by Chris Fabry
Leason had left her alone most of the day. She guessed he thought she was just in one of her moods. He’d taken the tractor out on the ridge by the old logging road behind the house, and she could see him every few minutes through the trees, cutting the hay and doing whatever it was he did by the water tower all day. Work always seemed to give him comfort. On the day after Natalie disappeared, he had exhausted himself driving around looking for her, then came home and worked on an old car. It had seemed the strangest thing to her, that he could do anything like that when there was so much at stake, but now she understood it better. He was only trying to cope.
When he came in late in the afternoon, he took a Ball jar and held it under the tap until it was cold and then downed it in one gulp and got another. He stared out the back window as the few cattle he had left lumbered down from the upper field for a drink. He asked what was for dinner without even looking at her.
“Sub sandwiches.”
They ate in silence with the night both behind and ahead of them. She didn’t want to bring up anything about Dana, and of course he didn’t. She couldn’t help thinking they were growing apart in their old age instead of growing together and that something needed to happen or they were going to drift off like sticks in the creek, one getting caught in the weeds while the other one rolled on with the rising tide.
After supper, he turned on a game and sat in front of the TV with a bowl of buttered microwave popcorn. Normally she would sit with him and read or doze until he got tired. Tonight she just couldn’t sit there and watch another nine innings of life slip away. She went to the porch and gazed at the clouds and the slipping light, thinking about what her daughter had said, trying to decipher the meaning. Maybe there wasn’t anything to decipher. Maybe those were just the spiteful words of the crack or meth or whatever it was Dana had taken to numb her pain. Or maybe there was more.
“She coming back tonight?”
The voice startled her. Leason stood behind her, the echoes of the sparse crowd at the game still whistling and clapping in the other room.
“I know she was here for money,” he said. “I heard you talking.”
Mae waved at a fly and wiped her head with the paper towel she’d been holding since she’d dried her hands doing the dishes. Still staring at the clouds, she said, “I think it’s the right thing to do. I think it might be our last chance.”
“Last chance to mess up her life for good, you mean. You give that girl any more money and you know exactly where it’s going.”
Mae straightened her apron. She’d forgotten to take it off after the dishes. Actually she’d worn it all day. “I’m not arguing with you. I know what she’ll do with it. But maybe this is the bottom. Maybe it’ll take this to turn her around.”
Leason stood there at the door, his face clouded gray by the screen. He picked at a popcorn husk in his teeth and then looked at it on his finger, finally flicking it away. “It’s throwing our money down the toilet. You know I love her, but I can’t stand to see the life just sucked right out of us because of this. We’ve paid enough—don’t you think?”
She looked at him. “How much is enough for a life? You stop praying for her?”
Leason’s face showed pain, as if the question were a knife. He shook his head. “If that’s what you want to do, go ahead.”
“I don’t want to do anything of the kind,” Mae said. “I’m trying to do the honorable thing. This may be our last chance with her.”
“You’ve said that about a hundred times. And every dime she gets she spends on the drugs and the booze.”
She folded her arms. “Well, this time it’s true. This might be our last chance at a breakthrough.”
He looked like he was going to say something else, but instead he went back to the game.
Mae stood up and went for a walk down the driveway. Gravel under her house shoes bit into her feet. She walked in the grass, then switched back to the gravel, not caring about the pain anymore. When she got to the end, she sat on the brick casing Leason had built for the mailbox so nobody could hit it with a baseball bat. It had only given the vandals a reason to become more creative. They’d stuck an explosive in there, a blasting cap, and then Leason had given up. It made a good place to sit down but a lousy place to get your mail.
She turned and faced the house, set up against the hill like it had grown there naturally. The way the land ebbed and flowed in and around it was like some picture, especially with the soft light above the trees showing the fading pinks and oranges. She saw movement above the house at the treeline and watched a deer edge out into the open. Soon another and then three more joined it, and they all looked up at the same time when a car came around the bend. It passed her, and out of the corner of her eye she saw someone wave and threw a hand up.
She watched the animals move farther down the hill as darkness descended. They were beautiful creatures, and she remembered as a girl wanting more than anything to be one of them. Just become a deer and run through the woods without a care.
Her legs and back ached, and as she stood, she heard the rattle of the old car. When it reached her, she turned and watched it pull into the gravel and stop. Mae stared at the deer again when her daughter got out and left the door open, a buzzer sounding.
“I was just thinking about the times we used to drive to Myrtle Beach when you were young,” Mae said. “You sure loved splashing in the water.”
“Did you get the money?”
Mae looked at Dana and a deep well of emotion stirred. She could see her daughter as a child, skipping and laughing in the surf, looking for seashells and digging in the sand. How had she come this far? And where had Mae gone wrong?
“Or did he tell you not to waste any more of it?” Dana said.
“I’m sorry I slapped you. I shouldn’t have done that and I apologize.”
