Without Trace

by Rae Richen

“The guys that sold him the coke.”

  “It was coke? What the hell was Trace thinking?”

  DeAndre snorted. “Why’d you imagine that Trace thinks?”

  “What did they look like?”

  “Just guys. Older than us. White.”

  “Yeah? And you’re gonna tell me all white guys look alike?”

  DeAndre nodded. “Mostly. The difference is hair color and pimples.”

  “And these guys?”

  “Brown hair on one, black on the other and Brown has pimples right up into his hair line.”

  “Tall? Fat?”

  “Skinny. Like they both been using a long time.”

  Glyn didn’t want to imagine the bad guys looking for him. And he didn’t want to finger Felipe to get himself out of a spot. This was getting serious.

  “How’d they know it was my car?” The car that’s really my Mom’s car. Damn.

  “He texted you.”

  “All right. They have his phone, so they have him and they have my phone number and name. Who are they?”

  DeAndre said, “I don’t know, I just heard from Ray Burt what the stuff was and where he got it.”

  DeAndre fidgeted, and then said, “Ray said he heard it down at the Taco Bell.”

  “That where these guys hang out? That why he had the stuff in a Taco Bell bag?

  “I don’t know. Ray works there after school. Trace always eats there. Got no other idea where and who. I just heard this stuff.”

  “DeAndre, how come you are hiding out?”

  “They know you and Trace are Ancient Nation. Ray said if they see me with you, they might come here looking for you. We can’t be meeting.”

  “Not near me, eh?”

  “Yeah. Nothin’ against you. Just, you were his wheels that day.”

  **

  An hour later, Glyn had Mom’s Camry parked in a lot on Forty-Eighth and Fremont, the location of Mom’s friend and car mechanic. Glyn and DeAndre had jimmied some wires and Ron, from the car shop, had arranged to tow it in for a fix. It was sitting behind his shop, waiting for a part, the part that now sat on the floor of Ron’s garage.

  Glyn didn’t want Mom in that car until he got this figured out. He also didn’t want his sister, Arwain, to happen to borrow the car to go to a college class, so he told Ron the truth.

  “All right,” Ron said. “I’m tenting the Camry, and I’m recommending that Susan . . . that your mom, rent.”

  “She’s always renting to deliver plants to customers,” Glyn said. “Big garden designs are a U-Haul project.”

  “What about the police?” Ron asked.

  “The guy that’s missing was carrying product.”

  “Did you fellows ever think maybe jail would stop him from using? Might be safer, even for him?”

  “You know anybody comes out of jail to a better life?”

  “Got a point there, Glyn.”

  “If I find him, I’m hoping his mom will put him in rehab.”

  “That only works when the kid wants it to work,” Ron said.

  “So I hear,” Glyn said.

  “Best thing might be to take him out to that tree farm your family inherited. Leave him there ‘til he’s desperate.”

  “Even a tree farm has neighbors. And my aunts take the dogs out there to hunt the wild mushroom.”

  “Not the wilderness then. Got no more ideas for you, but we’ll keep mom’s car under wraps.”

  With Mom safe, or at least safer, Glyn asked Ron to drive him home.

  Dad was practicing the piano when he came in. The Schumann stopped in mid-phrase.

  “How come Ron brought you home?”

  “The Camry’s toast.”

  “You speeding again?”

  “No. Ron says the alternator is gone and the thing’s old enough it will take a while to find parts. He called Mom and recommended renting while he looks for a better used car deal.”

  Dad studied Glyn a moment and then started playing, exactly where he’d left off. Merlyn the Mathematician had that kind of mind. It always gave Glyn a laugh that Dad was so rational and so focused. Even out at the farm, you could see him measuring trees with his mental calculator – so many board feet, so many inches growth on the leader branch.

  As Dad played, he asked, “So, the basement has now become The Beat Kitchen, I hear. Explain, please.”

  “Felipe needs the space in the filling station for storage.”

  “Kind of sudden.”

  “Uh, yeah. Pressure from Chevron National, I guess.”

  “That all that’s going on, Glyn?”

