Hellbent

24 A Teaching Moment

Given the events at Portland Union Station, Evan decided to get Joey safely out of the state before parting ways. In the past he’d had a few near misses with Van Sciver around Los Angeles, so Van Sciver likely knew that Evan had a base there. Putting himself in Van Sciver’s shoes, Evan figured he’d bulk up surveillance on routes leading south from Oregon. So rather than head for California, Evan and Joey rode the bell curve of the I-90, routing up through Washington and cutting across the chimney stack of Idaho.

They swapped seats at intervals, Evan driving the current leg. His attempts to access the laptop had been unsuccessful. The Dell Inspiron had proved to be heavily encrypted. Breaking in would require time, focus, and gear, none of which he could get until he had Joey off his hands.

Van Sciver’s words returned, a whisper in his ear: You have no idea, do you? How high it goes? You still think it’s about me and you. No matter how many ways Evan turned the conversation over in his head, he couldn’t make sense of it. Van Sciver was working off an agenda unknown to Evan.

That scared him.

It felt as though Van Sciver were sitting at the chessboard and Evan was a pawn.

It was ten hours and change to Helena, Montana, a destination chosen for its unlikeliness and because they had to cross three state lines to get there. His stomach started complaining in hour six. It had been nearly eighteen hours since he’d eaten.

Joey had finally dozed off, slumped against the passenger window, a spill of hair curled in the hollow of her neck. It was good to see her sleeping peacefully.

Evan pulled off at a diner, braking gently so as not to wake her. He parked behind the restaurant, out of sight from the road, and reached to shake her awake.

She jolted upright, shouting and swinging. “Get off me! Get off—”

Awareness came back into her eyes, and she froze, backed against the door, fists raised, legs pulled in, ready to kick.

Evan had leaned away, giving her as much space as possible. He’d taken the brunt of her fist off the top of his forehead. If he’d been a second slower, she would have rebroken his nose.

Her chest was still heaving. He waited for her to lower her shoulders, and then he relaxed his.

She unpacked from her protective curl, looked around. “Where are we?”

“I thought we’d get some food.”

She straightened her clothes. “This isn’t a thing, okay? Like some big window into me.”

“Okay.”

“You don’t know anything about me. You don’t know what happened to me. Or didn’t happen to me.”

“Okay.”

“I just have a temper, is all.”

Evan said, “I’d noticed.”

They sat in a booth in the far back of the empty diner, Evan facing out. Despite the stuffing peeking through the cracked vinyl benches, the restaurant was clean and tidy and appealed to his sense of order. The aroma of strong coffee and fresh-baked pies thickened the air. A Wall-O-Matic jukebox perched at the end of their table, the Five Satins “shoo-doo ’n’ shooby-doo”—ing in between hoping and praying. Salt and pepper shakers, syrup bottles, and sugar jars gathered around the shiny chrome speaker like children at story time.

From the old-school baseball pennants to the inevitable Marilyn poster, the manufactured nostalgia made the place seem like a location from a TV show, a faux diner set decorated to look like a real diner.

Evan ate egg whites scrambled with spinach and dosed heavily with Tabasco. Joey picked at a stack of pancakes, furrowing the pooled butter with the tines of her fork.

Conversation had been in short supply since the incident in the car.

Evan set down his fork, squaring it to the table’s edges. A few drops of coffee formed a braille pattern next to his plate, remnants from the waitress’s lazy pour. He resisted for a few seconds and then caved, wiping them clean with his napkin.

Joey remained fascinated with her pancakes. Her rucksack rested next to her, touching her thigh, the closely guarded life possessions of a street dweller.

Evan searched for something to say. He had no experience when it came to matters like this. His unconventional upbringing had turned him into something sleek and streamlined, but when he collided with the everyday, he felt blunt, unwieldy.

Then again, he supposed she wasn’t very good at this either.

He watched her eviscerate her short stack.

“If you’re fighting off an attacker — a real attacker — go for the throat or eyes,” he finally said. “Up and under. If you swing for the head, he can just duck, protect his face, take the blow off the top of the forehead where the skull is thickest.”

Her mouth gaped, but for once no words were forthcoming.

He sensed he had said something wrong.

“Are you seriously turning this into a teaching moment?” she said.

The best course of action, he decided, was to consider the question rhetorical.

