Chapter Two
“Hey, could we make a pit stop at that gas station for just a second? I’m starving,” I asked her. She didn’t look really happy with that idea, but as long as we were still playing the game it was hard for her to say no. She tried, though.
“Do you think it could wait till we get to Glenwood?” she asked reluctantly.
“Well, see. . . if I don’t eat then I get car sick really bad. I promise it won’t take but a minute,” I squeaked, doing my best to look as sick as possible. That almost always works, and this girl was no exception. Her eyes opened wide and she pulled over in front of the gas station right away. Nobody likes to get vomit in their car.
I opened the car door and walked into the station, which had a hole in the wall convenience store on one side. As soon as I was sure the girl couldn’t see me, I took out my cell phone and tried to call Justin again, only to find that I still didn’t have any service. I texted him instead just on the off chance that he might get it later.
I bought a Coke and some Cool Ranch Doritos since I really was dying of hunger, and when I paid for them I brought up the subject with the clerk.
“Uh, can I use the phone, ma’am? It’s really important,” I asked her.
“Is it a local call?” she asked. I knew that was coming.
“No, but I’m willing to pay for it. I’ll give you five bucks,” I said, pulling out the cash. The sight of money has a wonderful way of motivating people sometimes.
“Well, you can use mine if you want to, but keep it short if you can,” she told me, handing me her cell phone. I noticed she used a different company than mine, but that was okay. That was probably why she had service and I didn’t. I called Justin as fast as I could push the buttons.
All I got was his voicemail, but that didn’t surprise me much. He was still at that dadgummed conference, and he’d probably be in and out of seminars where he couldn’t get to his phone all day long. I left him a message saying I was at a gas station in Norman, Arkansas, and asked him to come get me. I couldn’t say much more than that, not with the clerk standing right there in front of me. She’d think I was loony. I figured Justin was smart enough to fill in the blanks well enough, anyway. He’d know if I asked him to come all the way from Houston to pick me up, there’d have to be a really good reason for it. I told him to hurry as fast as he could and I’d call him back later when I had a chance to. Then I gave the girl back her phone and the five dollars.
I got one other thing while I was there, too. They had a rack of souvenir items against the wall, and amongst the postcards and shot glasses and assorted trinkets, I found something better than I dared hope for: a set of red heart-shaped ear rings with a ceramic bass in the center. I guess they were supposed to mean “I love bass fishing” or something like that. They were perfect!
No, I do not wear them, but the reason I wanted them was because they had sterling silver posts. It said so, right there on the label. They were $8.95 and that just about cleaned me out, but it was well worth it. Now I had a powerful weapon to use.
There was a garage attached to the store where they changed tires and things like that, so I went that way and walked out the back of the building so the girl in the car wouldn’t see me leave. I’m pretty sure I wasn’t supposed to use the back door, but nobody said anything.
As soon as I got outside I hurried away, being sure to keep the gas station between me and the Mustang for as long as I could. While I walked I tore the ear rings open and dropped the extra one in my pocket while I held the other one in my hand. I wanted to be ready to defend myself if I had to.
I quickly found out there aren’t too many places to hide in Norman, and I started to get a little scared again. I didn’t dare stay out in the open for too long. Before very much longer Blondie would figure out I’d slipped the noose, and then she’d be after me. She’d probably be furious, too, and there’d be no fooling her next time if she caught me again.
I spied a bridge over a little river and made a beeline for that, walking as fast as I could without running. If you start to run then people get curious, and I didn’t want anybody to remember seeing me.
I made it to the bridge in double quick time, and ducked underneath it after glancing around to make sure nobody was watching. There were a lot of big gray rocks under there and a little bit of sandy beach down next to the water, so it wasn’t too bad of a place to hole up for a while. I climbed way up near the top where it was harder for anybody to see me, and there I sat.
I tore into the chips and the coke while I had time, and I don’t think anything ever tasted so good.
Hiding under a bridge like a troll in a fairy tale was not the best plan in the world, I have to admit, but it was the only thing I could think of right then.
Now and then I heard cars passing by on the bridge over my head. They made the whole bridge shake and rattle around me like it was about to fall apart any second, but none of them stopped. The girl in the green car must have figured out I’d flown the coop by then, and I was willing to bet she was hot on my heels. Others too, most likely. Back up on the roads was the last place on earth I needed to be.
I moved downhill a little bit so the bridge didn’t make so much noise when cars went by, and then I sat there tossing pebbles into the water for a while and thinking about what I should do. The river was clear and blue, gurgling and splashing over gravel bars and rocks, but it was no more than about waist deep. It was hot even in the shade, and the water looked inviting to say the least. I wished it was just an ordinary day and I could jump in for a swim.
