by Amy Vansant
The ensign laughed louder, defending against Arturo’s attempt to swat him.
Mason stared at the stump of his leg. He needed to get skilled with his prosthesis fast if he was going to be running around after a puppy.
He also needed to find out what happened to Mick.
Jelly would have to go to his funeral, right? Stick around? Get his affairs in order maybe?
He fingered a hard lump beneath the rugged skin on his left bicep.
He’d been looking for Mick’s daughter, on and off, for almost thirty years. He hadn’t found her, and yet somehow she’d been there, standing between him and every other woman in his life, walking through his dreams like she owned him...
Yeah. She’d have to come home if Mick was dead.
Suddenly, he felt better. Lighter.
A man with a plan.
He looked down at the dog.
Or maybe the puppy’s a therapy dog, after all.
He looked at Arturo. “So you’ll take him for the week for me?”
Arturo nodded his head side to side. “Yeah, sure. I guess I can’t dump the mutt on you and run. Josefina will deal.” He flashed a warning glance at the ensign, who squelched a grin and looked away.
Mason started a checklist in his head. “Can you get some stuff for him, too? I need his crate for my truck.”
Arturo’s brow knit. “Why? You takin’ him to Disneyland?”
Mason smiled.
“Closer to Disney World.”
&&&
Chapter Nine
Thirty-Five Years Ago
“Listen to me, baby. I need you to pack your things.”
Mason rubbed his eyes and blinked at his mother. “What?”
Even in the dim light cast from the neighbor’s porch light through the slats of his shutters, Mason could tell she’d been crying. Though, he hadn’t heard the screaming that usually preceded her tears.
Something felt different.
She opened his closet. “Pack some clothes.”
“Why?”
“Don’t ask questions. Just do like you’re told.”
She pulled his backpack from the closet and put his favorite sneakers inside. He shook his head, pointing.
“I want to wear them.”
“Wear your other pair.”
“But—”
She put a hand on his cheek. “Mason, listen to me.” Her eyes were wide and wild. She’d never looked like that before. Not when looking at him.
“Wear your other pair. Don’t touch those.”
Something about her tone made him stop arguing. “Okay.”
“Pack. I’ll be right back.”
“Where are we going?”
“You’ll see. It’s a surprise.”
“Is Daddy going?”
“No.” Her answer was faint. She was already in her bedroom. He heard the sound of drawers opening and closing.
Mason scanned his tiny bedroom, the desaturated colors of his baseball posters making the players feel even less alive.
Sliding out of bed, he felt the clothes he’d worn the day before beneath his feet and put them back on. He packed his favorite pair of shorts, two t-shirts and three pairs of underwear with the shoes his mother had put in his school backpack.
When it came to slipping his feet into his old sneakers, he hesitated. Torn canvas and ragged threads spilled across grass stains and holes.
“I hate these,” he muttered. He looked back at the pair in the suitcase. It didn’t make any sense he couldn’t wear his good pair.
Mason reached to pull the good pair from beneath his underwear. He jerked them to the surface as tires screeched in the driveway. Headlights glowed outside his window.
Daddy’s home.
A familiar dread roiled in Mason’s stomach. His mother was acting crazy. His father had pulled into the driveway too fast.
All bad signs.
His mother burst into the room.
“We have to go.”
“But I’m not done packing—”
“It doesn’t matter. I’ll buy new things.”
“But—”
His mother’s eyes flashed when she spotted the sneakers in his hand.
Uh oh.
She snatched them from his grip, dropping one shoe and then the other from trembling fingers. Frantic, she tied them together, lifted the pair by the locked laces, and took his hand in hers.
“Grab your backpack.”
Mason did as he was told.
“Charlotte!”
His father’s roar bounced off the walls of their little house. His mother jerked him forward.
“This way.”
She dragged him toward the back door.
“Charlotte!”
Mason heard his father’s footsteps following, pounding through the living room.
“Charlotte!”
His mother ran around the side of the house to the front, her grip pinching his hand. She stopped at the curb. Tilting back her head, mouth agape, she stared skyward, as if willing herself to fly into the night.
For a moment, Mason thought they might rocket upward.
He followed her gaze to heavens, seeing nothing but blackness.
His mother took a step back and lowered her chin to stare at his good shoes dangling from her right hand. With one motion, she jerked her left hand from his, squat, thrust upward, and flung his favorite sneakers skyward.
“No!”
Mason watched his sneakers twirl through the air until the laces caught on the telephone wire. The lower shoe arced in a loop to secure a hold on the lines. The pair remained there, swinging like a pendulum.
He gaped at his mother, his eyes so wide he could feel the skin around them stretching. He’d waited months for those shoes. She’d complained about the cost of them as if he’d asked her for a sports car.
“Why would you—”
“Don’t tell Daddy they’re yours.”
“But why—”
She squat and again grabbed his face, staring deep into his eyes. “Don’t tell your daddy those are your shoes up there. No matter what.”
