The Runaway

by Jo Barney

  He invites her to join them at dinner. She accepts a plate and settles on a rock near the fire. He enjoys watching her fidget with her food, whisper to Leaky, who doesn’t answer her, glance around the camp, look for escape.

  A hand of fate brought her here. Even if Danny had actually gotten in contact with her with his cell phone, no way could she have made her way up into the forest without divine guidance. This ceremony was predestined

  Then he notices her shoes, red sneakers, familiar because Smiley wore similar ones, had made her escape leaving behind a pair just like them. Apparently this old woman has fucked him over not just once, with one kid, but twice, with another, all three of them traitors. Mrs. Miller deserves to be punished even more than Danny and Smiley. She is responsible for everything.

  The ritual will be a living hell for her. Her hands will hold her son’s beating heart to the sun. His blood, draining into the earth, will appease the gods and offer retribution for her evil acts. Starkey retreats to his tent to prepare.

  After the family has cleaned up the debris of the meal, Starkey opens the tent flaps and emerges, his bandanna now a band tied around his forehead. One white feather rises above his head. A black bird, its one nippled eye glaring, spreads its wings across his bare chest. He bathes in the stunned silence of the campfire as he leans against the canvas back of his throne. Then he points at the white plastic bucket next to his chair. Bebop kneels at his drum, looks up at the chieftain, and picks up the drumsticks. As the drumbeats reach an ear-shattering crescendo, Starkey waves a hand, its palm stained black from the charcoaled wood that created the raven. Bebop stops, slips back into the circle, wipes his forehead on his sleeve.

  Starkey leans forward, begins to speak. The words flow from his throat as if they have been waiting forever for this moment. At first he talks of spring, redemption, nature’s and the gods’ willingness to allow their lives to continue unabated. Then he lowers his voice to a soft growl. “We must be willing to pay the price for this blessing. Tonight.” The tension in his throat and the wary eyes watching him inform Starkey that the time has come.

  He rises and enters his tent. In the dim light making its way through a half-opened flap, he sees the hump that is his once-friend, silent but alive still. Starkey’s hands tremble, and he understands that this is the most momentous event of his life. He breathes, calms himself, bends to scatter a handful of fragrant fir needles over the still body. Then he grasps it by its loose legs and drags it out of the tent toward the fire, leaving a bloody path to the wooden plank where the food once was. He places Danny on this altar, arranges fir boughs around him.

  He walks back to his chair. “You know this man as Seattle. I know him as Traitor.” He glances around the circle of his silent children to make sure the cudgel and the sacred knife are in their places, that a chest is still rising in shallow breaths, that an evil mother’s eyes are brimming with tears.

  Chapter Forty-One

  Ellie

  September 2009

  I stumble into the camp, the black plastic bag falling off my shoulders and onto the feet of a teenager, who stares at me and then bends to help me pick up the spilled cans. Her flat features and slow-lidded eyes tell me she is a little dull, but her smile lets me know I don’t have to be worried. I look around. The two of us are alone.

  “Hello?” I say. She continues to smile. No help here. The tent is set up a few yards from the ring of stones and blankets that surround the fire pit. To one side of the pit, a couple of pans pile up, and a pot hangs over the fire that must be the source of the beans’ aroma. The girl is in charge of the cooking. Others are away, doing chores, maybe, collecting whatever else the meal will hold.

  I hear a moan, a word. “Water.” The sound seems to leak from the tent.

  I am moving in that direction when I am hit by another word, this one frightening. “Stop.” Then, “Who are you, and why are you here?”

  I turn. The man has skinny devil eyes. A slit of a mouth slices through a neat beard. His deep voice would curdle cream. A kerchief, knotted at the back of his head, covers his hair. A gold ring dangles from one ear.

  “Hello?” I try again. I go into an old-woman hunch, try to look more even pathetic than I feel. “I saw your camp, thought I could exchange my cans for a little food. I haven’t eaten in a while, and,” I try to chuckle, “there aren’t any return machines here in the woods.” I point at the cans, the girl clutching the neck of the bag. She looks from the man to me.

