by Hughey, J.
The father distributed paper wrapped food with jerky thrusts of his arms. “We barely got out with our lives, and I get a twelve-hundred-mile guilt trip about a stuffed animal,” he groused. The mother put her hand over his to soothe him. He shook her off and pointed a stubby finger at their daughter. “You eat your lunch or I’ll beat your bottom,” he warned. “And I better not hear any of this bullshit when we get to Meemaw’s.”
The girl flopped her head down on the table with renewed sobs. Her despair grabbed me right at the small of my back.
I leaned over to Boone. “Can I have the keys for sec?”
“Um. Sure.”
I dug through my crap at the side door of the truck. Gloria. I looked at her hard and brushed off a few cheese curl crumbs from last night.
The despondent girl’s sandy hair floated in wisps around her head, lifted by an insubstantial breeze. She didn’t see my approach since her face was still buried in her arms. I gestured with Gloria and the mom’s eyes widened with understanding. She nodded. Her bottom lip started to quiver. I wondered if this was a bad idea, if I was going to succeed at only creating a second hysterical female.
She got her act together, though, and said “Susie? This nice lady has something for you.”
Susie turned her head, skeptical. I imagine she’d heard every promise in the book since leaving whatever was left of her home. Crystal blue eyes fixed on Gloria. Susie leaned away from me while staring at my hippo. I squatted down a little.
“This is Gloria. I know she isn’t as nice as Fluffy, but she might get there if she had somebody like you to take care of her.”
She withdrew even farther, her child’s body curving away while hunger for Gloria sharpened the expression on her puffy, tear-streaked face.
“It’s okay, baby,” the mom encouraged.
I rubbed Gloria’s soft nose on Susie’s thin arm. A big scab adorned her elbow.
“How’d you hurt your arm?”
I wasn’t sure she’d answer, but after a few seconds she said, “Bike.”
“No kidding. Look.” I tucked Gloria under my arm so I could push up my sleeve and point to the whitish patch on my elbow. “I got this scar last winter.”
After a cursory glance, Susie fixated on Gloria again. “She don’t like that.”
“Oh?” I freed the hippo from my armpit. “See, that’s the thing. I kind of stink at taking care of her.”
When I offered the stuffed animal again, Susie checked for a confirming nod from her mom, then gently removed Gloria from my hand. She drew in a final hiccupping breath before inspecting her charge like a mother would a newborn. Four legs, two eyes and two pink ears, tail intact. Satisfied, she settled Gloria onto her narrow lap. She reached for her drink and sucked deep, fortifying gulps through the straw.
The mother dropped her face into her hands. Her shoulders trembled with sobs she kept silent for the sake of her daughter who petted Gloria with one hand while shoving fries into her mouth with the other. The husband wrapped a consoling arm around his wife as he looked helplessly up at me.
“I…um,” he started to say.
I lifted my hand to stop him. “Hey, we’re all in this together somehow, aren’t we?”
He nodded.
“Good luck,” I said as I turned back to Boone.
One of the many nice things about dating Dudley Do Right is he holds the disgusting trashcan flapper open at self-serve restaurants.
“You always that good with kids?”
I shrugged. “I babysat a girl about her age over the summer.”
“Well, what you did was awesome. She went from crying her eyes out to eating a second burger.”
“I can take a turn driving,” I said, uncomfortable with the praise.
“I’m used to doing it solo,” he said.
At least he let me buy lunch. “You don’t seem like one of those guys who is super-protective of his car.”
“I’m not.”
“You doubt my driving skills?”
“Nope.”
“Male chauvinist?”
He rolled his eyes.
I balked at the passenger door he opened for me. “Well, what is it then? You can’t honestly want to drive all four hundred miles if you don’t have to.”
He pursed his lips. “Maybe I’m old-fashioned. I think, in the early stages of a couple, it’s nice for the man to drive. It’s a courtesy. Like holding a door.” He swept his hand toward the seat.
