Blood Highway

by Gina Wohlsdorf

  We’d been building up too long; we were so primed it was scary. Nobody tells you about this part. How would they? We stared at each other, moving, tandem-breathing. Beyond sheer pleasure, to something other, where the self has no meaning so the guards leave their posts, forfeit borders.

  “God! Oh my God!”

  Twelve

  The bathroom light flicked on. The ceiling had supernovas. My hips reached for where he’d been, aftershocks, and my skin seemed bubbly, blistered in a superpositive way. I started laughing. I looked toward the light so he could laugh with me.

  Johnny was at the sink, scrubbing his penis with a washcloth. Lather slopped off the tip. He was standing with his legs far apart. Harsh white light reached to the crack of his ass.

  I didn’t understand. Between his buttocks was a one-sided game of tic-tac-toe. Some of the scars were old, and some were new. Two still had fresh stitches. The lips of the wounds were red, angry. Of course they were. Of course, of course.

  Beautiful boy in prison. He never wants to kiss.

  Oh my God.

  The faucet shut off. “Rainy?”

  I didn’t think about it, racing upstairs, leaping into my jeans. I just did it.

  His shadow was long and thin across the bed. “Rainy, are you—”

  I tripped outside, thinking I’d black out or barf and that either would be fine. I found a surface with some give, the tires, their grave of dead flowers. I was expanding—getting pulled from all sides, becoming larger to accommodate this new reality. I had to let it in. I didn’t want to; I fought the stretch, curling inward. Trying to integrate what I’d seen with all I’d been through before it, the too much I’d been through before it, but my efforts kept being crossed out with red lines. Jagged red lines teethed in black thread.

  “My God, my God, my God—” My refrain, vamping. My brain improvising: Na-na-na, I’m just secondhand news, my heart will go on and— “Shut up. Shut up, shut up.”

  The door opened. “Did I hurt you?” He sounded five years old. “Do you want me to leave?”

  I did. I wanted nothing more. Leave, go away, I’m not ready. Whatever the hell any of this is, I am not ready.

  I reached out, snared Johnny’s hand. “Sit by me.”

  The tire sagged. I went sideways, laying my head in his lap.

  “What happened?” he said.

  “I saw your scars.”

  “I won’t do that to you. Not ever. Don’t worry.”

  “Who did it to you?”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  “Yes, it does!”

  “Shh. We’re not that far from the main house.”

  “Who did that to you? Who did that to you?”

  “It isn’t bad. It doesn’t hurt anymore. I go somewhere else.” He set a tentative hand to my hair. “What can I do?”

  “Talk. I like it when you talk.”

  “About . . . about what, though?”

  “What’d you mean? ‘You were always good’—what’s that mean?”

  Johnny’s hand got bolder. He combed. That’s all he did for a while. I was about to ask again when he said, “It’s gonna sound crazy.”

  I had no rejoinder for that. Honestly, what was sane?

  “I weigh one-sixty now,” he said. “I was one-fifty when I went in. For a guy, I’ve got, like . . . I guess I’ve got a prettiness or whatever. My second day inside, a guy in the shower, he goes for me. And Sam swoops in and he saves me. Like he’s Batman or something. I didn’t really have a dad. And my mom wasn’t . . . y’know?”

  I sat up, nodding.

  “Sam got me transferred to his block. He paid off some guards so I could have my own shower time, got me a job in the auto shop. He protected me. He didn’t let anybody mess around with me. And he didn’t mess around with me, either. He was my friend.”

  I experienced such a lift at this I was surprised I didn’t levitate. I wanted Johnny to stop right there.

  “Sam didn’t have a cellmate, and I was terrified of mine. After two months—in the House, that’s forever—Sam got it fixed so we could be cellies. I was so happy, I mean just so happy, had my blanket and my stuff. He steps aside to let me in. And I cross the bars, and he shoves me on the bunk and he does it.”

  That wouldn’t compute. Does what?

  “And I’m suffocating in the pillow, so I look up. All I can see is his mirror. But that wasn’t what I was looking at. He thinks I like to watch us, but that’s—he’s not what I’m looking at. When he does it.”

  Johnny paused. He’d related the horror with the disinterest of a bad tour guide while my lungs turned solid and the ground dropped to a depthless pit where Sam haunted the very air.

