24 Hours

Before Abby could remind him that she couldn’t eat Cap’n Crunch, the giant got to his feet and walked toward the kitchen. After three steps, he stopped and put his hand to his head as though he had forgotten something.

“Dumb, dumb, dumb,” he said.

He came back to Abby, bent down, and picked up the Nokia cell phone he’d left beside her. “Joey said, take this with me everywhere. Don’t leave it anywhere. He gave me a extra battery, too.”

Abby looked forlornly at the phone. She was thinking about what her mother had said about calling the police.

“I’ll be right back,” Huey promised. “You just wait.”

He walked into the kitchen, leaving Abby alone in the front room with his whittling knife and his shapeless chunk of wood. She could see his back as he opened a cabinet. Then he moved out of the doorway, and she couldn’t see him anymore. She heard a sucking sound. A refrigerator door.

She turned to the cabin window. It was pitch-black outside. She hated the dark, but her mother’s voice was playing in her head. Take the phone and hide… She wouldn’t have said that if she wanted Abby to stay with Huey. But if she went outside, what could she do? She didn’t know the way home, or even how far away home was. And without the phone, she couldn’t call anybody.

She heard a clink, then Huey humming something. She liked Huey. But he was a stranger, and her daddy had told her over and over how strangers could be bad, even when they seemed nice. She felt sorry for him, but whenever she looked up and saw him watching her, she felt something funny in her stomach. Like a big bubble pressing up against her heart. In a moment he would walk through the door with a bowl of cereal that could kill her. Abby closed her eyes and pictured her mother’s face. What would she say if she could talk to me now?

Run.

Abby stood up with her Barbie and took a tentative step toward the door. Looking back toward the kitchen, she saw Huey’s shadow moving on the floor. She walked very fast to the front door, picked up the small ice chest her mother had left, and slipped outside without a sound.

Joe Hickey took two steps toward Karen, a lopsided grin on his face. She kept her eyes on his and tried to keep the fear out of her voice as she spoke.

“Will you please wear a condom?”

“Sorry, babe. Not tonight.”

A shudder of revulsion ran through her. God only knew what diseases Hickey carried. He had been in prison, and the HIV infection rate behind bars was astronomical.

“Please,” she implored. “I don’t want to-”

“I ain’t worn a rubber since junior high, and I ain’t starting now.”

She fought down a wave of nausea. “I need to use the bathroom.”

“I’ll go with you.”

“For God’s sake. Give me that much privacy.”

“What’s in the bathroom? Another gun?”

“My diaphragm, okay? I don’t want to get pregnant.”

Hickey’s grin returned. “Well, now, I don’t know. You look like you got good genes. Maybe you and me should pro-create. Do the global gene pool a favor.”

She closed her eyes, praying he wasn’t serious. “May I please use the diaphragm?”

“What the hell.” He waved his hand. “Hey, maybe I should put it in for you.”

She struggled to keep her face impassive.

“Fine. Go do whatever. But when you come out of there, I don’t want to see those panties. It’s Lady Go-diva time.”

As she walked toward the bathroom, he picked up the Wild Turkey bottle and stretched out on the sleigh bed, his face glowing with anticipation.

Huey came out of the kitchen carrying a bowl of Cap’n Crunch as big as a colander in his left hand and his cell phone in his right. He looked down at the saddle blanket Abby had been sitting on and blinked in confusion. Then he peered around the room. After several seconds, a grin lighted his face.

“Are you playing hide-and-go-seek? Is that what you’re doing?”

He carried the cereal and the phone into the bathroom. Finding it empty, he checked the bedroom. He had to set the bowl on the mattress and lie prone to look under the old iron frame bed, groaning as he squeezed his oversized body between the side rail and the wall. There was nothing under the bed but what his mother used to call “slut wool.”

He got to his feet again, picked up the cereal bowl, went to the bedroom door, and stared at the empty saddle blanket again. Then he cocked his head and listened hard.

“Abby?”

His voice sounded lonelier than it had when she was in the room. The silence just swallowed it up.

“Abby?”

The screen door banged softly in the wind.

Huey looked to his right and saw the door hanging open. His face went slack. After a long sequence of thought, doubt, and realization, he dropped the bowl and the cell phone and charged onto the porch.