Damp, delicious air rushes in from every side, scattering my hair and every piece of paper and fast-food napkin on the dash. Half of it flutters into the night like space debris.
“This air will wake you up,” Carl says. “Smell it. Nothin’ like it.”
He’s not wrong. Just like that, my senses are flushed and alive again, cranked with oxygen that has been cleaned and filtered by the pine needles of a thousand trees. I feel a rush—hope, energy, resolution? Like something important is happening.
“Where…?”
Carl suddenly cranks the wheel left. We’re veering off the road, straight into the trees.
I want to scream but nothing comes out. I brace for impact. Instead, it feels like we are speeding through the rough and tattered brushes of an old car wash. Branches poke me through the open windows, sweep along the sides, feather across the top.
A road is slung inside here, hidden by undergrowth and kudzu, nature wild and abandoned to its own will. Carl was aiming for this forest opening by feel.
“That deer sign and the odometer have never failed me,” he confirms. “Four-point-two miles.”
He’s slammed on the brakes in the middle of the road and switched on the high beams. Thirty to forty yards ahead, the headlights illuminate a bumpy asphalt road that drops into oblivion.
It’s the kind of night and the kind of road where you have to edge forward trusting that there will be another thirty yards, and another and another. We are sitting less than a quarter-mile off the highway, yet it’s like we’ve left earth.
The sky is no longer visible through the sunroof. Barfly’s nose is at work behind me, whispering, orgasmic with hundreds of new scents. I turn and his tail whips me in the face. He’s poking his neck out the back window, stretching like a hungry giraffe.
I’ve read about dogs that can hang their noses off a boat in the middle of a lake and signal to searchers where a corpse rests at the bottom. Dogs that can sniff out the unmarked graves of Civil War–era slaves and archaeological remains a thousand years old. The soil chemistry is changed for centuries when flesh dissolves into the earth. Dust to dust, everything composting for the new life to come, the way it is supposed to be. Some dogs can smell that old death in the soil.
Barfly’s paws are suddenly braced up on the window, his body now leaning so far out into space that I am sure he is going to tumble out. “Barfly, come,” I say sharply. Miraculously, he obeys. “Roll up the windows halfway,” I order Carl, and he obeys, too.
Two small things, but it makes me feel like I’ve wrested back some control.
“Where the hell are we, Carl? Where are you taking me?”
“My darkroom.” He floors the gas, and we shoot into black.
57
Carl forges the truck ahead with little regard for speed or a dark, bumpy road unfurling bit by bit.
“There’s a deep ravine on your side,” he mentions, squealing around a serpentine pass. “My uncle named this section James Dean Drive. About six cars a year used to go down there. It’s a big junkyard jungle now, vines and moss creeping all over everything. They lost a wrecker or two before they figured out it’s too much trouble to pull anything up but the bodies. This curvy part just ahead? My uncle called it Marilyn Mon-road. Get it? Curvy? He liked his old movie stars. Of course, he’s long dead now. He lived out here with my aunt for fifty years.”
“Please slow down.” My voice is tight. “I don’t need you to be a tour guide.”
“Relax,” he says, “I’m a blind man who knows the way. All my senses heightened. You like maps. Well, it’s mapped perfectly in here.” He takes a hand off the wheel to tap his temple.
To my relief, he does ease his foot off the gas. It’s not to appease me, I learn shortly, but to wheel off on a dirt road. I picture us driving around inside Carl’s brain, a giant asteroid floating in space, packed with craters and holes. We can travel forever but never leave.
My head knocks back against the seat as Carl smacks into a particularly deep rut. I think about rough terrain puncturing the tires and only one spare riding in the back. Running out of water, food, and gas. Hiking or driving out of here with a broken arm and limited supplies.
All of these loom as threats just as big as Carl right now. The last time I glanced in the cooler, which was yesterday, it was a chocolate-tinged lake of water and scattered ice with one Ozarka water bottle, a Stella, and two Hershey bars.
