Take Me There

by Carolee Dean

  “Dylan,” she says, dropping her shears and running to wrap her arms around me. I hold her in my arms, wondering when she got so small. I want to hold her like that forever and make sure nothing ever hurts her. “I was so worried about you when I heard what happened,” she says.

  “What did you hear?” I ask, taking a step back.

  She lowers her voice, even though there is no one around to overhear us. “Your uncle Mitch has a friend in California who said you robbed a liquor store. Is it true? Tell me it isn’t true, baby,” she says, pushing my bangs out of my eyes like I’m five years old.

  “It isn’t true,” I say as I imagine Eight Ball using Jake to get to Mitch so he can find me. Maybe it was Eight Ball in the black Jeep after all.

  “If you didn’t do it, then why did you run?” she asks.

  “I came to see Dad.”

  She lets go of me and looks away. “Did you … see him?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How is he?”

  “He asked about you.”

  She fidgets with her hair. “What did he say?”

  “He asked me if you ever talked about him. I told him no.” She looks away again, and I take her hand in mine. “Come with me to visit him?”

  “I can’t.”

  “He’s a decent guy.”

  “Don’t you think I know that?” she says, and starts throwing her gardening tools into a box.

  “Well, well, well, the prodigal son from California.” Uncle Mitch comes out the front door of the house wearing cowboy boots and a big Stetson hat. He’s carrying a glass of wine and a white pill. He gives both of them to my mother, and I suddenly understand why her mood has improved so much. “I hope you’re not excitin’ your mama. She’s just started comin’ out of her slump,” he tells me. Then he walks behind a bar in the cabana and opens a refrigerator. Meanwhile, a nurse dressed in white comes out of the house with a wheelchair. “Time for your nap, Miss Mollie,” the woman says, and my mother sits obediently down in the chair, but before they leave she pulls me close and whispers, “Next time you see him, tell him …” She suddenly looks away as if she’s changed her mind.

  “Tell him what?” I imagine she wants to say she never stopped loving him, but I want to hear it from her.

  “Tell him I never had the nerve to make the big time, but it was easier to blame him than to admit I was afraid. Tell him … I’m sorry. Tell him it wasn’t all his fault.”

  “What wasn’t all his fault?” I ask, but by then she is being wheeled away.

  I walk over to Uncle Mitch, ready for a fight. He opens two Coronas, keeps one for himself and slides the other to me across the bar. Thirsty as I am, I cannot bring myself to touch it. Partly because I remember the last time I started with beer and woke up in a dumpster clutching an empty whiskey bottle. Partly because accepting any gift from him feels like I’m betraying my father. “Guess we got a few things to talk about,” he says. “From what I understand, you’re gonna need a good lawyer.”

  “Why didn’t you ever tell us my father gave you money to take care of us? Why did you keep it for yourself when you knew he wanted us to have it?” My throat is so dry I can hear the words cracking like sandpaper against brittle wood.

  “Whoa, boy. That’s a mouthful of accusations for a kid on the run from the law.”

  “Don’t act high and mighty with me,” I say. “You’re the one who got me that job with Jake. He’s the one who hooked me up with Eight Ball and had me chopping cars. You knew he was dirty the whole time, didn’t you? What was I supposed to do when Wade robbed a liquor store to get into their gang and then Two Tone came after him with a blade?”

  “Is that really the way it happened?” he asks.

  “Yeah,” I say, and realize that even though I started out with all the questions, I’m the only one giving any answers.

  “Let me see what I can do,” he says, winking like he’s about to do me some huge favor, but I’m sick of Mitch and his favors.

  “Why did you keep the money my father gave you?” I ask again.

  “Sit down,” he tells me, pointing to a bar stool.

  “I’ll stand.”

  He shrugs, pushes the beer a little closer to me. “Go on. I didn’t poison it,” he tells me.

  I’ve been driving around all day in a truck without any air-conditioning. My head is spinning, and I know I’m dangerously dehydrated. “Do you have any Coca-Cola?”

  “You know me better than that,” he says with a grin. “Go on. One beer won’t kill you.”

  I put the bottle to my mouth, and it feels so good against my parched lips that once I start drinking it I can’t stop, until the entire bottle has been emptied. The familiar alcohol buzz starts to settle me, taking off the edge, turning down the tension that’s been threatening to explode inside of me.

  And I realize that a little alcohol might be just what I’ve needed.

  “Feel better?” he asks.

  “The state of Texas is getting ready to kill my father. How the hell do you think I feel?”

  Mitch looks at his Corona, shakes his head, and puts the beer back in the refrigerator. Then he opens a cabinet and takes out a bottle of tequila. “I think this conversation calls for something a little stronger. Want a shot?”

  He’s not going to drug me and dumb me up like he’s done to my mother. “I want answers.”

  “Suit yourself,” he says, taking out a shot glass and filling it with liquor. Then downs the tequila. “That’s better.”

  “Travis Seagraves told me you were my father’s border connection,” I say, figuring I’ll get more of the truth if I pretend like I already know what it is. Already feeling confidence working its way through my bloodstream.

