From the Black Hills

by Judy Troy

  Tears came to Mike’s eyes immediately. He put down his fork, drank his water, and told himself: It’s only a feeling. It’s not a fact. That helped, but barely.

  After Raymond finished eating he looked at Mike’s plate—chicken, mashed potatoes, and green beans, mostly untouched. “Clean-plate club,” he said. “You’re not a member.”

  “What?”

  “How my mother used to get me to eat.”

  They returned their trays, crossed the emptying room, and walked back to Hansen Hall through the windy night.

  LATER, while Raymond worked on his paper, Mike read history—the fall of the Roman Empire. Out the window two girls were walking down Eleventh Street toward the dorm; as they passed under a streetlight, he saw that they were Heather Coates and Morgan Gault. The person Mike used to be would have had more sex, by now, with at least one of them. Not that he liked either of them much. But that wasn’t as important as people thought. What was important was that you kept doing things in the world, making things happen. That’s what history was about. You couldn’t stop just because you didn’t feel like waking up or talking to people, or because nothing seemed to matter to you anymore.

  Mike shut his book and turned off his desk lamp.

  “You’re done?” Raymond said.

  “Not exactly. I’m resting.” He got into bed.

  “I can turn off the light, go to the library.”

  “No,” Mike said. “Study for both of us.” He lay in his clothes on top of the covers. There seemed to be nothing ahead for him except cold weather, poor grades, and conversations that left him upset. He listened to Raymond leafing through the pages of his books. Raymond seemed pathetic to Mike, despite the fact that he did well in school and had friends and now might have a girlfriend. Raymond couldn’t see the sorrowfulness of his life the way that Mike could. Raymond couldn’t see the pointlessness of college.

  Mike tried to concentrate on things that once had made him feel good. But swimming naked with Donetta or drinking whiskey with Josh belonged to some past life that didn’t seem to be his anymore. He didn’t fantasize about Lee-Ann anymore, and she probably didn’t about him, and when Mike thought about sex it didn’t drive away his other thoughts, the way it used to. If Raymond weren’t there, he could masturbate. But maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe he wouldn’t even bother.

  He got out of bed to get another blanket just as the phone rang.

  “Mike?” his father said. “Drive on out! Did you forget about us, man? Come on! We’re waiting for you!”

  TWENTY-THREE

  OUTSIDE, nothing was different—just the lit-up parking lot and the dark field behind it. Raymond had said, “Who was that?” and Mike had said, “My friend Josh. He’s at the campgrounds with some friends. I’m driving out there.”

  Mike stood now at the back door of Hansen Hall, thinking: Maybe that hadn’t been his father on the phone. Maybe Mike’s own paranoia had changed one person’s voice into another. But he wasn’t that crazy.

  He tried to think coherently. He had Tom DeWitt’s card in his wallet, but there was no way he was going to call him. He didn’t have any specific information, anyway. He didn’t know where his father was or even where he, himself, was supposed to go. Still, he didn’t want to be in this alone. He needed somebody to know. If he called Donetta, she’d freak out and call his mother. Josh would keep it to himself, but it was a weekend night and it was unlikely that he’d be home. Mike went to the pay phone in the lobby and called him anyway. There was no answer, not even an answering machine. He called again with the same result.

  Behind him, three girls were laughing at something on television. The student working the desk had his head down, studying. Mike stood again at the back door, concentrating on the night outside. He waited. Then he walked out, unlocked his truck, and got in. If his father drove up now, he thought, they could talk right there, in the parking lot. Mike could find out exactly what had happened with Mary Hise, and what it was, if anything, his father wanted from him now. He could learn what the truth was without having to get too involved.

  He sat for a long time, looking out, starting the engine when he got too cold. The wind was blowing hard enough, at moments, to rock the truck. Nobody drove up or walked past.

  Then, across the wide field that separated Hansen Hall from its neighbor, Berg Hall, a car flashed its lights twice. Mike tensed up and watched. He hardly breathed. A minute passed, and the lights flashed twice again.