I don’t expect help. We’ve crossed the desert into the Pine Curtain. People out here thrive on isolation and survival. We had to carve our way in. The road is neglected. I’ve glimpsed the shadows of a few abandoned, sagging cabins.
I’m gripping the plastic handle above my head, the one meant to help old ladies climbing in. My fingers itch to rip off the duct tape covering the clock so I can know the time. My backpack with the extra burner phones and my laptop are on the floor behind Carl, all of them turned off.
But I’ve only got one working hand. I don’t want to lose my grip as Carl hits every pothole in the road like he’s aiming for them.
No, it definitely wouldn’t be smart to piss off Carl at the moment by reaching around to get something. His driving is getting more erratic every minute. My dim hope—to fire up one of the extra burner phones and use a GPS app—is fading. There will be no cell towers able to filter through these soaring trees. No drones or satellites that are going to stretch their eyes and ears down here just for me.
Nightmarish questions pelt my brain. Did he turn that junkyard ravine into his own private cemetery? Did he roll Rachel down its cliff, listen to her tumble through the brush to the bottom?
Are my sister’s bones lying in rust? Are Nicole and Vickie and Violet keeping her company?
“How far?” I ask, instead, friendly. As much as I want him to turn the truck around, I don’t. Rachel wouldn’t turn around.
I wince as Carl slides the truck a little too far to the right, the paint shrieking off the passenger door as he scrapes a couple of trees.
He seems not to care, just leans forward, peering out the windshield like he suddenly can’t see as well. The road appears to be shrinking. I can see twenty feet in front of us. Ten.
“Just a couple seconds,” he says, suddenly confident, eyes on the odometer. “Right here.” He thumps jerkily on the brakes, sending Barfly yipping and scooting off the seat onto the floor.
I flip sideways to protect my broken arm from colliding with the dashboard. Carl turns off the ignition, pitching us into utter darkness. Barfly lets out one sharp protest bark.
“We’re here,” Carl announces.
* * *
—
For seconds, we sit in silence. Then I recover. “You’re not driving anymore. That was it.” I reach in the glove compartment for the small flashlight stowed there.
I’d accidentally, foolishly, left my Maglite in the other rental. My trainer would have given me hell for that. “Flip on the headlights so I can see where we are. Carl? Turn. On. The. Lights. And put the leash on Barfly if you’re getting out. He could take off and we’d never find him.”
As long as I order Carl around, as long as I’m not so nice and rapidly assign tasks with no time for him to think, things will be fine.
Carl mutters and maneuvers with Barfly, and I slide myself gingerly out of the truck. We’re parked in a very small, circular clearing. Carl stopped the truck inches before slamming into a tight line of trees.
Carl said, We’re here. I expect some sort of dwelling. Instead, the smoky beams from the truck are fighting their way into dense woods, illuminating nothing.
The road, if you can call it that, has quit. Carl is still inside the truck. I circle around, sweeping the flashlight on all sides, making sure I’m right. There is nothing but forest beyond our doily of dirt, with the single exit behind us. It’s going to take some maneuvering to back out.
>
I hear the creak of the truck door opening on the other side and the steady stream of Barfly peeing. I hope it’s Barfly. When Carl emerges, he grins at the minuscule distance between the trees and the front of the truck he almost demolished. Measures it with his hands. I’m not amused. Driving out of here without headlights would be unthinkable.
“What are you still standing there for?” Carl asks, testy. “We need to turn out the eyeballs on the truck so we can get going. We have a little bit of a walk.”
He’s carrying a flashlight I’ve never seen before, an industrial, expensive one. His list of conditions pops into my head.
Shovel. Flashlight. Rope. WD-40. Glad Press’n Seal.
He got the flashlight, what else might he have purchased on that list in our time apart?
I note that the left calf of his jeans is bulging more than the right one.
