Armadillos Read online

  ‘Where you headed?’ he asked.

  ‘Well, I don’t rightly know, sir. Where you headed?’

  ‘You can forget that one right there, little lady. Come with me. Let’s get you some food while I figure out what to do with you.’ Grizzly locked up the truck and headed to the diner. My belly followed him and so did I.

  The station heaved with groups of tourists, all loud and with no sense of personal space. I got bumped and shoved so many times I felt like the silver ball in a pinball machine. Rows of one-arm bandits dinged and winked their pretty lights while groups of boys crowded around and fired pretend machine guns at flashing screens, bam-bam-bam-bam-bam! Children shrieked and hollered as tired parents dragged them past those adventures, and above it all on giant screens, TV presenters moved their mouths silently in the din.

  I felt his grip on my arm again and he pulled me through it all.

  ‘You need a piss? You better need a piss. You better not have pissed in my truck.’

  I hadn’t. I was fit to burst.

  ‘You go in there and meet me back here in one minute, you hear?’

  I nodded.

  The lavatories were almost as busy as outside. I soaked a bunch of paper towels so I could clean myself in the cubicle and joined the back of a long line. We shuffled slowly, as one, towards the cream-colored doors that opened and closed to the unpredictable tune of flushing toilets.

  I could feel people’s eyes on me as I dripped my way closer to the front. To distract myself, I tried to focus on a girl who was brushing her hair in the mirror. Stroke, stroke, stroke. She was a princess in a tower. She didn’t have to wash down there the way I did. She caught me looking, and I blushed.

  The constant flushing was like a river rushing through my head. The lights glared, and I swayed on my feet. I grabbed on to the woman in front to stop myself falling over. When she turned to see me with my wet towels soaking my clothes, she looked at me the way a calf does a new gate. I mumbled an apology and gave myself a shake. I’d only been going a day and already I was drawing attention. I looked in the mirror and Jojo was looking back at me. I blinked and she was gone. I was left with just myself, dark hair sitting around my shoulders, and dark lines under dark eyes. Man, I was tired.

  Grizzly was antsy when I got back outside.

  ‘A minute, I said.’

  He was pissed off with waiting but I was too shot to care. I shrugged my shoulders and followed him to the food court. He chose a table, told me to sit and went to order burgers. He’d asked me where I was headed and the truth was I’d no clue. I didn’t even know where in the world I was. How far I was from home. From Jojo.

  I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to concentrate. All I wanted to do was go sleep in his truck, but I figured the chances of him letting me do that were slim. I eyed him across the table. His attention was with the waitress who was asking something about the order. The exit wasn’t too far away but my body was heavy. My ass was glued to the seat. I willed myself to move but nothing happened. I shook my head and cursed under my breath. Hell, I’d walked all night on my own with only snakes for company and never felt weaker, but now I realized it’s people who make you truly weak. You come to depend on them and I didn’t want to come to depend on Grizzly, because people will let you down every time. Still, if I could just sleep in his truck a little bit I was sure I’d be stronger when I woke. He came towards me carrying a tray. I craned my neck to see what was on it. Jojo always said with food in your belly and a good sleep, the world always seemed that bit friendlier. Not that you should let that fool you.

  We ate our burgers in silence. I had to force myself to eat slowly. Every time I glanced up at him he was watching me. Eventually he said, ‘You aint seventeen.’

  ‘So what if I aint?’

  I slurped the last dregs of coke through my straw. He wanted to know what my story was but no way was I about to spill my guts to some guy I never even saw before. It might give him ideas. Less people I told more likely it would be that one day it’d just slip from memory, easy as ice turning to water when the thaw comes. I swirled the ice in my cup with the straw and waited for him to speak. The waitress swung by and asked if we needed anything else. I shook my head and kept my eyes down but Grizzly ordered me a pancake with ice cream.

  ‘How’s it taste?’ he asked when it arrived.

  ‘It’s larrupin’ good, sir. I sure do appreciate it.’

  I wasn’t even hungry anymore but I crammed it in anyway. Didn’t want to appear ungrateful and didn’t know when I’d next eat. I could feel him watching me, hatching some plan. It made me nervous.

