by Vicki Grove
A shadow suddenly darkened the grain. I looked to the sky but was too sun-dazzled to see anything except a huge shape up there, probably some winged predator, maybe a giant eagle or a clot of three or four buzzards.
Then the shadow grew sharper and darker and the black dog dropped out of the sky and into the wheat not four feet in front of me! He sat up on his haunches, staring at me with all three tongues lolling in big doggy smiles.
I opened my mouth, then stood there speechless, looking from the dog to the weird hitchhiker and back. “So this is—this is your dog?” I finally managed to stammer.
The girl started shaking that big pink bottle, looking peeved at the delay.
“Nah, we’re just co-workers. He’s got a tiny bit of seniority on me.”
The dog turned one head toward her and set up a little whimper-whine. She rolled her eyes, then drew the lighter from her pack and looked at it wistfully.
“Cherry Berry says I have to give this back. He likes you. That’s why he brought you Trey’s green lighter in the first place.”
She threw it to me, and I caught and pocketed it. “He dug it up across the street from my house,” I muttered quietly, rubbing my forehead. Had I told her it had been Trey’s?
She snorted. “Don’t make me laugh. CB brought Trey’s lighter from a lot farther away than that. He probably thought it might help solve this little problem of yours.”
Without waiting for my response, which would have been utter confusion, she turned and headed toward the pump again. The wheat slammed like an iron gate behind her.
The dog meanwhile sat quivering in every muscle, then bounded right up into the air.
I watched him swoop up the hill, do a flyby of the house, then circle twice around the roof. He finally did a four-point clumsy landing on the porch, where he regained his balance and stood facing, facing, facing me, eagerly waiting for me to join him.
I swallowed hard and began jogging up the hill, breathing deep, which I hoped was a way to keep panic from getting the best of you.
I still thought, or I guess I mean I hoped, the weird girl was simply insane.
But something about seeing that flying dog with his gangly legs hanging so loose and his big floppy ears tossing in the wind had made me admit to myself that when I reached that black Lab that reminded me of our old dog Ringo, I wouldn’t be joining a him.
I would be joining an it.
By the time I reached the porch steps, the dog was chasing its tail in close circles like dogs do when they’re especially eager to get going. I made doggy small talk, said it was a good dog and so forth, and when I was balanced on the rickety floor of the porch itself, I even went down in a crouch at the dog’s level to show I was its friend.
I stopped short of reaching out to scratch its ears, though. I wouldn’t say I was squeamish, not exactly. Just off-balance, like I was around the girl. In fact, I had the sudden thought that I wouldn’t have wanted to touch her either.
“Is Bud inside?” I asked the dog, and in answer it turned all three heads toward the front door, which was banging in the wind. I caught it and held it still and open a few inches and the dog slid through and disappeared into the gloom inside the house.
I followed but stopped just over the threshold to adjust my eyes to the sad and murky shadows of what must have once been the kitchen of the place. Wooden cupboards sagged against the walls, so shrouded with cobwebs they looked like mummies. Shards of broken glassware studded the floor—the handle of a cup, half a flowered plate. I made out a rusted pump bolted to the edge of a large sink, its white porcelain fuzzed with mold. A mouse skittered from the spout of an overturned teapot.
I took a breath and called, “Hey, Bud, you awake? We gotta hit the road!”
I waited, my heart galloping. If he didn’t answer, then what?
But from above me, Bud finally grumbled back, “Keep yer shirt on, will ya?”
I felt boneless with relief as I hustled in the direction of his voice, dodging the glass and fallen boards that littered the floor of the kitchen and the room beyond, which was empty except for a bedraggled staircase against the far wall. I needed Bud like you need the feel of solid ground beneath your feet after you’ve spent too long on a roller coaster.
I reached the foot of the treacherous old stairway and called up, “Bud? Hey, there’s a bacon and cheese sandwich with your name on it waiting at some fast-food place down the road! Let’s get a move on!”
