by Greg Howard
Miss Betty weaves the bus down the dusty back roads of Buckingham, fishtailing slightly every few minutes. The windows rattle in their frames like alarms going off, pleading with her to slow the heck down. Miss Betty is an old black lady who always wears a pink-and-blue housecoat over her day dress, and sandals that barely contain her crusty biscuits. She’s a retired nurse and way too old to be driving forty schoolchildren in a giant yellow death box this close to a six-foot-deep ditch. Her Coke-bottle glasses do nothing to calm our nerves.
As Gary rambles on about Rebecca Johnson’s butt, or chest, or one of her other rapidly developing body parts, I casually glance over my shoulder. Dylan Mathews sits in his usual seat in the back row. Alone. Sometimes I wonder if he’s embarrassed to be trapped on here with a bunch of kids when he should really be on the Upton High School bus. He’s slumped down in the seat, so only the top of his straw-colored hair is showing. It’s always buzzed short, which somehow makes him look even older than he really is.
“Be right back,” I say, cutting Gary off. I have to do this before I chicken out.
I pop up out of my seat and wobble down the aisle to the back of the bus, grabbing on to seat corners to steady myself as I go and hoping we don’t get any closer to that ditch.
“Riley James,” Miss Betty barks from up front.
I glance back over my shoulder at her. She narrows her eyes on me in the oversized rearview mirror.
“Sit yo’ narrow behind down, boy!” she yells.
“Yes, ma’am,” I call over my shoulder and hurry the rest of the way to the back. Miss Betty has the unusual talent of switching on a dime from being the sweetest old lady you could ever meet—mornin’, baby, bye, sweetie, tell ya mama and ’em Miss Betty said how ya durin’—to the most terrifying. Like announcing to the whole bus how narrow (or wide) your butt is, or how if she wasn’t busy driving the bus she’d give you the tail whoopin’ your parents are too lily-livered to give you. It seems really unprofessional, but no one’s going to tattle on Miss Betty. Not when our lives are completely in her hands for an hour a day, five days a week.
When I reach Dylan, I realize his eyes are closed. His head bobs around a little, following the jerky movements of the bus. I ease backward, but his eyes pop open.
“Sorry,” I say. “I didn’t know you were sleeping.”
He scratches the back of his head and stretches his arms out wide. His T-shirt rides up, exposing a tanned sliver of smooth skin, and just like that, my cheeks go hot. I look away so he doesn’t think I’m some kind of hell-bound pervert or something.
When he scoots up in the seat, he winces a little and touches his side. “It’s okay,” he says, playing it off with a weak smile. “What’s up?”
I sit facing him on the edge of the empty seat across the aisle and will my voice not to fail me like it did at recess.
“I just wanted to say thanks for what you did today,” I say, impressed by the sturdiness of my voice. “With Gene.”
Dylan shrugs. “Let me know if he bothers you again.”
My insides melt into a puddle of goo, but all I do is nod.
“And just forget that stuff Gene said about your mama,” he says, leaning his head back on the seat and looking me straight in the eye. “I bet you’ll find her real soon.”
His words are so kind and unexpected that if I don’t just ignore them, I might lose the tiny bit of cool I’ve managed to pull together. If I tear up in front of my own personal redneck superhero, I will never forgive myself. I keep going before my tongue reties itself into a knot.
“Have you ever heard them?” I say. “The Whispers?”
He closes his eyes and laces his fingers together, resting them on his flat stomach. “Nope. Can’t say I have.”
I feel like an undercover cop, inspecting his face while his eyes are closed. His skin is golden brown and his cheeks have a deep red glow. A few—seven—light freckles dot his nose, but otherwise, his skin is smooth and flawless. Not that Dylan’s seven freckles could be called flaws, really. His jaw is firmly set and he has what Mama calls cheekbones for days.
Dylan either senses my disappointment in his answer or my pervy inspection of him, because he opens one eye and grins a little. “But that don’t mean they ain’t real.” He closes the one eye again. That’s when I notice for the first time how long his eyelashes are. He gives his lips a casual lick that aggravates my other condition.
