Trapped (4 page)

and leveled and hard-rolled, and suitable for everything but

the very largest aircraft. Five thousand feet from end to end,

straight as a string. A much improved version of the old,

rutted clearing where, once upon a time, smugglers limped

in, flying wheezy old DC-3 Dakotas loaded with bales of

whatever, no runway lights to guide them other than a few

pools of smoky kerosene set afire. Wild times that more or

less ended before Roy and Dug were old enough to partici-

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pate. Unlike their poor pappy, who died in Raiford Correc-

tional, basting in his own bitter juices.

Don’t trust nobody, boys, least of all yur so-called frens.

That was Pappy’s only song, for years before he died.

How he was ratted by friends and associates and blood rela-

tives. A long story, partly true, mostly bull. The sad fact was,

the old man was the last in a long line of willing rats, with

nobody left to rat out. Boys who started out jacking gators

ended up rich, wrecking fifty-thousand-dollar Jaguars on

backcountry roads for the sheer stupid fun of it, until they

were spent out, broke, back in the cracker swamplands where

they started.

Roy, twenty-four years old and barely out of the same neck

of the Everglades, has no intention of going back, not without

a wad of cash in his pocket. Enough for him and Dug to live

decent. And near as he can figure, Ricky Lang is the man to

back, moneywise. That is, if he don’t go totally squirrel.

“What we do?” Dug wants to know, gazing at the empty

airfield.

“Ricky wants us to wait,” Roy explains, patient as always.

He’d started out life five minutes ahead, is still waiting for

his brother to catch up.

“Huh? Wait for what?”

“Somebody’s coming,” Roy says. He opens the glove

compartment, takes out his brand-new ten mil Auto Glock 20

with the fifteen-round magazine. “Somebody special.”

6. Worse Than Sex

Fern has been my best friend since the first day of first

grade. She sealed the deal by finding my shoes. Brand-new

shoes strapped onto my pudgy little feet by my mother barely

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Chris Jordan

an hour before a group of marauding third-graders—big as

invading Huns to me—knocked me down on the playground,

pulled up my dress and threw my brand-new shoes into the

woods behind the school.

There must have been adults overseeing us, but I have no rec-

ollection of that. All I remember is being devastated. Destroyed.

These were the shoes I’d insisted on when shopping for my new

school outfits. Expensive, from the way my mom pursed her

lips and looked worried, but I’d made a fuss and she’d given in.

Now the precious shoes were gone. I couldn’t go into the school

barefoot—mortal shame—and I couldn’t go home. I was lost.

The new world of first grade had ended before it even began.

I cried so hard I couldn’t see. And then this big girl came

out of the fog of tears, a lovely girl three years older than me,

with bright, beautiful, almond-shaped green eyes and wonder-

fully curly hair. She put her arm around my shoulders and

helped me smooth down my dress and promised to find my

shoes. She did find them, and helped me strap them on, and

twenty-five years later whenever I get irritated with Fern, or find

her wearisome, I think of the shoes, and that seals the deal all

over again.

So it’s Fern who gets the first distress call.

“Kelly ran away,” I say, my voice breaking. “With a boy.”

“Oh, Jane! No way! I have to sit down.”

Fern has the wireless, carries it to her favorite chair, the

soft leather recliner that belonged to her ex-husband. Poor

Edgar. A sweet guy but no match for Fern, not in marriage,

not in divorce, not in life. I know she’s using Edgar’s old chair

because I recognize the sound of the squeaking springs as she

settles in, pushes back, lifting her size-ten feet. “There,” she

says. “Tell me everything.”

I try, but naturally, Fern being Fern, she interrupts long be-

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fore everything gets told. “So you’re telling me Kelly stayed

out all night and skipped out on her summer job? Welcome

to the club, Jane.”

