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Wes Boyd’s Spearfish Lake Tales Contemporary Mainstream Books and Serials Online |
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Wes Boyd’s Spearfish Lake Tales Contemporary Mainstream Books and Serials Online |
Sometimes Scott was slow to wake up, and that was the case on Sunday morning. He felt rather blissful from the dream of Sonja he’d just been having, which had been the result of the hour or so after the race spent in the quiet spot he knew over near Amherst once again. They really hadn’t gotten very far – damn the bucket seats – but it had been an enjoyable time indeed. It had been clear much more was to come as soon as the time was right.
Even now the dream was hanging on to him. He could almost feel Sonja was snuggled up next to him, her arm thrown around him, the warmth of her breath in his face.
Only slowly did he become aware that it wasn’t a dream. Sonja was really there . . . well, outside the covers, but lying next to him, a huge grin on her face. “What are you doing here?” he finally managed to mumble.
“Well, good morning sleepyhead,” she smiled. “You were really out of it. Your mom is making breakfast, and she sent me up to get you up.”
“Best alarm clock I ever had,” he managed to say, pulling himself together mentally a little bit, noting that Sonja was wearing shorts and a T-shirt, probably something else left over from Abby again.
“Oh, it was getting to be time,” she said as she moved her face even closer to his, which resulted in a rather hot kiss that went on for a minute or two. He was beyond caring how long it was, because it could have gone on all day, as far as he was concerned.
It did come to an end. “Like I said, best alarm clock I ever had.”
“It’s time for you to be getting up,” she said warmly, her lips still only a short distance from his. “If we’re going to go up and see those friends of yours at that renaissance faire, we probably ought to get moving.”
“Yeah, Dayna and Sandy. We did talk about that, didn’t we?”
“I can think of things I’d rather do,” she replied, giving him a quick kiss on the lips. “But since your folks are home, we’re going to have to put that off till tomorrow. I can hardly wait.”
“Me, too. I’m so ready I can hardly believe it.” He was almost painfully aware of it, too, thanks to the combination of his normal morning condition, the dream he’d been having, and the sensation of waking up and finding Sonja right next to him. It was awfully tempting to do something about it right now, but with his folks in the house . . . well, not just yet. “Guess we’ll have to put it off, though.”
“In case you’re wondering, I’m having trouble waiting myself,” she sighed, pulling herself away from him a bit and sitting up. “Now get up, grab a quick shower, and get dressed. It’s not going to take your mom long on breakfast.”
He started to throw the covers back, then stopped and thought better of it. “Sonja, maybe you’d better leave. I don’t have anything on under here.”
“Don’t mind me,” she grinned. “That way I can get a preview of coming attractions.”
There was no doubt what that meant. “Sonja, you’re making this very hard for me.”
“Good. That’s what’s supposed to happen when I’m around, isn’t it?”
“Sonja . . . oh, hell,” he shook his head as he threw back the covers.
“Oh, wow,” she smiled at the sight. “That really is something to look forward to, isn’t it? I’d sure like to do something about that right now. Could I rub it and make it feel better?”
“It’s only going to take about one more line like that and it’s not going to matter whether my folks are in the house or not.”
“You’re right,” she sighed, some of the teasing tone gone now. “Soon, Scott. Very soon. Now maybe I’d better go downstairs and help your mother with breakfast. Don’t be long.”
Scott sat on the end of the bed pulling himself together for a moment as he watched her leave. Holy crap, he thought. I mean, holy crap! What a way to start the day! There was no way this could be anything but a long one, with that hanging over him.
There was no putting it off, he thought as he got to his feet and headed to the shower. Better make it cold, he thought, or I’m likely to try and nail her on the kitchen table right in front of the folks.
The cold shower helped, even though he could barely stand it. At least it gave him plenty of reason to be quick. In only a couple minutes he was drying himself off and thinking that things sure had come a long way in a couple days, not that he minded, not at all. He had been good friends with Sonja for a long time and had come to the comfortable feeling some time before that he wouldn’t mind having her in his life on a permanent basis. Apparently she’d come to the same conclusion, too, but it had seemed so far away. But no longer; somehow the future seemed very different than it had a few days before.
It was clearly going to be hot again, so he settled for shorts and a T-shirt himself before heading downstairs to find his mother and Sonja putting breakfast on the table; his father already sat in his normal chair, a cup of coffee before him. So normal . . . and yet so different. “So what’s on tap for you today?” his father asked.
“We’d pretty well decided to go to the renfaire up by Battle Creek to check out Dayna and Sandy,” Scott replied. “Since they only play on weekends, now’s probably the best chance. Do you have anything planned?”
“Not really,” his father replied. “It’s going to be too hot to do much outside. We’ll probably just stay home and watch the Cubbies get their butts whipped.”
