He headed off into the woods across the drive. Thirty minutes later, he came back.
When he saw me, he shrugged. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”
After my shower, Dad and I ate a frozen pizza. He seemed to be trying not to panic. He kept talking about possibilities: A neighbor had picked them up, they’d gone down to the gas station and waited the storm out, and now they were waiting for the old man who worked there to give them a ride home. I didn’t bother telling Dad that neither of these made much sense. Instead, I let him talk and nodded along.
After we finished, Dad stood up. “Come on. You’re okay, aren’t you?”
“Sure,” I said, though all I wanted was to fall into the bed and wake tomorrow and realize this had all been a bad dream. I followed him as he went outside and headed back for the woods.
This time both Dad and I shouted for them, our voices echoing back to us from the hollows. We went deeper, all the way back to the little shack, the one I later learned belonged to Pike. I remember Dad clearing the kudzu away from the door and going inside. He emerged a few minutes later, his face so burdened with emotion that I half believed he’d found their dead bodies. Instead, he’d simply found the end of his own rope.
“I think it may be time to call the police.”
Back at the house, Dad reached Deputy Jack Barnes, who was underwhelmed by the news of a missing woman and child.
Dad got angry with him, almost shouting over the phone, before he pulled back, reining himself in. “Listen, my daughter is autistic. They just walked away. None of this makes sense. Could you just try to put yourself in my place?”
Barnes said he’d send a cruiser by and put out an all-points bulletin.
“Too early to get worried,” Dad had said to himself after hanging up. He looked relieved somehow.
That night, I barely slept. Each time I began to drift off, I was awakened by a noise, some sound that I imagined to be Mom and Anna returning. “We had to wait out the storm at Cliff’s place,” Mom would say. “And then we just stayed for dinner.”
I’d rush downstairs to hug them, and Dad—who’d never even attempted to go to sleep—would put in two frozen pizzas and we’d sit around the table laughing and talking about what a close call it had been, about how we’d been to the precipice and almost fallen, until some hand, some high and lonesome hand, had reached for ours and pulled us back and made us a family again. In the vision, I saw us sitting on a mountaintop somewhere, all four of us, happy and content. Most of all, together. This was the vision that would drive me when I started to doubt Pike’s sanity, or even my own. This image of us together. The way it should be. The way it will be, I told myself over and over again.
At some point I did sleep, only to be awakened again by a noise. Something downstairs, a sound like a door opening. My dream was true. Rushing down the steps, I found Dad standing at the door, holding it open with both hands, staring out into the hot night.
This was my night, over and over again, until at some point, very deep in the morning hours, I came to a realization. Mom and Anna weren’t coming back, and the dream of the mountaintop was just that, a dream.
Chapter Thirteen
You’re not to leave this house.”
I stood, staring in utter disbelief at Mr. Banks. He sat at a mahogany desk, his glasses halfway down his nose, hands clasped together as if in prayer.
“This is your father’s wish,” he said. “I’ve been in touch with his attorney, who will be acting as a liaison in this difficult situation. And though I do have some doubts about following your father’s wishes, I have decided that in this case, at least, it is the right thing to do. Furthermore, he has expressed very clearly that he wants you to stay away from Walter Pike. I agree on that count too. Pike has mental problems. I know it’s hard for you boys to understand, but he has a history of violence in this town. And coming back now, it just looks suspicious.” He spread his hands out. “Besides, Daniel. It’s not so bad. You’ll have the run of the house. Your best friend is already here. Where could you possibly need to go?”
He was right in a way. If it hadn’t been for the burning need I felt to visit Pike again, he might have been completely right. So I tried to hide my shock and displeasure and nodded solemnly.
“Good then. So we understand each other.” He nodded at me curtly and turned back to the papers he had been perusing on his desk. I had been dismissed.
“What was that about?” Cliff asked me later in his room.
“My dad doesn’t want me to leave the house, and your dad is backing him up on it.”
Cliff smiled. “Big deal.”
“Big deal? What do you mean, ‘big deal’?”
“You think my dad has ever paid attention to me?”
“Huh?”
“You’ve been here, what, three days? How many times have you seen either of my parents?”
I thought about it. “Well, today . . .”
“And that’s it. They do their own thing. They’ve built this vast . . . empire for me to hang out in and it’s like they think it’s enough. Screw that. We’ll come and go as we please.”
So we did. But most of the time, we didn’t go far, just out back to the pool or down the road to the little gas station where Cliff bought some comics. Nobody seemed to notice or if they did, they didn’t seem to care.
On one of our trips to the gas station, I mentioned to Cliff that I wanted to pay another visit to Pike’s cabin.
He stopped walking. “What?”
“Think about it,” I said. “There’s no logical explanation for what happened. People don’t just vanish. So when the illogical happens, you have to start looking for illogical explanations.”
He said nothing. His silence said it all.
“I’m not asking you to go with me,” I said. “I just wanted you to know.”
“Before, when I said you should go see that man, I didn’t know he was going to be crazy.”
“Crazy?”
