The Forgotten Girl

by Rio Youers

  Brickhead. Was it really him, or was paranoia playing tricks on me?

  In lieu of the gun, I reached for the red feather. Studying its filaments, its color, a simple fact occurred to me: that I had only seen the hunt dogs twice—for certain—since crawling from that cinderblock room. The first time was on the bus out of Parsippany, when I’d flipped Brickhead the bird. Second time was when Jackhammer paid me a visit at the cemetery. I thought I’d seen them on many occasions, of course. Jesus, I was convinced they were hiding in my apartment, listening to my telephone calls. But the truth was, there had only been two definite sightings.

  Was I fighting myself here? Was I my own worst enemy?

  “You need to get a grip, Harv,” I said.

  It came down to this: If I truly believed I was being followed, I needed to head back to Jersey; no way could I risk leading the hunt dogs to Sally. If, however, I thought it more likely—and I did—that the only things following me were fear and paranoia, then I needed to seriously cowboy up before continuing west.

  I twirled the feather. It was beginning to look a little beaten up, but was still vibrant. Still intact.

  So … what’s it going to be?

  I’d already made my decision, of course. The hunt dogs had rattled my cage. Dominic Lang had rattled my mind. They had me—understandably—jumping at shadows, but that didn’t make me a coward.

  I put the feather away, gunned the truck, and headed back to the Interstate.

  One last scan of the periphery.

  “Okay,” I said, and rumbled west.

  Kansas bound.

  Thirteen

  Sea salt glitters on your shoulders. Sally walks beside you with air beneath her heels. Her hair is unkempt in the ocean breeze, half covering her face, and she makes no attempt to fix it. She looks tousled, a little drunk, and altogether alluring. You pull her into your arms and kiss her.

  Fourth of July and the boardwalk is thronged. Everybody is sun-dark and smiling. Along with the singles, straight couples, and families, you see gay and mixed-race couples. They hold hands freely. Kiss openly. This is what you love about Asbury Park: You cannot judge or be judged. It is a microcosm of a diverse and accepting society. The smiling faces prove that it can and does work.

  “Remember when you mentioned running away?” you ask.

  “Vaguely,” Sally says.

  “I could live here,” you say. “The beach life. The music scene. Not too far from Dad.”

  “I’m not sure it counts as running away if you stay in the same state.” Sally’s eyes glimmer behind her hair. “I’d at least want a different time zone.”

  You walk on, hand in hand. Beyond the sounds of the boardwalk, the roar of the ocean, you hear the parade marching along Cookman Avenue. This is soon drowned out by a three-piece band playing outside a crowded seafood restaurant. They are halfway through an old-time country number with a slow, swinging melody.

  Sally is already dancing.

  The song is one of Dad’s favorites: “Abilene” by George Hamilton IV. As a kid, you thought it was just another country song about a girl, but Abilene is actually a town—in Texas, you assume.

  You watch Sally. She rolls her hips in perfect time. Her blue dress sways. The love you feel for her in that moment is daunting. It pushes at you from inside. It fills empty spaces and burns recklessly. You have qualms—of course, what relationship is faultless?—but they are brought to their knees in surrender. And Sally can do that, with a kiss, a smile, a twirl. She has a way of making everything brighter.

  She dances without inhibition, just another free-spirited soul on the boardwalk. Her arms and hair flow. Her dress bounces around her knees. Fragile as memory is, you think this is a moment that will stay with you forever.

  The song ends and she falls into your arms. You hold and kiss her. She twirls again, takes you with her.

  “Oh, Harvey,” she says. “I think that was a sign.”

  “A sign?”

  “Forget Asbury Park … let’s move to Abilene.”

  “Right,” you say. “Sure.”

  “A complete change of scene. A new beginning.”

  “Sounds great,” you say. “I could learn some Merle Haggard songs. Wear a gun on my hip.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “You’re drunk.”

  She holds her thumb and index finger an inch apart. “But Abilene … I’m feeling it, baby. It’s safe and low-key. Slap-bang in the middle. The perfect place to disappear.”

  “Why would you need to disappear?”