Breakfast turned into a long, lazy conversation that lingered over a second cup of coffee, then a third. Scott just sat back and didn’t have very much to say; he was still stunned over how quickly things had moved with Sonja, and at how well she got along with his parents. When they’d first heard about her, and the rumor going around that she was black, they’d displayed some reluctance, but that had pretty much disappeared by the time they’d actually met her. Now, it seemed as if she was a part of the family, displaying little of the crabbiness they’d gotten used to with Abby. There was no doubt about it; she fit in.
Eventually they ran out of coffee, and Scott’s mother got up to start a second pot. By the time it was done burping the cups on the table were about empty. Since Scott’s mother was deep in a discussion with Sonja about Israel, Scott got up to get the refill to pour all around. He was just reaching for the pot when the phone rang. Out of habit, he picked it up first and said hello.
“Scott!” he heard an excited Emily. “A woman was just in here looking for you. She’s dark and had a funny accent. I think she’s Sonja’s mother.”
“Oh, shit,” Scott replied. “How long ago?”
“She’s getting into her car now. It’s a white Dodge, I can’t see the plate. I told her how to get there the long way around, but I don’t think she’ll be long.”
“Thanks, Emily!” Scott replied. “You’re a lifesaver!” He hung up the phone and announced, “Emily thinks Sonja’s mother is just leaving the Spee-D-Mart.”
“Oh, God,” Sonja sighed. “What do we do now?”
“Run,” Scott said. “Let’s get out of here! We’ll worry about the details later! Mom, Dad, Emily told Sonja’s mom where we live, so we don’t have long. Sonja, let’s take your car, that way it won’t be here.”
“Good idea,” Sonja replied, getting up from the table and running for the stairs. “I’ve got to get my keys.”
“If she shows up, Sonja wasn’t here,” Scott’s mother said.
“Thanks, Mom,” he replied. “Hell if I know what we’re going to do, but we’ll think of something.”
Scott’s father stood up, reached for his wallet, and pulled out a bunch of bills. “Here’s this if you have to stay gone for a while,” he said. “Keep us in touch, and good luck.”
“Yeah, but, well . . . see you later.”
Scott had barely made it to the front down when Sonja came racing down the steps, carrying her handbag. “Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go,” he said, hurrying her along as they ran out onto the front porch and down the steps, then across the lawn to Sonja’s car. Scott piled in the right side, while Sonja got in the left.
“Made it, I think,” she said as she started the engine.
“Thank God Emily was on her toes,” Scott sighed as she dropped the Olds into gear and pulled away from the curb.
“Scott, where do we go now?”
“Away,” he said. “Keep your eyes open for a white Dodge; that’s what Emily said she was driving. We’ll worry about the details later.”
“Scott, I really don’t want to drag you into this.”
“You don’t have any choice, now,” he said. “Besides, I don’t want you to have to face her down, especially alone. Let’s worry about that in a few minutes.”
They were just about up to the corner, when they saw a white Dodge turning the corner in front of them, coming the other way. There was no time to do anything but keep driving. “Oh, shit!” Sonja said. “That’s her, I know it! She can’t miss us.”
“Keep going,” he said. “Maybe she won’t notice us.”
“Scott, I’m so dark she can’t miss me in this town,” Sonja complained as the two cars passed each other. Scott got a glimpse of a dark-skinned woman driving the Dodge, but that was all. “It wouldn’t be anyone else!”
“Might get lucky,” he replied, twisting in his seat to look behind them, seeing brake lights on the Dodge. “But we didn’t. Looks like she’s turning around. Take a corner, any corner.”
The car lurched as Sonja took him at his word. “Might have lost her, but I don’t think we’re going to get that lucky.”
“Scott, what are we going to do?”
“It comes down to the same thing as before. Either we run, or we stop and you tell her to go to hell.”
“I don’t want to do that. I really don’t. I still think the best thing to do is to avoid her.”
“We may not get to,” he replied as he continued to look out the back. “We didn’t lose her. She’s coming after us.”
“Shit, shit, shit!”
“Right,” he said, settling back in the seat, thinking furiously, but no good ideas were coming. He glanced down at his knee, noticing a CB radio there. Was there anyone he could call who would be likely to have a CB on? Not likely. He didn’t have one in his own car, for example.
Sonja was driving well over the speed limit for the small-town side streets, but wasn’t gaining anything on the white Dodge. But then, as far as Scott could tell in the distortion of the right-side mirror, they weren’t losing anything, either. Get out in the country and open it up? He wouldn’t want to bet that would work; he knew the town and there were more alternatives right here . . .
