Ryan Jahn - The Dispatcher

She runs into the woods.

And through them. Blades of sunlight cutting through the canopy overhead and splashing across her face and legs and arms. The sound of birds singing, then taking flight as she nears. Breeze shuffling through the summer leaves. She is outside. She has escaped. She glances back over her shoulder but sees no one. She is outside. No walls surround her.

She runs until it hurts to breathe, until the stitch in her side is unbearable, jumping over plants she thinks might be poison oak or poison ivy, ducking beneath thick mustang grape vines that are growing between the tree branches and wrapping themselves around tree trunks. She runs until she has to stop, and then she does stop.

She stands breathing hard, bending over, hands pressed against her knees. Her throat hurts but it feels good too. Clean hot summer air. Lungfuls of it. She tries to slow her breathing so she can listen. She hears nothing. She hears nothing and she sees nothing behind her.

Maybe he gave up. Maybe she really is free.

She walks to a white beam of light breaking through the canopy overhead and she stands within it. An outside observer would see a pale, fragile-looking girl seemingly glowing while everything around her was covered in the shade of trees. An outside observer would see an angel. But there are no outside observers. There is only her and the sunlight and the silence of the woods.

She allows herself a quiet moment, almost allows herself to cry, and then she pulls herself together again, and continues on. She walks at first, but the walk becomes a jog, and soon enough she is running again.

Despite the pain it feels good to run. She has spent years trapped in a place where running was impossible and it feels good to have this much space open before her.

In five minutes she comes to a sun-faded road, cracks twisting their way across its surface like rivers on a map.

She turns left for no reason she can think of and continues on, padding her way along the asphalt. It feels good on the soles of her feet. It is almost too hot, and if she slowed to a walk it would be too hot, so she does not slow to a walk. She keeps running.

Henry is watching TV and sucking at a beer like it’s mother’s milk when Beatrice calls to him from the kitchen.

‘Henry!’ she says. ‘Henry, she’s got out! Sarah’s got out the basement!’

‘Ah, fuck,’ he mumbles to himself. Then gets to his feet, finishes the Budweiser in his hand, showing the bottom of the can to the ceiling, and sets the empty on the coffee table. ‘How the hell’d she get out?’ he says.

‘Sarah, get back here!’ Bee says from the kitchen. ‘She’s getting out, Henry!’

‘I’m coming.’

He walks to the kitchen. Beatrice is on the far side of the room facing the open front door. When she hears him she turns around.

‘She’s got out.’

‘Well, goddamn it.’

‘I didn’t mean to let her.’

‘Goddamn it.’

‘I told you she was getting out.’

He ignores her and hurries to the front door. Sarah is running barefoot across the gravel driveway. She is running to the woods west of the house.

Henry jumps down the steps and runs after her, feeling sick to his stomach. He’s too old for this kind of activity. When he catches up with Sarah he’s gonna make her sorry she ran like this. He’s gonna make her sorry she made him run like this. She’ll be screaming sorrys, is what she’ll be doing. She’ll keep screaming them for a week.

As she reaches the line of trees she glances back.

‘You better,’ he says angrily between great heaving breaths, ‘you better stop, Sarah!’ Another breath. He feels like he’s gonna have a heart attack. ‘You fuckin’ stop!’

He knows she is afraid of him. He’d like it better if she didn’t have to be afraid of him. He’d like it better if she accepted the fact that she was now part of this family. She’s had a long enough time to get used to it. It would make everybody’s life easier. Including hers. He’d like that; it just ain’t the way it is. But she is afraid of him and she does what he says. So when he shouts at her to stop he fully expects her to comply.

But she doesn’t. She turns and disappears into the woods.

‘Fuck.’

He runs to the woods and into them.

He sees flashes of blue dress between the trunks of trees. He chases after that color. Branches scratch at his face and grab at his clothes. He tries to keep her in sight as he runs, but it’s an impossible task. He must pay attention to what he’s doing or he’s liable to run straight into a tree. He loses sight of her. Then another flash of blue thirty or forty yards ahead. He cuts toward her, but the heel of his boot catches on the root of a tree and he falls face first to the ground, getting a mouthful of composted leaves. He spits and picks himself up. He looks to see if she’s still in sight but she is not. He briefly considers chasing after her anyway, but doesn’t think he’ll catch her on foot. But the woods are surrounded by road, and she’ll have to come out of them eventually.

He turns back and runs toward the house.

‘Bee, I need my keys!’

A moment later Beatrice arrives at the front door.

‘Did you get her?’

‘No, goddamn it, I need my keys.’

‘Your truck keys?’

‘Of course my truck keys. All my keys are on the same fucking key ring. Come on.’

‘Okay.’

Beatrice turns from the doorway and disappears a moment. When she returns his keys are dangling from her hand. She throws them toward him, but they land in the gravel five feet shy of their intended destination. Henry curses under his breath, goddamn it, leans down, and snatches them up. He walks to his pickup, a green ’97 Ford Ranger he bought used a couple years ago from Davis Dodge-it’s got a mushy clutch, but you have to expect that kind of thing when you buy your truck used from Todd Davis, Mr Chief of Police, you just might get pulled over less with a Davis Dodge license-plate frame on your vehicle-and slides into the driver’s seat.

A few seconds later he’s slamming the thing into first and the tires are kicking up gravel as he takes the driveway north to Crouch Avenue.

He drives west along the old cratered road, squinting left into his own woods, trying to see white skin or a snatch of blue dress between the trees. On the other side of the road is Pastor Warden’s place, alive with the sound of barking dogs. It sounds to Henry like a schoolyard during recess. Pastor Warden breeds dachshunds and sells them to pet shops in Mencken and other larger towns. Maybe even to some places in Houston. The goddamn dogs never shut up. Henry doesn’t know how Warden can stand it. Then again, after a few weep sessions with troubled parishioners laying their guilt on him, maybe the sound of dogs barking ain’t so bad.

He makes it to Main Street without seeing Sarah, but that doesn’t really surprise him. She was heading west when she ran into the woods and unless she got disoriented there’d be no reason for her to come out on the north end. He makes a left and drives south, along the western edge of the woods.

The gray strip of road stretches out before him, empty of life.

A tight feeling in his chest, like his heart in a vise.

If Sarah manages to get out of the woods and comes across someone and tells them what happened, that will be the end of his long and peaceful life here in Bulls Mouth. He knows everyone in town and everyone knows him. And mostly they like him. Sure, it’s because they don’t really know him, because he’s always smiling and patting backs and saying give my regards to the missus, Dave, but who really lets the world see their guts? Guts are ugly; that’s why we have skin. Take away the skin and what remains? Nothing you’d want to have a conversation with.