Citrus County (24 page)

They came to an open area, what would have been a meadow if there were such a thing as a meadow in Citrus County, and Shelby let Toby get ahead. She watched him drag through the sandy clearing and into the woods on the other side. Shelby wasn’t a spy, she was a girl in love. There was something delicious about watching Toby with him not knowing she was there. She could see a lot of the tired sky, could see the spot where the sun, in a few hours, intended to set.

She came out into the brightness and hurried across, peering ahead for the red T-shirt, and in a moment there it was, bobbing in the foliage. Toby had sped up. They pushed past bunches of cross-trails, tracks in them from dirt bikes and dogs and raccoons, and they shuffled past countless rabbit holes, countless isolated bogs that hid countless snakes. They passed a shopping cart full of beer cans. They’d been walking for close to an hour. Sweat was dripping off Shelby’s nose. She could taste it. The sun was a bald eye. It was clearing away the clouds, making preparations.

The best odds were on Uncle Neal being exactly how Toby had described him, bewildered but volatile. Probably the house would look normal, and Toby would take a shower and play solitaire or something, and Uncle Neal would be down for his pre-dinner nap. Probably Shelby would find nothing damning about the household, but she had to check. She had to see where Toby lived. She was doing this partly for herself, she knew, following Toby for her own reasons. At night, when he was at his house and she at hers, she would be able to picture Toby safe in his bed. She would be able to see him drift off to sleep as she drifted off to sleep. He was her only friend, and at night she knew that more than ever.

Shelby sensed something above her and took a bad step. It was an owl. The thing was ten feet over her head. The owl didn’t like having people in its woods; that was clear from the look on its face. Shelby whispered hello to the owl and it did not blink. It was a haughty little statue. Shelby wanted to throw something at it, but she was afraid. It was like the snake on her patio. It wasn’t going to move until Shelby went away. She had to keep going. She got back on Toby’s trail, and soon saw power lines. The woods grew less wild. Toby’s red shirt bumped up onto a porch. Shelby had made it. The house was in view. Toby dug out his key, wiggled it into the lock, and went inside.

Shelby pulled her shoulders back. She took stock, drifting around the side of the property. No flowerbeds, not even grass to speak of. No sports equipment or bikes lying around. No dog, no cat. The house was the color of an old gym bag. It had a wide front porch with a rocking chair. The place appeared tidy in its spareness, except for the gnarly live oak branches hanging near the roof, some of them scraping when the breeze picked up. There were no squirrels, no vultures soaring high above. The blinds in most of the windows were open but Shelby could not see in. She was too far away and the house was dim inside.

She made her approach near a shed that looked at once dilapidated and sturdy, some kind of greenhouse. It smelled cramped, like things overgrown. In the woods, Shelby’s footfalls had been drowned out, but now she could hear the soggy ground compressing under her boots. She could hear the wind brushing the back of her neck. There was one window on this side of the house, all the way at the back, looking like a mistake. It looked like the windows they put in the walls of fortresses, to see the enemy coming. Shelby slipped across the yard and rested against the worn stucco. Her heart was beating so quickly it seemed to have stopped.

She shuffled down the wall. The blinds of the little window were open. She inched her face, seeing more and more of the room inside. She placed her forehead against the cool glass. She was looking at Toby’s bedroom. This was it. There was his dirty laundry in a basket, the shirt he’d worn to school yesterday, his track shorts. The bedroom door was closed and Shelby knew that at any moment it might fly open. There was a big closet in Toby’s bedroom, the doors not fully closed. Dog-eared cardboard boxes. A stack of folded sweatshirts he’d retired for the summer. There was no TV in the room, no radio. Toby had hung no posters, had no bookshelf. He didn’t read comics or play video games. There was a case of soda on the floor near the bed. The cords for the fan and the light hung low, so he could reach them while lying down. The carpet was a couple shades of marbled brown. Shelby locked the image of his room into her mind, the garish hue of his bedsheet, the water stain on the ceiling, the riveting stillness. She felt satisfied, like now she would be playing with house money. There were shreds of peace within her, blowing around like confetti. Shelby didn’t need Aunt Dale. She didn’t need to go to Iceland. It didn’t matter where you went.
Where
meant nothing. Maybe, Shelby thought, she’d always been playing with house money. Maybe everyone was, every day they were alive.