Waterproof watch (resistant @ 300 meters). Did he get one of those? Is he leading me to a lake? There is no lake in Texas as deep as a skyscraper. I’ve done the math—300 meters is almost 1,000 feet. The only American lakes I know that deep are north. Very, very north. It doesn’t matter. I don’t plan to join Carl in water of any depth, no matter what he says he has stored there.
“The path’s right here.” Carl pulls aside a branch and directs the beam forward into a narrow opening. The ground slants. Carl intends for us to climb down. It could be a path. It is so plush with a rough carpet of leaves and dead pine needles, there’s no way to know.
“Toss me the keys so I can turn off the lights,” I demand grimly.
He does. He watches with interest as I trudge over to the driver’s door. He snickers a little off to his side, like he has a bet going on with Walt about whether I’m going to take off. I’m not sure Carl cares whether I do or not. I can almost hear the crunch of Walt’s boots myself. Fifty bucks or a handful of your gold says she’s done with us.
The driver’s door is wide open. I step up on the running board and click off the truck lights. I rip the duct tape off the clock. 9:26. Four minutes until Family Feud.
I grab whatever is left of the napkins on the dash and open the door to the back of the cab. The backpack is heavier than I remember. I can always dump stuff out along the way if it weighs me down too much. Still, it takes supreme effort to sling it over my good shoulder. I never trained with anything broken, just sprained. Broken would be a little sadistic, even for my trainer.
Whoosh. Crack.
The sound, swift and merciless, has traveled from the other side of the truck, where Carl was standing. Did he fall? Is someone else here? There’s no outcry from Carl. No more sound at all. I duck around the truck and beam my flashlight where I last saw Carl.
A large branch is missing, leaving a gaping hole. I see a beam of light bouncing ahead in the woods. My own light catches the shadow of Carl’s lean form and a flash of metal. Crack. Carl is slashing through the forest using an extremely sharp object. A small sickle? A knife?
Something pushes against my leg. I gasp, and Barfly lets out a howl that sends another, unseen animal skittering into the woods.
“I’m so sorry, Barfly.” I’d forgotten about him. I’ve stepped on his foot. I flash my light and hold up his paw. Looks OK. He’s licking my hand.
Barfly has been sitting patiently, waiting, his leash wrapped around a giant root jutting out of the ground. Carl giving me one more chance to give up? Or Carl trying to make my hike more difficult?
He knows I can’t hold on to both Barfly’s leash and the flashlight.
I’m already considering how well I’ll be able to maneuver an obstacle course of stones and roots with a backpack and my arm in a sling.
I’m going to have to trust someone. It might as well be Barfly. I worry about his stitches, even though he seems to have forgotten they exist.
I worry more about leaving him behind. What if I leash him to a tree or lock him in the truck with a window cracked and never make it back?
“Stick with me, OK?” I whisper, as I unwrap his leash. “We can always turn around.” I don’t know whether I’m reassuring him or me.
“You coming?” Carl calls out.
Coming…coming…coming…
The echo dances off the trees, almost musical.
Did Carl ever call out Rachel’s name here?
His flashlight glints like fire between the branches of the trees and then it’s gone, extinguished, out of sight, descending to God knows where.
Whoosh. Crack.
Whoosh. Crack.
I step onto the path.
I trained for this.
58
I shouldn’t have worried about losing Carl. First, he doesn’t appear to want to lose me. He even stopped so I could catch up.
The object he’s swinging at every plant in his way turns out to be a machete, the kind sported by outdoorsmen and maniacs.
I’m staying a good fifteen yards behind him, not because I think he plans to use it on me but because I want time to duck if it flies out of his hand by accident. Barfly is trotting along a few feet in front of me, similarly wary.
This does appear to be some sort of old trail. My flashlight has illuminated fading arrows painted on tree trunks—some orange, some white. For hunters? Amateur botanists? Boy Scouts? The Ku Klux Klan?
