The man’s words echoed inside Ben’s head: “I’ll be back.” Perhaps he was simply retrieving something left in the cab; perhaps he needed a cigarette break. Perhaps, like Ben’s stepfather, he had a bottle of booze hidden under the seat or a joint in the ashtray. He wouldn’t be the first; Emily’s readings could get to people.
The truck’s engine came to life with a roar. Ben glanced up at the skylight. It seemed so small, so far away. So out of reach. The truck rumbled and backed up.
Ben scrambled on hands and knees for the half-sized back door. He reached up and turned the handle, preparing for the moment when the driver paused to shift into forward. He would use that instant to leap from the truck.
He twisted the doorknob, and to his joy it moved. It wasn’t locked.
The truck slowed and then braked, and the gears made a sound as the driver shifted. Ben pushed on the door. It stopped abruptly, only open an inch-padlocked from the outside.
The truck roared off. Ben tried the door again, but it would not open. The pavement blurred through the open crack in the door.
He was trapped inside.
14
Panic seized every muscle in Ben’s body. For the first few minutes of the drive, he couldn’t help but focus on how much trouble he was going to be in. He had violated Emily’s one rule-once and only once-and yet here he was locked in the back of a pickup truck, heading who-knows-where, with a suspected criminal behind the wheel. Surprisingly slowly, his fear of getting into trouble migrated into a realization of his predicament and focused on the importance of figuring a way out of the camper. Fast. The truck was moving quickly and not stopping at lights anymore. It seemed increasingly apparent to him that they were on a highway, and the only logical candidate was I-5, either north or south. North was Canada; south, Oregon and California. What if the truck never stopped? What if Nick had been checking out a date with Emily because he intended to commit a crime? Fear ran his blood hot and his skin cold.
The side windows were tiny things with locking screens; there was no way he could go out through one. He kept looking up to the skylight-to the heavens-his only way out. It might be possible to jump from the folding table, catch his hand on the lip of the skylight, and pull himself up and out, but only if the skylight were open, and it had fallen shut behind his less-than-graceful entrance. He realized in a calculating and determined way that escape was a multi-step process: force the skylight open and keep it open in a way he had yet to figure out; climb up onto the table and jump; pull himself up and out; wait for the truck to slow; and either climb down or jump off. All this, without being seen or heard by the driver. He felt on the edge of tears-it seemed an impossible task. He felt afraid for his life.
The gun in the holster and the duffel bag both kept staring at him, as if alive and with eyes of their own. He crawled around the soiled carpet searching out a broom handle or some other device to help him push the skylight open. As the truck changed lanes, he was thrown off balance and onto his stomach, and he struggled back to his hands and knees. It was a tiny space, and he quickly realized there was nothing in plain sight to help him, and he felt convinced that if he opened the tiny closet or any of the drawers, Nick would catch on to his presence, kill him, and leave him dumped along the highway, which was where all bodies were found anyway.
He lost his balance again and was tossed up against the duffel bag, and he couldn’t resist looking inside. One end was clipped shut, using a webbed strap that ran from the fabric handle. He unclipped this, opened the canvas folds, and stuck his head inside, hoping something might prove itself useful to his cause. What he found instead scared him half to death: large, clear plastic containers filled with milky fluid. A chemical formula was handwritten on the nearest container in black marker.
He didn’t have to know chemistry to know what it was. Drugs! He had seen a police raid of a meth lab on TV. The thought that he was trapped in the back of a pickup truck being driven by an armed drug dealer sent his head dizzy, and he swooned, nearly losing consciousness, only brought back to reality by the swerving of the truck and its sudden slowing-the whine of the engine lowering and softening in pitch. He looked up in time to see the green flash of a highway sign outside the window:
SEA-TAC AIR TERMINAL EXIT ONLY
He glanced at the duffel bag. Nick was taking a trip. He would be coming after his bag in a matter of minutes! Ben had not considered the possibility that the truck might stop and the driver come into the back. He had pictured himself heading off forever. Suddenly, he found himself a victim of the clock; they were only a matter of minutes from the airport. Time was running out. He needed a place to hide.
