Part of the problem a sleepless streak in the middle of the night. He’d gotten up and used the upstairs bathroom. Entering, he’d turned on the bathroom light, shut the door. Halfway through emptying a stream into the toilet, he’d noticed a companion.
A Beeper, nudged into the corner of the shower stall to his right. The shower curtain dragged back, showed off most of the shower. Soap. Shampoos. The Beeper on the tub edge featured bone white hair, eye slits, body bent, a hunchback, balanced on a cane, the mouth tooth deprived. The lips sucked in, deep crevices, crannies, formed in vertical strips between the mouth and nose. He was nude. A sea star planted over his crotch.
Done pissing, Sipe inspected it. Picked it up. Turned it around. The old man striding from the ocean it looked, what looked like foam-capped waves along the back of the figurine. A lipless god. A dentureless sea deity. Sipe fought the impulse to set the figure back and pull the curtain, or to pick up the Beeper, smash it against the tub, or take it out onto the porch, pitch it, listen for the impact.
Back in the strange bed, he’d been wide-eyed in the dark, thinking about Roxanne, his sibling smiling somewhere, sensing Sipe’s discomfort, pleased she’d left so deep a scar.
Now - his jacket, his shirt, his holster, slung over his shoulder or squeezed tight in his hand. The burner phone shoved in his pocket ringing. He yanked the bedroom door open and ran down the dark hall and ran down the stairway.
Sipe cut the wheel to the right. The Honda’s tires bounced off asphalt, and skidded into a gravel lake. He glanced in the rearview mirror, saw the wounded fence, the flowers and elaborate landscaping behind the impact point, where Lori’s car had spun and hit yesterday.
Driving up Main Street towards the Auntie’s intersection, he hadn’t seen anything. No oncoming traffic. He’d turned off anyways. This alternate route just seemed stealthier. No cops at the Zippy Mart intersection either. From that intersection into Little Creek he’d driven the Honda fast as he could handle. Slowing down to 60 mph when he passed the ‘Entering Little Creek’ sign. The vacuum, the sudden absence of cops felt queer. Tiff had been trying to tell him something about that. He did mental projections. If Tiff got out to the track, and Millie and Connie were at the railcars, the cops weren’t assembled around the railcars, settled in for some sort of long-term negotiation.
He steered left, the first left, off Mountain Road onto Gompers Street, following the same route he’d taken when fleeing Millie. Now driving towards Millie.
Bug’s mother had been the only person awake and in view in the house when Sipe had run through the living room. The dog at her feet, snuffling, bubbling, cleaning its crotch, the woman resting in a chair. She said something to Sipe, but he was already out on the porch, the screen door screaming, the house door swinging shut behind his pulling it closed.
There. The car, the black Lexus, parked parallel to the gravel street, in front of one of the houses on Gompers Street. Two houses west of the intersection. Connie had parked and walked. Ran probably. Not wanting to draw attention. But doing that, leaving so alien and shining an object right there, likely drawing attention.
Sipe turned southbound onto Old Woods Road so fast he cut through the northbound lane. He cut back into the south, then slowed, the railcars coming up into view on his right. He remembered Tiffany driving Norm’s truck off the asphalt, onto the field, right at him. He took his foot off the gas, applied the brake, slowed down, and steered the car off the asphalt, onto the field. The front bumper lowered and lifted. The top of his head glanced off the cab ceiling.
The car suspension translated all the ground irregularities into the cab. Sipe slowed and stopped the car, killed the engine, took the keys out of the ignition, and grabbed his wad of clothes and shoulder holster off the front passenger seat and got out of the car.
He shut the driver side door. It was quiet. A trail of car disrupted dust trickling back down to earth. Everything bright. The sky scrubbed free of clouds. A dog was barking. He drew his shirt over his arms, buttoned hit and miss, scanned the world around him. Slid his arms through the shoulder holster, adjusted it, and slid the suit jacket on. The shirt hem stuck out over the top of his pants. Sweat pooled in his armpits, on the ribs where his arms touched the torso.
Tiffany shouted. He turned and looked. She was down south on Old Woods Road, just coming up from the hill, and then running for the bridge, running towards the railcars.
The couple walked out from behind the railcar closest to Sipe. Connie first, Millie behind him.
Sipe acting on instinct. His hand reaching under the suit jacket for a gun.
Connie had given Millie his suit jacket. She dangled it in her hand, the jacket dragging across the ground. Millie stopped. Connie sensed she stopped. Looked back at her. Put out his hand. She dropped her chin towards her chest and took his hand, let him walk her forward. About ten feet shy of Sipe Connie stopped. Millie stopped. She had cuts on her face. Her arms. The crimson yoga pants blotted with stain. Her face puffy, worn down, victim of not enough sleep.
“Connie,” said Sipe.
“Pretty day,” said Connie. He pointed, smiling. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you look so frumpy. You missed some buttons.”
“What’s the plan here?”
“I don’t know. That’s the plan.”