  “Around the mirror, there’s . . . He used Scotch tape.” Johnny’s words were thick with humiliation: up to here had been the easy part. “The first one, you’re a baby. A woman’s holding you. She’s got a swimsuit on. There’s another mom and baby at the edge, so I think it was a swimming class. You’re laughing, and you’ve got your hands pressed together like you’re clapping for whoever’s holding the camera. The next one, you’re three. Exactly three. You’re wearing a purple party hat, and you’ve got a cake with Scooby Doo on it and three candles. Your lips are orange but only in the middle. So you must’ve drank some orange punch or juice. Or soda. Could’ve been soda.”

  Johnny’s beatific smile was fixed on the trees. “This one’s my favorite. I don’t know how old you are. You’re wearing purple overalls with a pink shirt, sitting on red Keds, and you’re holding this book that’s as big as you are. One of your teeth is missing. That’s why it’s my favorite. It was a door I could go through, and Sam couldn’t get me there. He could hurt me, but he couldn’t really hurt me.”

  Johnny lit a cigarette and pulled deep. He held out the pack. There was one left. I took; he lit. “They’re school pictures after that.” He tipped the empty pack above his mouth, swallowing the capsule that fell out. “I don’t sleep much. I don’t like to—I dream funny. Sam doesn’t know about the ephedrine. He thinks I have insomnia. He gets me all kinds of downers for it. I save ’em for when I need a break. Then I can tranq him.”

  Johnny stood and started pacing like a windup toy. “So when Sam’s asleep, I can look all I want. It’s boring in there. That’s what really drives guys nuts, not the other stuff. I made up—it’s kind of a game. I look at one of the pictures. The baby one, I usually start there. And I go from that one to the next one. But I’ve gotta go through every single day between them. I’ve gotta think of what you ate for breakfast and what clothes you put on every morning. Who you talked to. Did you play with a Lite-Brite? Or a Slinky, or did you practice a yo-yo? What’d you have for lunch? Did you watch TV? Sesame Street, Reading Rainbow? Or maybe game shows? Where in the World Is Carmen San Diego?—that was good. And when I finished that game, I made up another one. In that one, I’d go into the pictures. I could talk to you. Sometimes I was a baby along with you, and we’d swim together. And sometimes I was grown up, like I am now, and I’d push you on a swing set. Or this one time, when you were eight, we went fishing and you caught a water snake. And you just completely panicked. It tried to bite you, but I threw it back.”

  I rose, shaking my head. Johnny started talking faster. “Sometimes we were both grown-ups and we’d go places. I’d get books out of the library, and we could go anywhere. We went everywhere, all over, and, I’ll be honest, last year, the . . . that red sweater. But before that, we were just friends. We were best friends, so if I look at you like I know you, or I talk and talk like I haven’t seen you in a long time, then that’s why. And it’s”—he fired a finger gun into his head, mimed brains spraying out the back—“it’s crazy. But you gotta believe me, there are crazier guys. There are way crazier guys.”

  “So . . .”

  “So when Sam said he was coming to get you, to make you take him to the money— He trusts me. He thinks I’m his bitch. And I owed you. I owe you big-time. Y’know, for helping me get away.” />
  Johnny picked up a pinecone, threw it past the guesthouse’s far corner. “Path’s back there. In a couple hours, you run it all the way to town. Call your cop, game over.”

  “And Sam goes back to prison?” I said.

  “He’ll still try for the money. If you knew where it was, I’d tell him and we’d go get it. But I can just make a place up.”

  “And what happens to you? When the money’s not there?”

  Johnny shrugged.

  “We can go get the car,” I said. “We can go right now.”

  “Sam keeps the keys.”

  “I watched you hot-wire a bus in, like, three seconds.”

  “You’ll be all right. The path isn’t hilly or anything. I asked.” He frowned at my frown. “Is it the dark? You’re going at sunrise, remember? I wouldn’t let you go in the dark.”

  We stared at one another. It was like we were speaking two different languages.

  I followed the side of the guesthouse to its back corner. There was a stump for chopping logs but no ax, and behind that, a mat of darker dirt. The woods didn’t split for the path. It got lost about five feet in.

