Going Where It's Dark (23 page)

H
e told David about every ride at the carnival before he told him about Pete and his gang chasing him down. Told him about the Wildcat, in fact, before he told him about the robberies at the sawmill and how he and Nat had discovered Pete's shack in the woods.

David:
man, buck! u should have hung out with someone at the carnival the whole time!!!!

Buck:
i know i was by myself when they spotted me

David:
they're going to b gunning for u

Buck:
pete socked me hard before he left he'd get in trouble if he did much more

David:
glad they'll b in high school when u go back

Buck:
yes to that! how was the counseling job?

David:
i don't ever want 2 b a teacher, that's 4 sure gram's here now baking up a storm fattening me up 4 survival camp I guess i'm going 2 hate it

Buck:
maybe not can never tell when u might be trapped in a submarine or something

A
ny day now.

Any day the headlamp should be arriving, and Buck checked the Anderson's box several times each afternoon to see if the mail had come. The weather had turned unusually cool for the end of summer. He was used to autumn coming early here in the foothills, but couldn't remember ever needing a jacket quite this early.

“See?” Gramps told them, buttoning up his sweater. “Hardly had the air conditioner on before we turned it off again.”

The carnival had packed up and moved on, and Buck wished more than ever he could have one last trip to the Hole before school and homework began. Nat's family was having a cousins' reunion, and relatives were coming from all over, so Buck didn't see much of his friend.

Impatient for the headlamp to come, Buck even went to the little post office attached to Bealls' and asked if a package was there for Joel, that he had permission to pick it up if it had.

Mrs. Beall gave him a half smile that meant,
not on your life.
“Now, Buck,” she said, “you know that even if I had a package here for your brother, I couldn't give it to you. Not without his signature. You'll just have to wait till we put it in the box at your driveway. If they said it was on order, it'll come, don't you worry.”

As he walked back toward his bike, hands in the pockets of his jacket, he heard a woman call, “Excuse me…”

Buck turned quickly, thinking it was Mrs. Beall, telling him the package was there after all, but it was a brown-haired woman in pants and a jeans jacket who had been sitting on a bench outside Bealls' when he entered. She was no one he'd seen before, because he would have remembered; she was as freckled as a speckled egg. Her wavy hair was cut short and fell loose over her ears, and a cloth bag hung on her shoulder. She was smiling at him tentatively, and Buck walked over.

“Ma'am?”

“Hello. You're Buck Anderson, I think, and I wondered if you had a few minutes to talk,” she said. “I'm Karen Schuster, Jacob Wall's daughter.”

Buck studied her face, unable to see any of Jacob in her features, except for the eyes, perhaps, the same shade of blue. Jacob didn't smile enough for him to tell whether her smile matched his or not.

“I g…guess so,” Buck said, and she motioned to the bench beside her. Buck sat down, leaning forward awkwardly, ready to leave at his first opportunity. Yet he had to admit he was curious.

“The Bealls tell me that you and your uncle are dropping in regularly to help my dad out,” Karen said. “I wanted to say thank you in person.”

“It's okay,” said Buck.

“I haven't…haven't been able to see him yet, and I just wondered…how is he doing? His health?”

Buck's shoulders gave a little shrug. “He gggggets around—we just do the things he ccccan't do—pick up his mail and everything.”

She nodded, her blue eyes searching Buck's face, taking in every little nuance of expression, as though that would answer whatever she couldn't get up the nerve to ask.

Then she leaned back suddenly and looked out over the parking lot. “I write to him, but he returns my letters unopened. I suppose you knew that?”

Buck didn't answer. He was uncomfortable talking with her, not that she wasn't nice enough, but he didn't want to tell her anything Jacob wouldn't have wanted her to know.

Karen sighed. “I just can't get him to forgive me, and you've no idea how that hurts.”

Wow! Now he
knew
he shouldn't be listening, and he shuffled his feet as though he might stand up, but he didn't. Resting his arms on his knees, palms together, he studied his fingertips.

“My husband is—
was
—a financial advisor, and three years ago, Dad put all his money, and all his trust, in us. Gary, my husband, had a plan all worked out so that when Dad retired, he could buy himself a small farm and raise horses, a few, anyway, something he'd always talked about doing. He loved the country. He even had the land picked out and was going to hire a couple of men to help him.”

So what was the problem? Buck wondered. This was country, but probably not what Jacob had in mind….

“We really, truly, wanted the best for Dad. He deserved it—he was so lonely after Mom died, and his rheumatoid arthritis made him take early retirement. But…at the last minute…Gary impulsively invested most of Dad's money, and most of ours, in a new business venture he didn't think could possibly lose. Something that would bring Dad, and us, even more retirement money than he had thought. And…”

Buck guessed.