  He seems to be smiling, the edges of his mustache moving upward, his eyes even more narrow. “Of course. Welcome,” he says, and he points to bushes beyond the ring. “We have a latrine if you need it. Feel free, and then come back and enjoy the fire. And Owl, take the cans to the recycling area. We’ll turn them in tomorrow.”

  My nose is now aware of the latrine, and I am heading toward it when he adds, “Glad you’re here. We’ve never done an old woman before.” I don’t know what he means. A threat? Can he possibly know why I’m here? And where is Danny?

  When I get back to the fire, Owl is bending into the tent, a cup of water dripping in front of her. A moment later I hear a thin thank-you. Owl smiles as she backs out, wiping her hands on her jacket.

  The pirate pushes aside the tent flap and calls to me over his shoulder as he crawls through the opening, “Sit down and make yourself comfortable. The rest of the family will be back any minute.” I hear a bottle clink against a glass once he’s inside.

  Then kids start pouring in from all directions. One of them, a black boy, says he found a cart up above the camp with a few bottles in it. “Mine,” I say, and “yours if you want them. I’m,” and I hesitate, “Grandma. Who are you?” When I hold out my hand, he wraps his fat fingers around it.

  “Bebop, and this here is Jasper.” The other boy, his curly hair gasoline-red, nods and looks into the pot on the fire. “That all?” he says.

  “Be glad of it, dildo.” A gangly girl in camouflage and a khaki knit cap steps into the warmth of the fire. “You had it too good lately. I almost starved last week until Lila found me, brought me here.” She high-fives a girl who looks like a bedraggled Asian princess, her lacy edges brown with dirt. The net petticoat she’s wearing on the outside of her jeans hangs in lazy droops at her ankles.

  So this is Lila, tough, nice Lila. Not so tough. Frightened, if her solemn eyes aren’t lying.

  The camouflaged girl looks at me. “How’s it hanging?” It’s been a long time since I heard that greeting.

  “Loosey goosey,” I answer. I hope I sound like a senile old woman.

  “Just Goose,” she says. “How’d you guess?” Goose settles herself next to me, and I see that her camouflage is not army issue. Big green and gray birds fly across her chest and up her arms.

  “You must be a hunter.”

  “My dad is, or used to be a few years ago.”

  I don’t ask for the details. None of my business.

  I’m noticing that for teenagers, they’re pretty quiet. They keep looking at the tent, at each other, as they spread out the food they’ve brought on the plywood board in front of the fire. Then they sit down in the rock circle, wait.

  “Where’s Mouse?” someone asks.

  “Mouse got picked up hustling in Chinatown. He won’t be back for a day or so.” Lila pokes at the ground with a twig, not looking up.

  “I bet,” Jasper says. “Wait till Starkey hears about that.”

  A low hum of “uh huhs” ends abruptly.

  “I’ve heard about it.”

  I turn. If this skanky-eyed, bandannaed fool is Starkey, then Starkey is not my son. I have miscalculated. A wave of relief almost drowns me. My next thought is Why am I here? Then, more to the point, So what’s the plan? I don’t have one now that I don’t have a son to kill.

  “We’ll deal with Mouse’s bad decision another time. Eat. We have a ceremony planned for tonight, as you well know. And we have an unexpected guest.” He taps my shoulder, and I try to, but can’t,
smile at the eyes looking at me. They aren’t smiling, either.

  Owl ladles out beans onto our paper plates, and we line up and choose bits of other food from the board. I take a roll, pick off the mold, sit back down and pretend I’m eating. A boy, narrow and spindly-looking in skintight jeans, dark hair falling onto his forehead, black eyes taking me in, sits down on Goose’s rock. His voice is soft, a whisper. “I’m Leaky,” he says. His hands tremble as he shoves a pile of beans toward his mouth.

  I whisper back, “You helped Sarah.” Then I notice the bruise under the bangs, the ear bloody and bandaged. “He found out?”

  “We all got punished. That’s why Mouse isn’t here. Ellie, you’re in trouble.” This is the second time I’ve been warned with these words. Must be true. The boy glances over my shoulder, shuts up.

