Chapter 35
The hair freckled blanket made Millie’s skin itch. The weak light from the lamp producing enough illumination she could make out the dark swathes of hair and pluck them or brush them off. Some of the hairs refusing to pop off even after she’d snapped the blanket over and over again. Given the absence of clouds, she knew once night fell the heat would rise, making the woods cold. Hairy or not, the blanket was a gift.
Running through the woods, she’d been delivered to the unfinished cabin. Another gift.
Upon her entry into the woods, the gravel road she’d veered off from had disappeared. She’d lost track of which direction she ran. South. West. She might’ve been running in circles. Too much adrenaline. Fear. She had to put distance between herself and the cops, anyone interested in finding her. Connie. Even Connie.
Some guiding hand helped. Finally kicked in. The gravel road attracted towards the path she’d chosen. Magic almost.
Hiding behind a tree, she’d viewed a side road forked off the main graveled vein, a stone marker, something you’d buy then bring out and mount at the head of a driveway. It had held her attention, Millie sagging against the tree, trying to catch her breath. The marker promising a civilized place to hide. Busting a move through the trees she’d tripped, nearly lost an eye once, freaked out by the helicopter, trying to run and look up at the same time. Dumb.
Waiting until full dark, she tromped down the steep hillside, across the main road, past the pretty tower of stones then moved through the brush alongside the driveway. Stars and moon combined light allowed her to make out the unfinished cabin. It looked empty. Inside, second and third guessing herself she’d performed several loops through the building, looking for an alarm system. Just because nothing of value was stored out here yet, it didn’t mean the house wasn’t wired. The place already had electricity, enough to fire up the lamp.
Someone had been out here. They were gone now. If they came back, they came back. It might all work out. Some mysterious force providing for her so far. Not everything though.
There was nothing to eat. The single lamp, on the floor beside the blanket, displayed the fact plenty had been eaten. Empty hot dog packages, potato chip bags, and several containers of Nestles Strawberry Banana Quik. And then the question of the hair. Quite a lot, honestly. No scissors. She wished for scissors. Some sort of weapon. Not to kill, but as a potential negotiating instrument.
Hearing Connie, seeing him, it’d cleared her head long enough to let her realize what she’d done. Punching the cop. Then shooting at Sipe, at his car. Worse, she remembered nearly running Connie down, plastering him all over the road as she drove into Little Creek. Locked, the mechanism was impermeable. Millie all about the mission.
She’d ditched her phone. The GPS thing. Stopped running through the woods, looked around and hucked it, let it land wherever. Let some squirrel drag it into a tree, store it. It could only get her in trouble. She suspected if she called her mother it’d be like something out of the movies. Cops present. They’d have already told mother to stretch out any potential conversation, let their electronics work, so they could fix a location on Millie, get her, bring her in, for her protection, before anything else happened to make the situation any worse. Before events whirled out of even law enforcement’s control and Millie wasn’t just a disgraced former Olympic athlete, and now former business owner, but now dead, dead as Bela Yalbo.
Why couldn’t there be enough mystery hair left here in the chilly, mostly roofless cabin for her to weave some sort of wig? Some squirrel had gathered just enough scissored off hair to leave her wanting. On its own, a wig wouldn’t do. She’d have to shed six inches, muscle, pounds, bone density. Post-Olympics, pre-scandal, her would-be acting agent had insisted Millie be realistic, none of the leading lady parts in any of the piss poor prospective screenplays would ever go to her. Best friend roles, sister roles, weird foreigners, the bad guy’s trusted female companion, those were the only parts Millie qualified for.
Owls, tree tilt, Millie clearing her throat, the sounds out in the forest tonight. It seemed too much trouble to stand and spit out a window. Simply, the floor was closer. Besides, the lamp had shown dust and bird droppings galore, boards coated in a putty knife resistant crust, the unfinished roof allowing nature maximum access. Her spit would dry and meld with the other splotches. Her bits of lung. In prison, she could imagine the lung cancer would rear its head. Or a pregnancy. All day long something she’d spaced on, something important. All the goop Connie had fountained into her in a matter of hours, and she’d forgotten the pill. So baby, and blackened lung. Both. Twine the two and she might bear a molten mutant chemo-baby. It wouldn’t even wait for the normal processes of birth. Milling about in the fenced in yard with other convicts, Millie sporting the Lex Luthor-do, and without warning, the little one would melt clean through her abdomen, through the prison grays, roll onto the grass or concrete and then drop right on through, searing surface then dirt, worms going up like black snakes on Fourth of July, and like a slender seam of mercury cannonballing through the layers of a child’s ant farm, the baby’s irradiated descent forming a permanent notch in the geologic record. The plummet slowing somewhere shy of the planet’s heart, nursing on liquefied mantle, imprinting on the glowing inner-core, a nickel-alloy mother of circumstance.
Potential future molten baby aside, she still wanted a cigarette. Back before her first Olympics, several of her teammates/competition, girls under Veronica’s wing, smoked in secret, drank not so secretly, and it was pure coincidence that at the qualifying event some Bela Yalbo trained sticks, uniformly blonde with eating disorders and overbites/and or dimples, spotted the coven and the cloud of smoke, and ratted them out. Back in the auditorium, Veronica way pissed, and before the most important competition of her life, Yalbo giving Millie a triumphant look, most his smile lost in the walrus mustache, those eyes twinkling, like all those years ago, denying her discipleship, he’d suspected she’d mistreat her holy vessel, something in Millie driving her towards self-destruction, hampering any slender chance of victory already pushed out of reach by virtue of her slabular, swim meet unfriendly torso. The Czech, such a presumptuous student of human psychology, mistaking Millie’s reaction when anyone attempted to inject her with fear.