They were coming up on the four-way stop at Elm Street now. “Better stop, the cops watch this place,” Scott said, noticing a semi just stopping. “Take a left,” he suggested. “If that semi is going straight, he might block her a little.”
A stop, in this case, was about thirty miles an hour, and Sonja barely squeezed in front of the semi, who was just pulling away from the stop. There was the blattt of an angry air horn, but as Scott glanced up at the truck, he saw something that gave him hope: the truck said Sallows Trucking on the side and Dean was driving it! “We might have just gotten lucky,” he said, reaching out to turn on the CB.
He glanced down; it was on 19, right where it needed to be. Grabbing the mike, he said, “Hey, Dean, this is Scott. Sorry about that, but Sonja’s mom is in that white Dodge not far behind us, we’re trying to not let her catch us.”
“Sorry about flipping you the bird there, bud,” Dean’s gravelly voice came back over the speaker, “but you gotta watch that stuff.”
“Yeah, but things are freaky right now. Can you block that Dodge long enough to let us get away?”
“Yeah, but you’re going to owe me one. I can see her in my mirrors right now, she’s damn close.”
“Whatever you can do to buy us a couple minutes.”
“Sure thing,” Dean’s voice came back. “Look, take a left onto Mechanic. I might be able to block her at the corner.”
“Good, thanks a bunch,” Scott replied, then with the mike button off. “About a block and a half, take a left,” he told Sonja.
Once again, Sonja screamed around the corner; to Scott it seemed faster than the race cars the night before. The street was narrow and ran through an older industrial area; since it was Sunday, it was dead quiet there, with no other traffic. Sonja took that excuse to floor the Olds. Again, Scott twisted to look out the back. He could see Dean coming around the corner, with the white Dodge right on his tail.
“Gained some time,” he said into the microphone.
“Yeah, she wants around me so bad it ain’t funny,” Dean replied. “But I can lay a serious block on her just a little bit up here.”
“Go for it,” Scott told him, then unkeyed the microphone. “Looks like we might make it after all,” he told Sonja. “She may not be able to see us through him anyway. Right at the next corner, just over the hill, then settle down. We do have cops in this town.”
“OK.”
Still twisted in the seat, Scott could see the semi pull cross-wise in the street, as if preparing to back into a loading dock at one of the factories there. That would keep the street blocked for some time. He only got a glimpse of it, as Sonja turned the corner. “We may, I say may, have just gotten away with it,” he signed, then settled back into his seat. “Two blocks, then left. That’ll get us onto a country road out of town.”
“Thank goodness,” she sighed. “That was scary. What do we do now?”
“We get the hell out of town and think about it. I don’t think we’d have made it if we hadn’t gotten lucky with Dean.”
There wasn’t much talking for the next few minutes, but a lot of furious thinking was going on in both seats of the Olds. Several minutes later they heard Dean’s voice on the loudspeaker again. “That’s about all I can do for ya. She just now turned around and went the other way. I ain’t never had to back and fill to get to a loading dock like that till now.”
“A big thank you, Dean,” Scott replied. “We’re well out of town. I owe you a big one sometime.”
“No big deal. Catch you on the flip side, good buddy. Gotta pick up my brother, then we’re headin’ out to the shaky side. Oughta be back next weekend.”
“You take care, and remember there’s bears in them thar hills.”
“Never forget it. Catch you later, and take care yourself.”
“Well, that’s that,” Scott said as he hung up the microphone. “We broke contact, now we just have to keep it broken. Thank God you had a CB in your car. What’s it doing there?”
“Dad put it in, in case I had a breakdown on the freeway or something. I’ve never used it.”
“Well, give him credit for foresight on that one. It saved our butts this time.”
“This sucks,” Sonja announced. “She’s already run me out of Pontiac, and now she’s run both of us out of Bradford. What’s worse, now I’ve got you up to your ass in the problem.”
“I know it’s your problem, but I’d rather face it with you than have you going it alone. Thank God Emily caught her at it and Dean was able to help out, or else we’d be having a hell of a confrontation in my folk’s living room right now.”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t solve anything, except now I can’t hide in Bradford, either. Scott, what am I going to do?”
“It’s more a case of what we’re going to do,” Scott replied. “Sonja, don’t forget I have an interest in this, too. I don’t want you in Israel for the next few years. I want you with me, not running around some damn desert. If you think the best thing to do is to avoid her, then I guess we continue to avoid her. There are lots of other places we can be. What I want to know is how she knew you were in Bradford in the first place. You don’t think your dad would have told her, do you?”
“I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t, or Gina, for that matter. We’ve all talked this problem around enough times.”
“There’s an idea right on the edge of my mind that isn’t quite gelling,” Scott replied. “But one thing is clear. If she’s in Bradford, she’s not with your dad. Maybe this would be a good time to give him a call.”
