pretty quiet this month. The last text before this round
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was two weeks earlier, when he asked Nate to bring him
clothing and some cash he had stashed in the crawl space.
I’ll meet you haffway. Enid cool?
Interesting. The town of Enid is halfway to Tulsa
if you go by the back roads instead of taking the toll-
way. And something tells me Little Dog doesn’t have
an EZ Pass.
Yeah man no worries. Wtf is going on?
Did that guy come back?
No.
Ok, tell you in Enid.
Hm. Nate knows more than he let on. I nudge his
shoulder. “Hey. What did Brodie tell you when you met
him in Enid?”
He grumbles into his pillow, and I’m highly irritated
that I had to come back to this stink-ass house, so I raise a hand high and bring it down hard on his ass with a
satisfying crack. “Wake up.”
Nate squeals and flips around, seeming to hover in
midair as he twists with a wordless cry.
“What did Brodie tell you in Enid?” I repeat. “I know
you saw him there, so don’t bother lying to me.”
“What the fuck, man? Who are you?”
“I’m a fancy lady, not a man, dude. And I’m not here
for fun and games this time. You’ll tell me what you know
right now or I’ll make your life a living hell, starting with 178
Problem Child
calling the sheriff to report all the drugs strewn around
this house. I’ll tell them you’ve been dealing, and I don’t think they have video games in jail, Nate.”
He’s awake enough to be scared now and scooting
back to press himself to the headboard while his hand
slides back and forth under the sheets. I hold up his phone.
“Are you looking for this?” When he doesn’t answer, I
raise my other hand to reveal the knife I brought along.
“Or are you looking for something more like this?”
“Eep,” he bleats out, and I snort-laugh at the sound.
“Just tell me what Brodie told you in Enid and I’ll leave.
No big deal.”
“In Enid?” he gasps. “Uh. He asked if that guy that
beat him up came back and I said no.”
“What else? And don’t lie or you could wake up
anytime and find me watching you in your sleep again.
I’m sneaky that way.”
“Jesus,” he whines. “I don’t know. He said Kayla had
fucked up. That’s all. He said, ‘Kayla fucked up and we
need to lay low.’”
“So he’s with her?”
“I think so.”
“And he was her pimp?”
Nate swallows with comic loudness. “Something like
that. I mean, it was weird.”
“Weird how?”
Nate presses a hand to the front of his sweats. “Can
I pee, man? I’m gonna piss myself.”
“I don’t care. You’ve probably got a gun stashed in the
toilet tank or something. Piss yourself if you’re going to.”
He shakes his head and swallows again. “Brodie used
to say he was her pimp. But he didn’t act like that around
her. But, like, I don’t even know if she even gave him 179
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any, you know? She slept in a separate room and smoked
all his weed.”
“But he claimed he was pimping her out.”
“Yeah.”
“They’re in Tulsa?”
“Yeah, but I don’t know where. I swear. He didn’t say
anything more than that.” He’s actually squeezing himself
hard now as if he’s trying to stop water coming out of a hose.
I aim my knife at his groin. “What else do you know?”
“Nothing! I swear! Brodie came by my place three
weeks ago, and his face was a mess. Lip split, black eye.
He told me he had to get the fuck outta town, and he
said I could stay here if I wanted but that dude might be
back. That’s all I know!”
“Did he hurt Kayla? Kidnap her? Sell her to someone?”
“I don’t know. He left town for a day around the same
time she disappeared. Maybe he took her somewhere,
or maybe he was lying and something bad happened. I
seriously have no idea!”
“Okay. What did he tell you about the guy who beat
him up?”
“Nothing!”
“Maybe a guy named Morris? Roy Morris?”
“I don’t know anything, I swear!”
“Ugh. Fine. I need to use your phone. If you stay
in the house and don’t cause trouble, I’ll leave it in the
mailbox at the bottom of the driveway.”
“The mailbox,” he repeats, nodding violently.
“You gonna be cool?”
“Yeah. I’m cool. Mailbox. That’s fine.”
“Don’t follow me.”
“I won’t. Swear to God.”
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I take his phone, and before I’ve even made it to the
double doors, I hear his feet hit the ground and pound
away toward the bathroom. Just in case he’s playing hero,
I slide through the doors and watch through the crack
near the hinges. If he comes barreling out with a gun,
I’ll just trip him and kick him in the head.
But Nate isn’t playing hero. I hear the wild flow of
urine hitting water and then his guttural sigh of relief,
so I bounce down the hallway and out of the house, and
I even close the front door politely behind me.
I do watch the house carefully as I get into my car, and
I glance constantly into the rearview mirror as I drive,
but the door stays still and unmoving.
