Girl, Stolen

while, she wanted to slug him. He was forty at least, so he had had a life. He had had his chance. Cheyenne hadn’t even really gotten started. Her mom had let her drive once in a cemetery near their house, but now she would never get to for real. And her mom was buried in that same cemetery. Cheyenne had never even been to her grave.

At first when she was at the school, Cheyenne had felt like an alien who had just landed on the planet. She had had to relearn things that she had known how to do for so long that she didn’t remember not knowing them. How to feed herself. How to dress herself. How to walk without bumping into things.

One of the first things she learned was how to use a cane. Surprisingly light, the cane had a rubber handle like a golf club and a plastic tip. The cane could be folded up into a neat little bundle of sticks. Cheyenne resolved to keep it folded up and hidden away as much as possible. When the instructors told her it glowed in the dark, she imagined how it would give her away at night, the one time she might have a slight advantage over sighted people.

Still, while she was at the school, surrounded by other blind people, she decided to learn how to use it. Danielle had told Cheyenne a Bible verse, “For we walk by faith, not by sight.” Using a cane was like that. Each step was like stepping into nothing until she felt solid ground under her feet again.

It made a tacka-tacka sound. “Touch, don’t tap,” the instructors said. They taught her how to sweep it from side to side like a metal detector, touching the spot where the next foot would land. When she stepped forward to the left, she tapped on the right. If there was a hole, or something in her way, the cane would find it first. Going down stairs, she held her cane directly in front of her and learned to trust that it would tap when she reached the bottom. Through the feedback she got from the cane, Cheyenne learned to feel grates, ups, downs, carpeting, tile, wood, gravel, curbs, grass, and swishing revolving doors.

And she learned that it wasn’t just that the cane could tell her what was directly in her path. If she listened closely, she could tell whether the sound it made was bouncing off a brick wall or echoing in an open doorway or rebounding off an awning overhead. Even without the cane, she could sometimes tell if there was something ahead of her, like a tree or a telephone pole. As a blind person, Cheyenne had to interpret every shred of information she could get from her other senses. Everyone thought the blind had special abilities, but it was really that they had just learned to pay attention. That they had to pay attention.

Now as she lay on Griffin’s bed, Cheyenne remembered the first time the instructors had had her venture out on her own. She had walked down a city street, listening to other people’s footsteps around her, fearful she might hit one of them with her cane. (That was before she realized that a cane was good for crowd control — once they saw it, people usually gave her a wide berth.) She wondered if they were staring. At one point, she thought she heard someone whispering, but she told herself she was imagining it. After a couple of blocks, her breath finally began to come easier.

“Are you blind?” someone asked, startling her. The voice belonged to a young boy.

Cheyenne turned, not sure she was looking in the right direction. She took a deep breath and let it out. “Yes.”

“You must be really bad!” Then she heard the sound of his footsteps running away.

At the end of each day — she was there for three months, coming home only on weekends — Cheyenne had fallen into bed and slept so hard she didn’t even dream. In some ways she was glad. In other ways she wished desperately to spend time with her mother again, even if it was only in a dream. The few times she did dream about her mother, Cheyenne was always searching through a huge crowd, only to finally catch just a glimpse as her mom left a room.

When the yelling began outside Griffin’s door, Cheyenne was so deeply asleep she didn’t hear it.

YOU WANT PROOF, I’LL GIVE YOU PROOF

Griffin hurried back into the living room. “What’s wrong?” He hadn’t seen his dad this angry for a long, long time. Back then, his mom had been around to try to jolly Roy out of it. Not that she usually succeeded.

For once, TJ and Jimbo were quiet, watching Roy with a look they normally reserved for Duke.

“Nothing,” his dad snarled. He had taken the bottle of Maker’s Mark out of the kitchen cupboard. He took a swallow of the whiskey and then looked at the two men who worked for him. “How come you’re still hanging around? How come you’re not at home?”

Jimbo knew enough to keep quiet, but not TJ. He said, “Because we wanted to hear what her folks said. How long till we get the money? How much are we going to get?”

“Who said anything about ‘we’?” Roy roared. “It’s my stupid kid who brought her back to my house. I’m the one who’ll take the fall if this thing goes south. When this thing goes south. You guys can turn state’s witness and come out of this smelling sweeter than a rose.”

“But—” TJ really didn’t know when to shut up.

“But nothing. Go home. Now.” Roy took another slug, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”

“Can we just see her?” TJ asked.

“No,” Griffin said firmly. “She needs to rest.”

“Did you tucker her out?” TJ asked with a leer. “Come on, let TJ take a little peek. She’s one sweet thing.”

Griffin took two steps so that he stood between them and the hallway. “You heard Roy — go home.”

TJ looked at him in surprise. He didn’t back away, but he didn’t go forward, either.

Jimbo was the one who finally showed some sense. “Come on, Teej, let’s go. It sounds like nothing else is going to happen tonight.”

“Dad, what’s the matter?” Griffin asked after the door closed behind them. “They showed her parents on TV” — he decided to leave out the part about just how nice the house was — “and they said no one had contacted them. Didn’t you call them?”

Roy looked away. “It took me a while to score a mobile phone that I could use. And then when I finally had it, I couldn’t find the piece of paper with the numbers on it.”

Griffin felt confused. “What are you talking about?”

His father leaned forward until their faces were only inches apart and carefully enunciated each word. “I … lost … it.” Griffin realized how bad Roy’s mood really was. “I lost the goddamn slip of paper. So I couldn’t call. I was trying to think of the best way to do this. So I was down at the Green Roof, making notes.” The Green Roof Inn was a dive of a bar about twenty miles away, where Roy sometimes went to shoot pool and drink Fosters until he got kicked out for fighting. They always let him back in the next time, though, because if they barred all their customers for that type of behavior, they wouldn’t have any left. “So, yeah, I watched those rich bastards on the TV above the bar. All” — he pitched his voice higher — “boo-hoo, my baby’s gone.” He switched back to his normal voice. “And then when I went out to the car to call them, I couldn’t find the paper. Maybe they’re just covering up. I mean, come on, it must be a drag, having to watch after this disabled girl all the time. Maybe they want to get rid of her and start fresh.”

“I think Cheyenne’s pretty independent,” Griffin said. He suddenly felt the need to defend her. “She’s got a seeing-eye dog and everything.” He paused, then said in a rush, “I’ve been thinking. Maybe we should just let her go. Without asking for money. And if the cops figured out who we were, which they probably wouldn’t, we could explain it was all a mistake.”

The blow to his belly came out of nowhere. The next thing Griffin knew, he was on the floor, huddled up. The air was stuck somewhere inside him. His mouth opened like a fish hauled onto the bottom of a boat, but nothing came in and nothing went out. Time seemed to slow down and he could see everything — a paper clip on the carpet, the scuffs on the tips of Roy’s work boots — with a kind of sparkling clarity. Was he going to die?

And then finally the air came rushing back in. It hurt just as bad as when it hadn’t been there at all.

“Like that’s such a bright idea.” Roy leaned over him, shouting. “Like they’re going to overlook what it is we do here?” With every word, spit freckled Griffin’s face. “This chick could be our ticket out. On New Year’s Eve, I want to be on a beach someplace warm, drinking mai tais. And now that could happen. But only if we play our cards