Runaway

I left in the late morning, after my mom went to work. We’d had an argument before hand and she said things she could never take back. Including calling me a liar when I told her about her boyfriend.

I left my car behind because I knew she’d call the cops and report it stolen, she’d done it before. Then it would be easier to find me.

I walked across town with a backpack of notebooks and clothes. Signed my $52 paycheck from the bird feeder factory over to Hippie Cass and she gave me a ride down to the state line. Dropped off at Dakota’s house, I traded a pack of cigarettes for temporary use of a BMX bike that was too small for me. Riding to the edge of town, I knocked on Savannah’s door to talk with with her mom about a job at the truck stop. She was the kitchen manager of The Dinner Bell. She regarded me suspiciously and I was careful not to give away the fact that I was a minor that had just left home. But when she asked for a phone number and I couldn’t provide one, she couldn’t help me. Instead, recommending me to talk to Toby’s mother, who cleaned rooms at the tiny motel off the interstate. She might be able to help me find some work.

Toby’s parents were hoarders, which is more common than you might think in rural communities. To hang out at his place meant crawling through his bedroom window because the front door and living room were blocked with piles of stuff, mostly trash. They couldn’t help me find work but offered a place to stay. Before I could say yes or no, his mother excitedly cleared out the spare room for me to sleep in.

The room was packed floor to ceiling with stuff, so clearing it out meant just enough room to lie down on the floor with a pillow and a blanket, like a coffin of garbage. She had exerted a lot of effort and daylight ran out on me so I agreed to stay awhile until I had a solid plan. Unable to sleep that first night because I wondered if the walls of junk were going to collapse on me.

Their house didn’t have running water, so you could either use this old timey outhouse in the backyard or walk down the road and across the field to one of the many truck stops that lined the interstate. Toby told me there was also a bucket in the bathroom, but I never went in there to see exactly what he meant by that. Every day I’d walk across the field to the public restrooms of King’s Gas n’ Go. Wash my face, brush my teeth, and do my business. That’s also where I took all my microwaved roller-dog meals and spent most of my days making calls on the payphone, trying to find work or set up a different connection. After almost two weeks I got ahold of Johnny, who lived down the road 10 miles in the middle of a cornfield. At the end of summer you couldn’t even see his trailer from the road because the corn would be so high. Johnny hosted a lot of parties and did dealings with folks that made long treks across the country to pick up and drop off –god only knows what. I knew plenty of people that supplemented their income in shady ways like this; young and old, neighbors and family. It was none of my business so I’d look the other way and never bring it up. He told me to come stay at his place while he was on vacation, keep an eye on things and then he’d see about setting me up with a ride out East. I had been taking about Chicago so much, that seemed like where I was supposed to go. Like where I was meant to be.

I had planned to walk out to Johnny’s trailer, but Toby’s mom insisted on giving me a ride. She was sad to see me go while my friend, her son, seemed indifferent to my presence for 2 weeks. I hugged her before I got out of the car. She and her family had nothing and offered me so much, I was deeply touched and would never forget that kindness.

I will admit it was a relief to take a long hot shower at Johnny’s place. And sleep in a bed without tight bulging walls threatening to bury me. But I wasn’t alone, his trailer was a revolving door of locals looking for a place to party or score party favors. A few times someone would wander into Johnny’s bedroom where I slept, once trying to wake me up to drink with them and another trying to crawl under the blankets with me. This scared me just enough to develop a decade long habit of sleeping with a hammer under my pillow, on top of years and years spent sleeping fully clothed. You never know when you gotta run.

When Johnny returned after a week, his girlfriend Magnolia wasn’t with him. They had gone to Florida together and whatever happened on that trip resulted in them “taking a break”. I liked Maggie but she didn’t care for me. She didn’t care for any of Johnny’s female friends or customers and made it impossible to get a hold of him, at times. Johnny was good looking and winsome, his folks were well off in the bug-tussle community and everybody knew and liked him. If you didn’t know better, you could say he was flirting with everyone he talked to all the time. And now, he especially laid it on thick with me after returning from his trip and no Maggie in sight. That first night he came back, we stayed up late talking about Chicago. He treated me and a few hanger-ons to some fancy cannabis he brought back from the primordial swamps of Florida. There were mixed feelings and mixed drinks of rum and whatever flavor of truck stop soft drink they were fixated on in the moment. When the little welcome home party had left or passed out, I went to retrieve the hammer from Johnny’s bed. Intending to crash in his spare room on the floor with the plush carpet, now that he had returned. But once I had that hammer in my hand and turned around, he was standing in the doorway blocking my exit. For a split second I felt threatened and as if I should use the tool to escape–but this was Johnny! We locked eyes and he approached me, gently removing the hammer and placing it on the nightstand. “Let’s go to bed…” he said softly, pulling back the blankets as an invitation to get in. So I did, with all my clothes on. We spooned all night, and a few times he lightly kissed my neck. Attempting to breath life into this stiff wooden figure in his bed. It didn’t go any further than that and I was relieved. I wouldn’t have to mentally leave my body for an indeterminable amount of time. It’s so exhausting.

