|
TOUGH LOVE
by Rebecca Campobasso
The mid-July sun streams through holes in the worn curtains of the only two windows in the one-room cabin, splashing the wood floor with ribbons of
light. The rancid odor of cat urine hovers offensively like humidity. Short, husky Chief walks to a corner where a young runaway sleeps, nudging her with his steel-toed boot. “This
ain’t no hotel,” he says in a gravelly voice. While the runaway stirs he lights an oil lamp, its dancing flame casting scraggly shadows.
“Where am I?” She asks, attempting to stand.
Rushing in from the darkness, a crazed old man screams in staccato outbursts. “Shut up! Sit down!”
The young girl shrieks and crumbles to the floor just as the skeleton-thin man, inhaling deep on a cigarette comes face-to-face with her.
She trembles. Her large frightened eyes watch the cigarette’s glowing red embers turn to gray ash that cascades silently onto her white t-shirt. “What’s your name, kid?”
“Emily,” she whimpers.
“You wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t run away from home,” he says, coughing stale cigarette smoke into her face.
His eyes are wide and darting, his body odor foul.
“Don’t mind Gnat,” Chief laughs. “He’s just skittish. Remember us? You wanted to score some meth.”
Emily nods. “My friend introduced us last night. The last thing I remember is taking a few sips from a drink you offered.”
“Rohypnol, Roofies,” Gnat says of the hypnotic-laced drink. Moving to the foremost part of the cabin he paces the creaky floor, neurotically
peering out the windows. “What now, Chief?” His hands tremble nonstop while he lights one cigarette after another.
“Relax, Gnat,” Chief replies.
“Yeah, okay.”
Chief continues,
“I took an inventory of food; there’s not much but we’ll have enough for three days.” Slanting his dark blue eyes he glances in Emily’s direction. “The supplies would last longer if there were only two of us.”
Emily retreats into her small corner, weeping.
“How do you like your new life so far?” Chief teases, easing into a chair in front of the scared girl.
She raises her head, desperation showing on her tear-streaked face.
“I bet this is still better than living with your mom, isn’t it?”
Emily looks away.
“Think about it,” he rationalizes. “No more screaming matches with your mom, no rules, no school, and best of all, no curfews.”
Gnat snickers.
“I wouldn’t take crap from my ma either. No one’s the boss of me. I’ll pick my own friends. I’ll smoke weed and cook crystal meth if I want. Ain’t nothing wrong with drugs. I’ve been doing them since I was younger than you.” He proudly spreads his thin, needle-scarred arms. “I’m only 28 years old and people tell me I don’t look my age.”
“We’re going to lie low here a couple days, see what happens,” Chief says, pouring a shot-glass of whisky from a dusty, half-empty bottle. He
guzzles this down as if drinking water.
“Why do we have to lie low?” Emily utters.
Both men laugh.
Chief asks, “You don’t remember?”
Emily shakes her head.
Gnat goads, “You were really tweaked-out on meth.”
“We had to score some cash,” Chief says.
Reaching into his pants waist he deliberately removes a small silver revolver and places it on the table. His gaze fixates on Emily’s face when he adds, “We didn’t leave witnesses.”
Emily gasps. Her eyes dart to the front door.
Chief laughs. “I wouldn’t contemplate escaping if I were you.
We’re in the middle of the hot desert surrounded by Joshua trees. We’re miles from anywhere.”
Emily withdraws into a fetal position.
He continues, “You’re pretty cool.
You’ve been on crystal meth since you were eleven, right? Your friend told me that you’ve bragged about breaking into cars; you’ve stolen from others to get money for your habit.”
Emily shifts. “I’ve never broken into cars, or stole anything by myself,” she stammers.
“I was with someone who did and didn’t want her to think I was chicken.”
Gnat cackles. “If you hang with doggy-doo, you become doggy-doo.”
Chief grins. “Even though you aren’t home there are still guidelines we follow around here. Everyone brings something to the table, including
you.”
Gnat grimaces, showing a mouthful of tiny black teeth clinging to swollen red gums. He walks seductively toward Emily. “You’re cute and
you’ve got something that could bring us in loads of money….”
“Knock it off, Gnat!” Chief snaps.
He turns back to Emily, harshly addressing the slack jawed teen. “Your price of admission for hanging out with us “pretty cool drug dealers” is your life. You’ll recruit other runaways to buy and sell meth! Troubled kids listen to others their age; troubled kids are our biggest customers! Understand?”
Emily nods her head. Chief can see she’s paralyzed with fear.
Gnat cautions,
“Always watch your back. If you get caught, we don’t know you and you don’t know us. You can go away for a lo-o-o-o-ng time if you get caught. I hear that in these women’s prisons they take great pleasure in initiating into the system young tough one’s like yourself.”
“What do you mean?” she sniffles.
Chief shrugs his shoulders. “You choose who you hang with young lady, so expect to pay the consequences. Like it or not, you’re an
accomplice.”
“But I didn’t do anything!” she cries. “I’m not tough, I’m only 16! I’m in tenth grade; I want to graduate high school and be a veterinarian…I….”
Suddenly, a voice blaring on a megaphone outside the cabin interrupts the conversation. “This is the police! We’ve got you surrounded!”
Chief grabs the gun from the table as he and Gnat rush the windows. He smashes a windowpane with the revolver butt then screams, “You’ll never take
us alive!”
“I want to go home!” Emily wails. “I won’t say anything to the police!”
“Shut up!” Gnat screams, his neck arteries bulging dangerously. “You’re in this as much as us and if we go down, you’re going, too!”
Emily recoils as Gnat’s spittle splays across her face. She prays out loud.
“Please help me. I’ll never use drugs or run away again…I’ll obey my parents…”
The sound of crashing glass penetrates the commotion as a smoke bomb rolls rapidly across the floor. Gunshots ring out, screaming ensues and
once the smoke clears, the two drug dealers lay dead.
“I want my mother!” Emily shrieks to S.W.A.T. members who quickly hustle her into a waiting police cruiser that drives hastily away.
Once the cruiser is out of sight, Gnat and Chief, the ‘actor’ drug dealers, get up off the floor.
“That’s the third kid this week,” Gnat says to Chief as he brushes dirt off his clothes. “I’m convinced. This Tough Love Program works.”
Chief nods, pouring a glass of sweet tea from the scotch bottle.
“Next time, though, I’ll play the skittish freak and you play the cool dude, okay?”
“Okay,” Gnat laughs, removing the false, rotten teeth from his mouth. “I’ll call the office and let them know we’re finished with this kid.”
He plugs a phone line into a fake Joshua tree on the Hollywood set as he and Chief prepare to scare the crap out of the next runaway.
Rebecca Campobasso and her husband, Nathan, and are retired and have owned property in Yucca Valley since 1998, becoming full-time residents in
2002.
“I’m a registered nurse and my husband, a longshoreman. Having grown up in small Midwest towns, it’s refreshing for both of us to settle here in the desert, escaping the harried life of Los Angeles and pursuing our hobbies of writing and horse racing.”
|
