by John Brandon
She walked around the outside of her house, finding no way to get onto the roof. She ended up in the backyard, lost. She lifted the kiddie pool and flipped it over and curled underneath it. The sounds in the air, the accidental noises of the world, were different under the plastic shell. They seemed to come from a long way off, from the bottom of some blue sea. Shelby felt animalistic. She detected a strength, a madness, a rogue element inside her that would help her shape the days of her life. She wanted to determine herself. She wanted to force her way into an open destiny.
On his way to track practice, Toby walked up on Shelby at the playground. She had a newspaper, like the first time he’d talked to her here, when Kaley had been swinging. She held the paper at arm’s length as if it smelled bad. Toby didn’t know what she was doing at the playground. She ought to be avoiding this place. Toby kind of missed the old Shelby, the regular Shelby. It was disorienting to be around someone bleaker than himself. And Toby still had a slight fear that Shelby would detect his guilt with some sisterly sixth sense. He sometimes suspected she could read him like a book, that she would look into his eyes and see Kaley slumped against the bunker wall on her cot, her dirty feet smudging up her sheets, her ears red and teeth gnashed. Shelby wasn’t looking for clues, though. She had never been part of the search. She was just trying to understand what it meant that her sister was gone.
Toby sat down on the end of the bench. Shelby wore a thin T-shirt that revealed the soft form of her breasts, which shifted each time she moved her arms to turn a page.
“They’re opening a jazz bar in Crystal River,” she said. Nothing was happening in her face. “Have you ever heard anything more pitiful?” She folded the paper, taking the time to follow the original creases, then flung it under the bench. ”They say music soothes the soul.”
“I haven’t heard much music.” Toby found that he wanted to say something to make her feel okay. He wanted to see some hope in her.
“How come you still haven’t asked for my phone number?” Shelby said.
“Because I don’t have a phone,” said Toby.
“In your house, you don’t have a phone?”
“Never have.”
“Your uncle again, huh?”
Toby shrugged. The swing set looked lonesome. Toby wished they’d come and tear it down already, get rid of this old playground that didn’t belong here.
“Can I ask you something?” he said. “Did you really throw a bunch of Cracker Barrel on a girl?”
Shelby’s lips pinched. “All that stuff is still in the fridge. My dad won’t throw it out because that would mean admitting how much time has passed.” She looked at Toby flatly. “I don’t know what we eat anymore. I really don’t.”
Toby tried to keep his eyes from darting to Shelby’s chest. He felt sick. He felt like he might throw up and he never felt like that. Shelby rested her arm down the length of the bench. She touched Toby’s ear.
“What the hell are you wearing?” she asked him.
Toby had on skimpy green shorts and a tank top that read greece.
“You’re shallow,” he said. “Making fun of someone’s clothes is shallow.”
“You haven’t been to Greece, have you?”
“I haven’t even been to a Greek restaurant.”
Shelby drew her arms to her chest and shuddered, startled to be cold.
“I know it’s going to be okay,” Toby said. “We’ll be okay.”
“You don’t have to try to be a good guy.” Shelby drew a breath. Thunder could be heard, far off. “We won’t be okay, you know that.”
“I don’t. I don’t know anything.”
The thunder was steady and not very threatening. If it did anything harmful, it would be to other people. Toby, out of nowhere, could feel his courage gathering. His stomach didn’t feel bad. This wasn’t the dashing focus his evil sometimes provided him, but his own simple, native courage. Shelby considered Toby the one good thing about Florida and Toby knew it. He slid down the bench toward Shelby and heard the newspaper crumpling under his feet. He could smell Shelby’s hair. She had goose bumps but to Toby she was warm. Suddenly she hopped up, startling Toby, her boots making a chirp. She strode past the swing set, leaving muddled tracks in the sand. As she passed, she pulled one of the swings in the air and released it and it was still swinging when she disappeared around the corner. It was the swing Kaley had been in that day. Toby couldn’t raise himself off the bench. He watched the swing. He watched it until it stilled, until its slight movement was the work of the breeze.
