June Bug (25 page)

25

So this was Dogwood. It didn’t look like a place newspeople would come, but I guess they don’t get to decide when and where the news is going to happen. Dad and I walked down the road and had to move to the side a bunch of times because there were these big trucks that passed us, blowing the weeds by the road, and it felt like we were going to roll down the hill. He was walking fast, as if he didn’t want to spend any more time here than he had to.

Off to the left there was this nice brick house, but right beside it was a trailer park with weeds coming up in between. I saw a couple of people outside, one guy with long, stringy hair and no shirt. He was smoking, and when he glanced up I wondered what could make him look like such a shell.

“Where are we going?” I said.

“I used to know a few people in town. Maybe we’ll find a ride.”

We walked behind a grocery store, and there were a bunch of blue bins in the back and some rats gnawing on stuff, crawling around underneath. It gave me the creeps. Then we went by this tiny gas station and crossed onto the other side. There wasn’t any sidewalk here, just road and yards.

He took a road that looked sort of like an alley, but there were no houses on either side and I wished I had my bike because I could have ridden it up and down all day. The end of that road stopped at the volunteer fire department, which Dad said had burned down when he was a kid. That made me laugh—not that a fire is funny, but that the very place that’s supposed to protect you from a fire would burn down is just a little humorous. There’s a word for that, I think, but I don’t know what it is.

On another street were more houses and next to them gardens growing with big stakes holding up vines with green tomatoes. Dad said there were corn, cucumbers, and probably potatoes in those rows, and when they were ready, the people inside the houses could come out and pick off the vine for their lunch or dinner. I thought that was like a drive-through without the driving.

It was sweltering hot, and every chance I had to get into the shade I took. In fact I ran ahead of Dad and jumped into the shade and waited there for him as he looked along the road.

“Sure has changed,” he said. “This used to be a dirt path we’d take to my grandparents’.”

“You didn’t tell me you had grandparents,” I said.

“Everybody has grandparents. It’s just that some of them are alive and some of them aren’t.”

“Do I have grandparents?”

The shovel clanged on the blacktop. “Yeah. I’m sure you do.”

“Then where are they?”

Dad kept walking into the shade of a big tree. “I don’t know the answer to that.”

“I don’t understand,” I said. “Do you know my mama or not?”

He stopped by a little green house with a porch swing and an apple tree in the front. “Wait right here.”

I followed him up the sidewalk anyway because I wasn’t about to be left out of another conversation.

An older woman came to the door, and my dad asked if a Mrs. Burris lived there.

“Law, she hasn’t lived here for years,” the woman said. Her cheeks hung on the side of her face, and I couldn’t help but watch them bounce up and down when she talked. At the bottom of her arms was the same kind of skin, just big globs of it swinging back and forth when she lifted one up to scratch her head or point. “Last I heard they was headed down to Florida. Had a son or daughter that lived down there. Boca Raton, I think. Or maybe it was Tampa. I can’t remember which. I bet I could find out from a friend of mine over in town a ways; she keeps up with them.”

“No, that’s all right,” my dad said.

The woman looked past him at me and smiled and lifted her glasses. “Who you got here?”

“That’s June Bug,” he said, putting his arm around me and patting my shoulder.

“She’s a cute one. I love that red hair of yours, darling. You all want some lemonade? It’s hot out. My lands, you must be about ready to melt out here.”

I was so hot I could feel my face turning red and inside was the low hum of an air conditioner and it looked cool and inviting. I could just about taste that lemonade and feel the water running down the side of the glass on my hands, and I pictured myself putting that cool glass to my forehead.

But there was a noise behind us and Dad said, “We have to be moving along. Thank you.”

“It won’t be no trouble,” the woman called after us, but Dad was already off the step and headed toward the road. “I can bring it out to you.”

There was an old truck that rumbled past and then stopped at an intersection. When the driver saw Dad come out to the edge of the road he turned around, smoke coming out the back of the truck and gears grinding.

“Why can’t we have a glass of lemonade?” I said, and I could tell by the way Dad didn’t look at me that I was whining.

The truck was blue with a bunch of white places all around, as if somebody had changed their mind what color they wanted it to be. Where the truck bed was there were rusted-out holes and you could see the tailpipe. My dad has taught me to look at tires carefully because a blowout when you’re riding in an RV can be a life-changer or a life-ender. So other than the rust and the holes, I noticed that the tires were about as smooth as the floors at Walmart. The truck stopped with both windows down. I stood on my tiptoes and was surprised to find it was the old man, Dad’s father who had been so mean.

“Put that shovel in the back and get in.” He said it more as a command than a request.

Dad looked at me, then at the old man. Then he opened the door and climbed in to sit in the middle, which I thought was nice that he wouldn’t make me sit next to the old codger. I didn’t want anything to do with him, and I just stood on the road.

“Come on,” Dad said. “We need to go.”

“He’s mean. And he told us his truck doesn’t work.”

Dad glanced over at him. “She’s got a point.”

“I told you the truth. My truck doesn’t run. This is a neighbor’s. Said I could use it in an emergency if I needed it.”

“Why didn’t you tell us that before?” I said.

“Get her in here. There’s somebody coming behind us,” the man said.

“You said I was ugly.”

“I was upset. You’re not that ugly.”

Dad held out a hand, but I crossed my arms and stood there thinking about the lemonade I was missing and the fact that this was the meanest man on the face of the earth that was offering us a ride.

“June Bug, this is the best we’re going to do. Now come on.”

