Girl Gone Missing Page 11

  Cash pulled the pillow over her head, then threw it and the sheet off. She got up, pulled on her jeans from the night before, lit a cigarette.

  Jeezus Christ, what the hell was that? she asked herself, looking around the bedroom. She stood next to the window and looked out. The screen had been cut in half. She opened the window to a blast of frostbite air. She grabbed the window frame, leaned out and looked down. She lived on the second floor. The exterior wall was red brick. She stuck her hand out and felt the bricks. Between the bricks and mortar was barely room for her fingers. How the hell did he get up here? She slammed the window shut, shivering. If he scaled the wall, he was a damn monkey.

  “What the hell?” is what she said out loud.

  “Come and get it. Chow time.”

  Mo was standing at the stove tending bacon, while eyeing eggs that were being cooked over easy. On a chair next to his makeshift bed was a record player. The singer was saluting the nurses of Viet Nam. Mo saw Cash eyeing the record player. “Had it in my car. Thought you wouldn’t mind some early morning music. Chow’s on.” He handed her a plate with bacon and eggs. She noticed a short stack of already buttered toast on the table, which meant that at some time he had bought a toaster. Sure enough, there it was plugged in on the kitchen counter.

  He was wearing a pair of blue jeans. She looked over at his stash in the corner. The Army fatigues he had worn last night were folded on his bedroll, the punji stick nowhere in sight. “Guess it was a little crazy in here last night.” He sat down and speared his egg, dipping a piece of toast into the runny yolk and shoving it in his mouth, grinning at her.

  Cash sat across from him. “How’s your leg?” She searched his left hand, the one that had held the burning cigarette last night as he fell asleep.

  “Fine. Just a scratch.” He dipped more yolk. He caught her looking at his hand. The skin between his two fingers was nicotine stained. He laughed. “Ah, you don’t know that trick? If you’re tired, smoke your cigarette between these two fingers. If you doze off, your fingers automatically close around the cigarette. Won’t burn your house down.”

  Cash ate in silence. She got up and poured herself a cup of coffee and sat back down. She didn’t know how to address the situation of the night before, so she didn’t.

  “Jim came up, but he left right away.”

  “He’s not a bad shot.”

  “Not at all. We’ve won quite a few tournaments.”

  “We should head over to the Casbah later and shoot a few games. I’ll show you how to work on those cut shots.”

  Cash sipped her coffee, smoked another cigarette. She got up and went over to the chair where the record player was, the baritone still singing. She picked up the album cover from the floor. The Ballad of the Green Berets. Sgt. Barry Sadler singing.

  Mo wrang out the dishrag and then flicked it through the air. “Let’s go shoot some pool. Day’s a’ wasting… I’ll teach you some of my Minnesota Fats billiard skills.”

  “Lemme brush my hair.”

  Within minutes they were out the door and down the stairs. They walked the short distance to the Casbah without talking. It was ten in the morning.

  Mo spent the first half of the day schooling Cash on how to cut in any shot on the pool table. The Casbah didn’t serve any food so they snacked on peanuts and popcorn from behind the bar in the afternoon. Around six they went back to Cash’s place to get her Ranchero and drove over to Shari’s Kitchen in Moorhead for a patty melt. The food took the edge off their buzz before they returned to the Casbah for the rest of the evening. Cash, after drinking all day, even with the meal in between, felt definitely buzzed. Mo, on the other hand, functioned like a person drinking water.

  By eleven, Cash was using the edge of the pool table to navigate around and missing more shots than she was making. When she scratched on the eight ball, she said, “Fuck,” smacked her cue on the table, quickly unscrewed it and fumbled to put it back in its case.

  Mo laughed.

  “Can’t hang with the big guys, sis?”

  Cash shook her head and sunk into the booth. Jim slid in beside her and nuzzled her neck. Cash pushed him away, “Don’t. I feel sick.”

  “Want me to take you home?”

  “Maybe. Yeah.” She pushed him out of the booth and he pulled her to standing. He grabbed her cue case and put his arm around her waist. She leaned into him.