Panic-stricken, he glanced around as if seeing this place for the first time: a tiny, claustrophobic space with the only obvious hiding place a broom closet that seemed too risky to open, given the small break in the curtains that hid the back from the cab. It was this gap in the curtains that kept Ben low, on hands and knees. Where else to hide?
The truck slowed more and took a strong right turn at a light. It was the entrance to the airport.
The few drawers were far too small to consider as possibilities. Ben thought about taking out the drugs, placing them in the drawers, and hiding himself in the duffel bag, but that would backfire badly if Nick took the bag with him, which was likely. Hiding inside the sleeping bag was a possibility, but seemed far too risky. Then he saw it.
The bench that supported the cushions where the gun was resting was a big wooden box, shaped like a coffin. A storage area with a lifting lid! Ben pushed and the cushion lifted up and the gun slid against the back. Cluttered with tools, extension cords, cigarette cartons, rags, and boxes of ammunition, there was still plenty of room inside for a boy his size. He crawled inside and lowered the lid, hoping the change in the position of the gun wouldn’t raise the driver’s suspicions. The truck came to a complete stop, and Ben heard faintly the sound of a mechanical voice say, “Take ticket, please.”
The truck began spiraling up the airport’s corkscrew ramps to the elevated parking. Ironically, Ben had never been to the airport. The only time he had been out of the city had been to take a bus with his mother down to see his dying aunt in Kent, at the age of six-but he had seen this very parking ramp in a cop movie and could actually picture the pickup truck, held in a tight corkscrew turn, accelerating up the steep ramp. He felt both apprehension-at the idea of the driver coming into the back of the truck-and relief that the truck was certain to park and the driver to leave, offering him the chance to escape. The truck slowed and took another hard right, and Ben had to move an electric drill that was stabbing him in the back. The truck made two more sharp turns and stopped abruptly. The engine died and Ben heard the driver’s door slam shut. He caught himself holding his breath in order to hear better. His heart beat painfully in his chest, his eyes stung. His mouth was dry and his tongue was sticky. He tried to think what he would do if Nick suddenly opened up the bench and caught him. His right hand searched blindly in the dark. He found a bag of small nails and quietly gripped a fistful of them.
The truck jostled, rocking Ben side to side. He heard the padlock snap open, followed by the sound of the clasp coming undone.
Nick was coming inside. The driver. The drug dealer. The man with the gun. It felt about a thousand degrees in the box. Ben was suddenly overcome by claustrophobia, the tightness and darkness of the uncomfortable space getting the better of him. He wanted out. He had to get out. Now!
A loud noise caused his whole body to stiffen. The driver had sat down on the bench. Ben thought it sounded like he was strapping on the gun, getting ready for whatever it was he had planned. And this discovery sent another electric bolt shooting through him. If the man was taking a gun with him, he wasn’t getting on any plane. So how long would he be gone? Or worse, maybe he was not going anywhere but had come to the airport parking garage to do a deal.
Ben did not want to be a witness to any drug deal. All he wanted, more than anything in the
world, was to be back in his own room, the door closed and locked; he didn’t care if he had to listen to his drunken stepfather screw his girlfriends; he didn’t care if the guy lifted a hand to him every now and then. He just wanted to be home. He hated himself for everything he had done. He wanted nothing more than to set the clock back and start all over, get a second chance.
The bench creaked as the man stood up. Ben heard the duffel bag dragging heavily on the floor; the guy let out a grunt as he struggled with it. The back door slammed shut.
He didn’t think about getting to the police and stopping the deal from going down; he thought only of freedom, of his flight to safety.
There was no sound of the clasp or the padlock. Nick had left the back unlocked. Ben didn’t stop to think why. For him, this was the green light. He pushed the bench top up a crack and ventured a look. His eyes stung with the light, and he blinked furiously. The camper was empty.
