Sing Her Down, page 9
“Sit,” Drew says. “Gary and Bob.” He points first at the pagan dude, then at the ruddy one.
Florida’s heart is beating a two-step. She straddles a crate near the fire and picks up a stick, snap-snap-snapping it and tossing it to the flames.
“Ladies,” Gary says. He has booze in a mason jar. It smells homemade—a tang of motor oil.
“You girls far from home?” Bob asks.
“We don’t have a home,” Dios replies.
“You girls lost?” Bob says.
“We aren’t lost.”
“Careful with that one,” Gary says.
They pass the jar. It burns like hell but dampens the cheap speed.
Bob begins to drum on a crate with a stick, a quick-time rhythm out of sync with Florida’s pulse.
“Where’d you find them, Drew?” Bob asks. “Where did these ladies come from?”
“What makes you think we can’t speak?” Dios replies. She holds Bob’s gaze.
Bob flicks his grizzled ponytail. “Your friend hasn’t said a word.”
“Tell them, Florida,” Dios says, drilling a finger into Florida’s side.
“It’s none of their business,” Florida says.
“Feisty,” Bob says. “I like it.”
“I wouldn’t if I were you,” Dios says. “She’s a killer.”
“I like it even more,” Bob says.
* * *
The fire crackles and an owl drops a lonesome note. Drew pours water into a bag of freeze-dried stew and stirs it before offering it around. The smell of the desiccated beef and powdered herbs takes Florida back inside. She gags and gulps the pine-pitch air.
Bob is smoking schwag, his face redder, like the fire is inside him. His words tangle. Back then I was a hairdresser for Pat Benatar. I did all the singers.
I wrote a few letters to the president.
I got a reply. Once, just the once.
We had a shop on Hollywood Boulevard. Everyone had a shop on Hollywood.
We used to party at Guitar Center. We partied at the Viper Room. I did hair in the toilets between sets. I did hair on private jets. I’ve been to Moscow. I’ve been to Estonia.
The letter I got back had his signature. The signature of the president of the United States. Dirtbag traitor.
They love American rock in Eastern Europe.
They love it more than Americans do. They can explain it to us. They hear things we don’t. American rock is full of code. It’s encrypted messages to the communists. It’s spy shit.
“Easy, Bob,” Drew says. “You don’t want to bore our company.” He scoots over, closing in on Dios.
“Pass me that.” Dios reaches for the jar. She swigs and offers it to Florida.
Bob’s voice is a bass refrain—a story that stretches on, only now and then interrupted by a drag and exhale.
“So you two aren’t going to tell us where you’re from and how come you’re wandering around after curfew?” Drew asks.
“What curfew?” Florida says.
“She speaks,” Bob slurs.
“You don’t know about the curfew?” Bob asks.
“We’re from Arizona,” Florida says.
“And they don’t have news there?”
“We were in prison,” Florida says.
For a moment the only sound is the snap-crack of the flames. Then the men roar as one, billows of laughter that knock them forward and back as if they are being buffeted by actual gusts of wind.
“What?” Florida says.
“What’d you do?” Drew asks.
“Lemme guess,” Bob says. “Domestic violence. Beat up the old man.”
“Forgery,” Gary says. “It’s always forgery.”
“Forgery. Or fraud,” Drew says. “One or the other. Got to be.”
“My cousin did time for bad checks,” Drew says.
“When I worked retail all the ladies skimmed,” Gary says. He holds his hands out and the flames light up his cheap pagan jewelry.
“That’s what you did, right?” Drew says. “Took a few bucks. Took a few more. Bought yourself some new clothes, some new makeup. Thought no one would notice.” His eyes bounce from Dios to Florida, his face a lopsided smirk, the smile of a superior drunk.
Dios wraps her hand around Florida’s wrist and pulls her toward Drew. “Hit him,” she says.
Florida’s mouth opens and closes like a Venus flytrap, catching nothing.