The house was a perfect rectangle. Shelby stuck to the wall. She moved down from Toby’s room, stepping over dry, stubborn bushes. If she saw Uncle Neal, then great; if not, that was okay, too. She didn’t need to see him. What would it help? She’d seen where Toby ended up every night, and that was the important thing. She came to a larger window. The blinds were dropped all the way, but a few of them were bent, as if something had been thrown against them. Shelby positioned her eye and saw a big, empty table and some metal folding chairs. The edge of a counter was visible, a big bowl of matchbooks. Everything was so still inside, same as Toby’s bedroom, like a museum exhibit. Maybe Uncle Neal wasn’t even home. Maybe he was out of town on a job. Shelby hadn’t seen any cars out front, but she hadn’t seen a proper driveway, either.

A blackbird began ranting from behind her and she got moving again, passing a lonely wooden door. There was no back patio, no steps or anything, just a door painted a shade darker than the house. The next window was small, at eye level. Shelby had a full, obscene view into the kitchen. There were puny oranges on the sill. A large portion of the counter space was given over to two-liter bottles of soda, all lined up stiffly like an army unit. There was a tray of what appeared to be surgical tools, soaking in a tinted liquid. Shelby was gazing at the tray when there was movement off to her right. She froze, couldn’t do a thing, couldn’t even unlock her knees and drop. But freezing was the correct thing to do. It was Toby, and he hadn’t noticed her. He was looking at nothing, talking to himself. Shelby watched him shuffle into the woods on one side of the house and once again she was following him.

She tracked Toby and tracked Toby, and the whole afternoon seemed like one moment now, one sprawling moment. The shadows congealed, preparing to be phased out. There was a line of weather-beaten stakes hammered into the ground at even intervals, a lot of trees with pink ribbons on them. Shelby noticed there were no more tracks of any kind in the marled ground. She realized she was behaving like a crazy person. She was stalking someone through wild unfamiliar acreage, afternoon giving way to evening. She wondered whether, if Toby got away from her, she would be able to find her way home. The trees looked forgotten. They were real trees, like up north—maples or sycamores. They’d never lost their leaves. The back of Shelby’s shirt was damp and sticking to her. She knew she should stop now, knew she should go back. And then Toby dropped to one knee. Shelby eased closer, to see what he was doing. He tossed moss clumps and branches this way and that. He dragged a raft of brush. All his movements were void of emphasis, nothing but utility. Shelby got low, observing Toby through the fronds of a palmetto stand. Her thighs were numb, exhausted from traipsing through the sandy woods, and now from crouching. Was Toby making camp? Maybe things at his house
were
that bad. Did he sleep out here, in the woods?

Toby rose and leaned and pulled up some kind of door, and when he did, the acoustics of the world warped. All the sounds slowed. Shelby grasped a palmetto frond, down near the base where they were sturdy, and pulled herself farther into the stand, the blades of the frond digging into her soft palm. Shelby’s body knew something was happening; the animal part of her knew. Toby descended into the ground, pulling something onto his head. He had been standing there and now he wasn’t. Toby had some kind of underground lair. Shelby was close to the real, secret Toby. She had to stay hidden. If Toby discovered she’d followed him out to this place, this place he considered all his own, he wouldn’t ever trust her again. Shelby had to wait him out.

After just a minute or two, he was back. He emerged and peeled off what appeared to be a ski mask and flipped the roof of his lair back over. He let it close with its own weight, like the hood of a car, and then, without bothering to drag the branches back on top of it, went back through the woods the way he’d come. Shelby watched his red shirt get smaller and smaller. She didn’t follow. She remained hidden, waiting. It seemed foolhardy, leaving her hiding space, abandoning the palmetto. She was about to betray Toby. She stood up and approached. The door was octagonal and had one little handle that latched and unlatched it. Moss and mushrooms were all over it. It was out of place, how moist and muddy the hatch was, in an otherwise dry section of the woods. Shelby began to reach for the handle and she heard a sound from inside. Her guts performed one ponderous flip. A small voice, muffled. It was singing. A child’s voice. Shelby knew there were physical actions she had to undertake, and the first one was lifting this hatch open. She was going to concentrate on the actions. She was going to keep doing the next thing.