His use of the word couple helped me forgive much. “Big difference between driving across town and driving across states. You’re still a gentleman even if you let me drive for an hour or two.”
Damn the secret weapon of physical contact. A coercive hand on my hip and a compelling, if too brief, kiss floated me into the truck.
My temple leaned on the headrest as the exit signs pinged by on Interstate 75 South. Grit swirled over the surface of the highway, like the first tiny flakes of snow on a freezing cold day. We were about halfway home, and my nerves ratcheted up when I told him to head west on Route 71. We Perches lived in the sticks, inconvenient to any major road. Highway 71 to 64 veered too far south, but were the best we could do if we wanted to maintain good speed instead of bumbling along on a two lane state road the whole breadth of Indiana.
We took a break at a rest stop west of Louisville that offered a few picnic tables, a three-sided shed full of vending machines and an American flag with an edge tattered by constant wind. I walked away from the truck to stretch while Boone went to use the passable bathrooms. With one wrist gripped in my opposite hand, I pulled my arms over my head and watched a primer gray pickup truck cruise off the highway. A guy with a black leather cap and beady eyes leaned out the passenger window. At first I thought he might be car sick, but he waved his hand toward Boone’s truck. Springs squeaked when the driver stopped right behind.
My throat tightened as adrenalin shot into my bloodstream. “Really?” I whispered in disbelief. The passenger slipped out and immediately disappeared behind our tall vehicle. My quick scan toward the tables and shed showed no police and no Boone in sight, only strangers eating early dinners out of coolers and feeding dollar bills into reluctant soda machines sold out of everything except diet yuck.
I stepped forward at an angle to check on Sneaky without getting any closer to him. “Hell, they’re full,” I heard him exclaim to the driver.
“Excuse me,” I called when I had moved far enough to see him messing with the bungee cords.
His head jerked up and his smile scored zero on the innocence meter. “Hey, uh, your straps are loose.”
“I don’t think so. My boyfriend checked them before he went inside.” I used a thumb to indicate the cement building behind me. Maybe I took liberties with my relationship status, but I figured boyfriend indicated proximity of a man-type-person.
“Nebraska, eh?” Sneaky’s eyes swept up and down me in more of an assessment of my threat potential than anything sexual.
I shifted my weight.
“The plates. They say Nebraska. Long way. That why you need all this gas?”
“I don’t think that’s any of your business,” I said.
A menacing presence swooped from behind me. The vision of being hauled into the pickup like a kidnapping/homicide victim on Criminal Minds ricocheted through my head. I braced, ready to resist.
Instead of a stranger grabbing me, Boone stepped past.
“Something I can help you with?” His voice sounded casual, but something in the expression I couldn’t see or his forward-leaning stance backed the guy up toward the open door behind him.
Sneaky grinned like a rodent. “Hey, man, I was checking your load,” he said. “Thought one of these straps looked loose.”
“Is that considered neighborly in Indiana?”
“Sure, man,” the guy said as he slid into the seat. The driver gunned the motor before the door slammed shut. Hoots of derision trailed out the open windows.
“Damn,” Boone said
. He turned to me. “Are you all right?”
I held my arms out to my sides. “Nothing happened.”
“I’m sure sorry, Violet. I didn’t think anything would happen in broad daylight with all these people around.”
“It’s not your fault the dude’s a criminal.”
“Damn,” he said again as he pulled me into his arms. He nuzzled his nose against my hair. “You’re full of surprises today. First, you end a little girl’s complete breakdown with a stuffed hippo, then you chase away a gas rustler.”
I pressed my lips to his cheek, loving the smell of him, the solidity of his form against me. “I think you did the chasing. I stalled them.”
The primered truck’s tires chirped as it ripped down the exit ramp.
Boone pulled away from me. “We’d better get going, in case they circle back.”
It only took a few seconds for Boone to re-secure the gas cans. When we were both back in the cab, he looked from me to the glove box and back again. He reached behind my seat for the box of crackers. He shook it in front of my nose, but instead of the rustle of dry snacks, it jingled. I’d heard that sound before.