  Back at her apartment, she fell into the bed. Jim pulled off her shoes and socks, rolled her under the covers. “I’m gonna be sick.” She jumped off the bed and made it to the toilet before throwing up. Jim handed her a wet washrag.

  “Don’t look at me,” she said. “Get outta here.” She threw up again.

  She must have passed out briefly. She dry heaved a couple of times and wiped her face with the washrag. Finally, she thought it was safe enough to stand up. She leaned against the bathroom doorframe, put her forehead on the cool wood for just a second before making a beeline for the bedroom. The sheet almost stopped her. She waved her arm to move it out of her way and stumbled. Jim jumped up off a kitchen chair, grabbed her and took her back to the bed. Cash hadn’t realized he was still in her apartment. Before she passed through a fog of grey, she sensed more than saw him bring the wastebasket from the kitchen and place it by her bedside.

  The next morning she woke again to the smell of frying bacon, but this time it turned her stomach. She leaned over the bed and retched. Nothing more to throw up. She heard Mo laugh. Sgt. Barry Sadler sang about a badge of courage. She groaned and held her head between her hands.

  Mo called out, “Come and get it.”

  She rolled slowly off the bed. The floor was cool on her bare feet. She was still dressed in the clothes she had worn to the bar the day before. She tugged the T-shirt over her head a little at a time and put a clean one on in its place. She shuffled out to the kitchen. “Coffee, please.”

  Mo set a cup in front of her. And a plate of eggs and bacon. He had even made pancakes. “Nothing like a little protein to help a hangover. Eat.”

  Cash drank half her cup of coffee before attempting the eggs. And then she ate gingerly. Small bites. Swallow. Wait. See how the stomach reacted. The more she ate the better she felt. Except her head. She got up and went into the bathroom medicine cabinet and got two aspirin. She swallowed them down with the rest of her coffee. Mo refilled her cup. He was on his second breakfast, this time two pancakes instead of three. Cash looked at his wiry frame and wondered where he put the food. Barry Sadler quit singing. Mo got up and reset the needle. The Ballad of the Green Beret began again.

  “I talked to Shorty last night. We’re going to do an 8-ball tournament at the Casbah this afternoon. Two brackets. Double elimination. Winner takes all. Everyone will put in five bucks to start. Starts at one. Was afraid you weren’t gonna wake up in time.” He laughed.

  “I’m not gonna drink.”

  “It’s Sunday. All they’ll serve is 3.2.”

  “I need a bath.”

  “Go ahead. I am already shit-shined and polished.”

  Cash took a long hot bath. Washed her hair in the tub. Dressed in clean clothes. Rinsed out the wastebasket and dumped the water down the toilet. By the time she was done, Mo had the breakfast mess cleaned up. She hadn’t even realized her kitchen was a mess until Mo showed up. Everything he did was clean and orderly. Except the ripped screen in her bedroom. Neither had mentioned that little escapade again. Neither probably ever would.

  Mo won the tournament. He stuffed a wad of bills in his flak jacket pocket at the end of the games. Jim came in second. Cash third. There was some lighthearted ribbing about fixing the games, but all the guys paid up willingly. Cash drank pop most of the day. In the early evening she drank a glass of beer from the pitcher on the table. One beer was enough, she told herself. Mo had been drinking steadily all day long, his side bets on the games kept a pitcher of 3.2 on the table at all times There was never any indication the booze was getting to him. By closing time she had lost trac
k of the number of glasses of beer she had drunk, her one-glass promise quickly forgotten. But she didn’t feel drunk. Just buzzed. Easy. Comfortable.

  At closing time they said good night to Jim and walked on home, Mo whistling a childhood tune that Cash vaguely remembered. At the apartment, Mo got them each a beer from the fridge, put on Sadler again, and dealt a hand of solitaire.

  “I have school in the morning. I’m going to have to work all this week ’cause I took the weekend off and I’m taking next weekend off too.” Cash sat down across from him.

  “What you doing next weekend?”

  “Going to the Cities.”

  Mo whistled. “Gonna be a city girl? How you getting there?”

  “Driving the Ranchero.”

  “You’re driving?”

  “I know how to drive. Seems like I been driving all my life.”

