by Lisa Wingate
The phone showed a one-bar signal, so I dialed Dustin’s number and achieved a patchy connection long enough to hear his voice and ask if he was doing all right.
“Yeah, I can hardly hear you, though. Where’re you at, Mom?”
“I’m out at the Crossroads waiting to meet up with Len. I’m taking Birdie for school supplies, remember?”
It was hard to tell whether Dustin really heard me or not. A hiss of static answered, and then “… kay. I better go. Don’t worry about me, all right?”
Don’t worry about me. Easier said than done.“I love you, sweetie.” Shutting the phone, I laid my head back against the seat, watching a family with a pull-behind camper select watermelons across the street.
The lack of sleep was starting to weigh on me. I let my eyes fall closed, thinking, Maybe just a little nap. Ten minutes. If Len and Birdie didn’t show up by three, I’d go to the Community Closet event by myself and see if they’d let me pick up school supplies and select some clothes for her. Since Sheila was working, and she knew about Birdie’s situation, I could probably pull it off. It wouldn’t be as much fun as actually watching Birdie select things for herself, but it would be better than completely missing the opportunity. When a child has nothing and needs everything, you can’t afford to pass up a chance.
The breeze combed my hair as I drifted off. Considering the heat of the day, it wasn’t bad, sitting here in the shade. Comfortable, actually. Relaxing, after a really rough night and a strange day. Maybe all of it really was a dream. I’d wake up any minute now and find Dustin asleep in his bed. Mart would call while I was on my way to work …
“Y-y-y-you uuh-takin’ ubb-Birdie?”
I jerked upright and opened my eyes, my head light and logy. I was … Where was I?
In the truck?
“Yy-you takin’ ubb-Birdie?”
I turned toward the open window, my neck protesting the movement. Len was outside. He had his hand on Birdie’s shoulder.
Fog glazed my eyes as I checked the clock. It was almost four. If Birdie and I didn’t get going we’d miss the school supply event completely. “Oh, um, I … yes … I guess I fell asleep while I was waiting. I thought you’d be here earlier, selling tomatoes.”
“Him uggg-got c-c-colic. Umm-my umm-mule,” Len answered. “I ubb-been w-w-walkin ’im. Ugg-gotta go ubb-back, too.”
For a man of few words, Len did a surprisingly good job of filling me in on the events of the day. I quickly recalculated the rest of the afternoon, while realizing that Len had left what he was doing and driven all the way here, either because he didn’t want to miss our appointment or because he didn’t want to deprive Birdie of the shopping trip. Not every parent I dealt with would go to that extent. “Tell you what.You go ahead and do what you need to do. I’ll take Birdie to pick up her school supplies and clothes, and then we’ll get some supper, and I’ll bring her back later this evening. Would that be all right?”
Len seemed momentarily confused, then he shrugged and said, “All urr-right, I ugg-guess.”
Len walked Birdie to the passenger side of the truck and let her in. I buckled her into the seat, noting that among the other things we needed to accomplish was the procurement of a booster seat. In Texas, kids weren’t legal without one until seven years old.
She sat like a little statue as I turned on the ignition. Her eyes tracked the disappearance of Len’s truck, her head remaining face-forward, as if she were afraid to move.
“We’re going to have some fun today, Birdie,” I said. “We’ll get crayons and some paper and other good things for school, and some clothes and maybe even a toy, if we can find one.” She flashed a look my way at the word toy, and I knew I’d hit on a temptation. Maybe we’d make a quick stop at the dollar store.
As we circumvented the lake, Birdie and I began getting along famously. She and I even shared some conversation – mostly observing birds and flowers on the roadsides and spotting cars and signs that were red, like her boots. After that we sang “Jingle Bells,” because Birdie had spotted a trailer house with leftover Christmas decorations wilting in the sun.
When we reached the Community Closet event in the Moses Lake High School gym, Sheila was at the registration table, and much to my surprise, so was Bonnie, from work. Her church outreach group had helped gather boxes of clothing and school items for Community Closet. Birdie seemed happy to see Sheila, and in short order, Sheila and Birdie were shopping the goods while I stood talking with Bonnie, since the crowds were pretty well gone by then.