Now was his chance.
15
Terrified, exhilarated, Ben climbed out of the storage bench, his one good eye trained on the camper’s back door, no plan in his head on how to deal with what the next few minutes might bring. He behaved more like a caged bird discovering the cage left open. He carefully approached the camper’s only door, distrustful and cautious, bravely venturing a look out the window into the parking garage. He ducked just as quickly, glad he had not charged out the back of the camper as he had been tempted to do: Nick stood waiting for the elevator with the large green duffel bag at his side. It was stenciled in bold capital letters USAF. Ben impatiently waited him out.
It was strange how with just the one eye Ben could see so much, or perhaps it was his lack of peripheral vision that sharpened the importance of those objects he could see. So many times he had been struck by a football or a stick or even another kid’s fist, because it moved too fast into his range of vision and caught him by surprise. Little by little his brain had adjusted, sending early warning signals far ahead of the warning signals received by people with stereoscopic vision. Ben lacked depth of field-the world played out on a two-dimensional television screen. He was a terrible judge of distance, and his hand-eye motor coordination suffered measurably from his impairment. But if something entered his visual field it registered fully, taking on an immediate importance.
It was just a shape. Dark. About as tall as his stepfather. Standing between two parked cars. Watching. Perhaps he-she? — was standing there waiting for someone with the car keys to arrive from baggage claim, but it felt far more sinister than that, as if Ben himself were being watched, or even the man over at the elevator. Worse, the presence of this man caused Ben to fear leaving the back of the truck; he would be seen, and something warned him to avoid this at all costs. (Although he didn’t see it as such, this was his first real glimpse of Emily’s true powers. He experienced the ability to tune in to the subtle signals inside him that, if trusted, offered a vision of the future: If he stepped outside this camper, there was trouble waiting.)
The figure in the dark possessed him; he couldn’t take his eye off him. When the man-he suddenly saw clearly that it was a man-turned his attention away from the elevator and toward the truck, Ben knew that he was headed for him.
The elevator arrived.
He twisted the handle, tempted to flee, regardless of that dark shape. He wanted out so badly he could taste it. At that same instant, however, the figure moved, walking out from between the parked cars, and headed straight for the truck. A voice inside Ben’s head warned, “Don’t!” and he found himself releasing the doorknob.
Nick stepped into the elevator, hauling the duffel bag with him. The doors slid shut.
The other man suddenly approached quickly, taking long strides, nearly at an all-out run. Patches of light flashed across his face, but even so, Ben had trouble actually seeing that face. It was as if the man were wearing a mask.
Ben lifted the bench and dove inside, driven back into hiding amid the tools and oily rags, feeling ever more involved with something he wanted no part of. How many times had Emily warned him not to so much as touch a customer’s car? It felt as if his situation was designed as some kind of lesson; he half expected the approaching figure would turn out to be Emily, having created and acted all this out with Ben in mind. He promised himself that if he got out of this, he would never, ever in a million years, lay a finger on another person’s property. He hoped this promise might in some way protect him from the man who now approached, for his stomach churned with fear and trepidation.
The camper door made a noise as it opened. Ben felt his insides go watery. He could barely breathe, his throat was so dry. Where the driver had seemed a threat, this dark figure was the one to fear.
As quickly as the door opened, it shut. Ben never felt any movement of the truck’s springs, any indication that the man had come inside. He waited and listened, blood pounding in his ears and chest. The tips of his fingers felt cold, and all at once a shiver passed through him. He felt on the verge of crying. He swallowed his fear and ventured to lift the bench a crack and peer out.
Empty. He wanted to shout a thanks to God. Instead, he hoisted the bench, climbed out, and hurried to the smudged glass of the back door.
The parking garage appeared empty. He didn’t trust this and looked back and forth, intent on spotting the other man lingering in the shadows or wedged between two parked cars, but he was nowhere to be seen. Ben twisted the doorknob and pushed, thinking that with his luck the door would prove to be …
… locked!
