Dismember Page 6

  “Let’s walk and talk,” Mike said, knowing she couldn’t stay still for long.

  “He promised he’d stay where I could see him,” Libby said and hurried off down the corridor, leading Mike, though only barely. “I can’t believe…I thought maybe somebody grabbed him.”

  Mike glanced at the carousel crowd. Children swayed slowly on their feet, bored. Little boys danced from foot to foot and…

  “You were getting a refill?” Mike asked after a sudden inspiration.

  “Yeah, so? I don’t—”

  “You ate supper?”

  “Oh,” she said, “yeah. I didn’t know if you had plans.”

  “No, it’s not that. But I think I might know where he went.”

  Mike took hold of her by the upper arm and led her only long enough to be sure they were heading in the same direction; then he let go of her bicep, and they rounded the uncrowded side of the merry-go-round together, back toward the eateries and the munching customers. He didn’t come to the mall any more often than anyone else, and certainly far less often than many people, but he knew his way around well enough.

  “Where are we going?” Libby’s flats clacked against the floor. Dressed in well-worn sneakers, Mike had the grace of a cat burglar in comparison, though he chugged along just as swiftly.

  Mike let her question go unanswered. Just a few more seconds and she’d see for herself.

  Between the Orange Julius and the Chick-fil-A stood double doors slathered with a flat gray paint and sporting bulky push bars that would have made them look unappealing, almost off limits, if they hadn’t been propped most of the way open. Shoppers might still have confused them for fire exits if not for the belying placards screwed into the drywall overhead. Two icons; probably some of the most universally recognized in the world: little stick man, little stick woman.

  The restrooms.

  Mike and Libby stepped side by side through the two openings, moving together though momentarily separated by the thick steel jamb between them.

  The acoustics here were very different, probably designed to spook you and get you back out into the mall where you could spend, spend, spend. The sound of their footsteps echoed off the walls. The music from the carousel ricocheted into the hallway after them.

  The plain, white walls held no pictures or advertisements to draw the eye and should have been almost blindingly bright, but something about the quality of the light made them seem darker, more depressing. The way Mike imagined halls might look in a mental institution.

  Still hurrying, almost jogging, they turned a corner to find the entrances to the facilities. Mike moved to the right-hand doorway, the men’s entrance, and sensed Libby surging along behind him; he stopped and held his hands out in a halting gesture.

  “Whoa. Where are you going? Don’t you think maybe you ought to wait out here?”

  “To hell with that,” she said, never slowing.

  Grinning just a little, Mike followed her into the men’s room. “Just watch out for yellow puddles,” he said.

  One look at the floor proved that to be a wise bit of advice. A second, equally important suggestion might have been: hold your breath. Mike didn’t think Libby would have any problems figuring that one out on her own.

  At the second of the three urinals, a rotund man in a wrinkled shirt glanced from Libby to Mike and then quickly back to Libby. It was cinematic, the kind of double take a guy only did when he was an actor and he’d read it in his script. Mike expected him to shout out something like, Get outta here, lady, this is the men’s, but instead he zipped himself up prematurely and waddled away from the unflushed urinal with a quarter-sized wet spot to one side of his fly. He didn’t stop at the sinks, just rubbed his hands on the sides of his pants.

  Mike shuddered and reminded himself never to touch anything in public again.

  Libby moved to the first of the stalls. “Trevor, hon, you here?”

  Mike wouldn’t have chosen the word hon to address someone as likely to be a horny biker with a bad case of constipation as their son, but he held his tongue.

  A brief hesitation followed, and Mike had time to wonder if there was anybody in the room besides Libby and himself, and then a single-word response floated out to them from behind the closed door of the last stall: “Mommy?”

  Libby’s body slumped. It was like every tensed muscle relaxed at once. She let out a little gasp of a cry. “Trevor. Thank God!”

  They walked together to the locked door. “Hey, bud,” Mike said, standing close to the one-inch gap between the door and the frame but not looking in, wanting to give his son at least a hint of privacy. “You okay in there? Didn’t fall in, did you?”