“Assault and battery is what it was.” Dana smiled and there it was, that familiar gap-toothed grin, though it was only a hint of what the young girl had been. The sun had gone down on her life and it looked like the darkness had just taken over and there didn’t seem to be a chance at a sunrise.
“I was so hurt by what you told me,” Mae said.
“Now you’re going back on it—”
“No, I’m not.”
“Either you’re sorry you slapped me or you’re not. You can’t say you had a good reason.”
Mae bit her cheek. “You said Natalie disappearing was my fault.”
“Forget it. Do you have the money or don’t you?”
“Dana, please. Tell me what happened. What did I do that was so bad?”
“I’m not arguing with you anymore. Just give it here and I’ll go.”
“Was it that man? the one who came by looking for you? Surely you wouldn’t hurt your daughter over a man.”
Dana lifted her head and sighed. “Mama, forget it. It’s over. Done.”
“You mean with Natalie? You know she’s not alive?” Mae’s voice sounded more like a whimper now. Even to herself.
“I don’t know what happened. All I know is, she’s gone. You have to accept it and live with it. Stop looking for her. Stop putting flyers up and talking with the missing children people. It won’t do any good.”
The moon edged up over the treetops and cast a ghostly glow on the cornfield behind them. Mae felt her legs giving way, and she sat back on the bricks and put out her hand to steady herself. She wanted to ask more, probe deeper, but she couldn’t. She’d believed all her life in the words of Jesus, that the truth would set you free. But she was beginning to believe that there was some truth that didn’t. It just wrapped itself around you like a wisteria vine and choked the life out of you. Took your breath away until there wasn’t any left.
She reached into the apron pocket and pulled out a thick envelope. She’d spent the morning thinking of what she wanted to say and wrote it in a note she’d tried three times to write before she came up with a good line or two. As she handed it over, she wondered if Dana
would even read it or if she’d toss it out the window.
Her daughter took it, but Mae held on, locking eyes with her. “This is the last. There won’t be any more.”
Dana pulled, but Mae still held on.
“Okay, I get it,” she snapped, and Mae let go.
When Dana got in the car, Mae followed. “I love you, honey. I hope you know that.”
The woman in the car was not her daughter. She was someone else, looking slack-jawed and spent. “Yeah, I know you loved me the only way you knew how, which wasn’t much.”
“Call me?” Mae said. “Let me know where you’re going. Where you wind up. You think you’ll—?”
Before she could finish, the door slammed and the engine fired, and without buckling, Dana backed onto the road and was gone.
Mae watched the taillights wink at the corner, and then she set her face toward the house, willing herself forward, across the sharp gravel like it was the Via Dolorosa. She thought she was all out of tears until she made it to the front porch and the sobs began.
28
I pleaded with my dad to let me go back to the house with the old man, and he finally let me. He told me to watch myself, which I guess meant stay out of the man’s way if he got mean again, and I told him I’d be fine.
We drove back to get the mattock, which I found out was this rusty old thing with a point on it that looked like it could do some damage. I always thought my dad was strong enough to do just about anything, but all those layers of blacktop are pretty hard to get through without the right tool.
The old man didn’t talk much on the way to his house, and when we got there, it was almost dark. He went straight out to the shed and rooted around until he found what he was looking for. I hung around the front porch watching the lightning bugs rise and catching a few. He returned and threw the mattock in the back of the truck, and I thought the thing would have punched a hole in the bed.
He looked at me. “You want you a jar?”
“Excuse me?”
“When Johnny was little, he’d get him a jar and poke holes in the top and fill it full of them bugs. Put it on the windowsill in his room and let them light up all night.”
I thought it was interesting that he’d be telling me something about his son because from what I could tell he didn’t take much thought to him when he was a kid. “Sure,” I said.
He went inside and brought back a mason jar that looked like it had had some beans or something in it before, and I wondered how those lightning bugs would like it in there. Then he pulled a pocketknife out and poked holes in the cap.
“Do you know where the Edwards live?” I said.
He kept working on the jar, his head down. “Just up the road a piece.”
“What road?”
He pointed behind him. “Next street over and past the interstate, then left. They got this big house by the water tower. Why do you want to know?”
“Just wondering.”
“Leave those people alone. They’ve had enough trouble the past few years.”
“I don’t want to cause them trouble,” I said.
“Here,” he said, handing me the jar. “You hang on to this and we’ll see how many you can catch when we come back from the reservoir.”
I’d been wondering how I was going to say what I was about to say, and this seemed like the perfect opportunity. “I don’t want to go back there. That place is spooky at night. Let me stay here and I’ll have this jar filled by the time you get home with my dad.”
“You think that place is spooky and you want to stay here?” he said, his forehead wrinkling. “That house behind you has more ghosts in it than all the others combined.”
“I don’t believe in ghosts,” I said. “My dad would let me stay. He really wouldn’t mind, as long as he knew I wanted to stay.”
“Is that so?”
I started collecting the bugs and giggling and putting on a good show.
