Run For Your Life

 

             Chapter 1

Flicking a scab of yellowed paint from the wall, Josh paused at the front door. The cold March night whispered through its cracks—a warning too soft to hear, but loud enough to feel.

He scanned the living room, looking for something to care about, his face etched with a weight beyond its twelve years.

You’re supposed to feel sad when you leave a home you’ve lived in for seven years, he chided himself.

But he didn’t feel sad.

He wasn’t sure what he felt. It was a swirl of doubt and insecurity pureed together with fear.

Lifting a bag of cups from the couch, Josh’s hands slipped, filling the room with a tinkling clatter.

Already on edge, he found the sound magnified the terror eating away at his thoughts.

“Be careful with those things,” his mother warned from the kitchen.

“I got it,” Josh called back, trying to sound calm. His mind, clouded with nervous anticipation, made feeling calm an unreachable goal.

Flipping the hood of his woolen coat over his straw-colored hair, he hurried into the icy moonlit night.

Frigid winds slapped his thin cheeks red and cemented the hairs in his nose with ice as he slogged across the thirty-foot gravel driveway. Each stone lay covered with ice like a million marbles glued together. One misstep and the cups would be trash.

He had to be quick and careful if they were going to escape before his stepfather came home. That left no time to clean up a mess.

Holding the bag high to block the bitter wind, he waddled forward like a penguin on a glacier. For most people, the ice was a nuisance; for Josh, it was a welcome relief. With all his focus on walking, there was no room for other thoughts.

Reaching the waiting trunk of their ten-year-old Chevy Malibu, he lowered the bag and took his first breath since leaving the house.

Puffs of icy-mist drifted from his mouth over the packed dishes and threadbare towels. The swirling fog tugged at his thoughts like a whirlpool drawing in a leaf.

What will the kids at Bradbury Middle School say Monday when I don’t show up for class? he pondered. Will they even know I’m gone? Will they care?

Josh didn’t have many friends at Bradbury Middle, and none of them were close. That was mostly his stepfather’s fault.

The town of Bradbury counted about two-thousand residents and every one of them knew his stepfather, Fred Gibson. Fred had a bad temper and didn’t care who he took it out on. There was even a rumor that he had robbed a bank and killed a teller, but no one could ever prove it. It was no wonder parents didn’t want their children anywhere near Fred or his stepson.

“Josh Taylor, stop lollygagging,” his mother chastened from the house.

Snapped back by her words, and the chilling thought of Fred catching them, he rushed for the warmth of the bungalow.

Swirling dead, gray leaves followed him up the rickety wooden steps and through the open door.

“Check to make sure we have everything,” his mother instructed, her eyes darting about the room.

The stress in her voice stoked a quiver in Josh’s gut, a nervousness that was becoming volcanic. The closer they came to leaving, the harder the quakes were to control. It was like getting ready to ride the most ferocious roller coaster in the world when all you’ve ever been on was the teacups ride.

He tossed a sideways glance at his mother. Her usual well-combed hair appeared tousled like a troll doll’s and the gentle smile that always greeted him was turned down tight. Her delicate five-foot frame stood rigid and alert. Though she was a few inches taller than he was, tonight she looked smaller.

How are we going to make it on our own? he queried in silence.

Fred was a brutal drunkard, and a cruel stepfather, but he protected his family like a lion protects its kill. The thought of living without Fred was almost as scary as living with him.

It had been eight years since his mother left Coral Cove, Florida to move to New Jersey and marry Fred. Josh was four at the time, but he still remembered how his mother cried every day after his dad died. When he died, part of her died with him. The pain of living in a town where they had grown up together and married was unbearable. For eight years, she fought the ghosts of the past, while for seven of those years Josh endured the demons of the present. Now it was time to go home.

In the kitchen, Josh’s eyes danced over the cracked linoleum floor. It was as bare as the countertops. Even the magnets on the chipped porcelain refrigerator were gone.

Surveying the living room, he saw rectangles on the wall surrounded by faded paint. Each stain marked a picture that told of events in his life. One photo was of him and his mother sitting on a bench-swing in Coral Cove, Florida. He was three at the time it was taken—before they moved to New Jersey and came to live with Fred. The little boy in the picture had a huge smile with sparkling eyes.

Another photo showed him when he was eight. He had just won a fishing contest, but the lifeless eyes and sullen face made it look as though he had lost. The happy little boy on the swing was a stranger, someone Josh knew nothing about, but the boy in the fishing photo he knew well.

The rest of the living room held nothing of value. The beer-stained couch and patched chair sat empty; the plaid throws that kept him warm at night, packed away.   

Dropping to the floor, he checked under the couch. It looked empty except for a few clumps of dust and a dark rectangular box tucked in the far corner. 

Josh stretched his arm as far as he could under the couch. His fingertips pressed on the side of the box, moving it a little closer. After several attempts, he managed to pull the box from its hiding place.

A flush of excitement swept through his body; it was the wooden chess set that had belonged to his dad. The box was locked and in perfect condition. He ran his fingers over his dad’s initials R.T. that stood for Richard Taylor. Fred told him he had thrown the chess set out years ago.

Thoughts of his father rushed into his mind. Patchwork thoughts, filled with fact and fantasy sewn together with threads of make-believe. His father died when he was two, but in his mind, he lived. Often he conjured up illusions that possessed all the textures of reality. He and his dad would go fishing or play ball or just sit and talk about the day. Every memory was colored with sunshine and laughter. Now, after ten years, it was hard to sort out real memories from ones made up.

“Hurry up, Josh,” his mother called out to him, her voice ripe with tension.

With trembling hands, he placed the chess set into his brown tattered suitcase and fumbled to tie a rope around it. The lock on the suitcase was broken and its casing scuffed like an old potato. He wrapped the rope around one more time to make sure nothing fell out.

Until tonight, the only thing he had that belonged to his dad was a math book, which he never let out of his sight. Now he had the chess set. It was like finding his dad all over again.

“Let’s go, let’s go,” his mother urged.

There was no time to savor the moment or even to tell his mother what he had found. Time was not a friend tonight.

“Let me check my room one more time,” Josh pleaded.

He set his math book and suitcase on the couch. Then pushing aside the purple drape hanging in the doorway, which separated his room from the kitchen, he looked one last time.

His eyes scurried from the single bed jammed against the wall to the apple crate, which he used as a dresser. There was no sign that he had ever been there. A single drab olive-green blanket, tossed on the bed, was all that remained, but that belonged to Fred.

“Listen!” his mother said, holding up a finger.

Outside the unmistakable rumble of Fred’s pickup turned them to stone. He wasn’t supposed to be home, not for at least another hour.

The old rust-riddled truck barreled onto the gravel driveway and skidded to a stop just before the front steps.