The M.I.L.F. Man

The not-so-great escape

As I stumbled back up against him, the dude they'd dragged away right behind Chas, said, "He ain't in there! C'mon!"

And then he raised up his hands like he was being arrested because all the students were stampeding over our way, pointing those guns we'd grabbed right up at him like they meant business.

So he bleated, "Y'all wanna get outta here, you'd better hold your fire!"

And I barked back, "Where's my husband?" Cause that was all I cared about.

He took us racing over to this rickety looking storage shed where we heard a muffled grunt and something metallic rattling inside. Which got me kicking and yanking on that door like a crazy woman—the others joined in until this Jeffrey guy (I learned all the names later) stepped up and shot the padlock like he definitely knew guns better than the rest of us.

Chas was laying on the filthy floor, all tied up and gagged against some shovels and rakes and things. He had a blue eye, lots of fresh cuts and scrapes and bruises. But he sat right up once we got him untied and cried, "Did they touch you?"

I put my hand on his face and said, "Hush. I'm fine!"

And the "bad" guy—his name turned out to be Lonnie--yelled, "We need to get the fuck outta here! Y'all head for that van you come here in! I'ma bust into the key box'n' meet you--"

"Wait—you're goin' with us?" I said.

He barked, "Gon' do what I say! We ain't got time to talk!"

And then he ran off to one of the trailers and came back with this little grey metal box that he handed off to one of the students as we ran to get into that van.

Our cell phones were in the box—batteries dead of course. And as we all dug in there trying to sort out which cell belonged to who, he snapped, "Shut that damned door so we can go!"

A few people almost fell out of that damned door when he gunned it without checking if we'd closed it all the way. But once we'd secured ourselves as best we could while bumping and shimmying down all these lumpy dirt roads, I held Chas as close to me as I could to keep him from being jostled around too much.

And this guy named Julio asked, "What the hell'd those bastards beat you for?"

It was actually Lonnie who told him, "He knocked Tuck on his ass," with a chuckle in his voice. "Cause Tuck got to talkin' about what we all oughta do to you and how that was the only thing you was good for and that one launched his whole body off that chair and sent Tuck to the floor so hard we all saw stars for a minute."

"Okay, I'm confused," this Paul guy said. "Weren't you with them?"

Lonnie turned the van onto another little wheel rut road and growled, "I ain't goin' to prison for that crazy mother fucker! Sum's wrong, man. Sum's really wrong. And I don't want no parts of this shit—you mark my words, somebody's gonna get kilt! And I do not want no blood on my hands."

"Then why the hell are you even here?"

"Hell...that's too long a story to tell right now."

"Try," Jeffrey snapped. And Lonnie looked in the rearview and saw lots of scowling faces staring back.

So he sighed and said, "Cause I don't want 'em hurtin' my fam'ly, for one thing. See...we was some o' the ones got shunned when Tuck's Daddy started havin' all these visions said God told him they ought not to be hidin' down there in Mexico. Said they should be up here with their own kind, preparin' them for the coming of Our Lord. Said our numbers was dwindlin', the righteous. Convinced the men that they should have more'n' one wife--my mama was a third wife. Joined up with them after a revival meeting they had after they moved up here. She'n' the others...they're true believers. They ain't never gonna question nothin'—couldn't live no other way. And I was like 'at too—still am, except...well...this thing we're doin' here..."