THE BANDIT QUEEN - Chapter 1 continued

Eden stared at the boy’s face, noticing the gaunt cheeks and dark circles under his eyes. She searched for the marks and scars that would result from the type of beating she’d interrupted in the alley behind her apartment building in Los Angeles. A very large, very angry man had been slapping the boy around when the headlights from Eden’s car had lit up the alley as she turned her car around to park. Without even stopping to think of her own safety, Eden had driven quickly into the alley and stopped her car just inches from the surprised face of the attacker. The man had stared at her car with a baffled look on his face and then had let go of the boy. He ran clumsily off down the alley while the boy slid down to the ground and lay still. Eden had pulled out her cell phone to call for help but set it back on the seat before her call was connected. She stepped out of the car and approached the ominously still boy. She spoke softly as she knelt down next to him as she had spoken many times to her dog when he stumbled home after a long run through the woods. The boy twitched away from her hand and tried to stand up by himself. He reached behind him and gripped the wall of the building with his dirty but surprising long and sensitive fingers. Eden looked long and hard at his hands and then grasped his arm to steady the boy on his feet. He stood about six inches taller than she did but he allowed her to pull him slowly in the direction of her car. The boy tried once to pull away from her but he couldn’t. The will was there, but the energy was not.
Eden folded him and stuffed him quickly into the front seat of her car before she reversed out of the alley. As she fishtailed down the darkened street, another pair of headlights appeared in her rear view mirror and followed her closely, corner for corner. On some of the longer blocks, the car closed in on her bumper. Eden felt fleetingly grateful that she was familiar with the neighborhood and turned corner after corner, keeping barely in front of the other car until she turned onto a well-traveled four-lane street. She turned to the right and slid effortlessly into the traffic. The other car, a two-door white one of indeterminate origin, sat fuming at the corner until the light changed to green. He gunned around the corner and was brought up short by two full lanes of traffic going nowhere. Eden imagined him pounding on the steering wheel in frustration and craning his neck out the window to look for her car. She had one fleeting moment of regret that she was driving her own beloved red convertible instead of some mid-sized gray four-door Buick. She quickly shook the regret out of her head and concentrated on getting away from her pursuer.
Eden drove the highways of Los Angeles for the next two hours with no destination in mind. When she was finally sure no one was following them, she pulled up outside the entrance to a small hospital and parked under a street lamp. She reached across the seat and slightly shook the thin shoulder of the boy. He jerked away from her hand and curled into a tight ball.
Eden leaned over and spoke softly into the boy’s shoulder. “They’ve gone away. This is a hospital. Do you want to go inside? Are you bleeding or are any of your bones broken?”
The boy shook his head emphatically and mumbled, “Just let me out anywhere. I’ll hide until they quit looking for me.”
Eden leaned against the back of her seat and contemplated the miserable form sitting next to her. “Who’s after you and what do they want from you? Did you steal something from them or what?”
The shoulder hunched even higher to shut Eden out. “C’mon, you’ve got to tell me something. At least tell me where to take you. I don’t imagine you want to be dropped off at a police station so give me some ideas here. I’ll get you something to eat if you’re hungry.” A quick convulsion shook the boy’s body. “Okay, food coming up next.”
As they sat in the parking lot of a twenty-four hour convenience store eating greasy burritos and drinking cokes, Eden watched the boy out of the corner of her eye. He looked as though he’d been living rough for some time but not for years.
As he finished his food, she said, “I don’t imagine it’s very safe for us to drive back to my apartment, is it? That’s where I was going when I broke up your little fight. We might need to save that trip until later.”
The boy shook his hair at Eden and mumbled again, “I’ll just take off from here. You go on and do what you want.” He opened the car door to leave and swayed as he tried to stand on his feet. Eden leaned across the car and grabbed his shirtsleeve to pull him back into the seat.
“Just get in the car and I’ll take you where you need to go, okay? You’re not in any shape to walk away from here. Buckle your seat belt and tell me where to go. By the way, Hell is not the answer I’m looking for.”
A very small chuckle rose from the boy and he said, “If you really want to know, I need to get to Dallas, Texas. You can drop me along the highway and I’ll get a ride with a trucker. Some of them drive all the way and are glad for a little company.”