Toby awakened with a craving for an icy soda. His throat felt like it needed to be scoured. The lights in the room were off, but the door was open and even the scant light from the hall was harsh in Toby’s eyes. It was exactly as dim outside the window as it was in Toby’s room. It was dawn or dusk. In the coming hours, Toby would be expected to fall back asleep or he would be expected to face a day.

Toby had never been in one before, but the sour, sprucy smell and the gamut of beeps he heard—monitoring machines, the bing of the elevator, the buzzing of the nurses’ call buttons—all came together in a way that could only be a hospital. Toby remembered being brought here. He’d been loaded into the back of a van. Stale rock music had been playing on the radio. He remembered a wheelchair, an elevator, but before that a police station, another place he’d never been. The station had seemed tiny from the outside, but inside it went back and back. Phones had been ringing and no one would answer them. A lady had administered a bunch of tests on Toby, then he’d been given a hot dog with no bun and a very small apple. This memory was sharp, the smallness of the apple. Toby had eaten it in three or four bites and hadn’t touched the hot dog. What Toby did not recall was the police arriving at his uncle’s house. He remembered walking back from the bunker after making one final check on Kaley. He’d had her dressed the way he wanted her and had let her hair grow out in the past weeks until it looked like that FBI agent’s hair. He’d gone back to the house to wait for night to fall, not meaning to go to sleep. He’d stretched himself out on the floor of his bedroom, wanting to get down onto something firm and permanent rather than his mushy mattress, and the next thing he knew he’d been awakened by a shot. He’d wanted to be shocked by the sound, that flat, resolute clap that could’ve come from Toby’s closet or from miles away, from some distant, cool place. He’d gone to the living room, and from there he could hear the radio from his uncle’s room, excited cops barking away. They’d found the Register girl. There were a bunch of them talking, all failing at keeping a calm, determined tone. Code numbers and directions. They’d kept saying Toby’s uncle’s name, Neal Showers. The singed smell of the shot was lingering in the house. Toby had known, had come to understand, that his uncle was in the next room, dead. His uncle wouldn’t make any more decisions, wouldn’t clean another thing or smoke another thing. Toby couldn’t bring himself to go in there. He remembered how it sounded, strangers on a radio talking about Uncle Neal, calling him all kinds of names that regular, tame people called people they didn’t understand.

It was morning. Outside the window of Toby’s hospital room, the sun was rising. He propped himself on his pillows. He saw the TV up in the corner of the room, saw the remote control on the dresser beneath it. He wasn’t squinting anymore. Another type of beeping was coming from outside, a big truck backing up.

Toby remembered riding in the back of the police car. There was a metal screen separating the front seat from the back. Two cops sat up front and one sat next to Toby, a guy with a thin, sly mustache. The guy kept asking Toby questions, mostly easy ones like his age and what sports he liked, but then he’d slip in questions about Uncle Neal. Toby had known enough to say nothing.

Uncle Neal was gone. Toby’s uncle was dead. Toby would never know if he’d killed himself because he thought he’d be blamed for the kidnapping, or because he’d been looking for an excuse for a long time and this seemed like a good one, or if his uncle had meant to take the rap for Toby. Maybe, for the first time, Toby’s uncle had looked out for him. Toby had hastened his uncle’s suicide and his uncle had kept Toby out of trouble. They’d helped each other. Toby was very glad he hadn’t gone in and seen his uncle dead. He didn’t want that in his mind. That wasn’t the kind of thing, he imagined, you could clear out with a long walk.

Toby heard steps approaching his room and then a nurse with black shoes was in the doorway.

“Want the light on?” she asked.

“No,” Toby said. “If that’s okay.”

The nurse came over and pulled Toby straighter and plumped his pillows. She didn’t seem fond of Toby, but was nonetheless going to be a proficient nurse.

“Did they get me from my uncle’s house
last
night?” Toby asked. “Or was it the night before?”

“It was last night,” the nurse said. “They gave you something for sleeping. That’s why it feels like you got hit in the head.”

The nurse had a mint in her mouth. The mint was gleaming white, and made it easy to see that her teeth were not. She opened a couple drawers and was not displeased at what she saw in them. She glanced at Toby’s chart, then went and pulled the blinds all the way up. She told Toby she’d be back in a few minutes to help him to the shower. The doctor would be coming by in an hour or two, and she wanted Toby alert.

