” he said, tapping the side of
his head. “I got it all right here.”
The girl shook her head, clearly not understanding him.
Al looked at her, keeping his eyes focused into hers, trying to avoid looking at the disfiguring scars. “She’s beautiful, you see. The most beautiful girl in the world. And she’s athletic and smart. She’s got about three college degrees and works for some big company that pays her a lot of money. She’s got men asking her out every night of the week, but she’s waiting for the right guy to come her way. And he will. But she’s only twenty-three. Turned it last February the eleventh. She’s got time.”
The girl opened her mouth, as if to speak, but Al continued. “You see, if I ever did meet her, she might not be all those things. Maybe she’s not blonde like she was when she was two. Maybe she dropped out of school at sixteen. Maybe she’s a hooker.” Al forced a laugh, and shrugged. “I don’t want to know. She’s my little girl, and she’s right here, in my head. She’s perfect.” He tapped at his temple again. “Ain’t nothing going to change that.”
The girl nodded, scratched at something in her eye and smiled. Her bright white teeth, so straight, so flawless, belonged in a prettier face. “Well,” she said. “Looks like it’s time for me to get going.”
Al gave a quick nod, watched her as she gathered her things. He wondered about the scars. He wanted to ask her how hard it was, how she’d survived, what life was like—but he didn’t. He let it go. Tomorrow she’d be gone, he’d never see her again, and the less he knew about her life story, the better.
The big crowd would start gathering here soon, he thought, glancing at the big neon clock. He’d wasted a lot of time talking to the girl this afternoon, and needed to hustle if he wanted to finish cleaning all the glasses before the place started to hop.
She had her hand on the bar, looking as though she wanted to say something. Opening her mouth, she shut it again, tapping her damaged hand on the edge of the bar before crinkling her nose and turning away. She let her fingers drift slightly along the edge of the bar for a moment. “I’m glad we got a chance to talk,” she said.
Al smiled at her. She was such a young thing. He wished her well. “You take it easy,” he said.