  Okay, Mike thought. He would drive over there. His father, if it was his father, was afraid, probably, to come to Hansen Hall itself. They could talk there, then, in that parking lot. And if that car had no connection to his father, which was what Mike hoped, Mike would come back, go up to his room, and wait for his father to call again. Then if his father wanted to talk to him, he’d have to do it on Mike’s terms, either on the phone or in the lobby, or in the parking lot of Hansen Hall. If talking to Mike was important enough, his father would have to take one of those options.

  But as Mike drove toward Berg Hall, the car, flashing its lights only once this time, pulled out in front of him on Eleventh Street and kept going. When Mike got closer he saw that the only visible occupant was the driver, who was small and female. The car was a two-door, hatchback Toyota. It had an Illinois license plate, and Mike memorized it. He repeated it out loud while following the car through town, up one street and down another—a circuitous route, Mike thought, like in a detective movie. He was the private detective on the trail of the criminal’s girlfriend. It felt a lot less fictional when he followed the car into the parking lot of a Taco Bell and saw his father run out of the restaurant. It stopped seeming like a game then. His father had a beard now, looked thinner, and was wearing a dark nylon jacket. He was holding a take-out sack and didn’t look in Mike’s direction. He opened the passenger door of the Toyota, and the driver accelerated the second he closed it.

  Then they were on the entrance ramp to the interstate, heading south, and Mike, behind them, knew that he’d gone too far. He’d get off at the next exit, he told himself, but the car his father was in was not getting off; it was going exactly sixty-seven miles per hour, and if Mike didn’t follow it, the space between himself and his father would widen to infinity.

  He drove past the exit. In his rearview mirror he saw the lights of Brookings grow distant; in front of him he saw what he didn’t know grow closer.

  Halfway to Sioux Falls the Toyota left the interstate, heading east on a two-lane road and crossing the state line into Minnesota. That made it much worse, Mike knew, whatever crime this was that he was committing. But he couldn’t stop. It was one thing to be afraid, he thought, but another thing to be a coward, and in addition it was his father he was following, not some maniac or stranger, and his father was the only person who could tell Mike what really had happened with Mary Hise. Mike was the only one who could find out. He could accomplish what no one else could.

  He followed them through forty miles of countryside and one-stoplight towns, turning, finally, onto a long dirt road that ended at a semicircle of concrete-block cabins called the Twilight Lake Motel. There seemed to be no one staying there except them.

  Mike’s father jumped out of the car and ran back to Mike’s truck. “Turn off your headlights and pull around behind the motel,” he said. “As far back under the trees as you can. I’ll meet you there.”

  He pointed to a rutted, overgrown trail that led through pine trees and ended an eighth of a mile into the woods. Without headlights Mike had to inch down it, and when he got out of his truck he knew the lake was close by: He heard water rippling and smelled the wetness. The night was absolutely black and cold. Then his father appeared, carrying a flashlight, a wrench, and a Minnesota license plate. “Here we are,” he said, and grasped Mike’s shoulders in an awkward hug. Mike didn’t step away, but he kept his own arms at his sides. Then his father eyed the truck. “This is nice,” he said. “Looks dependable. And it doesn’t stand out.” Then he stoop
ed down behind the truck and loosened the bolts.

  “Wait,” Mike said. “I’m not staying. I’m going back to school tonight.”

  His father didn’t move or lift his head. “No,” he said. “I’ve got enough on my hands as it is.”

  “I’m just saying that I can’t stay.”

  His father stood up. “Are you wearing a watch?” Pointlessly, because it was too dark for Mike to read it, he showed Mike his. “We won’t have time to talk tonight,” he said. “I won’t be able to tell you what happened. We’ll talk in the morning, then you’ll go back first thing.”

  “Then I don’t need a different license plate.”

  “Here’s where I know more than you do,” he told Mike. “A minute’s work can save you heartache.” He handed Mike the flashlight. “Hold it still,” he said. “Keep it steady.” He replaced Mike’s South Dakota plate with the Minnesota one. “Welcome to the North Star State,” he said. “Here. Put yours under the seat. We’ll replace it when you leave.”