She picked up the remote control and walked it over to him.

“Could I get a soda?” Toby asked. “A soda on ice?”

“I suppose you can have a soda.”

“Are there cops here?”

The nurse nodded. “They’re down by the nurses’ station. They’re wearing regular clothes. I think it’s supposed to be a secret you’re here, but we’ll see how long that lasts. Those guys won’t bother you. They’re down there flirting with Stacy.”

“I don’t want to see any cops right now.”

“I wouldn’t worry. Stacy’s got her low-cut scrubs on.”

The nurse tapped the door frame, meaning she was leaving.

“Maybe two sodas,” said Toby.

“A double.” The nurse might’ve smiled.

“Is the little girl here?” Toby asked. “Is Kaley and her family here?”

The nurse made a noise. If she’d smiled, that was over now. “No, sir. They took that child down to a fancier place than we got.”

The nurse left and Toby turned his attention to the remote control in his hands. Menu. Mode. Function. He hit the power button and the screen snapped to life. He heard the announcers before he could make out what was on the screen. It was a soccer game, from Mexico or somewhere. People holding banners hopped in the stands. Toby pressed the arrow. A show from the eighties about teenagers. A show about barbecue. Toby needed a news network. He found one, and turned the volume up a notch.

There was a shot of Uncle Neal’s property from above, from a helicopter. Toby could hear the blades whirring. The sight of Uncle Neal’s place gave him a pang—for what, he couldn’t say. A woman with a flinty voice began speaking, referring to Uncle Neal’s property as a compound. All of it could have looked placid and everyday—the house, the shed, the winding dirt driveway that stopped a ways short of the house—but with the wobbly camera and the eerie music swelling up, everything was sinister. The woman mentioned Kaley and a picture of her appeared in the upper corner of the screen. The woman was in disbelief that Kaley had survived her ordeal. They had a different picture of Kaley now. In this one, she was held aloft by someone and was clutching a popsicle. Next to the bright orange of the popsicle you could see just how gaunt and colorless she’d grown, like the mint and the nurse’s teeth. Kaley looked terrible, really. She would’ve died. Toby could say that now. Anyone that laid eyes on her could tell she wouldn’t have lasted much longer. The station left the picture of Kaley in the corner of the screen while the anchorwoman returned her attention to the Showers compound. The shed, she said, was packed with hemlock plants. There were drugs all over the house, few of them strictly illegal. No food in the fridge. Old carpets that had never been cleaned. The anchorwoman said a lot of folks believed Neal Showers had gotten off easy, killing himself, that he should have had to face Kaley’s father and have his day in court and try his luck in prison. Toby looked down at his hands. They were pale, weakly veined. They didn’t seem capable of the things they’d done. Toby wanted to know how they’d even found Kaley. How had it all broken loose in the first place? No one was saying.

In time, the station cut away from Uncle Neal’s place. They showed the anchorwoman. She guided her bangs into place and then started talking about Shelby, speaking reverently, speaking of Shelby as a hero. She had followed the nephew out to the bunker. Neal Showers had been sick enough not only to kidnap a little girl, but to force his nephew to help with the keeping. The anchorwoman was flabbergasted at the things that happened in the world. She promised that in the coming hours she would have full reports on Shelby, on the nephew, and on the bunker itself. She promised to describe in detail the conditions the little girl had endured.

Toby removed his blankets and sat himself on the edge of the bed. Shelby. Shelby had figured it out. Somehow Toby was glad it had been her and no one else. She had never underestimated Toby, had she? Toby was relieved that Shelby knew the truth about him. He made his way to the window, one hand on the wall, and pulled the cord, dropping the blinds. He twisted the plastic staff and the room grew dim again.

The commercials came and went and the anchorwoman began talking about Toby. Earlier she hadn’t said his name, but now she did. The woman spoke of him in pitiful tones. She said the name Milton Hibma. Mr. Hibma? Here he was, wearing a tie. Mr. Hibma was trying to get temporary custody of Toby. He was the boy’s geography teacher, the woman explained, a single man with no children. Toby had no family, no godparents.

