Made in the U.S.A. (34 page)

“Oh, her. Yeah, I saw a girl like that. She was carryin’ a suitcase.”

“Which way’d she go?”

“Down there to the bus station.”

“Thanks, Cash.”

The bus station smelled of dirty feet, onions, and Old Spice. A fat woman was sleeping on one of the benches, her dress pulled up to reveal several pounds of cellulite around her upper thighs. Mama, in a gesture of kindness, pulled the dress down to cover the unpleasant view, a slight disturbance that caused the woman to say “Bird shot,” or “Bird shit,” in her sleep. Mama didn’t know for sure what she’d heard.

A family of Mexicans she didn’t recognize sat wedged together on another bench. Mother, father, and seven children, all awake, silently watching the door as if they feared a lynch mob or the law would burst through at any minute.

At the counter, a lone agent was looking at pictures in
Hustler
magazine.

“Where to?” he said without looking up.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Mama said.

“Then why are you here?” he said, his eyes never straying from the
Hustler
women.

“I’m looking for a girl.”

“Yeah? So am I.”

“She was here. Sixteen, low-rise jeans, belly button—”

“Was pierced. Had a silver ring in it. No hooters to speak of, but good-looking ass for a short girl.”

“Where’d she go?”

“Out the door.”

“I mean did she go north or south? East? West?”

The agent sighed and closed the magazine. “She wanted to know if I’d give her a ticket for some cheap ring she was wearin’. Hell, it wasn’t worth five bucks.”

“Did you see which way she went when she left here?”

“Look, lady. I sell bus tickets. I ain’t a damn detective.”

At the four-way stop at the end of Main, Mama saw Dub’s pickup coming from the opposite direction. She stopped her truck in the middle of the intersection and flagged him down.

When he saw the expression on her face, he knew there was trouble. “What’s up?” he asked.

“Lutie’s run away. I’m afraid she’ll hitch a ride.”

“I just came from Idabel. She’s not out that way.”

“Then she either took 70 toward Durant or the Indian Nation.”

“I’ll take the turnpike; you take 70.”

“Let’s go.”

Just west of town at the entrance to a deserted drive-in, Mama spotted Lutie getting into a vintage car with Texas plates. She sped around the car and slid to a stop only inches from the fancy front grille. Then she got out of her truck and hurried to the driver’s side, where she found a boy who looked to be in his late teens behind the wheel.

Rolling down his window, he yelled, “You idiot! What the hell is wrong with you? You almost hit my car.”

“Get out of this car, Lutie.”

“Do you have any idea what kind of car this is?” the boy said. “It’s a perfectly restored 1969 Pontiac GTO.”

Mama pointed to the suitcase on Lutie’s lap. “Know what she’s got in there? Snakes—rattlers, copperheads, cottonmouths—”

“What?!”

“She’s taking them to her daddy. He’s a preacher at one of those churches where they handle snakes to prove that God will protect them.”

“She’s lying,” Lutie said. “This is filled with clothes. Here. I’ll show you.” When she put her thumbs on the flimsy locks, the boy slapped one hand on top of the suitcase, holding it closed; with the other, he opened the passenger door. He shoved the suitcase out of the car first, Lutie next.

As he backed up, then burned rubber speeding away, Lutie picked up her suitcase, shot a vicious look at Mama Sim, and said, “I’m leaving here, and no matter what you do, you won’t be able to stop me.”

Thunder rumbled in the distance.

Mama said, “Storm’s headed this way.”

When Lutie saw streaks of lightning in the west, she became agitated, crawled into Mama’s truck, and yelled, “Come on!”

As soon as they were inside the old GMC, Mama said, “I read your note.”

“I don’t suppose it mattered to you that the note I wrote was
for Fate
, not you.”

“When I went to your room, saw that you were gone, I was in a panic. Looked all over the place. Went to Fate’s room, where you left the note.”

“So you were in a panic because I’d gone. You know how much I believe that? Not . . . one . . . bit.” She drew out the words in order to make an impression. “He had a choice. He could go with me or stay with you. I really wasn’t much surprised when he chose you.”

“Why?”

“He hates me.”

“Fate? He doesn’t hate you, Lutie. He loves you. Adores you. No, Fate’s not your problem.”

