Vanished

by Mary McGarry Morris

  When it was almost suppertime, Ellie came across the way to the cabin door. She brought her small white face against the screen.

  “The kids’re getting hungry, Pops.” She shaded her dull, close-set eyes and squinted. “You in there?”

  He nodded, then added, “Yup.”

  “Well, Dotty’s asleep and the kids’re starving and Alma says everyone can go screw, she’s not cooking for a hotelful no more and I tried, Pops. But just looking at the cans is making me sick, much less cooking.… Think maybe you could fix something?”

  He got off the bed and followed her. In the front room the television set sputtered with static every few minutes. Dotty slept on the couch with her mouth wide open and an ashtray heaped with butts on her chest. Canny and the two Huller girls were on the floor trying to watch cartoons. Light and shadows from the screen flickered on their faces. Krystal and Kelly both scratched their heads. Canny glanced at him uneasily. Her hair hung to her shoulders in greasy, wet-looking clumps.

  Huller was in the barn and Alma was nowhere to be seen, but every few minutes, like the far-off thunder, her shuffle rumbled overhead. Wallace opened two cans of Spam, which he sliced thin for eight, then added to the onions already frying in the pan. There were no potatoes, so he boiled macaroni. When that was cooked and drained, he added it to the Spam and onions.

  Ellie ran into the bathroom and slammed the door. Even with the water running, he could hear her retching. Outside, the sky blackened suddenly with another storm and lightning flashed. The dog crept up the porch steps and huddled close to the door. With every tremble of advancing thunder, it whimpered and pawed the chicken wire that held the bottom door screen in place. Wallace looked at the dog and wondered why it didn’t bark to be let in or just push in the door. The dog looked back through heavy wet eyes.

  Wallace went to the door and through the safety of the screen murmured, “You’re a dumb dog, you know that, don’t ya?” The dog pointed its snout to the muddy sky and howled softly. Wallace chuckled and held open the door. The dog darted inside and ran under the table.

  Huller was coming up the steps. He wore a big yellow rain poncho and his boots were smeared with black greasy mud, which he tracked into the kitchen. He pulled the dripping poncho over his head and threw it back out onto the porch. “Been working on the truck,” he said, gesturing back at the barn. “Just about ready to roll,” he said, with a conspiratorial clamp of his hand on Wallace’s shoulder. The minute he stepped past Wallace, the dog charged out from under the table and, snarling, caught the cuff of Wallace’s pants in his jaw.

  “Get outta here!” Huller snapped, booting the dog’s rump until it fled back under the table.

  Wallace could feel the thud of his heart in his ears.

  “What’s this shit?” Huller said, lifting the lid of the frying pan.

  “Supper,” Wallace said, conscious of the dog’s dull, filmy stare.

  “Well, let’s eat then,” Huller said. “Alma!” he hollered up the stairs. “C’mon, everybody! Chow’s on!”

  They all crowded around the table, hot and sullen-faced. Dotty’s eyes were bright and blank as a bird’s, the pupils so big they looked ready to seep out of the sockets. She hadn’t wanted to get up, but Huller had insisted. She ate nothing. Instead, she smoked, filling her plate with ashes and matches. Huller was in the best mood Wallace had ever seen, cracking jokes and teasing his daughters.

  Alma hadn’t said a word. First Kelly began to scratch her head, and then so did Krystal. Alma’s lashless little eyes moved between the two of them. She glanced at Canny. “What’s that in your hair?”

  “Nothing,” Canny said, lowering her face to the plate.

  “How come it’s so greasy-looking?” Alma asked, her two daughters scratching frantically now.

  Canny shrugged and looked at Wallace. Alma’s eyes widened. “She got bugs, don’t she?” She sniffed in Canny’s direction. Canny’s face was almost in her plate.

  Alma sniffed again. “That’s why,” she said, looking from Krystal to Kelly. “That’s why they’re so itchy.” She began to scratch her own thin hair. “We all got bugs!”

  Ellie touched her own chopped hair and examined her fingertips.

  Dotty burst out laughing. She buried her face in her hands and tears ran from her eyes. She shook her head and gasped with wild laughter.

  “All of us!” Alma exclaimed. “And it’s all your fault,” she said to her husband.