  Damn. Dad wasn’t dropping a note, but he was into this interrogation with laser ears for fog facts.

  “Can’t think of anything else,” he said, and went into the kitchen as if to find a snack.

  Dad continued practicing.

  Glyn hated lying to Dad. He hoped they could find Trace and get him into rehab instead of jail, but this sneaking around the people who trust you wore pretty fast. Dad, Mom, and certainly Grandma had a trust in the police and the justice system.

  That system worked for white folks, mostly, but Glyn had come to realize it was a trap for his black friends. He was glad his adopted older brother, John Phillip, was away in the Marines. At home, because J.P. was black, he’d been stopped for minor traffic violations Glyn could have gotten away with easily, stopped in the stores and frisked, stopped in the mall and questioned because someone thought he looked like the black man who did something somewhere. White witnesses and white policeman were notorious for not recognizing the differences that made black people individuals.

  Glyn didn’t want Trace to be part of that system just because at sixteen he’d been a fool for a few months.

  Had it been only months? He thought back to their freshman year. Trace had started blowing smoke over his mind pretty soon after the first assignments were handed out. He’d felt out of his element, couldn’t read as fast as the curriculum moved forward, and didn’t have a computer to write on, so didn’t have any kind of speed built up to get out the assignments.

  Even after Leneld had given Trace an old computer and wrenched him into the chair to learn how to type, Trace felt behind, out of it, and in need of some kind of high to make him part of life.

  Reading, Glyn thought. It all went back to their grade school days and some kind of trouble with reading. During those years, no one had paid a lot of attention, except the few teachers who gave Trace extra lessons in phonics. When they were little kids, volunteers came and read to kids like Trace, trying to help fill in gaps left by whatever made reading difficult.

  Trace’s own mom came and read to others, while someone read to Trace. It wasn’t like the teachers and family didn’t work at helping, but nobody seemed to have the key to unlock his abilities. Each year, Trace was farther behind, until it all crashed on him in high school where seven different teachers could hardly find time to communicate with each other. They had no time for goof-offs who found weed an entertaining relief from real life.

  Glyn took some potato chips up to his room and called Trace’s mom, Alice Gowen.

  “No. No sign,” Mrs. Gowen said. “Leneld and Markus have been all over the neighborhood and into Darrell’s Bar at the corner where you let him off.”

  “Church? Would he hide out with Reverend Jackson?”

  “I tried that,” Mrs. Gowen said. “The whole congregation is on the look-out for my boy.”

  **

  Figuring that Felipe and his guys were the only real source of information, Glyn decided to skip Thursday classes. He put on his helmet, hopped his bike and took off uphill toward Emerson Street. Half an hour later, he rolled in and pretended to pump air into his tires.

  After a moment, Felipe came over, saying loudly, “You want some help with that?”

  Felipe bent down, took the air hose and said, “They look for you.”

  “Didn’t you give them the Taco Bell?”

  “Yeah, but not enough. See those new bulle
t holes in the wall?”

  Glyn squinted at the white wall and the new pock marks. “Any of the guys get hit?” he asked.

  “No. Showing off that they could. They wanted info. They think you used some. Or sold it.”

  Glyn’s neck stiffened. Choice. Throw Trace to the drug guys or become the target. “Where’s Trace?”

  “Fat guy with curly hair took him. Right off the corner by Darrell’s Bar. Don’t know where.”’

  “What did they look like?”

  “One guy’s got a big gut. The other two seem like walking death.”

  Glyn thought of DeAndre’s description. Like they been using a long time.

  “Thanks, Felipe.”

  “Please go.”

  Glyn hopped his bike and took off down Emerson toward the Adida’s buildings and the park where he could think.

  So, Glyn thought, they know Trace used some. He was flying when I left him here. They’ve just decided to drag me into this because they can.

  He crossed the park and the Adida’s campus to let himself down into the Greeley Avenue bike lane. As he rode next to the railroad tracks and the train repair yards of north Portland, his back sweat with alert prickles.