“And I suppose you know what my problem is?”

“I think I do. I’m no mind reader, but I believe I know what’s tearing you up.”

“That’s so lame.”

“Might be. But I can tell when something’s gone bad.”

“You mean like me.”

“That’s right.”

“And how can you tell?”

“Because of how you treat people. Seems the nicer to you they are, the meaner you are to them. Oh, you let them see another side of you, but then you push them away. Never let anyone get too close to you.”

Another bolt of lightning, closer this time, produced a soft, rolling sound of thunder. Lutie scooted a bit closer to Mama.

“Look, Lutie, you act like everyone hates you. But that can’t be true, can it? That
all
of us hate
you
all the time? I mean, we’ve got our own troubles, lots of problems in our own lives every day, so we don’t give much time or thought to hating you.”

“Maybe not everyone at the same time, but—”

“Yeah, I think you’re right. There’s only one person who hates you
all
the time.”

“And who would that be, Miss Know-It-All?”

“You.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“It means that you’re your own problem. You hate yourself so much that you hate everybody else.”

A blazing lightning strike that seemed to electrify the heavens created a thunderclap that rolled across the earth, making the old pickup shudder, causing Lutie to let Mama wrap her in her arms and pull her even closer.

“What happened to you, Lutie? What happened to make you hate yourself so?”

“I don’t hate myself.” Lutie tried to act as strong and sound as furious as she had earlier. She even tried halfheartedly to pull back, but Mama held her firmly in her arms. “I do
not
hate myself,” she said again, hoping to sound confident and secure. But she sounded more like a frightened child.

“Tell me what happened, darling.”

At first, Lutie said nothing, holding her resistance as long as she could; but finally, she said, “I don’t know.”

“You probably do, but you’ve pushed those memories and those pictures that made you feel so bad, you’ve pushed those way back here.” Mama tapped the back of Lutie’s head. “Or maybe you wrapped them up in an ugly little pouch and put it behind your heart. But either way, you’ve tried to bury it. So maybe now’s the time to let it out. Because if you don’t love yourself, you won’t be able to love the ones who love you.”

Mama held Lutie so close that she could feel her heart pounding, the resistance still holding her back. Then, in the blink of an eye, she felt Lutie’s body go limp as she let down the years of barriers she’d worked so hard to build up.

“I let her die,” Lutie said, her voice so soft and broken that Mama wasn’t sure what she’d heard.

“What did you say?”

“My mother. I let her die.”

“Why don’t you tell me how that happened,” Mama Sim said, trying to sound as natural as she could.

“She had that disease. A phobia, terrified of storms. She had seizures sometimes. Once, she lost consciousness. So my daddy told me that when a storm came, I was supposed to get in the closet where Mama hid so I could hold her, talk to her. Try to keep her calm.

“That worked, too. It always worked until that day. The day she died.”

“And you think it was your fault?”

“Yeah. I was in my room playing and I didn’t go to the closet as fast as I should have. But I went. Closed the door, put my arms around Mama, and said the kinds of things that I always said before.” Lutie was struggling now, trying to talk despite the weeping that distorted her words. “Then there was a tremendous crack of lightning and the thunder just exploded. Like a bomb. The light in the closet went out.”

Lutie was sobbing now, trembling violently, causing Mama to hold her even tighter.

“I felt my mother stiffen for a few seconds, heard her gasp for breath once or twice, then she went limp in my arms. I was only six, but I knew then she was dead. And I knew it was my fault.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

F
ATE SENSED SOMETHING
was wrong when he rounded the corner and saw Mama Sim’s house. Too many vehicles were parked in her driveway and yard: Dub’s pickup; Katy’s VW van; Juan’s Continental; even Essie’s Dodge Neon, which she always parked next door in her own driveway. And near the front porch steps, Fate saw Johnny’s bicycle. But nowhere did he see Mama’s GMC.

He tried to make himself believe they were all at Mama’s because of the storm that had passed over nearly an hour ago. The rain had been accompanied by lightning and thunder, which might have caused Lutie a few rough minutes, but this storm—fast moving—was nothing like the fierce one that had struck a couple of nights ago.