  “What’s in the Cities?”

  “I might get some award for an essay I wrote for English. The professor says there’s an award ceremony at one of the colleges down there.”

  “Things are different in the city.”

  “I’m not doing anything, just going down and getting the award.”

  “Lots of people. Cars. First time I went to a city, I got seasick, like carsick. All the movement back and forth, up and down. Got me dizzy.”

  “Serious?”

  “Serious as a motherfucker.” He swooped up the cards, clearly having lost, and dealt himself another run. “When you grow up on this prairie where you can see into yesterday and tomorrow depending on which direction you look, all them buildings and cars in the city can make you damn sick. Worse than last night.” He laughed and put the eight of hearts on the nine of spades. “Maybe you’ll see some streetwalkers.”

  “Streetwalkers?”

  “You are a farm girl, aren’t you? Streetwalkers. Prostitutes. Maybe you’ll see your missing girls. They’ve been gone long enough they’ve probably been turned out by now.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “What they do is they take these girls, keep them locked up, drug them. Have sex with them. And then make them go out on the streets and sell themselves.”

  “Why don’t they just run away?” Cash took a long drag of her cigarette.

  “There’s a big bad world out there, sis.”

  “Come on, why don’t they just run away?”

  “They can’t. They’re scared. They’re drugged. Maybe beat. How did you get out of the foster homes? Did you run away?”

  Cash felt a touch of shame. “No. I didn’t know how to run. Where to run. All I know is the Valley. Everyone knows everyone. There was no escape.”

  Mo leaned his chair back on two legs, his right hand holding him steady from the table.

  “So how’d you get away? Trust me, I know foster homes aren’t no R&R.”

  “Wheaton. The sheriff. He helped me. Helps me.”

  “Same with girls sold into white slavery. There’s no escape. Unless someone goes in after them. Gets them out. But they move the girls around. If they’re from here, by now they’re in the Cities or Chicago. Maybe even New York.”

  “Serious?”

  “Serious.”

  “Well, Wheaton doesn’t know where the Tweed girl is. Doesn’t sound like the folks down in Milan have found their girl either. If the Cities are that big, how would you go about finding them?”

  “I don’t know. Never been to the Cities other than on a layover on the way to Ft. Bragg. Each city has a district, a part of town, where the pimps tend to run their girls. Guys can just ask around at any gas station and someone will head them in the right direction. Wouldn’t be so easy for you, a girl.”

  “Wheaton doesn’t think that’s what happened. He told me to just focus on my studies. He wants me to finish college. I gotta get to bed. School. Work. Bed. Probably won’t see much of each other this week.”

  Cash pushed back from the table. Grabbed her pack of Marlboros and went to her room. She pulled her clothes off and crawled under the covers. She debated in her mind whether to get up and get her nightly bedtime beer: she was still troubled by getting so sick the night before, not trusting her stomach, even though the beers at the bar hadn’t seemed to bother her. Rather than get back up, she smoked one last cigarette, rolled over and went to sleep to the soft slap slap of the cards being laid down for the solitaire game, Barry Sadler crooning away.

  Cash spent the rest of the week going to school and driving truck. Each morning she woke to a breakfast made by Mo. There wasn’t another punji stick escapade.

  Sharon, dressed in bell-bottom jeans and a thick over-sized mohair sweater, informed her on Monday morning that she was going to “just die” of embarrassment. She had gone to Professor Danielson’s office on the Friday before dressed in her sheerest hippie shirt. Instead of swooping her in his arms, he had talked her into babysitting his kids so he and his wife could go out for a drink and movie. Shame had forced her to hide out all weekend. “Sorry to have worried you and Chaské.”

  She apologized for missing the Homecoming game. Cash told her not to worry—she had forgotten all about it too. Had shot pool instead.

  That week, because she didn’t have to go to English, Cash spent more hours at the rec center to practice cutting balls into side pockets. Her judo improved. And on Wednesday, she found out she had successfully tested out of science. Another hour of pool was added to her school day. It was cheaper to shoot at the rec center on her student ID pass than to pay for a table and drink at the Casbah. By Thursday, Mo joined her at the rec hall.

