Wild Horses

Chapter One

It was time to play the hiding game.

Legs drawn up to her chin, Suzy sat behind one of the brick piers supporting the old house. She'd been waiting down here in the crawl space under the house since Daddy got the phone call before supper. He took one look at the phone's screen and went into the kitchen to talk. Then he came back into the front room where Suzy was painting her doll's fingertips with markers and said he had an important visitor coming;

"Mommy?" she asked.

He shook his head.

"Uncle Sherman?"

Daddy grinned. "Them as asks no questions isn't told no lies, Suzy girl. Time for you to go to the hiding place. And you know what happens after that?"

"We get ice cream?"

"You betcha."

"With sprinkles?"

But Daddy was already zipping the phone into her purse. "You know what to do, right?"

She nodded. It was a bad man coming. Bad men came to see Daddy a lot, but after they left, he had money to buy ice cream with, so the hiding part wasn't really bad. It was a game they played, her and Daddy. She ran as fast as she could to the bedroom closet with the trap door that opened into the dusty place under the house.

"Good girl." Daddy pushed the closet's hangers to one side, making them rattle like Halloween skeletons. "A lot of people think you're dumb, Suzy, just because you're slow. But you're not dumb, not one bit, are you?"

She shook her head, liking the feel of her hair flying straight out from her head and slapping against her cheeks.

"You really know a lot, Suzy girl. You're like me that way. Your mommy thinks I'm dumb. Sometimes she acts like I got holes in my head."

He dropped to his knees and opened the trap door. "But I don't, do I? Do I look like I got holes in my head?"

She giggled and shook her head again.

Daddy set her down into the space below the house. "Now, here's your dolly and your purse. Remember, we're playing the hiding game, so don't you dare touch the phone unless I yell for you to do it. You understand? there's a bad man coming, so you got to be real quiet till I come get you."

"I'll be quiet, Daddy. I promise."

"As soon as he leaves, I'll let you out. I'll have a lot of money then. A lot of money. And we'll go get you an ice cream with everything you want on it."

Suzy looked up at him against the light from the bedroom closet. Then Daddy shut the trap door. For a second, there was a skinny outline of light around the edge, then that went out. There were more rattling noises overhead that told her Daddy had pushed the empty clothes hangers back in place.

There was still a little light under the house, finding its way through the screen-covered vents in the foundation. But mostly it was dark. Suzy pulled one of her markers out of the little purse, but it was too dark to see how to finish painting her doll's fingertips.

In a little bit, there was a car noise outside. Then from the back of the house, creaks in the floor from feet moving overhead. They were heavy feet, making louder noises than Daddy's, shaking the spider webs that hung like curtains from the twisty pipes under the floor until she was afraid she might sneeze and the bad man would hear her. There were voices overhead too, and once somebody said her name. She wasn't sure if it was Daddy or the bad man, but it was scary to think the bad man knew her name. She clutched her doll tight and held her breath when the heavy feet came into the hallway toward the bedroom.