“Yeah, yeah,” he answered. “Come on up, why doncha.”
Meanwhile the dog materialized on the landing at the top of the stairs and sat patiently looking down at me with six shining eyes. I pushed fallen ceiling plaster out of the way and slowly climbed, avoiding the ragged holes where the stairs had rotted through. When I finally reached the landing, the dog skittered down the hall and came to a sliding stop outside one of three closed doors that must have been upstairs bedrooms.
And then it, the dog, evaporated into nothingness.
I walked cautiously to the door where it had been and knocked.
“Bud? You . . . in there?”
No answer, so I turned the knob and pushed it open a bit. “Hey, Bud?”
He was sitting on a straight chair, looking out the window with his back to me.
I let out my breath in a whoosh that left me light-headed. “Hey, come on, Bud, let’s get going! I’m starving, aren’t you?”
He didn’t turn. In fact, he didn’t move at all. “Come over here, will you, son?” he said. “I got something I need to show you right quick.”
His voice was so . . . I don’t know, tired? Well, of course he was tired and so was I. I walked up behind him and bent to look over his shoulder. “What is it, Bud?”
He pointed. “Can you see that small hill yonder a ways, the one with trees?”
I squinted, trying to see what he was talking about. The glass was just too grimy, so I straightened and looked through a place near the top of the window where the glass had gone missing. Beyond the ocean of wheat I saw a series of bumps along the far horizon.
One of the bumps seemed fringed. “I think I see the hill with trees.”
He nodded. “Our burying place is under those elms. My grandparents, my parents, my little sis. She died of polio while I was in Korea. My Mary is out there as well. My sweet Mary, gone now for ten years.”
I said nothing, just thought about how Bud’s voice was so distant. He sounded like he was in a different room, reading out loud or talking in his sleep.
The wind blew the wheat. Some crows flew by in a tight formation. The scene outside was so peaceful, but it somehow had an edge, a dark border.
“This was your house, then, Bud?” I finally asked. “And we’re in . . . Nebraska?”
He nodded. “Lived here with my folks and then for years with my Mary before we had our Janet and moved on to give her more advantages in a bigger place.”
I took a step back and looked around the room. There was an old set of iron springs that must once have been part of a bed. Wallpaper hung like loose skin from the walls, too puckered and water-stained for you to tell what color or pattern it might have once been. Wasps’ nests were thick in the corners of the ceiling and littered the floor.
“Go along now, boy,” Bud said, still without turning. “I’ll join you directly.”
“I’ll just hang out here until you’re ready to go, Bud.”
“Go on along,” he insisted. His voice had a crackle to it when he said that, like a radio transmission sent from far away. I wanted him to face me and to at least explain how we came to be at his old place. But he just kept staring out that filthy window. “Tell her I won’t be but a few more minutes,” he added weakly.
I shook my head and threw out my arms. “What business is it of hers, Bud?” I took a few angry paces across the room and back. “You’ve done plenty for her already! Now we need to get on the road home and let her hitch a different ride.”
He said nothing, so I said, more quietl
y, “Okay, how about this, Bud. I’ll go get the car and bring it closer while you finish getting ready. I think I can drive through the wheat right up to the porch. Okay with that?”
“Yeah, yeah, good plan,” he murmured.
On my way out of that sad room I spotted a small patch of wallpaper that must have been protected for many decades by a dresser or something. I crouched beside it for a few seconds, running my fingers over the pattern—bright blue, yellow, and red wildflowers blooming against a violet sky. So beautiful and eternal, all hope and innocence.
A new wave of anger and frustration rolled through me and I was stumbling over my own feet by the time I made it back down the rotted stairs. Why did nothing last? What was the point of all that innocent hope? Who could answer me, huh? Huh?
I had to get a grip, and I knew a run through sun and wind would help more than anything. The jog up the hill, though, had been excruciating. My legs were tight and hurt worse than ever today. There was nothing mental I could do to block the pain.
I stood on the porch and looked around. No sign of the dog. The car looked like a toy some child had lost in the blowing wheat.
