A Short Story

Short stories make really good bathroom reading. Here’s one:

TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT

Taffy awoke in the shivery, silvery dawn and reached for her knapsack. She clasped it between her ankles and drew it, and her knees, up to her chest. She wrapped her arms around her knees and tried to go back to sleep for just a few minutes longer, but of course she couldn’t. Jocko was there, mumbling and poking at her. “Up. Up! I’m hungry.”

She rolled over onto her back and straightened her legs and gave them a shake, each in turn, to get the circulation going. Dancer’s legs that her daddy had been so proud of, long, lithe, muscular, so long ago. She sat up and pulled the knapsack straps over her shoulders, stood up and walked away from the corner bench where Jocko still lay under a navy surplus greatcoat. She didn’t look at him or acknowledge him in any way. She headed for the convenience store-cum-service station on the opposite corner of the street.

First things first. She’d pee, then do what she could about hygiene, then count out what she had left from last night’s tricks. Most of it had gone for hits but she thought she might not have to shoplift this morning and that was a nice way to start the day.

She shoved some loonies and twoonies and a lonesome ten-dollar bill into her bomber jacket pocket, hefted the knapsack back onto her shoulders and opened the washroom door. Another fugitive street girl waited patiently to perform her own morning ablutions and take stock behind the locked door. Taffy knew this one – Sheera, small, scared and scarred. Younger than anyone should ever be out here, and alone. She hugged her and slipped her a couple of one-dollar coins then walked to the self-serve coffee bar. She prepped the usual caffeine fixes, grabbed a couple of morning-glory muffins and took them to the cash where she stood in line behind a large guy in denim overalls and plaid shirt, paying for the gas he had just poured into his Ram truck. What a cliché, she thought, then, looking down at her own exposed cleavage and short skirt, so am I, I suppose.

She paid with the ten-dollar bill, regretting how quickly it became next to nothing. She balanced the coffees and muffins on a take-out tray, pushed the door open with her shoulder and walked out. She was brought up short by the large denim-clad guy who stepped out just behind her and restrained her by grabbing her knapsack. “What the fuck?” she demanded, glaring at him. “Go on over there and give your guy his coffee,” he replied. “Tell him you need a poo and come back here. Go in one door and out t’other. I’m parked in the lot on the other side of the buildin’. Black Ram, Newfoundland plates.”

“Hey! I’m not doing business in broad daylight in the fucking parking lot, mister! Let go or I’ll start screaming and bring down all my peeps and the cops, too.” Taffy shrugged his hands away and backed off, eyeing him disdainfully. “I’m goin’ back home to Trinity Bay,” the large man said. “Me and my folks don’t use young women like people here been usin’ you. You need to leave. That’s all I’m sayin’. And you can leave wit’ me.”

“Are you nuts?” Taffy laughed at him as she walked away towards her Fate: Jocko in the greatcoat. “I’ll wait for a half an hour in case ya changes yer mind,” the large guy said and suddenly smiled, irradiating the parking lot. Then he turned away.

 Taffy regained her corner and handed Jocko his coffee and muffin. “What that guy want?” Jocko asked, eyeing her suspiciously. “He said I remind him of his kid sister. Guess she died in a car wreck or something.” Taffy lied, realizing as the words left her mouth that she had already decided, and furthermore, she had decided the same thing for Sheera. They were going to fucking Newfoundland! With a stranger who had a smile like megawatts on a night-time football field and a Dodge Ram truck. She sat on the bench with Jocko and sipped her coffee, polished off her muffin, lit and smoked a cigarette. Then she stood, reached out her hand for Jocko’s trash, added it to her own and headed back across the street. “Need a dump,” she called over her shoulder as she tucked the trash into a curb-side bin and scooted back into the convenience store. She checked once to make sure Jocko wasn’t following, then walked down the store’s interior corridor to the service door. She opened it, stuck her head out and spied the black Ram backed into the parking spot closest to the exit lane. One more quick look around and she was sprinting across the parking lot, long legs pumping, covering ground like she was running for a foxhole with bullets whizzing around her head. The door swung open and she clambered in, he of the megawatt smile and she with a pirate’s grin facing each other over the console. “Well, by God, ya did ‘er! Duck down, now, we’re peelin’ rubber.”

Taffy scooted down to the floor and squatted there while he pulled up to the street. “Stop!” Taffy hissed. “Turn right and take the next left. We’re bringing my friend with us, or I’m not going at all.” “Ok,” he replied. “Just tell me when to stop drivin’.”

