The Overnight Guest(26)
Hours passed. The stars faded, and the sky above was slowly stripped of its nightclothes and replaced with gauzy veils of pink and tangerine. Josie’s mouth was dry and her tongue heavy with thirst. Every time she moved, a jolt coursed through her arm, and she whimpered with pain.
She had broken her ankle once when she was ten. She and Becky were hopping across the maze of round hay bales in her field when she misjudged the distance to the next bale of hay and tumbled six feet to the hard-packed earth.
That pain was intense—but nothing compared to being shot. When Josie could no longer stand the fullness of her bladder, she unfolded herself from the cocoon of her T-shirt and stood. Using only one hand, she awkwardly pulled down her shorts and relieved herself, urging the unending stream of urine to hurry up.
Josie was so thirsty that she was tempted to step out of the field to get a drink of water but couldn’t bring herself to leave the camouflage the corn provided. She tried to keep time by the movement of the shadows. She wanted to lie down and sleep but was afraid that the gunman would find her.
A dry, papery crackle moved through the field, and the corn shivered and swayed above her. Someone was coming. Panic clutched at her throat. She wouldn’t be able to outrun him; she had no weapon, no protection. Josie braced herself for what was coming.
But instead of someone crashing through the crops, a large black cloud swept over her head and dipped and rose and fell and rose again. Red-winged blackbirds, thick as smoke, making their annual migration through the fields, gathered on the stalks above her.
Josie’s father would be irritated to no end. It happened every year; the glossy black birds with red and yellow shoulder patches swooped through the fields to feast on their corn. She expected to hear the loud bangs of the propane exploders, a device that her father relied on, to scare away the pesky birds. The cracks never came, only the flapping of wings and the chatter of the redwings.
Josie couldn’t stay hidden in the field forever. No one was coming to rescue her. She needed to save herself. Josie struggled to her feet, and the cloud of birds noisily rose and moved on to another section of the field. Her leg muscles screamed in protest, her arm pulsed and was swollen and hot to the touch. Another wave of nausea washed over her, and Josie closed her eyes and conjured up their farmyard at dawn.
It calmed her, the thought of the big red barn and her mom and dad drinking coffee at the kitchen table. The morning sun gliding up from behind the barn meant that if she headed in the opposite direction of the sun, she would come out of the field somewhere near the house.
Step by step, Josie made her way through the canopy of green, the hot morning sun burning the top of her head. She quickly found the path she took the night before. Stalks lay flat, leaving a crumpled, frenetic trail. Josie’s heart hammered in her chest.
She was so close to home. She wanted to run toward the house, fling open the front door and find her parents, Ethan, and Becky sitting at the kitchen table, irritated because she made them late getting on the road to the fair, but Josie was too scared. Instead, she hovered on the edges of the field, peeking between the thick stems.
At first glance, everything looked just as it should. The yard and house looked the same as always. Her father’s truck and her mother’s car sat in the drive. Ruby-throated hummingbirds hovered above the bright orange butterfly weed next to the house. The copper weather vane rooster atop the barn spun in the hot breeze.
But still, Josie couldn’t bring herself to step out into the open. The screen on the back door swung on its hinges. Maybe everyone overslept, Josie thought hopefully, though she knew it wasn’t likely. The outdoor goat pen was empty, and humanlike cries came from the closed-up barn. Josie knew it was just hungry bleats coming from the goats, but their desperate calls caused the hair to stand up on her arms. Her father never forgot to feed and milk the goats.
She wanted to sprint to the house and find her family and Becky waiting for her, but the soles of her feet, chewed up by rocks and parched earth made it impossible. She cringed with each step.
The chickens in the coop clucked at her approach, harassing Josie to feed and water them. Please let everyone still be asleep, she begged silently.
Josie looked up at the house. She remembered the bangs and the flash of light she saw in her parents’ bedroom window the night before. Nothing moved behind the curtains, but they were a bit askew, as if someone was peeking out from behind them.
It was just a bad dream, Josie told herself; she had been walking in her sleep. The more she thought about it, the more it made sense. She’d had an awful nightmare.
Once past the barn and the henhouse, the goats and chickens grew quiet. She passed the old shed where her mother kept her gardening tools and passed the trampoline where she and Becky had jumped with so much joy the night before. It felt like a million years ago.
Josie cocked her head in hopes of hearing her mother and father chatting at the kitchen table. All was quiet except the creak and bang of the screen door opening and closing with the hot breeze.
Josie caught the screen door midswing, stepped into the mudroom, and closed it behind her. She’d get a talking-to for leaving the door open all night too. Josie spotted her father’s dusty work boots on the mudroom floor and another surge of anxiety rushed through her.
The kitchen was empty. There was the hum of the refrigerator, the whir of a ceiling fan. In the living room, a pair of Ethan’s tennis shoes lay on the floor and the paperback book her mother had been reading lay open on the arm of the sofa.