Lizzie by Richard Hulse

As the hot afternoon ticked by, Lizzie thought they wouldn’t show. Then, far off, a vehicle coming down that dusty road. A car, not a truck.

It got closer and the passenger door was opening even before it stopped. Then Charlene was out and running to Lizzie, and Lizzie, she was jumping straight into her big cousin’s smile. Both of Charlene’s hands were on either side of Lizzie’s face.

‘Oh, I’ve missed you!’ said Charlene. ‘You been all right, baby? Have you?’

Lizzie pressed her face into her shoulder. Folks always said they were only second cousins but so what? Like she didn’t know that? Charlene was still special.

They got in the back and drove away. Emerson looked back from the steering wheel, reached one hand over to ruffle the little girl’s hair.

‘How’s it happening, short-stuff?’ His own hair was like she remembered it, dark, flopping over his forehead. ‘You glad to see us?’

Charlene was fussing over her, saying how pretty she was looking.

They kept to the backways dirt tracks. Because of the heat, the car windows were down. Charlene pointed out the window one time; thought she’d seen a wolf.

Emerson snorted. ‘Come on! Just a dog.’

‘No, it was big.’ 

‘Can we go back and look?’ Lizzie asked.

‘Forget that,’ said Charlene. ‘What if it gets mad?’

Charlene didn’t seem really scared, though. Charlene was scared of precious little. Other things – animals, people – they usually got scared of her.

‘We’d only have looked at it,’ said Lizzie. ‘We’d have driven off if it got mad.’

‘It might have its own car,’ said Charlene. ‘What’d we do if it started driving after us?’

Everyone laughed. Charlene was always having crazy notions like that.

An hour later, the three of them camped under some trees near a stream, ate bologna sandwiches, and drank buttermilk. Emerson took a shot or three from a hip flask.

‘How’s it been, baby?’ asked Charlene. ‘They been mean to you?’

Lizzie shrugged. ‘The McKinneys? Nah. Least, it’s somewhere to stay. I got chores. Hauling water, fixing meals. Told ‘em I was stopping at the Owens tonight. They wasn’t even bothered.’

‘I didn’t mean the McKinneys.’ Charlene smiled. ‘I meant them mean old lawmen.’

‘Them? They didn’t scare me none. They kept asking me who you was, but I didn’t say nothing.’

‘We knew that, sweetheart,’ said Emerson. ‘You’re true as they come.’

A month ago, it had been like a game. Least, at first.

Lizzie’d gone into the store, counted to a hundred. Then she sat down on the floor, and started bawling. Shouting she’d lost her mommy. Everyone, the lady clerk, the customers, they’d all come round, telling her to hush now, they’d find her. One lady even got her some candy. Lizzie had been worried that no one would believe her; after all, she wasn’t a little kid, she was eight years old last February. But Charlene had told her she could do it: ‘Why, Lizzie, you’re just as good as those actors we seen in the movie palace – better in fact!’ And, truth was, she was small for her age, could easy pass for six years.

Which meant everything had gone good until the moment it didn’t. When Lizzie heard what she thought was a car backfiring.

She didn’t like remembering the rest.

Charlene leaned back against the tree. ‘You know Emerson had to do it, Lizzie. Didn’t have no choice. It was that dumb old store manager round the back.’

‘Lost his head,’ said Emerson. ‘Shouldn’t have been working that job, panicking the way he done.’

‘He should’a just been sensible.‘ Charlene was twenty, but that moment she looked real young herself. ‘None of us wanted it going down that way.’

‘I know it.’ Lizzie waited, and then said what she’d been saving up for weeks. ‘How’d it be if I stayed with you now? What you think?’

‘What about the McKinneys?’

‘They’ll think I just run off. Likely be glad to see me gone.’

Emerson rubbed his chin. ‘No one’s looking for a couple with a little girl. It might work, Charlie.’

Charlene lit a cigarette, thought a while.

‘I don’t think just yet, baby. Give it a few months. When things quiet down, we’ll come for you. What you say?’

Lizzie didn’t say nothing. She watched the stream.

That night, Emerson sat and smoked, sipped from his flask. The two girls sat shoulder to shoulder by the campfire.

‘It’s gonna be all right, Lizzie.’

‘I guess. I mean, yeah, sure.’

‘All you got to do is keep on keeping quiet.’

‘Never said nothing before.’ She looked at the stars. ‘Not likely to start now.’

Charlene kissed her. ‘I know it.’

Charlene got her a blanket. Then Lizzie hunkered down in the back of the Ford and tried to get to sleep. She could hear them talking low by the campfire. She did her best not to be blue but it wasn’t no use. Going in that store, it had been pretend, acting like a little lost girl. But seemed like it had all come true.

Next morning, Emerson was feeling sick.

‘A bug,’ he said. ‘Don’t think I can drive, sugar.’

‘We got to get Lizzie back home.’

He looked at Charlene, and then away. ‘Can’t you do it?’

‘You want me to?’

‘Don’t think I can.’

She stared at him.

‘I’ll wait here,’ said Emerson. ‘I’ll wait here, and you drop her off at the McKinneys and pick me up later.’

Charlene stubbed her cigarette into the grass. ‘You’re something else. Anyone ever tell you that?’

‘Sugar, I’m sick.’

‘All right. Seeing that’s how it is.’

Lizzie sat beside Charlene as she drove. It was early morning and still cool. They made good time. They were going through the woods when Charlene cried out.

‘Whoa! You see that?’

‘What? Where?’

‘That wolf again!’ She whistled. ‘I’ll bet that was the same one from yesterday. You want we should go take a peek?’

Before Lizzie could speak, the car was slowing.

‘Should we?’ Lizzie had never seen no wolf before.

’We’ll be careful.’

They walked back along the track. Charlene had taken her handbag out of the car.

‘Be real quiet, now,’ she said. ‘Don’t want it running off before we spot it.’

They were whispering. Lizzie could hear a blue jay calling. No other sounds. No breeze.

‘Sure you didn’t imagine it?’ she asked.

‘Nope,’ said Charlene. She smiled in that shining way she had. ‘I didn’t imagine a thing. Let’s go see.’

They walked off the track, under and into the trees.

Richard Hulse

Image: Black silhouette of a howling wolf against a dark background. From pixabay.com