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“Charlie, I can’t believe you told people my story,” said Abby. “How could you do that?”
Now he looked straight at her. His eyes were empty. Devoid of all emotion.
“How could you do that?” she repeated.
“Don’t give Chuckles a hard time,” said Rake. He tilted his beer can back, finished it off, and then crushed the can and tossed it into the fire. “Hand me that stick,” he said to Charlie. Charlie passed it to him with no objection.
“You see this stick?” Rake said to Abby.
“Yeah.”
“This is my gator poker. You think I’m making a joke? I’m not. I brought this from home. You gotta have this with you if you’re gonna spend much time here.”
She said nothing.
“Are you hearing me, girl? Some of the biggest gators in the state come right out of this pond here. We got some record setters out of here when I was a kid, but now there’s no one around here much to bother them, so they’re probably just getting bigger.”
She nodded. She was trying to look calm, trying to figure out where exactly they were in relation to her buried treasure. She’d have to go down the dirt road, back to the main road, from there how many miles? Two? Three? Five?
“You listening to me?” Rake asked her.
“I’m listening,” she said. Aside from the popping fire what else was there to listen to?
“These gators will eat a deer or a dog, or a person. Chomp chomp chomp. They’re nature’s scavengers. They’ll eat anything you give ‘em. This pond here, this pond is nature’s garbage disposal.”
She nodded. Her mouth was too dry to speak.
“I’ve just got one question for you,” said Rake.
“What’s that?” Abby croaked.
He laughed, but not his usual mean, ironic laugh. It was a laugh of genuine delight. “Didn’t you think,” he said, “that it was a little stupid to ask someone you hardly knew to help you disappear?”
Chapter 44
Abby had never planned on staying more than a night, but she’d pictured her stay to be a sort of a fresh air sabbatical that would invigorate her for the journey to come. She hadn’t seen it going quite this terribly.
She stayed planted in her lawn chair, peeling the label from her water bottle, trying to not look terrified, pretending she still hadn’t comprehended her dire circumstances.
She thought about taking off running, but there were miles of unknown terrain to navigate through in the dark, and nowhere to hide besides scrubby patches of orange trees and weeds. She sipped her water, trying to look calm and oblivious, while Charlie and Rake turned their conversation to hunting rifles.
“Have a beer,” Rake said to her after several minutes, reaching into the cooler, scooping one out, and tossing it to her. She dropped her bottle of water to catch the beer. Without arguing she opened it and took a small sip. They went back to their hunting rifle talk. At first it seemed that they’d started it to intimidate her, but now it had morphed into a legitimate discussion.
After another fifteen minutes or so, Abby interrupted them. “I have to pee. Charlie, will you come with me? I’m afraid to go alone,” Abby said.
“You’re a big girl. You’ll be okay,” said Rake.
Charlie opened another beer, not meeting Abby’s eyes.
“Please?” Abby tried again.
“He doesn’t want to watch you squat in the weeds,” Rake said.
“Okay, fine,” she said. “I’ll go on my own.”
“Don’t you go far,” Rake yelled.
She went up the hill, poured the majority of her beer into the weeds, relieved herself while she had the chance, and patted her pocket as she pulled up her shorts. The money was still there.
