Prodigal Blues

There were easily one hundred more significant questions I could have asked next—everything from "What do you want?" to "Who the hell are you?"—but the one that came out of my mouth when confronted by this face, this gun, and this situation, was:  "Why don't I have my pants and underwear?"

I heard others laughing to the side of the room but I wasn't about to look away from False-Face and his gun.

"You wet yourself after Rebecca gave you the shot," he said.  "If I had been thinking, I would have told her to wait so that would not happen.  I apologize.  We took them off and washed them in the bathtub.  They should be dry enough in an hour or so."

"Thank you."

"You are welcome."  So formal and polite.

"How long have I been out?"

"A couple of hours."

The drapes were closed; I couldn't tell if it was still daylight.  "What time is it?"

"About two in the afternoon."  He picked up a bottle of pills from the table, looked at them, then slipped them into one of his pockets.  "In case you are wondering, no one knows you are missing yet.  The girl from the restaurant who tried to deliver you supper figured you were sleeping, which gave us enough time to get you out before the State Police arrived."

"They'll go to my room and find I'm not there."

He flinched at something, then shook his head.  "No, they will not.  You left a note at the desk for Edna saying that you caught a ride into Jefferson City to rent a car, and that you will be back as soon as you can—you realize the police want to speak with you and, after all, you left four boxes in her storage room.  Considering all the excitement and confusion about Denise, and so many witnesses in the restaurant wanting to tell their stories, it will be hours before anyone starts looking for you, and morning before it occurs to them that something is wrong."

I started to ask something else, and then it hit to me:  "How… how did you know about any of that?  Edna's name or the food being delivered to my room or the car rental or—?"

False-Face set the gun in his lap and reached down beside the chair to lift up something that looked like a hybrid of a large metal plate and opened umbrella.  "This," he said, and proceeded to explain about the parabolic dish, what it could do, and at what distances.

I waited until he was finished, then pointed at the dish and asked:  "So how much do you know about me?"

"We know your name, where you live, and that you came to Kansas to sign some release papers for your sister's share of an inheritance.  We know that your brother-in-law's name is Perry, and that he loaned you a piece-of-junk car from his lot.  We know that you did not tell anyone about our bus and our trailer.  We know that you are traveling alone and like to pretend you are an obscene phone caller when you talk to your wife—and that as far as Tanya knows right now, you are stuck at a motel until you can rent a car in the morning.  Which means we have about eighteen hours before any serious questions about you will be asked."

There might very well have been holes in his reasoning, but I sure as hell couldn't find them at the moment.

I took a deep, slow breath, swallowed, then licked my lips and said, "Please listen to me.  I'm a goddamn janitor, you hear me?  I'm not anybody important.  I don't know what you want or what you think I have, but I'm asking you to please, please not hurt or kill me.  I have no idea where we are right now, understand?  No idea.  You could just leave me here with my leg chained to the bed like this and be two states away before anyone finds me."  I looked at the bedside table and saw that he'd disco

He put down the dish and again picked up the gun.  "That is true, but you could describe the bus and trailer to them."

"Unless we paint the trailer," said the younger boy's voice from the other side of the room. "I think we have enough to do that."

False-Face shook his head.  "You have watched too many bad crime movies, Arnold.  Besides, you are all too tired.  You need to sleep."  He looked directly at me.  "I was hoping that I could convince you to help us."

I almost laughed—not out of any false, macho bravado, no, but at the sudden, surreal absurdity of it.  "Let me get this straight—you kidnapped me because you need a fucking standby painter?"

"Not exactly.  No one will be painting anything.  And please do not use profanity.  It is very discourteous."

"And I suppose these restraints you have me in are an expression of your humanitarian compassion?"

"Please do not raise your voice like that."

"What the hell do you expect?  I'm scared, in case you're not getting the idea."

"I will ask you again to please not curse."

Something about the way he spoke struck me as odd, but I couldn't put my finger on it.

"Look, I only swear when I'm nervous or angry," I said as evenly as I could.  "I'd feel a whole helluva lot less anxious if you didn't have that gun pointed at me."

He tilted his head slightly to one side as if considering something.  "Why have you not looked at anyone else in this room?  You know that we are not alone."

"Because if I don't look"—again, he flinched at something—"then I can't give the police any descriptions, can I?"

"But you have seen me."

"I've been looking at you for five minutes, pal, and I honestly don't think"—again, he flinched—"that I could describe one detail of your face if an FBI sketch artist walked in here right his second.  Nothing personal, but you're"—another flinch—"not exactly blessed with the most distinctive features, and—what the hell do you keep jumping at?"

He shook his head and set the gun aside.  "I do not think that you would understand."

"You 'do not think'?  What gives with all the formality?  Did you learn how to speak from reading Daymon Runyon books or—?"

And I figured it out.

Just like that.

Contractions.

False-Face wasn't using contractions in his speech; he'd flinched every time I'd employed them, as if they were invisible hands slapping his face, or something that he found repulsive or frightening.

He looked at me and gave a little grin.  "I see that you have figured out what it is about the way I talk which bothers you."  Something was wrong with his upper lip; it moved when he spoke, but not in synch with his words; it was shifting independent of his speech.

He noticed where I was staring and reached up to cover his mouth.  "Oh, no…"

"I told you that we needed to take everything off, did I not?" said Rebecca, and at last I turned to see how many other people were in the room.  I was expecting to see two—Rebecca and Arnold, the younger boy who'd checked the map and computer—but there were three; the third, a boy, was the farthest away, sitting in a wheelchair by the corner near the bathroom door.  His legs were missing from the knees down; the pants he wore had been rolled up and tied into knots near the stumps, which were seeping; the knotted pants legs were badly stained.  He moved his torso slowly back and forth in time with some song he was humming, his breathing labored and asthmatic—though it might have sounded worse because of the plastic Hallowe'en mask he wore:  Elmer Fudd, trying to figure out if it was duck season or wabbit season.  I tried to place the song he was humming.