I noticed an old river tube caught in the debris under the bridge stanchions, and that gave me an idea. There was one way I could get far away without being seen on the roads, if I could make it work.
I picked my way down to the bank, then waded out there to look at the tube a little closer. Sure enough, it had a hole in it about the size of a pencil, but it seemed otherwise okay. A holey tube won’t do you much good for long, but it might work just long enough to save my bacon, if I played my cards right.
I stuck my left thumb in the hole to plug it, then started to blow up the tube with my mouth. I left it a little bit loose and flabby on purpose so there would be less chance of leaking, and waited a minute to see whether it held air. It seemed to be holding steady for the moment at least, and I decided to risk it. If it blew out on me later, I could always swim if I had to.
The water was shallow enough that I could climb into the tube without too much trouble, so I clumsily got into the seat while trying to leave my thumb plugging the hole. It wasn’t easy to twist myself around and find a comfortable spot, but I finally managed it. Then I paddled out into the current as best I could with one hand. Before long the stream grabbed me, and away I went at a pretty good clip.
Floating a river is fun, if you’ve never tried it. I’d done it lots of times with Justin and Eileen. Not usually in a leaky tube, to be sure, but as long as it held air I was okay with it. The late afternoon sun sparkled off the water, which was just a tad bit chilly but not too cold to handle. If it had been very much later in the year I wouldn’t have been able to stand it, but as it was I didn’t mind so much.
I wrapped up my phone in the empty Doritos bag from the gas station, rolling it up as tight as I could to keep it from getting wet. I could brush the chip crumbs off later, but phones don’t handle water too well.
I thought I knew where I was, now. I’d been to Norman once before to go digging for quartz crystals and to float this very river for a few miles. At least I thought it was the same river. It had been a year or so ago, but the more I thought about it the more certain I was. I was maybe a hundred miles or so from home. I just needed to head south, and that’s the way the river would take me anyway for now.
The Caddo River doesn’t really have what you’d call whitewater, exactly. Just a few little riffles and such, not enough to even pay attention to. I remembered that much. I’d been in a canoe the last time I was here, b
ut it shouldn’t make much difference. I had to keep an eye out for logs and rocks and willow strainers, and that’s about it. With a bit of luck, it would carry me all the way to Glenwood.
I’d have to get out of the water there and start watching my back again. The river didn’t go much farther before it fed into Lake Degray, and then there wouldn’t be any current to carry me anymore. So, Glenwood it would have to be.
Blondie probably didn’t have a clue where I was right that minute, but she might very well guess where I was headed, especially since it was the only close town. She surely knew where I lived, and she probably also knew there was no other way for me to get there except by going through Glenwood. Not without going forty or fifty miles out of the way, and I didn’t have time or money for that. There were mountains all around, and the river and the highway followed the one and only gap through them. She’d be watching that place like a hawk on a mouse-hole.
But for the meantime I was safe from prying eyes, so I relaxed and laid my head back on the tube and closed my eyes. I knew better than to go to sleep, but I wanted to think.
Who were these people that seemed so bent on catching me, and what did they want? I knew the girl was a werewolf; her fingernails gave that away, and it was hard for me to believe she wasn’t connected with the people at the deer camp. But on the other hand, why hadn’t my silver cross done anything to the man who caught me in my own back yard? That made me wonder if maybe he wasn’t one. But if not, then why was he helping them? And again, what did they want with me?
That’s the one thing I kept coming back to. Why me? And why now? I had wolves in my family, sure, but I hadn’t seen or talked to them in two years. No one had ever bothered Justin just because his sister was a loup-garou, so why should it matter if my parents were? What did they want?
Try as I might, there was no way I could figure that one out. Not unless I found out more, and I didn’t know any way of doing that right now.
The river gurgled and whispered to itself, and the quiet and the solitude were starting to make me sleepy. I raised my head to shake loose the cobwebs; it would never do to fall asleep in the tube and then hit a log or a rock and get dumped in the river with no warning a split second after waking up. That was a good way to lose my tube in the current or even drown.
The rest of the afternoon passed without too much to say about it. The banks glided by smoothly and swiftly, and the occasional riffle was no trouble. Every now and then I had to blow some more air into the tube when it got too flabby. I almost got tangled up in a willow strainer once, at a place where the current passed close to the bank and tried to pull me right under a thicket of low-hanging branches. I had to paddle hard with my right hand to keep from getting sucked in there.
