“Perfectly legal ways?” I asked. Willow remained silent. “Does this job opportunity of yours in any way involve breaking the law?”
“Technically, we won’t really be doing anything illegal.”
“Technically?”
“It’s easy work. We don’t even have to do anything, really. Just sort of stand around.”
“Cut the crap, Willow. Just what the hell will we be doing?”
“Craig and some other guys have kind of this big project they’re working on, and they need someone to stand watch, make sure nobody shows up to spoil the party.”
“This isn’t a tattoo project,” I said.
“Look, all we have to do is watch out for any cops or anyone who looks too nosy. It’ll be a few hours, maybe four all together, and he’ll pay us two hundred fifty bucks a piece.”
Many things went through my head at that point. Two hundred and fifty dollars wasn’t a lot of money. It definitely wasn’t anywhere near my dream of roadside cash, but when you’re out of work, it sounds like a lot of money. Still, money wasn’t my only incentive. I guessed that this project was something a whole hell of a lot bigger than a simple drug deal, and I might have the chance to provide Christian with some valuable information. Maybe it would be something good enough to get me my get-out-of-court-free card. The last thing I wanted to do was pass up this opportunity, but I couldn’t just accept it. I would have to put up a fight or Willow would think I was crazy, or more likely know that I was up to something. It wouldn’t take much in the way of acting skills—I did have my reservations.
“Do you think this is such a good idea?” I asked.
“Two hundred and fifty dollars to stand around and do nothing? Hell, yeah.”
“I mean doing something illegal, something where we could potentially get caught and arrested. Do you think that’s such a good idea, when in about a month we’re going to have to prove our good names before a jury that thinks teenagers are to blame for everything that goes wrong in the world?”
“I don’t plan on getting caught,” Willow said. “I was just trying to be nice. I thought you could use some money.
Craig just offered me the job. He offered me $500 to stand around and keep a lookout, but I thought it would be better if I was with my best friend. If you want to wander the roadsides looking for cash, be my guest. In fact, why don’t you start right now?”
Willow pulled off onto the shoulder and stopped the car. She looked at me. I stared back at her.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll do it, but if there’s any sign of trouble, we take off. We disappear. If the cops catch up with us, we don’t know anything. We’re just innocent bystanders.”
“Well, duh,” Willow said, and her face eased itself into an almost-smile as she swung back onto the road and pounded on the gas pedal.
And so, like that, I turned another corner and edged a little bit closer to hell.
In another age, a beleaguered Civil War general decided that there was no such thing as a code of ethics in war. He turned his back on the commandments he had previously preached, and the world of warfare would never be the same.
How do they happen, these sharp turns? Desperation drives us to do the things we would not normally consider.
A Few Nights Later
Craig drove us to the site. He said nothing during the ride. We sat in stony silence listening to the local classic rock station at low volume. A barely audible Bob Dylan sang about the injustices visited on Ruben Carter, but every time the engine got a little louder or we hit a noisy patch of road, he was drowned out. When he sang that part about taking him to a jail cell, goose bumps broke out on my arms. I felt like talking just to fill the half-silence, but I couldn’t think of anything appropriate to say. What does one talk about when heading off to some sort of vaguely illegal work?
Instead, I concentrated on watching the scenery roll past the window. This was not easy. It was late, close to midnight, and Craig drove mostly on the unlit back roads. I saw trees and occasional houses. I tried to find road signs to at least get a general idea of where I was, so that I could have something of value to offer Christian, but I failed miserably. Once, I spotted a green street sign, bent at an angle so that only half of it could be seen—something-or-other Trail, which narrowed it down not at all. I had no doubt that Craig had carefully arranged his route so as to avoid all landmarks and obvious road signs. He might have even driven around in a circle or two. Maybe he didn’t trust us. Maybe he thought we would go to the cops, or maybe he feared we would share this juicy information with an enterprising individual.
The nature of the project, which was deliberately not mentioned ahead of time, involved hiding a massive amount of drugs. For this, Craig and some anonymous cohort whose name I never learned had enlisted the help of about a dozen desperate-for-money young men and an equal amount of shovels, in addition to Willow and me. In a vacant field in the middle of nowhere—which was probably Sussex County but could have easily been a neighboring county or even, for that matter, Pennsylvania or New York although I don’t think we crossed any bridges—the young men were put to work digging ditches. Willow and I were posted near the road where we were to watch for the approach of any vehicle.
“I don’t care what it is,” Craig said. “A car, a bike, an ATV, whatever. If you see or hear it, since they might have their lights off, you send the signal.”
The signal, which Craig had already explained, was for us to shout, “Stephanie is here!” There was no Stephanie, but Craig in his clever way had decided this would be just the sort of confusing information that could play with the mind of any officer of the law. The shout was to be followed by everyone’s immediate disappearance into the surrounding woods. I spent only a short while considering our odds in the dark and unfamiliar woods on a moonless night against a team of police officers with dogs and flashlights and an intimate knowledge of the local terrain. Basically, if the cops somehow caught a whiff of what was going on and showed up, we were screwed.