The second man had re-padlocked the door. A wave of nausea coursed through him. He banged the door against the clasp several times, paying no attention to the possibility of being heard or noticed. Where was good luck when he needed it?
He dropped to his knees in an effort to study the clasp and lock, in order to see if there was any chance it had been hooked but not locked. As his knee touched the filthy carpeting, he felt an unexpected bulge below his kneecap and glanced down to see the corner of a plain white envelope protruding. He slipped the envelope out. It was thick and bulging, but lightweight. He couldn’t resist looking inside. He lifted the flap to see the squiggled edges of money. Dozens of bills. Fifties and twenties and some tens. Old bills. Worn money. Lots of it.
To him, it seemed like a million dollars. Cash, right there in his hand. He would need money to get home. He had none on him. He reached in and fished out a twenty. And then another. With each bill the temptation grew. Who would know if he took the whole thing? So many times, as Emily slipped her ten-dollar payment into the cigar box she kept in the freezer, she had spoken the words to Ben: “Money is freedom.” They lived in him as a kind of mantra. Money meant independence. Money offered people the chance to be themselves. And here was this envelope of cash in his hand and no one around to see him. He could give the money to Emily; he could pay for his food; he could live with her.
The presence of the money was overwhelming. There was no drug deal. He was not trapped in the back of a truck. He was free. He didn’t return the envelope to where he had found it. Never even considered it. He folded the envelope and shoved it into his front pants pocket. He had a chance at a new life. He felt giddy. Then, all at once, the confines of the camper shell got to him. The envelope seemed to be burning his leg. It suddenly felt heavy to him, as if anyone looking at him would see it. But not for a second did he think about putting it back. He moved quickly, as if he had done all this before. He checked the tiny closet. He didn’t find a broom or a mop, but instead an aluminum baseball bat. Hurriedly, he climbed atop the camper’s tabletop and probed skyward with the bat, pushing open the skylight. It took three tries to get the hook to catch, and even then it was not through an eyelet but only resting on top of one. Nonetheless, the skylight remained open, and Ben returned the bat to the closet. Once again he felt the pressure of time bearing down on him. He sensed that the trouble was not over but only in a lull. Despite this pressure he moved fluidly, accustomed to the anxiety of
searching a car while the customer remained with Emily inside the purple house. His senses remained on full alert. His hands were sweaty, his skin hot.
He climbed back on the table, trained his eye on the edge of the skylight, and knew he had to make it in one jump. There were no second tries. To miss would be to fall backward on the table; he would break something or knock himself out. He had one try in him.
A voice inside reminded him that this required hand-eye coordination, this was something everyone agreed he had no talent for; the voice grew louder, warning him not to even try. But the drive for survival spoke louder, and he overcame this nagging voice and blatantly disregarded it. There was no choice. He simply had to make the jump. And he had to be successful.
He squatted down, feeling the strength in his tree-climbing legs, aimed his single eye above him, having little judgment of the exact distance he had to travel, and jumped, fingers outstretched.
The wood edge slapped his palms and he gripped down and hooked the lip and held himself dangling, suspended in midair. But he had rocked the truck, causing the hook to slip off the eyelet, and the skylight came down like a Chinese poultry knife onto his knuckles. Ben cried out, but he did not let go. Could not let go.
He pulled, as he had so many times in a bad situation in a tree, as if lifting himself to the next branch. He did this twice but sank back down to his dangling position, his fingers aching under his weight. The third time he coordinated all his efforts simultaneously: He pulled himself up, banged the skylight partially open with his head, hooked one elbow, then the other, and pulled even higher, worming his torso up and through the skylight. Kicking his legs, as if swimming for the side of the pool, he wiggled up and out of the hole in the camper’s roof. He clambered over a rusted rack, where a tire and wheel were chained and locked, and slipped over the back to a narrow ladder fixed to the side of the shell. His feet touching pavement, he was off at a run, as if hearing footsteps immediately behind him.
Beyond Recognition lbadm-4 Page 9
