Elizabeth Massie: Wire Mesh Mothers

“Ahhhhhh!” hissed the deputy.

“Tony, no!” cried the teacher.

Tony dropped the mic on the floor and stomped it as she would stomp a bug, or a girl in the Hot Heads’ tobacco barn.

The car spun to the left sharply, hopped up over a lip of rock, and completed its spin in the sandy soil of west Texas. It struck a small boulder and stopped. The engine thundered as if knocked between gears. The deputy panted madly, spittle flying from her mouth. “You…oh, God, help me.” She lifted her blood stained hand to Tony. Tony smacked it away.

“Please, get help, don’t leave me here,” said the deputy. The words were muffled, garbled, like the speaker on the scanner.

“Shut up!” Tony jumped from the car and opened the back door. Mistie stumbled out, ran several steps, and dropped to the sand, crying, “Mama!”

The teacher didn’t move. She stared at the deputy’s bleeding, groping hands as they fumbled on the dash, on the seat, then the floor, trying to get to the mic to put it back in the socket.

“Out!” yelled Tony. “Fucker, out!” She leaned in and took the teachers hair and gave it a powerful yank. The teacher crawled out of the back seat. She stood, dumbfounded, by the cruiser.

“There!” said Tony. “There’s a ranch, come on! We can hide!”

“You stabbed her,” said the teacher.

“She was going to kill us!”

“You don’t know that!”

Tony lashed her foot out and caught the teacher in the shin. The woman screamed.

It was her bad leg.

“Come on !”

With the teacher hobbling and the kid crying, the three scuttled up the knoll in the direction of the buildings of the distant ranch.

“It’s a mirage,” the girl said to Mistie. “Looks like it’s right there but it’s either really far away or not there at all. I learned that in sixth grade. Believe that? Learned something from a stinking teacher.”

Mistie looked where the girl was pointing. It was a farm on a hill. They’d been trying to run to the farm but it was like the farm knew they were coming and kept backing up. The girl had said, “Almost there,” a couple times but they still weren’t.

The teacher was crying. She was right behind Mistie and the girl but she didn’t talk at all. She just cried.

The ground was rocky and dry. There was some grass growing there, but it was yellow like the hair on Valerie’s head. Mistie tried to grab for some but the girl made her run too fast.

At last they reached a dirt road that wound across the dry land toward a large log house, but the girl urged them over the road, down a short slope, then back up to a rail fence. On the other side of the fence were lots of barns and trucks and trailers. Not trailers like at MeadowView but trailers like Mistie had seen taking cows down Route 58 through Pippins. There were some men in cowboy hats standing in the shade of a barn door.

“Quick, over, and in the back of the truck,” whispered the girl. “Keep low, crawl if you have to!”

Mistie climbed through the fence, the girl and teacher climbed over. Mistie could hardly breath for running so much. They had to run at school and she hated it. Running made her pee her pants. She thought she’d peed her pants a few minutes ago, but maybe it was just sweat.

The closest vehicle was a truck with a long, empty trailer behind. The trailer was made of pipes like the gates of cotton farms back in Virginia. The three sneaked over to the side of the truck and the girl slid open the side door. Mistie knew the cowboys couldn’t see them — they were on the other side of the truck by one of the barns — but she wondered if they could hear her breathing.

The girl climbed in first, then put out her hand to pull in Mistie and the teacher. It took the teacher three times hopping to get up inside.

The trailer was filled with straw, but it smelled like cow poo. The girl lay down flat and covered herself with the straw, then hissed, “Hide!”

Mistie and the teacher lay down. Mistie pulled poo-smelling straw over her head and her body, and wondered what would happen if the cowboys put cows in with them?

The cattle trailer stunk, and the floor was soaking wet with urine and manure. Tony held Mistie in her lap and Kate sat directly across from them. It was dark, and they truck was moving.

They’d held still under the straw for what was almost too long to bear. Then Kate had heard some ranch hands come up to the truck, and one said, “Hey, gotta git. Herefords to pick up over in Hobbs. Gotta git ‘em and have ‘em back to old George by daybreak.”

“You ain’t cleaned the trailer yet.”

“What George don’t know his damn Herefords ain’t gonna know. Damn, they drink pond water that they’re standing there shittin’ in.”

“You got it.”

There was a creaking as the hand climbed into the cab, and a grating as he turned on the engine. And then, they were driving off the ranch and heading for Hobbs.

Hobbs, New Mexico. That was west. Kate had looked it up in the map she had folded in her overall pocket. Route 180 went to Hobbs, after passing directly through Lamesa.

No one had spoken the first few minutes after the truck pulled out of the fenced compound and onto the dirt road. Tony had killed the deputy. Well, she was probably dead. God forgive us , Kate thought. Greta was doing her good weekly deed.

Mistie had crawled out from her straw when she saw that Tony had done the same, and had snuggled up to the girl. Tony hadn’t pushed her away. Kate had checked her leg wound. It had stopped bleeding again. At Tony’s father ranch, if they made it, she would clean it out and hope for the best.

Tony’s face was hard to see in the darkness. Kate said, “Tony, are you okay?”

Tony shrugged. “I didn’t want to kill her. She was going to tell on us. I have to get to my dad’s.”

“It’s not long now, we’ll probably be in Lamesa in just a matter of minutes.”

“I’m watching the road,” said Tony.

Kate leaned into the steel ribs of the stock trailer and crossed her arms over her chest.

Tony said, “My dad’s the best. He’ll hide us. He won’t let nobody find us and put us in prison.”

“Think so?”

“Know so. He ain’t no fucking new nigger.”

“Women aren’t the problem, Tony.”

“Women suck.”

“Look at Greta. She offered to drive us for gas and didn’t know who the hell we were.”

“She was going to turn us in.”

“Before that. She didn’t know.”

“Maybe.”

“Tony, what happened back in Mobile? Why did you…hurt yourself…with that knife handle?”

“You don’t like me to talk dirty in front of Misite.”

“Were you….?”

“Yeah, I was. Two boys down on the Gulf. Okay, make you happy?”

“Of course not. But think about this. Look at what they did. They violated you, and they weren’t women. Evil has no gender.”

“It was my fault. They saw me, what I had, if I just didn’t have…. Fuck it all.”

“It’s not your fault that they stole something from you.”

“Had it stole before. No big deal.”

“Really?”

Tony began to rub the top of Mistie’s head, and she looked again out to the road. “Mile sign, right there,” she said, and her head whipped around as the sign approached and then passed behind them into the night. “Saw it. Three miles to Lamesa.”

“That’s great.”

“There’ll be cops crawling all over town. We gotta be more careful than ever.”

“We will be.” Kate looked at Tony, at Mistie. She said, “You’ve been really nice to Mistie, Tony. She liked your stories. You’ll make a good mother someday, I’ll bet.”