“Danny, he told us that your mom and sister had disappeared from this world. As if there’s some other world to disappear from.”
“He might not have literally meant it like that, Cliff.”
“Yeah, right.”
“I just want to hear him out.”
“I think you should stay. That guy gave me the creeps. He’s not right in the head. I’ve heard people saying he was involved with the two girls.”
“What? I thought you didn’t believe all that stuff about the girls.”
“It doesn’t matter what I believe, Danny. He could be dangerous. That’s the bottom line. Think for a minute. Try to understand the risk you are taking.”
Strangely enough, I didn’t get angry with Cliff. I could see that he honestly believed he had my best interest at heart.
I decided to let it drop and we continued to the gas station. It was Wednesday, the day the new comics came in.
I don’t know how it might have ended up if we hadn’t gone to the gas station that day. Maybe I would have eventually let Cliff convince me that it was foolish and dangerous to pursue Pike. Maybe I would have lived out the rest of my days pondering how two people can just disappear. Or maybe I would have grown older and the mysterious circumstances around my mother and sister’s disappearance would have grown murkier and less important with each passing year.
When we walked into the gas station, Cliff made a beeline for the comics rack and didn’t notice the man standing in line to check out. Walter Pike.
I almost didn’t recognize him either. He looked . . . well, he looked sober. His hair had been washed and brushed. Though he was far from clean-cut, he looked alert and put together, more like a man than a red-eyed demon of the night.
I froze, unsure at first what to do.
“New Hulk is in,” Cliff said.
Pike turned and saw me. His eyes s
canned me quickly until recognition dawned on his face. He placed a six-pack of beer on the counter and reached into his back pocket for his wallet, while I stood frozen to the spot.
“Earth to Danny,” Cliff said. “Don’t you want the new Hulk?”
I shook my head. The only thing I wanted at that moment was for Pike to turn back around. Then I wanted him to tell me how to find my mother and sister.
“Howdy,” the cashier said. He was an old-timer, Mr. Grayson or Granger or something. Most people just called him Cap, though I didn’t know why. What I did know is that “howdy” was his standard greeting. He liked Red Man tobacco and was partial to overalls, and he wasn’t particularly impressed with my or Cliff’s love of what he called “funny books.”
“Afternoon,” Pike said, keeping his eyes down, his wallet ready in his hand, anxious to complete the transaction.
Cap rang up the beer and said, “Four dollars nineteen pennies, my friend.”
Pike pulled out a ten.
Cap picked up his spit bottle and deposited a long brown strand of dip into it. “Got nineteen cents?”
Pike shook his head.
Cap nodded and took the ten. He opened the register and began to count out change. He was about to hand Pike his money when he stopped, pulling it back. “Wait a minute,” he said. “I recognize you now. You’re Preston Pike’s boy.”
Pike nodded and reached for his change.
Cap pulled it back. “Hell naw.” He dropped the change back into the register and pulled Pike’s ten out, flinging it at him. “We don’t do business with your kind.”
A thin smile creased Pike’s face. “My kind?”
“I know about you. You might think people forget, but Cap don’t never forget. You and that Sykes boy. Both of you disappearing like you did. I don’t forget.”
“You don’t, huh?”
“Go on. Take your pretty ass on out of here. Don’t care to do business with a queer.”
“Queer?”
“You heard me. Go on.”
Pike reached for the six-pack. Cap did the same, pulling it away from Pike just before he could get his hands on it.
That’s when I saw a different side of Pike, a side that gave me pause.
He moved quick, grabbing Cap’s shirt in both fists and pulling him across the counter. The old man grunted and made a face like he was in pain. Pike jerked him again, the old man’s belly pressing against the counter. “Let’s me and you get a few things straight. I don’t care what Cap remembers. It don’t make it true.”
The old man tried to pull away, but Pike yanked him so hard, I heard Cap’s T-shirt rip. “I’m going to drop this ten dollars on the counter”—Pike opened one fist and let the damp bill flutter to the countertop—“and I’m going to let go of you and take this beer. If you try to stop me, I’m going to give you something to remember, and this time, it won’t be some made-up shit that none of you will ever understand. You got all that?”
Cap looked like he wanted to spit on Pike or hit him in the mouth or maybe even kill him dead, but all he did was nod, his face set in stone.
“Good.”
Pike let go and took the beer. He said something under his breath and turned to walk out. “I hate you had to see that,” he said as he walked past me and out the door.
I whirled around and saw from the look on Cliff’s face as he stood by the comics rack that he had witnessed the whole thing.
“Don’t do it,” he said, but I was already moving.
When I got outside, Pike was getting into his truck. He stopped, the door half-open. “Come with me.”
His voice was cold and hard but low enough to make me realize he didn’t want anyone else to hear him.
“Only if you promise to tell me how to get my mother and sister back.”
“No promises. Only a story I think you might be interested in.”
—
We all piled into the front of his pickup, me in the middle and Cliff by the window. I knew he was pissed, and scared, but he came with me. I’ll always appreciate that because I’m sure the whole thing seemed crazy to him, not to mention dangerous.
