11
“FUCK,” the truck driver said when he saw Vern with her babes.
“You’re still here,” said Vern. She’d been ready to start the search process all over again.
“Had to finish my cigarette anyway.” Vern sniffed. The man didn’t smell like smoke.
“They yours?” he asked.
“Course they’re mine,” she said.
“Of course they’re yours, but I mean legally yours.”
He was asking if someone in a black robe had told her she couldn’t have her kids anymore. That was what had happened to Lucy’s mam. The woman who’d snatched Lucy from the compound had been working for Lucy’s mam, but Lucy’s dad tracked her down. He sued Mrs. Jenkins for custody and won. Lucy came back to the compound, for a time.
“They’re mine,” Vern assured the trucker. “And they don’t know anyone else but me.”
“Mhm,” he said, in a tone that implied he didn’t believe her, but he opened the passenger door for them. She lifted her children inside one by one, then set them up so they were crouched on the floor in front of her seat, between her knees.
“Right,” he said.
“I’m armed, just so you know,” she said. One knife was in a sheath around her neck, the other two in pockets.
“Wonderful,” he said, then wiped the back of his hand over his mustache.
Howling and Feral stared at the man, eyes wide disks. Their mouths flopped open into little puckered Os. The only people they’d ever seen before were themselves and Vern. Ollie, too, though that was a while ago now and they hardly remembered.
“I’m Mitch,” the trucker said.
“I’m Feral,” volunteered Vern’s youngest.
“Shh, child,” Vern snapped. She was glad Feral still couldn’t say his f’s or r’s properly. Sounded more like Pearl, the way he said it.
“That’s a sweet little name for a sweet little girl,” said Mitch, starting up the engine.
“Don’t call my children sweet. Don’t call them anything,” said Vern, and sank into the soft cushion of her seat, lapping up the pleasant darkness. The gentle movement of the truck threatened to lure her to sleep, but she refused to succumb, remaining alert as each hour passed.
“Mam?” Feral said.
“What?”
“Look.”
He pointed out the window. Murmurs of light, only just, dabbed the sky. Night was gone. Time slid by and by.
It was a spectacular show, the green of trees, the pink gradient of the sky. Feral crawled up onto Vern’s lap and stared out the window. “We’re so high and going so fast,” he said. “How?”
“It’s like rolling your body down a soft grassy hill,” Vern said.
He pressed his face and open palms to the glass. “Almost,” he said. “Why is the world so big?”
“Everything is always growing, moving,” Vern said. “Changing.”
That was what was happening to Vern. A stranger was growing inside her.
Vern shivered. She reached into her left sleeve with the opposite hand and picked at an itchy patch of flesh. No amount of scratching made the itch cease. She dug anyway, convinced somehow that if she tore the skin away altogether, made it somehow down to the bone, she could expunge death from inside her.
* * *
VERN TILTED HER HEAD an inch to the side to focus her vision. Gray buildings erupted like sorry, prefabricated hills from the street. The only spot of color was a pink stucco cube. A Mexican restaurant, Vern guessed.
“I’m going to need money,” said Vern when Mitch pulled off the highway onto the service road where he planned to drop her off.
He sighed but grabbed his wallet. He took out all the cash in it and handed it to her. Vern brought it close to her eyes so she could count it. Two fives. One ten. Three one-dollar bills. She folded each of the bill types in a different pattern so she’d be able to recognize them quickly. The ten she folded long side to long side, the fives she did shorts to shorts, and the ones she did in thirds. She tucked the money into a thick wad of napkins from the floor, then put it in her carrying pouch.
The trucker stopped at a red light on the service road and gestured to Vern to get out. She slid out the rig and lifted Feral and Howling down with her. She slammed the door behind her, and ran onto the pavement, tripping lightly over the curb. The trucker had already driven off by the time she remembered he was probably owed a thank-you.
“You all right, children?” she asked, setting them down on a spot of brown grass.