  Her mouth closes at once, as if she’s said too much. She steps out of your arms and looks at the ocean.

  “Sally?”

  “It’s just a figure of speech,” she says, turning back to you. Her cheeks are crimson. Her eyes are huge. You want to give her everything, but you’re not sure if you can. There are moments when you don’t even know who she is.

  She presses herself close, stands on tiptoe, whispers in your ear.

  “You have to admit … I’d look cute in a cowboy hat.”

  Her cheek brushes yours, then she is kissing you, both hands in your hair. She comes away smiling and you can’t help it; you smile, too.

  Everything brighter.

  * * *

  The night before leaving, I’d rifled through Dad’s vinyl collection and found “Abilene” on an album called Country Gold. I dropped the needle and listened to it, focusing on Sally—that one memory of her dancing on the boardwalk. I matched the tick of her hips, the bounce of her dress to the song’s easy tempo. I recalled the band—the drummer’s rhythm, the guitarist’s strumming pattern—and everything fit. This was the song from the memory … the song she’d erased.

  I think that was a sign, Sally had said, as if she’d been looking—waiting—for a sign. Let’s move to Abilene.

  “The perfect place to disappear,” I mumbled.

  Dad had entered the room as the track faded. “One of my favorites,” he said. “I didn’t think you were into old-time country. What gives?”

  Given that I was about to take off on a covert cross-country adventure, I didn’t want Dad knowing that Abilene was on my radar.

  “Thinking about making a mix tape for the journey,” I said. “Random songs. Just to keep my mind fresh on the road.”

  “Good idea.”

  “Found this old track and it brought back a few memories, so…”

  I trailed off. Dad nodded, lost in memories of his own, no doubt. It occurred to me then that I had no idea where Abilene was. I’d assumed Texas, but only because it was a country song. It could be in Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kentucky. And what if there was more than one? Abilene wasn’t as common a town name as Clinton or Springfield, but I’d save a lot of miles by getting it right the first time.

  “I always thought Abilene was a girl,” I said carefully. “Until I actually listened to the lyrics.”

  “Prettiest town I’ve ever seen,” Dad sang.

  “Women there don’t treat you mean,” I sang with him, then smiled and casually asked. “It’s in Texas, right?”

  “There is an Abilene in Texas,” Dad said. “But this was written about the one in Kansas.”

  A map of the United States unfurled in my mind. I threw a mental dart and hit the bull’s eye.

  “Kansas,” I said, and recalled what Sally had said: “Slap-bang in the middle.”

  “Pretty much,” Dad said. “It’s where Eisenhower lived, and where he’s buried. I know it because it’s about twenty miles west of Fort Riley, where I did my basic training.”

  “That explains why you like the song so much.”

  “We’d go off-base from time to time. Me, Curly Tom, Billy Gomez. Head down to Abilene. There was always a bar playing that song, and always a woman waiting to treat you mean.”

  “The song lies,” I said, smiling.

  “Yeah, but you can still dance to it,” Dad said. “And really, son, what more do you need?”

  * * *

  I h
ad hoped to make the Illinois state line before calling it a day, but because of my detour through rural Pennsylvania there was no way. Resigned to this, not to mention tired and hungry, I stopped for the night in a little town west of Indianapolis. I found a motel that accepted cash payments, no questions asked. The Mexican restaurant on the next block played mariachi music through external speakers. I fairly danced through the door and loaded my face with tacos.

  Afterward, I tried calling Dad from the motel but—as expected—he didn’t answer. So I took a long shower, then collapsed into bed. I woke refreshed and found breakfast in a vending machine: Aquafina and a granola bar. I took a moment to enjoy the sunrise (I didn’t even consider the periphery), sitting on the truck’s rusty tailgate, swigging my water. Then I brushed my teeth, checked out, and hit the road.

