Sugar Castle, Chapter 5
The SUV was warm. It smelled like dog, which was a little reassuring. The man pulled into a driveway and reversed. Sophie looked over her shoulder at Gindy triumphantly. See, she meant to say, he knows where we live. Gindy looked for a seatbelt, but it was jammed in between the seats and she couldn’t get it out. The floor had a lot of junk on it, things that looked like car parts, a length of clothesline, two work gloves that didn’t match and a half squashed bottle of water.
“Sorry I’m not wearing a mask,” the man said. ‘But I didn’t expect to have driving company today. I’m going to pick up some dogs and you don’t need a mask for dogs, I guess.”
“What kind of dogs?” Sophie said.
“Pointers, you know what those are? They’re hunting dogs. Not purebred though. Part collie.”
Gindy watched the scenery of the road pass by, so well known to her, all of it sodden and wet and brown.
“What you got under that coat?” the man said.
“It’s my art project,” Sophie said. “I had to get it from school.”
“I saw you going over to the school when I was getting gas.” he said. “Isn’t it all locked up?”
“Not really,” Sophie said.
“It is though, that’s what I heard.” He raised a hand from the steering wheel as if he were going to take an oath. “It’s OK though. I’m good at keeping secrets.”
Sophie was silent for a minute,. Finally, she said, “I’d love to have a dog. “But we have cats, and they wouldn’t get on.”
“They do say that pointers are friendly sorts though. They might get along with cats.”
“Maybe if we told mom that,” Sophie half turned toward the back seat, “she’d let us have one.”
Gindy ignored her. The SUV slowed down at 56 and then took the turn.
“Say,” the man said, “what if you showed her a puppy. They’re pretty hard to resist. She might have to say yes then.”
“She might,” Sophie said.
Gindy rolled her eyes.
“There’s nothing like the power of a cute puppy, that’s what my grandma used to say. The place I’m going to is just a little ways up 56. We could go there and you could pick one out and take it home. If she don’t want it, it wouldn’t be so much trouble for you to take it back.”
“I don’t think so,” Gindy said.
He turned to look at her and grinned. “Big sis says no,” he said to Sophie. “What does little sis say? I think she says yes.”
“Really, no,” Gindy said. They were approaching the turnoff to their road, but the SUV didn’t slow down. “This is our road.” Her voice sounded squeaky and weak.
“The farm is just up a couple of miles. Only take a minute or five.” He looked at Gindy in the rearview mirror. “It’s the least I can do for an old friend’s kids. Every kid should have a dog. It’s like a law.”
Sophie turned around to look at Gindy. For the first time, she looked worried. Which, Gindy said to herself, she should have been all along.
“Please turn the car around,” Gindy said. “Our mother is expecting us.”
“Big sis wants to be on time. I can respect that. But little sis—“
“Stop calling her that.”
“You know,” he said to Sophie, “you shouldn’t let her boss you around.”
Sophie said nothing. She was still looking at Gindy. Her face was pale. I don’t know what to do, Gindy thought. She kicked her feet against the engine parts. What if she hit him in the head? Would the car go off the road? Although it would probably just make him mad if it wasn’t something heavy enough. She felt around with one hand on the floor. The work gloves were sticky or oily and she wiped her fingers on her jeans.
She looked out the front window. They had passed their road and were taking the hill right before New Dover, another cluster of houses and a church. After that was the state forest for ten miles or more. Her scrabbling fingers found the rope and she pulled it out of the tangle of junk. Sophie’s eyes widened when she saw it, and Gindy put her finger against her lips, mouthing shhh.
When the SUV slowed a little down to the 40 mph speed limit, she took the rope in both hands and leaned forward. “Where is this farm anyway,” she said, trying to make her voice strong. “I don’t remember a farm with dogs around here.”
“You don’t know all the farms, now do you?” They were at the crossroads just before the top of the hill. He wasn’t going to stop, most people didn’t, but he turned his head to check for cars coming around the curve.
When he turned away from her, Gindy lunged forward and wrapped the clothesline around his neck. As soon as she’d done it, she leaned back, pulling on both ends so that his head smashed against the headrest. She braced her feet braced against the back of his seat. He squawked and tried to pull the line away from his neck with one hand while the SUV wavered back and forth across the road.
“Pull over,” Gindy said. “Right now.”
The SUV had slowed down but it hadn’t stopped. She pulled harder on the rope. His hands were reaching back, trying to get at her, but the line was long enough so that he couldn’t. He stomped on the brakes, and Gindy thought that maybe he hoped she’d hit her head or let go, but she didn’t. The car stopped, half on the gravel edge. They were about fifty feet from the church at the top of the hill. Gindy hauled on the rope with all her might.