After a few hours I passed a place where the bank had been turned into a parking lot, and I felt the water turn suddenly warm around me right through there, which startled me. I guess there was a hot spring under the water or some such thing. It felt nice, but after I passed through it and got back into the ordinary water it only reminded me how cold I was. I thought again about how it was really too late in the year to be floating like this.
There were some people lounging around on the tailgate of a red pickup truck in the parking lot, and they seemed to think it was way too cold to be out there on the river, too.
“You’re gonna freeze your butt off, boy!” they called out cheerfully. They meant well, so I didn’t take offense.
“Nah, I’m all good!” I yelled back, just as cheerfully. They laughed and waved me off. I didn’t mind the conversation so much, but what did make me uneasy was that I could see the highway the whole time I was in that little area. Anybody driving by could have seen me on the river just by turning their head.
That didn’t happen, though, and it wasn’t more than a few minutes till I floated under another bridge and back into the woods again. It only seemed like a week.
By that time I was getting really tired of riding on that dadgummed tube, and dusk was coming on pretty fast, too. It wouldn’t be more than thirty minutes till the stars came out. Any other time I wouldn’t have even thought about staying out on the river after dark, and certainly not without at least the moon. It was way too dangerous.
But as it was, I was probably safer on the water than I was on the road. The moon would be up in an hour or so, and as long as I kept my eyes peeled and my ears pricked and paid attention to what was around me, it would probably be okay.
I hoped.
And so it was. I won’t say I enjoyed it much, but I’ve gone through worse things. After a long time I saw another big highway bridge up ahead and a bunch of yellow and red canoes down below it on the left bank. There was a shallow gravel bar where I ran aground on purpose, and then I clambered my way out of the river like a waterlogged rat. I was shivering by then and being wet didn’t help, but there wasn’t much I could do about it.
I climbed up the bank and came to the highway, then scooted across an old football field till I got to a Wright’s grocery store. I couldn’t go inside soaking wet and with no shoes on, unfortunately. They kinda frown on that, even in Arkansas.
Instead, I went behind the store beside the trash dumpster and took off my shirt and wrung as much water out of it as I could, and then I did the same thing with my shorts. It felt weird getting buck naked in a public place like that, I have to say. It was fairly dark behind the store, but still. If anybody had come waltzing around the corner right then I think I would have died three times before I could hit the concrete.
I was still damp after I finished, but at least I was dry enough not to drip river water all over the place. There was nothing I could do about my bare feet, so I decided I’d just have to brazen it out. Maybe they wouldn’t say anything to me about it if I didn’t draw attention to myself.
So I breezed inside like I owned the place and got me a turkey and cheese sandwich and paid for it with almost the last of my change. That one bag of chips hadn’t done much for me, and even that was hours and hours ago. Nobody said anything about my feet.
I went back outside and ate my food, and that’s when I found out my cell phone was soaked. The water must have got in at some point, in spite of the Doritos bag. I shouldn’t have been surprised, I don’t guess. I sighed and wiped it as dry as I could on my shirt tail. There was a chance it might work again after it dried out. Sometimes they do.
There was a pay phone in front of the grocery store, and I still had fifty cents left in my pocket. I walked over there and tried to call Justin one more time. All I got was his voicemail again, but I let him know I was in Glenwood at the grocery store and he needed to come get me as soon as he could. I told him everything this time, since there was nobody around to hear what I was saying.
That’s when I got careless. Instead of finding somewhere to hole up and hide for a while, like I should have done, I went back and sat down on the bench in front of the grocery store. I don’t know what I was thinking, looking back. Maybe somewhere in the back of my mind I had the notion that Justin might try to call the payphone back or something like that. I don’t know what I thought, honestly. But I was bone tired, and I felt safe at that point, and so I stupidly sat there in a public place in full view of the highway. I could kick myself for it, but there you go.
After a while, a dark blue Blazer pulled into the parking lot, and I paid no attention even when it circled slowly around the lot and came near the front of the store. Sometimes people do that, you know, when they’re looking for a parking spot close to the doors. I think they probably waste more time circling the lot than they would if they just walked all the way.
Anyway it was late and so this one found a spot pretty close to the front, and three or four people got out. It was too dark for me to see them very well or I might have thought one of them looked awfully familiar, but as it was I didn’t notice.
One of them pulled something out of her purse, and a second later I felt a sharp sting when something hit me in the
chest. I just barely had time to look down and see a dart sticking out of my shirt, and after that everything went dark.