“Not until after my two brothers left home. I’m quite a bit younger than them and take after my mom. I think that’s why he’d pick on me. When he’d get home at night after drinking, if he was particularly plastered, he’d come looking for me first, even if I was already asleep, and beat me for no reason. Then, when mom would plead for him to stop, he’d go after her.”
“Your brothers never stepped in?”
“Nah, as far as I know, they didn’t know about it. Mom suffered in silence and I never let on.”
“Why didn’t she leave him?”
“Mom didn’t believe in divorce. She knew he wasn’t well and she’d vowed ‘in sickness or health’ on their wedding day.”
“That’s so sad. No one should have to put up with that. I’m really sorry, Rudy.” It took her by surprise she felt even the slightest paroxysm of sorrow for him. No matter how Rudy turned out, no child—no woman for that matter—deserved to be treated like that. “Abusive men should all be sent to a place like Alcatraz where they can’t escape. No guards, no women, no children. Then they could have the run of the place vent their rage on each other but bring no harm to the innocent.”
“That’s why I left Detroit.”
“When was that, after your mom died?”
“No, last year, she died six months later.”
“You left your mother alone with him?”
“Yeah,” he said, “I kind’a ran away, dropped out of school in my junior year. With her blessing, though.”
“Then, what, your father beat her to death?”
“No, nothing like that. They say her heart gave out and it’s probably true. Deep inside I think she just couldn’t take the abuse anymore and with me leaving, she gave up.”
“So, what, you’re seventeen now. I was seventeen when I left home.”
“Yeah, it’s been rough, and now it’s worse.”
“My parents always warned me about hanging with the wrong crowd,” she said.
“I guess I found mine.”
The conversation withered like a desert wild flower in a summer drought and she decided to use the lull to think about how she could use the information. It was clear Rudy felt powerless against the men in his life, yet he seemed drawn to strong-willed men. Why some people seek the very thing that damns them is in itself a mystery she knew she could never comprehend. For now though, if they had any hope of getting away from Tony, she needed Rudy to take control of their situation.
That wasn’t likely as Rudy ran from adversity. He escaped from an abusive father, left his battered mother, and just before Tony ran down the man on the bike he had admitted he wanted to run away from all this now. To try to gain Tony’s trust would prove pointless. Men like Tony only trusted themselves. And in Tony’s case, she feared, everyone else was expendable.
She expected Rudy to ask her something about her life but when he didn’t, after five silent minutes, she was about to speak again when Tony, with a loud snort, suddenly sat upright and then got out of the van.
“What’s he doing?” Natalie asked. From her position on the floor behind the driver’s seat she couldn’t see out the windshield.
“I don’t know. He just walked off towards the road.”
“Can you still see him?”
“No, he disappeared in the dark.”
“If I could untie your hands, do you think you could start this truck and get us out of here?”
“Do you think that’s a good idea? What if he comes back?”
“We both know he’ll kill us sooner or later. We have to try to get away and this is our chance.”
“I know you’re right but he scares the shit out of me, Nat.”
“That gun scares me and he’s proven he’s not afraid to use it. I know he shot the clerk and the newspaper story said he was a suspect in a murder in Reno. Did he do it?”
“Yeah, just walked up to the guy and blew him away.”
“And he’ll do the same to us, Rudy.” With her new assumptions she decided to appeal to what she had reasoned to be his life pattern. “This is your chance to run away. Can you get the truck started?”
“Maybe … I … think so, I’ve watched Tony several times but my hands are tied pretty tight.”
Natalie slid out from under Hank and got to her knees. They were still swollen from the scrapes she suffered while Tony stole the van last night and new grit from the cold steel floor ground into the wounds. She pushed aside the pain, and began to work on the knots. The cloth from the bedspread wasn’t as easy to work her fingers into as a rope would have been but she persisted and after a few minutes finally found an edge. She slipped a broken fingernail under it and began to ease the fabric free.
“Hurry,” Rudy said.
“I’m working as fast as I can. It’s beginning to come loose. You keep watching for Tony.”
As she continued, she asked, “Do you know what Tony’s plan is?”
“Yeah, we’re heading to Canada.”
“Canada? What’s in Canada?”
Tony had tied several overhand knots on top of each other and her fingers were tired and sore. She had broken more than one fingernail trying to slip them under the fabric.
“My uncle’s hunting cabin. He rarely uses it. Tony and Hank plan to hide out, but I know the woods around it real well. If we don’t get away now, we can look for a chance then, and hide out just about forever.”
I don’t want to hide out forever, I want my life back, she thought.
Then she had an idea, why it hadn’t come before, she could only excuse by mental fatigue. Rudy’s hands didn’t come together behind the seat. So Tony had looped the shreds of cloth around Rudy’s wrists and then tied it all together in one large knot. She found a section of the fabric between the knot and Rudy’s left hand. She grabbed it between the thumb and forefinger of each hand, she tried to rip it. At first it was stubborn but when she heard the first tear, she pulled harder until it came in two. Once she got it loose, she freed his left wrist.
“Quick, slide over and try to start this thing.”
Rudy changed seats and, after a moment, the engine roared.
Natalie knew they were almost free. All they had to do was drive back to the road and put some distance between them and Tony. On her knees, she peered out from behind the passenger seat. The headlights come to life.
Caught in the beam, Tony pointed the Colt at Rudy.
_____
©
Jearl Rugh 2012
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