Shadows Among Us

by Ellery A Kane

  “What does that mean? DEATH is at my doorstep? Comforting, Luci. Really comforting.”

  “Are you actually asking for Madame Luci’s professional opinion?”

  I shrug, because I can’t bring myself to say yes. Or no. Before I decide, Luci squeals and rubs her hands together. There’s no stopping her now.

  “When a card comes out of the deck, it usually represents something that will happen very soon. Muy próxima. DEATH could signal a change, like we discussed. But it could also mean letting go of the past.”

  She raises one eyebrow and stops speaking long enough for my stomach to clench tight, my hands to ball in fists at my side. All of me wound as tight as the vise grip I’ve got on the past, on Dakota. I don’t say it out loud, but we both know I won’t let go. I can’t. The goddess would have to pry Dakota’s memory from my rotting fingers.

  “And my other jumper? Whitetails and Whoppers? What does Madame Luci have to say about that?”

  “Well, it’s technically not a tarot card, but the goddess is unpredictable. You said that place reminded you of your dad, right? And you haven’t seen him in a while . . .”

  She doesn’t call it what it is. Total estrangement. But I know she understands. Her dad had spent twenty-five years in San Quentin as a shot caller for the Mexican Mafia. Muy complicado, she’d told me when I’d asked if they got along. But I’d take Juan Castillo and his teardrop face tattoos any day. Sometimes the devil you don’t know is better than the one you know too well.

  “And you mentioned the old cowboy is your dad’s age. Maybe the goddess is telling you it’s time, mi querida.”

  “Time for what exactly?”

  “Abre la puerta. Your father is at the door, and you need to open it.”

  I roll my eyes as hard as I can muster and take a long sip of vodka. I hold it in my mouth and let it pickle my tongue to stop the chill racing up the back of my neck. Because I’d already decided to make the drive to the junkyard in Allendale the moment I’d quarantined that business card in the desk drawer.

  “Well?” she asks, preening. “Am I right or am I right?”

  I knock back the rest of my glass, savoring the burn. “Does Madame Luci give refunds?”

  ****

  When I see the dead squirrels hanging on the fence line, their mud-brown pelts shivering in the wind, I know my father still lives here. Here is Mol’s Junkyard, my namesake, though the sign had tumbled to the ground years ago. And it’s never been more apropos. As if my dad had somehow known, even then, what a wasteland my life would become.

  I’d been seven years old when I first came to Mol’s to live with my father. After the court had declared me a liar and my mother unfit. Back then, this place had a heartbeat, a vital kind of magic. With rusted-out cars for hide-and-seek and old engines my father brought to life again, wielding his tools like a wizard, his hands mucky with grease. Where there’s muck, there’s brass, he’d say.

  I park the Jeep in the gravel turnaround outside the chained gates, next to my dad’s ancient rust bucket—4 SALE $100 painted on the back window—and tap the horn. The sound splinters the stillness, sudden as a starter’s pistol. A few blackbirds scatter from the refuse, taking flight with an urgency I fully understand. I watch them with envy as they disappear into the grove of sycamore trees.

  There’s no sign of Dad. Even the dingy beige curtains he’d sewn himself are pulled across the windows of the Terry travel trailer, as stiff as if they’d been starched and ironed. The silence feels unnatural too, and I can’t stop thinking he’s watching me from behind them. Rust stains the trailer’s exterior, its wheels like roots sunk into the earth. No one would know it had another life, cavorting cross country to Badlands National Park, where I’d celebrated my fifth birthday counting prairie dogs instead of candles. Then Mom and Dad divorced, and the trailer anchored itself here like a statue, a monument to my father’s despair.

  I open the car door and call to him. But my voice sputters, dies out, like one of his hopeless cases. The engines he couldn’t save that he’d lined in a row in back of the trailer, where they’d rested in their own pitiful graveyard. I try again, louder this time, but the only reply comes from the crickets, desperately flinging themselves out of my way as I trudge like a giant into the tall grass.

  The mailbox attached to the gate tells me what I need to know. It’s not stuffed full, but it’s not empty either. Inside, I find a sportsman’s catalog and a check from the VA, both postmarked three days ago and addressed to Victor Krandel, my father.

