Back Roads (20 page)

“It’s all right,” she said again.

I got up from the floor and stumbled blindly around the room looking for my hat and a ME.

“Harley, please calm down. Don’t go rushing off again.”

I grabbed my hat off the table. I couldn’t find a single ME.

“You need to talk about this.”

“No, I don’t,” I cried.

“It will make you feel better.”

“I don’t want to feel better.”

I bolted for the door.

“Please, don’t go, Harley,” she called after me.

But I was gone, and this time I knew better than to look back.

Yee’s had three customers, the busiest I had ever seen it. Jack Yee didn’t look as glad to see me as he usually did. The customers didn’t look too glad either. Jack’s wife glanced up from her newspaper, then buried her face in it again without waving.

I ordered Misty’s egg roll and got myself an order of General Tso’s chicken. I was supposed to be saving money—I still needed a hundred dollars to finish paying our taxes—but I couldn’t shake the Doomsday feeling I had had in Betty’s office. Every meal could be my last and I didn’t want it to be hot dogs and mac and cheese.

Jack Yee went back in the kitchen and packed up the order himself. I had to ask him for Jody’s fortune cookie and umbrella. On my way out, I checked myself in the front door glass to see what everyone had been staring at. I could have used a shower and a shave and a good night’s sleep but other than that, I was still ME.

I got back in my truck and ripped into the chicken box right away. He had given me six plastic forks, three sets of chopsticks, and about twenty packets of soy sauce and sweet and sour sauce. I could almost smell his nervousness in the greasy-bottomed bag.

The chicken was good but not great. I was sure Callie could do better. If I was married to her, she would cook for me all the time too.

I finished eating and crushed the box before tossing it on the floor. It bounced off the Chicago Art Institute book and landed next to Mom and Dad’s wedding picture. I had never thought about it before but it was pretty pathetic if that was the best photo they had from their wedding: Mom sick because she was pregnant with me, Dad falling down drunk because she was
pregnant with me. I had always assumed Dad was grinning at a buddy. Now I wondered if it was Uncle Mike, and Uncle Mike already knew it was a bad idea. Or was he looking at Grandpa? Was he saying, “Look at me, you nasty old cocksucker. I got a job and a wife, and you were always telling me I’d never get either?” I was going to keep the picture buried there in the trash for the rest of my life. It was too fucking symbolic to mess with.

I took my time driving. I wasn’t in any hurry now that I had a full stomach, and I definitely didn’t feel like seeing the girls.

I hadn’t seen any of them that morning. I didn’t get home from the mining office until five. Elvis went nuts in the front of my truck where I had locked him so his barking wouldn’t wake them when I left and when I got back.

I let him out, gave him a good scratching, and took him inside with me. We shared the leftover sloppy-joe meat Amber had left sitting out on the stove from the night before.

I didn’t even bother trying to catch an hour or two of sleep. I went for a drive and counted Madonnas. They looked best at breaking dawn, gazing peacefully at the dew-soaked grass around their feet. They were always surrounded by a bunch of crap—ceramic deer with chipped noses, birdbaths, lawn jockeys, a kaleidoscope of reflecting balls, ducks with windmill wings, wooden cutouts of women bending over showing their underwear—but they always seemed to be standing alone.

I counted seven. The only old-fashioned plastic one belonged to the Shanks. On the way home from Yee’s, I slowed in front of their house like I had done in the morning and admired her sky-blue robes and petal-pink lips. She was the only one of the Madonnas who had the nerve to look up at God, and she was happy with Him. Her smile gave me hope.

Driving up Potshot Road made me feel even better. The trees made a quiet leafy tunnel. Shafts of sunlight poked through them, striping the air and covering the rutted dirt road with white spots
of dancing light. Freaking out with Betty faded into the furthest reaches of my mind. Everything did. My full belly, the bouncing of the truck, and the green calm almost put me to sleep.

I drove slowly as I neared the crest, hoping to see a deer bound away or the shimmer of a pheasant’s tail. What I saw was a pickup truck parked in our driveway. It wasn’t Uncle Mike’s. The only other people who ever came by our place were either sent by a government agency or drawn here by Amber’s ass.