I set up a fast jog and was about halfway back to the car when I remembered that the weird hitchhiker girl had stolen the keys! But how hard could it be to grab her pack, fish them out, and pocket them again? I just hoped I could locate her in all this wheat.
That proved to be easy. She’d returned to her circle of flattened wheat, not far from the Olds. She was lying on her back with her lumpy green pack beneath her head like a pillow and the ankle of one cowboy boot casually jiggling on the opposite bare knee. She was thumbing through a magazine and chewing a wad of gum. Three or four more of those magazines were scattered around her, their pages rippling in the wind.
She rolled to her side when she heard me charge up, propping her head with her hand.
“How do you like my hair, Tucker Graysten?” she called out cheerfully. “No, wait, wait! Don’t answer yet!” She sat up and scratched her flaming pink hair into random spikes. “There, now you can answer.”
All my anger at her finally boiled over. “Do you think this whole thing is a joke?” I yelled against the wind. “Okay, so you somehow learned a lethal type of hypnosis, hooray for you. And you go around reading people’s minds without any respect for their privacy, and drive them to places they never wanted to go, and then you steal their keys, and then you . . . you have the nerve to ask for an opinion about hair choices?”
She knit her brows, looking truly confused. “No,” she said, simply. “Only a joke is a joke.” She held up her magazine and turned it toward me. “Look at this, Tucker, chocolate cake with chocolate fudge icing! Have you ever heard of chocolate cake?”
I gawked at her for a few seconds. “Everybody’s heard of chocolate cake,” I muttered, rubbing my face with my hands and shaking my head. What was the use? My anger drained— why cling to it? She was just a total airhead. Hating her was impossible and useless. It would have been like hating a tree, or a shoe.
She began carefully tearing the cake picture from her magazine.
“Oh, come closer and look, Tucker!” She held the picture up so I could see. “On the back there’s a photo of that airplane that crashed last month! You can even see the teensy people inside!”
She turned the airplane photo toward me and my blood went cold. Those magazines scattered around her makeshift lounge were my magazines from the school library!
I dropped to a crouch, laced my fingers behind my neck, and stared straight down at the ground so I could pretend for a few minutes that she didn’t exist. I could hear the swish of her gathering those magazines into a stack, though. Then she cleared her throat like someone giving an important speech and began reading the covers out loud.
“Time Magazine, October 22, PROPERTY OF CLEVESDALE HIGH SCHOOL, CLEVESDALE, OKLAHOMA,” she announced. “Newsweek magazine and here in the bottom corner it’s stamped PROPERTY OF CLEVESDALE HIGH SCHOOL, CLEVESDALE, OKLAHOMA. This one is Smithsonian and it’s for the month of September and it’s stamped PROPERTY OF CLEVESDALE HIGH SCHOOL, CLEVESDALE, OKLAHOMA. National Geographic and up in the corner, kind of light like the library’s stamp needs inking, is PROPERTY OF CLEVESDALE HIGH SCHOOL, CLEVESDALE, OKLAHOMA. And the one that had the yummy cake picture, American Life, PROPERTY OF CLEVESDALE HIGH SCHOOL, CLEVESDALE, OKLAHOMA.”
When she was through, I raised my head and stared at her, hoping I could send anger her way that would melt her or something. She merely leaned closer to me, wide-eyed.
“So, did you steal all these magazines from your school library, Tucker Graysten?”
“Shouldn’t that question be did you steal them from my backpack?” I spat out.
“Guilty!” She held up her hands, laughing. “You caught me red-handed!”
Her palms oozed and dripped with something thick, shiny, and very, very red.
I felt things getting black around the edges so I panted, trying to get more air.
“What’s the matter, Tuck?” She turned her wrists to look at her palms, then wrinkled her nose. “Ick, I see what you mean. Is this blood on my hands?”
She laughed that crazy laugh again and turned her palms back toward me. Now they were just the dry hot pink of her hair dye.
