Eighteen

How I disappeared. The last driver took me for a runaway, escaping an abusive stepfather. She looked me up and down and decided she knew my story the way people do all the time. I’d done it myself. She assumed my gaunt face was the product of mistreatment at home, not bad prison food, and she thought my calloused hands were the result of punishing household chores, not the harsh chemicals in the prison laundry. I let her think that. For the previous two days nothing I’d said was the truth, and I was getting better at lying. She gave me a bag of trail mix, a pair of woolen gloves, and the best advice I’d gotten in my young life, certainly better than anything from that jerk lawyer.

She said it wasn’t enough just to hope that someone couldn’t follow you, you had to actively feed misinformation into whatever system you thought they’d use to track you. I had to stay away from everything and everyone I formerly knew or loved. She sounded as if she knew what she was talking about. Maybe she’d left an unhappy marriage or a difficult past. Who knew? But she had me thinking about what I could or couldn’t do next.

There could be no tearful late-night calls to my brother, no showing up on old friend’s doorstep. No registering for school or doing anything that required me to give my social security number. It was easier back in the eighties. I don’t know how someone would do it now.

I was afraid to throw away my driver’s license and passport for fear of leaving a trail, so I kept them. Besides, maybe I could use them. I’d already toughened up and learned a lot, but I needed a plan. First and foremost I needed to clean up. I’d been on the road since that first night at the motel in Michigan and I stank.

The ladies’ room at the Port Authority wasn’t as disgusting as I thought it would be. When I saw my reflection in the cloudy mirror, I teared up but didn’t let myself cry. The washroom attendant didn’t seem surprised when I took a poor man’s bath in the sink with my stolen washcloth and a sliver of soap that had all the weight of a matchbook. I dried off with the hand dryer. The attendant warned me to keep my bags close and wear the shoulder strap across my chest so there was less chance of its getting ripped off. I must have looked like Alice in Wonderland, the only thing missing was the pinafore.

I took my time lingering in the bathroom, because I hadn’t a clue as to what I’d do next. Near the diaper changing table there were stacks of flyers-social service agencies, suicide prevention hotlines, employment opportunities from an escort service, and a flyer from St. Ann’s Community Kitchen. I took one of each and shoved them in my bag.

“St. Ann’s is four blocks south of here. Make a left when you get outside,” the woman said. “You don’t wanna go to that other place. Go to St. Ann’s. They got chicken stew on Fridays.” As if I knew what day it was.

The sign on St. Ann’s said the kitchen was open from 7 to 10 A.M., 12 to 2 P.M., and 5 to 8 P.M. It was 3 P.M. I heard the rain before I felt it, pelting my brother’s cheap nylon duffel that held everything I owned and was already starting to show signs of fabric fatigue from having been dragged on highways and thrown into the backs of trucks. I was showing signs of fatigue, too. Then it really started to pour and I figured no one would mind if I ducked into the church to wait out the storm. Isn’t that what they were for? Sanctuary?

A priest was rearranging items on the altar, moving candlesticks or something. I didn’t want him to see me still there two hours later, so when he went behind the altar, I crept into the confessional booth and pulled the carved door closed behind me. Then I fell asleep.

There was no anger or judgment in the priest’s voice when he woke me two hours later.

“You look troubled. Would you like to talk?” The same words that other priest had said to me at the stable in Connecticut.

The priest at St. Ann’s led me to the church basement, where dinner was being served. I took a tray and waited in a line that reminded me of a school cafeteria, albeit one with a down-at-the-heels student body. I was starving. I loaded up on sides and tried not to be too piggy with the meat, which didn’t look that appetizing anyway. Then I sat at a long table opposite a girl about my age. She had a choppy haircut and wore a lot of makeup, and I could see a pack of Marlboros sticking out of the pocket of her denim jacket. Again I felt like a child. We shoveled in the food in silence. She put a cigarette in her mouth but knew the rules well enough to not light it. Finally she spoke to me. “Need a place?”

Nineteen

I suppose only the wildly optimistic in Springfield were surprised. I saw Les Mis. Turn your life around? It doesn’t matter. Maybe it shouldn’t. I’d never really thought about it before. I just knew Caroline Sturgis and couldn’t see what purpose it would serve to have her making license plates in the big house for the next fifteen years.

I turned off Babe’s computer. It was time for that drink, and Babe Chinnery obliged, pulling a bottle of Jack Daniel’s from a small wooden cabinet under the window in her office. I’d had a Jack night once a few years back. All I remember was that I forgot where I parked my car, and it was a damn good thing, since driving would have been suicidal.

“What do you have for lightweights?” I asked.

“How about a dark and stormy-rum and ginger beer?”

“Maybe just coffee for now.”

Babe locked up her office and we took our time walking to the diner’s front entrance. If I hadn’t spent the time going to Mossdale’s and blowing eighty dollars on lunch, maybe I could have driven to Bridgeport and convinced Caroline to see me, but it was too late to speculate.

“Something happened that day,” I said. “She got a ticket, saw the priest, and then came here. However startling those first two events might have been, they didn’t put her out of commission. She was pretty happy when she got here.”

“Yeah, she came in to see you, you talked, she started to leave, and the trucker hit on her,” Babe said. “That long-haired guy who tried to help Terry?” I didn’t know who she was talking about, then realized the waitress with the bolt in her eyebrow was Terry.

“She flung a tray of coffee cups and nearly decapitated someone? You were there, remember?”

“Right. The guy who said Caroline looked familiar,” I said, trying to dredge up a mental image.

“Please, I hear that ten times a day. It only registers when it’s one of my regular customers and I’m worried that it’s early stage Alzheimer’s.”

“Maybe he wasn’t throwing her a line. Maybe she looked familiar because he knew her back in Michigan when she was Monica Weithorn. Maybe she was upset because he looked familiar to her.” Could be. It was right after that that Caroline made her hasty departure, giving some phony excuse to her friends outside.

All I remembered was that the trucker had long hair and wore a baseball hat, but Terry had spoken with him. He’d even gotten a laugh out of her, which was the first time I’d ever seen her teeth. Maybe something about him stuck with her.

“He was with another driver, someone you knew, wasn’t he?”

“Retro Joe,” she said. “No one knows if that’s his real name-that’s just what everyone calls him. One of the long haulers. I can almost see the truck, red logo, two letters interlocked. I’ll get it but it may take some time. But those guys don’t always drive with the same partners.”

Inside the diner, we escorted Terry to a booth and sat her down to ask her a few questions.

“What is this, the Spanish Inquisition? You guys are worse than my parents. I don’t know. I wasn’t paying attention. I dropped the tray and he helped me clean up until Babe came over. It was two seconds. No great meeting of the minds.”