We were going to miss the bus! And it was all my fault!
Bitsie just wanted to leave Arnold tied up in that puppet-clothing- rope. It would serve him right, Bitsie said. But I couldn’t do that. Who knew if anyone but us ever visited the Great van Gurp? If someone a hundred years from now found a skeleton tied to a chair with tiny pink jackets, how would I feel?
Rotten. 62
And anyway, Zola had said Arnold was an honest man.
She believed there was good in this guy. I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. I figured he wasn’t the first person the TV business had driven nuts.63 Someone probably knew how to help him.
When he came to, I told him that.
Sort of.
By that time I’d taken the rope off and dragged him into his big lopsided bed.64 I made Bitsie stay out in the hall and keep his mouth shut and I told Arnold that he’d had a seizure. An anti-flatulent diabetic postpartum seizure, I called it, which doesn’t actually exist but sounds serious. I told him he’d been hallucinating and saying crazy things about talking puppets and cha-cha lessons and holding people hostage. I patted his hand just like my dad always does (especially with his “difficult” patients) and I told him I was going to get him a doctor.
Then I stuffed Bitsie into my knapsack again and ran like my undies were on fire.
I was at the phone booth by the Petrocan calling 9-1-165 when I saw the bus to Toronto fly by.
I gave the lady Arnold’s address, hung up and ran.
And I mean ran.
Like I’ve never run before. I knew it was hopeless, but I kept on running anyway. If I stopped running and just admitted I missed the bus, I was going to have to come up with another plan. That was too terrible to even think about.
So I kept running—even though the bus was half a click ahead of me.
I’d spent a month thinking that the big city and everything about it was so much better than hick towns like the one I’d grown up in. But right then I knew it wasn’t true.
There are a lot of wonderful things about the country. If you asked me today, I’d list the cows and the beaches and the Turkey Burger off exit 13. But that’s not what I was thinking about then.
What I really loved about the backwoods at that moment in time were the country drivers. The type of driver that never breaks 50 k an hour even if his wife is giving birth to triplets in the backseat.
The type that will block traffic for five minutes while he decides whether to turn left and visit Uncle Basil or keep on going straight to the Bingo Hall.
The type that will slow down to zero to admire some roadkill, totally unaware that the Saturday Greyhound to New Cumberland, Goldrink, Neewack and Toronto has had to grind to a halt behind him and, since it was just sitting there doing nothing, let on a tall, skinny girl with stupid orange braids and a wiggling knapsack.
62 I’d probably feel rotten if I lived to 112 anyway. But that’s not my point.
63 I mean, I already knew at least one other…
64 For which he owes me, big time. What did that guy eat?
65 I have to admit, Bitsie was right about that. He’d seen enough police shows to know if I used Kathleen’s cell phone they would have been able to trace the call. I didn’t need that.