  If Trace’s druggers didn’t spot him, he could get to Holly Hills Retirement Center in time to take Grandma Willie for a walk around the roof garden before work. Of course, she’d ask about school, but she didn’t have the calendar, and since the voters of Oregon had decided to cut funding to schools, there were plenty of furlough days to fob off on Grandma as an excuse.

  Chapter Five

  Up in apartment eight-twelve, Glyn found fobbing a lie off on Grandma failed.

  “Goodness,” Grandma said. “You are the only student who has a furlough day. Are you in some high school not related to the Portland Public Schools?”

  He breathed deep and plunged toward truth. “Sorry, Grandma. I just can’t be at school today. Too much goin’ on.”

  “So much that hiding out with your Grandma is an improvement? Give with the information, young man.”

  He thought a moment, fiddled with the magazines on her coffee table and finally said, “Grandma, you gotta promise you won’t talk to the police.”

  “Can’t promise, but I can promise I will consider the wisest direction to move. I know that isn’t always to the police, since they are human and embedded in a less than perfect system.”

  Glyn gawked. His assumptions were blown. Grandma knew more than an eighty-year-old might, and maybe it was because she taught policemen how to write.

  He reminded her about his friend Trace. She’d known Trace since he was kindergarten through fifth grade, so she had the picture. Fact was, she’d read to him once a week in fourth and fifth grade and helped him learn phonics rules to be able to read more easily.

  So, Glyn brought her up to date on the whole situation.

  “First thing,” she said. “We are being honest with your mom and dad. Situation like this, they need to be aware and alert. Call them now.”

  He called Mom, who worked at home.

  **

  “Ah,” Mom said, “So that’s what this is about. A kid came to the door looking for you. I’m glad I smelled a rat when he came. His handshake was slime. So, I pretended you’d moved out. Angry. Gone. No contact.”

  “I’m sorry, Mom.”

  “The car is not dead, right?”

  “Also a lie.”

  “Ron is in on this lie?”

  “Trying to keep you safe.”

  “Okay. I’ll discuss that with him. I need new wheels anyway, so this time we’re looking for a plant-mobile. Next, after your call to dad, you have to live somewhere else for a time. May I speak to my mom?”

  Grandma Willie took the phone. Grandma listened, then she said, “Remember when you tried to talk me out of a two bedroom, saying I’d only fill it with books? Aren’t we glad I vetoed that edict from the Queen of Sheba?”

  Mom said, “Who’s going to move all those books?”

  “Guess,” Grandma said, smiling at Glyn.

  Later, Dad enlisted his company’s lawyer in the search for someone to take on Trace when he was found. Dad said, “That kid has the best rap lines in Ancient Nation. Sometimes, I think he sees people more clearly than any of us. Let’s save him if we can.”

  During the phone calls, Grandma had disappeared into the second bedroom. When Glyn stood in the doorway, stacks of books were still on the bed, but Grandma had cleared off some and created pilons of literature under the windowsill.

  “Well, your mother was correct, but everybody needs a bedroom plus a library. Her library is in the basement, you’ll notice.”

  “Yeah,” Glyn laughed. “I counted eight bookcases when Dad and I were planning the new Beat Kitchen sound studio. Half her library will be moving into her sewing room.”

  “Now, young man, you call, using my phone, and don’t text. Tell the guys not to come to your house. We’ll find a space in the retirement center. The development department in this venerable community is panting after my stock portfolio, so, I’ve got a crowbar to pry open spaces and attitudes for your group.”

  “Thank you, Grandma.”

  “Three rules, however.”

  Glyn peered at her.

  “No words your grandma wouldn’t approve of. Don’t raid the kitchen at all. And those fellows must leave off the shit-kicker boots. Those heavy-metal toe bands make big marks on the floors. Old ladies with walkers have to look at floors a lot.”

  “I’ll tell the guys.”

  **

  In a small bungalow on Northeast Twelfth Avenue, Violeta Aguirre sat on her sister’s twin bed while her Rosaria packed her suitcase.

  “Vi,” Rosaria said, “don’t look so blue. You’ll be coming to college in a year and a half.”