And even if it was Lutie’s phobia about thunder, Essie and some of the others knew what to do. No, something else was going on, something that caused a burning sensation in the pit of Fate’s belly.

Morrell, who was never still, was sitting on the porch swing with Tiki, neither of them talking as they watched him coming toward the house. And when Johnny saw him, he didn’t run to meet him as usual, but bent to adjust a spoke on his bike, an easy excuse not to look into Fate’s eyes.

“What’s going on?” Fate asked.

To add to his discomfort, nobody spoke.

“You all just hanging out?”

After several minutes of silence, Johnny said, “Maybe you ought to go in and talk to Juan or Essie.”

When he stepped inside the front door, Fate knew without a doubt that he was going to be hit with bad news. Any movement and conversation that had been going on came to a sudden halt, as if everyone in the room were frozen in a photograph. Dub was caught sipping lemonade; Katy stopped as she was about to turn a page in a magazine. Only Juan met Fate’s searching eyes.

“Let’s go up to your bedroom,” Juan said.

Without another word, the two of them climbed the stairs to Fate’s room. When they sat on his bed, Juan pulled the note from where Lutie had left it and handed it to Fate.

As he read, he would, from time to time, shake his head and speak, as if he were talking to his sister. “I knew you did it for me, Lutie. I knew that.” And as his eyes welled with tears, he whispered, “Of course we’ll see each other again.”

When he finished reading the note, he looked briefly at Juan as if he were about to ask a question, but instead he read the message from Lutie again. Finally, he let the paper slip from his fingers and float to the floor as his chest fell and his shoulders sagged—his spirit crushed by loss.

Juan gripped Fate’s shoulder, but the boy seemed not to notice.

“This is my fault,” Fate said, openly admitting his guilt, the guilt he’d been trying to run from all day. “When I told her I loved her, she said she didn’t know how she felt about me, meaning she wasn’t sure if she cared about me or not. I was hurt. I was mad. And the only thing I could think of was to hurt her worse than she’d hurt me. So I did.

“I said every mean thing I could think of. I made her feel horrible. Humiliated. I told her I knew about some sex pictures she posed for in Vegas, told her I knew about a porn movie she made out there.”

When Juan tried to put an arm around Fate, offering comfort, he pulled away, knowing he was not deserving of comfort . . . or pity.

“I talked to her like she was . . . like she was nothing. That’s why she ran away.

“She’s gone because of me.”

Just before sunset, the sound of Mama’s GMC brought everyone inside the house rushing to the porch. Though the light was dim, they could see no one but Mama, the driver, in the truck. Dub stuck one hand in his pocket, slid the other around Katy’s waist; Morrell and Tiki pressed themselves against Essie’s sides; Juan folded his arms across his chest and leaned against the porch railing, while Johnny straddled his bike, hunkering down over the handlebars.

Fate flew off the porch and across the yard. When he reached the opened window of Mama’s truck, he saw Lutie curled on the front seat, asleep, her head resting in Mama’s lap. But before he could speak, Mama put her finger to her lips.

As she slid as gently as she could from beneath Lutie, the girl slept on, undisturbed by Mama’s movement or the sudden silence of the old pickup. Mama walked around the truck with one arm around Fate’s shoulders as she guided him toward the house.

“Is she okay?” he asked.

“Yes, Fate, she is. But right now she’s exhausted, and I think the best we can do for her is to let her sleep.”

“But what—”

“I know you and Lutie have a lot to talk about. So much to say to each other, but this isn’t the time for it. Okay?”

“Sure, but can you tell me why she ran off?”

“I could, but I won’t. That’s something she’ll have to tell you herself.”

“I just need to know if she left because of me.”

“Do you trust me, sugar?”

“You know I do.”

“Then let it be for now.”

When Mama reached the house and started up the porch steps, she was peppered with questions until she assured them all that Lutie was okay, asleep in the truck.

“Juan, will you go out and get her while I turn down her bed? And do your best not to wake her.”

As Juan started for the truck and before Mama could get inside the front door, Johnny said, “Did you have to rescue her?”

“No, Johnny, I hate to disappoint you, but I didn’t have to do battle with anyone. But I did get to her just after she’d hitched a ride with a boy not much older than she is. No telling what might have happened if I hadn’t gotten her out of that car before the kid took off.”