Toby remembered. Mr. Hibma had been waiting at the hospital when Toby’d been transferred from the police station. Mr. Hibma had left him food from the taco place. Nachos. Toby rolled to the edge of the bed and lifted up the trash can. The carton was inside, the cheese containers. Toby didn’t remember eating anything, didn’t feel like he could’ve.

Toby shut off the TV. He was so thirsty. Mr. Hibma wanted him. Could that be true? Mr. Hibma didn’t bother with troubled kids. Since Toby had gone and tried to confess to him during lunch that day, Mr. Hibma had barely looked at him. Toby had woken up in an altered world. It only
looked
like the old world. Toby would have to change. He’d have to take the new world in stride. He had to shake the feeling that he was going to be punished, that he deserved justice. He was being treated as a victim. He was a type of victim; that’s what they all thought.

Mr. Hibma had been up late, switching between a show about temp workers and a long commercial for a video of girls revealing their breasts. He had been preparing to turn the TV off and face the noiseless night, flipping through the cycle of channels one last time, when there was a newsbreak. The pictures in the corner of the screen weren’t matching up with the hastily written script. Shelby Register’s little sister had been found. She’d been rescued, alive. Mr. Hibma had listened to a description of Neal Showers, who’d killed himself, and whose nephew was now in the custody of the Citrus County Sheriff’s Department. Mr. Hibma sat up and took a swallow of stale tea. Neal Showers. That was the name Toby had always forged on his detention forms. Mr. Hibma could see the careful cursive. It was Toby who was at the police station. Toby.

Mr. Hibma threw back a shot of bourbon, brushed his teeth, and tore down the empty roads that led to the county offices and the jail. This was the change. Mr. Hibma saw it. He didn’t have to love the kiss-asses. He had to love who he loved. He could be his own kind of teacher, one who took an interest in the Tobys of the world. Mr. Hibma didn’t
have
to give Toby all those detentions. He respected the boy. Mr. Hibma had been misguided in trying to take the drastic alteration of his life into his own hands. As usual, the world was supplying the change. As usual, Mr. Hibma was a character, not the author. And thank God. Mr. Hibma wasn’t up to being the author. He didn’t know how to save himself. Never was he less skilled, more doltish, than when he tried to figure and plot his own life.

When he arrived at the station, he drove around the building, deciding where to enter. There were media vans and he didn’t want to be near them. He found a side entrance that seemed meant for deliveries, then collected every bit of identification he could out of his glove box and wallet—documentation proving his residence and place of employment and the status of his automobile insurance, credit cards and a valid driver’s license. He had a social security card, a punch card for a smoothie shop.

Mr. Hibma went and knocked on the door until someone answered. He asked for the guy’s supervisor, saying he had information regarding Toby McNurse, and was taken to a small room with speckled tile on the floor where he waited for almost an hour. He decided, after much consideration, to leave the room, and he soon found the infirmary, where a nurse informed him that Toby had undergone his tests and was now resting. The nurse seemed a sympathetic person, so Mr. Hibma told her why he was there, that he wanted to claim Toby, that he was one of Toby’s teachers at school and that the boy was fond of him and that he was meant to help this kid and probably not meant for a damn thing else.

The nurse sat Mr. Hibma down and gave him some coffee and again Mr. Hibma waited for an hour. He felt like
he
was in trouble. His hair felt greasy. He was on the verge of tears. He realized that he was very tired and agitated and that when he finally got to talk to someone with pull he was going to come across as raving. He drank more coffee. He could sit for ten more minutes, he told himself, and then he would have to go explore another part of the building. Mr. Hibma wondered if he was on camera. He imagined that by now the police social workers had confirmed that Toby had no family. They were doing a background check on Mr. Hibma. There were lawyers back there. The chief. Mr. Hibma needed a bathroom. He needed to piss and splash water on his face. Mr. Hibma thought back to the only other time he’d been in a jail. In college he’d missed a court date for underage drinking and cops had come to his apartment at six in the morning and pounded on his door. They had sat the eighteen-year-old Mr. Hibma in the back of a long van and then proceeded to pick up every deadbeat dad in town. It was something they did once a month. For hours upon hours Mr. Hibma had watched lawyers dragged from offices, mechanics led out of garages, old leather-skinned black guys called up from fishing holes.