Wire Mesh Mothers

49

The teacher’s hands were left free so she could tend the child, but Tony had told the woman to tie her own ankles together with bale string or she’d hobble the child in effigy. She knew what effigy was; she’d seen a video on the American Revolution in fifth grade. The Americans back then did stuff to other people in effigy all the time, like burning them and hanging them and stuff. The teacher didn’t much seem to care what happened to her anymore. But the child was Tony’s ace in the hole. The teacher cared about Baby Doll. The teacher’s ankles were bound neatly with a tidy little knot in the back, as neatly as a teacher who’d been a Girl Scout could do.

The barn was different from the barn the Hot Heads used as a getaway back in Pippins. It was much bigger, and had two sides separated from each other with a supply room. On the side Tony had picked there were eight stalls, a ladder, and a loft. Beneath the sound of the rain on the roof, Tony could hear the skittering of mice and rats in the walls and under the floorboards. The barn wasn’t used for tobacco but for animals, and it smelled like it.

Tony had taken the duffel bag from the car. So other than a few farts lingering in the cushions and whatever DNA was in Baby Doll’s vomit, and well, there wasn’t much to trace the stolen Nova to them. Well, except for fingerprints and Tony didn’t have any on file and she was sure the teacher and Baby Doll didn’t. In the country there were always trashed cars and trucks on the sides of roads. They could stay there for weeks, even months, before somebody alerted somebody and had them hauled away or maybe tried to find the people who’d last driven them. Tony wasn’t worried about the Nova.

The teacher sat on some straw she’d spread on the floor. Tony was on a bale a couple yards away. She’d found some cool stuff in the supply room — a saw, a pitchfork, an ax. The ax was better than the knife, though she’d put the knife back in its place in her sock for future need. The saw and pitchfork were leaning against a stall door, but the ax was resting on Tony’s knee. It was heavy, but would pack a damn good punch.

Manly yes, she thought, but I like it, too.

It was evening, sometime around eight or nine, Tony guessed. In a dented metal wheelbarrow a small fire burned. It had been the teacher’s idea, so they could see what they were doing. There had been old planks and wooden blocks in the store room, and they were old and dry enough to burn hot. It was started with straw, and then splinters pulled from stall walls, and then the thicker blocks. Tony thought that when she finally reached Burton’s ranch in Lamesa, she would know how to build a really good campfire for the cowboys to sit around.

The teacher wore only her bra and jeans. She stroked Baby Doll’s hair and every so often dipping the bottom of her sweatshirt into a pail of rainwater at her feet and wiping the kid’s face off. The kid had awakened off and on, and said she wasn’t hungry and wondered where her Mama was. Tony’s gut tightened when the kid asked about her Mama. Why hadn’t the Mama sent out police looking for the kid? Why hadn’t her name been on the T.V. news last night? Just didn’t care, clearly. Bitch like Mam.

The teacher began to hum a song, something that sounded like a nursery rhyme. Tony ordered her to stop. She did, but she looked at Tony with eyes that said, “One wrong move and you’re dead.” Tony wouldn’t have believed it yesterday. Today, she did.

The fire light played shadows across the floor and the walls and the nooks in the stall doors. Tony had never been in a barn at night. She didn’t like it. It was creepy, with most of whatever was in there with them in darkness, things that could watch them while going undetected. Even a flashlight wouldn’t have made much difference.

The teacher began to sing again. Again, Tony said, “Shut the hell up!” Baby Doll whined in sleep then muttered, “Val.”

“Truth or dare?” asked the teacher.

“Not now.”

“It’s your game, and you’re in control. Why not take a chance?” The teacher’s eyes looked like she was smiling even though the corners of her mouth were turned down. Her skin crawled in the light of the fire.

Tony patted the ax, punctuating her power. “Truth.”

“What’s your name?”

“Ha!” This truly was funny. They’d spend so much time together and the teacher didn’t even know her name. “Okay, I’ll give you truth. It’s Tony.”

“Hm,” said the teacher. “Tony what?”

“Tony’s good enough,” said Tony. “My turn. Truth or dare?”

“Dare.”

“No kiddin’?” This was a nice change. “Okay, I want you to lick the bottom of my boot. It’s got lots of nice mouse shit on it.”

The teacher cocked her head. “I will,” she said. “But why did you pick that?”

“Why doesn’t matter.”

“Why is the only thing that matters.”

“You don’t make sense. Just lick the fucking boot.”

Tony loosened the laces and flipped her foot, tossing the boot at the teacher. The teacher picked it up, ran her tongue down the bottom without a single hesitation, and threw the boot back.

“Sick!” said Tony. “God, I’d never do that!” The teacher was becoming as creepy as the old, dark barn itself.

“Really?” the teacher asked. “So I’m braver than you?”

“Brave’s nothing to do with it. Stupid is what it is.”

The teacher shrugged, dipped her sweatshirt and dabbed Baby Doll’s neck.

“Truth or dare?” asked the teacher.

Tony hesitated. “Truth again.”

“What happened to you last night?”

“I meant to say dare.”

“No, you didn’t. You said truth.”

Tony shook her head.

“Okay, dare, then,” said the teacher. “Go to the farmhouse at the edge of this field. Sneak in, get yourself invited in, whatever. I need some Tylenol, some rubbing alcohol. A thermometer if they have one.”

A gray tabby cat appeared near the wheelbarrow, it’s glassy eyes reflecting yellow. It sniffed at the straw on the floor near Tony’s feet. “Get out of here,” Tony said. “You got no idea what I do to cats. Psssh!”

The cat scurried off to where it could not be seen.

“Well? Are you going?” asked the teacher.

“I didn’t hear what you said,” said Tony. “Now just shut up for a while.”

“Mistie is really sick. You said dare.”

“Maybe I did and maybe I didn’t. So just shut up.”

She scooted off the straw bale to the floor and leaned against the scratchy surface behind her. Little bits of straw bit into her arms and through the Jesus sweatshirt. Jesus, the great protector, she thought. Oh, yeah.

“If you won’t go for the things I need for Mistie, then let me go,” said the teacher.

Tony leapt up, grabbed the ax and slammed the blade into the floor inches from the teacher’s foot. “Shut up!”

The teacher shut up. Tony bound the woman’s hand behind her back with another length of bale string, but left the kid untied. Tony took off her own sweatshirt — screw the teacher, she could do what the teacher did and not care –and rolled it into a pillow-ball, then eased Baby Doll down so her head rested there.

“You ain’t gonna run off, now are you?” Tony asked the child. Baby Doll didn’t seem to hear or understand. She just sighed heavily and whispered something that sounded like, “Bad liver.” She was dreaming. That was good, Tony thought. If you were really, really sick, you didn’t dream. She knew she’d heard that somewhere. If not, she should have because it made sense.

Back against the straw bale, Tony tossed another few blocks of wood into the wheelbarrow. The fire blazed, crackled, and leveled off. Tony kept her gaze on the woman and the kid. She didn’t want to see what might be in those dark corners. Pussy, she told herself, but it didn’t matter. Dark corners could hold things that weren’t good. And she had enough that wasn’t good without adding to the mix.

She heard a cat’s guttural and distant snarl, then only the secret whispers of the dreaming kid and the casual popping of the straw bits in the fire. She scratched her head slowly, as if one wrong move might bring out the devils in the barn.