  “Daddy?” Trevor sniffed, and Mike realized the boy had been crying. “I…messed myself.”

  Mike shared a sympathetic look with Libby, trying to think of some way to respond, but Libby beat him to the punch. “Hey, that’s no problem. Happens to the best of us. We’re gonna get you fixed up good as new. Okay?”

  Another sniff. “Kay.”

  Mike had to admire her. She was probably still upset with Trevor for wandering off, and maybe more so with herself for losing sight of him, but with just a mouthful of words she’d shown that her compassion outweighed her anger and that she could put Trevor’s feelings ahead of her own.

  “But my shorts,” Trevor said. “They’re—”

  “Never mind those,” Libby said. “You stay here and let your daddy help you get cleaned up, and I’ll go get you some all new ones.”

  Mike looked at her approvingly, but she didn’t seem to notice.

  “Push your dirty clothes out here, and we’ll take care of them,” she said.

  A pair of elastic-waisted jean shorts slid under the door. Spiderman undies followed, and Trevor admitted in a trembling voice, “I got some on my socks and shoes, too.”

  “Give em up,” Mike said. Libby scooped the soiled garments from the floor with no hesitation despite the streaking veins of fecal matter. Not so long ago, they’d changed his diapers for him; Mike supposed his poop was probably about the same now as it had been then, and they’d spent most of the first three years of Trevor’s life covered in it. What did a little more matter?

  The first shoe rolled out to them and landed upright, the laces loosened but still knotted. The second ended up beside it on its side. Trevor had rolled the socks up inside.

  While Mike examined the sneakers and the socks, Libby took the shorts and underwear to the trashcan, balled them up and tossed them in. At home, Mike knew, she’d have dropped them in the washing machine instead—neither of them had ever been rich enough that they could afford to throw out perfectly good, if temporarily soiled, clothes—but in these circumstances, Mike didn’t blame her a bit. He sure as hell didn’t want to haul the outfit through the busy food court.

  He took the socks to the trash and dropped them in among the other clothes, but he thought he could probably salvage the shoes.

  A crackling voice come down from speakers somewhere in the ceiling.

  “TREVOR PULLMAN, IF YOU CAN HEAR THIS, PLEASE COME TO SECURITY. YOUR MOTHER IS LOOKING FOR YOU. TREVOR PULLMAN, TO SECURITY, PLEASE.”

  The voice cut out with a click, and Mike said, “The security guard?”

  “I guess so.”

  He smiled a little. “Better late than never.”

  Libby didn’t respond—or smile.

  “Mommy?” Trevor sounded both scared and a little confused.

  “Never mind that,” Libby said. “I’m gonna get you some new clothes now, okay? Just stay here with Dad and I’ll be right back.”

  “Kay.”

  Mike pulled his wallet from his back pocket and fished through the bills inside. “Here, let me give you some money. I’ll see if I can’t get these shoes fit to be seen while you’re gone.”

  “No,” Libby said too quickly, “I can pay for—” She patted her right shoulder, then gave Mike a look he hadn’t seen often in all the years they’d been tog
ether. A look like she’d forgotten to turn off the stove or left the garage door open, a combination of forgetfulness and stupidity. He half expected her to slam her palm into her forehead. She didn’t.

  “My purse.”

  Mike didn’t have time to respond. She was halfway out of the bathroom, tossing the crumpled paper towels into the trashcan like an NBA player banking an easy lay-up. He followed her to the exit.

  She spun around and saw him watching her. He thought from the look on her face that she might ask him a question, but instead she said, “Thanks. For helping me find him.”

  “No problem.” He leaned his shoulder against the white block wall.

  “But I would have found him on my own.”

  Mike crossed his arms over his chest and said seriously, “I know you would have.” He meant it and could tell she knew.

  “Back in a jiff.” And then she was around the corner and gone.

  Mike uncrossed his arms, pushed himself away from the wall, and re-entered the bathroom to help his son.