When Toby got to practice, Coach Scolle was herding everyone into a circle. He said they had to move ass because if he felt one drop of rain he was clearing the field; no one was getting struck by lightning on his watch. He went around and made everyone name their goals for the season. Vince, the kid who tried to buy friends with gum, wanted to clear six feet at the high jump. Rosa and Sherrie, the enormous girls, wanted to beat Pasco High, a black school that, with the exception of girls’ volleyball, dominated all sports within the district. When it was Toby’s turn, Coach Scolle complained about having a pole-vaulter on the team, about having to lug the apparatus out every day, about the high-jumpers sacrificing valuable mat time, about worrying that Toby would break his neck on Coach Scolle’s watch. The coach informed Toby he would waste no energy instructing him.
“You better check that book back out and do some trial and error,” Coach Scolle said.
“I still have it,” Toby said. “I’m on chapter two—conditioning.”
“Could be a long chapter for you.”
Toby shrugged. Plenty of people on the team were in worse shape than he was, overweight even. Coach Scolle asked Toby’s goal. Because pole vault was a middle school sport only in Citrus County, Toby could not hope to win a state title, possibly not even a district title. “To learn to pole vault,” he said.
Coach Scolle huffed. “Believe it when I see it.”
This was the point at which, normally, Toby would’ve been a smart-ass. He would’ve asked the coach if the real reason he was afraid of a few clouds was that his man-perm could get damaged. If the real reason he was afraid of rain was that one of the windows of his Firebird was busted out and covered over with a plastic bag. But Toby said nothing. Being seen as a bad seed would only hinder him from here on out. He didn’t want that kind of attention. Though he hadn’t realized it when he’d tried out, he saw now that he’d joined a sports team to appear average, and showing up the coach and getting booted from the squad would defeat the purpose.
On his way to the taco place, Toby made another stop at the big bookstore. He dropped his bag off at the front and maneuvered back to the TV. The national news had abandoned Kaley, and Toby found that the Tampa news had let her drop off, as well. He figured out how to change the channel and watched for almost an hour. The weather in St. Petersburg. Sports in Tampa. A drowning in Lutz. Someone had driven an El Camino into the side of a flower shop. A girl at the university had blackmailed her poetry professor. A cemetery was being sued. These people didn’t give a damn about Citrus County. They didn’t give a damn about Kaley. They would if they knew she was alive and who had her. They’d give a damn then. Toby sat there before a bank of magazines—motorcycles, health food. All these interests. Everybody had all these interests.
The shop that sold used hardware and appliances was right up near the Chinese buffet. It was about a mile from Uncle Neal’s, which was a long haul with Toby toting a wide two-wheel dolly behind him the whole way. And he was going to have to drag it the whole way back, but loaded, right along the roadside, right through the weeds.
Most of the store’s stock was out front, sprawled over the yard, but Toby needed a stand-alone air conditioner and the lightest generator he could find. That sort of stuff would be kept inside. He rested his dolly on a refurbished pulpit and entered the store. The old woman who ran the place nodded at him and he nodded back. He went to the back aisles and quickly the items he was seeking appea
red before him on the shelves. He felt grateful. They were right next to each other, kind of a set. It felt like an endorsement, finding exactly what he needed so fast.
Toby carried the items one at a time to the front counter and waited for the old woman to ring him up. He saw now that the woman had a little girl with her. She was hidden behind the counter, at the old woman’s knee. The little girl kept thrusting her fists into her pockets then slowly pulling them back out.
“Not taking no chances,” the old woman said. “I’m keeping my grandbaby right here. Her mama goes to work, this little one’s right here with me, not at the daycare with some pot fiend watching her.”
Toby dug his bills out and started straightening and sorting them. The old lady’s eyes were on him. She had ratty hair, but her eyes were clear and her posture was straight.
“What do you think of this one?” she asked the little girl, jabbing a thumb toward Toby.
The girl shrugged.
