NaNoWriMo: Murder in Wilson Park, Chapter 23

Jerky didn’t think the man in black saw her, but she wasn’t sure.

He’d looked right at her from across the lake but that didn’t mean he’d actually seen her. He was a long way away and she was small and inconspicuous and camouflaged in the trees, but she had that sensation of having locked eyes with someone. Everything changes when you lock eyes. You have a relationship then whether you want to or not.

She waited an hour after watching the man trash Ace’s camp before moving any part of her body. She stayed still, being a leaf, blending with the foliage, breathing just enough to stay alive, and then she decided that if he was going to come after her, he already would have. She stepped out from the bushes and on to the path, shook out her cramped arms, and took a long, lung-filling breath. Just as she exhaled, the force of an arm around her neck yanked her off her feet.

She grabbed at the arm, trying to get her fingers between the black cloth and her throat. She felt as if her neck would break, his arm squeezing harder and harder, and she remembered how to breath just enough to stay alive and made her body go limp, like an autumn leaf drenched with rain.

He ran. He ran holding her by the neck like a hunter might tie a killed possum to his belt, letting her flop against him as he chased down the path, nearly skidding around turns, and splashing across the stony creek at the far end of the park. She watched the trees with their nearly bare branches as they passed and the spurs off the path he didn’t take. He was taking her into the woods that bordered the park and she thought she knew where.

Just beyond those woods was an abandoned sand and gravel mine. Nobody went back there anymore because the mining roads had grown over, but Jerky knew about the place. There were vast stretches of sand and a gravel pit filled with water. It was a desolate place although migrating birds like piping plovers had started to appear. Nebraska made no effort to welcome them, just left them alone which might, in the bird world, be the same thing. If that’s where he was taking her, there would be nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.

He was saying something, maybe yelling, but Jerky couldn’t hear him. She felt the rumble in his chest when he yelled, that’s how she knew, but she didn’t know, couldn’t know what he was saying. Whether he was telling her something, threatening her, or telling her he meant no harm, she had no way of knowing and so she just hung there suspended from his clenched arm trying to be small and pretending to already be dead, maybe so she wouldn’t be so shocked when the time finally came.

She thought of all these things, her impending doom, the long time she’d lived in the park’s woods, the friends she had known, how she’d made a life for herself being wild, how proud she was of her survival, that she had never been beaten down or without hope. These things came together in a sort of prayer and when she was done thinking of all the things, the man tripped in a great, immense heave and they both landed face down at the base of an aspen tree. His arm broke her fall. Nothing broke his.

The man lay still, blood from his nose seeping into the soil. Jerky watched to see if he was breathing and when she saw his back rising and falling ever so slightly, she got up, found a chunk of log and hit him square in the back of his head. He squirmed but didn’t yell out.

Jerky decided that trying to kill him was risky. If she stayed and tried to beat him to death, he could wake any minute and take the log from her. She would become a captive again, now just yards away from a massive, abandoned place where she’d never be found.

She ran.

She ran hard, retracing their path, pounding the dirt with her old hiking boots, looking over her shoulder to make sure he wasn’t following. Her breath came in gulps now, no more trying to breathe just enough to stay alive, now she had to fill her body with the air that would lift her to a safe place. But where would that be? She was by herself, almost always, so where should she run? To her camp? To Ace’s camp? No one was there.

The senior center, that’s where she’d go. There would be people there. They would call the police. She could tell them about the man in black and how he wrecked Ace’s camp and then came after her. He was planning to kill her. She knew that. She just didn’t know why.

“I think that’s the woman they call Jerky over there.” Amanda pointed to the edge of the parking lot where Jerky stood, nervously looking from side to side as if deciding which way to go.

“She’s pretty famous around here even though nobody ever sees her. Supposedly, she lives in the woods, has for years.” Sally waved to Jerky. “Hi there!” If she’d ever known, she’d forgotten that Jerky was deaf.

Jerky was so surprised by the wave, by that insignificant act of friendliness, that she ran across the parking lot to stand in front of Sally and Amanda. She waved at them from just two feet away.

“Hello, How are you?” said Sally. Jerky was breathing heavy but smiling like she’d just won a race.

Jerky pointed to her ears and shook her head.

“Are you saying you can’t hear? Are you deaf?” Sally said these things and then realized how stupid the questions were. Would she say yes if she was deaf?

Amanda pulled out her phone. She typed on the screen: We’re Sally and Amanda. How are you? Then she handed the phone to Jerky.

I’m Jerky and a man in the woods just tried to kill me.