Patchwork People XXVIII Departures
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Patchwork People XXVI: The Great Escape. free porn video
XXVI. The great escape.
One could imagine a thousand things going wrong, but there was no hitch
at the hospital. Their quickly improvised charade worked like a charm.
Walt's performance as Phoebe's concerned but understandably angry father
was spot-on. Marcia, in her supporting role as distraught mom, hadn't had
to act at all. There were the usual papers and forms to sign, a brief
interview with a representative from the Chupadero police department and
another with a representative from Child Services, and half-a-dozen other
official procedures that had to be gotten through. At several points,
Marcia began to despair that they'd ever be permitted to leave. But then,
just like that, Phoebe was discharged.
As they crossed the parking lot to Walt's pickup, Marcia kept expecting
an authoritative voice behind them to order them to stop.
Under his breath, Walt muttered, "Just act normal. Keep walking until the
bullets start flying. Then run like hell."
He was joking, of course, but he'd caught Marcia's feelings exactly.
Phoebe, treating the entire episode as something of a lark, started
whistling, comically pantomiming normality. They piled into the truck
like they were making a get-away from a bank heist. It was mostly in fun
but they didn't truly breathe a sigh of relief until they were back onto
the interstate. Later they would come to call it their "Great Escape,"
and it would forever after form the basis of a lasting bond between them.
Phoebe hadn't been happy to discover that Marcia had come. It registered
on the girl's face the instant she'd seen Marcia in the interview room.
Phoebe felt that Walt had betrayed her, broken his promise, but she was
resigned to the situation. He'd come through, that was the important
thing. And to be honest, she hadn't really expected him to keep his
promise in the first place. What adult ever did? Anyway, if she'd had a
choice, if it had to be one or the other, Phoebe would have chosen Marcia
over her mom. Her mom could be a real nightmare in situations like this.
If Phoebe could admit it to herself, she'd have to admit that she was
even secretly pleased that Walt had lied, that Marcia had come. It was
just the sort of promise that real parents would break, wasn't it?
They didn't linger in Chupadero any longer than the local traffic laws
demanded. They waited until they were a good fifty miles down the road
before stopping for gas and cold bottled drinks at a convenience station
rest stop. No one talked much. Walt and Marcia said a few words to each
other in the front seat of the cab. Phoebe sat in the back, half-dozing.
She knew that the questions were coming, she was resting up for them,
thankful that they weren't coming now. Somewhere down the road she'd have
a lot to answer for. Right now, she was happy for the reprieve and the
blank sunburned scenery outside her window.
They spent the night again at The Cactus Inn. Walt half-jokingly
suggested that having survived serial murder there one night, it was
pretty good odds they'd might survive it again. Phoebe argued for
adjoining rooms. Without saying it in so many words, she tried to make
the argument about how creepy it was to sleep in the same room as your
parents even under the most ordinary of circumstances with the most
conventional of parents. Marcia sympathized, but there was no way she was
going to let Phoebe out of her sight now, not that she thought a repeat
performance likely, but still.
So they rented a room with two beds and Walt requested a cot thrown in as
well. The desk clerk was the same as the one on duty the day before.
Simply out of habit, he seemed about to declare Walt's request impossible
to satisfy, caught Walt's warning look, reconsidered, and hunted one
down. The desk clerk might have thought he was only avoiding a beating;
he seemed genuinely surprised at the generous tip he earned for his extra
effort.
Walt slept on the cot. He set it up by the door. He claimed it was a good
vantage place from which he could watch the pickup. And any midnight
intruders would cause quite a racket tripping over him, giving Marcia and
Phoebe just in enough time to run screaming for their lives.
"Not funny Walt," Marcia said.
"What can I say," he shrugged. "My career isn't in comedy."
They were all up early, dressed, showered, and ready to get back on the
road before eight. No one cared to linger. No one slept well. Walt
especially. He spent the first half-hour after getting up trying to work
the kinks the rickety cot had tied in his back. While the girls finished
getting ready, he stomped around the parking lot in circles.
Phoebe had gone outside to have a smoke. Looking from the window, Marcia
saw her daughter and Walt in animated conversation. She couldn't imagine
what they might be discussing. At times, the discussion seemed to turn
intense. At one point, Phoebe, appearing frustrated, threw her cigarette
on the ground and ground it out emphatically under her shoe. Later, when
Marcia had the chance, she didn't ask what they'd been discussing. There
seemed more than enough to deal with at the moment. She noted, however,
with relief, that when Phoebe had returned to the room after her
conversation with Walt, her daughter seemed to be in a lighter mood than
she had since they left the hospital, more relaxed, even
uncharacteristically chatty.