  And on Thursday, Professor LeRoy called her as she was crossing campus. “You’re still coming down with me to the Cities to get that award, right? Big honor for you, for the school, I know you’re going to place, take one of the top three awards, would hate to disappoint folks around here, not every day the school has an award-winning writer—at the state level, mind you. Makes us all look good, you’re on your way to grad school, and you just a freshman, thought about what classes you are taking next? Don’t waste that talent.”

  Cash wasn’t used to folks who talked so much. Or so fast. She stood shifting her school books from one arm to the other, looking toward the rec center where she had been headed. “Yeah.”

  “Good, good, good, you still planning to drive? Be a lot cheaper for you if you just rode with me in the state car. It’s free, you don’t even have to pay for gas, the school gives us a credit card for things like this.”

  “No. I mean, I’m going to drive. I…” She couldn’t very well say, “I feel trapped if someone else is driving.” Or, “If I need to get away, I want my own way out.” She didn’t trust her words to make sense to most folks.

  “Well, suit yourself, just make sure you are here on Saturday morning to follow me down. It’s a city, way bigger than this friendly, ha, Scandinavian oasis on the prairie, would hate to lose you once we get down there, no way to find each other if you don’t know your way around.”

  Cash nodded and started to walk away.

  “Renee,” he hollered after her, “there are some other students going down, some science award thing, too, Danielson is riding down with two upperclassmen but if you change your mind and want to ride along instead of drive, there’ll still be room.

  Now Cash knew for sure she wasn’t riding along. And she knew for sure she wasn’t telling Sharon what her plans were for the weekend. She waved at LeRoy and moved on to the rec center.

  She had just racked up a game when Mo sauntered in. “Rack ’em and weep.” He went to pick out a house cue. “Straight eight or last pocket?”

  “You break. Straight eight. If you leave me a ball, I might have a chance.”

  They played for a good two hours, both of them in the zone. Mo instructed her on the cut shots. He bought a pitcher of cola from the help desk. The sugary drink was unpleasant to the two players who were used to the fizz of beer. They sipped the pop slowly, the drinks going flat in the glasses they poured.

 
“I’m gonna go to the Cities this weekend. Get that award. The professor stopped me on the way over here.”

  “Don’t get sold into white slavery.”

  “I’m not white. Not blonde enough.”

  They both laughed.

  Off-key, as always, Mo sang, dancing around the pool table, his cue as his dance partner. “Pretty blue eyes, please come out today…” He twirled. “… my heart skipped a beat.”

  “That sucked,” laughed Cash. “That really sucked.”

  “Hurt my feelings.”

  Mo bowed to his cue.

  “Do you really think that’s what happened?” asked Cash, leaning over the table, stretching, giving up and reaching under the table for the “idiot cue.” This was another skill she was learning in college—how to use the idiot cue.

  “Stranger things have happened,” Mo answered. He pointed his finger at the exact spot on the 5-ball she needed to hit to get the ball to drop. “Seems pretty far-fetched, but where else are they? They haven’t turned up, have they?”

  “Maybe they just ran away. It can be pretty boring around here. What’s a girl going to do? Get married and have a bunch of kids. If they just came to Fargo-Moorhead, someone would have seen them already.”

  “So they ran away to the Cities. Or Chicago. Maybe New York.”

  “Joined the Army.”

  “Yeah, joined the Army. Became nurses. Might be enough incentive for me to re-up.” He started dancing again with his cue.

  “Take your shot.” Cash pointed at the table with her cue. “Last game. Then I gotta get to class.”

  Later, as she was leaving her psych class, Mrs. Kills Horses was waiting at the door.

  “Congratulations. Professor LeRoy told me about the state award you’re up for. I knew you could get it,” she gushed.

  “Thank you.” Cash tried to brush past her. Yeah, right, you knew I could get it. But Mrs. Kills Horses grabbed hold of her arm. “You are going to the Cities, right?”

  Cash hated how Mrs. Kills Horses acted like she owned the Native students and she hated being touched. She twisted a little so her arm came loose. She nodded her head yes.