  EIGHT

  Dave carried Georgie half a mile through the woods before the kid began to gasp and sputter and generally wiggle about. He stopped beside a dead tree and lowered the boy. The kid flopped back against the scarred trunk and breathed so shallowly and raggedly that Dave wondered if he might have asthma.

  “You—” the kid started but never finished.

  Dave would have added bastard, but he was glad Georgie hadn’t. He didn’t want to have to punish him.

  Dave reached for the boy’s forehead. Georgie tried to pull away, but Dave grabbed hold of the side of his face and took another look at the wound above his eye. It had bled freely for a while, the blood running into the boy’s hairline while he hung from Dave’s shoulder. A dried clot reached from his hair down to his eyebrow like an unfortunate birthmark. Dave would wash it clean later. Didn’t want to risk infection. Daddies knew better than that.

  His own wounds still throbbed. He reached an exploratory hand to his cheek, pulled it away, and looked it over. Blood, and plenty of it, but none fresh. It caked under his fingernails and packed into the creases and wrinkles like dried paint. He wondered if an artist felt this way, stained by his chosen medium.

  For a while, he said nothing, just stood and waited for the boy’s breathing to return to normal. Finally, he asked his question: “Do you have asthma?”

  Georgie looked at him strangely and said, “No, I…no.”

  Good, Dave thought but didn’t say. Asthma would have meant medicine and doctors, maybe hospitals with questioning nurses and forms to fill out in triplicate. Dave would take care of his boy, but he didn’t want to deal with those kinds of complications if he could avoid them. Nodding satisfactorily, but not enough to worsen the pain in the gouges on his face, he curled the tips of his fingers upward a couple of times and asked the boy to stand.

  “No, I don’t want to,” Georgie said in a tone that could hardly have been more impudent. The boy wriggled back on his butt a little, straight back, though he had nowhere to go but up the tree.

  Dave grabbed him by his armpits and jerked him to his feet. “Don’t ever tell me no,” he said. He didn’t raise his voice, didn’t even really change his tone, but thought he managed to convey a sense of authority regardless.

  He would get the hang of this.

  The boy sighed, nodded, and acquiesced when Dave told him to get moving.

  They followed an old game trail through a dense section of forest—a trail Dave had found and taken advantage of many times in the last few months. The tracks in the mud consisted mostly of deer prints. At points, the path narrowed to almost nothing, but it never completely disappeared. Even if it had, Dave would have managed to pick it up again. He wasn’t an expert tracker, probably couldn’t have followed a chipmunk from California to Maine on a two week delay, but he could sure as hell keep his eye on a deer-wide rut. To a woodsman (and Dave considered himself one), this path might as well have been a newly paved interstate.

  Dave walked behind the boy, nudged him in the back when he slowed or seemed to get confused about which way he was supposed to go, wiped occasionally at his eye. The sneakers on the kid’s feet were well tied (of course) but otherwise cheap and worn; one of the soles flapped and smacked against the shoe’s upper with every step the boy took. Dave hadn’t noticed the damage before, so it must have happened only recently, perhaps during the kid’s unsuccessful rush in the tree fort. The shoes showed no brand name, only an icon he didn’t recognize. He’d have to get Georgie some decent hiking boots.

  They continued to move, and Dave wondered if he should have spent a little more time inside the house, gotten some of the kid’s clothes and maybe some food. Might have made the transition a little easier, both on Georgie and on himself. It wasn’t too late to go back—he doubted anyone had heard the woman scream, and there wasn’t a husband to come home early—but the house was the kid’s territory. He might know of another hiding place back there, or of a weapon to use against Dave. Dave didn’t want to chance anything like that, not when he could just as easily pick up some boots off a back stoop or a porch somewhere along the way. Or he might find something back at Mr. Boots’s house, something left over from his own boyhood. He had a few outfits at least and maybe some toys (or toy-like objects anyway). It was his job to provide now. And he would.

  They crossed a narrow stream, Georgie slipping once but catching himself in that acrobatic way of his, Dave never missing a single step. Once he’d reached the other side successfully, the boy said, “My mom—”

  But Dave cut him off. “Don’t worry, we’ll find her,” he said. The boy meant his old mother, of course, and Dave knew it, but he didn’t want to risk a conversation about her. Not now or ever.