We slept late into the next day, getting up when the phone rang off the hook. Johnny’s cousin Cody was going to drive up from Kansas City and stop off for a quick visit before heading to Indiana. They talked for awhile and I went to shower, leaving a giant purple hair dye stain on his towels from all the cheap color fading from my pixie cut. When I joined Johnny in his living room again he told me Cody would meet us in the early evening at Kim’s apartment. Kim was a mutual friend with a troubled past. She had been in and out of rehab in high school for amphetamines and rotated through a rainbow of antidepressants and anxiety medication. I had spent many nights folded up on Kim’s loveseat after drinking shop lifted cough medicine and sharing all the ugly things in my heart. Absent from social gatherings for a while following the passing of her father, she seemed excited for all of us to come over to her apartment. She kept calling Johnny repeatedly, asking when we’d get there and when Cody was going to show up. Growing frustrated but never furrowing a brow or raising his voice, Johnny told her we’d be over in an hour or so.

I packed up my whole world of the last handful of weeks in a backpack and garbage bag and loaded them into Johnny’s Cavalier. He offered to buy me a meal and drove us out to The Dinner Bell for which I was grateful. I was down to my last $40, most of which was going to go in Cody’s gas tank if he agreed to take me along on his drive East. Johnny assured me he cousin wouldn’t say no, Cody had been awake for a few days and could use the company to keep him going across state lines until he could get his next fix. Sensing my nervousness, Johnny held my hand in that 10 minute long car drive to the truck stop diner. I didn’t know what this meant between us. From the previous night’s snuggling to his abundance of generosity, I was unsure of how to regard ol’ Johnny boy. He had a whole spindle of burned CDs in his car and he popped one marked up in sharpie into the stereo and Bjork’s “Human Behavior” played through the speakers for the duration of the drive. We pulled into the parking lot of Kim’s apartment complex and once again he grabbed my hand as we walked through the court yard.

Johnny let go of me when he knocked on the door and we waited for a short while with no response. He knocked again and we waited some more. This was unusual, given how excited she was to see us a few hours before. Long ago, Kim had entrusted Johnny with a spare key to her place. Utilizing this privilege, he cracked the door and called out to announce our arrival.

We found Kim standing in the kitchen. She was shifting from one foot to another, red in the face and her eyes were swollen like she had been crying. “Why didn’t you answer the door?” Johnny asked her, a little annoyed. Kim didn’t respond, her face just twisted up into a distressed knot. “What’s wrong?”

“…I did something stupid!” Kim yelped and began bawling.

“What did you do?!”

Kim wouldn’t answer the question and instead sobbed and repeating “sorry” over and over. Johnny pushed past her into the kitchen and found a bunch of pill bottles in the sink. All of her meds: Wellbutrin, Xanax, Seroquel, and a bottle of Ibuprofin. All of them emptied and glowing orange from the light streaming in the kitchen window. “Goddamnit Kim, again?!” Johnny yelled. It was the first time I’d ever heard him raise his voice. He dragged a garbage can in front of her and poured a glass of water from the faucet. Instinctively she began sticking her fingers down her throat, making herself choke and vomit. Kim would take a drink of water and then barf dissolving pills into the trash. Johnny called for an ambulance and the whole time I had just been standing in the door way watching. Kim’s pink face, swollen and wet, found mine from across the room. We stared at each other for a short eternity, pausing as she’d wretch up more pills and gulp for air.

“I’m sorry,” She said calmly to me.

The paramedics came and took her out of the apartment on a stretcher. She didn’t take her eyes off me as they wheeled her out. I will never know what happened to Kim in those few hours between making plans on the phone and arriving to find her in such a state. Johnny apologized and gave me her apartment key, asking me to wait for Cody and lock up as he went to the hospital with Kim. I stood at the front door of the apartment, watching him get in the ambulance. The back doors slammed shut and the lights flashed as it pulled out onto the highway and vanished down the road. Glancing at the key in my hand, I wondered how much longer until my ride out of here arrived.