by Kit Reed
They have Danny to thank for the fact that for runaways, they’re pretty much traveling in style. They’d be sleeping in Dumpsters and eating MacGarbage by this time if it hadn’t been for Danny. God knows what they would be doing for gas.
Betz’s twin is feisty and unpredictable, but he has this uncanny skill. With no prompting he’s managed to hustle a few eating bets and bring in a little cash in every state. He knows as well as they do that he is risking his amateur status, but they’ve got to eat! So Danny is hustling. He’s found pushovers willing to meet him and raise him one at jamming in jalapeños in Ohio, Buffalo wings in Galena, and apple pies in Dubuque. Fortunately, these are side bets made before the season opens so the locals haven’t heard of him. Yet. Right now they think he’s a cocky Eastern kid whose mouth is bigger than his stomach and it’s only at the end of a long, hard session of eating that they pony up because they are wrong. By midsummer Danny Abercrombie will damn well be doing TV spots and scoring product endorsements in the hairy new big-ass national sport. If he gets home in time to qualify. After he .wins the Nathan’s Famous event, everybody will know this face, but right now he is walking into the Gazillion Flavors as a dark horse, which means he’s as good as gold.
When the twins and Dave come in, Danny looks so young and skinny and unassuming that the regulars already at their places at the long table don’t even look up. Six big guys and one small woman sit with their spoons raised, each in front of a frozen plateau of ice cream sawed off the top of a twenty-gallon drum.
Danny does what he does to get attention in these situations. He trips over his feet and falls smack onto the registrar’s desk. “I want a number.”
The crowd rumbles, budda-budda-budda: “You gotta be kidding.”
“He’s too little to take our people on.”
“He’s too young.”
“He’s too late.”
“Please give me a chance, I’m only a kid!”
“Son,” the registrar says gently, “we don’t want you to hurt yourself.”
“All I want is a chance.”
One of the contenders stands. One always does. “Come on, Brenda,” he says generously, “let’s give the kid a chance.”
And Brenda does. In these situations, registrars always do. Somebody says, “Might teach him a lesson,” and somebody else says, “Don’t worry, Brenda, he won’t last long.”
“Damn straight, the kid’ll never last.”
They don’t know that Danny always does.
Time passes. Everybody eats. Betz and Dave work the back ranks of the spectators, quietly collecting side bets. Time passes. The smart money has begun covering its bets with wagers on Danny. Dave nods to Betz and they quit accepting bets. Time passes. The biggest guy slaps the table; he’s done. The others plow on until they topple one by one, and at the end of the table Danny eats his way to victory because in these situations he always does. Danny eats and last year’s champion eats and they keep eating down to the finish. It’s close—he’s almost there—they are neck and neck with the plateaus of ice cream finished and the manager dropping the tie-breaking gallon cartons on their plates when one of the truckers watching says, “Wait. I’ve seen this guy before.”
“Don’t think so.”
“Look again and look closer. Anybody here seen this guy before?”
And somebody else—a voice Betz can not source—says, “Yeah, that’s the kid that aced the Nathan’s semifinals in Vegas.”
“Holy shit.”
“Oh God,” Betz says to Dave.
“He’s a hustler.”
“The kid is a ringer!”
The voices rise. “What do you do with a hustler?”
“Give him what for!”
“Break his thumbs?”
Somebody yips, “Hang him out to dry!”
Betz gives Dave a helpless, baffled look. “What are we going to do?”
Dave is scrambling. “Create a diversion?”
No need. At the table, Danny hears and he knows better than they do what will happen next. If the locals catch him they won’t break his thumbs and they won’t snap his fingers, one by one. They’ll stab him in the belly, and that will be the end of hustling for him, but this isn’t what tightens his gut and raises his back hairs now, it is this:
It will be the end of his sports career.
