Hitchhikers (Wolf Point #1)

-18-

It continues like this for weeks. I tell myself I will leave after lunch, after dinner, tomorrow, next week. But I like Bobby. I help him cook meals that aren't straight out of a box. We drive into town and I help him sell hot dogs. Sometimes I walk to the grocery store and buy ingredients for dinner while he's working. Sometimes I sell hot dogs while he sleeps in the truck. He sleeps a lot.

Some days, if I'm restless with nightmares and sleep too late, I only wake up when Bobby's truck rumbles to life. Usually he leaves a note, Didn't want to wake you. Make yourself at home. Or, See you for dinner, cook something good! On these days I clean the trailer, vacuuming and dusting and sweeping and scrubbing. One day I find a pair of hedge clippers and trim the weeds around the trailer.

I've got a flair for cooking. Maybe it's just Bobby being nice and the crap I've grown used to eating over the past three years, the bruised fruit and pizza crusts from the garbage, but what I make tastes good to me too. It's surprising, considering what I'm working with, but somehow I can tell by scent what needs to be added. In the kitchen the warm smell of good food cooking wraps around me like a blanket. I can almost hear my mother's voice, asking if I want to stir or crack the eggs or lick the spoon, singing along with the radio. I can almost feel her hand on my head, just resting there, like she could protect me this way, keep me safe.

We both knew that when my father got home it wouldn't be safe.

A few times, like today, the memories of my father and what he would do to ruin dinner made me think it was him coming through the door and not Bobby. I found myself gripping the knife I had used to cut up beef for a stir fry, backed into a corner.

"Easy there, Dan," Bobby said as he entered the trailer. He held out his hands. "It's just me."

I couldn't get my jaws apart to say anything, my teeth were clenched so tight. But I did put the knife down and look away, pretending to be busy washing the vegetables. My heart hammering in my chest.

Bobby has learned not to call me Dannyboy. He has learned to go to bed at night and not share the couch with me. He leaves me alone after these incidents and lets me get myself together. Except for that one time he found me curled up in a ball on the floor

(I don't even remember how I got there)

with Lila licking my face and hands. On that day, he stroked my hair until I stopped shaking so much, talking to me about his son, Little Bobby. I don't remember the first part of what he said, but once I was able to focus on his voice I listened real hard, about how he taught Little Bobby how to throw a baseball and how he went to all of Little Bobby's baseball games, how Little Bobby was going to play for the major leagues someday. When Bobby lost his job during the recession, and found out his wife was cheating on him, he funneled all of his energy into Little Bobby.

When he got to the part where his wife left him and took Little Bobby with her, that was when Bobby asked me how I was doing.

"I'm okay," I told him.

"I bet you are," he said, not sarcastic but matter-of-fact. He never mentioned it again. Never yelled at me for letting Lila hang out in the trailer with me, but considering that the place seems so much bigger now that it's clean, and I vacuum her fur up on a daily basis, there's not much reason to keep her out.

I cut the strips of beef in a slow, methodical rhythm, keeping my movements as steady as possible and my mind as blank as a new layer of snow. But it won't go away. Memories of my father keep punching through the blankness.

"Stop with the women's work, Dannyboy."

Flinching, feeling the tightness as he grabbed my collar and pulled me away from the counter.

"Come on, let's wrestle."

These were the good days, when we would wrestle.

"Gotta learn how to be the leader of the pack, Dannyboy. Come on, show me what you've got."

I was too afraid to give it all I had. What if I really hurt my father? How angry would he get then? So I held back, grappled with him until he laughed and pinned me to the ground, digging his elbow into my back and pressing my face to the floor, squeezing every molecule of oxygen out of my system, his grin hanging over me, waiting, just waiting, for me to think I was about to die.

black spots dancing in front of my eyes, behind the tears being squeezed out, losing sight of my mother in the kitchen, she's disappearing and she hasn't even turned around, I'm dying and she won't even turn around to see

It's a few moments before I realize Bobby is waiting just outside the kitchen area. I blink and look up at him.

"How's dinner coming along, kiddo?"

I clear my throat. "A few more minutes."

It's safe here with Bobby, I keep telling myself, smelling the sizzle of the steak and the weaker aromas of the pea pods and broccoli.