Emmy Laybourne - Savage Drift

Entering the cafeteria it seems to me that a hush falls over the room.

There is no sign of Carlo or the other Union Men.

We walk to the line.

Lori says we should all stay together at all times.

Maybe she thinks the presence of the little kids will keep the Union Men off us.

We go to the line and get trays.

People shush as we approach.

It is eerie.

A man gives me a little salute and a woman with him pushes his arm down and hurries him away from us.

We get our food.

“Where’s your fella?” the cafeteria lady asks me.

“He’s in the clinic,” I tell her.

“Aw,” she clucks. Then she leans forward to whisper. “Look, he asked me to do something. I don’t know. Can you tell him I’m still thinking it over?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I say, looking away.

She presses an extra dinner roll into my hand. “You tell him it’s from Cheryl.”

“I will,” I say.

Cheryl gives all the kids extra spaghetti and, what’s more, an extra meatball each.

A little boy named Jonas runs over to Aidan.

“You guys are in some kinda trouble!” he says cheerfully. “My daddy said the Union Men is out for you all!”

“No!” Aidan retorts. “That’s dumb. We gave them oatmeal just yesterday and ALL our sugar! They’re on our side now!”

If only.

We go ensemble to a table. People go back to their eating and talking, but we get a lot of glances.

The food tastes like tomato-covered wood pulp, to me, though I see the little boys eat up their large helpings with gusto.

So the word is out that the Union Men were going to come for us. It explains the death pall we’d brought over the cafeteria.

“I’m not going back with you,” I say quietly to Lori. “You take the kids and you get back to the room and lock the door.”

Lori looks at me, her eyes red, her thin brown hair limp around her pale face.

“And you’ll do what? Hide somewhere?”

There is sarcasm in her voice and for the first time, I actually see the girl.

She isn’t as pasty as I thought. She has some spirit.

Maybe she will make it.

“I’m going to fight them,” I say.

She shakes her head, her mouth set in a grim, determined line.

I slide my hand into hers so she’ll really look at me.

“The thing is, I’ve been ready to die for a long time, Lori,” I say quietly and my throat gets a little constricted, eyes a bit watery, maybe.

But it is the truth.

“No,” she says. “We can make it to the room. We can make it one more night.”

“And then what?”

She squeezs my hand hard.

“You are going to make it through the night so you can see Mario in the morning and then you’re talking to the reporters and getting out of here, Josie Miller.”

I look at her for a beat.

Maybe she really will make it.

The kids are done eating now, and starting to fidget.

“My tummy hurts,” Heather says.

It was likely the extra meatball.

“Let’s go,” Lori says.

We rise and then a skinny mother, a woman from our hall, stands up at the table opposite us. She elbows her kid—a teenage girl I’ve seen shuffling around. The two of them, and three more people from the table behind them, get up.

“Are you headed back to the dorm?” the lady asks us.

Her voice is narrow and shaking.

These are the first words she has ever said to us, and she lives right on our hall.

“Because we’re headed back, too.”

And as we start to walk toward the door, people cram the last plastic forkfuls of pasta into their mouths and chug their milk.

Soon we have an escort of fifty or sixty people, herding us toward the dorm. I recognize one of the men—he is the guy who had fought to get me free, when I was trapped in the Men’s hall. Patko.

As we walk, whispers come to us.

“We’ll help you any way we can.”

And, “Don’t be scared, kids. It’ll be all right.”

The skinny mother grabs my hand and squeezes.

“We’re praying for you,” she says.

“There’s a KID in the TRUNK!” Astrid said, scrambling to release her seat belt and open her door.

I practically fell out of the car.

Niko was frantically reaching around the dash, trying to find the trunk release button or knob or whatever.

He pulled it and thonk , the trunk came up and I skidded around the bumper and there was a little girl. A toddler with black hair matted down by sweat. She had skin the color of caramel and big brown eyes. She wore a sweater dress and little white shoes.

The toddler saw Astrid and me standing there and burst into sobs.

Astrid stepped forward and took the girl in her arms.

Astrid looked up at me. “Juice box. Now.”

I grabbed a juice box as Niko came around the car.

“Whoa,” he said.

“Yeah,” I answered, putting the straw in and handing the box to Astrid.

The crazed (now-dead) mother of this child had made a nest for her little girl in the trunk of the sedan.

There were blankets and two or three sippy cups.

There was also a large pack of diapers pushed to the side.

“We tailgating?” Jake asked, stumbling to us. Then he saw. “Hey, who brought the baby?”

He patted the back of the toddler. She pulled away from him and cried all the harder.

“Mommy,” I said, nodding to the trunk so he could see the nest of bedding.

“Wow. That’s… that’s…”

“Sad? Horrifying? Tragic?” Astrid offered as she bounced the little girl.

“Lucky we found her in time,” he said.

“Okay, okay,” Niko said. “We need to think. We need to get off the road and think.”

“I need to change her first,” Astrid said.

I got a whiff of the kid. Yes. She had to be changed.

Astrid held the girl on her lap and we drove to the next truck stop, fifteen miles down the road.

“What’s your name, sweetie?” Astrid had asked her, but the girl wasn’t talking. Maybe she couldn’t talk yet. It was hard to tell how old she was. Maybe two? Maybe less?

In the backseat, I picked up one of the photo albums that we’d thrown behind the headrests.

The album started with the mom we’d seen hugely pregnant, being hugged by her husband. Some of those kind of sappy naked-belly photos with the man placing his hands reverently on her giant, round globe of a stomach.

Then there were photos of the hospital waiting room. Parents milling around. Two families, one black, one white, waiting it out with expressions of nervous excitement. Some older kids playing around with bubble gum cigars.

There was the dad, grinning broadly, coming to tell them the news.