A kid with two-tone hair wearing three earrings, a hemp bracelet, and a beaded choker sat on the hood drinking a can of Red Dog and smoking a cigarette. He looked in my direction but didn’t nod or smile or acknowledge me with a wave. I considered that impolite.

I hadn’t noticed Jody and Misty on the porch. When I got out of my truck, Jody tore across the yard, her face streaked with tears, and threw herself at my legs. Misty didn’t follow her, but she stood up and allowed our eyes to meet which was the most contact we’d had since the day I took the money.

“What’s going on?” I asked, putting my hands on Jody’s shoulders but staring at the kid on the truck.

“Amber’s running away,” Jody bawled.

“Who the fuck are you?” I yelled at him.

He slowly took the can away from his mouth. He had the stale eyes and rehearsed smirk of someone who spent a lot of time in dim, smoky rooms thinking about himself.

“Who the fuck are you?” he yelled back.

I started toward him but Jody had wrapped herself so tightly around my legs, I couldn’t move.

“Don’t let Amber go,” she cried. “Please, Harley. Don’t let her go.”

“Don’t worry, she’s not going anywhere,” I said.

I pried her off me and stalked over to the kid. “I asked you who you are.”

He finished his beer and tossed the can in my yard. “I’m a
friend of Amber’s,” he answered, poking the cigarette back between his lips. “You must be her brother the bag boy.”

I waited for my hand to explode from my side like it had been doing lately but nothing happened. I stared dumbly at it.

“Don’t hurt him, Harley,” Jody said, coming up beside me.

“Hurt me?” The kid laughed.

“Just make him go away.”

“Hurt him,” Misty shouted from the porch.

The front door slammed open and Amber stepped out lugging a suitcase and carrying her pillow. She stopped when she saw me. All the blood drained from her face and her eyes turned black from some unspeakable outrage brewing inside her.

“Come on,” the kid yelled at her. “I’m hungry. Let’s go.”

I walked toward her, without thinking. “What are you doing?”

“I’m leaving you.”

“What did you say?”

“You heard me.”

I grabbed her arm with my throbbing hand. She ripped it away.

“Don’t touch me,” she said, savagely.

“Amber, what’s going on?”

“I won’t live with you anymore,” she turned around and hissed at me. “You’re disgusting.”

Jody came and squeezed in between us. She hugged Amber around the waist. “Don’t go,” she whimpered.

“I’m sorry, Jody. I don’t want to go but I have to. It’s all Harley’s fault. Be mad at him.”

“What did I do?” I cried out.

She grabbed up her stuff and took off running for the kid’s truck. He didn’t make a move to help her. He should have been carrying her stuff. He should have been comforting her. He should have been opening the door for her. He was blowing smoke and watching her tits bounce.

“You know what you did,” she turned around and screamed at me.

“Harley.” Jody tugged on my arm. “Shoot his tires,” she pleaded.

“It’s okay, Jody.”

“No, it’s not.”

Amber threw her suitcase in the back and climbed into the cab with her pillow. She slammed the door shut and bowed her head, crying. Her friend took his good old time getting down from the hood.

“Stop her,” Jody begged.

“She’ll be back.”

“No, she won’t.”

I put my arm around Jody’s shoulders. She was crying so hard, she shook.

“That kid wants one thing from her and once he gets it, he’s going to dump her in a parking lot somewhere.”

“Does he want her pillow?”

I looked down at her, at all the love and trust shining in her eyes. I was never going to have a kid. I had too much respect for them.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Will you go get her in the parking lot?”

“Yeah, I’ll go get her.”

“Okay.” She sniffed. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah.”

She plunked down on the top porch step. “This is all Misty’s fault,” she grumbled.

Misty was standing at the far end of the porch. She didn’t show any sign that she had heard Jody. I told her her egg roll was in the truck. She didn’t show any sign that she had heard me either but then she walked to the porch railing, swung herself over it, and started across the yard.

I didn’t want to ask Jody what she meant. I had survived one
Doomsday strike. I wasn’t ready for another. But I made the mistake of checking on Misty. She had the bag from Yee’s in her hand but all I saw was the cheap sparkle of the fake pink stones around her wrist. It struck me that I couldn’t remember seeing her without the collar since the day she had put it on.