Eden put her hands on her steering wheel and stared through the windshield of the car. Then, with a decisive nod, she started the car and drove up to the gas pumps. She filled the car with gas, paid with a credit card, and drove quickly away. As she drove down a partially empty business street, she noticed the bright lights surrounding an ATM kiosk. She quickly pulled in and drew out a handful of cash. She stashed the money in her backpack and drove on to the next ATM. She took cash on every card in her wallet including the one belonging to her parents. She thought it might not be a good idea to leave a paper trail all across the Southwest on the way to Texas. The boy paid no attention to her actions. He’d flipped back his seat and closed his eyes to shut out the world. Before long, Eden heard light snores from that side of the car and hoped he’d sleep for hours. She had more things to do before they left Los Angeles.
The nameless boy stirred a little as she finally passed the LA city limits around 10:00 the next morning. She’d slept a few hours herself parked in a hospital parking garage after she’d sneaked into her apartment building and quickly snatched up clothes and other necessities. She’d left by the back door and reached her car before the boy woke up and wandered off. She cashed a large check at the nearest drive-through bank on the way out of town and liberated most of the money in her checking account.
As she drove through the heavy traffic, the watery sunshine raised her spirits higher than they had been for months. The last eighteen months had ground her down. The endless days of driving for over an hour to get to school and then walking all over campus only to get back into her car and drive to her job. Then, finally, the long drive back to her apartment after the world had turned dark. She needed a definite break in her routine. Actually, she decided to get rid of all routines. She’d been a good girl for long enough. Sometime, later, maybe even tomorrow or the next day, she’d call her parents to tell them some lie or another about what she was doing and where she was going. She smiled at the highway in front of her and tried to imagine what would happen at the end of the road. When she realized she had no idea why they were even driving to Dallas, she gave up the effort and smiled with the joy of getting away from the millions of people who lived and breathed in Southern California. She was ready to enjoy the sheer quiet of the trip through the desert. Wide-open spaces had a great appeal for her this morning.
Eden looked again into the eyes of the boy seated across from her and waited for him to finish chewing his latest bite. “Uh, can you give me a name? I’d sure like to quit thinking of you as the ‘boy.’ Any name would be fine. It doesn’t have to be yours. Make one up for me.”
The boy smiled slightly and looked at Eden with even more interest. “Why are you doing this for me? Why didn’t you just drive away from that alley last night and forget about me? Why did you rescue me?”
Eden filled her mouth with a handful of chips and chewed slowly to play for time. For the first time, she really thought about what she’d done the night before and she, too, wondered why she’d done it.
“Okay, here’s what I think. Decisions are made in just one second. It doesn’t really matter why a person makes a certain decision. As soon as it’s made, the next thing will happen and then the next decision will have to be made. Most of the time people don’t even weigh the consequences of every little decision they make during their lifetime. If they did, they wouldn’t get anything done. They’d still be back in time somewhere, wondering whether to take that first step or not. Anyway, people usually make up reasons later on after everything has already happened. There are all kinds of words for that: rationalization, justification, excuses. But, in reality, most decisions are made unconsciously and a course of action has been started. So the reason for the decision is unimportant. The decision itself is the only important thing. Once it’s been made, for good or bad, there’s no going back.”
The boy smiled really widely this time and said, “You mean, shit happens.”
Eden laughed explosively and sprayed her next mouthful of chips all over the table. “Oh, God, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to coat you with half-chewed food. Oh, wait a minute, maybe unconsciously I did mean to do that. That could just be one more of those decisions that can’t be taken back.”
“Deakin.”
“What did you just say?”
“Deakin, that’s my name.”
“You mean, like at church. D-E-A-C-O-N.”
“No, nothing to do with church. D-E-A-K-I-N. Thanks for helping me get away from Joey. He was really mad last night.”
“Why?”
“Uh, it’s a long story. You don’t want to hear it right now.”
“We have a long drive ahead of us. You can tell me while we drive. Now, we need a Wal-Mart or a K-Mart or something like that. You need some new clothes. You’re way too tall to fit into mine. I’ll drive and you look. Holler when you see something suitable.”