He took off his hat and scratched his head with the bill. “I guess if you want to stay, it’s okay with me. Just don’t bother the neighbors and don’t wander off.”
When he drove away, I was still catching the bugs but when he went around the corner I stopped. I went inside the house and rummaged around in the drawers in the kitchen and the pantry, but it wasn’t until I looked in the hall closet that I found a flashlight. Lightning bugs are okay, but you just can’t see with that little bitty light.
The flashlight weighed a ton. When I turned it on nothing happened, so I opened it up, which wasn’t very easy, and these big batteries fell onto the floor with all this gunky stuff on them. It took a long time to realize he didn’t have a stash of batteries like we did in the RV and that I was basically out of luck, though I don’t think luck has anything to do with life. I think the things that happen are for a purpose, though at the moment I didn’t know what the purpose of not being able to find a flashlight was.
I grabbed the jar and walked out the back and went through a couple yards with that jar held out. The moon was up and peeking around the few clouds in the sky, so it didn’t take long for my eyes to adjust. The houses looked old, and there were a few junk cars sitting around like forgotten children.
I found a spot between two houses that were close together and saw the road down the hill on the other side. There were people talking and laughing in one house, like they were having a party, and in the other house it was just a man and a woman yelling at each other, something about how much she was spending and how he couldn’t keep up with her.
When I got to the front I heard a noise that made my skin crawl. It was something growling, and if you have ever been walking in the dark and heard that sound you would know why I stopped and nearly peed my pants. A dog was on the porch, but he came at me, lunging at the screen and barking his head off. The people inside were the ones who were fighting and I guess didn’t pay much attention. I took off down that driveway and didn’t judge the incline too well because I tripped on a rock and went flying headfirst and the jar crashed into a million pieces and that just got the dog going crazy. I didn’t have time to check myself because a light came on, so I got up and ran to the street and headed toward the interstate, the way the old man had said.
There was something pulling and tugging at my heart. I suppose other people have this same feeling and never do anything with it and just stay where they are. But I’d thought about this a long time. I believe you have to let things be the way they are and accept them sometimes. Like the whole thing with me and a dog. I still have the dream of having a puppy and training it and going to sleep with it at night, but there are some things that aren’t going to be, at least anywhere in the near future.
But there are things I can change. And I’d decided that now was the time. And the biggest thing hanging in the back of the closet of my life, though I have never had a closet living in the RV but you know what I mean, is the question about my mama.
So on that moonlit road, without a flashlight and with my jar broken on some driveway behind me, I started walking toward the interstate underpass. I felt something sticky on my arm, and when I reached around, there was a bunch of blood coming from a gash. I hadn’t even felt it, probably because that dog was barking so loud.
I imagined some big magnet pulling at me and drawing me down that road, and that was the only thing that could do it because it was so spooky walking under that bridge holding up the interstate. There was a bunch of stuff spray-painted all over it, and some of it was about a guy named Will. Most of it I couldn’t see because it was too dark, but I could imagine the types of words there.
When I got to a little ridge, there was a street going left, and I figured this was the way because the old man said there was a water tower near the Edwards house. I didn’t know what a water tower was, but as soon as I saw it I knew what it was because it rose over everything like a metal monster with big legs. On the side of it was the word Dogwood all lit up by the moonlight. Down below were trees and a hillside and a
house that sat back from all the other houses.
A car was coming, so I got off the road as far as I could, but even with all of that, I thought whoever was driving was going to run me down. They didn’t even slow when they saw me, if they ever saw me, and then the car just kept going around the bend without stopping. I got back on the road and kept walking until I came to a driveway with a mailbox that said Edwards and a little pile of bricks that looked like a monument to something but I don’t know what.
My heart was going about a hundred miles an hour, and I looked up the long driveway to the house that sat there in the dark. There was a flicker of a TV in one of the windows but not much else, and I wondered if the people inside were my family. It’s scary to think you know where you come from and then find out you don’t really know the truth. But sometimes the truth can be scarier than not knowing.
Since I saw my face on the wall at Walmart, I’ve had this thought that someday I’d find a whole passel of people related to me. Instead of just me and my dad, there would be sisters and brothers and uncles and aunts and cousins. We’d have picnics and reunions and parties, and everybody there would have a dog. I know some people will say that’s just a little girl dream, but it’s what I thought about as I walked up that driveway with the gravel crunching and the lightning bugs rising. I swear, I thought I could run right out there in that field with the creek snaking through it and lie down in the grass and watch the stars come out and put on a show. And I got this warm feeling deep down inside, but at the same time I got this terrible feeling that things were about to change.
When I got to the concrete walk that led to the house, I stopped and looked around. There was a tractor parked beside the house, and it had this long thing attached to it. There didn’t seem to be any playgrounds or bikes, so I figured kids didn’t live here.
There was a noise, like some animal had been wounded, and it seemed to be coming from the house. And then it stopped and the light came on, not a light in my head telling me something, but an actual light at the end of the walk. Somebody said, “Hello?”