He and last year’s champion had been neck and neck, or gullet and gullet, but accidentally, Danny forges ahead. The angry locals are closing in. He has to act fast. It goes against every atom in his finely tuned body and everything he’s been taught and everything he stands for, but Danny does what you do in these situations. He throws up.
By the time the crowd is done throwing ice cream at him and laughing at him and jeering and rubbing his face in it his friend Dave and his twin sister are in the Saturn with the motor running. In spite of the way Danny looks and in spite of the terrible smell, they open the car door and pull him in within seconds after the door to Gazillion Flavors falls open and the crowd cheers as the reigning Gazillion Flavors champion and second-time winner of the Gazillion Flavors contest throws Danny out.
Now the Saturn is wheezing over Independence Pass. Following a lead they picked up at the all-fabric car wash in Denver where they steam-cleaned poor Danny and policed the car, they are heading for the former Trappist monastery in Snowmass, a couple of peaks over from Leadville. The car wash manager turned out to be a Catholic priest in deep cover, which is how the nation’s clergy have to operate in the era of Reverend Earl.
When Dave asks the question—how did he know?—the priest says with a nice smile, “There are a lot of people like me doing jobs like this.”
Betz was standing by while Dave hosed out the car. She said, “You mean ex-priests?”
“I’m not ex. Priests. Rabbis, mullahs, you name it. In times like this we’re not the first thing you want to see.”
“Shit,” Danny said, “you look all right to me.”
He grinned. “We’re, um. Eschatological symbols.”
“What’s that?”
He didn’t try to explain, he just said, “When you’re into your own body …”
Betz thought but did not say, like Annie. She said, “Like the Reverend Earl.”
He nods. “You kind of don’t want to think about last things.”
“Say what?”
“When you think you’re going to live forever, you don’t want to see people like us walking around.”
As soon as the Dedicated Sisters took over the monastery, the priest told them, the Trappist monks moved on to a location as yet undisclosed. This was for their own protection. In times of persecution, the faithful retreat and hunker down in catacombs. When flesh became the new religion, religion had to go underground.
“Like me.” He grinned at them like another kid. “But you don’t want to mess with .the Dedicated Sisters. They’re just a bunch of nutcakes who get off on dressing up like nuns.”
“They’ve got our sister.”
“Ooooh, man!”
He was a weird guy, this underground priest with his coveralls buttoned to the neck to conceal the tattooed crucifix, but he was the kind of guy you just sort of opened up to. They ended up telling him about Annie and the parents and the Dedicated Sisters. There was something about him that just sort of brought it out in you. The twins told the story the way they did, in sequence and finishing each other’s sentences. Danny started with the night she vanished and Betz took it up. “She started looking bad so they sent her away, does that suck or what?”
“Body image.”
“Sir?”
“It’s all about body image,” the priest said and when he went on he wasn’t exactly asking, he was telling. “How did this get so important that it’s the new religion? Why are our bodies more important than ourselves? Sorry,” the priest said gently, “I didn’t mean to scare you. Hang on for a minute and I’ll point you to Snowmass on the topographical map.”
10
“Are
you all right?”
Marg comes back to herself with a start. “Oh,” she says in a voice so sweet that it surprises her. “Yes, I think so.” She hasn’t felt this light in years.
“You were kind of wandering, and I …” The gawky clerk means well. The cameras picked up on Marg revolving like a misplaced lighthouse in the Better Dresses aisle of Petites and the boss dispatched the newest employee to intercept. You never know what kind of wackos are going to wander in and completely lose it here in the 24/7 store in Harpers Mills, accessible from exit 45 off westbound 1-85 in these parts, exit 42A if you are going east. And after these people lose it, you never know what they’ll do or how much merchandise they’ll ruin before you get them out of the store. When she doesn’t answer, the kid touches her arm. “Ma’am, you were …”
“Was I?” The light is harsh, there are endless racks of clothes but, odd: none of them her size. Marg paddles through the aisles like Alice after she drinks the potion and gets big. She’s been driving for so long that she rolls along like a sailor who’s been at sea for so long that he’s forgotten how to walk. How long has she been on the road? She thinks it’s been days. Everything is unreal now. “I guess I lost my sense of direction.”