“We don’t expect any company,” Craig said. “This is just a precautionary measure.” Unspoken but heard was the implication that maybe one of those well-paid laborers had decided he could make a few bucks by telling what he knew to local police, who could be Drug Free School Zone saints with their record one-night haul. But since our location wasn’t disclosed ahead of time, the police would need to follow this hypothetical informant, and I had a feeling that like Craig, whoever had driven the laborers had taken a cautiously circuitous route and checked frequently for any followers.
“Well, this isn’t so bad,” Willow said as we stood at our post. Cricket noise and darkness engulfed us. The diggers worked so silently we could barely tell they were there.
“Easiest buck I ever made,” I said. I swatted at a mosquito on my ankle.
“Next time we’ll have to bring some Off.”
“I didn’t know there would be a next time.” I’d kind of figured this whole weird thing was a one-time sort of deal. How often did drugs get buried in out-of-the-way places?
“Well, I don’t know. Craig kind of hinted at something. You know, like if we do well then next time we could work for him or something. It’s not such a bad summer job.”
“It’s not exactly something I can put down on a college application.””
“Right, well, we’ll probably both end up at County anyway.”
“I thought Midge was pushing Vassar.”
Willow sighed. “My father has been extremely pissed off lately. It’s this goddamn trial shit. I kind of missed an appointment with the lawyer, and he flipped out at me. Said how I would never amount to anything. How he would disown me. All kinds of crap, but you know he would have to be the one to pay for college, if I went, and I just don’t see him shelling out the dough. Oh shit, like it even matters. For all we know we’ll end up taking correspondence courses in prison.”
“Don’t say that.”
“Oh, face it, will you? We’re fucked.”
> Neither of us said anything for a while, and the crickets seemed louder in the silence; almost, but not quite, loud enough to drown out my thoughts. A few crunches came from our left. Footsteps.
“What was that?” Willow asked. I shushed her. Something snorted, and Willow jumped and grabbed my arm. A deer ran past us, as surprised to see us as we were to see him. “Goddammit,” Willow muttered.
“Your attorney, has he given you any idea, you know, about how things might turn out? Does he have some sort of strategy?”
“I don’t know,” Willow said. She sounded like she didn’t care, and I could see how her apathy could have sent her father into a fit of rage. “I only met with him once or twice, and he didn’t really tell me anything. He doesn’t know anything, anyway. He wasn’t there. It wasn’t our fault.”
“Yes it was,” I said. My voice was small and soft and quickly swallowed up by the crickets, but Willow had heard me.
“No one else was there. It was only us and Randy and Tigue. No one else knows what happened. Things happened the way we say they happened, and it wasn’t our fault.”
“What about Tigue?” I asked.
“Oh, he’s cool. Randy talked to him.”
“I thought he was in Europe.”
“Well, email or something, I guess. I don’t know. Randy said not to worry. So, I’m not worrying.”
“Which is why you’re slowly poisoning yourself?”
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“Just stating the obvious, Willow, but then, if that’s not the way you say things are happening, then I guess it’s not.”
“What’s with the attitude?”
“If you’re not worried, then why are you doing this to yourself?”
“What, because I like to have some fun once in a while, because I’m not some straight-laced little goody-goody, now suddenly I’m some sort of drug addict who can’t face her own problems?”
“Well, yeah.”
“Fuck you.”
There were more footsteps, softer ones. They came from the direction of the digging. We couldn’t tell who it was until he was inches from our face. Craig glowered at us.
“Can you keep it down?” he asked.
“I think we’re done talking anyway,” I said.
A Week or So Later
Down in the darkness of deep woods, the skeletal remains of what was once known as the Lackawanna Cutoff lay withering into nonexistence. The tracks are supposed to be haunted. Once some old geezer buying cigarettes at Johnny’s Quik Mart told me he had made some brilliant scientific discovery about the tracks’ mystery lights, but that the Japanese had stolen his research. He and Bill were probably on the same conspiracy theory mailing lists.
Randy and I didn’t care about mystery lights. We’d come down here for other reasons. His parents had company over, and Randy felt like entertaining or being entertained or whatever. I didn’t really feel like much of anything, but I thought maybe a change of scenery would make things somewhat less perfunctory. It didn’t.
“What’s wrong?” Randy asked as he attempted to squeeze into the tiny space beside me on his car’s back seat. He ended up draping himself half on top of me. I felt trapped, more so even than when we’d been screwing.
“Nothing,” I lied.
“You got someone else?” he asked. “You know, like on the side?”
“On the side of what?”
“Paradise. What the fuck? Why are you being so moody?”
“There’s this girl I like.”
Hanging out with Andrea was torture. Actually, the last time I’d hung out with her, she gave me the web address of some rehab place her cousin had gone to. “For Willow,” she’d told me. It pissed me off that she would make such an accusation about my best friend. I crumpled up and threw away her little scrap of paper as soon as I got home.
“Cool. Bring her along next time.”
“You’d need a bigger car.”
“I’ll buy one.”
“Don’t waste your money. She doesn’t even like me, not like that.”
“She just doesn’t know you, that’s all.”
“I want to go outside.”
“Put your shirt on at least.”