  “In the morning,” Mike said.

  “Fine. Whatever.” Glenn stood up and took the flashlight from Mike. He turned it off and walked toward the motel. Mike hung back under the trees. “Mike!” his father said. Then he was walking again, with Mike behind him, trying to find his way in the darkness.

  Ahead of them then was a bright rectangle of an open door and the sound of a radio, and then Mike was inside, facing a woman who looked as old as his father but was the size of a ten-year-old. She was so skinny that the outline of her shoulder blades was visible through her flowered top. “This is Inez,” his father said, shutting and locking the door behind him.

  She touched Mike’s arm. “I guess you’re real!” she said, then sat down in a dilapidated armchair. Then she was up again, moving into the adjoining kitchenette. She took a cigarette from her purse and lit it at the gas stove. “You two go on and talk,” she said. “Just pretend I’m not here.” She slid herself up on the counter and let her high-heeled sandals drop. Her toenails were painted pink. Her feet were so pale that Mike could see the blue of her veins.

  The cabin was shabby, small, and old. There was only one bed, and Glenn, sitting down on the side that was farthest from the kitchenette, motioned for Mike to sit next to him. The heater came on noisily.

  “Tell me what’s going on at home,” he said softly. “Keep your voice down. Inez doesn’t know the details.”

  “Mom’s okay,” Mike said.

  “Fine. Good. But I mean, as far as I’m concerned.” He was leaning forward, his eyes intense and excited. His face was thin. He looked older, and his beard was more gray than brown. His left eye was bloodshot.

  “Well,” Mike said, “people know what you did.”

  “I didn’t have to see you to find that out.” He put his hand on Mike’s knee. “It wasn’t what they think, though. They’re after me for the wrong thing.”

  The heater turned off. Glenn swiftly reached for the transistor radio and turned it up.

  “You mean you didn’t kill her?” Mike whispered.

  His father jerked back around. “Listen,” he said quietly. “She died, and I was there. But kill is the wrong word.”

  Behind them Inez jumped off the counter and opened the refrigerator. “How about eggs?” she said with her back to them.

  “What?” Glenn said.

  “Eggs,” Inez said loudly.

  “Where are the tacos?” Glenn said. “What happened to the Mexican food?”

  “How should I know?”

  “What’s the right word, then?” Mike said in a low voice. “What word would you use?”

  “I’d just as soon not use a word,” his father said. “A word can mean one thing when you mean another.”

  “Did you shoot her or not?” Mike whispered.

  “It’s not that simple. You’re asking the wrong questions. I can see already that you have bad information.” Mike watched him rub the back of his neck, then move his head back and forth. “I get stiff,” he told Mike. “It’s tension. You’ll find out about it when you get older.”

  “I find out about it every day,” Mike said.

  His father stared at him.

  “I can do scrambled,” Inez called out. “I can do over easy.”

  “What?” his father said.

  “Scrambled, then,” she said. “People who don’t answer don’t get what they want.” After a moment she sang, along with the radio, “It hurts as much in Texas as it did in Tennessee.”

  “Tell her how good the meal is,” Mike’s father said. “Don’t forget. Say it a couple of times.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  THEY ate at the Formica table in the kitchenette: eggs, toast, and milk on the verge of going sour. “Drink it anyway,” Glenn told Mike. “It won’t kill you.”

  “It’s yogurt,” Inez said happily. She crossed her thin legs, and Mike saw her slide a bare foot along Glenn’s calf. “I have the coldest feet. So did my dad. We had that in common.”

  “Put on socks,” Glenn said.

  “Your dad’s not a good listener,” Inez told Mike. “But I guess you already know that. You have a whole history, you and your dad.” With her toast she moved her eggs from one side of the plate to the other.

  “This is good, isn’t it, Mike?” Glenn said. He was eating with intensity. “It’s delicious, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Mike said. “Thank you.”

  “Then finish it,” Inez said.

  “I’m not all that hungry,” Mike told her.

  “Eat it anyway,” his father said tersely.