Dios shakes her wrist and tightens her hold, her finger digging into Florida’s fine bones. “Hit him.”
“Now, now,” Drew says. “That’s not ladylike.”
“And what does that mean?” Dios says.
“It means she’s not going to hit me,” Drew says.
Dios yanks Florida’s arm. “What do you know?”
Florida’s wrist is burning. She’s unsteady on her feet.
Drew is staring up at her with his smug smile but there’s worry in his eyes fed by the chill fury that’s emanating from Dios. “Go on,” Dios hisses.
Florida tries to jerk away.
“Do it.”
“Stop,” Florida says.
“Stop,” Dios mimics.
“What do I know?” Drew says. “Seems like I know something.”
Dios lets go of Florida, then feints toward Drew, her own fist raised. He flinches and falls off his crate. “You know jack-shit.”
Florida’s cheeks are blazing with shame and fury. She pushes past Dios so she is standing over Drew. Then she presses a foot to his chest. “Accessory to murder after the fact,” she says. She presses harder. “That’s what I did. Pled down from accomplice to murder.”
Dios pivots, her eyes on Florida’s, their green glimmer flecked with fire. “Well now,” she says. “What do we have here?”
Florida removes her foot and stands tall. In these woods, in this dark, she is bold. “Pass me that jar,” she says.
Drew takes his seat. His expression is frustrated yet hungry. Florida knows this look from the COs who kept them in line by summoning the women’s worst behavior for their own pleasure. She knows it from the CO on the bus who looked at Dios with the same eyes. Make them misbehave so you can devour them later.
The fire gives a castanet sputter. Somewhere an owl lends its voice.
The mix of booze and speed makes Florida both loose and wired with an energy that needs to flow.
She breathes deep, drinking in the forest, a smell and taste so free and clear it scrapes her lungs raw.
“Look at her.” Florida is barely aware of Gary’s voice, his gross, gravelly admiration of her as she drops her head back, tilts her face toward the sky, and begins to sway.
She feels it all fall away. Carter. Her mother. The years inside. The smells and sounds of hundreds of women crammed together. The echo of their fears. The air—so tight and heavy.
Gary finds another stick. His rhythm on the crate accelerates, working against the drag and drone of his companion.
Florida whirls, feeling the warmth of the fire revolving against her body. Feeling the towering trees and the forest expand on all sides, the world receding until it’s just her dancing alone with limitless space and endless time.
Now there is music coming from the pickup, songs from a tinny radio. The headlights are on, sharpening the focus on the party.
Bob is bowing and weaving on his crate, nodding off, his joint between his lips. Dios takes the joint just as Bob slumps to the ground, his face slack with chemicaled sleep.
Gary cups his hands over his mouth and starts a pagan wail. He takes off his shirt and steps up to the fire. One side of his chest is scarred from shoulder to waist—a half vest of rippled, ridged skin.
Dios slides her arms around Florida’s waist. “We hold them in the palm of our hands,” she whispers. “All we need to do is squeeze.”
Gary howls and calls and guzzles his home brew and then staggers back toward his trailer, where he passes out on the steps.
Then it is Drew. Hungry Drew.
“Ladies,” he says, “shall we dance?”
Florida pulls Dios to the far side of the fire.
Drew’s eyes never leave hers. “Playing hard to get?”
She gulps from the mason jar and the scene swirls faster. The trees close in. The fire grows higher. All the space that was just there evaporates as Drew circles the flames, trying to catch them.
It’s a game at first, this counterclockwise prowl.
Florida wobbles as she dashes around the firepit, keeping away from Drew. Dios steps to the sidelines.
“Are you going to let him catch you?”
“Come back, Dios,” Florida says.
“Come back, Dios,” Dios mimics, retreating behind the truck’s headlights.
Florida circles fast. Drew circles faster. Then he reverses course and catches her in a sloppy bear hug, wrestling her to the ground. She falls hard. Her head knocks against something sharp. The pain is startling.