  Starkey knows who I am. Sarah must have said something to him about me. About an old lady who took her in for a while, like a grandma. How did he recognize me? Then I know. My red shoes, just like the ones she wore when she came back to this camp, huddle under the bulk of me perched on the rock.

  Who else did she tell about me? Maybe the kid who is taking my plate and tossing it with his into the fire. Short and a little pudgy, his belly showing below his T-shirt. Oily strands of long blond hair separate to reveal red stripes on his neck, dots of blood on his shoulders. He lays a scrap of blanket on the ground, sits at my feet. Jimmy.

  The fire flares with the plates and scraps of food. Everyone is silent. Then Starkey emerges from his tent, bending so that the feather sticking up from the band tied around his head misses the flaps. He’s changed from a pirate to some kind of painted Indian. His hands are black like the black he’s smeared on his body and on his cheekbones. His transformation has frightened the kids into gasps, and me into a hysterical giggle. What next? I ask myself, and I don’t think I want to know.

  He settles into his chair, says, “Begin, Bebop,” and the beat of a stick on a plastic bucket fills the air, joining the smoke and fear floating around us.

  Bebop’s rhythm races into a thunderclap, then stops. Starkey lifts his chin, and slowly he looks us over. Then he holds a bat upright. “Tonight we deal with the disloyalty of a broken friendship, the worst kind of betrayal. A friend I considered a true companion on the road of life, from my childhood on, turned on me, allowed our sister to run away yet another time, and because of his disloyalty, all of you have been punished.” Starkey takes a cell phone from his pocket, places it on the rock, brings the bat down on it. “Who knows the damage this betrayal has done?”

  He pauses. “However, tonight we also must deal with another kind of disloyalty. A good father teaches his children that the failure to act can be as evil as committing a sin.” He passes an uplifted palm over a circle of unblinking eyes. “Who of you stood up to defend me when I was attacked? No one. You all cowered, watched, allowed our fugitive sister to escape. And who tried to bring her back?”

  I feel an arm rise beside me. “Me. I followed her,” Leaky says.

  “Faggot effort,” Starkey spits out.

  “I got lost.”

  “Enough. We have work to do.” Starkey gets up, disappears into the tent. He comes out dragging a slump of a naked man blue with bruises, patched with dried blood. He lays the body down on the board that held our dinner. “You know him as Seattle. I know him as Traitor.”

  And I know him as my son. I must have made a sound, because Jimmy tightens his hand on my knee. Be quiet, his touch urges.

  “Tonight we go beyond punishing disloyalty. We go to the core of our very existence. Lila, bring the instruments to me.” Lila scuttles to the throne, picks up the bat and something else. He points to the rock at the end of the board. “There.”

  She leans the bat against the rock and places a leather-sheathed knife in one of its crevices. Its ivory handle glows in the firelight.

  “You all know our punishment ritual. First the cudgel, then the sacred knife. And tonight we will perform a new ceremony, one used hundreds of years ago to calm angry gods, to ensure the universe would not end. Our efforts will ensure that our small universe, our family, will not end.” He pauses, seems to be recalling a pleasant scene. I remember the drops of blood splattering on the carpet at my open door. “Here to observe and then to help us is our visitor, Grandma with the Cart.”

  Danny’s chest moves, and his eyes twitch under their lids. His beard doesn’t hide his cheekbones, high like mine used to be, and his long hair is blond under the grime of the matted tails he’s worked it into. His eyes will be blue when he opens them.

  I feel Jimmy’s hand, holding me.

  Starkey gives the bat to Jasper. “You have the honor of being first.” Jasper gets up slowly, wipes his hands on his pants, takes the bat and aims it. The wood hits an already purple arm with a dull thud. He gives the bat to Bebop, who stands over the board and swings at a thigh. Lila gets the bat next and closes her eyes as she goes for the other thigh, and then each kid in succession takes a turn at my son. Danny groans but does not cry out. Perhaps he can’t feel anything anymore. I am noticing that none of the blows land on his head or on his ribs.

  Then it is my turn.

