Run

by Kody Keplinger

  He used to rock me to sleep in his grandma’s old rocking chair. Used to sing me Hank Williams songs when I was crying. Used to let me sit on his lap and watch the NASCAR race with him while he drank a beer. He’s my daddy. And no matter what this woman thinks of me, I’m his baby girl. His family.

  So I take a deep breath and spit it out.

  “Well … I was sorta hoping I could live here. With you.”

  It wasn’t long before the days started getting hot and the humidity made us all miserable. Farmers’ kids stopped coming to school, pulled out by their parents to work in the tobacco fields. Summer was here, and we’d all be done with classes in a couple weeks. Then there were two and a half months of long, slow summer days to get through.

  It got too hot to stay inside—Daddy refused to turn on the air conditioner until June to save money—so Bo and I started spending our afternoons in my backyard. We’d get off the bus at the church and head to my house. By the time we each poured ourselves a glass of sweet tea to cool down from the walk, Utah would be waiting outside for us, lying right by the back door. The first day she showed up, I nearly tripped over her. The second day, too, actually. But after a week or so, I just expected to find her there.

  There wasn’t much to do outside besides get a sunburn, so Bo started bringing the book I bought her and making good on that promise to read some of the poems to me.

  “ ‘Hoodwink’d with faery fancy, all amort, save to St. Agnes and her lambs unshorn …’ ”

  Her voice curled around Keats’s words, so slow and soft that I nearly drifted off. We were stretched out beneath Mama’s dogwood tree, the only good shady spot in the yard. I was on my back, arms tucked behind my head. Bo was next to me, propped on her side as she read the long poem. Somewhere near my feet, I could hear Utah panting.

  “What’re we gonna do this summer?” I asked once she’d finished reading.

  “What do you mean?” She was flipping through the book again, looking for another poem, one we hadn’t read together yet.

  “I mean … What are we gonna do? We can’t just stick around here doing nothing for two months.”

  “Well, I usually work the tobacco fields at the Scotts’ farm to make a little money during the summer.”

  I sighed. “That sounds nice.”

  “Not really. It’s hot and exhausting, and you come back covered in tobacco gum.”

  “But it’s something,” I said. “Something to do. Mama and Daddy would never let me work tobacco. They’d tell me it’d be too hard with my vision and all. And maybe they’d be right. But I’ve spent every summer of my life stuck in the house, never leaving this yard.”

  “I kinda like this yard,” Bo said, still turning pages.

  “I wanna do something different,” I said. “Something exciting.”

  “There will probably be a few parties.”

  Last year, that would have been all the excitement I needed. A couple parties, the promise of a few hours without my parents’ eyes on me, that would have been enough. But now, it hardly did anything for me. Parties were over too fast, too similar to one another. And, at the end of the night, we were still stuck in Mursey.

  “We ought to go out of town,” I said. “Take a trip.”

  Bo quit flipping the pages. “You serious?”

  “Maybe.”

  “When I suggested that, we ended up fighting. You said I was crazy for even thinking—”

  “I know, I know. But I been thinking about it, and maybe if we do it right, my parents will let me go.” I sat up so I could look at her better. “I mean, they’re letting me walk home from the bus stop with you, so that’s progress, right? And the way I see it, my parents just wanna know where I am all the time. So if we plan it out right, give them all the details before we even hit the road … Maybe it would work?”

  “You really think so?”

  “Maybe … And we wouldn’t be going far. I was thinking we could just go visit Colt for the weekend or something.”

  Bo snorted. “I see how it is. You just wanna go fuck my cousin again.”

  “Shh!” I swatted at her. “Keep your voice down.”

  “Your mama’s inside. She ain’t gonna hear me.”

  “There might be a window open. And if she got wind of what happened with Colt, she’d never let me out of the house … or she’d hunt him down and make him marry me.”

  The second option didn’t sound so bad, really. I’d never wanted to get married right out of high school, but if it meant moving in with Colt, getting out of here, I might’ve been on board.

  And Bo could come, too. She could move into the guest room. Or sleep on the couch. I wasn’t real sure how big Colt’s place was. But we’d make it work. Maybe Bo could get a job singing somewhere in the city. There was a school for the blind there—maybe I could teach braille. Colt and me would be together, and Bo could find a boy of her own. Or maybe a girl. I could see her with a pretty brunette—a poet. Bo’d be great with a poet. The four of us would eat dinner together every night, then we’d sit out on the back deck counting fireflies and talking about the towns we’d escaped from …

  “Maybe we could do that.” And for a second, I thought she was commenting on my fantasy. But then she added, “We could go see Colt. Bet he’d like that, actually. And not just because you’d be fucking him.”

