“What are you doing?” he asked.
She stood in the middle of the vacant road, waving at something. That’s when Rosser noticed that the vacant road wasn’t vacant anymore.
The next bus was coming.
Maxine ludicrously jumped up and down in the road, waving her hands. Each time she landed, her fat jiggled in ripples.
“Help! Help! Hurry!”
Rosser was totally off guard. “What-what are you doing?”
“Help! This man molested my l’il baby!”
“Help! Hurry! Child molesterer! Child molesterer!”
The bus was getting real close, and the driver would have a radio.
“Fer-GET it, ya prick. I’m gonna fuck you up!”
Rosser tried to calm down. If he ran away, it would appear to the driver and passengers—material witnesses—that Rosser was guilty. If he stayed and stood his ground to dispute the allegation, he’d be more credible than she, right?
Then he looked at the baby. Shots was sitting back up in the shelter, waving pudgy arms and flinging more excrement. But his little fat and thoroughly atrocious face told all. Cloudy white blobs were still ringing his mouth.
Rosser ran.
The area seemed so wide open but then he noticed a decline off the road. He trotted down. He dared jerk his gaze behind him and saw the bus had already stopped, the driver and several rather rough-looking passengers coming out the door as Maxine wailed, “He molested my baby, my poor li’l Shots, right here in the shelter. I tried to stop him but he said he’d kill me—”
“Jerked off right in my baby’s face, he did!”
“Look at that! Damn if she ain’t right,” a passenger exclaimed. “Poor kid’s face is covered with jizz—”
“I’m calling the police,” the driver yelled and went back in the bus.
“Ain’t gonna be no need fer no police,” another, bigger, passenger assured, “not if we find this sick fucker first—”
“There! There he is!” Maxine shouted. She pointed right to Rosser, who was in the decline but his head showing. “Get him! Make him pay fer the horrible crime he done to my baby!”
Several figures began to run after him. Rosser hightailed it faster than he ever had in his life.
Lower into the decline, the woods began. He thrashed through brambles, leapt over tree stumps, tore through the forest. Deeper, it occurred to him that he had no idea where he was going, only a general inclination of direction. It also occurred to him, quite quickly, that he was not in the greatest physical condition. His heart hammered, he grew winded, and his knees and ankles began to ache—
“Daggit, Jory. I’se think I see the monster, right down yonder past them trees!”
“Shore’s shit do, Judd! We’se’ll tune that sick bastard up
The tear through the woods seemed endless. As he progressed he felt more and more lost; he’d deliberately been zigzagging, hoping to lose them. Spider webs stretched across his face, bugs covered him, including masses of mosquitoes. At one point he slipped on something and fell flat on his face: a rotten woodchuck. At another point, when he thrashed through some vines, a yard-long green snake fell on him. Somehow, though, he managed to fling it off without shrieking. Within these woods, the humidity doubled, sucking sweat out of his skin.
Rosser kept running.
He stopped when it felt as though his heart would pop, leaned behind a tree. He wheezed in deep breaths that simply didn’t seem to suffice; for a few seconds he feared he might pass out from exhaustion. The most dreadful notion told him that he’d soon be able to hear his pursuers, gaining on him, strong, young men, men who weren’t winded at all but instead bent on vengeance.
Hugging the tree, he held his breath.
Listened.
Nothing.
His pursuers had branched off in the wrong direction. A few shouts in the distance verified the absolving observation: the shouts were getting further and further away, until they disappeared.
Finally, luck seemed to be on his side. Another thirty yards through the woods showed him an open field beyond the trees, and the modest valley in which Luntville had been built. When he squinted he could even see Mrs. Doberman’s rooming house!
It would be difficult, but he thought he could make it. He couldn’t stay in town, of course, not with crazy Maxine accusing him of child molestation, but with just a little more luck, he could get in the house, get into his room and retrieve his money, then slip out again and hike to the next town and catch a bus somewhere else.
It was the only plan he had and it didn’t sound too bad. Maxine had been the only one to see him, and he hadn’t told her his name, nor his address.
He was just about to exit the woods when sharp voices rose. He jumped to the ground behind a fallen log.
The voices blared with rage and urgency. Male voices.
“Kin ya believe the sick shit that people do?”
“Shee-it, brother. A baby, a little
The voices…were grimly familiar.
The Harkins boys.
“Maxine even said he butt-fucked the baby!”
Rosser nearly pissed in his jeans.
“Yeah, boys, he’s one sick piece of shit, but if he thinks
“Yeah, man!”
All Rosser could think after that was two things:
“Bet he went in the woods. Let’s go!”
“Naw, why would he do that? Bet he went up the main road, to hitch a ride.”
“Anybody know what the fucker looks like?”
“Naw, not his face ’er nothin’. Shouldn’t be hard ta spot though, ’cos Maxine said he was wearin’ a button- down white shirt.”
“Come on, yer right. Let’s head to the main road—”