“That wasn’t funny.” That came out in a whimper. I tried again. “That. Wasn’t—”
“It was a cool trick, though, wasn’t it?” she interrupted. “Caught red-handed, get it?”
“Why can’t you just express your opinions like a normal person?” I moaned. “Why do you always have to act like a—”
“Street magician? Tucker Graysten, tell me the honest truth, do you think if I went to a big city, say, Chicago, that I could make a living as a street magician?”
I looked down at the ground again and pushed out, under my breath, “If you think I have blood on my hands, why can’t you just . . . say so.”
At first she said nothing. I assumed she hadn’t heard me. It would have been almost impossible for her to have heard me. But then she asked, “Why would I think that?”
I jumped to my feet, took a couple of angry and painful strides toward her, and yelled, “Because I bailed out of the Mustang before that wicked curve, of course! You know that from invading my memories. You’re accusing me of abandoning my best friends!”
She sighed. “Tucker Graysten, everything in this world is not about you, you know. I was just practicing a new trick with that blood-on-my-hands thing. And also for your information, I am not in the business of judging people, thank you very much. My job is hard enough without my having to be some kind of judge or jury or . . . or dictator or something in my spare time, of which I don’t even have any!”
The idea of this weird girl holding down a job was outrageous. And hadn’t she said earlier that she and the dog were, what . . . co-workers? That proved it. She was a psycho, just totally nuts. I had to remember that and not let her get to me like she’d been doing.
I sat down in the wheat, pulled up my legs, and planted my elbows on my knees. “So, okay, where do you work?” I asked with a weary snort. “A fast-food restaurant?”
“I’m a laborer,” she said. “See my calluses?” She held her hands toward me again, palms out in a butterfly shape. “I get blisters you wouldn’t believe, Tucker Graysten.”
Her palms were a mess, all right. All oozing blisters and leathery gray calluses, just like she’d described. But then again, after witnessing that last trick, I had to assume she could make her hands be just about any way she wanted them to be.
“That’s why I asked you if you thought I could be a street performer,” she said in a wistful way. “I’m always dreaming of a different job, though even if I found something, I don’t know if I could quit the job I’ve got. I mean, I’ve had it like forever and ever.”
“You can quit any job,” I muttered, not because I knew what I was talking about but because I was exhausted and it’s what people always said. “If your jo
b sucks, just quit.”
“You don’t know my boss.” She shivered and stood. “Here, I’m done with these.”
She threw the stack of magazines toward me, and they spread their pages and flew in slow motion like five gaudy parrots. They stopped in midair and fell straight to the ground in front of me as though some invisible hunter had shot them through their hearts.
I stared, openmouthed, at where they formed a quivering line between me and the crazy hitchhiker. Each magazine had fallen open to the picture I stole it for.
She stood up and strolled over to squat beside the American Life. She tucked the cake picture back into it and I watched the rip where she’d torn it out close like a sutured wound. Then the cake page turned all on its own to reveal that falling airplane.
“A plane falling from the sky,” she whispered. “You wanted to see the expressions on those faces, didn’t you, Tucker Graysten? That’s what fascinated you. Don’t you think I know why you collected these pictures? Death is the last frontier, and you think you can learn its terrain, its language, and its customs without ever leaving your cozy home.”
When I felt her breath on my neck, I realized she had somehow moved to stand right behind me. In fact, suddenly she was looking at those pictures from over my shoulder.
She smelled like . . . what was that smell? Plants? No, she smelled like dirt.
XII
The wind came up and rustled all five magazines closed. “There’s a surer way to learn what you want to know, Tucker
Graysten,” she breathed into my ear. “Give me what you have in
your right back pocket and presto, you’ll know.”
She snaked one of her hands under my arm. It loomed there
in front of me, cobra-like, asking for something, needing me to
feed it with something, a callused and creased hand so very old,
ancient even, thin and in fact almost . . . skeletal.
My ears rang as I scrambled sideways like a crab, getting