He looked away. “He’ll know.”
“No, he won’t. He don’t pay attention to your stuff. Don’t tell him.”
She squeezed his cheeks with her thumbs and he jerked from her grip. “I won’t.”
Behind them, Mason heard the familiar sound of the back door screen slamming against its frame.
Daddy’s coming.
His mother straightened and took his hand again. She turned to face their home.
“Where are they?” shouted his father, rounding the corner of the house, striding toward them, his white t-shirt glowing beneath the porch light.
“Hm?” asked his mother. She sounded calm. Almost sweet.
Mason could tell she was trying to smile but her lips trembled, making it hard for her expression to hold its shape.
His father thrust his face inches from his mother’s, screaming, spittle flying.
“Where are they?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
His father grabbed his mother’s arm and glared at Mason when he moved to stop him. Her hand tore from his grip. She whimpered.
Mason stood.
“Go inside,” said his father.
Something hard rose in Mason’s throat. “Don’t hurt her.”
“What you say to me?”
“Don’t hurt—”
The slap came too fast for him to duck. He stumbled sideways, his head ringing. When he opened his eyes, he saw his father’s finger pointing at him, nearly touching his nose. The man spoke through gritted teeth, his breath heavy with alcohol.
“Get in the house and don’t sass me again.”
Mason looked at his mother.
She thrust out her chin, looking defiant. She looked beautiful, moonbeams glistening through the wisps of her hair around her head, creating a sort of golden halo.
His father raised his ha
nd, but before he could slap again, his mother stepped between them.
“Go to your room.”
It took Mason a moment to register her command.
“Me?”
“Yes. Go to your room.”
“But you said—”
“Go to your room!” She screamed so loud Mason stumbled back and bolted for the house. He ran through the kitchen to the living room and stationed himself at the window where he could watch his parents outside.
They screamed at one another. His father shook her. Slapped her. The neighbor’s front porch light sprang to life and his father’s head swiveled in that direction.
“You mind your business!” he roared at someone Mason couldn’t see. He pulled his mother toward the side of the house to hide from the neighbor’s meddling.
Mason ran back to his room to peer through the side window. His father pushed his mother into the passenger side of his truck and shut the door so fast he couldn’t believe he didn’t catch her leg.
From inside the Ford, his mother placed her open palm on the glass. She looked at his window.
He yanked open the shutters and put his own hands on the glass.
“Momma!”
She smiled.
The truck roared to life. Mason heard the gear pop out of park. His father rumbled from the driveway, the red rear lights growing smaller until they disappeared at the end of the block.
The house fell quiet, but for the steady ticking of the scratched grandfather clock in the hall.
Mason padded to the back door and pushed the hanging screen door open. He walked around the house and stared up at his favorite shoes dangling from the telephone lines in the moonlight.
&&&
Mason awoke in his own bed, his eyelids stiff and swollen from crying. Licking his fingers, he pulled them across his long, salt-crusted lashes and glanced at the clock on his bedside table.
Three o’clock in the morning.
A fog of despair enveloped him. He hated three o’clock. Anytime he saw that number on his clock, trouble followed.
He listened for the argument he guessed had woken him.
Nothing.
The memory of his father roaring out of the driveway with his mother returned to him.
Did they come back?
Mason swung his legs over the bed preparing to drop to the ground.
Heavy footsteps thumped in the hall outside his door.
He jerked his knees back and whipped the blanket over him, slamming his head to the pillow so hard it bounced. Turning his face away from the door, he stared at his clock, the glowing red three taunting him.
I hate three o’clock.
A sliver of light cut across his bed to the opposite wall as his door opened.
“Mason?” His father’s voice sounded strange.
Tired? Usually, he barked every word like a drill sergeant, but tonight he sounded as if talking tapped the last of his energy.
Mason turned to his opposite side to face his father, trying to appear half-asleep.
“Huh?”
“Hey, buddy, I gotta tell you something.” His father walked to the side of his bed and stood for a moment, looming over him. Sweat covered his neck. As he twisted to sit on the edge of the bed, Mason noticed dirt on his tan arms. Streaks of mud crisscrossed the t-shirt that had seemed so white a few hours before. The stink of swamp filled his nostrils.
Did they go frog giggin’?
Mason couldn’t picture his momma agreeing to that.
“Where’s Momma?”
His father slapped the bed with his palm as if calling over a dog. “That’s what I gotta talk to you about. Sit up.”
Mason scrooched up against his pillow, distrustful of his old man’s unusually gentle tone. He spoke staring forward, his back turned to Mason.
“Your mama left us.”
“What?”
“She left us. You ain’t gonna see her no more.”
“She wouldn’t—”
“She told you she was goin’, didn’t she?”
Mason fell silent.
She did.
“But she told me to pack.”
His father sniffed and Mason thought he heard him mutter a single word.