She is making the kid clerk anxious but he takes her elbow, saying kindly, “We were getting worried about you. You looked sort of …” He is too polite to say “messed up.”
“Well, I’m not any more. I’m fine.” She looks up at him and smiles nicely. “Thanks to you.”
His expression tells her she is not. “And you’re looking For …”
“I was looking for …” Odd. She came into the 24/7 for something. Now she can’t remember what. “Supplies,” she says brightly. “For a trip. Crazy time for it, but I’m on a trip.”
“Suitcase?”
“I suppose. And things to put in it, like …” For no reason that she can understand, she is at a loss.
“Clothes?”
“Oh, thank you. That would be excellent. But. Everything in here’s too small!”
“You might want our women’s department,” he says tactfully.
“Oh my God, I forgot.” Marg blushes to the roots of her hair. Half the time she thinks of herself as Annie’s size. Which she was, the last time she looked in a mirror and was happy with what she saw. How quickly we forget.
“Over here.”
By the time Marg leaves the 24/7 she and the clerk are bonded and she has everything she needs: travel bag just like the one she took to the hospital when she had her babies, toiletries and travel clock, wrinkle-resistant drip-dry clothes. Separates, the kid told her in all seriousness, are easy to take care of and you can mix and match. She is heading into Chicago on a mission and now she is loaded for bear. You can’t beat the 24/7 for one-stop shopping. It says so right there on the sign.
She hurries into the parking lot with a sense of purpose that dissolves in strong light. The lot is vast and studded with cars lined up like deathwatch beetles glittering in the sun. The countryside is endless. She is small. How can she find her children when she doesn’t even know where they are on the map or if she’s looking at the right map? Can she do this without help? Can she do anything without Ralph?
For the first time in her adult life, really, Marg Abercrombie is alone. It is scary and exhilarating, running around with nobody depending on her for the day-to-days. For the first time since she got married, she is traveling on her own with nothing more to think about than which road and nothing to take care of except the few things she just bought. Things she can wash every night and hang up to dry in whichever cheap motel. She has no family bills to pay, no books to read for tomorrow’s classes, no student papers to grade. For the first time in years she is traveling free of encumbrances. Nobody to service, nobody to mother, nobody to teach. All Marg Abercrombie has to be right now is herself. For the moment, she could be anyone. She could do anything. Except for the search-and-rescue, she has no obligations right now. Ever the conscientious academic, she called the college the minute the sun came up on the day after she decided to leave Ralph. She notified department voice mail that she was taking her sabbatical starting now, a good time for it as her grades are in and even the wretched grade-grubbing senior English majors won’t be back to badger her until fall.
She isn’t sure how long all this is going to take but Marg is determined to stay out here in the world until she finds all three of her children, no matter what.
“I am woman,” she says experimentally. “Hear me roar?”
If she’s so damn capable, why did she almost lose it right there in the middle of the 24/7 store? And why does she get all weird every time she has to stop the car and get out to pump her own gas and buy food?
“Agh.” Truth hits so hard that she groans. She’s been propped up by routine and carried along by duties for so long that she can’t stand alone. Now only the knowledge that her children need her holds her up? Without them she’d dissolve into a helpless puddle of flesh.
“Bloody, bold and resolute,” Marg says—a quotation from somewhere! —and gets into the car. She feels better the minute the door slams because like all Volvos, this one is so tight that it makes her ears pop.
