John Brandon - Citrus County

Toby backed into the woods and rounded the house and advanced to the edge of the yard. He would either get caught red-handed or he wouldn’t. He stood tall while he strode, bracing for motion lights. A hot coal had been burning in his guts for years and it was about to be doused. He passed a rusted grill that had been turned into a birdfeeder. A kiddie pool. Still no lights. Toby donned his mask and it fit superbly. It made him feel skilled. He watched, through the eyeholes, his fingers come to rest on the handle of the sliding-glass door. He watched, through the eyeholes of the snug black mask, the door budge. Toby slid the door inch by inch. He wouldn’t have to jimmy a window. He was going to walk right in. He stuck his head inside first — a flat, oaty smell. It was the dining room. He breathed the baked-hay scent. He could hear Shelby’s voice from the porch, but he couldn’t hear what she was saying. It sounded like the voices that came to Toby in the bunker. He could hear Shelby’s voice and he could somehow hear that the father was listening to her with care, leaning in. One of them could get up to use the bathroom or get something to eat or something to drink or get a sweatshirt at any time. Toby could hear the scrape of a chair on the wood porch at any moment. He could hear it now, or now. But he didn’t. He heard the refrigerator humming in the next room. All of Shelby’s things were in this house, all her army pants and all the books she read. And her sister. Her sister was in here, eyes drawing closed under her red bangs.

Then everything went fast. Toby slipped down the hallway toward Kaley’s room. He hung strips of duct tape from his forearm. If someone came in from the porch now he was cornered. He pulled the door open and Kaley lurched in her bedding. She seemed to know what was happening, that she was becoming part of something. She tried to collect a breath, but it took her too long. Toby had the tape around her head. He had her dumped in the rucksack, her top half first, her kicks thudding mutely against the mattress and then the carpet. She was a real child. She was a person made of flesh, her terror pure and clumsy.

Toby zipped the pack and shouldered it and its lightness exhilarated him. He was strong through the hallway, strong through the dining room. He heard nothing but his own blood. The wholesome smell was gone. Toby didn’t bother to close the sliding door. Patio. Patchy lawn. Woods and woods. The breeze was at his back, the ground under him firm. He ran and then he jogged and then he walked and then he felt the gnarled roots under his feet and then, halfway to the bunker, he rested under a giant fern. He had to open the pack and tape Kaley’s ankles because she was kicking the hell out of his back. His saliva was foamy. His feet were sloshing in sweat from all the socks. He’d done all of it. He had put a cot and a blanket and a pillow and a bunch of water and snacks and a flashlight and some clothes and a tight-lidded bucket in the bunker and now he’d snatched a little girl. From the moment he’d seen Kaley on the playground to now had been one long afternoon, and night had finally fallen.

Toby strode toward the house on a wanton trajectory. He would be proud, he knew. Soon enough. The mission was accomplished. He was tired in a buoyant way, like for once he would be able to really sleep. He yanked sharp breaths in through his nose, smelling every hidden thing in the woods, trying to get ready to return to his regular life and act regular. All he could think of was lying in bed with his secret. All he could think of was the very near future.

When Toby got to the house, Uncle Neal was on the porch in his rocking chair. He was slugging from Toby’s thermos of soda, making calls like an owl. The ashtray on the floor next to him was overflowing. Toby could hear the police radio from inside, the station his uncle listened to at night — the uncondensed blotter, he called it. He couldn’t make out the words. His uncle said knowing what the cops were up to helped him relax. Toby had listened to it before, and it was mostly boring. It was a bunch of speeding tickets and the occasional disturbance at a party, and when something important did happen, it was told in codes and jargon, in voices trained to be calm. Hell hadn’t broken loose yet, it didn’t sound like. It sounded like the same old chatter.

Toby stretched out on a lounge chair with no cushions.

Uncle Neal rotated his head without moving his shoulders. “Hoo,” he said. “Hoo.”

Toby’s eyes wandered to the ashtray.

“Dried banana peels,” Uncle Neal told him. He peered into the thermos. “There’s something in this shit. Did you put anything in this soda?”

Toby said, “Like what?”

“Something for the memory.”

“The memory?”

“You’re not poisoning me, are you?”

Toby didn’t answer.

Uncle Neal dug something out of his nose. “Some kid introduced me to banana peels when I was your age. I was in gifted. Our teacher was hot.”

Toby couldn’t imagine Uncle Neal being a different age, being a kid or an old person. He couldn’t imagine anyone different than they were. Toby was meant to be in eighth grade, pretty much an orphan. Kaley was meant to be kidnapped, meant to be stashed in the bunker. Everyone he saw every day was meant to be in Citrus County, fated to be carrying out whatever fruitless act they happened to be engaged in.

“There were twins in my gifted class. They teach college now.” Uncle Neal hoisted the thermos and paused. “And this ugly Chinese girl, she writes for a newspaper in Boston. This guy Rob said he wanted to be a rocket scientist — works for NASA.”

“Can I have some of that?”

Uncle Neal handed the thermos to Toby, who glugged its contents until his throat burned.

“What were you supposed to do?” Toby asked.

“I don’t know anymore.”

Toby took a few more sips of the soda. It was making him thirstier. He was glad he’d done what he was supposed to. He’d filled the bunker. He wasn’t like Uncle Neal.

“They kicked me out of gifted,” Uncle Neal said. “I got caught leaving fake suicide notes. Kicked me right out.”

Toby could still perform his end of a conversation with his uncle. He was the same person, just with a big secret that would give him strength. He could still do everything he had to do. “Were the notes supposed to be from other students?” he asked. “Kids you didn’t like?”

“I’d make the person up and leave the note at the bus station or a motel.”

“How come? Why suicide notes?”

Uncle Neal cut an eye at Toby. “Think I know? You think that’s the kind of thing you do for a known reason?”

“Well, how’d you get found out?”

“Not by telling anybody. The school cop just figured it out. I guess they do that now and again — crack a case.”

Tomorrow, Toby knew, every cop in the county would be scurrying around looking for Kaley, looking for Kaley’s abductor, and this didn’t worry Toby in an immediate way. The cops didn’t seem a part of any of this to Toby. They were strangers. What Toby did was none of their business. What came over their radio might as well have been transmitted from the moon.

Toby heard a clap of thunder and then raindrops panned the roof.

He looked over at his uncle, whose shoulders had gone limp. His head was sagging to one side. After a minute, Toby said his uncle’s name and got no response.

The next morning, Toby began the walk to the county line, to an immense bookstore where he could watch the news away from Uncle Neal. The few kind slaps of winter had landed and the red marks were fading. Now it would be summer again. Before long, Toby would have to put an air conditioner in the bunker. He’d have to get a little air conditioner and a little generator and he’d have to lug the generator back to the house and sneak it into his bedroom to charge it every, what, couple days? He probably didn’t even have enough money saved. Toby’s mind was blundering. He’d concocted the kidnapping and looked forward to it and executed it, and now he felt unconvinced that it had occurred. It hadn’t sunk in, was all. He felt like if he went down in the bunker right now there’d be nothing but his folding chair. There was weight in Toby’s joints as he put one foot in front of the other. He had to grit his teeth and walk through his doubt like it was a cloud of car exhaust.