“Is that where you keep the bullets?”
He nodded.
“Not that I’d know what to do with them.”
“You don’t need to know,” he said. He put the box at my feet, within reach.
Twilight threatened on the last leg of the drive. Farm fields flanked the state road, punctuated by dusty forest and scrub. My hands clenched in my lap. Until now, I’d maintained a strict separation of college life from home life. If I’d had to choose one person from Western Case I wouldn’t expose to my family, it would have been Boone.
At least not so soon.
“Looks like the farmers got most of the crops in,” he observed. “They sure jam these fields into some small spots.”
“A little farther on Route 50 is Gardenburg, the closest real town and where I went to high school.”
“Your sister goes there? Does she still have school?”
“As far as I know.” My stomach sank. Details of life at The Perch would soon equal the sum total of my life. Gag. “Turn left here, then right onto Laurel Gap Road.”
Was I crazy, bringing him here? Just to watch him drive away tomorrow? No Boone, no Mia, no classes or hanging out in the lounge or…. As if sensing my agitation, or perhaps sharing it, Boone reached across the center console to curve his hand around my knee. I slid mine flat over top, stared at it, tried to memorize the vision of my hand on his hand on my leg.
I mourned the loss when he needed the hand to navigate the truck up our narrow driveway. We climbed gradually through thirty feet of forest left to grow wild. I tried to see the place through his eyes, with the trees encroaching on all sides until we reached a small balding yard further scarred by a fresh rectangle of bare dirt in the middle. What? I whipped my head to the right to study the tilled area, about the size of a quarter of a tennis court. Sara had warned me, but seeing the furrowed soil made the whole garden and seed-planting thing real.
A slight right bend around a cluster of butterfly bushes brought us into full view of the house. Lights glowed on the deep front porch, though the sun hadn’t quite set. It got dark early in our gap with the shade of the woods all around.
The gray wood siding contrasted with a charcoal metal roof—new last summer—and dark blue trim. Both my parents’ cars were in front of the double detached garage, instead of inside where they usually parked.
“You can pull over to the left,” I suggested, trying to sound casual despite the horror of seeing my family boil out onto the front porch. All three of them headed right for us like dogs on a scent trail. There wasn’t going to be any easing into this.
Boone slipped the truck smoothly into the extra parking spot and switched off the engine. “Well, we made it.”
“Yeah. Now you have to meet those three,” I said, hearing the quiver in my voice.
“They don’t look like axe murderers,” he replied as Dad pulled my door open.
“You made it,” he said.
My smile was totally involuntary. “Hi, Dad,” I said as I slipped out of the car.
He enfolded me in a tight hug. “I’m so glad to have you home, safe and sound.”
Mom followed, rocking me back and forth on my feet. Sara gave a “whatever” wave over Mom’s shoulder, her eyes pinned behind the twenty gallons of gas where Boone must be standing.
“Welcome to The Perch,” Dad said.
Boone had removed his hat. He thrust his hand out. “Thank you, sir. Boone Ramer.”
“Matt Perch,” my dad said. They shook hands.
Mom gave me a girly squinch of the eyes before she turned to Boone. “I’m Candy.” Her voice rose at the end like she wanted him to confirm her name.
“Ma’am.”
“Violet says we met you on her first day last year?” She spoke with an unusual lisp, reminding me of the root canal she’d had.
“Yes, ma’am. I’m sorry, those move-in days get blurry.”
“This is Sara.” I pointed to my busty sister, disrespectfully taller than me, and even prettier since I left, with a fall of naturally highlighted chestnut hair she could twist into a lopsided knot on the top of her head and still look like a runway model. She was a cheerleader and dated the star basketball player since last winter. I suspected by the familiar way he’d been touching her at the end of the summer they’d started having sex.
“Hey, Sara,” Boone said, not leaving her out of the handshakes.
