Page 41 of Small Town Hunter

“Back,” he grunts.

And I don’t know what possesses me to say, “Do you want me to rub it?”

In choir, we massaged each other’s backs before rehearsal. It’s an innocent suggestion. Maybe, a little bit, I want to know what Crash feels like. What would it be like to touch those hard firm muscles.

He looks at me like I just offered him a cup of dirty dishwater, then abruptly goes into the bathroom and slams the door.

Embarrassed, I stretch out on the bed.Unsolved Mysteriesruns in the background but I’m tuned to every sound coming from the bathroom.

Shhhhhhhhhhhh–he’s turned on the shower. He’ll be in there a while.

Naked.

Stop. Stop.

I force my attention back to the TV, but the distraction isn’t much better. My mind wanders back to dark places. Dark places like the basement they kept this poor woman on the TV in for twenty years.

John Wallace fathered three children with Mary Lou, all born in the basement,the narrator says in his creepy voice, like he’s just so happy about it.

Ugh.

I shut off the program, my skin crawling. The world is a scary place. The devil is lurking everywhere. You can’t trust anybody.

Can you trust Crash?

Maybe he’s just waiting for the right time to drag me into the desert and murder me with a staple gun.

My eye lands on his leather bag.

Crash has a gun. I know that — and I know it doesn’t leave his sight. In fact, he just brought it into the bathroom with him. I guess he doesn’t need a staple gun to kill me. He’s got a regular gun-gun.

Suddenly I’m climbing off the bed. If I’m going to trust this man to take me to California I need to know more, for my own protection.

It’s an ordinary-looking weekender bag made of leather. I spy a maker’s stamp with a cardinal and the initials “CW” entwined with its feet.

Cardinals, again…

I kneel down and unzip the bag slowly, listening out for sounds of the shower running. If he catches me digging through his things he’ll fry me up, but I can move fast when I need to.

I dig through the insides. There’s a zippered pouch containing a toothbrush, toothpaste, shaving cream and an electric razor. A bottle of prescription antibiotics made out to CRASH JAMES WALKER, expired.

Oh, and handcuffs.

I swallow hard, remembering he put cuffs on the Reverend back in Tippalonga. What kind of man walks around with two pairs of handcuffs in his bag?

What if he uses them on me?

I dig deeper. Underwear– more gray T shirts– an extra pair of jeans.

Wow. That wassoworth it.

My fingers touch something hard and flat.Score.It’s the book he got from Walmart that he doing the most to hide.

I know it’s wrong to go through people’s things, but I’m reading it.

I get a hold of one corner, but when I try pulling the book out of the bag a shower of tiny little beads flies out and explodes all over the floor.

What the hell— is that…birdseed?

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