  ‘What age are you?’ he finally said. I shrugged my shoulders. He leaned forward over the table, keeping his voice low. ‘What you expecting me to do with you if you don’t tell me nothing about yourself, little lady? What’s your name?’

  I looked up from my plate. You couldn’t tell anything much by his eyes, shadowed like they were by a baseball cap and those eyebrows, but I figured beneath that beard lay a good face. I took a chance.

  ‘Name’s Aggie,’ I said, my voice suddenly croaky. I cleared my throat and to my embarrassment, tears flared beneath my eyelids.

  ‘Aggie.’ He nodded. ‘And you aint even seventeen?’

  I blinked the tears away and shook my head.

  ‘Sixteen?’

  Shook my head again. One fat tear rolled its way down my burning face.

  ‘Shit.’ He leaned back in his chair, sighing as he removed his hat and stroked his head. He gazed over me to the sky outside. I remembered Ash, how he used to stare out of my bedroom window when it was happening, seeing but not seeing. Grizzly shifted in his seat, reminding me where I was.

  ‘Well, Aggie,’ he said, at last. ‘I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do with you. You got no money to go nowhere. You aint got no food but what I bought you. You aint even told me what it is you’re running away from. I’ll take a guess it aint too pleasant, whatever it is.’

  Maybe it was just sugar rush but I decided to be truthful.

  ‘No, sir,’ I sniffed. ‘Aint too pleasant at all.’

  ‘I hear you, Aggie, but here’s the thing. You’re a minor. A little girl. I can’t just walk away and leave you. Guess I aint got no option but to call the cops. They can decide what to do with you.’

  I almost choked on my pancake as he pulled out his cell and started to dial. I reached across the table to stop him.

  ‘Don’t do that, mister. I wouldn’t if I was you.’

  When my voice came out, it was like someone else talking. I barely recognized it or knew what I was going to say, but I was powerful sure no way was I going to the cops. They’d only send me back again.

  ‘I said I wouldn’t if I was you, mister.’ My voice was harsh and I’d somehow pushed his arm down onto the table. He looked surprised as I felt.

  ‘You call the cops and I’ll tell them you abducted me,’ I hissed. Pancake crumbs fell out my mouth onto the formica table. ‘I’ll tell them you put me in your truck and made me do things. I’ll say you did things to me. I’ll say it, mister. They’ll believe me, I know what to say.’

  He stared back at me. ‘You little whore.’

  I could hear the anger in his voice and the change frightened me. Words I never liked to say came tumbling out, words I’d been made to say before, but for the first time I twisted them and used them to protect me.

  ‘I’ll say you took your big fat dick and stuck it in me,’ I whispered. ‘I’ll say you made me suck it and they’ll believe me.’

  He looked so sickened by my lies, I almost felt sorry for him. Inside I was shaking, with fury, nerves, fear, all of that, but I was good at sitting on top of that shit. When I was sure he’d got the message, I changed my tone. It was just business, after all. The business of surviving.

  ‘Now, mister, all I want is some money. I aint greedy. Just enough to tide me over, so whatever you can spare me I’ll be grateful for. Bearing in mind I aint got no money at all, no clothes,
no nothing. But just whatever you can spare will do just fine.’

  I was quite impressed with big Grizzly. Must have been so relieved, he actually laughed a little as he reached in his back pocket and pulled out his wallet.

  ‘Little girl, I wish I’d never have met you.’ His eyes locked on to mine and I glanced away. He flipped open the wallet. ‘But I do wish you luck with whatever it is you’re trying to get away from,’ he said, as he pulled out a pile of bills and slid them across the table. I covered them with my hand just as the waitress brought the check over. He sat there with his empty wallet sitting open like he was waiting for me to pay, but I just kept my eyes on the table, too frozen stiff to do much else. The waitress was getting the fidgets and eventually he pulled a card out and laid it on the plate. She disappeared again. He started to get up from the table and still I couldn’t look at him.

  ‘Thanks for the money, mister,’ I managed to blurt out, and I meant it. If he replied, I didn’t hear him. He picked up his card from the waitress on the way to the exit, and a few minutes later his truck pulled out.