  I exchange a wink and a nod with the familiar NO TRESPASSING signs as I avoid the gate entirely, making my way around the side where there’s a hole in the fence. The same hole I’d slipped through at fifteen, when I’d run away from Mol’s and back to my mother’s, just in time to watch her sicken with breast cancer and die. Long after the heart of this place had ground to a stop and the magic turned black and my father became a dark wizard who went off his meds and talked to himself and drank too much and shot the squirrels that nested inside his precious rust buckets, marking his kill count on an old steel drum until he’d run out of room.

  The break in the fence seems smaller than I remember—the whole place does. But I manage to squeeze through on my hands and knees without snagging my sweater on the torn end of the chain-link.

  Once I’m inside, I move like I’m on enemy ground. Like I’m making a slug trail through the jungles of Vietnam. The way my father taught me. Most of it is still here, exactly as we’d arranged it, but the weeds have grown into thick camouflage. Better and denser than any we could’ve made ourselves.

  Near the gates, to the right of the burned-out jalopy, I spot the booby-trapped plyboard with the 16-penny finishing nails my father had hammered in as I’d watched. Just in case Charlie tries to sneak up on us at night. It wasn’t until seventh grade—US History—I’d realized Charlie wasn’t one person but a whole army of them. The Viet Cong.

  I creep over the air-horn trip wire that runs along the perimeter of the trailer, marveling at how well it’s concealed. He must’ve finally invested in the USGI snare wire—the cheap fishing line we’d strung had always stood out like a sore thumb. The thought makes me shake my head in dismay. It’s no surprise I’d never fit in with Cole’s friends and their Stepford wives. Even with my Louie and my Manolos, my degree, and my put-on sophistication. You can take the girl out of the junkyard, but . . .

  I survey the rest of the lawn, if you could call it that. The skeleton frame of a tattered recliner stands guard like a scarecrow at the periphery. Otherwise, it’s a jumble of beer cans, car parts, and cigarette butts set atop a blanket of dead leaves. Same as it ever was. The steel drum is there too, overturned and red with rust, and for a moment, I’m a girl again, awakened at dawn, terrified by the sound of my father’s voice barking one of the army’s drill slogans, “Kill! Kill! Kill! To kill without mercy is the spirit of the bayonet!” as he etched another mark in the drum’s cold flesh.

  Just beyond the kill-count barrel, the front door. Dad always set a trap there. The last line of defense, he’d called it. Usually an Altoid-tin alarm system he’d rigged like a regular MacGyver. I never knew whether to be worried or impressed.

  “Dad?”

  My voice echoes in a way that convinces me I’m the only person left alive on the face of the earth. Me against the world: the fantasy of a survivalist, especially a paranoid misanthrope like my father.

  I take another step—the trailer’s within reach now—and cry out as I fall. Straight down and hard through the leaf cover. My foot lands in a hole clear up to my knee, my body vibrating with the impact.

  Damn it, Dad.

  I suck in a breath and wait for the searing pain. For the sharpened spikes to gouge my foot the way my father must’ve intended. The same had happened to him when he’d stepped into a punji pit in Vietnam. He’d shown me the quarter-sized scar where the b
amboo had gone straight through. But I don’t feel a thing. And I’m afraid to look down.

  My foot sticks a little as I haul it back to solid ground, and I stare at my sneaker in horror. The spike pierced the toe box, narrowly missing flesh and bone. Infuriated, I poke at the pit, watching the rest of the thatched twigs and leaves tumble to the bottom. Four rows of sycamore sticks, filed like spears, point up at me, the intruder, with their accusing fingers.

  He’s gotten worse. I’d been right not to let Dakota anywhere near this place.

  I test the door, jiggling the handle—so far, so good—and open it a crack, waving half of a discarded car antenna inside. With all my limbs intact, I give it a gentle push, and it swings open, wide and beckoning.

  My father could be inside. I’m not sure what frightens me more. That he is. Or that he isn’t. But it’s the portal to another life, one I thought I’d left behind forever, and I’m sucked right in, powerless to resist it.

  I breach the threshold and call for him again, certain he’ll answer now. Because the place reeks of him, that nauseating fragrance of malt liquor, mildew, and anger I’d grown accustomed to at the end. He’s probably sleeping one off in the pullout bed in the back.