  Six hundred miles from Abilene. I estimated ten hours in the old man’s shitbanger. My intention was to stop for food and gas and nothing else. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out that way; I blew a tire just east of Columbia, Missouri. The spare was beneath the truck. It was cracked, worn down to the plies, but inflated. It would get me to the nearest auto shop but not much farther. I found a jack and tools behind the bench seat and fought for an hour to release the spare. It finally dropped and I switched it with the blown tire, which I tossed into the bed, then drove slowly to a garage on the outskirts of Columbia. The owner was a thickly bearded man with grease embedded in the cracks on his hands and face who conducted business by way of his dog—an old Great Dane with a dry, probing nose. “Rutherford says you’re lucky we had a no-show, otherwise you might’ve been waiting ’til tomorrow a.m.… Rutherford says the credit card machine’s out of commission, so we can only accept cash or check … I’m replacing the blown tire and the spare, but Rutherford says the rest of your rubber is looking a little thin, too.”

  I sat on an oily seat and waited, thumbing mindlessly through three-year-old issues of Easyriders magazine while listening to Boxcar Willie’s greatest hits. The owner—GUNNER, according to the nametag on his coveralls—worked at an undemanding pace and spoke to Rutherford as if he was human. When it came time to pay, I took the cash from my wallet and slid it across the counter toward Rutherford. He responded with a deep, booming bark—RAAAOOOF—and I smiled for the first time since leaving Jersey.

  I was back on the road by 4:15, pushing the old Silverado to its full thrilling sixty miles per hour, trying to make up for lost time.

  * * *

  I’d left my paranoia in Pennsylvania and spent the remainder of the journey freer, clear-headed, but when I crossed into Kansas at just after 6 p.m., a different kind of anxiety set in. I was now only two hours from Abilene, where—if I was right about it—I could bump into Sally at any given time. The closer I got, the more nervous I became. Part of it was not knowing how she’d react. Would she fall into my arms and sob grateful tears? Would she reset my mind and take to her heels again? Jesus, I didn’t even know how I’d react. I had so many emotions inside that I wasn’t sure which would bubble to the surface first. I wanted to kiss her—to scoop her into my arms and carry her away like Richard Gere in An Officer and a Gentleman. I was afraid, though—for all that I loved her—that my initial reaction would be less forgiving.

  I passed a sign: ABILENE 50.

  I realized the first words out of my mouth were all important. They would support everything that followed. After considerable thought, I decided on: You don’t have to be alone. Simple. Powerful. Beautiful. Cue the kiss, the Richard Gere moment. I rehearsed it as the evening sun rippled across the horizon ahead of me, experimenting with levels of gravitas. I settled on an inflection that was sensitive but strong. It did nothing to help my nerves.

  It was full dark by the time I reached Abilene.

  * * *

  I drove around to get a sense of the town’s geography. It was a little larger than Green Ridge, with roughly the same population, but not as urbane or contemporary. The main thoroughfare, Buckeye Avenue, ran north to south with the downtown core made up primarily of family-run businesses—a lot of antique and gift stores, from what I could see. There were the usual places to eat: McDonald’s, Burger King, Pizza Hut, and a sprinkling of home-style restaurants, the kind of places that would employ Sally without asking too many questions. The Eisenhower Center was to the south, along with a strip of “old town” buildings marked by a sign inviting you to CHECK ALL GUNS by order of Marshal J. B. “Wild Bill” Hickok. In keeping with the Old West flavor, the Smoky Valley Railroad offered tourists locomotive rides to the nearby town of Enterprise.

  Abilene was not—as the song professed—the prettiest town I’d ever seen, but it was unmistakably charming, with one foot firmly planted in the nineteenth century. I drove around knowing I could never live in a place like this, and I didn’t think Sally—assuming she was anything like me—could live here, either. But maybe that’s the whole point of disappearing: going somewhere people would never expect.

  * * *

  I checked into a downtown motel, paid for two nights but was prepared to stay for as long as it took to check every mom-and-pop store, restaurant, family farm, and lemonade stand in the area. I didn’t waste any time, either. Once in my room, I snagged the photograph of me and Sally from the front pouch of my backpack, pulled on a clean shirt, and hit the streets. Most of the places I needed to check had closed for the night, but I’d seen a few bars while cruising around town. I figured they were good places to start.