“That might work, but we’ll have to get to a phone.”
“Take a right up here a couple miles, that’s Plank Road and it’ll take us into Hawthorne. We ought to be able to find a phone booth there somewhere.”
Fifteen minutes later they were in a phone booth at a gas station in Hawthorne, and talking to Sonja’s father, Bob, and stepmother, Gina. Sonja was actually the one doing the talking, but Scott was right up next to her so he could listen in as Sonja explained what had happened. “I’m afraid I couldn’t have been much warning,” Bob told them. “We knew she’d gotten up early and gone somewhere, but we had no idea where.”
“Do you have any idea how she could have found out I was with Scott?” she said, half angrily.
“Nothing I know for sure, but we’ve got her in the spare room across the hall from your room. It could well have been that she was poking around in there behind our backs. She might have found a letter or an address book or something.”
“Yeah,” Sonja replied, obviously deflated. “That’d be a good guess. There’s enough stuff in there with Scott’s name on it she wouldn’t have had much problem in figuring it out. I guess that means I can’t come home right now, either. I don’t have anything but the clothes on my back, and they belong to Scott’s sister.”
“The only idea I have is that maybe if you left right now, you could be in and out before she gets back,” Bob offered. “That would at least give you a chance to get clothes and stuff, but I don’t think it would be a good idea to be around here very long. My guess is that she’ll hang around Bradford for a while in hopes you or Scott will come back.”
“Well, maybe,” Sonja replied dubiously. “But what happens if she shows up while we’re there?”
“Then I guess you’d just have to deal with it. We’ve always known that could happen.”
“Yeah, but I don’t want to just tell her to go to hell, either.”
“I’ve got an idea,” Scott said, squirming so he could speak into the telephone receiver a little better. “I really doubt she’s going to hang around Bradford very long, but if she wants to catch us there she’s probably going to be keeping an eye on our house. Let me call my folks and see if they have her spotted. If they do, we’ll start towards your place in Pontiac. We’ll call again when we get close to your house. If she’s still in Bradford, then we’ll know we have a couple hours minimum.”
“It might work,” Bob agreed. “At least it’ll buy us some time to think about what to do next. Is Sonja still there?”
“I am, Dad.”
“Look, honey. Just remember we’re still on your side in this. Do what you have to do. I was never too good at talking reason with your mother, especially on things to do with Israel, and I think you know her better than I do anymore. Gina and I will back you up on whatever you decide the best we can, but you’re going to have to be the one to draw the line.”
“I know, Dad. I’ve always known that. At least the timing could have been worse. She could have caught me up at school.”
“Yeah, there is that. It’d be harder for you there. I wish there was some way we could end this permanently, without getting her angrier with us than she already is. You take care, and Scott, you take care of my little girl.”
“I will, sir. Whatever happens, we’ll be keeping in touch on this.”
Immediately after the phone call to Sonja’s father, Scott took the phone and called home, explaining that they’d almost been caught but had managed to break contact.
“Yeah, she was pretty angry about you getting away from her,” his father said. “Well, she was angry about something, but that probably was it.”
“She was there?”
“Oh, yeah, maybe twenty minutes ago,” Chuck told him. “We said you weren’t here and didn’t know when you were coming back, except that you were planning on running up to that renaissance thing. We didn’t mention Sonja at all.”
“We’re just about dead sure she saw Sonja,” Scott replied. “Is she still there?”
“We weren’t very hospitable,” his father told him, “but she’s sitting in her car up the street, waiting for you. So what are you going to do now?”
“We still don’t know what we’re going to do,” Scott told his father, “but what we’re thinking is that if she waits us out there for a while, we can sneak up to Sonja’s and get some of her clothes and stuff. After that we’re not sure but our options are open.”
“I’ve been thinking about it a little. It ain’t the nicest place in the world, you know that, but there’s the hunting cabin you could use.”
“Hadn’t thought about that, but it’s an option,” Scott agreed. “Things are still changing a lot and I can’t look that far ahead. Look, keep an eye on her. If she leaves, call Sonja’s dad and let him know she might be on the way. You’ve got the number, I think.”
“Better give it to me again.”
Scott reeled it off from memory, and checked to make sure it was right. “OK,” he said when they were done. “I guess we’re going to head up to Sonja’s. I don’t know how long we’re going to be there, but if it’s just a quick one we’ll have her dad call and give you a heads up that we’ve been there and left, or something. I don’t have the foggiest idea of what happens after that.”
“Son, you take care. We don’t know Sonja very well, but we really like what we’ve seen of her. You could do a lot worse in this life, and I think you know it. That’s worth going to some trouble for.”
“That’s about how I see it,” Scott agreed. “Like I said, we’ll keep in touch.”