Since he didn’t try anything and he was kind of funny,
I actually stop at the bottom of the driveway to send a
text to Little Dog from his phone so I can put it in the
mailbox as promised:
That lady came back! With a huge dude! They
just left!
I wait a few moments for the ellipses of response,
then send a WTF man in case he didn’t wake up with
the first text.
Finally, I see a dot dot dot and then Nate’s phone dings.
Fuck! Whatd you tell them?????
I hit the telephone icon and raise the phone to my
ear. “Hello, Mr. Little Dog,” I drawl when he answers.
“Don’t hang up.”
“Shit!” he yelps. “Who is this?”
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“I’m a relative of Kayla’s, and I have a law degree
and more than enough money to hunt you down and
send you to jail for the rest of your life for trafficking a minor child. Tell me where she is right now or I’ll have
this text traced and you’ll lose the one hiding place that
you’ve managed to dig out for your sorry ass.” I pause
for a beat and add a smile to my voice. “Nice to finally
meet you, Brodie.”
“I don’t know where she is!” he screeches.
“Don’t be a lying little bitch, Brodie. I know you’re
in Tulsa; I just need your address. And if you don’t give
me your address, I’ll let that big bald guy know what
I’ve discovered and he can help me find you. Is that what
you want?”
“Fuck off!” he tries, but fear makes his defiance
squeaky.
“I’ve got Roy Morris’s number right here, Brodie.
One phone call and he’ll know you’re in Tulsa.”
“I want a thousand dollars,” he blurts into the phone.
“I’m not giving you a thousand dollars, Brodie.”
“Five hundred. Five hundred and I’ll send you the
address. You can have her. This stupid bitch has been
nothing but trouble. Fuck this.”
“I’ll give you two hundred dollars when I get there
after I see that she’s fine.”
“Deal.”
“I’ll be there by tonight. Don’t move or the deal is off.”
I write down the address he gives me and warn him
that he’d better damn well answer any texts from me in
the future. Then I very kindly get out of my car and slide
Nate’s phone into a mailbox that’s shaped like a red barn.
It’s not until I’m turning away from the miniature
barn that I notice the black SUV driving slowly down
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Problem Child
the road toward me. As it approaches, I lock eyes with
the big bald white guy behind the wheel.
Very interesting. It’s scary mystery man himself.
Well, Nate definitely isn’t getting his phone back now.
I snatch it from the mailbox as the SUV passes, then get
back into my car and watch the truck turn around. He’s
welcome to follow me if that’s what gets him off. I’m a
grown-ass woman with a law degree and a camera, not
some scrawny two-bit hustler scared to go to the cops.
I’ve got only one more stop before I go pack up my
hotel room and head for brighter horizons. There should
be several luxury hotels to choose from in Tulsa.
The SUV follows me onto the highway, not on my tail,
but not bothering to hang back. There are two possibili-
ties here. Either Little Dog came up with some scheme
that got him in trouble with Roy Morris or Kayla did.
I’m really, really hoping it’s the latter, because that’s what Baby Jane would have done at Kayla’s age. But Brodie
seems to be the one calling the shots and taking the beat-
ings, so it’s hard to tell.
Considering what the soccer coach blurted out un-
der pressure, I assume that Kayla or Brodie made some
sort of extortion attempt after he paid her for underage
sex. And I assume they did the same to Mr. Morris, not
realizing he actually had deeper pockets and dangerous
connections behind his failing business.
Big Baldy here has got to be working on that side
of things. He’s approaching all of this like a hired goon,
not a panicked middle-aged man. He tracked down my
mom, used her, and then tracked down Little Dog and
put the fear of God in him.
Once my car approaches the familiar environs of my
old hometown, I pull into the one ancient gas station and
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sit there to see if Baldy wants to chat. He pulls in and
parks but doesn’t engage.
Just to be sure, I do an image search for Roy Morris
to confirm he’s not the guy behind the wheel, but no.
Morris is a fifty-something guy with a full head of salt-
and-pepper hair and disturbingly pink lips in his round
face. He’s smiling in the PR picture I’m looking at, but
his smile is snarky and self-satisfied instead of friendly.
Shutting off the car, I get out, figuring this is as good
a place to handle this as any. There’s a pretty steady stream of people stopping in for gas and coffee on their way to
work, so he can’t shoot me here.
The guy in the SUV is momentarily distracted by his
phone and doesn’t notice me approaching. He actually
jumps when I knock on his window, my phone raised to
snap a picture of his face. I descend into a fit of laughter as his heavy brow falls into a frown like an iron curtain
dropping. He rolls down his window, and I find out im-
mediately that I’ve underestimated him when his arm
shoots out, hand grabbing for my phone.
