Drawn Into Darkness(46)
Bleakly Justin said, “Nobody’s ever going to understand.”
“I understand.”
“And that’s why I want to stay with you, Lee. Can’t I just stay with you? I don’t want to go home yet!”
“Stay with me? I don’t know where I’m staying myself!”
“Here! What’s wrong with right here?”
“How long?”
“Long enough for my hair to grow out.” The flashlight beam was too dim to show me, but I bet he blushed. “The hair on my head, I mean.”
“Justin, we can’t risk it. What if Stoat finds us?”
“I just need a few days—”
“Justin, I can’t handle a few days.” It was no use; I had to take charge. “We have to get you to the cops. Tomorrow.”
He blurted, “But they’re gonna think I’m a faggot.”
“No, they won’t think any such thing. They’ll understand.”
“Lee, there’s no way in hell anybody will ever understand what it’s been like for me.”
“Nobody ever understands anybody completely. But your parents love you.” I pressed more than I should have. “You can’t possibly understand what they’ve been going through, missing you, searching for you. They love you so much. That’s all that matters. Don’t you love them, Justin?”
Too late I remembered I was talking to a kid who, in addition to being terribly damaged, was a teenager. But he didn’t roll his eyes, just narrowed them, wincing. “Look, can’t we just go to sleep now?”
“Oh. Um.” I realized I’d gone too far. “Sure, excellent idea.” Maybe in the morning he’d be more able to deal with his situation.
The dying flashlight helped us grab blankets out of the Rubbermaid containers. We took turns using the very primitive outhouse. Then Justin kicked off his pink socks and headed for the top bunk. “Good night,” I told him.
He didn’t answer. Typical kid. I took the flashlight with me to the bottom bunk, turned it off, lay on my side almost in the fetal position, nestled under my blanket, and tried to relax. I was so physically exhausted, this wasn’t as impossible as it should have been. Within minutes, Justin and I were both asleep—or so I thought.
• • •
“Now, tickle my grits—just look at this.”
The loud and unpleasantly familiar voice plus the glare of a Maglite in my eyes startled me from a deep sleep into—I wished it were just a nightmare.
Lying flat on my back in the flashlight’s glare amid utter nighttime darkness, I could see only that the man steadied a long gun with his other hand, a double-barreled shotgun pointed at me. His head appeared only as a bobbing shadow, but by his gloating voice I knew well enough who he was: the bogeyman in person. Stoat. Come to get me. Us. Justin in the bunk above me—
At the thought of Justin, adrenaline bolted through me so that I reacted like lightning. Feeling Hypatia’s weight coiled atop the warmth of my midsection, I grabbed the snake and flung her into Stoat’s face.
He screeched and staggered back, arms flailing so that his Maglite showed me only mad flashes of shotgun out of control and snake convulsing as it fell. On my feet, I yelled, “Justin. Justin!” and grabbed at the top bunk where he should have been as the shotgun went off with a blast that traumatized my ears and my heart; what could Stoat be shooting if not the boy? “Justin!” My arms searching the top bunk found it flat and empty. Where was Justin? In a panic to find him and run from Stoat, I slewed around to look, then stood paralyzed by what I saw.
The Maglite lay on the floor, showing me Stoat with a contorted face and his shotgun shaking in his hands. He aimed the shotgun toward a biggish snake writhing at his feet, but it was not Hypatia. Its crisp markings, diamonds running down its spine, identified it unmistakably as a rattler. So did the raised, quivering tip of its tail, although I could barely hear it buzz through the clamor in my ears.
“The fucker bit me!” Stoat yelped, sounding incredulous just before his shotgun roared again, the second barrel blowing the rattlesnake into bits. Then, visibly shaken, he raised his unlovely face to glare at me. For the gray man that he was, he looked unusually white, and I didn’t think it was the spotlight effect in the darkness. On his hollow cheek above his goatee, paired puncture wounds and trickles of blood showed garishly red against his pallor. He clenched his long yellow teeth as he said, “You threw a rattlesnake at me and it bit me.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t realize!” I responded with spontaneous, genuine contrition. “You’d better sit down.”