But she pressed on. “Everything doesn’t have to be some learning experience.”

He thought of his upbringing in Jack’s farmhouse, where every task and chore held the weight of one’s character — making the bed, drying the dishes, lacing your boots.

How you do anything is how you do everything.

“Yes,” Evan said. “It does.”

“You’ve seen me fight,” she said. “I know how to fight. That wasn’t about fighting. It was just… a startle response.”

“A startle response.”

“Yes.”

“You need a better startle response.”

She shoved her plate away. “Look. I just got caught off guard.”

“There is no ‘off guard,’ Joey. Not once you get on that bus in Helena. Not for a second. That’s how it is. You know this.”

She collected herself. Then nodded. “I do.” She met his stare evenly. “Throat and eyes.”

Though the sky still showed a uniform black, a few early-hours patrons filtered in — truckers with stiff hats, farmers with worn jeans and hands that rasped against their menus.

“You’ll be okay,” Evan said. “The farther you are from me, the safer you’ll be.”

“You heard him. He’s not gonna let me go.”

“He’s gonna have his hands full.”

“I think we’re safer together.”

“Like at your apartment? The train station? That pest-control shop in Central Eastside?”

She held up her hands. “We’re here, aren’t we? And they’re not.”

The sugary scent of the syrup roiled his stomach. “This isn’t — can’t be — good for you.”

“I can handle it.”

“You’re sixteen.”

“What were you doing at sixteen?” She glared at him. “Well? Was it good for you? Or is that different? Because, you know, I’m a girl.”

“I don’t care that you’re a girl. I care that you’re safe. And where I’m going? It’s not gonna be safe.”

A patter of footsteps announced the waitress’s approach. “I just started my shift, and already I’m winded trudging all the way to you two back here.” She grabbed her ample chest, made a show of catching her breath.

Evan managed a smile.

“Anything else I can get you or your daughter, sweetie?”

Evan touched her gently on the side, not low enough to be disrespectful. “Just the check, thanks.”

“It’s really nice, you know, to see. A road trip. I wish my daddy spent time with me like that.”

As she dug in her apron pocket, Joey gave her a look that bordered on toxic.

The waitress pointed at her with the corner of the check. “Mark my words, you’ll appreciate this one day.”

She spun on her heel, a practiced flourish, and left them.

The bill had been deposited demurely facedown. Evan laid two twenties across it, started to slide out.

Joey said, “I didn’t do it.”

He paused. “What?”

“The duffel bag. The guy. I didn’t do it. I couldn’t pull the trigger.”

Evan let his weight tug him back into the seat. He folded his hands. Gave her room to talk. Or to not talk.

She took her time. Then she said, “I stood there with the gun aimed, Van Sciver at my back. And I couldn’t.”

“What did he do?”

“He took the gun out of my hand. And showed me…” Her lips trembled, and she pressed her knuckles against them, hard. “The mag was empty. It was just a test. And I failed. If I’d done it, if I’d passed the test, I could’ve been like—” She caught herself, broke off the thought.

“Could’ve been like what?”

“Like you.”

Silence asserted itself around them. Kitchen sounds carried to their booth, pots clanking, grills sizzling. In a booming voice, the short-order cook was telling the staff that he hadn’t had much luck with the rainbow trout but he had a new spinning lure that just might do the trick.

“Van Sciver unzipped the duffel, let the guy out. He was acting all along. Probably some psyops instructor. Van Sciver said he was gonna walk him out, that I should wait there for him. But the thing is?” Her voice hushed. “I noticed something standing there, looking down at the duffel bag. It had a smudge of blood on the lining. And I knew that I hadn’t just failed the test. I’d failed Van Sciver. And at some point it would be me in that duffel bag and another kid outside it. And when that happened? The gun wouldn’t be empty.”

She sat back, breaking the spell of the memory. “That raised office in the hangar, it had a window with a shitty lock. I kept a hairpin hidden in my hair. I thought it’d be wise to GTFO before he got back. So I did. I was on the run eleven months until Jack.”

“How’d Jack find you?”

The distinctive ring sounded so out of place here among the retro candy-apple-red vinyl and Elvis clocks and display counter up front stocked with Dentine. It was a ring from another place, another life, another dimension.

It was the RoamZone.

Someone needed the Nowhere Man.