Taffy sat up and looked around. “Ok. Pull up in front of this blue house on the right. She sees a customer here most mornings. Don’t go into the driveway – you’re going to have to be ready to scram fast. I’ll go get her.”  “What’s she look like – I’ll get her. Ain’t nobody gonna try to stop me, but you’re just a little thing.” He held Taffy’s arm lightly, worry in his eyes. “I can’t drive,” she answered. “It’s got to be you behind the wheel when we come out. Leave the door open.”

With that, she was down the driveway and into a side door in the time it took him to put the truck in park. He watched and strained his ears for sound, any sound, coming from within the blue house. He saw and heard nothing and sweated profusely until two smallish bodies flew down the side walkway and landed one atop the other in the passenger seat. Two excited young voices yelled “Go! Go!” He jammed his foot down on the gas pedal and left the curb with the door still open. Taffy strained every bit of muscle she had to hang on to the door and pull it closed. 

“Omegod! Omegod! We did it! We’re outa here,” Sheera yelled, then was abruptly quiet. “Where is it we’re goin’? Taffy? Where we goin’?” Her small face turned to the large guy driving. “Who’re you?” She reached past Taffy to grasp the door handle.

“Look. I don’t see no one followin’ us, so I’m gonna pull over up here and we’re gonna introduce ourselves,” the large guy said. “After that if you wanna get out and go back where you come from, that’s fine, but if not, once we’s on the highway, you can’t be jumpin’ outa the truck. That’s cracked! It’s a long, long drive back home and I don’t want to have to use me damn child-proof locks all the way through the Maritimes, ok?”

He pulled the truck into the Welland Street Walmart lot, parked and turned to his passengers. Sheera sat on Taffy’s lap looking at him warily. “I’m Milton Monster,” he said with a grin. “No, you’re not.” Sheera said. “No, you’re fuckin’ not.” Milton pulled out his Newfoundland driver’s licence and handed it to her. “That’s a Newfoundland name – there’s lots of us. And that’s me home address and where we’re headed. If you want to, though – only if you want to.”

“What do you want from us, though? We ain’t got no money for nothin’. That means we gotta do somethin’ in exchange, like, right? And what we gonna do when we get there?” Sheera looked at Milton full in the face: she had been negotiating sexual favours since she was eleven.

“What’s your name?” Milton asked softly. “Sheera,” she answered, equally softly. Johns rarely asked – she was hesitant to say it out loud. “How old are you?” he asked. “Thirteen,” she replied. Milton looked into Taffy’s eyes. “She’s why you said you’d come, huh?” Taffy nodded. Milton smiled hugely at her. “Proud to know you, Taffy.”

Milton put his driver’s licence back into his billfold and pulled out a faded picture, handed it to Taffy. “This here’s me family, what used to be me family, I mean. That’s me wife, Colleen, my Queen, I called ‘er, and that’s me little girl, Dotty, and sometimes she were. Dotty, that is. They died when me house burned down that time. I was at the oil patch when it happened, like so many of us was, then. Nowadays I lives with me Mom and me fader in the house where I was raised. That’s where I’ll be takin’ you. Me Mom and Dad is real nice people. They’ll feed you good, take right good care of you. If you want them to.”

Taffy handed the picture to Sheera. “Milton,” she said, “you know we’re addicts, right?” He gazed levelly at her. “I was one meself, after the fire,” he replied. “It ain’t so easy, but we can do it, one day at a time. I expect one or the both of you will spend a bit of cranky time in that there back seat on the way home, but it’s comfy and you’ll be through the worst of it before we even hits the ferry to Newfoundland. If you want to, that is.”

“Ok,” Sheera said, staring at Milton with disbelief, “I hear you, but what do you want in exchange? Nobody gives nothin’ away, really. Anyhow, I ain’t never seen it.”

“Well, I think that’s goddamn sad. You ain’t never met me parents, that’s all. When you are feelin’ up to it, you can come out and help us with the fishin’. There’s nothin’ like being out there on the water. It’ll make you right glad you’re alive, it will.”

Sheera shuddered. “Fish? I don’t think so. Can’t swim, anyhow.”

“I’ll teach you,” Taffy offered. She turned to Milton. “My name is Daphne. Taffy’s like, I don’t know, a stage name, or something. I don’t want it anymore.”

“Daphne it is, then. Sheera, is that your real name?”

“Yeah – my mom had a thing for that TV show. I like it, though. It was a dopey but cute thing my mom had and she shared it with me. All I’ve got that she had, so…..”

“Are we goin’, then?” Milton asked. Sheera opened the front passenger door, climbed down and shut it behind her. She clambered into the back and stuck her head between the front seats.

“Allons-y!” she yelled. And so they did.