“Yeah, well, she changed her mind ‘bout you goin’. Thought you’d be better off with me.”
Mason’s chest constricted. “With you?”
“Yeah. A boy should be with his father.”
“But—”
“Look, no buts. You’re with me and she’s gone and that’s the way it is.”
His father stood and headed toward the door.
Mason found it hard to breathe. Something was building inside of him. He felt like a shaken can of Coke.
His father turned.
“Did your momma give you anything?”
Mason gasped for breath like a landed fish, his mouth wide. He’d forgotten to breathe.
“What’s wrong with you?” His father’s familiar sharp tone returned, as if he’d been released from whatever held him back before.
“Nothing.”
“I asked if Momma gave you anythin’.”
“Like what?”
“Like anything. Rocks?”
“Rocks? Why would Momma give me rocks?”
His father took a step toward him and Mason recoiled on his bed.
“Are you sassin’ me?”
“No.”
“She didn’t give you nothin’?”
“No.”
“She didn’t tell you to hide anythin’?”
Mason’s eyes pulled toward the front of the house where his sneakers hung from the telephone wire. He turned his face toward the back of the house to keep from exposing his thoughts, his mother’s words echoing in his brain.
Don’t tell your father those are yours.
“She said we were goin’ to Disney World.”
His father exploded with one, loud, cannon-shot laugh. “She did, huh?”
Mason nodded.
“See? She was mean as a polecat. She wasn’t takin’ you to no Disney World and now she left us.”
Mason remained silent, watching the right corner of his father’s mouth pinch up until it made his corresponding eye squint.
“Where was she right before I came home?”
Momma had been with him, helping him pack, but Mason felt sure if he said that his father would remain in his room looking for whatever he thought she’d taken.
“She was in her bedroom.”
“You mean in my bedroom.”
Mason nodded.
His father wiped his brow on the back of his forearm. “Okay. You go back to sleep.”
Mason slid back under his sheets. His father left and closed the door.
He stared into the darkness of his room.
The clock glowed three-fifteen.
It had only taken fifteen minutes to lose his momma forever.
&&&
Chapter Ten
Mason sat in a hard wooden chair beside an unoccupied police station desk. He assumed it looked like him sitting in the chair. The body and the face resembled him down to the last freckle, but the real part of him, the part that felt like Mason, had gone somewhere else.
Maybe with Momma.
The remaining hard shell looked like him.
His center had gone hollow.
“You want a Coke, sweetie?” asked a pie-faced lady in the biggest police uniform Mason had ever seen.
He shook his head. He didn’t know much about this new Mason, but he knew he didn’t drink soda. Nothing sweet. Nothing that reminded him of before.
“Well, if you want anything you let me know,” said the lady.
He nodded and let his gaze bounce over desks and chairs and trashcans until he spotted a girl about his age sitting on the opposite side of the room. She sat in a chair as scratched and rickety as his own. A man in a white uniform stood beside her, his hand resting on her shoulder. She didn’t look scared. Her face turned to the man
and she smiled, but he could see her eyes pressed to the right, looking at him.
The man in the white uniform patted her on her head before following a policeman to another part of the station. They entered a room and closed the door behind them.
The moment the door clicked shut, the girl jumped to her feet and walked to him and if she’d been waiting all day to do it. She wore red sneakers and shorts with orange flowers splashed across them.
“Hello,” she said. Her dark hair pulled from her temples toward a ponytail tucked once, so it made a loop hanging from the back of her head.
“Hi.” Mason was glad his new self didn’t cry. She didn’t seem scared to be in the police station. He would have been, but he’d run out of fears and tears a day earlier.
“Did you rob a bank?” she asked.
He scowled. “No.”
“Did you pull a museum heist?”
Mason shifted and looked away. “No. You’re stupid.”
“No, I’m not. I’m smarter than just about anybody I know.”
“No, you’re not. You’re a girl.” He didn’t know why he’d said it. He didn’t think girls were stupid. There were three girls smarter than the smartest boy in his class and Momma had always been smarter than his old man.
Though not quite smart enough in the end.
Instead of being angry, the girl laughed. “Mick says that makes me stealthy. No one sees me coming.”
Mason had never met anyone stealthy before. He liked the sound of it. He liked the way she said it. She didn’t have an accent like his. She wasn’t from South Carolina, or if she was, it had to be some other part he didn’t know.
“Why are you here?” she asked.
“I’m not.”
“You are. I’m looking at you.”
“My father is here. They don’t know what else to do with me.”
“Where’s your mom?”
Mason’s new tough exterior thickened another inch. “She left.”
“Left where?”
“I don’t know.”
The girl took a deep breath and let it out. “I don’t have a mom either.”
“Did she leave?”
She shook her head. “I never had one.”
Mason rolled his eyes. “Everyone has a momma.”
“Not me. I was born in a Naval laboratory.” She spilled hellacious lies as if they bored her.