“But she’s never—”

“That you know of. Please. She’s sixteen. Everything but

their name is a lie. Sometimes the name, too. I got these calls

for Cheyenne? Frat boys looking for Cheyenne. Is that like

a stripper name? Jessica was calling herself Cheyenne at

some club, gave out her home number. Unbelievable. Jess has

a tested IQ of one thirty-five, but at clubs it apparently drops

to about sixty-five.”

“So you’re telling me not to worry.”

“No, no, no. Be very worried. Just don’t think you’re alone.”

“But what if she’s having sex?” I ask plaintively.

That gets a laugh out of Fern. Laughter so hearty it seems

to warm the receiver on my phone. “If, Jane? Did you say
if?

Of
course
she’s having sex! Why else would she stay out all

night with Smike?”

“Seth. His name is Seth.”

“He told Kelly his name is Seth and she told you. He

could be Smike for all you know. Or Squeers. Or Snagsby.

Probably something with an
S.
Like Sex.”

Fern is riffing now, trying to make me laugh. I know what

she’s doing, but I can’t help responding, and my heart un-

clenches. A big, tension-relieving sigh and anxiety begins to

recede like the tide.

It’s so much easier on the phone. If Fern was here I’d be

worried she’d see the tears in my eyes and go all soft, and

then we’d both be blubbering.

“I hate it that they grow up,” I tell her, taking a deep breath.

“No you don’t,” she responds. “Not so many years ago you

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Chris Jordan

were praying she’d get the chance to grow up. Your prayers

were answered.”

“True.”

“The miracle kid. She’s a character. They broke the mold.

What a personality she has! If the average person has a hun-

dred watts, Kelly has five hundred, all of it beaming. One day

she’ll make you proud, but right now all she wants to do is

blow your mind. And maybe Smike’s little thingy.”

“Fern! Please!”

“His little mind, too.”

Nobody enjoys her jokes better than Fern herself and that

gets her laughing until she can barely breathe. After a while,

after we’ve both enjoyed a few moments of silent commu-

nion, she goes, “So, you got a battle plan?”

“Grounding doesn’t seem to mean much.”

“Means nothing. Not unless you can lock ’em up and

throw away the key. What you gotta do, you gotta scare

some sense into her.”

“And how do I do that?”

“With Jess I used to grab my chest, make my face go all

white. Make her think my heart was about to stop.”

“You can do that, make your face go white?”

“Years of practice scaring my own mother.”

“I can’t fake a heart attack, Fern.”

“A seizure then. That’s easier. All you gotta do is drool.”

I’m crying now, but tears of laughter.

“It’ll be okay,” Fern says, shifting to serious. “You’ll see.

Kelly’s a good soul. She’ll know what to do, even if you don’t.”

“You really think so?”

“I really do. But just in case, can you fake a nosebleed?”

I’m still smiling ten minutes later when I enter Kelly’s

room. My intention is to rummage around, see if she left a

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35

contact number for Seth. No doubt it’s right there on her com-

puter somewhere, but her computer is forbidden to me. The

personal computer, Kelly has explained, is like a diary. There-

fore no peeking, on pain of death. To which I agreed. Not the

death part, of course, but the general idea. So in my mind her

computer is off-limits until one second past noon. Until then

I’ll stick to her address book, the handy little purse-size one

I gave, assuming she hasn’t taken it with her.

Can’t find the address book. What I do find, nestled way

back in the drawer, very nearly gives me that seizure Fern was

suggesting. A photo album I’ve never seen before. Quite

new, very slick.

Pictures of my daughter doing something really awful.

Something worse than sex. Far, far worse.

7. When Sleepy Voices Make It Snow

Once when Roy Whittle was a boy—just the one time—

Pap took the whole family to a carnival in Belle Glade. Some

kind of harvest jubilee thing, where they blessed the dirt and

prayed for the sugarcane, or anyhow that’s how Pappy ex-

plained it, in the brief interval when he was sober and smiling.