  I swipe at the half-eaten can of Beanee Weenees attracting flies on the kitchen counter. There’s at least two months’ supply of them in the pantry, the ones we’d pack for hunting trips and spread on saltine crackers with a pinch of brown sugar. A hillbilly’s delicacy, Dad would tease.

  The flies disperse, then circle back for more, and the memory of that sweet, salty taste coats my tongue in a nauseating instant. I bend over the sink and seek relief at the faucet, scooping the water from hand to mouth. It’s warm and slightly musty, but I swallow it down anyway, grateful the damn thing still works.

  I pick through the top layer of paper on the dining table—mostly delinquent bills and unread newspapers—and make my way to the beds in the rear of the trailer, which is only a few steps further on the cracked vinyl.

  His bed is empty and unmade. The pillowcase stained an unhappy yellow. The sheets rumpled and cast aside in the kind of fitful sleep he’d awaken from, screaming. He’d always fall right back under, leaving me huddled in my burrow, mouth dry and heart pounding.

  Resting on the floor within his reach, a half-empty bottle of risperdal—the antipsychotic medication my father had always insisted was manufactured by Charlie himself—and an open can of Olde English. Chasing one good decision with a bad one. That’s classic Krandel.

  A fat black horsefly flits from the can’s mouth to the pillow and past me, landing on the lower bunk nearby where it sits, watching me with its alien eyes. I walk to shoo it, and it takes flight again. But I’m fixed here, staring at the bunk I’d called mine as a girl.

  It’s littered with the debris of twenty-some years. At the center, an open photo album with a glossy 8x12 splayed like a body at a crime scene. It’s Dakota’s freshman yearbook picture. I steady myself in the narrow hallway, leaning against the bathroom door and gulping up the stale air like my life depends on it.

  “Put your goddamn hands in the air where I can see ’em.” I haven’t heard that voice in years—that razor-toothed bark—but it belongs to my father. Of that, there’s no doubt. “And turn around real slow.”

  “Jesus Christ, Dad. It’s me. Mollie. Your daughter.”

  He’s backlit by the late afternoon sun streaming in from the open door, looming so tall on those stilt-like legs of his, it’s a wonder he can stand upright in here. The light plays tricks, and for a moment, I’m a kid again. And he’s the man who can catch a fish with his bare hands and lift me onto his shoulders like a sack of deer feed and fix anything with duct tape. The man who would never hurt me no matter what my mother had convinced me to tell the judge. But as he steps toward me and into the shadows, his jack-o’-lantern grin reveals itself as a grimace, and his skin turns to worn leather, deep lines etched in sun-spotted earth. The .22 rifle in his hand becomes undeniable. It’s pointed right at me.

  “I don’t care who you are. You’re trespassing on private property. And you know my motto. Kill anything that moves.”

  I don’t mean to laugh—a short burst of bitterness—but it comes out anyway. “I came looking for you. And I nearly got a spike in my foot.” I point my toe at him, and he nods like he’s proud of himself. “Now you’re gonna what? Shoot me?”

  “Good ole punji pit woulda served you right. This ain’t your home no more. You made that real clear a long time ago.” But he puts the gun down at least, leans its slim body against the kitchen counter, and I see what he’s brought with him, strung up over his shoulder on his game carrier. At least six rabbits, fur slick with blood.

  I look away before I get sick. Or cry. I won’t let that happen.

  “Where’d you get this?” I ask, pointing to the photo. I can hardly look at it. Here. In this place. Where I’m already so raw.

  He shrugs. “Showed up in the mailbox one day. Figured you’d sent it. You used to send ’em to me. Or did you forget about that?”

  “You never wrote back. Or called. Or said thank you. I didn’t think you cared. You didn’t even come to her funeral.”

  “Yeah, well. That’s how you wanted it. That’s how you always wanted it. Still a teenager and thinking you knew better than your daddy. You got yourself emancipated. So you ain’t my problem no more.”

  “Can you blame me?” My question is rigged, as booby-trapped as the junkyard itself. Because we’ve never talked about the night I ran away. Not from Mol’s per se, but from my father. The man I’ve spent a lifetime trying to make sense of. But he’s smart enough to sidestep my punji pit.