Nobody spoke for a long while. Instead, we just watched as the mid-July landscape coasted by on a cloud of dust. This had been my favorite time of year before they disappeared. I could play for hours in the hot sun and not even feel tired. But this year the heat seemed draining, glaring, like some great white light that sucked at your energy, sometimes even your soul.
Finally, Pike looked over at me, nodding in Cliff’s direction. “You trust him?”
I didn’t hesitate. “He’s my best friend.”
Pike nodded. “I heard they put your daddy in the jail. He got a lawyer?”
I told him he did.
“’Cause I know one if you—”
“I just want to know where my mom and sister are. Please.”
“Fair enough.” He made a hard right onto a mud-splattered path that I’d barely noticed before. “I should start by showing you something.”
Chapter Fourteen
WALTER
After the beating Seth took at the hands of Jake and his cronies, it was nearly March before he showed up at school again. The rumor was that he came then only because Sheriff Branch drove out to his house to find out what was going on.
One thing was clear: He had been beaten badly. His nose was busted and his face was every color a bruise can be—brown, black, blue, even green. I was pretty sure his daddy had told the truth about giving him more when he got home.
I kept my distance. No matter how bad I felt for him, I had no desire to be seen with him at school. Knowing he was my cousin made it that much harder. I felt like I owed him something, but I just didn’t have it in me at that point. My own life had been hard enough since I’d pulled the knife on Jake. He’d told anybody in the school who would listen that I was queer and that Seth was my boyfriend. I don’t know how many people believed him, but I do know that everyone avoided me like the plague.
For the most part, Ronnie and Jake avoided me too. Occasionally, I’d catch one of them staring at me in gym or secretly flipping me a bird during class change, but they didn’t get in my face. That was fine with me. I knew my threat of always carrying a knife might have been behind this, but I also hoped the tension was beginning to ebb.
Turned out, that was just a daydream with no basis in reality. Retaliation was coming, and when it did, I knew I needed to be damn ready.
The next day I swiped three dollars from my mother’s purse and left for school early. I walked out to County Road Seven and found the half-crippled black man we called Old Roy. Roy could always be found on County Road Seven pushing a grocery cart full of whatever knickknack you might need—cleaning supplies, clothing, snacks, paperback novels, and knives. I bought a switchblade for two dollars and kept the other dollar in my pocket. That switchblade didn’t end up helping me much against Jake and his cronies, but it did play a role in the coming days. A bigger one than I’d ever imagined.
—
April came on hard with storm after storm. For several days the cotton fields turned to mud and the men who worked them stayed home or used the time off as an excuse to head out to County Road Seven and spend their wages on moonshine and women.
Getting to school became dangerous. I remember running across the highway in the middle of pounding rain and seeing two trees in front of me get split in half by lightning. Another time a whole line of pines was uprooted and thrown into the pond. The same storm took down our old fort, collapsing the roof and leaving it a twisted snarl of wood and rusty nails.
Another storm was beginning to gather over the cotton fields, turning the sky a coal-dark color as I headed home from school one afternoon in mid-April. I kept an eye out for Jake and his gang—something I’d started to do out of habit. I didn’t see anyone, so I slipped p
ast the football practice field and toward the highway. Moving quickly because of the coming storm, I let down my guard. As I ran across the highway, I noticed that no less than four boys were on my tail. I kept going. I thought I had a big enough head start on them and might be able to lose them in the woods.
Halfway through the trees, two other boys stepped into my path. One of them was Ronnie. He had his arms crossed and wore a smirk on his face. “You fucked up,” he said.
I changed direction and headed for the deeper woods. Behind me, I heard the two groups of boys meeting up, discussing where I had gone. I kept moving, thinking I could go past my house, almost out to the meadow right before County Road Seven and then double back home. Surely I would be safe there.
That’s when I almost ran over Seth.
He was standing in a clearing in the deepest part of the woods, surrounded by five boys, including Jake. I pulled up, realizing I had nowhere else to run. I didn’t recognize the exact spot, but I knew we were close to the storm shelter. The remains of an old building were just off to my right, one large piece of its tin roof flapping in the wind.
Jake grinned his most spiteful grin. “Well, look at what we have here. Me and these boys followed Seth. Ronnie and some others followed Walter, and imagine that, they end up in the same place. I wonder what for?” He elbowed the kid standing next to him—an older boy, maybe sixteen, who played football and grabbed girls’ asses in the hallways at school. I think his name was Steve.
“I’m going to take a guess,” Steve said. “Just a wild guess. Maybe to suck each other’s dicks?”
The whole group laughed. I turned to see that we had been joined by the six boys who had been chasing me. That made eleven in all. I thought I was going to die, but I wouldn’t die without a fight. That’s when I remembered the switchblade.
I kept it in my boot, so I had to bend down to pull it out.
“Hey,” Jake said. “Stand back up.”
I ignored him, instead digging inside my boot for the small switchblade. I popped the blade out, leading with it as I stepped toward Jake.
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