“Mrs. Barnes? I’m sorry to bother you, but Kenzie and I are stuck at Wal-Mart, and I tried to call home but my stupid sister is online and I can’t get through. Would you mind sending somebody to get us? My car just spins around in the parking lot, and I’m afraid to drive.”
Jodie feels faint and sits down. Mack shoots off the sofa.
“Are you girls okay?”
“Yes. Kenzie wanted to buy my birthday present. My birthday isn’t until next week, but we decided to go shopping today. I guess that wasn’t such a great idea.”
“That’s all right.” Jodie is motioning to Mack and Jerry that everything’s fine. “Kenzie’s dad will come out in the truck and get you, okay? Just stay where you are. Can I talk with Kenzie?”
She hears the phone changing hands. “Hi, Mom. Sorry about this.”
“It’s all right.” She fights to keep her voice normal. “Dad’s coming to get you, all right? Just stay right there. Do you hear me?”
“Sure, Mom. Thanks.”
She puts down the phone. “She’s with the Braeburn girl at Wal-Mart. Their car’s stuck.”
The sigh that fills the kitchen issues from all three of them. Mack puts on his jacket. “Thank God.” He heads for the door.
“Well, that’s easier than what I was expecting,” Jerry says as he grabs his own jacket from the back of a chair.
“Maybe it was just a daydream or something.” Jodie looks at the journal, which is still on the kitchen table. “Just something a kid would write in her journal.”
“Jaylee’s gone, though. That’s a fact.” Jerry puts on his cap. “I think you’d better talk to Kenzie and find out for sure what’s been going on.”
“Oh, I intend to. I’m sorry we caused all this commotion, Jerry.”
He waves at her. “I’m just happy it’s turned out this way. You and Mack come talk to me if you find out anything about Mitchell. If he’s been involved with Kenzie, that’s a whole other problem. She’s only fifteen, right?”
“Not quite fifteen.” Jodie doesn’t get up but watches Jerry disappear into the night air, where the silver lines of sleet are now illuminated by the yard light.
She picks up the journal and reads the first few pages, then closes it and puts it down. Her daughter’s dreams and longings break her heart. And she can’t bring herself to enter a place that is so private, so absolutely true.
Rita
In midafternoon the Ford dies halfway between the Glen farm and town. Just the way Rita has imagined it would, all those other times when it didn’t after all. She turns the corner at Miller’s Mile, and the engine slows down and just stops. At that very moment, a gust of wind catches the car, rain with it. Rita leans into the front windshield, and she can see that the rain is tapping the glass and hardening as it slides down. It is three in the afternoon, but the countryside has fallen dark as the weather moves across it.
“Well, this is just fine.” She grips the steering wheel and hears her own breath gust inside the car. During the seconds when the wind lets up, there is a massive silence around her on the road. She looks at her watch, at her hands in their gloves. She tries to stare down the road in any direction, but the windshield is fast becoming a glaze. The Glens are the only people who live on this stretch, and they are a mile behind her. Another two miles lie before her.
Rita has not been truly afraid of much in her life. She is a person who gets out of her chair and does something when the situation turns grim. But the only options now are to stay in the car and pray for someone to happen by—not likely on this road at this time of day—or to start walking. Just the thought of the cold air makes her lungs hurt. The time at the hospital taught her a new sort of fear. She remembers the sensation of not being able to get her breath, of coughing and coughing and not being able to clear her throat and gulp in air. The doctor preached hard at her upon dismissal. “You can’t afford to get so much as a cold, you understand that? Take care of yourself or you’ll be back in here.”
So she sits in the car, the cold creeping in and beginning to nip at her cheeks and legs. A mile or two isn’t that far to walk, in good weather. Her arthritis makes it painful, but she could do it. But she can tell that the temperature is dropping quickly, and the worn soles of her shoes will not keep her upright on a sheet of ice. It wasn’t that many years ago when Frank Darling’s wife tried to walk across a field to home when her car got stuck during a snowstorm. It was after dark, and she never found the house. Her body was found a quarter-mile from the barn the next morning. Nancy Darling knew those fields like the back of her hand. But zero visibility and cold have a way of wiping the map clean and confusing a perfectly good mind.
Rita tries to start the car. She tries to at least get some juice to come on so she can run the heater. But the alternator light flashes weakly, then goes out. She pulls her coat tighter. “Lord, you’ll have to send someone out of their way.” Her prayer sounds tiny in the lonely car. “Please do that.”
She waits and waits. Her watch tells her that an hour has passed. She can’t see out any of the windows now. And she is truly cold. She thinks of Alex, out in that drafty garage with his radio on, working on his truck, too drunk to know that it was time to go in. She figures that the cold didn’t bother him at all. His death was probably as easy as death gets. In some ways, he had died before that anyway. Something in his soul had given up. That bothers her almost more than the drinking did.