“I don’t know either,” said the old woman.
Toby dragged his stuff home and stashed it and then turned right back around and headed back to the dirt road. He’d forgotten. He’d meant to go to the drug store. He had to walk all the way to Route 19. He needed hair clippers. Kaley’s hair was riddled with knots and snarls and Toby couldn’t begin to loosen any of them.
The next day, Toby found a note on his dresser: See me in the shed. Toby had never been allowed in Uncle Neal’s shed, but he knew from looking in the window that it contained a stove and a bunch of potted plants that were likely some backwoods hallucinogen. Uncle Neal kept the place off-limits with a padlock. He went out there each Sunday, even in the crush of summer, and did a bunch of snipping and boiling.
Toby pushed the shed door open and found Uncle Neal standing before a mess of purplish stalks and a steaming stew pot. He wore rubber gloves and wielded a pair of tongs. An open bag of uncooked tater tots sat on the counter, and a forty-four-ounce soda with a long straw. There was a bowl of lemons. A bag of sugar. Cutting board.
Uncle Neal raised a heap of stalks over the pot and let them fall. He bent down and slurped some soda. “Drop one of those tots in my mouth.”
Toby reached into the bag and fed his uncle.
“Are you getting high?” Toby said.
“This isn’t drugs, it’s hemlock.”
The stalks were giving off an acrid aroma. Toby pulled the door open all the way.
“I keep a gallon in that fridge for one week,” Uncle Neal said. “Then I throw it out and make more. It’s the secret to my success.” His forehead gathered in appraisal.
Toby began coughing.
“The steam can’t hurt you,” said Uncle Neal. “Might make you happy. I used to look forward to breathing it, but I guess I built a tolerance. I built a tolerance to most things that might make me happy.”
Toby cleared his throat and wiped his eyes.
“This stuff wouldn’t really kill you,” Uncle Neal said. “If you drank the whole gallon it might maim you.” Uncle Neal sipped more soda. “Quarter those lemons.”
Toby stepped up to the counter and positioned the cutting board. He was already getting used to the stench. Now he recognized it from Uncle Neal’s clothes, the clothes he always wore to do his Sunday chore in the shed—the faded blue T-shirt and worn jeans. The stuff was doing something to Toby. He felt light.
“Hemlock is potent when it’s young,” Uncle Neal explained. “The plants get over five feet tall, I get rid of them. They grow little white flowers sometimes.” Uncle Neal handed Toby a miniature spoon to dig out the lemon seeds, then he went about watering the plants, fondling their leaves.
“I don’t get this,” Toby said.
“Well, that’s because you’re a little slow on the uptake.” Uncle Neal smirked. “You’ll understand one day. Maybe one day soon.”
Toby waited.
“I got a .38 snub in the house. Every morning, I have to decide to let it rest or decide to take it out where the light can hit it.”
“So, the hemlock is—”
“The hemlock is to remind me of the choice I have to keep living or to stop. If I choose to keep living, I have nobody to blame but myself. Anything that happens to me, I signed up for it.” Uncle Neal set a mug in front of Toby. “Put the seeds in there. I’m going to plant them, in case I keep deciding to live.”
“Can’t the gun remind you? You always know it’s there.”
Uncle Neal looked disappointed. “How long does it take to pull a gun out?”
“Not long,” said Toby.
“What does it smell like?”
“What does a gun smell like?”
“Yeah.”
“Not like this.”
“That’s right,” said Uncle Neal. “Nothing smells like this.” He ground up a leaf in his hand and then sniffed his fingers. “Doesn’t matter what I’m doing out here. I could be playing solitaire. The point is to think about living and dying. If you don’t make yourself think about it, you won’t. It’s not in the nature of a human being to step back and consider big choices.”
Toby kept working at the lemons, wondering if Uncle Neal really had a gun, wondering what would happen to him if his uncle killed himself, where he would end up. Toby considered things. He considered things all the time.
“That’s some haircut,” Uncle Neal said. “You joining the service?”
