An old man with a long beard was living on the hill inside the freeway fence, which was sliced open, and he called to me, “Hey, what happened to your boyfriend?” when I went by.
“He’s not my boyfriend,” I called back.
Then I kept walking, because I had a bad idea that maybe this was the kind of guy that, if you’re going to tell him you’re single, you better keep walking.
A minute later I turned a corner and ran into those three guys. The Three Musketeers.
“Well, well,” the supposedly smart one said.
I had about three bites of sandwich left, and I wolfed it down without hardly chewing, because I was worried they would take it away from me or knock it out of my hand onto the dirty sidewalk. If they were going to kill me, at least I was going to eat my sandwich first.
“What?” I said. I was scared, but I was doing my best to make them think I wasn’t. I have no idea if it was working or not, but I tried.
“What happened to that baby?” the dumb guy said.
He had hair that was really red—or actually orange like a carrot, but people still call that red—and I’d never noticed that before. He always had it stuffed under a knit cap, but it was getting longer and shaggier, and it was sticking out and curling all around his face.
“I gave her back to the police,” I said. “What do you think?”
“Did you know we were looking for her?”
I don’t know which one said that, because I was purposely looking down at the sidewalk. I didn’t want to look at them because I didn’t want them to see that I was scared, but maybe looking down wasn’t good, either.
“No,” I said, real nice and casual. “How would I know that?”
I looked up, because I sort of had to, because if something was coming at me I needed to see it. I could see the freeway out of the corner of my eye, off to our left and up over our heads, and I could see the cars really well, which was good. If we could see them then all those drivers could see us, and it was still daylight—kind of late toward dusk, but light enough for the drivers to see us. That didn’t absolutely guarantee they wouldn’t do something terrible to me, but it was a step in the right direction. It helped me like my chances a little better.
The smart one was looking into my face, and his eyebrows were all pressed down, and he walked a few steps closer to me, which I didn’t like. But what was I supposed to do?
“How long did you have her?” he asked me, and I could smell his breath. It didn’t smell good.
“Like, maybe ten minutes,” I said. “The cops were out driving around looking for her and one of them saw us right away. It was like no time at all.”
“Are you stupid?” he asked me. Still too close.
“No, we’re the stupid ones,” his stupid friend said. “I told you it was a waste of time. Pounding up and down the streets and the police already had her back for hours. What a waste of good energy.”
“Speaking of waste,” the smart guy said right into my face, “why did you give her back? That was a gold mine right there. Why did you give her back if she was worth her weight in gold?”
“What choice did I have? The cops saw me with her.”
“You could’ve run away. You know how to run away from the cops, right? Your boyfriend sure knows how.”
“She was heavy,” I said. “You’re not the one who was lugging her around. You can’t run fast when you’re carrying a little kid like that. Besides. How was she a gold mine? The only ones who knew who her parents are were the police. And what was I supposed to do? Go up to them and say, ‘I’d like to ransom this little girl back to her mom, so please hook me up?’”
Then I decided I should’ve kept my mouth shut, because I wasn’t supposed to know it was a ransom thing with them, and I wasn’t supposed to know that it was just a mom, not a set of two parents.
I waited, but fortunately none of that seemed to stick with them, or to ring any alarm bells in their heads.
“You’re supposed to play it cool,” the smart guy said. “You bide your time. Two or three days later the parents go on the TV news with this impassioned plea to anyone who’s seen their kid. We would’ve been smart enough to bide our time. But you blew it for us.”
I remember thinking his idea was still pretty stupid, because none of us owned a TV, or probably knew where to go to watch one. But I didn’t say so, because he was still right in my face and I didn’t want to piss him off.
Then all of a sudden the quiet one opened his mouth. And I think I was right about him being a little dangerous, because I noticed that when he finally did say something, everybody listened.
“Look,” he said, “just leave her alone, okay? She didn’t know we were looking for the kid. How could she’ve known that? Our timing was just wrong.”
I waited to see how that would settle in with his two friends, and a minute later the guy with his face right up to mine moved it away, and they all cut around me and kept walking.
I started shaking, which I guess I’d been smart enough not to do when they were watching, and I ran all the way home.
Well, to that crate. Home was a really stupid thing to call it.
I was still shaking when I got there, and when I opened up the crate and climbed in