  “Why are you doing this?”

  Dave nudged him again. “No more questions,” he said, still keeping his voice perfectly cool and level. “Georgie never asked so many stupid questions.”

  “I don’t know who Georgie is,” he said. “My name is Zach.”

  Dave smiled and nudged him forward. “Used to be. You used to be Zach, I used to be Davy, everybody used to be somebody.”

  The boy didn’t respond to this. He pushed on, warding off a low-hanging tree branch with one arm and letting it swing back when he’d moved out of its way. He didn’t look back to see if it had hit Dave (which it had not), and Dave was glad. He didn’t want to think Georgie had tried to hurt him on purpose, although at worst it would have thwacked him in the chest and maybe given him a little welt.

  The trees thinned ahead. Not far from where they walked, sunlight cut through the canopy in wide swaths. The road beyond was really more of a gravel walkway that had once been wide enough to allow a vehicle passage to a pair of cabins in the mountains above. The cabins had burned a long time ago, and nature had crept in to reclaim what had been leveled, but Dave had managed to get his truck most of the way up the forgotten road and knew he could get it all the way back down. He’d done it before.

  The underbrush grew less dense here, and the trail widened until it became almost indistinguishable from the rest of the forest floor, though Dave could still see it clearly where it hit the road and make out the spot on the other side where it continued.

  He’d parked the truck just downhill from that point, and though it seemed the boy had still not spotted it—had, in fact, strayed in the opposite direction—Dave saw the sunlight reflecting off the windshield and just a hint of blue from the hood. He touched Georgie’s shoulder and steered him in the right direction, like a shepherd with a single lamb. In a lot of ways, he supposed that was exactly what a daddy was supposed to be.

  They walked through the last stretch of forest side by side, Dave’s footsteps hardly louder than the rustle of pine needles beneath them, the boy’s sounding like a slow applause as his damaged sole continued its clapping.

  They reached the overgrown road. Dave didn’t see the boy speed up, but he heard it. Clap, pause, clap, became clap c
lap clap. And then the boy was running.

  He ran uphill—his first mistake—and stayed on the road, opting for a clear path ahead rather than the possibility of cover, which made sense to an extent but was, in all the ways that mattered, very dumb. Dave was more ashamed than upset. He supposed he needed to understand that, despite Georgie having always loved the outdoors, he hadn’t had a chance to grow up in them yet. Dave had a lot to teach him.

  Although the boy was graceful in some regards, he was a gangly runner, all legs and arms and flailing elbows. Dave barely had to do more than walk to catch up with the scrambling boy. Just a little bit of movement, but enough to restart the throbbing in his face and eye. Damn bitch, he thought, glad he’d gutted her, wondering how he could ever have thought she’d be an acceptable choice.

  Ahead, the road curved sharply, cut uphill through a grove of thick trees and led at last to the two cabins, which Dave had investigated only once on a rainy night that spring. From the place where he overtook Georgie and latched on to the back of his t-shirt, Dave couldn’t make out the two ruined homesteads, but they were up there, hidden in the trees, home now to only the birds, the bugs, and the burrowing animals camped out beneath the rubble.

  Georgie whipped around so furiously that a chunk of shirt almost ripped off in Dave’s hand, but the man twisted his fingers into the material until he had a good enough hold to make sure the kid wasn’t going anywhere. Dave saw the grass-covered stone on the road before the boy did and kicked it out of the way just as one of Georgie’s hands dipped in its general direction. Dave didn’t flip Georgie around, didn’t say anything, just turned back toward the truck and dragged the writhing child behind him.

  Out here in the open, the sun baked Dave’s head and face. He’d spent so long hiding in the shade, he’d almost forgotten it was summer. A bead of sweat dripped down his cheek, hung for a moment from the tip of his chin, and then fell to the dirt below.

  The boy’s thrashing had almost stopped, which seemed strange to Dave. His fits of rebellion came in spurts. Throw a rock here, run away there, but never an all-out fight for his life.