She feels the fire at her back, dirt and dried needles in her mouth.
Drew’s hands are all over her, a frenzied clawing that gets under her clothes.
Florida is stunned by the fall. Drew’s clumsy fingers probe. He tears her shirt. He tugs her pants.
The fire cracks, shooting sparks that shower them. Drew yelps and recoils, freeing Florida.
She rolls away and staggers to her feet.
“Show him.” Dios’s voice comes out of the dark. “Now is your chance to show him who you are.”
Florida makes a fist. Drew is rolling at her feet.
“Hit him now.”
Florida stares at the man on the ground brushing sparks from his hair and his shirt. She watches him blink, blinded by the smoke.
“Do it.”
Drew is struggling to his feet.
“Now.”
Before he can stand, Florida delivers a kick.
“Again.”
Another and another.
Drew groans and doubles over.
“Show him.”
Another kick and then she is down at his level. Her fists fly like they belong to someone else—a rat-a-tat hailstorm of blows. Dios’s voice driving her on.
She’s pinned Drew against the concrete of the firepit. Her fists and feet flying, alternating kicks and punches. Her fists bleeding. Her feet throbbing. Still she continues. She feels her knuckles split, the bones in her fingers bruise and swell.
She punches until her hands are numb and her breath gone.
Drew lies limp, his eyes closed, his head rolled toward the fire.
Florida falls back. She is empty. Dios comes to the fireside—pristine and glorious. She helps Florida to her feet.
Florida is slick with sweat and spattered with ash. She looks down at Drew, motionless and spark-showered.
Her knuckles ache. Her wrists too. Her head is heavy, her stomach sour and churning. Florida looks at the blood on her hands and the blood on Drew’s face. She retches, then wipes her mouth. She finds the mason jar and takes a swig.
Dios is already making tracks. Florida hears her boots striking the gravel. She takes a look at the bodies strewn and slumped around the campsite.
Bob mutters something.
Florida needs to hustle. She can’t be around when they come to.
She stumbles over crates and bangs into the pickup. She finds the driveway but then veers off, unable to navigate in the dark, unable to steer herself straight.
“Florida!” Dios’s voice again, but farther way. “Florence.”
Florida takes a few steps down the road but then stops. In the woods she can hide. In the woods she can be free of Dios.
She waits.
“Florida!” Fainter now. “Get your ass down here.”
When Dios’s voice fades away, the only sound is the erratic thump of Florida’s own heart. Then boot strikes returning in her direction.
Go. In the woods. Over rocks. Through brittlebush and tumbleweeds. Into the trunks of towering trees. Past more rocks. Over dried moss. Over fallen branches.
Go. Faster. Away from Dios. Away from that campsite and another person she’d beaten senseless.
Go. Dios’s voice still in her ears, egging her on.
Go. Faster and faster until she trips over a tree trunk and is thrown headfirst into a small clearing.
The air smells of blood and pitch. Florida holds her breath, hoping for enough silence to hear if Dios is calling to her, chasing her, summoning her back. But the only sound is her own heart pounding in her chest and the forest settling back to stillness behind her.
* * *
The sun leaks through the low branches of the towering pines. Florida’s throat is parched, her eyes crusted with dirt. She slept on the forest floor. Her hip aches. Her hands throb. In the trickling dawn she can see most of her nails are broken and her knuckles swollen.
She stands. She has to move and put this behind her—just another drunken revelry, a woodland rave, a fire-dance.
Florida has no idea how far she came in the dark last night before she fell to the ground and slept. It could be minutes or miles. Time was a funnel that made her spin and spat her out. She pats her pockets. She has her debit card. She’s lost everything else.
Down. That’s all she knows. Head down and one way or another she’ll come to a road. She’s in the woods but civilization can’t be far, the suburban, exurban sprawl that snakes away from cities until all cities are one city.
The forest is bald in patches—rocks slicked with a carpet of dried pine needles. Florida slips, breaking her fall with her bruised hands. She slides.