“Lord, I’m calling on your help,” she says, loudly. “You’ve got me in a situation I can’t get out of on my own. Please send help soon. Amen.” She’s not necessarily blaming the Lord, but she’s out here because she was delivering medicine and groceries to the Glens, both too old and feeble to get around, even together. She’s out here for the right reason, but maybe her timing was off today. Maybe if she’d skipped her TV story that came on after lunch…
As the space outside her car grows darker, her memories become clearer. How white her son’s face was, almost the color of the concrete floor of the garage. He looked peaceful. She tried to move his body, but it was so stiff. She couldn’t move his fingers, his neck. He was heavy as lead. She had to leave him and walk to the house. The handle of the back door was so cold she could feel it through her heavy gloves. The door made a great crack when she pulled it open and went inside to make the phone calls. So disrespectful to leave Alex out there in the garage, frozen into a position of uncomfortable sleep.
Something thumps the window, right near her head. She looks out and sees Alex’s dark eyes staring in at her. “Lord,” she says, tears rumbling up, “is this heaven? I expected it to be warmer.”
The car door comes open, ice crackling with it, and two slender forms lean down to look in at her. “Grandma, are you okay?” The person who has bent down to get closer to her pulls a scarf away from his face. Young Taylor’s cheeks are rosy from the cold, his thick lashes harboring tiny droplets. “We nearly slid into you.”
“Young Taylor, what are you doing out here in this ice storm?”
“Eric’s taking me home. Decided to go the back way, because there’s a pileup on the main road.”
“Pileup? Anybody hurt?”
“No. They’re trying to get one guy out of the ditch, and everybody’s hanging around, blocking traffic.”
“This car just stopped. I’ve been out here for an hour. Didn’t think anyone would come by.”
“Normally, nobody would,” says Eric, leaning closer. “But we can pull you home. How’s that?”
“Please do.”
“Grandma, get in Eric’s truck. The heater’s running.”
“Who’s going to drive this one? Somebody’s got to steer.”
“I’ll drive it. Let me help you out.”
“No. I’m fine. I’ll just scoot over.”
“You sure?”
When she moves to the passenger side, Young Taylor gets in. He tries to start the car and gets nothing. Eric’s jumper cables are not in the truck, but he does have a chain,
so they hook up the car that way. Young Taylor hops back in. “It’s a lot warmer in Eric’s truck.”
“I’ll be home in my warm house soon.”
It takes them fifteen minutes to get to Beulah, with Young Taylor steering and Eric pulling as gently as he can. When they get to the main road, Young Taylor angles the wheels toward Rita’s street. She puts her hand on his arm.
“No. Don’t take me home.”
Young Taylor honks at Eric, and both vehicles stop. “You want to take the car to Tom? He can probably get to it tomorrow.”
“No, take this car to the dump.”
Young Taylor laughs and looks at her. “You serious?”
“I am absolutely serious. Take us to the dump.”
“We’ll take you home first. It’s just four blocks.”
“No, take me to the dump too.” Her voice quivers.
“Grandma, I think we should just take you home. We can do whatever you want with the car tomorrow.”
“Young Taylor, you haul this car to the dump right now! Don’t back-talk me or act like I don’t know what I’m talking about.”
“Okay. We’ll go to the dump, and then Eric and I will take you home in his truck. Okay?”
“That’s fine. But this car goes to the dump.”
Young Taylor hollers out the window and gives Eric the plan, and they cross the main road and head for the junkyard. Rita can feel her grandson looking at her every few moments. Maybe he thinks she is going crazy. No matter. What do young people know about life? And this one has been running around for nearly a year now, looking like Halloween, so he has no room to talk.
“Dump’s the best place for this piece of junk,” she mutters.
“I never thought you’d do it,” says Young Taylor. “Take it to the junkyard. You’ve really liked this car.”
Rita feels the tears burn in her throat again. She feels the words come up too, like bad food: “He should’ve known better than to buy me a Ford.” All the men in her family line up on the hood in front of her: her son frozen dead, her other son out in the woods, her grandson with black eyeliner, and Taylor Senior, handing her the car keys. “I told him all along that I wanted a Chevrolet.”
Jodie
Their relief is short-lived. Mack brings Kenzie home, and Jodie can tell from their faces that he hasn’t said anything to their daughter about the journal or their frantic search. The moment Kenzie sees her journal on the table, she grabs it and looks from one of them to the other.
“Why is my journal here?”
“You left it at Bekka’s, with the books you gave her.”
“Oh.” She turns toward the staircase. Jodie moves to intercept her.
“Tell us about Mitchell.”
Kenzie stops cold. “Have you been reading this?”
“Just tell us about Mitchell.”
“You don’t have any right to read it—it’s private! I can’t believe you did that!”
Mack has moved closer to her. He motions toward a chair. “Just sit down here and tell us what’s going on.”
“No! I don’t have to tell you anything!”
“Sweetheart, we need to know if you’re involved with somebody.” Jodie keeps her voice as gentle as she can.
“Sit down.” Mack has a hand on her arm.
She sits and folds her arms, wrapping up tight as if to protect herself from both parents. They sit down on either side of her.
“Have you been seeing Mitchell?” Jodie doesn’t know how else to put it.
“We’re good friends.”
“So tell us about it.”
“You won’t understand.” Kenzie starts to cry. “You’ll never understand. That’s why I wasn’t going to tell you.”