The bus hits a deep rut in the road, jostling everyone in their seats. Dylan opens his eyes and glances out the window, probably to see how close we got to the ditch and our death. I feel like I’m intruding on his nap, and being a little creepy too. He probably has to get right to work on the farm when he gets home.
“We’re going camping tomorrow after school,” I say, trying to drag out my time with him as long as possible without seeming like a stalker.
Stalking is when you can’t stop thinking about someone, so you break into their house and watch them while they sleep, or make up excuses to be close to them when they’re awake. It’s a real crime. They made a whole show about it, but it got canceled after only one season.
As in, I could be breaking the stalking law right this minute, but hopefully Dylan wouldn’t press charges against me because he’s a nice person.
“So if you’re out there hunting, don’t shoot us, okay?” I stand to leave, pleased with my small attempt at humor. But Dylan doesn’t smile. His face actually goes a little dark.
“Y’all need to watch yourselves when you go out there,” he says in a serious tone. “Stay close to the tree line. All kinds of crazy in them woods.”
His dark brown eyes plow into mine, like he knows something I don’t and really wants me to hear his warning. We only go deep into the woods when we’re exploring during the daylight. We always stay close to the tree line when we go camping. But that’s not the plan this time, and he looks at me like he knows that.
I nod. “Okay.” I turn and head back down the aisle to my seat while Miss Betty isn’t looking, Dylan’s words needling me the whole way.
All kinds of crazy in them woods.
9
CAN’T NEVER COULD AND IF NEVER WOULD
Later that afternoon, I count down the minutes until the sun sets. I try distracting myself with homework and then with chores. I’m allowed to go into Danny’s room without his permission even though he’s not home from football practice yet because I’m on trash duty this week. Danny has a lot of trash.
I push right through his door like I own the place. Ugh. What a dump. There’re underarm-smelling clothes all over the floor. The trash can is overflowing with wadded-up tissues. He must have a cold. Game magazines cover the bed. It’s a mess. But I’m sure Daddy thinks it’s better than a tidy room with pee-soaked sheets.
My eyes are drawn to one of the magazines on the bed, so I pick it up. On the cover is a shirtless brown-skinned man in tight black pants with tons of muscles bulging out every which-a-way. He’s holding some kind of huge space machine gun, and beside him the headline says:
Cord Stargazer Is Back!
It’s just an avatar and not a real live man, but my other condition starts acting up anyway. I quickly put the magazine back where I found it and shake those thoughts out of my head. That’s when I notice the corner of a white book sticking out from under Danny’s bed. I look over my shoulder even though no one is home, because I know I shouldn’t be snooping. All clear. Dropping to my knees, I slide the book out slowly and recognize it right away. It’s one of our family photo albums from back when people still had photos printed at the Walmart and then put them in spiral-bound albums. We used to have four or five of them on the bookshelf in the living room, all full up to the brim with our memories, but I haven’t seen them since Mama went missing. I figured Daddy took them down to the police station so Frank and his team would have lots of different pictures of Mama for their
search. Turns out Danny kept one for himself.
I open the album and right there on the first page is a picture of me and Mama sitting on the back porch swing, except I’m really little. I remember this one. I’m sitting in her lap and she’s tickling me. I probably peed on her. There’s a bunch of other pictures too. One of Mama and Daddy getting married at the North Creek Church of God. They don’t look much older than Danny is now. Another one of Mama’s and my last joint birthday party, when she got strawberry cake with white and red icing and I got yellow layer cake with chocolate icing. There’s another picture of me and Danny with Grandma and Grandpa one Easter all dressed up for church and standing out in front of Mama’s climbing red roses on the front porch. One shows me and Danny when we were little, sitting in front of the Christmas tree in matching blue and black cowboy outfits. Danny sits cross-legged and wears a cowboy hat. I sit with my legs folded under me. I don’t have on a cowboy hat like Danny’s. I was probably afraid it would mess up my hair or something.
There’re a lot of pictures of Danny when he was a baby—way more than there are of me when I was a baby. I guess that’s because he got here first and Mama and Daddy were more excited about him being born than me. Plus everyone talks about how Danny was so beautiful when he was little that some people thought he was a girl. Nobody thought I was a girl, though. When I was a baby, I was bald and fat and not very photogenic.