Both men looked southwards, Tiffany crying out as she stumbled off of the asphalt, regained her balance and kept down the decline and onto the scrub.
“Where’s the cops?”
“I don’t know,” said Connie. “They were gone when I drove out here. I mean, I parked where I parked, and started walking and the cop parked down there just took off, shot down the street with his lights going. Scared the shit out of me for a second. Thought he was coming for me or something.”
“You were just gonna drive right on through them?”
“I mean, yeah. I did. To get into town. They didn’t give a shit. Just waived me through,” said Connie. “To get out of here, to get us out of here, I was going to put her in the trunk.”
“How were you going to get her past the cop out here?”
Connie smiled. “Improvise.”
Millie showed nothing. No reaction. Too tired to comment on Connie’s never implemented plan.
“Hey. You guys.” Tiffany’s face flushed with her efforts. Once she joined up, standing in concert with the adults she exhaled mightily and bent over, palms spread just above her knees.
“Millie called me,” said Connie. “I don’t remember. 4? 4:30, something. She said if I didn’t want her she was going to turn herself in.”
“On a phone? On a cell?”
“Naw. Cabin. Had it’s own phone. It’s just up in the woods there.”
Tiffany made a noise. She got it. Millie using Hope’s hideout.
“How’d she get here?” asked Sipe.
“Crawled.” Connie pointed to the timberline. “It was still dark. She just got down and crawled from there to here. Took her an hour or so. Just like swimming, just on the ground though. Cop had no idea.” Pride in Connie’s voice.
Sipe looked at Millie. She looked at him. He had that gun. And her stun gun in his jacket pocket. Still, it felt like he would need more to stop her if she dropped the subdued routine and resumed her Godzilla impression.
“I thought for sure you were going to hear me, Sipe,” said Connie. “Getting up. Talking to Millie on the phone. I almost left the car and just hoofed it, right? But then, I did that, how do we get out of here? Hitchhike?”
“We’re supposed to go back. Seattle, Connie,” said Sipe. “We should be on the road.”
“I puked last night,” said Connie. “When I went off walking with that girl, Hope? We got up to the school and I just heaved. It was too much. Hitting that guy so many times to get him to go down on the floor. And I kept thinking about Faye, Fay
e Shmaye. Shooting her. I mean, I almost did. If she’d taken her hand out of her bag any differently then she did. Any faster or…I would’ve shot her. Maybe just at her, I don’t know. You guys had me take all that practice, but. It’s different. Shooting a target is different.”
“If you go, where are you going to go?”
“I don’t know.” Connie looked at Millie. “Where do you want to go, baby?”
“Wherever.”
“Yeah. Yeah. Wherever. I always wanted to go there, too.”
Sipe thought about the wallet. Tiffany didn’t have it. Connie didn’t. Zeke had it. All the cash.
“You got money?” asked Sipe.
“Enough,” said Connie. “You figure my dad will ever talk to me again?”
“I don’t know him very well, Connie.”
Connie laughed. For Tiffany and Millie’s benefit he said, “Sipe’s worked for him longer than I’ve been alive, and he doesn’t know him very well. That’s something. That’s really good. Probably right.”
A phone buzzed. Tiffany goggled, embarrassed, then looked at her phone. She looked past Sipe to the street. Henry stood in front of Mrs. Mason’s. Mr. Regular As Rain. Showing up for the work just a little later than yesterday.
“It’s just Henry,” said Tiffany. “Texting. He was wondering what was up.”
“If you’re going, go.” Sipe rubbed the back of his neck. Henry’s appearance some precursor to the entire town waking up. “People are going to start getting up, going to work. All of that. The cops will be back.”
“They’re in Dale,” said Tiffany. “That’s where they think Millicent is. Some guy went crazy over there. Said it was her doing it.”
“Where is that?” Sipe asked her.
“Like 15 miles away. You turn left at the Zippy Mart.”
Sipe told Connie, “Don’t go that way. The Zippy Mart. Go the other way out of town. Past Pleshette’s, the motel. Go that way.”
“Ok. No squirrel. Got it.” Connie put his hand around Millie’s wrist. “Ok. Ready?”
She nodded.
“You should put on the jacket,” said Connie. “Maybe it’ll do some good. We’ll get you some other duds later on.” Nodding, Millie put the jacket on.
“Bye,” said Tiffany.
Connie smiled at her. He smiled at Sipe. He walked past Sipe. Millie broke free of Connie’s grip and stepped back and faced Sipe.
Her eyes bounced back and forth like they followed a connect-the-dots forming the outline and the details of Sipe’s face. She put her hands on his shoulders and leaned down, her left hand raised off the shoulder to brace Sipe’s right cheek, holding it steady while her lips touched his, then locked on his lower lip and squeezed and sucked and then released.
By the time Sipe turned to watch, Connie and Millicent were running, up out of the field, up onto the roadside and picking up the pace, headed north towards town. Connie hailed Henry. On the other side of Old Woods Road, in front of Mrs. Mason’s, Henry raised the Lawn Buddy, answering in kind.