“You were going away with him?” Jodie decides to keep talking until Mack jumps in. He sits across from her, eyes fixed upon their daughter.
“We didn’t do anything wrong. He wouldn’t do anything wrong. He’s not like that.”
“What exactly have you done?”
“Nothing! Like I said. We just talk.”
Mack speaks up. “But you were planning to go off with him, weren’t you?”
Kenzie doesn’t say anything. She looks at her hands. After a moment, she nods. “There’s this place in Kansas. It’s a community where Christians work together. They share everything, and—” She stops, as if suddenly too exhausted to say more. “I knew you’d think it was crazy.”
“When were you going to do this?”
“Tonight.”
“That’s why your room is all cleaned out.” Jodie finds it hard to breathe. Now that Kenzie has confirmed her fears, she doesn’t know where else to go with this.
“He’s already gone.” Mack’s voice is harsh. Jodie stares up at him. Kenzie looks at him too, tears still on her cheeks.
“What do you mean?”
“His place is cleaned out, and the van’s gone. The sheriff’s had people looking for him all afternoon.”
She jumps up from the table and is upstairs before they can stop her. They hear the door slam. Jodie slumps against the kitchen wall. She looks over at her husband.
“Did you have to say that?”
“The sooner she faces up to it, the better off she’ll be.”
“Just because you’re mad at me doesn’t mean you should be cruel to her.”
“I’m not being cruel. That son of a bitch Jaylee is the one who’s cruel. Do you think he ever intended to take her anywhere? He’s odd as hell, but I don’t think he’s stupid enough to take a minor out of state.”
She knows he is right. She also knows that she cannot ease her daughter’s agony. Some things cannot be borne by others, ever.
“Are you going to go up there?” Mack asks.
“No. I’ll wait a while. She needs to be left alone.”
“It appears that we’ve already left her alone way too much.”
“Don’t start, Mack.”
“I’m not starting anything. Whatever craziness she’s gotten mixed up in started long before now. I’d better not find out that…that bastard has—” He turns away and brings both hands to his face.
“I don’t think anything has happened.” She knows that she should touch his shoulder or at least move closer, but the distance is just too far. “I’ll find out. She’ll talk to me later, and I’ll find out, but I don’t think anything like that has happened.”
Mack is wiping his eyes. He clears his throat. “I’ll talk to her too.”
“We can do it together.” She climbs the stairs then, and stops in front of Kenzie’s door. She can’t hear anything. Jodie slides down the wall and sits there in the hallway, waiting for an entrance.
15
FINDING HOME
I can see far down the mountain,
where I wandered weary years,
Often hindered in my journey
by the ghosts of doubts and fears;
Broken vows and disappointments
thickly sprinkled all the way,
But the Spirit led, unerring, to the land I hold today.
Is not this the land of Beulah?
Blessed, blessed land of light,
Where the flowers bloom forever,
and the sun is always bright!
—“Is Not This the Land of Beulah?”
Kenzie
She decides that, even though they know about her and Mitchell, she will leave at midnight anyway. Since they’ve found her, maybe they’ll stop looking for him. And he told her he would be away today, taking care of business. That’s why his house is all closed up. But if there’s any way possible, he’ll be down by the woods later. And she will go to him. Her suitcases still wait in the coat closet by the front door.
Mom has not left the hallway, and Dad is downstairs; she can hear his movements in the family room. Maybe she should just talk to them, act like she’s fine now, so they’ll leave her alone and go to bed.
“Jesus, why did you let everything get so complicated?” She tries to pray
, but can’t. She glares at the journal, which now lies on her bare desk. How could she be so stupid? And how did her most prized possession get mixed up with the giveaway stuff?
Mom taps on the door. For the third time in an hour. Kenzie walks over and unlocks it, but turns her back before Mom can look at her.
“Kenzie, talk to me about this, okay?” She follows Kenzie to the bed, and they both sit on it. “Sweetie, I really want to understand what’s been happening. Dad and I are just concerned—we’re not mad at you.”
“Yes, you are. And you’re mad at Mitchell, who’s my very best friend. So you may as well be mad at me.”
A shadow rests on them. Dad is in the doorway, the hall light behind him. It’s seven o’clock and dark outside. Kenzie scoots across the bed and sits against the wall. Dad moves her desk chair close to the bed and sits on it. He and Mom don’t look at each other.
“We’re not mad at Mitchell or you,” he says. “But we need to know…what’s happening with you. That’s all.”
“Even if I explained everything, you wouldn’t understand.”
“Try us.” Dad’s voice is steady, but not edgy the way it gets when he’s controlling his temper.
“Well, he’s really gifted. He’s an artist. I bet you didn’t know that.”
Her parents shake their heads.
“And he has such a heart for spiritual things. We read the Bible and pray together all the time. I’ve grown so much since I got to know him.”
Dad’s jaw is working nervously, but Mom is making a little smile.
“And sometimes he is so full of ideas that he doesn’t sleep for two or three days. He reads all night or works on his sculptures or just makes all sorts of plans for the future. I’ve never met anyone like that.”
Vinita Hampton Wright Page 31