  “No. I blame your mama. She fed you all kinds of BS about me. Tried to turn you against me. Had you spouting her little story like a goddamn parrot. Hell, she tried to get me locked up for touching you inappropriate. You remember all that? You remember when that judge said you was a liar?”

  Coached. That’s what the judge had said. I’d been coached.

  “He said I was a victim of the alien syndrome.”

  I laugh again, this time unabashedly. Even if it is at his expense. Maybe especially so. “You mean Parental Alienation Syndrome, Dad. And it’s junk science, you know that.”

  “Don’t go thinkin’ you’re smarter than me. I’ve got a college degree too, ya know?” And he did. An associate’s in automotive technology, paid for by the GI Bill. And a doctorate with honors in changing the subject.

  “I know you do. But that’s beside the point. You can’t blame mom. She lost custody. And I lived with you for eight years. Whatever happened between us, you messed it up yourself.”

  “So is that why you showed up here, trespassin’? To give me the old laundry list of what I did wrong? Because you can just ride out on your high horse exactly the way you came.”

  He unhooks the rope carrier from his shoulder and deposits the rabbits on the counter in a lifeless heap. “Unless you want to stay for dinner. I’m partial to fried rabbit these days.”

  He wants me to look. I know he does. They didn’t feel a thing—one of his favorite hunting sentiments. But as hard as I’d tried for him, I never had the heart for it. “I came to ask you something.”

  “Well, go on then.”

  I tread carefully, measuring every word. “Do you still go to that store, Whitetails and Whoppers? The one with the half fish, half deer on the sign?”

  “That sign always did tickle you, didn’t it?” His face is hard to read under all his camouflage: the wiry gray mustache, unkempt; the soiled baseball cap; the eyes so practiced at avoiding mine; the inevitable silence. Finally, he breaks the stalemate. “Here and there. Why?”

  “Did you ever see Dakota there?”

  He frowns, blinks, and stretches his head back, shocked. As if I’d grown a third eye right there in front of him. “What kind of damn asinine question is
that? You know I ain’t never even met Dakota. You made sure of that. You and Cole, that well-to-do husband of yours. Cole. That’s a soap opera name if I ever heard one.”

  “We’re divorced, Dad.”

  “Hmph. Can’t say I’m surprised. You always were a handful.” He shrugs out of his corduroy jacket—the same one he’d draped over my shoulders when it got too cold at the lake. The cigarette burn on the sleeve is a dead giveaway. Tossing it behind him, he opens the fridge and pops the top on another Olde English. “Want one for the road?”

  Over his shoulder, I spot the oversized duffel where the jacket landed. The bag that had always been too heavy for me to lug myself. I can’t help but think he did it on purpose. He remembers the night I ran. How could he not?

  I snatch Dakota’s photo from the album and push my way past him. Past the rabbits’ slender bodies, probably still warm.

  Down the step, around the pit, and through the hole in the fence. Eyes straight ahead. I don’t even glance back. But I hear him though, shouting after me.

  “You can’t outrun your own shadow, Mollie girl.”

  ****

  I peel out, spraying gravel from my tires. Thoughts racing. Skin radiating heat. Blood thrumming through me like electric current.

  The Jeep seems to have a mind of its own, driving me north on the 505 toward the easternmost edge of Lake Berryessa. I roll down the windows and scream like a once-caged animal, now freed and on the loose. The wind whips at my face, and I stick my hand out in the stream of it, wishing I could catch it under my wings like the bird Dakota had inked on her shoulder and let it take me far from here.

  The tears come later. Hysterical laughter too, when I rehearse the text I’ll send Luciana:

  Some doors are meant to stay closed. And I’m nailing a board over this one.

  The Jeep comes to a rest at the overlook near Glory Hole—that’s what the locals call the massive spillway in the middle of the lake that drains into Putah Creek below. Dakota had been enchanted by it, the plunging falls of water infinitely streaming down, down, down. Even Cole had perked up a bit, leaning over the railing to get a better look. But it always unnerved me. Probably because Dad had once called it a wormhole, a shortcut through space and time. A direct route to the devil’s lair. He’d tossed a beer can into the water and grabbed me as we’d watched it go over the edge. I’d squealed with terrified delight, believing every word of his story.