  Violeta shrugged. “It won’t be the same, Rosie. We’ve had all this time to share and then – poof – all things change. I’m going to miss our late-night secrets and our talks.”

  “And,” Rose laughed, “the pranks we play on Papá and Mamá. That mouse was a good one.”

  “And the spider down from the ceiling . . .” Violeta laughed behind her fingers.

  “And Papá yells the loudest while Mamá uses the broom on them.”

  Violeta rolled over on her stomach, laughing, but also working not to cry. “What will I do without you?” she asked.

  Rosie studied her. “You will do fine. I have to go for this last weeks of summer term because my math scores were not as good as my English, but your math is great.”

  “This early arrival at college is just to brush up on math?” Violeta asked. “Aren’t you taking some pre-med classes this month, too.”

  “Sure. Intro to Biology and an anatomy class.”

  “The shin bone’s connected to the . . . to the what?”

  Rose plopped her red plaid skirt into the suitcase. “I’ll tell you in my next letter where the shin bone connects.”

  “The shin bone is way below the level of that skirt, Rosie. Don’t you think you should leave that for your little sister?”

  Rose studied it. Held it up and looked in the mirror.

  “Where does it hit you?” she asked Violeta.

  “Right at the knee.”

  Rose pulled it out. “Yes. I guess it better stay with you. But if you get taller, watch out. That skirt is guy bling.”

  “What do you mean.”

  “It flips at the edges because of the pleats – makes the guys look twice.” Rose wiggled her eyebrows. “And you are never into making guys look twice.”

  Violeta said, “Maybe not, but I’ve got a guy who does it anyway.”

  “What?” Rose sat down on the bed. “You mean there is a guy you noticed looking twice? That’s not like you to notice. They all do it. You are a looker, sister.”

  Violeta felt the heat in her cheeks.

  Rose leaned toward her. “Who is this guy?”

  Violeta smiled shyly at her sister. “He works at Holly H
ill since last week. He’s cute in a messy sort of way. Curly blond hair, tall, stands near the doorway to the private dining room, looking more than twice, really. And then when he is working, he does it exactly the way I do it.”

  “What? He’s making fun of you?”

  “No. At least I don’t think so. He just uses the motions I use and then when he glances at me, he seems embarrassed to have been doing it.”

  “That’s weird,” Rosie said. “Watch out for weird.”

  Violeta smiled. “I will definitely watch out for weird. What time is your bus tomorrow?”

  “Ten o’clock in the morning. I think I get to George Fox University by one or one-thirty.”

  Do you have a class tomorrow?”

  “No. They start the next day.”

  “Great. You’ll have time to explore the town.”

  Rosie shrugged. “Of course, I had to promise Papá that I wouldn’t explore the town by myself, but I won’t know anyone on the first day.”

  “How about Liza? Won’t she be your roommate?”

  “Liza is living off campus.”

  “Geez! Her dad let her do that?”

  “I’m not sure how she got to do that, but Papá would have a cow if I even asked to live in an apartment.”

  “Papá plus Mamá.”

  Rose laughed. “Maybe by the time I’m a nurse or a doctor, I won’t have so many rules.”

  “Yeah,” Violeta laughed, “by the time you are forty.”

  Rosie tossed the red plaid skirt at her. “Off my bed, little sister. I have to get up in the morning and get to college.”

  **

  Back in Holly Hill Retirement Center, Grandma Willie waited for Geneva to appear for dinner. But Geneva didn’t come to the dining hall at all.

  The center’s social worker checked on her. Geneva told the social worker to go eat something shaped like bratwurst.

  So, Geneva was alive, angry, and articulate.

  Willie had talked Glyn into going to school in the afternoon, at least to pick up homework. During school hours, Susan, Glyn’s mom and Willie’s daughter, brought some pajamas, changes of clothes and Glyn’s computer. They looked at and reserved two large empty storage spaces in the basement where the rappers could practice. These were spaces left by recent deaths of people in the center’s care facility, so availability would only last until the vacated apartments were rented.