Half the time, they point different directions, sometimes even up to the sky. As far as I can determine, Carl is ignoring them, walking purposefully, still following the map in his head.
I comfort myself that dementia patients often easily remember the past and there is a good chance he knows where he’s going. I wonder if Carl’s darkroom is not a room with four walls but a whole damn forest.
For about half an hour, Barfly and I trudge behind Carl, while he slashes plant life and sings “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” It floats back in bits and pieces. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.
We splash through a shallow, rocky stream.
Glory, glory, hallelujah.
I check Barfly’s wound. It’s holding up fine. All along the path, I’m attaching scraps of fast food napkins to the branches as markers, little white flags for me to follow on the way out.
I’m feeling more optimistic now that we’re out of the truck. I’ve felt more certain than this that I was going to die, and for no reason other than a trainer did exactly what I paid him to.
No more singing. Carl has halted in a clearing. Above us, there’s a jagged circular patch of dark gray sky like a kid cut a hole out of construction paper to help us see better.
Directly ahead, a small house is settled among the trees.
It’s dressed in worn green shingles and accessorized with black trim and shutters—an attempt at camouflage, maybe. A porch widens out, with a decrepit white swing. Two Mexican flowerpots sit in the front yard, cracked and depressed.
If this place wasn’t buried in the woods and falling apart, if there weren’t dead girls to consider, I’d think nice people used to live here.
* * *
—
The screeching of the hundreds of cicadas living in this hole on earth is so deafening I wonder if that’s why Carl still isn’t moving. If he’s confused and the noise is crowding all thought out of his head. I’m struggling to think myself.
“Put the machete on the ground, Carl,” I say loudly when I’m three feet behind him. He grips it tighter. I repeat: “Drop it, Carl.”
“Don’t need to drop it. I’m not going to sling it at you. Going to go sit down on the porch.”
I start to argue. Then shut up. He advances toward the porch. I move in sync behind him. When he lands heavily on the swing, it groans, something near death. I expect it to crash to the ground, but it just sinks ominously with Carl’s weight, then holds. He switches off his flashlight and places it and the machete on the floor beneath the s
wing.
He raises his hands in front of his chest, wiggles his fingers at me like sarcastic worms, then slides them behind his head, elbows out.
“Good enough for you?” he demands. “Get that light out of my eyes. These damn cicadas are louder than a rock concert. That’s a fact. Loudest insects on earth. They can get over 115 decibels. Did you know that they pee out of the trees? We used to call it honey dew.”
I’m beginning to wonder if Carl belongs to this house. Maybe he was standing there, assuring himself it was empty. Maybe he just needed to sit, and he found a creaky swing.
“Homer wrote about cicadas in The Iliad,” Carl continues.
“Is this our destination or are we just resting?” I pause. “Does someone live here?”
I’m not sure he hears me. His chin has drooped against his chest. He’s pale in the meager light. His eyes are little cut slits. Barfly has settled his nose across his boots, the doggie sign that all is well. I flash the beam toward the ceiling hooks. The bolts appear surprisingly secure. Carl and his machete seem fairly secured for the moment, too.
I kneel on the concrete floor, jerk the backpack off my shoulder, and dig around inside. I hold up a Neoprene water bottle and jiggle it. Half-full. I wish I’d grabbed the last bottle of water in the cooler. I was just so afraid of losing Carl in the woods. I take a long swig and consider his wilted form. I tap him on the knee. “Heads up, Carl. Have a drink.”
While he’s guzzling, I try to figure out where we are. Estimating the time on the truck clock plus thirty minutes for the hike, this means Carl drove for about four more hours after I fell asleep again. My gut is, we’re still in Texas, and the landscape definitely confirms the Piney Woods.
I now most emphatically know why this stretch of forest is noted for its Bigfoot sightings and historic hideouts for Civil War deserters. The bad news is that the Piney Woods overwhelms more than 20,000 square miles in Texas and I can’t Google the map in Carl’s head.
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