“It’s for pole vault,” Toby answered.
“You’re still doing that?”
“Of course.”
“There’s a haircut for it?”
“There’s a haircut for everything.”
Uncle Neal helped Toby squeeze the last of the lemon quarters, then he pulled out a wastebasket and brushed the carcasses into it with his forearm.
“Do I get a key to the shed?” Toby asked.
“Why not?” Uncle Neal said. “I’ll have one made.”
Toby turned to leave but Uncle Neal called his name.
“One more thing. I’m going to start giving you an allowance—thirty-five dollars a week. In case you want to start… I don’t know, spending money. I can’t take it with me.”
Toby had never thought of getting an allowance. He’d always gotten by on his lunch money, but now, with Kaley, he had expenses. This felt like finding the bunker, like the rains that had fallen the night Toby took Kaley, like the air conditioner and generator. Something was on his side.
“Make it fifty,” Toby said, joking.
“Deal.”
“Just like that?”
“I never negotiated anything in my life,” Uncle Neal said. “I’m not about to start with a little shit like you.”
The churches, the Boy Scouts, the Little League teams—everyone had finally quit. Shelby’s father was losing weight and looked like a version of himself from fifteen years ago, a version Shelby had only seen in photographs. He was a boxer again, swinging and swinging because that’s what he knew how to do. He was growing a beard. The hair on his head was limp, but his beard was vital, aggressive in its takeover of his face. He stuffed flyers in the same mailboxes. He posted Aunt Dale’s $50,000 reward wherever he could. He joined an organization that raised money to publicize abductions and another that raised money to hire bounty hunters.
The police had tracked some guy to Alabama and, though he had nothing to do with Kaley’s disappearance, were able to arrest him for animal cruelty. They’d poked around a small trucking company based on the other coast of Florida. The last bit of aid the police department could offer came in the form of a therapist, a black man who hailed from New Mexico. Instead of business cards, he carried books of matches with his name on them: Cochran Wells.
“How long does this session have to take?” Shelby asked him. “Is there a certain amount of time?”
Cochran tipped his head at her. He looked like a stately, full-blooded dog. He had a controlled afro and wore a light-colored suit.
“Not long,” he said.
Shelby’s father looked like he w
as falling asleep. She touched his shoulder and he yawned.
“I’m taking diving lessons,” he said. “The police have no budget for divers, so I’m going to search all the springs myself. Is that something I should tell you?”
“You said something there.” Cochran had to push back from the table to cross his legs. “You said you’d search all the springs. That means you don’t expect to find anything.”
“I don’t,” Shelby’s father said.
Shelby had hardly slept the night before. She’d stayed up watching comedians. One of the comedians would get her laughing and the next thing she knew her face would be slick with tears. Last night it had been a nasally guy who told jokes about the state of Texas. Shelby had felt light and giddy for a moment and then she was muffling her sobs so she wouldn’t wake her father. This was her therapy, she supposed, not anything Cochran Wells could tell her. He was explaining something about emotional perseverance to Shelby’s father. She interrupted him.
“I have a question,” she said. “What’s the difference between therapy and psychotherapy?”
“Psychotherapy is the Jewish word for therapy.” Cochran allowed himself to laugh.
“Do you dislike Jews?” Shelby asked.
“I don’t like or dislike anyone. I apply my empathy one case at a time.” Cochran paused. “I evaluate circumstances, not individuals.”
“Lucky us,” Shelby said. “We got plenty of circumstances.”
“I finally had a dream,” Shelby’s father put in.
Cochran bellied up to the table and uncapped his pen.
Shelby’s father’s dream took place in the woods, at night. He couldn’t see anything but he could smell the woods, could smell tree bark and old breath. He was lost. Sometimes he smelled car exhaust or meat grilling. It was almost dawn. Suddenly, all the scents were blown away and bright artificial light flooded down. Shelby’s father had wandered into a small, shipshape warehouse. It was full of damp socks. They were Kaley’s socks, hung to dry on clotheslines.