“We lost everything. Well, not quite everything, because there was enough left…just enough…for Dad to buy the house and the little piece of land he's on now. No barn, no horses, no fencing, no pasture…We had to sell the place where we were living and move to a condo ourselves. We're in North Carolina, Dad's here.”

Buck glanced over to see a tear slide out of the corner of her eye and make its slow way down her cheek. Her hand came up quickly and brushed it away.

“We want to do whatever we can to make it up to Dad and prove that we're sorry. We'd like to start putting a little of our money in his bank account every month, but we don't even know what bank he uses, or if he'd allow it. Most of all, we just want him back in our lives, to take care of him if he ever needs it, but he won't take my phone calls, won't read my letters, and won't even answer the door. He's furious about what happened, and I don't blame him.”

“That sssssssounds…really bad,” Buck said.

For a while they sat without saying anything, and then Karen turned again to Buck.

“Do you have any suggestions? I mean, is there something he really wants or needs that we could buy for him—that you could give him for us?”

Buck shook his head. “He'd know.”

“Yes, I suppose he would.” Karen adjusted the bag on her shoulder. “Well, I shouldn't be bothering you with all this, and I just appreciate your listening. I simply can't bear the thought of Dad getting older and more crippled—not having people around who love him. It was awful what we did. What…Gary did. He lost his job over it too and is working somewhere else.”

She stood up, and so did Buck.

“Well, again, thanks for listening. Hope you enjoy the rest of your vacation. Guess school starts pretty soon?”

“Yeah,” Buck said. “Nice to meet you.”

“You too.”

He couldn't help but think about it when he went to Jacob's the next morning. Only a few days left before school started, and Jacob was working him hard—not in chores but his speech.

It had changed, he knew that.
He
had changed, and when he recited stuff aloud in front of the big mirror still propped against the wall at Jacob's, he was pleased that he looked like a guy named Buck Anderson, not a guy in a Halloween fright mask, his mouth pulled to one side, his jaw clenched, eyes blinking like a tavern sign.

Crutches,
Jacob called them, used to help get the words out. Except that they didn't. No more
decoys
either, the pulling at one ear, the scratching of the head, the shifting of the feet, all the little things he might have hoped, unconsciously, would distract the listener from his stuttering.

Jacob even relented and played a DVD that he'd made for his patients at the military hospital, parts of speeches by famous people—a president, a general, a senator, a movie star—each one demonstrating “normal disfluency,” as Jacob called it, showing that everyone is disfluent once in a while. “They just don't have a fit when it happens, that's all.”

But today, because Buck's mind was on Karen, he wondered if Jacob could possibly be happy, cutting her out of his life. He wasn't paying enough attention to his stuttering, and when he made phone calls and Jacob raised a finger, he sometimes reverted back to his choking repetition of a sound before he said a word, instead of letting the stutter come out slow and natural.

“Running backward again,” Jacob told him. “You fight it like that, you're stuck in the same old rut you used to be.”

Buck turned toward the mirror and saw the weird set of his jaw, and relaxed it, but he felt on edge, and saw that Jacob was too. He was wasting his time today, and Jacob's as well.

When the session was over at last, Jacob slowly got to his feet and said, “You want to come maybe once a week after school starts and we'll work on it? You've got to do your part, though, Buck. Practice at home. Practice on friends.”

“Yeah, well…,” Buck said, and picked up his jacket. It was the same jacket he used to wear searching for caves, he and David, only reminding him that the cold spell was sticking around, cheating him of some last warm days of vacation, and it didn't help his mood any.

He walked over to the door without saying good-bye, and pulled it open, and there stood Karen, staring past him at her dad.

“Dad…?” she said, pleading.

“Get out!” Jacob yelled, hobbling his way across the room.

“I just want to
talk
with you,
please
!” she begged, still blocking the doorway.

“Don't let her in, Buck!” Jacob bellowed, waving one arm. “Close the door! Now!”

But Buck couldn't. Wouldn't. And suddenly he wheeled about and faced Jacob. “Who's running backward nnnnow?” he shouted. “All she wants you to do is listen to…”

But Jacob's free hand gave him a push and Buck almost collided with Karen as he tumbled to one side, the door banging shut behind him.

Karen stood with one hand over her mouth, eyes brimming, and Buck didn't know what to do. He'd almost knocked her down.

“I'm sssssorry,” he said.

She nodded as she turned and went back down the steps, and Buck watched as she slowly got in her car and drove away.