She came walking back. She handed Jody her fortune cookie and pink paper umbrella and took the rest of the stuff inside. Jody cracked open her cookie.

“ ‘Good news will come to you by mail,’ ” she read, and wrinkled up her nose. “That’s a dumb one. Confucius didn’t say that. They didn’t even have mail when he was alive. They only had voices.”

“I think you’re right,” I said, sitting down next to her. “I don’t think Confucius wrote all the fortunes. Just the good ones.”

She kept it just the same. She folded it in half and carefully slipped it into a pocket in her jean jacket with the Pocahontas fringe.

I still didn’t want to ask about Misty but I saw the collar in my mind, sad and ugly in its necessity like a bad wig. She was my responsibility now.

“Why did you say Amber leaving was Misty’s fault?”

Her eyes turned thoughtful and she studied one of Amber’s clunky sandal footprints hardening in the mud.

“She told Amber something today when Amber got home from school and it made her really mad. The kind of mad where you cry.”

“What did she tell her?”

“I don’t know. They went into her room and closed the door. It was about you though. I heard your name a bunch of times.”

She stood up all of a sudden and walked over to where a tulip was sprouting from the ground like a purple bullet. She knelt down and bent her head toward it like she meant to kiss it.

“I asked Misty to tell me but she said it was a secret,” she told me, walking back to the steps. She sat down with a big deflated
sigh. “Misty keeps secrets better than anyone. She told me I wouldn’t be able to keep it.”

“You kept the secret about Mom’s money,” I reminded her.

“Misty said if I told, Mommy and Daddy would get in the biggest fight ever and get divorced.”

She glanced up at me. People always commented on her Sleeping Beauty hair, but her eyes were her most striking feature. They were a soft, downy gray and gave everyone the benefit of the doubt.

“Do you think I should’ve told?” she asked me.

“I don’t think it would’ve made any difference.” I leaned back and stretched out my legs. I crossed them at the ankles, doing my best to appear casual. “Have you kept any other secrets for Misty?”

“Maybe.”

“You know, when Misty tells you you can’t tell anyone, she’s not talking about me.”

“Yes, she is.”

“She tells you not to tell me?”

“She tells me not to tell anyone. You’re anyone.”

“Did she ever ask you to keep a secret about getting lots of blood on a shirt?”

“You mean the night Mommy shot Daddy?”

One of my hands jumped at my side. The surprise started my heart thumping too fast.

“She got blood on her shirt that night?” I asked, conversationally.

“Yeah, but it wasn’t a secret. Mommy knew.”

I stood up. I could hear my heart pounding in my ears. I could feel it in my throat. My fingertips quivered. Six seconds. TICK TOCK.

“How did she get blood on her shirt?”

“When she hugged Daddy. She told me he was going to be okay, but I saw him and I knew he wasn’t okay.”

“Misty never hugged Daddy,” I said cautiously. “The ambulance had taken him away by the time the state trooper and me brought her back from the mall.”

“I know.”

“She was at the mall. I saw her with my own eyes.”

“I know. Mommy drove her there.”

“Of course Mom drove her there. How else would she get there?”

I walked over to the railing. I put my torn-up hands on it and squeezed. The pain affected me like being pinched out of a dream. I suddenly understood the other question I needed to ask.

“When did Mom drive her there?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I can’t tell time yet.”

“Was it before or after Mom and Dad had their fight?”

“After.”

“After,” I said.

“After,” she said.

“You’re saying Mom drove Misty to the mall after she shot Dad?”

She nodded.

FOUR seconds. TICK TOCK. Sweat beads popped out along my hairline and started sliding down my face.

“You’re saying Mom shot Dad and left him lying dead in the kitchen, then loaded Misty in the truck and drove her to the mall?”

“I guess so.”

“You’re not making sense, Jody. You must be confused. You were only four years old when it happened. And you were in shock. You didn’t talk for six months. Do you remember that? Not talking to anybody?”

“I remember.”

I paced up and down, my boots making the same futile thuds
that Dad’s used to make when he was contemplating a day full of cement.

Three seconds. TICK TOCK.

I knelt down on the porch beside her.

“What did Mom do when she got back from the mall?”

“She got a shovel out of the shed and went in the woods. I thought she was going to bury Daddy.”