  You ever felt like you were the center of the universe and all the bad things that happened came from you? I sat at that table for an hour, dollars all bunched up in my fist, tummy all full of burger and pancake, and I wondered what the hell to do now. I got another coke and flipped the waitress a couple of dimes and felt like a big shot. A few tables down from me a woman was hissing at her two sons to behave while her husband was sucked into some game on his phone. Behind the service counter, a girl and guy threw fries at each other and laughed. Outside my window, people poured in on buses and then out again. The clock on the wall told me Jojo was laying the table for supper. Had she let on I was gone yet? Tomorrow was Wednesday, the day they started getting all friendly. I thought about Pop’s dirty laugh and his big hands slapping the kitchen table. I thought about that stain on the floor. I thought about Cy and how he stroked my hair as I was washing dishes, and I thought about Jojo drying up beside me, doing everything she could not to look me in the eye. Screw her. Screw them all.

  I wandered into the shop that sold stuff for rich folks. By that I mean it mainly sold magazines and candy, but I got a toothbrush and some soap and a washcloth. Just because I was homeless didn’t mean I had to be dirty. I stood in line because I had the means to pay and right by the checkout was a basket filled with rolled up picnic blankets. I picked a green one for lying on and a pink one for on top and felt a whole lot better for my evening’s prospects.

  Outside, the day was beginning to settle. The air was hot and thick and smelled of diesel. I stood at the top of the stairs, people still streaming past but less than before. I thought about Grizzly and how quick he’d backed down when I’d threatened him.

  I walked round all the parked cars and over to where the trucks were stopped. I don’t know what had changed between then and that morning, but seeing them all beside each other made me think they were a gang. It was too hard to break into a gang. I didn’t know if Grizzly had warned them about me either. Behind the trucks was the road leading to the on-ramp and I headed to that, figuring I stood a better chance one-on-one. Took me fifteen minutes to bag a new ride. This time it was a big rig with eighteen wheels that came right up to my shoulder. I hopped on up and pulled the door open, wondering what waited for me on the inside.

  The driver was old. Scrawny, too. He was wearing red overalls and a Coca-Cola baseball cap. Little wisps of white hair floated out from under it. He never even looked at me as I belted myself in. I knew because I never took my eyes off him. He sniffed and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. Looking in his side mirror, he signaled to pull out.

  ‘Headed south. That alright?’ He still didn’t look at me.

  ‘Yes, sir. South’s where I’m headed.’

  It’s mighty fine sitting up front in one of those giant trucks. You’re the highest thing on the road, and even though I’d just put myself in a tight space with a strange man, I felt the safest I’d been since starting out. There was almost four feet between me and him and as long as he was driving there was no way he could touch me.

  Couldn’t see where he might keep his money. No jacket, no bag. Not in sight, leastways. There was a pocket in the arm of his overall but it didn’t look big enough to hold a wallet. Maybe the glove was a better bet and I resigned myself to wait. If I still didn’t find any then I’d just have to turn on my big teary-eyed act for him and threaten to call the cops.

  The thrum of the engine was kind of hypnotizing and I felt myself begin to drift. The sun was hitting the sky from beneath. I always loved that.

  But how can it hit from beneath if it’s still in the sky, Jojo?

  It aint in the sky no more, Aggie. Look, it’s falling off the edge of the earth.

  And she’d point and show me and there it would be, casting off its orange rays, or yellow or pink or red, the very last edge of sun slipping off the side of the planet, pushed down and chased away by the blueness of night.

  I’d dozed off. Couldn’t believe I’d been so dumb. I checked my bag and the money was there. So was the hammer. I snuck a look at the old guy. It was like he didn’t know I was there. At one point, he looked at me and blinked over and over, like he was surprised to see me, his eyes like water and mud. It was dark by now and all the lights on his dash made me think of space ships. Cars zoomed past far below us but he just kept it slow and steady. His CB went off a few times but he never answered it. Now and then he grumbled a bit out his window – at what I don’t know – but apart from that, he never spoke.