“She’s so cute. I wish I had one,” Bonnie remarked wistfully as she watched Birdie fill her new backpack with donated supplies, then shop through what was left of the gently-used clothing. Sheila had tucked away some things in Birdie’s size, so the pickings were pretty good.
“You will, one of these days,” I said, but I understood Bonnie’s longing. I missed Dustin’s little-boy years.
“I’m so tired of waiting.” Bonnie peeled her name tag off her shirt, folded it, and dropped it in the trash, seeming uncharacteristically blue. “Guess in the meantime handing out school supplies to cute kids is better than nothing.”
“And taking care of Taz,” I added. “He’s like a big kid.”
Bonnie chuckled, leaning over the counter to peek out the gym door. “He really likes you, you know. The office is a whole lot more relaxed since you started taking care of the fieldwork.”
“It’s been a great learning experience,” I said. “Sort of baptism by fire, but great.”
Bonnie frowned at the words learning experience and baptism by fire. “Please tell me you’re not going to get tired of us and, like, move on. Taz tried to hire two different people before you, and once they got a good look at the job, they ran away screaming.” Straightening some Post-it Notes on the desk, she glanced at me. “I wasn’t supposed to tell you that, by the way.”
I blinked, surprised that two people had tanked in my job before me and that Bonnie had kept it a secret.“I’m not going anywhere.” I started to add that I felt as if this job and I were meant for each other, but a customer came to the counter, and Bonnie was obliged to stock her sacks with various free pencils, advertising pins, and a fish-shaped paper fan from the Moses Lake Chamber of Commerce.
I excused myself and walked to the other end of the room to help Birdie and Sheila look through the clothing. After some searching and trying on, Birdie ended up with two pairs of shoes, three dresses, three shorts, and a pair of jeans (red, she observed), as well as various T-shirts sporting everything from Mickey Mouse to Texas Rangers baseball. Sheila put the things into Wal-Mart sacks while Birdie changed into one of her new outfits in a makeshift dressing room. When she came out, she took a Wal-Mart sack from Sheila and clutched it against herself as Bonnie filled a goodie bag at the checkout counter. Birdie smiled when Bonnie admired her new dress and shoes. She had the glow of a happy little girl. Bonnie even offered to procure a free booster seat through her car insurance company and promised to bring it to the office early next week.
After leaving the gym, Birdie and I meandered along the main street of Moses Lake – a strip of turn-of-the-century limestone buildings that were the remains of what had been a farming community before the lake was formed. I stopped off at the dollar store to let Birdie pick out a toy, and the process took longer than I’d planned. She wandered up and down the toy aisle, carefully investigating toys and packaging, as if she’d never before seen such wonderful things. We talked a bit about sandbox toys, and Barbies, and a set of plastic dishes, but in the end, she selected a stuffed rabbit from a bin of leftover Easter goodies.
“You got you a bunny?” the teenager at the cash register asked, and Birdie ducked her head, nodding shyly.
“Tell her what color the bunny is, Birdie,” I prompted, wondering if Birdie would come out of her shell a bit.
“Hmmm,” the cashier said playfully. “Well, I dunno. I think it’s yellow.”
Birdie giggled, sneaking a glance at her
with one eyebrow lowered. “Blue.” The word was barely audible, but at least she answered. She smiled afterward, as if she was pleased with herself. After leaving the dollar store, we walked down Main Street, past the old-fashioned hardware store, and the small row of quilt and antique shops that catered to summer tourists, to Moses Lake’s combination gas station, Chinese food hut, and pizzeria across from Lakeshore Community Church. There, Birdie curiously watched the children of the Thai family who ran the place, as they played in a back corner that was stocked with toys and a television set. I encouraged Birdie to join them. Initially, she only shook her head and ate her pizza, but by the time we were ready to leave, she was checking out their toys and showing them her blue bunny.
After making friends in the pizza place, we headed back to Len’s house with the radio pumping out seventies tunes and Birdie bobbing along to the music in the passenger seat. In spite of the day’s upside-down beginnings, and the disaster with Mart last night, I had a sense of accomplishment as we sloshed along the muddy roads, weaving our way into the hills. I was on a volunteer high – the kind you get when something you planned turns out really, really well.