  I went closer, wanting to trace the route. Each of my steps was twinned by one of Johnny’s in the dry leaves behind me. “Careful,” he said.

  “Of what?”

  “Bears and mountain lions live up here. Snakes.”

  It was December, but I didn’t argue. In spite of my significant defiance, I was watching the past change. In it, somebody gave a shit. Like, really, really gave a shit. Con­ceptualizing Johnny’s version of our shared, merry years, I tried to go all in. I imagined stumbling, skinning my knee, and he picked me up and carried me inside and used the stingy stuff and put on a Band-Aid and said, “Go play for another hour but not any longer, because supper’s almost ready.” I imagined we went to the zoo and I liked the panthers and I wanted to get closer, and he said, “No, no,” and picked me up to protect me. At the water park, we did the slides all day. All day, every day, the entire summer.

  Yet I couldn’t ignore the false memories’ sloppy construction, the gauze I’d put over the lens. There’s a reason that’s done, thinking back over a perfect day. It lends the scene a haze, blots out any grimace of annoyance at this unbelievably high-maintenance child and how bad you want to throttle her. Nor could I get around my own formulaic choices. His fishing trip with the water snake was better.

  “I’m a real letdown, aren’t I?” I’d never meant an apology more, though I told it to the forest. The affection in Johnny’s gaze was so powerful I knew I’d make fun of him if I didn’t avert my eyes. “I’m aware I’m pretty much a giant bitch. And I’m not saying that so you’ll contradict me, like women do when they say they’re fat so the guy will go, ‘Oh, no, honey, you’re beautiful, you’re not fat at all.’” I backed up, fit my side to the house, picked at the paint. “I know I’m a nightmare. Sorry for that.”

  “I thought you would be. A nightmare. You’re Sam’s daughter, y’know? I thought you’d be spoiled as hell and a psycho on top of it. But then you saved the cop.”

  I spun around like a figure skater. “I what now?”

  Johnny was literally scratching his head. “In front of his house. When we hit you. Sam stomped my foot on the gas, we hit the cruiser— You remember, right?”

  “Yeah. But—”

  “You had a chance to get away. I heard the cop tell you to go, and you didn’t.” He was getting really worried. “You remember, don’t you?”

  “Anybody would’ve done that.”

  Johnny went from regarding me like I was a pipe that’d sprung a leak to regarding me like a pipe that was stupid. “No, they wouldn’t.”

  I felt my temper rising. “I’m an asshole. Okay? You maybe haven’t been around enough to fully appreciate it yet, but it’s a fact. We’ll fuck at sunrise and I’ll run right after, but you should come with me. Come with me as in driving, not . . . But that, too.” Holy no way—I was blushing. “Or you can go separate or whatever you think will work. Because I’m not worth it. What you’re talking about doing, I’m not worth it. I’m not.”

  Johnny was beaming at me. “Yes, you are.”

  I went to him and grabbed his hands. He had to absorb this. “Listen. I want to live by the ocean. I want to take walks on the beach. I want to learn guitar so I can sit on my fire escape and play ‘Moon River’ and maybe someone on the street hears and thinks, ‘Hey, that’s not awful.’ That’s my whole résumé, that’s—oh, for fuck’s sake, what?”

  “‘Moon River’?” Johnny said. “There’s a guy on the top tier who’s got a record player. He plays that song every night before lights-out. It’s my favorite.” The heat he radiated was cloying and uncomfortable.

  I lifted a foot to get some distance between us, but instead I went nearer, the burn increasing. “Remember that time we went to the mountains?”

  “We had a snowball fight,” Johnny said, his head bobbing yes, yes, yes. “I let you win. One night, the heater busted and I fixed it. Easy fix, just the converter.”

  “Paris?”

  Johnny laughed—all air, still a nice sound. “I wasn’t crazy about that. I’d never flown before. You held my hand the whole time. You really wanted to go to that big museum. You liked the guy who did the pond with the bridge and the flowers. I told you I liked these bendy clocks hanging on a tree branch. You said that meant I was sad, but I wasn’t sad. I was happy.”

  “That week in Hawaii—remember?”