  “Shut up and eat,” ordered Huller, pushing back his own plate in warning.

  “Lookit her laughing,” Alma said to him. “She don’t care.”

  “Shut it,” Huller snarled.

  Krystal had begun to cry. “I can feel the bugs,” she said, stiffening in her chair. “They’re biting me all over!”

  “They’re gonna eat your head up,” Kelly said, and Krystal screamed. “And then,” Kelly continued, “they’ll eat your neck.…”

  Ellie got up and ran for the bathroom, her hand over her mouth.

  Alma stared at Dotty, who was still laughing. “Stop it,” said Alma. “Stop laughing like that.”

  This made Dotty laugh harder. Alma’s lip trembled. “You get out!” she said to Dotty, with a quaver of fear in her voice. She took a step back and looked at Huller. “Make her go,” she said, so low it was almost a whisper. “Make her go before something happens.”

  Kelly had stopped tormenting Krystal; they watched Dotty’s ragged, teary laughter.

  “Momma,” Canny started to say, but Huller was standing over Dotty now, telling her to go next door and sleep it off. He put his hand on her arm and she pushed it away. Her eyes were slick with rage. “You bastard,” she kept muttering. “You don’t fool me, you bastard.”

  “Give me a hand, Pops,” said Huller. He grabbed her arm, but again she shook him off. She stood up and her chair crashed backward. Still muttering, she staggered outside.

  Huller sat down and pulled his plate back into place. He scraped his bread through the hardening grease, unmindful that he was the only one still eating. Canny got up and came around the table, headed for the door. Huller grabbed her wrist and pulled her close to his chest. “Where you think you’re going; princess?” he said through a mouthful of bread.

  “See how Momma’s doing,” Canny answered, stiffening away from him.

  “She’s okay. She just needs a little sleep,” he said.

  Canny strained back. “I’ll just go see,” she said. She pulled back, but he still held on to her wrist.

  “Let her go,” said Alma. “Let ’em all the hell go.”

  Huller smiled at Canny. “I’ll tell you what,” he said, wiping his mouth with the back of the hand that held hers, wiping it back and forth as he spoke, “I’ll go check on your momma. That way you can play with the girls some more.”

  “Not with me,” Kelly said, screwing up her face.

  “Not with me,” echoed her younger sister.

  “And she ain’t sleeping with them either,” Alma said. “Not with bugs she ain’t.”

  “Yes she is,” said Huller, still holding Canny close. “She can sleep on the couch.” He smiled and patted her narrow backside. “I’m going to take special care of this little package here.” He patted her again and now his open hand held there. Wallace’s eyes burned with sweat. The light bulb grew too bright. He stared at Huller’s hand and a voice boomed in his head, Get your hand off her! But no one had heard it.

  “Hey, Pops! Go check on Dot and whatever’s she’s taking, see if you can’t hide it on her.”

  “I’ll go look too,” Canny said, making a move toward Wallace, but Huller held her back.

  “Pops can take care of it, princess. And that way, I can take care of you,” Huller said, patting her again. His smile was not a smile so much as a quick, wet slither that curled Wallace’s toes in his sneakers, causing him to lurch across the driveway. His breath came tight and as sharp at his rib cage as the beaks of pecking birds.

  The cabin was empty. Walla
ce turned from the doorway to see Huller watching from the porch. At the same moment, with the same surprise on their faces, they both looked toward the barn, from which Dotty had just emerged, staggering down the rutted incline. A long piece of paper trailed from her hand.

  “You bastard,” she hollered, as Huller ran off the porch.

  He snatched the paper from her and stood close, speaking to her in a low, urgent, placating voice.

  “… double-crossing, two-bit, sonofamotherf …,” she rattled over his talk.

  Huller had her by the arm. He was trying to pull her to the cabin, away from the house where Alma’s face floated in the doorway. In an upstairs window was Ellie, her cheek limp on the screen like a flattened curtain.

  Each time Huller grabbed her, Dotty jerked free in a torrent of curses. For a moment he seemed almost afraid of her. Now he had her again, his thick fingers cuffing her wrists as he half-steered, half-dragged her toward the cabin. Wallace had to jump off the wobbly cinder blocks to get out of their way.