There is the road—a twisted cut between the trees.
The descent is easier now on the pavement.
Her mind churns—a painful collision of thoughts and the aftermath of last night’s booze, a hangover three years in the making that coats each decision in a penumbra of worry, confusion, and panic.
Down. Down.
Florida’s feet are running away from her, leaving her mind behind. She turns and looks back. She’s a long way down. The trees on top of the mountain are lost high above.
Her feet slap hard, sending shivers up her shins.
She is on level ground. Florida pauses to catch her breath. She must look wild—a feral creature clawing out of the woods. She rakes her fingers through her hair and tries to rub away the dirt on her cheeks.
Keep moving. Her body wants to stop.
Keep moving.
The ache is everywhere.
Keep moving.
Because if she does, she can get home. It won’t take much. Just a little thinking. The city limit of Los Angeles must be forty-five minutes away, her mother’s house a twenty-minute ride across town depending on traffic, which, by the look of this new world, won’t be much.
Florida takes a deep breath and exhales slowly to quell the staccato panic of her hungover thoughts.
Like she planned before, she will take things in stages. She will work it through and when she is comfortable somewhere in Los Angeles, when she has her car, when she is showered and groomed, the events of last night and the past years buffed and scrubbed away. When she’s free of Dios, she will be all right. The mountain will be a memory.
She crosses the border where desert meets mountain. There are houses now, even a few cars. A shopping plaza. A gas station. She buys water, coffee, and a pastry that’s sweating in its plastic sheath.
As she’s paying, a thought breaks through—no, not a thought, a sound.
“You okay, lady?”
“Did you hear that?”
The clerk looks in the direction of the door, as if the sound might be coming inside. “You mean the train?”
“There’s a train?”
“You just heard it.”
* * *
The station is a ghost town—a few mission-style structures shade an empty platform. The waiting room is deserted, the benches roped off with police tape, the vending machines disabled.
Florida uses her debit card to buy a ticket from a machine. She feels her money ticking away. A sign taped to the wall suggests trains are running on a limited basis.
The train is almost empty. Its few passengers have scattered themselves. There’s one other rider in her car—a man hidden behind a newspaper.
The air is cold and canned and bracing.
Florida takes a seat out of sight of the other passenger.
The rhythm is a balm, a pat-pat that soothes her.
The door at her end of the car opens and a woman enters, swaying with the to-and-fro of the train. She swings herself into the seat across the aisle from Florida.
She is all grunt and snuffle as she settles herself. This woman is too close, too loud, too much breath and heat.
Florida begins to make her way to another car. The rider who had been reading the newspaper is gone. He’s left the paper behind. Florida sits down across from his now-vacant seat, her back to her destination, and watches the Inland Empire slide away. The train is rolling faster now, barreling toward the terminus, whisking her home. Home. She’s not afraid to say the word now that she’s free from Dios.
The landscape is starting to look increasingly familiar. The outskirts of LA—places she’s passed with Carter or stopped with friends on the way to somewhere else. Places where someone who knew someone lived. Places where someone she knew lived.
Home.
She can feel it for the first time—an unburdening and an unwinding. A homecoming.
Florida reaches over and lifts the San Bernardino Sun from the vacant seat. Her eyes skim the pages, taking in the dispatches from a world on hold. Data and graphs and numbers and warnings. She is about to toss the paper when her eye catches something below the fold.
FEMALE SUSPECT OR SUSPECTS SOUGHT IN MURDER OF CORRECTIONS OFFICER
There is a stupid moment when Florida imagines that if she stops reading, the story will vanish or be a different story altogether. Her eyes continue before her mind can stop them.
The body of corrections officer Oscar Reyes was discovered on board a Ho Fong bus that was operating illegally between Phoenix and Los Angeles on Tuesday. The cause of death was a knife wound to the carotid artery.
It sounds so clinical, so impossibly distant.