They were all feeling a little more expansive, a little more at ease with
each other. They had breakfast at one of the ubiquitous pancake houses
that lined the desert interstate. Walt had the Prospector's Golden
Deluxe--a three-cheese omelet consisting of what looked like at least a
half-dozen eggs that cemented together a m?lange of bacon, sausage,
onions, green peppers, fried potato cubes and god-only-knew-what-else.
Included were a short stack of pancakes and a small loaf of buttered
toast.
"You should win a t-shirt at least if you can finish that thing," Marcia
said.
"A coupon for discount cardiac care," Phoebe suggested.
Walt plowed through about half of it and declared himself "sufficiently
full."
Marcia had ordered the cantaloupe and cottage cheese. Like mother, like
daughter, Phoebe ordered the same. They both turned their heads to follow
a chocolate chip pancake platter covered with a peak of whipped cream
that passed by, destined for some lucky diner without an eating disorder.
Walt urged them to order it for themselves.
"Come on. It's a special day. Treat yourself." He pointed to his own
place. "Look at me, I'm eating half a barnyard here."
Marcia made Phoebe an offer.
"Split it?"
"Deal."
Walt flagged down the waitress and told them to change their order. Even
splitting the breakfast-dessert, they didn't manage to finish the whole
thing, but it was a start.
Breakfast solidified their uplifted mood. The pancake house was the type
that had a gift shop attached, a faux country-store that sold handmade
candy, country crafts, aprons, kitchenware, cookbooks, and reproduction
vintage toys. Walt bought them all t-shirts. Phoebe rolled her eyes at
the goofiness of it all but went right along with it when Walt suggested
that they all put them on right over what they were wearing. It was so
stupid and corny that it seemed a cool thing to do.
They were still wearing them when they stopped for lunch a few hours
later. Phoebe thought they must look just like one of those dopey
families from Sticksville who wear the same clothes when visiting the big
city so they don't get separated from each other. She'd always made fun
of those seemingly super-normal families, but having never been in one,
she thought it might be fun to give it a try just once. How often did she
get a chance to be "normal"? People seeing them would smile
condescendingly, thinking, how cute, how corny. The fact that they
weren't really "normal" made it that much more fun. It was their little
secret.
"You know what I always wanted to do?" Phoebe said when they were back in
the truck.
"What honey?" Marcia asked, gazing out the window.
She was trying to put a name to what she was feeling.
Then it came to her, with a shock: it was perfect happiness.
"I always wanted to be on a family road trip and sing 99 bottles of beer
on the wall. Just like they do on TV."
"You're kidding."
"Nope."
It was Walt who started them off. "Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the
wall, ninety-nine bottles of beer-eer, if one of those bottles should
happen to fall..."
"Ninety-eight bottles of beer on the wall!" Phoebe chimed in, and Marcia,
shrugging, surrendering to the inevitable, added her voice to the mix.
They got it down to sixty-three bottles, their voices already wavering.
At least, sighing, Phoebe offered the observation that it wasn't nearly
as much fun as it looked like on television. "It's really a lot of work
after a certain point, isn't it?"
Marcia agreed. "Well, we can always pick up where we left off later, I
suppose."
"Is that allowed? That's not against the rules?"
"Rules?" Walt said, scoffing at the mere notion. "In this car, we make up
our own rules."
Marcia glanced over at Walt. He gave her a sidelong wink.
Walt turned the on radio and they lapsed into an agreeable silence,
interrupted only now and again by something of interest one or another of
them spotted as it flashed by along the roadside. A cactus. A billboard.
An eight-foot-tall steer made of junk car parts.
In the east, the sky was already going purple and a star or two was
shining. They weren't far from home now. It looked like they'd reach Hope
Crossing just before it was full-on dark.
* * * *
Author note: I plan to publish "Patchwork People" in its entirety in
weekly installments here on Fictionmania. In the meantime, the complete
novel is currently available as an Amazon Kindle ebook for $2.99.
For more of my writings, drawings, erotica, and photos please visit my
blog Bad Pussy
sissyforlife(dot)blogspot(dot)com.
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