  “Quick, Aubie,” Dotty screamed, as Huller forced her up the steps. “You and Canny get outta here before the …” She screamed with pain then as Huller clubbed the side of her head.

  “Get the hell in there!” Huller growled, shoving her into the unlit cabin.

  Wallace heard the thud of her fall and then her sob, sharp like the crack of a bone. Huller looked down at Wallace. “She’s all screwed up,” he said. “I shouldn’t have given her anything. Let me cool her down.…” He glanced back into the cabin, where Dotty’s voice snarled from the darkness.

  “Let me get her straight,” he said, snapping his fingers nervously. “Go on back to the house and let me get her straight.” Huller’s eyes were like Dotty’s, as bright and depthless as black glass.

  “I said go on back to the house!” bellowed Huller as he leaped from the step and jerked his hand up under Wallace’s chin. He stood so close, Wallace could smell his sweat and the sweet liquor on his tongue.

  “Fucking feeb …,” he muttered as Wallace quickly crossed the driveway.

  He didn’t go into the house. He stood in the middle of the driveway, listening to them scream at each other. All he could make out was his own name passing between them. He went back to the cabin and stood by the steps.

  “Admit it,” Dotty kept saying. “Go ahead, admit it!”

  “You’re so fucked up,” Huller said, “you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Admit it!” she said, her voice relentless and grinding. “Admit it!”

  “Here! Take one of these … you’re all fucked up … here.…”

  “You and that Callahan, you got us all set up, don’t you?”

  “Are you crazy? Callahan? He’d sell me so fast!”

  “What about the clipping?”

  “You got it all screwed up!” Huller said. “You read it wrong.”

  “I read it right. Twenty-five thousand for their kid and another twenty-five if the kidnappers are caught.”

  “It sounds worse than it is.” He tried to laugh, but it came out a cough.

  “You …,” she began.

  “I didn’t want to scare you, that’s all, babe.” His voice softened. “I couldn’t take a chance on you getting panicked, that’s why! I figured on telling you after … when we were long gone and so rich, you couldn’t … you wouldn’t change your mind.”

  “What about Ellie? She coming too? Are me and her both gonna …”

  “She’s got nothing to do with this! I told you before—nothing!”

  “Well, who knocked her up then?”

  “If she doesn’t know, how the hell should I!” Huller exclaimed.

  “Alma thinks it was you.”

  “Look Dot, tomorrow morning we have to move. Tomorrow morning, there’s no more Alma, no more Ellie, no more Callahan. There’s nothing but you and me and all that money. Think of it that way. Forget all this other shit. It’s all gonna come off like clockwork. I got it all laid out. I got every move, every second figured. There’s nothing I didn’t think of. And you got nothing to be scared of, Dot. I worked it all out perfect. Even Pops talking to the Birds. It was like a stroke of genius the way it worked out. He confessed! Don’t you see? You were never mentioned. He did all the talking.…”

  “But you wanted me to and I wouldn’t,” Dotty said.

  “And that’s when it all started to come to me,” Huller said. “How it was just like putting the pieces of a puzzle together.”

  “But what about Canny?” Dotty asked in a faint voice.

  “She was a baby. She doesn’t remember. For all anyone knows he kidnapped you too. You were just a kid. He took you and then he took her.”

  Dotty was crying now. “You can’t do this … not to poor Aubie. You don’t understand.”

  “Understand what?”

  “I don’t know,” she sobbed. “I can’t explain it. But of all the people in the whole world, he … he’s …”

  “Look, that’s the way it is,” Huller said, his voice clamping over her sobs. The chair scraped and the hard heels of his boots moved hollowly to the door. “Everything’s set.”

  “But what about Aubie?”

  There was silence and then Huller said, “They’ll be waiting for him.”

  “No!” she moaned. “Not poor Aubie.… Please.… Just let him head back home. Let him.…”

  “Jesus Christ!”

  “Maybe we could even ride him part of the …”

  “Shut up!”

  “No, you listen to …”

  They stood just inside the door now. Huller had her by her wrists, holding her so rigid and so close that they were one writhing figure, caught in the last of daylight, frayed and ghostly behind the dirt-plugged screen.