Photogenic is when some people look really good in just about every picture they take, no matter what kind of face they’re making, what they’re wearing, or how horrible of a person they are.
Like, My brother is very photogenic on the outside, but if someone took a picture of his heart, I bet it would be all shriveled up and dead.
I flip through a few more pages and stop when I spot one of my favorite pictures ever. It’s from the Christmas parade years ago, right after Mama won the Mrs. Upton pageant. She’s sitting on top of the back seat of an open silver Mustang convertible in a pretty blue dress with a little white hat and long white gloves like Cassandra Bailey wears on The DC Fixer. On the side of the car is a sign that says Mama is sponsored by Daniel James—Independent Contractor. Mama looks like a queen waving to the crowd. But she wasn’t waving to just anyone when this picture was taken. She was looking right into the camera and waving at me. I remember like it was yesterday. I waved back, which is why the picture is a little blurry. I was so proud my mama was the Mrs. Upton that I couldn’t stay very still. And I was probably too young to be taking pictures of a beauty pageant queen anyway, so not my fault.
A door slams down the hall. I snap the photo album closed and stuff it back under Danny’s bed, but something blocks it. I lean down to see what it is and find four other family photo albums stuffed under there. Danny stole them all.
Heart dead as a doornail.
* * *
We eat supper at Grandma’s house that evening. The windows are open because it’s not nearly as hot out tonight as it’s been lately. It’s the last day of August and it’s like September is giving us a little taste of the weather it will bring. A honeysuckle-scented breeze rolls in over the dining room table, cooling our food and reminding me that it’s almost time.
Grandpa and Daddy sit at each end of the table. Danny and I sit across from each other. He doesn’t like to sit beside me because he says I smell like pee and Lysol. I promise I don’t, though. I’m a little nervous about that part of the camping trip. But Gary and I usually stay up all night talking, laughing, and stoking the fire. As long as I don’t fall asleep, I should be okay.
I still have to get permission to “stay over at Gary’s house.” After a local boy named Peetie Munn went missing a while back, Daddy didn’t want me to go camping with Gary in the woods anymore, but Mama would say it’s okay as long as we stayed close to the tree line, so I’d always ask her for permission and not him. The police arrested Mordecai Mathews for the Peetie Munn thing, but they couldn’t ever prove he was guilty. Nobody’s seen or heard from Mordecai since they let him go. Most people think he’s dead, so I’m not scared. Besides, Daddy doesn’t seem to care too much about what I do and where I go these days, anyway.
Grandma seems to be in decent spirits tonight and her mind a little sharper than it’s been lately. She’s sitting between Daddy and me, probably on purpose, but she doesn’t eat anything. She never eats with us, just cooks and cooks and cooks and then sits there watching us eat and refilling our plates. Or, if she has one of her sick headaches, she might lie on the sofa in the living room, take some medicine, and pass out while we eat. Mama says that Grandma knows how to cook everything under the sun except a salad. Tonight she made fried pork chops, green beans, stewed potatoes, and a box of Kraft macaroni and cheese. The mac and cheese is always just for me. Danny doesn’t like it. He only likes the homemade kind. His loss.
I don’t talk much at the table because I don’t want supper to go long and miss being outside when the sun goes down. Mama always says that’s the best time to hear the Whispers—as day turns into night, when your senses are a little slippery and the colors of the sky and the sound of nature’s symphony all kind of melt together. Mama calls that magic time.
Grandma tries to replenish my unnaturally orange and unnaturally delicious mac and cheese, but I hold my hands over my plate. “No, thank you. I’m full.”
“Full?” she says. “You’re a growing boy. You need to eat.”
“No, really, Grandma,” I say. “I’m good.”
She eyes me suspiciously but sets the bowl back on the table. She’s always trying to give me extra. Extra food, extra money, extra attention. She understands how hard Mama’s disappearance has been on me. What’s a mama’s boy without his mama, anyway? A grandma’s boy? It’s not the same.