  “Guess he wasn’t as stupid as I thought,” says Mitch.

  So it was true. Mitch was involved.

  “He said you were the one who set up the deals.”

  “I happened to have low friends in high places.”

  “What about the money my father gave you to take care of us?”

  “Your grandma brought me some cash after the trial,” he allowed. “It was supposed to be my cut from the Colombian deal, but she informed me it was blood money. Told me your father wanted me to use it to take care of you and your mama. Said if I kept it for myself I’d burn in hell.”

  “But you did keep it for yourself!”

  “Hell never scared me.” He smiles at me and downs another shot of tequila.

  “What about your obligation to my mother, your sister. How could you let us live like we been living, scraping by for all these years?”

  “That money was mine, and I’ve been damn generous over the years with the two of you. Your mama could have got a real job, but all her life she’s been expectin’ people to take care of her. Buy her fancy things. Make a big fuss over her. She can’t hold on to a dime and you know it. You’ve seen that room of hers full of crap that she never even uses. I invested the money in my car business, and now there’s enough to take care of all of us, and it’s all clean cash. You ever stop to consider how it would have looked for your mama, wife of a convicted murderer and drug dealer, to suddenly come into money?”

  He’s made a good point. He’s made several good points, actually, but that doesn’t put him in the right. “In the meantime, you’re living in a mansion while we live in a piece of crap rent house in Downey.”

  “Your mama lives exactly the way she wants to live. She talks a lot about her big dreams, but she’s never had any action to back them up.”

  “Too bad we can’t all be like you … full of action.”

  “Life is a head game, kid. Blame who you want, but what you believe determines who you become. Pure and simple. My father, your granddaddy, lost all his money in the oil business, so he shot himself in the head when Mollie and me was away at UT. My mother, your grandmother, didn’t know what to do with herself after that, and six months later she was dead of cancer. My sister always had lots of talent but no spine to ba
ck it up. Didn’t believe she deserved happiness after what happened to our folks.”

  Wow . Mitch has just revealed more family history in ten seconds than my mother has shared in seventeen years. “What do you believe in, Mitch … money?”

  “Yep, and I got loads of it. But I ain’t the bastard you think I am. For your information, when I bought that house in Downey, I put your name on the title. I also started you a college fund about ten years ago. A lot of good that did,” he says, shaking his head. Then he tosses the empty tequila bottle in the trash and walks back into the house, leaving me alone, confused, and thirsty.

  32

  I WAKE UP FACEDOWN ON A BALE OF HAY, TURN OVER, AND find myself looking up into the butt of a donkey. Sunlight streams down through the cracks in the ceiling and I realize I’m in a barn, but my grandmother’s barn no longer has a ceiling, so I wonder where the heck I am. I start to stand and collapse back down onto the hay, feeling like I’ve been worked over with a baseball bat. Every part of my body aches. My heart is beating in my head, and as I put it between my knees to try to relieve the pain, I puke on my boots.

  The donkey brays and kicks dust in my face.

  A woman in a cotton dress comes out of nowhere, cussing at me in Spanish, chasing me out of the barn with a pitchfork.

  I run outside onto a dirt street, where children dressed in rags hold up their hands to me. “Dinero, señor, dinero por favor!” Looking up into the scorching light of morning, I see a sign shaped like a bottle of beer. It’s in front of a cantina where I vaguely recall consuming large amounts of cheap liquor the night before. The only other thing I remember is leaving my uncle Mitch’s place feeling very, very thirsty and asking the man who guarded his house for directions to the nearest bar.

  Somehow I’ve ended up in Mexico.

  I walk the streets for half an hour before I find the Ford, then drive to the nearest café, where I order coffee and eggs. Mostly coffee.

  I can’t believe I woke up from a blackout in Mexico. I’d like to tell myself that my uncle drugged me and dragged me across the border, but I’ve had enough experience with blackouts to know that the pounding sensation pulsing between my ears is my own fault.

  I will never do that again.

  Maybe I should just stay in Mexico. Doubt anyone could find me here. I’d be safe from the law and from Eight Ball’s crew. Besides, nobody would miss me. My mother is drugged out and seems happy to stay that way. My father will either be dead soon or will spend the rest of his life in prison. My uncle is an ass. Wade is happy with Dorie, and my grandmother cares more about her pig than me. The only person who gives a damn is Jess.

  Would she come to Mexico?

  I take her note out of my back pocket and carefully unfold it, spreading it out on the checkered tablecloth, hands still shaking from the toxins in my body. I could probably make out what she’d written if I had the time. Not much of that lately, but today it feels like that’s all I’ve got.

  I am not stupid. My problem is not that I can’t read, it’s just that the process is so painfully slow, the letters so hard to manage as they skip across the white space, the words so burdensome to decipher, that by the time I get to the end of a paragraph, I’ve forgotten what was at the beginning. But I will never forget what I read on that page:

  People look at me and say I’ve got it all,

  But when you’re standing at the top you’ve got

  A long, long way to fall.

  And tell me, if I do

  Can I depend on you?

  Will you be the man

  Who will catch me if you can?