  She grunted and struggled. “You listen …,” she kept trying to say.

  “You shut up!” he finally bellowed. “I’m getting fed up! Jesus Christ, I don’t need you,” he roared as she butted her head into his shoulder. “Just like I don’t need the feeb.…”

  “Shoot him then!” she cried. “You might as well! Shoot him and put him out of his misery!”

  “Well, that’s a thought,” Huller laughed.

  “Just give me the gun,” said Dotty. “I’ll do it myself.” She laughed. “I’ll blow all our fuckin’ heads off,” she panted. “Every goddamn one.…” Her voice rose hysterically, and in measure with her words came Huller’s voice, deep and jagged.

  He was saying, “All I need is the kid … and I don’t even need her. I could bring her back dead, you hear me?” He was slapping her.

  Wallace trembled with the sickening sound. He touched the rough outer board of the cabin and was surprised that the earth sat so perfectly still beneath his wracked body and their savage blows, that it could lay unjarred and heedless to this pain.

  “Dead!” Huller grunted, slapping her again and again. “In a bag or a box or even just a handful of her teeth … or her hair,” he said, yanking Dotty by the hair and throwing her onto the bed, which jumped against the plank floor and sent a shudder through Wallace’s fingertips. Then came the steady thud, thud, thud of a dull, monstrous heartbeat.… Was he kicking her? Kicking the bed? She made no sound.

  “All I need’s proof she’s found,” Huller grunted with each blow. “And dead or alive’s not going to matter … you hear me, you crazy bitch, you.…”

  Dotty whimpered. Something crashed. The chair maybe. Glass shattered.

  “I don’t need any of you, so don’t push! I’m tireda being pushed.…” He grunted. She grunted.

  Something, a shoe or box, thumped against the wall, then fell.

  “Don’t,” Dotty panted. “… bastard … goddamn.… Ohhh!” she moaned, and a slap of flesh struck flesh. Another and another. She moaned again and there was a crack, a splintered breaking apart that shuddered through the cabin frame.

  There was no sound, not even silence, just stillness, and then the dry, rattly swish of a tree branch across the cabin roof.
>
  I got to go now, he thought. She’s gone. Dotty’s gone. He did it to her.…

  Above, the door flew open, back against the cabin wall. Huller’s thick shadow loomed over the steps, the driveway. He was gone.

  Inside, Wallace found her curled on the bed with her face to the wall. The back of the chair had been broken off, and in the bathroom doorway, the plastic curtain hung by one brittle shred. Everywhere were clothes and shoes, and underfoot, the crushed glass of makeup bottles, their dark liquids inking his footprints to her side.

  “Dot?” He touched her shoulder and said her name again, relieved when she moaned. He bent down, listening to the congestion of her breath and tears.

  “Dotty,” he whispered. “Wake up! Wake up, Dotty!” He shook her and said it again. She swore and curled tighter.

  “We gotta go,” he pleaded. “He’s gonna kill us, Dotty. He’s gonna kill Canny.… Wake up, please wake up, Dotty.”

  She stirred, and when she turned, he saw the split raw flesh in her bottom lip and the blood that had run down her chin and jawbone to her ear, where it caked in her hair. Her right eye was swollen and bulging and when she moved her head again, he saw the pills that Huller must have thrown down at her in his final disgust. Like bright candies they were scattered over the stained blue ticking of the pillow and the soiled sheet. He picked them up, all that he could find, and put them in his pocket, and then he sat down on the other bed and watched her.

  They would have to get out of here tonight, as soon as the Hullers were all asleep. He had to figure it out. He needed a plan. This time, the running would be different. This time, they would be running from someone who knew all about them. But he couldn’t think about that. Right now, his biggest fear was that he wouldn’t be able to wake Dotty up in time. In the past when she had taken pills, she could sleep twelve or fourteen straight hours. Maybe he could just carry her out to the car. Between himself and Canny, they might be able to do it. He could sit on one side of her with Canny on the other side and they would drape her arms over their shoulders and then lift her onto her feet.…

  Canny, he thought, looking up suddenly. He had to get Canny over here with him and away from Huller. That was the first step. That’s it, he thought. One step at a time.