  When we reached a town I liked the look of, it took exactly sixty seconds to threaten him with a charge of rape and take his wallet. I almost felt bad about it.

  3

  All my life I’d never gone anywhere and I guess you could say I was making up for it now. Wichita, Lubbock, Abilene, Sweetwater, Brownsville. Got drove so many places, I’ve forgot more names than I can remember. Learned it doesn’t matter how big an eighteen-wheeler is on the outside, it starts feeling pretty tight in there after a while. I was happiest out free on the country, going days at a stretch, seeing nothing or no one but the odd buzzard sailing the sky. It sure was better than the monotony of the drive.

  Once you got off the tarmac, the country came alive. It was green and watery and lush or it was dry and dusty and red. Whatever shape it took, it took care to provide nooks and crannies for a child, or young woman, as I now considered myself, to tuck herself away from prying eyes.

  I got a good system going. I’d get some cash and build up supplies before holing up somewhere in the desert, not too far from a town or campsite where it was easy to get what I needed: waterproof matches, a lighter, flint and steel. I learned that fire makes a good friend when the lonesome dark falls.

  It wasn’t difficult to find a cave or hollow to bunk down in, though sometimes scratch marks on the walls made for uneasy thinking. If the cave smelled bad, I knew a bobcat must be using it and I’d keep looking. The night creatures I wound up sharing with didn’t seem to mind me, though the same couldn’t be said of the morning prairie dogs. I’d be lying still as could be, watching them skip and scuffle about the short grass. As soon as I made any move, they’d sense me and disappear down their burrows, quick as lightning. Wasn’t like I was fixing to cook them or anything like that, they were just real jumpy. Guess fear’s what kept them little critters alive.

  Fear’s good for humans too. I never got too relaxed about taking money off those truckers, even though once or twice it was so easy I wondered why they’d never mentioned it as a career option at school.

  Stayed away from folks much as I could but every few days I was forced to find somewhere to wash. I kept clean as I could out in the desert. But eventually the sand and dust licks over you, laying on your skin like flies on a sticky trap. I learned to always wash my face with bottled water before heading to a rest stop. Strange that some people won’t let you wash if you look too dirty, but the world’s made up of all
kinds of folks, and some of them are stupid.

  I was trying to settle into a new cave, but I couldn’t make myself comfortable. The roar of the traffic overhead drowned out the crickets like a bad omen. I slammed rocks hard against the cave wall, trying to make each one crumble into dust.

  Trying to chase Jojo from my mind.

  Sometimes it felt like she was everywhere; a bird rustling in a bush, a shadow thrown down on the ground, the moan of a low wind. I saw signs. Lights flickering in a store could drive me to call her name out. But she only showed herself in my dreams – a constant murmur of Where in the world could that little Aggie be? – chased me round and around. It had been her catchphrase in our hide-and-seek games, and whenever I slept now, she chased me again, but it wasn’t fun, like before. I kept pushing her out and she kept forcing herself in and we’d fight in my head and it frightened me. The circles beneath my eyes got darker. My arms and legs started to feel heavy as shovels, too big for my skinny runt’s body.

  Another rock hit the wall and all of a sudden I felt it. It came like a flood. I still hadn’t got used to expecting it every month. All I could think to do was bunch up some napkins my food came wrapped in and shove them in my underwear. I woke up next morning, jeans stuck to my skin and the ground all grape-colored. It was everywhere; my hands, my ass, my front. Little bits of napkin were all caught up in my panties. Took an hour to pick it all out. I used the last of my water to wash between my legs and stood at the mouth of the cave looking out. No choice but to walk to the nearest rest stop. Had to be at least three miles.

  Kicked the blooded ground over with sand and gathered up my stuff, knowing I couldn’t risk another night there with that smell hanging in the air. Dumped my green blanket, tucked the pink into my waistband to hide the mess, and scrabbled back up the canyon to the road. Clots oozed out with every step, and nausea took a hold of me. I tried to console myself that at least this time it was only me who knew. Pop and Jojo always wanted to know when my time came. ‘Sick fucks,’ I called out to no one, then set off strong down the road.