Elizabeth Massie - Wire Mesh Mothers

Her breath eased out, making a funny squeaking noise.

She turned on the engine. On the radio, the announcer said, “…with chances of wintry mix ninety-percent through tonight and tomorrow. Clearing tomorrow afternoon with highs near thirty-five. And please, parents, do not call about school closings, as we haven’t yet received any word from the county and will let you know as soon as we do.” Kate turned the radio off. Too much sound right now.

A whine from the back.

Kate hands clenched the steering wheel; adrenaline stung her arms. Enough whining! God! Okay, get this taken care of now, get her settled, then nothing else will stop us, nothing else save a bathroom somewhere off the main road in Northern Virginia or even Maryland, with luck.

“I’ll give you a Nestle Crunch and a Pepsi,” she said. Clearly that was satisfactory, for a small, snot-sticky hand came out from under the blanket. “Eat the candy bar but don’t drink yet, until I tell you it’s time to sit up. You might spill.”

The fingers wrapped around the candy and drew in beneath the blanket. Sigh of seeming contentment. Kate looked through the windshield. Nobody else was on the road. They were smart; the weather was pathetic.

Thank you God for sleet!

There was a loud, popping sound of thunder somewhere nearby, somewhere outside the car. Kate flinched. Thunder? Impossible. Just a car backfiring somewhere behind the gas station, back past the weeds where there was a trailer park.

Kate eased the Volvo around the pumps to the edge of the driveway and looked both ways beyond the splays of trees clustered at the roadside.

A tractor was approaching the station from the east, an old-fashioned rusty blue with the close set-front wheels and exposed engine. It was heading in the same direction Kate wanted to drive. In tow was a long flatbed with elephantine rolls of winter hay. She could pull out and pass him but he was going so slowly he might, at some future date when pressed by authorities, remember that yes, he saw that teacher’s white Volvo leaving the Exxon and exactly when he saw that teacher’s car leaving the Exxon, he knows it was because he was traveling all of twenty miles an hour and could read the license plate as she sped past.

“Damn!” hissed Kate. She rolled the car back several yards and steered over to the row of Dumpsters to wait. To Mistie, “That was ‘Sam.’ Did you hear me? What the Sam Hill is a farmer doing out in this sleet? I hope he doesn’t catch cold!” Kate checked her watch as the tractor ambled past on the road. Give the man a full minute head start and then she could drive out of the gas station. She could get on the road and past him without any unnecessary attention.

In the back was a soft sound of wrapping paper shredding. “Hang in there Mistie, you having fun?” said Kate softly. “I’m having fun, are you? This really is great, an adventure for both of us….”

And then she heard shouts. She looked back to see three of the gypsy-dressed kids stumbling across the gravel toward the Dumpsters, arms flailing. Kate’s heart stopped. She gripped the wheel. They know what I’ve done! They know!

God God God God!

Kate grabbed for the gearshift, hand shaking madly. She jammed the stick into reverse to pull back from the Dumpsters. God God God!

The kids ran around the Dumpsters and fell into a rusty car on the other side. Kate’s dry mouth opened with a click. She held her foot on the brake, watching. What? The rusted car revved, bucked, and lurched forward from its hiding place and sped to the road. Black smoke trailed. The car nearly struck the tractor’s flatbed, swerved around it and scraped the back door on the corner, then vanished beyond the trees.

Kate looked back at the gas station the back to the road. What was that about?

Mistie sneezed, another one clearly not covered with a hand or handkerchief. Kate would buy some upholstery cleaner in Ontario; give that back seat the good, solid once-over. “Well, that farmer won’t think twice about a white car passing him now,” she said. “I think those kids were giving Mrs. Martin a hard time in there, I’m afraid. I’d go back, but we have to get.”

Kate took a Pepsi from the seat beside her and cranked off the top, hand still shaking. “I need a drink,” she chuckled. She drew on the bottle several times, then sighed, recapped the bottle and said, “That’s it, nothing else is delaying us. Promise. You’ve been under that blasted blanket too long and it won’t be long before….”

The passenger door was wrenched open. Kate flailed about to see a red-striped face with steel gray eyes shadowed beneath a flattened fedora. The mouth of a gun was inches from her face.

“Bitch!” said the striped face as the rest of the body slid in to the car. “Don’t say a fucking word! Drive!”

The Crunch Bar tasted good. It was warm and mushy beneath Mistie’s fingers and sweet on her tongue. There was quilt lint in the chocolate, but it didn’t matter because the chocolate was good on her hands and on her tongue. She liked being under the blanket because she liked to hide. It was fun to hide. She liked to hide at home in the metal shed behind the trailer or in the big potato bin in the kitchen when it was empty of potatoes.

The teacher talked a lot. She had a voice that went up and down like those flutes the fourth graders tried to play at the assembly last week.

There was a drink on the floor, a plastic bottle with a white top. The teacher said not to drink it yet. Mistie didn’t mind, she had chocolate to play with. She patted her tongue with the stick and sucked on it, then rubbed it on her palms. Warm, soft.

Then there was another voice up front. Mistie paused and listened. It was a girl. The girl got into the car, said the “fuck” word and then “Drive.”

The teacher did.

The woman at the wheel stared at Tony until Tony cocked the trigger, then she eased the car to the edge of the lot and turned on her left blinker.

“Go right,” said Tony.

“Right?” The woman said the word as if she’d never heard it before. But then she steered right without another word. Tony rolled her upper lip in between her teeth and bit until it hurt. Right. They’d turned right, driving on Route 58. So where was she going to go now? She went right only because the woman wanted to go left.

Where the hell do I go?

“Where am I going?” the woman asked without looking away from the road. It sounded as if there was a roach in her throat and she was trying to talk around it. “I saw your buddies leaving without you. They sure were in a hurry, weren’t they? Where should I drop you off?”

“You ain’t dropping me off anywhere.”

The woman’s jaw tightened, though her eyes twitched at the corners. She was going to try to be brave, in control. What a foolish, ridiculous female! “Then what…?” the woman began.

Tony slammed the gun into the woman’s ear; her head snapped to the side and she grabbed her face, groaning in surprise. The car swerved madly on the ice.

“Drive!” yelled Tony.

The woman took the steering wheel with her left hand, holding her ear with her right.

“Now you know what ‘right’ is, don’t you?” said Tony.

The woman gasped, heaved, and looked like she was going to pass out.

“Don’t you?”

“Yes.” Her voice was tiny.

On the radio, some oldies shit that Tony’s mother sometimes listened to. Something about everybody smiling on their brother. Tony pounded the power switch with her fist. The song died in the air.

“Turn right on Route 35 before you get to Courtland.”