He moved as if to let me up, but ended up leaning on my arm. I pushed him off me, toward the floor, partly because it hurt so bad and partly because I was so sick of him, for no real reason at all. I slipped outside, got my shirt out of the front seat, and pulled it over my head. Randy cursed in the back seat, then managed to right himself and followed me outside.
“Are you premenstrual or something?”
“Willow and I have found new summer employment,” I said.
“That’s great.”
“We’re working for drug dealers.”
“What?” Randy asked. His voice cracked.
“Standing lookout while these guys dig ditches to bury their merchandise. It pays well.”
“Have you lost your mind?”
“It was your sister’s idea.”
“Yeah, but you were supposed to talk her out of it.”
“Why? What’s the point? Anyway, we both need the money.”
“You want money? You want fucking money?” Randy shouted. His voice echoed just the tiniest bit in the night air. He ripped open the passenger-side door and reached into the glove compartment. In the car’s dome light I could see he had a fistful of cash, and there was more inside the glove compartment. “Here, take it! Take all you want!”
Randy threw the money at me. A few of the bills hit me before floating harmlessly to the ground. I thought it was his tip money, but the first bill I reached down to grab was a twenty. I started picking them up and they were all twenties and tens, except for one fifty-dollar bill. Randy walked to the other side of the car. He paced and ran angry fingers through his hair.
“Are you the two biggest airheads in the world or what? Lookouts? Fucking lookouts? I mean, if the cops do show, who’re gonna be the first ones they pick up? Okay, and how does this look, you getting arrested for illegal activities two months before a jury looks you up and down to see if you’re fine upstanding teenagers who had an accident or hellraising hooligans who don’t give a shit about laws, morality, truth, justice, and the American fucking way?”
“It wasn’t my idea,” I said again. I got down on my knees to make sure I’d picked up all the money. I hadn’t kept count, but there was a lot. “Randy, where did this money come from?”
“What?” He was pacing now and kicking at the dirt. “I’ll kill her. I’ll fucking kill her.” I knew he wasn’t homicidal, I knew he was just speaking out of anger, but something about the way he said it chilled me. It made me think of the mysterious Danielle and Brandon. Death is following me, Randy had said back in the spring, and I’d wondered what he meant by it. No one was ever going to mistake Randy for a saint, but I guess I’d always pretty much assumed he was a decent-enough sleazeball. Maybe that had been stupid. Who was Randy Jenkins? What was he capable of?
I became aware of my surroundings—the deserted train tracks, the miles of woods, the lack of civilization, the lack of other people. I didn’t know if I trusted him. I know that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but nothing in my life made a whole lot of sense. Randy Jenkins was a criminal. He was a criminal the FBI was interested in, and I was the one who was going to help them make their case.
“Randy, there’s like three hundred dollars here,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady. There was more money in the glove compartment.
“Work,” Randy muttered. “Tip money.”
“You think I’m stupid? You’re the idiot, Randy. This is not tip money, you hypocrite.”
Randy suddenly looked up from where he’d been fuming. He pulled open the driver’s side door and leaned into the car.
“Give me that,” he said. He grabbed the money from my hand, shoved it into the glove compartment, and slammed it closed. “Get in the goddamn car. I’ll take you home.”
> I could try making a run for it, but what chance did I have? I obediently got in the car. I knew that I needed to ask questions, that I needed to get Randy to talk to me, but I didn’t want to say anything. I didn’t care about the money. I didn’t care about anything. No, that’s not true. I did care about the trial, and what Randy had said kept playing over and over again in my mind.
In less than two months, a jury was going to look us up and down to decide what sort of people we were and what sort of fate we deserved. I could already see it—the people who would sit in judgment of us would be old, dowdy, and so far removed from us that they might as well be aliens. What would they see when Willow and I were held up as specimens?
I needed to get out of that trial. I could already see my fate written on the wrinkled foreheads of the jurors in my mind. I needed to get out of that trial, but still I could not force myself to talk, to ask the questions that needed so badly to be asked.
Last Summer
In fourth grade, I developed a somewhat unhealthy fascination with the occult and exhausted our small local library’s resources on ESP and psychic phenomena. I remember a book that described psychic premonitions concerning the sinking of the Titanic—how family members with relatives aboard felt uneasy for no discernible reason, how a woman who’d drowned on the ship had suffered nightmares to this effect for weeks previous.
On the morning when Willow called me to tell me we were going on our own little cruise, I suffered no such premonitions at all. The only thing eating away at me was whether I should wear my brown bikini or the aquamarine one. I chose brown, and threw a halter top and a pair of shorts over it. I stepped into the back seat of Randy’s car a few minutes later, oblivious to the fact that everything in my life would soon change completely. So much for ESP. Maybe Pablo would have seen things coming, but if I’d known him then and he’d told me, I wouldn’t have listened.
The cruise in question was a ride on Randy’s friend’s parents’ speedboat. I had never met Tigue before. In fact, I couldn’t recall Randy ever mentioning him, but it wasn’t as if Randy and I did all that much conversing. Tigue’s parents were conveniently away for the weekend. Tigue had proposed the excursion, perhaps, and told Randy to rustle up some females.
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