  My head swiveled as I walked, checking every doorway and shadow. I was so used to seeking out hunt dogs that this was second nature to me. I had no proof that Sally was in Abilene, only a feeling—a vibe—plucked from a two-page entry in my Book of Moments. Even so, I expected to see her wherever my eye fell. At any point, she could be inches away from me, or many thousands of miles. Both possibilities set my heart racing.

  I breathed air that was notably fresher than Jersey’s, composed myself, rehearsed my line. “You don’t have to be alone.” Over and over, always with that delicate but essential inflection. I walked for ten minutes until the purr of live music drew me to a bar called the Steel Horse. American beer signs flickered in the windows, which were either smoked glass or dirty with exhaust fumes. Stepping inside, I smelled barbecue, sweat, and graft.

  It was open mic night, not exactly standing-room only but there was a decent turnout. The clientele was primarily blue-collar male, some still dressed in their work clothes, all drinking from bottles or eating with their fingers. I grabbed a seat at the bar and ordered a beer. Some dude on stage was giving his all to a Johnny Cash cover. I pretended to watch, but really I was scoping the room for Sally. Judging by what I’d read in my Book of Moments, I didn’t think the Steel Horse was exactly her scene, but I couldn’t afford to make assumptions.

  No sign of her.

  “That’s Shane,” the bartender said, gesturing at the kid on stage. “He knows one damn song and plays it every week.”

  “At least it’s a good song,” I said.

  “Not anymore.” She dropped a wink and smiled—a middle-aged woman with lavish eye makeup and the bare midriff of a teen “You play?”

  “On occasion.”

  “We have a house guitar,” she said. “Let me know if you want it.”

  I finished my beer, then took her up on the offer. The guitar was a decent Epiphone and I played a thumping rendition of Tom Petty’s “American Girl.” It earned the enthusiastic reaction I was hoping for. Making my way back to the bar, I felt less nervy, less like a stranger, which I needed before asking about Sally.

  I started with the bartender. I took the photograph from my pocket and slid it across the bar toward her.

  “Have you seen this girl?” I asked. I had this rehearsed, too: just enough information, delivered with the slightest crack in my voice. “My girlfriend. She suffers from depression. We haven’t seen her since the first week of August and we’re real concerned.”

  We: as if I were asking on behalf of th
e family, a whole network of people who cared, when—going by what I’d written—she had no one who cared. Only me.

  The bartender looked at the photograph carefully. I was glad I was in it, that we were both smiling and evidently in love. It made me look like her boyfriend, and not some deranged stalker. I had shoulder-length dreads in the photo, of course, and no scar beneath my eye. These differences aside, it was clearly me.

  “No. Haven’t seen her,” the bartender said.

  “Focus on her face,” I said. “She’ll likely have had a makeover: different clothes, a new hairstyle.”

  She looked again, narrowing her eyes, but then shook her head and handed the photo back to me. “Sorry, sweetie. Hope you find her.”

  I ordered another beer and walked it around the bar, hopping between tables, showing the photograph, getting the same negative responses. With every no, every shake of the head, my confidence waned. A few people said she looked familiar, but were too vague—or drunk—to be helpful. I left the Steel Horse feeling drained, unsettled, and overshadowed by the task ahead. I reminded myself that this was the first place I’d checked, and that Sally had a talent for making herself invisible.

  Still, if she was in Abilene, I’d find her.

  * * *

  I checked two other places that night: a coffee shop called The Grind where a tableful of twentysomethings played Cards Against Humanity, and another bar—I don’t even think it had a name—where some jacked freak with the Chiefs logo tattooed on his neck threatened to snap my “little goddamn bitch spine” if I didn’t get the fuck out of his face.

  Nobody recognized Sally.

  I returned to my motel. It was midnight and I was dog tired. I took a shower and collapsed on the bed. Sleep came with a warm, dark blanket and enfolded me. My final thought of the day was, Are you here, Sally? Are you close?

  Then I was gone.

  * * *

  Dominic Lang had told me that Sally blended with her environment, put down very few roots, and that because she had no credible ID, no social security number, was forced to work for businesses that didn’t object to paying under the table. This reduced the number of places I had to check, but I still had some schlepping to do.