Naturally she checks her cell phone for messages, nothing from the kids, although she picked the thing up off the mall floor when Ralph stopped quacking at her and stuck it in her shoulder bag in hopes. Pushing the skip button, she plows through a series of increasingly heated messages. Interesting, she thinks, Ralph isn’t worried about the kids, he’s pissed at her for missing her appointment at The Time Has Come. The rest comes in stages. Message by message, he lets her know
a. that TTHC won’t touch her now,
b. that he’s working on another clinic to fit her in,
c. that she’s scheduled for a face-lift by one of the offshore-islands-trained cosmetic surgeons at Put On A Happy Face and,
d. it’s the something-teenth of this month, which is today.
“As if!” She guns the motor, empowered by its growl. Take that, Ralph.
“As if he cares what I look like now,” she says to the face she sees in the mirrored sun visor. Devoid of makeup, with only a touch of lipstick to keep her from looking dead and scaring the crap out of the kids, the face Ralph is so sick of looks animated now, flushed with fresh energy and, in spite of fatigue and irreversible crumbling around the eyes, wide-eyed and expectant and surprisingly young. “As if I care.”
Pleased by her tone of assurance, she repeats, rehearsing. “As if I care.”
It’s only a few more miles to Chicago now.
Although she left Ralph and set out without a plan, Marg Abercrombie has a plan. There is a Dedicated Sisters processing office just outside Chicago, she noted the address on the duplicate contracts before Ralph filed them away. According to the agreement, Annie’s papers had to clear the Chicago office before she could be sent to one of the convents, so without a raccoon’s idea of where to look for her twins, Marg will start there. If she’s right about this, she thinks, the Dedicateds in the home office will direct her to the convent where Annie is being held. If Marg is right, she’ll probably find Betz and Danny camped out front, frustrated and madder than a pair of rabid bats because no administrator is going to let them inside without a responsible adult. One look at their wild, wonderful kid faces and even the stupidest Ded would slam the door on them.
Boy, will they be glad to see her!
“OK, I’m here,” Marg will say to Danny and Betz. She can hardly wait to see them, even though she was still her own woman until they were born. A baby is just one baby, but twins can break you in two. Nonstop changings and feedings and crying, it’s the geometric progression of sleepless nights. Never mind, she loves her twins and she’ll lift Betz and Danny with her voice as surely as she used to pick them both up in one swoop when they were small. “Let’s do this.” They’ll be so glad to see her that they’ll forget that they aren’t speaking to her, so, fine!
Together th
ey can storm the convent office, if convents have offices. They’ll storm the office and lean on the Dedicated Mother in charge until she capitulates and releases Annie to them. As the responsible parent, Marg has the right to withdraw her daughter from treatment no matter what it says on the contracts Ralph signed when he handed her over and they threw her in that van with the black windows and took her away. Listen, if the Dedicated keepers object they will find out that Marg Abercrombie is a force to be reckoned with, an irate mother and an associate professor of American Studies, a Phi Bete and a person in her own right.
Better, she is feeling better now that she is resolved.
At twilight she enters the sprawling infrastructure of Chicago, but by the time she threads her way through traffic to the Dedicated Center in the shadow of the Sears Tower, it’s after ten, and it’s almost eleven by the time she finds a parking place and makes it back to the door.
The place is massively ugly, a yellow-brick cube glowing pinkly in the sodium-vapor lights that illuminate the plaza and line the walks leading up to the double front door. To make it look more like a religious establishment than it is, somebody has replicated a Gothic doorway straight out of Mont-Saint-Michel, and above the doorway in raised stone she sees the puzzling legend in Gothic type, ABANDON FLESH, ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE. The Deds take care of overweight children too, but it’s weird.
The legend is so troubling that it stops her in her tracks. What was Ralph thinking when he signed half their portfolio over to these people with promises of more when they send Annie back cured? Why would their beautiful, emaciated daughter get better in the hands of a bunch of ugly women whose motto suggests that they’re dedicated to erasing fat? She is conscious of her own expanding flesh, upper arms that she shows to no one, the slight bulge at the back of her bra, and by Earl it makes her angry. Do they really think fat is evil, like incest or murder? Are they making poor Annie lose weight?