She nodded off, sitting on the floor, back against the wall, blanket covering her shoulders, and woke with water dripping on her, into her scalp, Bela Yalbo just arrived courtesy a permeable glitch between life and death, space and time, water logged, and dripping from the mustache the pool water buoying then drowning him during his fateful fatal cardiac event. Hovered above her, a buzzing and wet clucking in his throat, honestly, not all that different from his normal speaking voice, but here, a gift from the forgiving, benevolent dead to the slabular living on the lam, if only Millie understood not Czech, but how to translate the most foreign language out there, the dead’s wretched tongue, she’d know then how to air swim, outwit gravity, porpoise with purpose, muscling right through roadblocks, the cops losing sight of her, the foam, the chop, like heat made waves off asphalt she’d make waves, the cops Keystoning after her, only to discover the escape route tailed off like jet contrail, abruptly divorced from its source, levitating and disintegrating, segmented, loose loops like disinterested question marks.
The impression of dripping pool water just her brain and skin working in collusion, summoning cold flashes. The competitive drive. The residual damage after three decades of constantly setting sights on competitions. Giving her ghosts when skin and bone villains were wanting. Right now, they weren’t wanting.
The little man. That ugly little man.
Last night, after dropping Sipe with the stun gun she should’ve kicked him harder in the head. Maybe not kill him, but scramble his eggs enough to put him in a hospital. Why couldn’t Connie just let Sipe hang? Who cared what happened to someone short, some
one who looked like a lonely farmer, an undertaker, one of those faces from Great Depression-era photographs, men lined up for jobs, any job, grateful for a plate of watery thin gruel filled to the rim.
Her mother would tell her to talk to God. God was probably tired of hearing her mother yap. By this hour, Mom hitting her stride, even rocking back and forth, babbling, leaking tears, asking Him to keep an eye on Millie. Some Pendleton cop on detail secretly recording the old bird while she begged the lord to provide Millie the good sense to turn herself in.
She’d give herself up. Soon as she knew Connie was gone. If he was really truly gone, she’d walk out of the woods, walk right on up to the first fat fuck local cop waiting for her. If justice actually provided for the low on the totem pole, maybe she’d get cuffed by the double-chinned douche she’d dropped. He’d sport raccoon eyes, a purpled nose. Reading her rights, he’d sound like someone with a cold. Doo haf da wight doo un attoony. It’d be really hard not to laugh.
She’d sleep. Then wake up, head back towards town. Do her best to avoid eye hungry branches, and animals hungry for the whole human.
She’d told Connie they’d be free, but she’d bungled it. Should’ve taken off from Little Creek last night, the athletic club already left in her partner’s hands, mom told she was taking a vaykay, and just played it all by the seat of the pants. Two young lovers with the world in front of them.
The blanket betrayed her. Every time she shifted, putting out cold spots like fires, a new swathe of the surrendered hair sprouted, irritated her bare skin. The blanket spawning new hair like it’d been seeded. She stood and flapped it out again like she was trying to shake the dyes out. Settled back to the floor, once she unplugged the lamp, confident it could be gripped and implemented as a club at a moment’s notice, she felt soothed. Safe.
Even though Millie hadn’t taken a sip of water in hours, the need to pee pushed her up out of the blanket. She thought about wearing the blanket outside, it was that nippy now, and the weakness implied pissed her off. She tossed the blanket down. Walked through the house, the light from the night sky showing enough in her path she didn’t stumble too much.
She didn’t walk too far from the unfinished cabin. Just around the side. Stared at mounds of beauty bark striated by moonlight. Piss out of her, she pulled up her yoga pants and went back inside. Rubbing her arms, she made a left when she meant to walk down the hall and tripped over something. She screamed. It’d been a dull thump. She laughed. Swore. Hunched down, trying to make out shapes she heard a dial tone. She patted the floor. Felt floorboards, a phone base, but no phone.
She went back to the room with the blanket and the lamp. Picked up the unplugged lamp, plugged it in and dragged it far as she could. It barely made it into the hall. The light didn’t bleed far enough down to the front of the cabin to help even a little.
Back in the tripping room, she followed sounds, kneeling, searching thoroughly, her hand finally settling on the hands free phone. Launched from its base by Millie’s foot, the phone had flipped over, the caller ID screen facing the floorboard. Some robot voice telling her if she’d like to make a call she needed to hang up then dial again.
She shut the phone off. Set it back on the base.
Of course she knew Connie’s number. She wasn’t an idiot. She recited it.
She walked to the back of the cabin, got the blanket, shut off the lamp. Left it sitting there at the head of the hall.
What she’d do, she’d meditate. Call Connie when it felt right. When she knew he’d be awake. And they’d talk. If Connie wanted her back, they’d figure it out. And if he didn’t, if he was gone, already in Seattle, then that was just the way things worked out.
A swathe of shorn hair ended up in her hand. She rubbed it. Whoever it’d belonged to, now it belonged to Millie. Her version of a rabbit’s foot. She sniffed it, but all she could smell were her own fingers, and a faint forest sourced scent.
The Lipless Gods Page 37
