I thought the dog was gone, but she was only hiding. Popping out from some bushes behind a house further down the road, she rejoins me like nothing happened.
"You think you're so smart, huh? Hiding from the cops?"
Her tongue lolls out of her mouth as she smiles up at me.
"Nice of you to let me get the brunt of it," I complain, but when she nudges my hand I absently scratch her ear.
A faded white sign with an upward pointing arrow indicates the way to the state highway. The sun is near to setting, though I'll be awake for a while yet. Might as well get closer to the highway, then tomorrow I might be able to hitch a ride.
"You won't be able to come if I can get a ride," I say to the animal beside me. "You might as well cut out now."
Her ears prick forward while I talk, like she understands, but she doesn't understand, because she keeps on walking beside me.
* * *
It's long past sunset before I find a good place to sleep: in some lilac bushes near a small cottage-y house. The yard is neat and clean, which means there's no little kids to scatter their toys around, or indifferent teenagers half-mowing the lawn and parking their cars on the grass. There's one small red car in the driveway with a handicapped license plate. From the road I can hear the television blaring, the light shining through the closed curtains.
The bushes are taller than I am, and I crawl inside
we're giggling and pretending to be bears or wolves crawling into a cave
The smell is so overpowering it immediately gives me a headache. The space underneath isn't quite as big as I remember. When the stray crawls in after me we're on top of each other, but at least I feel warmer in this small hidden space
it's our secret place
no one can see us
no one can smell us
I curl up with my fist under my chin, roots for a pillow, a furry blanket warming me.
"Let's pretend I'm the bride and you're the husband."
"What do husbands and wives do?"
"Kiss each other."
Accompanied by these bittersweet memories, I drift into sleep.
* * *
When I wake into the still darkness, something is different.
Beneath my hand I feel smooth hair instead of fur. Smell woods and heat and earth instead of wet dog. I crack open my eyelids and peer around.
The girl looks back at me with wide brown eyes, her golden brown hair falling into her face. She looks like my cousin Kayla, not like what Kayla looked like when I took off three years ago, but what Kayla might look like now, if the round softness of Kayla's face became sharper, her eyes further apart, that untamable hair of hers grown long and flowing.
"Daniel," she says. Her voice is low and musical.
"Kayla?"
"You have to come back, Daniel. We need you."
"I can't go back. I don't want to get arrested."
"It will all be okay. We need you. You can't run forever."
You have to come back.
With a start I wake up.
Sunlight is burning through the lilacs in a purple haze. Though I'm sweating, the stray is right there, where Kayla was lying just moments before.
My hand remembers her warm skin.
Did I just dream about my cousin being naked?
* * *
All day long the dream lingers in my thoughts. "There's no way I can go back," I tell the dog. "No reason, really."
(although I would like to see my mother and Kayla again)
"The cops would be waiting for me. They would arrest me for sure."
(isn't that what I want?)
"What I want isn't important." I'm a monster. A killer. Things would be better if I just disappeared.
I have disappeared. No one knows who I am. I wander like a ghost.
(that's not good enough)
I'm a danger to everyone. Maybe I want food and someplace warm, but it doesn't matter. I need to be locked up.
"I'm going south," I tell the dog. "I'll find some deserted town in Texas and live like a hermit. I'll grow a garden and trap my own food. Lots of people have done it, become self-sufficient. I won't need to go near other people then."
In the hot mid-afternoon sun I stop to rest in the shade of a cottonwood tree. As my eyes begin to droop, I'm still talking. "You smell like those lilac bushes still."
I rest my face in her fur.
"It could be good, living alone. Maybe I'll even stop blacking out."
It would be warm all the time in Texas.
"Just you and me. Would you like that, Lila?"
She pants in my ear, hot doggy breath.
"Yeah, Lila's a good name for you. What do you think?"
She could sleep at the foot of my bed.
"Just you and me."
YOU ARE READING
Hitchhikers (Wolf Point #1)
WerewolfEvery time he blacks out, someone dies. Daniel Connors has been on the run since that terrible night three years ago, when he killed three adult men... including his own father. When a dog begins following him on the road, Daniel begins to feel alm...