  “I’m an old lady,” I say. “I can barely stand up. No way can I swing that thing.” I am trying to think what to do. I can’t hit Danny. I can’t hurt him ever again. “No.” I put the bat down at my feet.

  Starkey has gotten out of his chair, is standing over me. I twist my neck to look up at him. I can see from this angle that the black smear on his chest is some kind of bird that seems to be staring at me.

  “Isn’t there another reason why you can’t do it, Grandma?”

  “Yes,” I say. I press my hands on my knees and push myself upright and step back so that I can look past the bird into Starkey’s eyes and the feather above them. “This is my son.”

  “And that is why you’ll sit down and listen, Mrs. Miller.” His black palm shoves into my chest, and I land hard on a rock in back of me. “Consider this retribution for the time you betrayed your son and, as a consequence, me. Ten years ago. I’m sure you recall that night. We both were forced into hiding after you decided to call the police, teach him a lesson. We have been on the run ever since. But I have been the strong one. I never gave up the power of my anger.”

  “Jeff? Crazy Jeff? My God.” I almost laugh.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Matt

  September 2009

  “She said water tower?” Collin sits at Matt’s computer, where he has been waiting for his father to get off duty. Tonight they will be shopping for a new laptop for him to take to his college classes, and he is narrowing down his choices in an Internet search. He’s hoping for a Mac, Matt knows. However, his father has other things on his mind.

  “We’ll waste time looking for a duffel. It’s almost dark. Even a water tower will be hard to see. We have five thousand acres to search and mostly rabbit paths to follow. Any ideas?” Matt’s team has gathered at the table next to his desk.

  “Maybe the boundary path?” one of them suggests.

  “Same problem. We would be feeling our way down the hills. We could miss the camp by miles.”

  Matt doesn’t know what drove Ellie Miller to attempt to get to the camp. The sight of Sarah at her door, possibly, but the old woman does not seem to be a risk-taker or even slightly impetuous. Except the time she tried to save her son by reporting him. Protective, maybe. He remembers her hand on Sarah’s arm, understands that the girl is important to her. So whom is she protecting now that Sarah is being protected by Angie?

  “Is it big? The water tower?” Collin asks as his fingers move across the keys of the computer in front of him.

  “Yeah, I suppose. I heard it was used a long time ago to collect water for the farm that used to be at the edge of the forest, before the developers moved in and built big houses with views.”

  “It’s probably about eighty years old by now,” someone adds. “It’s important?” The huddle of cops l
ooks over the shoulder of the intense young man, who stares at the screen in front of him. Matt steps behind Collin and sees what looks like a fuzzy gray cauliflower.

  “Wait,” Collin says, working the mouse. Then, “See that? That round dot?” His forefinger taps again. The round dot becomes a round structure, then a rough-looking lid, a roof over something. “The water tower.” Collin points at the screen. “‘Peterson Tower,’ the label says.” He looks up. “Google Earth to the rescue.” He continues tapping. “Can’t see a duffel, but if we move around, we’ll find streets and paths in the area.” Names of roads pop up; a wide trail wiggles like a gray snake alongside the water tower. Four men bend closer to the screen.

  “West end of the park,” one of them says. “Near MacDonald Road.”

  “But north. I’ve hiked that trail. You can get to it by parking on Esther Street. Once we’re on the trail, we’ll pass the tower; then we can head uphill.”

  “Sarah said to look for smoke.” By now Matt is slipping on his holster, pulling on his jacket, and so is his team.

  As he follows them, Matt can’t resist going to Collin, who is still flying over the park, fascinated with the roof tops of houses at its edge, murmuring, “Look at that mansion! Four cars!”

  “Sorry about our plans for tonight, Collin. Grace will be happy to feed you, unless you have other ideas.”

  Collin’s eyes don’t leave the screen. “I got it covered, Dad.”

  As the officers hurry through the front office, Matt catches Shelly’s eye. She smiles, says, “Good luck. And if all goes well, I’m planning on seeing you tomorrow. Lunch, remember? My place. Bring Collin if he wants. I’d like to get to know him better.”

  Chapter Forty-Three