“Hey!” I jump two feet away so I’m out of his reach,
then hold up a hand when he starts to open his door.
“Don’t do it. I’ve emailed your picture and your li-
cense plate to my attorney’s office, so if you’re planning
to murder me, you might wish to reconsider.”
“You’re fucking crazy, lady.”
“Crazy or just not an easy mark? They’re not the
same thing. And now you’ve made an attempt to steal
my phone.”
“Good luck with that claim,” he says, but he shuts
his car door.
I’m back in control, but I hate that I underestimated
him. “Why are you following me?” I snap.
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“I’m stopped for gas, lady.”
I take another picture. “I guess I really am crazy, then!
So are you working for the Morrises?”
That finally makes him blink. He starts to roll up his
window.
I watch his stubbled cheeks turn red as the glass seals him off. When he starts his truck and pulls out, I wave cheerily to see him off. Still, he doesn’t look harmless. His collar is unbuttoned, mere fabric and thread unable to constrain
the muscles of his thick neck. His hands look ridiculously
oversized around the steering wheel, the knuckles ravaged
with scars. And then there was that gun my mother spotted.
I guess she’s good for something after all.
After he pulls out with a squeal of tires, there’s really
nothing else for me to do but grab my stuff and get the
hell out of this county, so I fill up the gas tank and buckle my seat belt. But just as I’m starting my car, I see a familiar face. It’s not often I’m surprised, but you could knock me
over with a feather with this doozy. It’s my old English
teacher, Mr. Hollingsway! What an unexpected delight!
He’s walking back to his car with a big coffee in his
hand, and he looks just as miserable and hangdog as he did
the last time I saw him. Older, though, and thinner and
grayer. He was never an enthusiastic teacher, but I liked
him fine because he was fairly hands-off in the classroom.
Hands-off. I snort at my little joke.
Mr. Hollingsway gave me an A my senior year be-
cause I had sex with him. He was all regretful tears and
self-hatred afterward, but the truth is that we both got
what we wanted. I wonder if he’s still married to Mrs.
Hollingsway, my favorite math teacher. She was way too
good for him, so I hope they’re divorced by now.
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When he gets into his beat-up gray Hyundai, I follow
him to the high school. It’s probably safer for me to stay
off the highway for a few minutes anyway. Give Baldy a
chance to get confused.
High school is an admitted exaggeration when it comes to my former educational institution. The town is just too
small at this point to support individual schools, because
most people don’t have families of a dozen kids anymore.
One wing is an elementary school and the other houses
grades six to twelve.
Every year that I went here, there was talk of ship-
ping the older kids out to the big secondary schools in the county seat, but, frankly, they didn’t want us. Long bus
routes and low test scores aren’t on any school’s wish list.
That’s why they left the prison town’s kids to us, but there were only about twenty-five of them when I went here.
I park in the teacher’s lot and hop out as Mr. Hollingsway
slumps toward the school. He was a plain man before.
Slim. Quiet. Slightly miserable with his existence. But
now he’s reached middle age, maybe forty-five, and he’s
slowly being molded into the shape of a man who knows
that this is it. This is his whole world. He’ll never teach at a well-funded school. He’ll never go back and get that
PhD. He’ll never even have a group of smart liberal friends he can kick back with on Saturdays to share a joint and
have a great debate with.
Mr. Hollingsway, welcome to the rest of your life.
Twenty feet behind, I follow him through a side door
of the school and find that everything inside looks the
same as it ever did. Drab gray and green and dirty white.
The colors of an institution. The perfect way to torture
restless minds and remind you that no one wants to be
here. Not you, not the teachers, not the administration.
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Problem Child
I pass metal-framed doorways and realize I’ve been
in almost every one of these classrooms at some point or
another. Had lockers in almost every hall in both of the
wings. But I feel nothing as I glide along.
I came to this place and sat in these rooms because
that was the ticket to escape, and I was smart enough to
use it. I could have earned that A in Hollingsway’s class
easily, but I resented the boredom and the busy work, so
I chose a shortcut. Plenty of students would. Even normal
teenagers are known for bad decisions and impulsivity and
spitting on the rules of the Man. The onus, of course, is
on the adult. The teacher. The golden holder of authority.
Funny thing, that. There’s a reason they had to pass
strict laws to punish the transgressions of teachers and
clergy.
Mr. Hollingsway disappears into his classroom. Same
classroom. Same view out the window of some pipes on
the exterior wall perpendicular to his. He collapses into
his chair and begins to arrange his papers.
I wonder if I was a bright spot. A moment of terrible