“You’re choking him,” Sophie sounded admiring.
“Get out of the car,” Gindy said. “Go on, get out.”
He had got his hand under the rope, trying to pull it over his head. “Goddamnit,” he said, “goddamnit,” his voice raspy and choked. He made reached out toward Sophie.
“Get out,” Gindy yelled at her.
Sophie opened the door and half fell out, pulling the sculpture out after her. Gindy wrapped the two ends of the rope around her arm to keep it taut and fumbled for the door handle with her other hand. She kept hold of the rope until she got out and then gave it one last hard pull. She slammed the door and pointed up the road, toward the church. “Go,” she said to Sophie. They ran toward it, Sophie’s stupid sculpture dragging in the wet grass.
“You stupid bitches,” he yelled after them. “I’m going to get the law on you. I know where you live, bitches.”
At the top of the hill, Gindy turned to look back. The SUV was still there. She couldn’t see him very well, but she could tell that he was looking toward them. The rope hung half out of the window, and as she watched, he threw the rest of it out.
“Can we go in the church?” Sophie asked.
Gindy shook her head. It hadn’t been a real church for a while. Someone had had an antique store in there for a while, but it shut down last year and the church was abandoned and locked up. “There’s a house on the other side of it.”
They ran across the church yard. Gindy’s knees felt weak, as if the bones had melted. “Come on,” she said to Sophie. The SUV was still sitting on the side of the road. When they got past a little stand of trees she couldn’t see it anymore, which made her nervous. She’d hear the door slam if he got out, she thought. There were no lights on in the house, but there was a car and a truck in the back by the pole barn.
“What if there’s no one home?” Sophie said.
Gindy didn’t answer, because she didn’t know.
They got up on the porch. Sophie’s breath was coming too fast, and she was afraid she’d be sick. She reached toward the doorbell.
“Wait,” Gindy said. She was breathing hard, too. “Just give me a minute.”
Sophie waited. She looked back toward the road. If there was no one home, maybe they could hide in the pole barn. She wondered if they had horses, the people who lived here. Or goats. Or maybe a big dog.
“OK,” Gindy said. She straightened her sweater and smoothed her hands over her hair. “Put the sculpture up against that wall so we don’t look so weird.” She pushed Sophie’s hair behind her ears. “Pull up your socks. How did you get mud on your jeans?”
Sophie rolled her eyes. They were running for their lives and Gindy was worried about how they looked. Typical.
“OK,” Gindy said again. She looked toward the road. “Go ahead and ring the bell.”
Sophie pushed the button and they heard a melodious series of notes inside the house. She went to push it again, but Gindy grabbed her hand. There were a series of indefinable noises on the other side of the door which meant that someone was coming. “I hope they’re nice,” Sophie said.
Gindy didn’t answer. Her face was pinched up, her eyes narrowed down to slits, but as the door opened, she smoothed out her face and put on her talking-to-grownups expression, what Sophie called her goody-good look. “Hi,” she said as soon as the door opened. “Is it OK if we come in?”
The woman who answered the door looked familiar to Sophie which meant that maybe she was the mother of someone they knew from school. She was wearing a dress over jeans, and the dress was covered with splotches of paint. She didn’t have a mask on. Of course, neither did they. “Are we neighbors?” she asked, smiling. “Is this a welcome visit?”
“Not exactly,” Gindy said. She looked back toward the road, and Sophie couldn’t help looking, too, even though she knew that they couldn’t see the SUV from here. Maybe you could from the second floor, she thought. She could ask to go the bathroom. Although maybe there was a bathroom on the first floor. If there was, she’d have to sneak up to the second floor.
“Well, come in,” the woman said. “Where do you live?”
“On Lander,” Sophie said. “It’s just down the road a little and then you turn right.”
The woman was looking closely at Gindy, and Sophie wondered what she was thinking. What if she was a friend of that guy? What if he had called her and said, keep those girls there until I can sneak in?
“You look a little freaked out,” the woman said. “Did something happen?”
Gindy and Sophie looked at each other. Sophie knew that Gindy was trying to decide what to tell the woman, or how much. Already what happened had started to seem unreal. What if he did go the police? What if they believed him? Would Gindy have to go to jail?
“You don’t have to tell me,” the woman said. “Why don’t you come back to the kitchen and I can get you something to drink. I think I have some cookies, too.”
Don’t take food from strangers, Sophie thought, although probably there was a rule first that you shouldn’t go into their house, which they’d already done. But Gindy was following the woman back and so she did, too.