A Hidden Place

Next to her, Travis climbed very slowly to his feet. Nancy’s stomach was leaden with fear for him.

Nevertheless she said, “No, thank you, Greg, I would not like a ride. You shouldn’t have followed me.

Greg came closer, his hips thrust forward, his hands loose at his sides.

“Just curious,” he said. “Just wanted to know what Miss Too-Good-For-Me is up to. Miss Royal Twat.” He spat at Travis’s feet. “Rolling in the dirt with a shit-heel farmboy. Well, well.”

She stood up. A moment ago, she thought dazedly, everything had been so nice… “Go away, Greg.”

“No,” he said. It was a hostile, insinuating whisper: “I want you to ride with me.”

Travis started forward. But Greg was quick, Greg was terribly quick, and she saw his fist fly out like a piston and heard it co

Travis reeled back. She looked up at him and saw a ring of blood around his mouth. He was sagging against the timbers of the shack. His eyes were closed.

“Son of a bitch,” she said.

Greg laughed. “You dirty-mouthed cunt,” he said triumphantly. “Come on, cunt.” And his friend moved closer, too.

Greg reached out for her. She drew back against the wall of the shack, next to Travis. Her heart was beating wildly, she could hardly see for the tears that had started in her eyes. But I will fight, she thought. He will not have me without a fight.

Greg came forward again, his hand suddenly clenched on her wrist… and then, so quickly that she did not understand at first what had happened, Travis’s fist clubbed down on the side of Greg’s head, his foot came up between the legs of Greg’s greasy denims.

It was clumsy, Nancy thought, but terribly effective. Greg stumbled back and then fell to the ground, clutching himself, shouting “Fuck! Fuck!

Fuck!” —so loudly that Nancy thought the whole town might hear.

Travis turned to face Kluger… but Kluger, his mouth an astonished 0, only stumbled back and pulled Greg to his feet.

She looked at Travis and thought: How often has he had to do this?

His eyes were dilated, vacant. He stared at Greg and Kluger. Greg, crimson-faced, drew himself up as if he might be willing to stay and fight it out; but Kluger whispered something in his ear and Greg nodded and backed off. It was over as quickly as that. Greg shouted once from the darkness, an insult or a threat—Nancy could not make out the words—and then there was the sound of Greg’s Model T ratcheting down a side road toward The Spur.

“They’re gone,” she breathed.

She felt Travis relax next to her.

“You’re hurt,” she said. “Let me help. Travis?” She took his hand. “Please.”

She led him across the dark field, down the shallow bank of the Fresnel to a quiet place she knew where pussy willows had grown up. The river had retreated in the dry season but she took his hand and guided him across a pair of broad, flat rocks until they stood surrounded by ru

He went down on his haunches at the edge of the rock.

She cupped fresh water from the Fresnel and washed his mouth with it. There seemed to be no loose teeth. That was good.

His blood ran into her hand and she dried him with the hem of her skirt. She did what she could, then sat cross-legged on the rock with his head in her lap. He was breathing more easily now. The first stars were coming out.

“This is what it means,” he said thickly.

She looked at him, frowning. “Travis?”

He said, “You let him screw you?”

It was a vulgar question but she answered seriously. “No. He wanted to. I wouldn’t. That’s why he’s mad at me.”

Travis nodded, seemed to mull over the information.

“This is what it means,” he said finally. “Being a ‘misfit’.”

“Oh,” she said. “It’s not fun.”

She said, “They’re gone now, Travis.”

“Sometimes you win. Mostly they win. There’s more of them.”

She rocked him. She put her hand on his forehead. “Dear God. This isn’t new to you, is it?”

“No,” he said.

“What were you?” She stroked his hair. “What could you possibly have done?” He said nothing.

She said, “Was it something about your mother?”

She thought at first he wouldn’t answer. But then, softly, he said, “Everyone knew.” He drew a breath. “I guess I was the last to know. Isn’t that strange? That I should be so close to her and not know—not even suspect?”

He sat up and faced the darkness. She had to strain against the noise of the river to hear him.

“We had no money. I knew that. We had loans out on the property. Every year a little deeper in debt. I knew that, too. But the other thing. …” He took Nancy’s hand, and his grip was frighteningly tight. “I thought they were friends, her men friends she called them, and sure they stayed sometimes— stayed the night even—but I didn’t know—I was only a kid—I didn’t know they paid. …”

And then she was holding him, because he could not contain his weeping, and a chill had crept up from the river.

Chapter Four

Travis thought often of Nancy Wilcox. But his thoughts returned almost as often to A

Creath let him borrow the Model A for an evening (after he’d promised to bring it back with the tank full—it was three-quarters empty when he’d climbed in) and he picked up Nancy at the Times Square. They drove far beyond the town, driving for the sake of putting miles in back of them, Nancy watching with a kind of rapt eagerness as the road unfolded. “Like flying,” she said. “I wish we could just keep going forever.”

September was already a week old. The wind that carried back her hair was cool and fragrant. When they were thirty or forty miles out of Haute Montagne, Travis pulled over and parked them under a stand of bur oaks. There was no other traffic on the road and the stars seemed immensely bright. They had escaped the aura of the town; it was easier to breathe here, Travis thought.

“See much of A

“The usual,’ Travis said. She nodded. “I’d like to meet her sometime.” “I don’t know if I can arrange that.” “You don’t think she’d come? Or don’t you want to ask?”

“I don’t think Creath would let her.” “How do you mean?”

He hesitated. But then he thought: well, why not tell her? He had come to trust Nancy a damn sight more than he trusted Creath or his Aunt Liza. If he owed his loyalty to anyone, he thought, it was to her.

“It’s Creath. He uses her. And I think he’s scared somebody might find out.”

He explained about the late-night visits up the stairs.

Nancy was wide-eyed, then thoughtful. She put her hands behind her head and gazed up at the canopy of oaks. “The princess in the tower,” she said faintly. “She’s a prisoner.”

“She doesn’t give him any argument.”

“Doesn’t matter. Maybe he’s blackmailing her. Maybe he threatens her.” She shook her head. “Jesus! I never did like the man. But this—!”

“We still don’t know why she’s there. Where she came from.”

“Find out,” Nancy said. Her features were suffused with new purpose. Her eyes seemed to shine in the dark. “She’s a prisoner. We know that much. And—you know what else, Travis? Maybe we can rescue her.”

He came home late, parked the car carefully, went upstairs and fell at once into a dazed half-sleep. The footsteps brought him awake again.

It was a Friday night—Saturday morning, he guessed—deep in the hinterland between midnight and dawn. Travis came awake groggily. He felt the house sighing and shifting, the wind talking in the chimney flues. It was a few days into September, the days were as hot and dry as ever but now the nights brought some small measure of relief, moon-cooled winds blowing in across the grasslands. He pulled the sheet more tightly around his shoulders and drew a deep, shuddering breath. Sleep was only a heartbeat away. But the footsteps came again and they were just beyond his door.