Wire Mesh Mothers

30

The campfire was pretty decent. The picnic table was old wood, and seasoned better than a lot of the stuff Mam bought to burn in their wood stove. There was nothing with which to break the table into smaller pieces, so she’d put dried pine needles underneath, with sticks collected by the teacher and Baby Doll on top of that. She’d picked up a pack of matches from the lot by the pumps back at the Texaco, a half-pack with most of the red tips washed away in some past rain. But several were still potent, and the needles caught fire with little urging.

Tony had instructed the teacher to light and tend the fire, Girl Scout that she was. She’d done so without hesitation or argument, kneeling on the ground in her soaking wet clothes and fanning the little blaze with the palm of her hand. The flame had grown steadily until the underside of the table had given up the ghost and had accepted its fate. Now, there was quite a bonfire, and the three sat as close as they could without scorching themselves, cross-legged.

The kid’s shoes and socks were off and drying near the blaze. So were Tony’s Granddad’s shoes and her pairs of socks. The teacher’s winter scarves hung from the forked twigs of a green stick planted in the ground near the fire. Tony had suggested the teacher take off her coat at least, to let it dry, but the teacher hadn’t seemed to understand the suggestion, or really didn’t care, so Tony let it go.

The sun was out, and there was no wind, which was a small favor. The geese were gone from the lake, replaced by a flock of mallards, brown-headed ones and green-headed ones. Tony wasn’t sure of the time, because the clock was in the lake with the car. Maybe one, maybe two in the afternoon. She was hungry, and the smell of the wood smoke made her think of barbecue sandwiches and beer. Followed by some doughnut sticks.

“Truth or dare,” Tony said to the teacher.

The teacher was watching the fire, little twin tongues of flame dancing on the shiny surface of her eyes. Her hair was flattened against her face, framing the bones and making her look even older than she was. Her shoes were missing, lost somewhere amid the fish and the snapping turtles of Lake Marion. She didn’t look like a teacher anymore. She looked like a whore who’d seen the bad end of her pimp. Tony grinned at the idea.

“I said truth or dare,” Tony repeated.

The teacher did not say anything to Tony. She did not even look her way.

Tony lifted the gun from her knee and waved it at the teacher. “Hey, you forget how this works? Did your little baptism erase your mind?”

The teacher’s mouth opened, but no sound came out. It shut again.

Beside the teacher, the kid played with a batch of dried grasses she’d picked. She was intent on the chore of wrapping the stems about the seedpods, yanking the stem, and watching the pod snap off and fly into the air.

“Mama had a baby,” she said dully, “and its head popped off.” After each popped pod, she reached down to rub herself between her legs. Tony cringed.

“Truth. Or. Dare,” Tony said, her attention back on the teacher, each word punctuated as if speaking to a foreigner.

The teacher’s mouth opened, closed, opened. “Truth.” It was more a mouthing than an actual word.

“Okay, then,” said Tony. “Tell me. What was it like in the car? What did it feel like to think you were going to die?”

The teacher’s hands came slowly from her lap, sliding up her arms to latch on to her elbows. One eye closed, then the other, then they both opened. The woman looked like a fucking, brain-dead monkey. One good scare and she was reduced to nothing more than a sack of wet clothes by a burning picnic table.

Tony cocked the pistol and pointed it at the teacher’s foot. “I could also blow your big toe away if I wanted. Maybe all your toes if I wanted. And I’m starting to want.”

The teacher’s hands began rubbing the elbows. “Was hell.”

“Yeah? Cool. Hell like how?”

A silent breath. A shiver. Eyes closing and opening. “Like…hell.”

“Did it hurt?”

The eyebrows furrowed as if she wasn’t sure what the word hurt meant. Her lip hitched. She shrugged, one shoulder lifting then dropping more in a spasm than a conscious move.

Tony slammed her fist against the teacher’s jaw, knocking her to her side in the pine needles. The woman lay panting, stirring crumbs of dead leaves with her breath. “Hurt,” she said. “Yes.”

Satisfied, Tony sat straight and crossed her legs again. “I didn’t know if I was going to let you drown or not until that last minute,” she said. “Oh, I rolled the windows down to let the water in faster, not to save you or anything. ‘Cause what do I need with you two? I can drive a car if I want to. I know how.”

The teacher remained on her side, staring into the fire. Her face was pinkening with the heat. She was going to have a sunburn.

“But I’m a fugitive,” Tony continued. “Wanted for armed robbery and murder. It’s a good cover having a teacher and kid along for the ride. So, I decided pull ‘em out of the car. I’m a good swimmer, if you didn’t notice. And I wasn’t even a Girl Scout.”

The teacher looked like she was going to go to sleep or pass out.

“Hey!” Tony kicked the woman in the side. “Hey, don’t you dare!”

The teacher opened her eyes.

“Sit up. We’ve got things to do. Places to go and people to meet, my Dad used to say. You hear me? Hey!” She kicked the woman again.

The teacher nodded, imperceptibly, into the leaf dust.

“All right, then!” said Tony. She held her hand close to the fire, and felt the sizzle on her palm. “All right, then.”