Birdie fell asleep before we made it to the low-water crossing, and her head lolled against the seat, bouncing at the chuckholes. I finally felt sorry for her and laid a hand over her hair, holding her head in place as we traveled the last few miles of rutted road to Len’s place.
The hills were a dusky gray in the distance as we topped the rise and rattled through Len’s garden. In spite of the beauty of the evening, an uncomfortable feeling pricked my happiness bubble. I hadn’t meant to return Birdie quite this late. I would need to drop her off in a hurry and head home to get out of Chinquapin Peaks before nightfall. The last thing I wanted was to be stuck up on these roads after dark – honkin’ big four-by-four truck or no.
I woke Birdie and helped her gather her bags as we idled toward the house. Apparently Len had been driving in the yard today, because the area in front of the house was a muddy mess of churned-up earth and tire tracks. Rather than parking in the mire, I rolled into the grassy space behind the old school bus and led Birdie around the back of the bus to the house. She had new shoes on, after all.
Len didn’t answer when we knocked on the front door, and the place was strangely quiet. The lights were on in the barn, so I sent Birdie into the house with her packages and I moved to the edge of the porch, studying the quagmire below and trying to decide how I could traverse the yard without ruining a perfectly good pair of tennis shoes. Just as I prepared to step off the porch, something caught my eye in the fading light behind the barn. There were three vehicles out there – Len’s truck, an old brown pickup, and a white SUV dotted with rust-colored primer. Who was here?
As fish are caught in a cruel net,
or birds are taken in a snare,
so men are trapped by evil times
that fall unexpectedly upon them.
– Ecclesiastes 9:12
(Left by Bob, who’s out of a job. Got fishhooks and faith. Life’s OK.)
Chapter 22
Mart McClendon
Some days you don’t get far before you find out you would’ve been better off staying in bed. Before I’d even opened my eyes to Saturday morning, someplace on the other end of the county, the day was taking on a life of its own. Not long after sunup, a sheriff ’s deputy patrolling on the far side of the lake had stopped a Ford Bronco, a late-model Malibu, and a brown pickup out on County Road 1556. The three vehicles were traveling together, all running over speed, and the inspection sticker was out of date on the pickup. When the deputy tried to run the tags, Dispatch had a problem with the computers, and they couldn’t pull up the information right away. The deputy, being young and impatient to go home at the end of his shift, decided he’d just hand out a couple warnings and let it go at that. The group looked harmless enough – low-rent types packed for a camping trip at the lake, their vehicle windows bulging with boxes, stuff in trash bags, and what looked like bedrolls.
When the deputy walked back to the cars to write out the warnings, he decided he’d give the drivers a little scare, so they’d slow it down in the future. He asked all three drivers to step out of their cars, so he could read them the riot act before letting them off with the warning. About that time, he noticed the lady in the passenger seat of the Malibu scrambling like she was trying to hold something down on the floorboard. It let out a sound that was somewhere between a cat squall and a baby’s cry, and the lady tossed a lit cigarette out the window so she could use both hands to control whatever she had underfoot.
The deputy hollered to her that she’d better put out the cigarette before the dry grass caught fire – it was summer, and even with the recent rains, we were under a burn ban. She yelled back that the car door didn’t open on her side, and if the deputy wanted the cigarette put out, he’d have to do it himself. Meantime, a little trail of smoke was rising out of the ditch. The officer also noticed that none of the drivers had exited their vehicles, and the front driver was arguing with his passenger.
Right about then, the deputy knew he was in trouble. He got ready to pull his pistol, and all of a sudden, something in the car screamed like a banshee, there was a commotion, and an animal the size of a small collie dog jumped out the window and darted off into the brush. Even with the dim morning light, the deputy got a look at it. He swore it ran like a cat and was striped like a tiger.
The lady in the car screamed, “It bit me. I’m bleedin’!” The cigarette lit the grass like tinder, and the mystery animal climbed a tree in the right-of-way. The officer didn’t know whether to draw his gun, put out the fire, or go after whatever was up the tree. A moment of hesitation is all it takes for a situation to go from strange to dangerous, and before the deputy knew what was happening, the driver in front hit the gas, tossed gravel, and took off. The second driver followed, and the Malibu bumped the deputy as it spun out after the other two. He ended up flat on his back with a pretty good goose egg on his head, a grass fire the size of a trash-can lid and spreading, and the mystery critter growling in the tree. By the time backup made it to the scene, he was fighting the fire and the critter had escaped. He swore it was a baby tiger.