  “Yeah, you liked it there. That waterfall—it looked a thousand feet high. You wanted to jump off of it. I wouldn’t let you, not in a million years. You got mad at me, but then I climbed a tree and picked you this piece of fruit. You said it was the best thing you’d ever tasted.”

  “We hiked back to shore,” I said, touching his ribs through his shirt, “and there was a boat tied to the dock. You rowed us out. I was thirsty, so when it rained, you cupped the rain for me to drink. I got hungry, so you caught a fish.”

  “You sang to me when it got dark,” he said, putting my palm on his heart. It was pounding, “because I don’t like the dark. You sang ‘Moon River.’ We saw this ship, right when you finished. There were people on the outside, by that railing part. The girls had sparkly clothes, and the guys were wearing tuxes. We could hear them talking. They were complaining, most of them. About how cold the night was or how warm the champagne was or how bored they were. And you looked at me, and I looked at you. And we laid back and went to sleep.”

  I had to sit. I hobbled back to the tires. “It’s cheesy—that song. I don’t know why I like it.”

  “It’s sad we can’t like cheesy things,” he said. “Somebody’s probably happy like that somewhere. Like the song says.”

  “Where?”

  “Here. Me, now. I’m happy like that.”

  “Knock it off. None of that actually happened.”

  Johnny sat beside me. The cloud of his happiness evaporated. Our hands were two hopeless prayers between our knees.

  “See?” I said. “I’m not good. It’s too late for me to be any good.”

  “No, you’re right. That stuff’s not true. It’s good, you reminding me.” He watched his toe draw a figure eight in the soil. “You’re better than how I imagined. You’re infinity better.”

  I laughed. One more time: “How do I convince you I’m shit, man? Tell me what I have to do, and I’ll do it. Whatever it is, I’ll do it.”

  Johnny glared at the moon’s angle, its effect on the trees. “If you have questions about Sam,” he said, “about your mom, about anything, I’ll tell you what I know. And once the sun’s up, you’re leaving. You’re getting out of this. I pinkie-swore. I told you, ‘Whatever it takes.’ So whatever you need from me, it’s yours.” He bumped me with his shoulder. “But you can’t make me not love you, Rainy. You gotta let me have that.”

  “Why?”

  He raised a finger, tapped the side of his head. “It’s all that’s left.”


  Thirteen

  Johnny kept his word. I asked, and he answered.

  “But remember, half of what you hear in the House is rumor and another quarter is bull.” We’d raided the fridge and spread a picnic on the bed. Complete meals with demonstrable nutrition didn’t appeal to either of us—we chose a smorgasbord of preservative-heavy junk. I gummed gummy snacks too small and too sweet to be real strawberries. He squeezed Easy Cheese on Ritz crackers, and the uppers he was on made his aim hit-or-miss. “So, y’know. Grain of salt.”

  Sam had gone to San Francisco in 1975, searching for free love. He found hopheads using switchblades to dig hallucinated bugs out of their arms, two-pound babies born addicted to heroin, and their mothers wandering the Haight, days after labor, offering five-dollar hand jobs.

  “At least, that’s how Sam talks about it. I wasn’t alive yet.”

  He went to a 7-Eleven, bought hot dogs and buns, ingredients for s’mores. He built a little fire on the beach, and anybody who came by could have some supper for nothing. Sam talked to all of them: “We got the bum end of the deal. It doesn’t have to be like this.” His audience wanted to know the other way it could be, so he told them certain crimes were acts of patriotism, certain violations were expressions of love. He portrayed himself as the authority on what counted as what when. It was those in dire need of authority who stuck around, but they were many. And they listened.

  The Cain Gang robbed their way up and down the California coast from 1976 until 1982. They were small-time—convenience stores, liquor stores, mom-and-pop markets. They’d make camp on the beach between jobs, somewhere nobody ever went, and fritter their profits away on pills and pot and acid. When they ran low, they got on the road to another county, and another robbery. Their constant travel was important. Police jurisdictions sucked at information sharing, and ViCAP didn’t exist yet. Even if it had, Sam’s crew wouldn’t have made the cut. They weren’t violent. When a cashier was too frightened to put the money in the bag, Sam talked her through it. He’d ask whether she had kids, what their names were, what sports they played. He’d say she was doing a terrific job. More than once, the woman thanked him before he left.