The thing about it was, the memory Roy savors, he and

Dug got to pretty much run wild because Pappy was off

doing whatever he did, and their momma went to the bingo,

and the Whittle boys were left to their own devices. They

didn’t have money for rides or cotton candy, so they took to

sneaking into the sideshow tents. Crawling under the heavy

canvas, flat on their bellies, the smell of wet grass in their

faces. Saw Howard Huge, the blubbery fat man, big as a

whale and sitting on a scale that proved he weighed a

thousand pounds. Saw a boy using a hammer to drive big

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Chris Jordan

spikes up his nose, which Dug thought was funny—it was a

rare thing, hearing his brother laugh out loud—and a skinny

old woman with really disgusting scaly skin calling herself

the Real Fiji Mermaid.

What Roy remembers best though, is getting hypnotized.

This man in a shiny black suit and western string tie, the

Amazing Mizmar, had the ability to control minds not his own.

Picking folks out of the little audience for his famous experi-

ment in mass hypnosis, he’d pointed out Dug to his pretty as-

sistant, but Dug wouldn’t have none of it. He wasn’t one for

talking to strangers, or drawing attention. So Roy took his place

up on the stage with the other victims, all of them looking

pretty sheepish, and then the Amazing Mizmar produced this

truly amazing device, a glittery little ball on the end of a wand.

He clicked the wand and the glittery ball shot pulses of light.

Alluring, rhythmic pulses that blended in with the Amazing

Mizmar’s sleepy voice, urging Roy to stare at the wand and feel

the light and then to close his eyes and still see the light through

his eyelids, and in less than a minute Roy was really and truly

hypnotized. It was like being awake but sleeping somehow,

frozen in a half-dream, in-between state, and it felt good. Felt

right somehow. When the voice suggested it was snowing, Roy

looked around, delighted—he’d never seen snow—and then set

about dusting the big wet flakes from his shoulders. The

laughter of the crowd was like the sound of flowing water or

the crying of distant gulls, and when the voice told him to wake

up at the sound—a sharp hand clap—he tried resisting. Wanted

to stay in the between world, where sleepy voices made it snow.

Roy still has his “between” moments and this is one of

them. Sitting in the air-conditioned cab of their new Dodge

Ram, Dug nods off as they wait, and Roy studies the shimmer-

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37

ing waves of heat that rise from the white runway. Makes the

air look like pulsing, transparent jelly. With that and the regular

sound of Dug breathing heavy through his nose, Roy can almost

hear the drone of the Amazing Mizmar’s voice, he can almost

see through the heat-shimmered air into some other place.

Almost but not quite, because Ricky Lang pulls him back

into the big bad world. Yanks open the door and pokes Roy

with an index finger that feels like a warm steel rod in the

ribs.

“Wake up,” says Ricky.

“I wasn’t sleeping,” says Roy. “I’m keeping watch.”

Ricky, studying him from behind his mirrored sun-

glasses. Nodding to himself. “Uh-huh. Whatever. What you

watching for, Roy?”

“Like you said. A plane.”

Ricky’s face untightens, and he smiles with just his lips.

“Good. The specific aircraft we’re expecting, that would be

a Beechcraft King Air 350. Twin turboprops. Color, green

and silver. Tail number ends in seven, my lucky number.”

“Yes, sir,” says Roy. He’s tried nudging Dug, but Dug is

deeply asleep, and he’s worried about how it looks, his

brother snoozing while the boss is giving instructions.

“Leave him be,” Ricky suggests. “Don’t matter if he

sleeps through the end of the world. This is on you, not your

retarded brother.”

“Dug ain’t retarded.”

“Whatever’s wrong with him, that’s not my concern. You

got the Glock?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you know how to fire it? How to get the safety off,

rack a bullet into the chamber, all that?”

Roy nods. He’s pretty sure he knows all that.

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Chris Jordan

“Good,” says Ricky. “Then you know how to leave the

safety on, how not to fire it.”

“What’re you saying?” Roy asks.