The deputy, of course, got a lot of jokes about the bump on his head, the tiger sighting, and whether he’d been drinking on duty. I got a morning wake-up call about the vehicles and the possibility of an escaped exotic cat somewhere along 1556. I didn’t have too hard a time buying the story. Both here and in the Bend area, trafficking contraband exotic animals went right along with the drug trade. I figured if we found those vehicles, they’d be packed for something other than a campout.
When the computers at dispatch finally came back up, they ran the tags, and word came back that the Malibu was registered to a woman who had no prior history of arrest, but recently the car had been reported in two separate pump-and-run thefts at local gas stations. In both cases, a man was driving. No doubt the woman who owned the car had herself a new boyfriend of the unsavory variety. Those types usually traveled in their girlfriends’ cars, since having one of your own requires a steady job.The brown pickup was stolen from one of the Mennonite farms up in Jake’s area, and the Bronco belonged to the sister of a registered sex offender who had warrants out for his arrest on a drug charge and a parole violation. He was a bad customer. It was a lucky thing he’d decided to take off instead of shoot. The deputy could’ve ended up with a lot worse than a bump on the head and a story to tell.
I spent the day involved in the manhunt with the state police, sheriff ’s department, and agents from the Drug Enforcement Agency. While driving back roads and ranch roads along 1556, I kept one eye out for the suspect vehicles and one eye out for the mystery animal, which, after I found a couple tracks in the moss near the grassfire area, I concluded probably was an exotic cat of some variety, most likely a juvenile. Being domestic, the poor thing was probably scared out of its mind. It wouldn’t survive too long in the woods.
If coyotes, a mountain lion, or a redneck with a gun didn’t get it, it’d probably starve to death soon enough.
Late in the afternoon, I got a call that some picnickers in the park near Eagle Eye Bridge had seen what looked like a small exotic cat watering along the shore. It’d run into the bathroom building, and they’d trapped it in there. I went to the park, and in pretty short order had myself a thirty-pound tiger cub. I wish I could’ve said the capture was dramatic, since I had an audience and all, but the truth was that the little fella was mighty glad to see me. After a day in the woods, he was looking for someone who might feed him and put him in a nice, quiet cage. He was tame, all right. The rednecks had probably been keeping him as a house pet, because he was still little enough to be cute. The picnic crowd took pictures with him in the back of my truck.
It wasn’t until I was leaving the park that I thought about the fact that this was our park – Andrea’s and mine. This was the place where I first looked at Andrea and saw something more than just a pretty girl with an attitude. Now, considering what’d happened last night, I felt a lot like that wannabe Robin Hood, sitting on the back steps of the school auditorium. Only this time, there wasn’t anyone to come along and patch up the wounds with an ice cream cone. I was glad it’d been a busy day. Not a lot of time to think.
After I’d made it back to Moses Lake and dropped the tiger cub at the vet clinic, I got the call that the state police and sheriff ’s department had given up the manhunt. That put me officially off duty. All at once the day that’d seemed full to the brim felt empty. I didn’t have anywhere to go or anyone to share the tiger-hunt story with, unless I wanted to hang out at the Waterbird with the docksiders. Pretty pathetic Saturday evening for a single man under forty.
I decided that maybe I’d go out on the lake for a while, drift up Larkspur Cove, and see if Andrea was out. Maybe I’d just not mention last night – act like it never happened. Could be, I’d been pushing too hard. That was, after all, why Melanie and I hadn’t worked out, back in Alpine. She couldn’t stop pushing for things to happen on her timetable, especially after Aaron died. To her, the accident was proof that we didn’t have any more time to waste just dating. Before that, she’d been pretty content to stay wrapped up in separate lives – her traveling as a sales rep, and me working the Bend area. Then suddenly she wanted a house and a family. To me, the fact that I’d let my job come before Aaron and Mica was proof that I wasn’t good for anybody. Finally, Melanie couldn’t take it anymore – the grief over the accident, or how I used it as an excuse to keep dragging my feet.