“They say it’s cloudy tomorrow,” Grandpa says down the table to Daddy.
Daddy nods and glances up at Grandpa. “Clear the weekend, though.”
That’s it. Eyes back on his plate. That’s usually about how their conversations go lately. That one actually went on a little longer than usual.
“Frank called today,” Daddy says in a low grumble. “He wants to talk to you about something tomorrow afternoon.”
Exactly thirteen words. It’s the first and only thing Daddy’s said to me since he got home from work, and even though he doesn’t look at me when he says it, everyone knows it was directed at me. The whole table goes silent. Like he just told me I have a date with the devil. Frank’s a little slow and a terrible police detective, but he’s hardly the devil.
“Why do I have to go back so soon?” I try and fail to keep the whine out of my voice. Daddy doesn’t like it when I whine. He says I’m getting too old for that junk. “I’ve given him my statement like a hundred times,” I say. “I told him I don’t remember anything else. He should spend his time trying to find Mama instead of harassing me.”
Daddy lifts his head and looks at me. His eyes are cold and go dark on a dime.
“If Frank says he needs to talk to you, you will go and you will talk to him,” he says, gritting his teeth, his eyes piercing. “And you will tell him the truth. Every blasted bit of it.”
He slaps his hand down on the table. Hard. I jump a little in my seat. Everyone stops eating mid-chew and freezes. Danny and Grandpa both look up from their food at the same time, staring back and forth from Daddy to me. Grandma shifts nervously in her seat beside me and clears her throat. At my feet, Tucker lets out a soft, throaty growl of his own. Daddy’s not the least bit threatened by the show of aggression from my protector, but anyone else would be.
“I always tell him the truth.” I immediately regret opening my mouth. Daddy purses his lips and forces a steady stream of air out his nose. He rubs his hands over his face and then flexes his fingers, like he’s trying to keep them from forming into fists.
I sit frozen in my chair, afraid to move an inch. Since Mama was taken, Daddy has been dista
nt, but he’s never been cruel. It wasn’t even so much what he said as the way he said it. And his meaning was clear. He thinks I know more about what happened to Mama than I’m telling. But I don’t. I promise.
Daddy hangs his head and covers his face with his hands. “I . . . I can’t. I just can’t anymore.”
He doesn’t say it to anyone in particular, but I know it’s meant for me. He probably means he can’t love me anymore.
Daddy keeps talking—about Mama, about Frank—but I don’t hear him. It all gets dumped into my internal Charlie Brown teacher translator.
. . . wah waah wah wah, waah wah waah . . .
Plus all I can think about is the fact that he just used that word. There’re two words that we’re forbidden to use. Can’t and if.
A couple of years ago, Mama and Daddy decided they were sick and tired of me and Danny making excuses for everything. Like when Daddy tried to teach me to catch a football and I kept saying I can’t do it every time the darn thing hit me in the chest. Or when Danny would say he’d make better grades if his teachers liked him. Mama would always respond by saying, “Can’t never could and if never would!” That got real annoying, real fast.
One day Mama made us empty out two plastic containers of washing detergent and decorate them like little people. She gave us yarn to glue on top of the containers like hair. Mama’s crafty. I used extra yarn on mine to make a mustache. We drew on mouths, glued on buttons for noses, and used Mama’s old dishrags to make little coats for them. They turned out pretty good for what we had to work with, and we actually had fun doing it together.
With a black Magic Marker, Mama wrote Can’t on the front of one of the laundry detergent people, and If on the other. While we were busy decorating Can’t and If, Daddy was outside digging two small rectangle holes in the backyard by the old oak tree. He also made two simple wooden crosses with sticks that were planted in the ground at the end of each mini grave with Can’t RIP written on one and If RIP written on the other. We had a funeral out in the backyard that day. Me, Danny, Daddy, Mama, and Tucker. And with Can’t and If dead and buried, Mama said we’re never allowed to use those words again. Mama’s been real strict about it, even after Tucker dug them up a week later and chewed them to bits. But Daddy just said can’t. Twice. It’s like he’s just given up on everything—even Mama’s rules.