The car behind slowed, then went around the truck. If this was the best we were going to do, we were in a bigger pickle than I thought. But I got in anyway, slowly, and closed the door. I didn’t do it hard enough, so Dad had to reach over and open and close it again.

“Now where do you need to go?” the man said.

“Reservoir,” Dad said.

The old man stepped on the gas, and the truck chugged a couple of times, hesitated, then took off. The lady was still on the front porch watching us, and I waved at her because anybody who says I’m cute is nice in my book. I wondered if I’d ever see her again.

If I were my dad at that point, I would have done all kinds of yelling and asking questions and giving his dad what for, but he didn’t. The two of them sat right there next to each other and didn’t say two hoots, and it liked to drive me crazy because I knew what had to be going through my dad’s head. Why did the old man go to the trouble to find a truck and then come looking for us? Was that supposed to erase all the hurt and the pain? Or maybe he was going to get back at Dad for pushing him down. It was just the most perplexing thing and I half wanted to scream about it but I didn’t.

“Things have changed a lot around here,” the old man finally said. “Everything’s built up.”

“I’ve noticed,” Dad said.

“They put in a Sam’s Club just up Route 60. You don’t have to drive all the way to Cross Lanes anymore.”

Dad glanced out the back window, and I asked him what was wrong. “Used to be a Brazier Burger right there.” He looked at his dad. “You took me there once for a hot dog, and I can still taste those toasted buns.”

“I took you there?” the old man said.

“Maybe it was Uncle Frank,” Dad said. He stared straight ahead and rubbed the sweat from his hands onto his jeans. After a few more minutes he reached out to the radio and turned it on. It was tuned to a Christian station because I recognized the song that was playing.

“Turn that Jesus stuff off,” the old man growled.

I leaned forward and looked straight at him. “You think Jesus is ugly too?”

He closed his mouth and didn’t say another word until we came to this big sign that listed the reservoir and a wave pool. I thought that sounded like the best place to be in the whole state. Dad said he didn’t remember that road being there.

“I told you, they’ve changed a lot of things. You won’t recognize the place.”

There were lots of cars parked along the side of the road, and from the looks of things everybody had the same idea about being at the pool. I asked if we could go, and Dad shook his head. “Not today, June Bug.”

I wasn’t sure that old truck could get all the way up the hill, but it did, and then he veered right, away from the promised land of the pool toward another road that led into the woods. Right then the news came on and I heard the words
suspect
and
Dogwood,
and Dad turned the thing up real quick.

“Sheriff Hadley Preston said in a news conference this afternoon that there’s a person of interest being sought in the disappearance of Natalie Edwards seven years ago. The suspect’s name is Graham Walker, and if you have any information, you’re urged to call the sheriff’s office. The suspect is believed to be armed and dangerous.”

“I hope they catch that fellow,” the old man said. “Anybody who would hurt a child like that deserves to be strung up, if you ask me. We used to take care of that kind ourselves.”

Dad stiffened like he had a stomachache or something.

“Go to the right,” Dad said when we came to a fork in the road.

“That don’t lead to nothing but a big parking lot,” the old man said.

“Go there anyway.”

We turned and when we did I saw the most amazing sight. Below us, through the trees, there was this big lake that stretched as far as you could see. Little boats dotted the inlets and choice fishing spots, and men in their hats fiddled with fishing lures. The reservoir spread out among the hills and snaked around to another area I couldn’t see.

“They’ve changed it,” Dad said. “Down there was the dock and it’s . . .” His voice trailed off, and I could tell he was trying to orient himself.

The old man stopped the truck and turned off the radio. We were just sitting in the middle of the road. “Where to now?”

“Right down there,” Dad said, pointing. “Does the road go that far?”

“I told you there’s a parking lot there.”

We rumbled through a turn and then down into the trees. The lake kind of disappeared, and then we came out a little above it. All around were picnic tables under trees, and it looked to me like the people who couldn’t afford to get into the wave pool had come here because there were kids splashing at the edge of the reservoir in an area where there was sand and rocks.

We stopped and Dad got out. He walked a few steps and looked back at the reservoir, then retrieved the shovel and headed down toward the bank. The old man came over to me, and I didn’t know what to do but inch away from him.

“What’s he looking for?” the old man said.

I wanted to say,
He’s your son—why don’t
you
ask him,
but I didn’t. I just said, “I think he buried something here.”

We followed Dad past the parking lot to a grove of trees. He acted like he was looking for something in particular, rooting around in some bushes and plants, which I later learned were rhododendron. His shovel clanked on something, and when I walked over there I could see it was a big rock that seemed to roll right along with the hillside.

“There was an oak tree about . . .” He walked toward the water, stepping off really wide like he was counting them. He stopped at a picnic table and trash can that were set in the ground with concrete. “It must have been here. The big oak tree.”

Then he turned around and looked at the parking lot and his face fell. He stepped off about fifteen or twenty paces and glanced back at the stone, then where the tree used to be. He was on the parking lot, right at the edge of a yellow line. He put the shovel head down on it and looked up. “It’s right here.”

“What is?” the old man said.

“Something valuable.”

“Cash?”

“Not exactly.”

The old man surveyed the lot. “Son, the people who put this in probably found whatever it is you buried when they leveled the lot. Or they could have pushed it over the hill yonder.”

Dad shook his head. “I buried it deep. Didn’t want anybody finding it.”

The old man stared at the blacktop. “Well, you’re not digging through there with that shovel. And you’ll do nothing but gather attention if you try to do it in daylight. The place closes at sundown, so I can bring you back. I got a mattock in the garage you can use.”