  Inez inched her own plate toward the center of the table. “I like history more than your dad does,” she told Mike. “I’m interested in facts, like where somebody comes from, and who his people are.”

  “We have all day tomorrow to talk,” Glenn said. “Let’s just relax right now. Mike’s tired.”

  “Why aren’t those words coming out of Mike’s mouth?” Inez said.

  “Because it’s full of your good food!” Glenn said with fake cheeriness.

  Inez studied his face, then Mike’s. “All right then,” she said. Her eyes moved back and forth between them as they ate. Then she cleared the dishes while Glenn unrolled a sleeping bag at the foot of the bed. “It’s where our dog would sleep if we had one!” Inez joked to Mike, who hadn’t moved, who felt stunned and exhausted.

  “You don’t even like dogs!” Glenn said, steering her away from the kitchenette sink. It was apparent to Mike that he was moving fast to get her out of the kitchenette, then in and out of the bathroom. He did the same thing with Mike.

  “How about this?” his father said to him, pointing with the toe of his shoe to the sleeping bag, which Mike got into—automatically and obediently, he realized, as if he were a dog—without undressing. Within a few minutes the light was off and the room was quiet. His father and Inez, in the double bed, above him, seemed to fall asleep within minutes.

  The situation was really wrong, really off kilter. It was so much crazier than Mike had expected that he couldn’t keep up with it, especially because he was so tired. What had he expected? he thought then. Nothing. He hadn’t had time to expect anything. But all he had to do was sleep, he thought. He would be out of there in the morning.

  Except that he was almost too tired to sleep. The floor was cold; the sleeping bag was a cheap one, just thin polyester, and if Mike could have been anywhere right then, it would have been with Donetta under the comforter he’d given her—though not at her house, he thought—someplace else, someplace alone. Mike was the only person who had ever made Donetta feel less alone. Why did that mean so much to him? It came back to him often, how she’d said that on their first date, how she’d trusted him that much, as opposed to now, when she didn’t anymore, when she’d gotten smart enough, he thought, not to.

  He was lying on his back, tears making a path out of the corners of his eyes and wetting his hair. There were tears in everything, he thought, if you looked around you, if you saw the
truth behind your situation and the sadness that was always behind the truth. Because underneath, you were tied to the world and to yourself, and who you were had already been decided beforehand, and without you.

  In his sleep, Mike’s father said, “Forget it,” then, awake, he got out of bed. Mike heard the floor creak under his weight, then heard water running in the kitchenette sink. His father had always gotten up at night—to use the bathroom, to get a drink, to wander through the house in a lost way. He’d done it all Mike’s life. Sometimes Mike had woken at two or three in the morning to the sound of his parents talking—his mother’s voice more frequent, somewhat comforting, his father’s hollow and depressed.

  His father came to the foot of the sleeping bag. “Mike,” he whispered; Mike kept his eyes closed. His father knelt down and shook him. “Mike,” he whispered more loudly, and Mike was forced to open his eyes, to get up and follow his father into the kitchenette. “Keep an eye on Inez,” his father said. “Though she sleeps soundly. She takes something.”

  “Where did she come from?”

  His father hesitated. “I don’t want to be cruel. I’ll just say, she’s helping me and I’m helping her.” He put his hand on Mike’s arm. “Did you tell anyone you were leaving?”

  “My roommate.”

  “Who did you say I was?”

  “Josh.”

  “When did you say you’d be back?”

  “Last night,” Mike lied.

  “Call tomorrow and say Sunday.”

  “I can’t.”

  “I’m asking you to, if it’s not a risk to me.”

  “I don’t want to,” Mike said.

  “Are you afraid of the police? Do you think that anyone would fault a son for wanting to see his father?” He tightened his hand on Mike’s arm. “I go from place to place,” he said. “I hide by moving. You don’t know how hard it is.” He broke into tears.

  Mike looked away from him, at the cold, dark room.

  “Just stay until Sunday,” his father said.

  “Glenn?” Inez said. She got out of bed. She stood, shivering, in a long, white sweatshirt, her thin legs bare.