  ’Cause I’m fallin’ hard,

  I’m fallin’ fast,

  And I gotta know

  If it’s gonna last.

  You’re the one I need

  To teach me to believe.

  I read it again, and then a third time, and then I trace each letter with my fingers and commit each phrase to memory.

  Jess thinks I’m somebody she can depend on. God, how I want to be that person, but I’m not sure I can anymore. My life is such a mess.

  I ask the waitress for a pencil, and then I turn over the paper place mat stained with coffee and bacon grease and slowly, painstakingly write my response:

  Peeple luk at me and wok akros the street.

  So tired of the suspishus eyes

  On all the faces that I meet

  And tell me, if I try

  To be a difrent guy,

  Will you be the girl

  To rearrange my wirld?

  You take me up,

  You take me down.

  Take me to the sky,

  Take me to the ground.

  I’d go anywhere

  If you would take me there.

  I carefully fold the paper place mat and put it in my pocket next to Jess’s note. I will go back to Livingston and see my father and ask him if people like me can start over. I believe he is the one person who would know.

  33

  “YOU LOOK LIKE HELL!” MY FATHER TELLS ME.

  It has taken me four hours and two gallons of coffee along with the pointing and gesturing of at least five different Mexican nationals, but I have finally made it back to Livingston.

  “Looks like the same clothes you wore yesterday.”

  “Didn’t have time to go back to the farm and change.”

  “Where have you been?”

  “La Puerta.”

  “Why?” His jaw tightens.

  “Went to see Uncle Mitch … and Mom.”

  My father’s face grows as pale as his white prison shirt. “What’s she doin’ back in Texas?”

  “She’s been depressed. Uncle Mitch wanted to take care of her. ”

  “That so?”

  “She’s a good woman.”

  “I know.”

  “Why do women like her and Jess fall for guys like me and you?”

  “Only God can answer that question, son.”

  “Do people like me … like you …” Suddenly I don’t know how to phrase my question. “How far can you go down the wrong path before you can’t get back on the right one?” I finally ask.

  He leans forward, studying me. Looks at the guard. Looks back at me. Knows I can’t give any details. “Well,” he replies, “I always say that as long as you’re breathing, there’s still hope.”

  I nod, but inside I cringe. If the State of Texas has its way, my father will be without a shred of hope in five short days. I can’t believe he’s a cold-blooded killer. Maybe what happened to Jack Golden was an accident. Like what happened to Two Tone.

  Or maybe somebody else did the murder. “Do you think Seagraves could have killed Jack Golden?” I ask.

  “Have you read any of my book? Cartwright gave it to you three days ago.”

  “Do you think Seagraves tipped the cops?”

  “Why don’t you read chapter five and find out?”

  “Why won’t you just answer my questions?”

  He leans toward the glass, eyes looking right through me. “Why won’t you answer mine ?”

  A silence as wide as an ocean passes between us.

  “You can’t read it, can you?”

  I feel myself take in a sharp breath before consciously realizing what I’m doing. “I lost my glasses.”

  “Don’t try to bullshit a bullshitter, son.”

  “Don’t you care at all that they’re planning to kill you in five days?”

  “That isn’t going to happen.”

  “But what if it does? Don’t you want to see Mom one last time?”

  “She left me, Dylan.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She found out about the drugs. She left, and she took you with her,” he says, and I see that the pain is still fresh for him, even after all these years. “When Jack died, you were in La Puerta with your mother, staying with your uncle Mitch.”

  “No, I wasn’t. I was at the trailer.”

  “You weren’t there!”

  �
��I was there!” I yell, pounding on the counter between us. “Don’t mess with me, Dad. Not about this.” I lean toward him and feel my fists clenching. “I remember that night. I dream about it. Ever since I was little. The clock. The blood on the curtains. I was there!”

  My father leans back, rubs his chin, seems to grow ten years older in the span of five seconds. Whispers, “How much do you remember?”

  “Not much,” I say, wondering why me being there is such a big secret. Wondering why everything has to be a secret. “I remember a bird coming out of the clock and a voice saying, ‘You killed him!’”

  “Whose voice?” he asks.

  “I don’t know.”

  He nods his head slowly. “Okay.” He sighs. “I guess I owe you an explanation. Your mother left me, takin’ you with her, and your grandma was fit to be tied. She never liked your mama. Claimed she stole you from us. So Levida went down to La Puerta to get you. Said she was entitled to bring you home for a weekend visit, but then she wouldn’t take you back. You were stayin’ with her down at the farmhouse. I don’t know how you ended up back at the trailer. Things got real crazy that night. I was setting something up. Trying to get out of that crazy business I was in. The Colombians found out. This guy, Zorro, broke in and tied up your grandma. Tried to make her tell him where I was, but she didn’t know. Guess you ran. Zorro went up to the trailer, and somewhere in the middle of it all, Jack Golden showed up and got himself shot by the Colombian. After it was all over I found you hiding in the pantry. You were so shook up you couldn’t even talk. I took you to Travis Seagraves’s house and asked his wife to take you to La Puerta the next day.”

  “Travis Seagraves’s house?” I can’t believe it.