“So, wow,” Dad exclaimed, walking to the back of the truck. “Good idea to have some extra gas. Did you have any trouble?”
“As a matter of fact, somebody got interested in this at a rest stop. Violet scared him off.”
“Oh my goodneth!” Mom exclaimed, with more drama than the story required.
“I didn’t scare anybody. The thief kept unhooking bungee cords until Boone showed up.”
“Come in while you tell your story,” Mom chirped “We can unload later, can’t we?”
“Sure,” Boone said. He clicked the locks on the truck with the keychain remote.
Sara looked up from the text on her phone. “You don’t have to lock it here,” she said with a laugh.
Boone tucked the keys in his pocket. “If you’d been on our Sunday shopping trip, you’d lock it.”
“I’ll say.” I walked next to him, liking how he kept saying “we” and “our.” “We cleaned out some inventory in three stores.”
“I can’t wait to see what you were able to find,” Mom said, though see came out like thee.
“Mom, how’s your mouth?” I asked.
“Sore.” Thor.
“Did it go okay?”
“Who knows?” she replied with a lopsided grin. “These pain killers make me a little loopy. I hope dinner’s edible.”
She led us through the modest foyer with the rack of five hooks for keys. The wall behind bore dents and scars from years of taking and replacing our individual sets of house and car keys. The fifth hook held spares, the garage key, and oddballs like Grampa and Grandma’s housekey.
Our eat-in kitchen, with its neutral so-not-granite counters and dark wood cabinets, smelled of oven-fried chicken. The table setting included Mom’s favorite tablecloth, a tasteful floral she said made her feel she’d journeyed to Tuscany.
“Wow, Mom, you didn’t have to go to all this trouble.” I traced my finger over the pattern.
Compliments for the table evaporated when my peripheral vision caught a flash of silver from the rarely used formal dining room. I flicked the wall switch for the wrought iron chandelier, now sadly out of place in a space resembling the storage area of a restaurant kitchen.
“Good Lord,” I muttered.
Three rows of wire shelves contained food, batteries, packets of seeds, paper products, gallons and gallons of bleach, blankets, enough vitamins to poison an elephant, and enough first aid supplies to stock the Gardenbur
g ER.
“Seriously, Mom?”
She looked embarrassed. “I know. I hope we won’t need any of it, but every day the eruption continues….” She lisped to the same sad conclusion the Western Case College administration had reached.
I shook my head as she pulled me into another hug. “Ooh, you’re finally home. We’ve been so worried.” She turned to Boone who checked out her insane storage room from the safety of the doorway. “Thank you for bringing her, and for helping her get some things for my crazy stockpiling.”
“No problem.” He thrust his hands in the front pockets of his jeans. “I enjoyed having company for a change.”
“Let me show you your room, and then I’ll get dinner on the table.”
I shadowed their journey down the hall. Mom pointed out the full bath on one side of the hall and the master bedroom on the other before ending at the minuscule guest room all the way in back. It had twin beds, a bench for a suitcase, a narrow closet and very little else. A set of pristine white towels was neatly folded on one of the beds.
“The girls’ rooms are upstairs,” Dad said from the hall, about as subtle as Mia, only with the opposite goal.
“Let’s eat,” Mom said.
At dinner, Dad grilled Boone about his major and his family then required a thesis on how a Nebraska boy found Western Case College. Having sorted that out, Dad went on to question him about his plan to go home tomorrow.
I bit my tongue through the entire meal.
Boone wiped his mouth with a floral napkin. “I haven’t talked to my parents in over a week, sir. I hoped to use your land line to give them another try tonight.”
“There’s an extension in the kitchen you’re welcome to any time. Unlimited long distance.”
Once Dad gave him a chance to eat, Boone took seconds of everything, and I don’t think he was just being polite. The meal seemed pale to me. Chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, applesauce, and baking mix biscuits. Mom mostly ate potatoes and applesauce.
“Were you able to get the clear plastic?” Mom asked.
“Yep,” I said.