  “Hush,” I said, blushing.

  She laughed. “All right. But really, what brought this on? You didn’t even wanna talk to your parents about it when I had the idea.”

  “I’ve just been thinking, and you and Colt were right.” And so was Christy. I hadn’t told Bo about talking to her that day in January, and I hadn’t talked to her since. But the things she’d said had stuck with me. “Complaining about their rules won’t change them. So, maybe if I just talk to them, reason with them, it’ll make a difference. And, I mean, they let Gracie go to Florida with her friends for a whole week when she was seventeen,” I said. “And Louisville’s only a couple hours from here. Not near as far.”

  “Your sister wasn’t in Florida with a pair of Dickinsons, though,” Bo said.

  “Stop it,” I told her. “Mama and Daddy have really come around on you, you know. They like you, Bo. They don’t care that you’re a Dickinson.”

  “Well, they’re about the only ones.” She started flipping the pages of her book again. “But all right. Let’s do it. Let’s go see Colt.”

  “Yes!” I threw my fist in the air, the way Daddy did when UK won a ball game. Then I fell back into the grass, stretching my arms over my head. “We gotta work out all the details. Starting with how we’re getting there. Maybe Gracie will let us borrow her car?”

  “We’ll figure it out,” Bo said. “Later, though. I ain’t done reading yet. This poem’s by Lord Byron. He’s one of my favorites.”

  I nodded and closed my eyes, sinking back into that pleasant place between waking and sleeping, more content and happy this time. Even as Bo’s slow, sad words lingered in the sweltering air.

  “ ‘Thy vows are all broken, and light is thy fame: I hear thy name spoken, and share in its shame.’ ”

  “We could go in July,” I said. “Maybe for the Fourth? Maybe there’s good fireworks up there.”

  “You can see fireworks?”

  “Yeah. If they’re bright enough.”

  It was the last week of May. We’d been out of school a few days, and Bo had spent almost every night at my house. She’d leave in the morning and head to the Scotts’ farm. They’d just started setting their crops, so she’d go help all day and come back to my house around dark, smelling like tobacco. She’d use our shower—always apologizing to my mama, like it was a huge inconvenience—then we’d head up to my room to watch TV and talk until bed.

  Tonight—every night—we were talking about the trip to see Colt.

  “Fourth of July’s good,” she said. “I get paid next week. Then I’ll be helping in the field in June. I can have some money saved up for gas.”

&n
bsp; That was still the problem, though. The car. There was no way Bo’s mama would let us borrow the blue car for a few days to go out of town. Hell, there was no way that blue car could get us out of town. I wasn’t sure how it got from one side of Mursey to the other without falling apart, based on how the engine wheezed and the frame clanked.

  “How old do you have to be to rent a car?” I asked, picking up the brush from my nightstand and combing through my hair.

  “Older than seventeen,” Bo said. “Don’t worry. We’ll think of something.”

  “Well, we’d better. I’m gonna have to ask my parents soon.”

  “Maybe we can take my aunt’s car. Colt’s mama don’t leave the house much.”

  I finished combing my hair and stood up, stepping over the pallet of blankets Bo sat on and walking toward the bedroom door. “While we’re in Louisville,” I said, shutting off the light, “we ought to go to Churchill Downs. You know, where they run the derby?”

  “I ain’t watched the derby in years,” Bo said.

  “Really?” I started making my way back to my bed. “I watch every year. The whole family does. But I think Mama watches more to see all the hats the ladies are wearing in the audience. She don’t care as much about the horses as Daddy and I do.”

  “Well, we can go anywhere you want,” Bo said. “How far’s Mammoth Cave?”

  “I don’t know.” I climbed into bed, but I left the covers off. It was too hot, and even though Daddy had finally agreed to turn on the air-conditioning early, he kept it real low. “I’ve never been.”

  “I ain’t, either. There was that school trip back in seventh grade, but Mama couldn’t afford it.”

  “And my parents worried I’d get lost in the cave.”

  “They really say that?”

  “Sorta. They just kept telling me how dark it was and how hard it would be for me to keep up with everyone else.”

  Bo thought about this for a moment. “Well, we oughta go. Even if it’s not real close. Ain’t no way I’ll let you get lost down there.”

  I smiled. “Okay,” I said. “We’ll go to Mammoth Cave, then. And you ought to ask Colt if there’s other stuff we should do while we’re headed that way. Make the most of the trip, you know?”

  “I’ll call him this weekend,” she said.

  “Great,” I said. “Then we can make a schedule and get all the details lined up. And then I can talk to my parents and …” I was grinning so hard my cheeks hurt. “Are we really doing this?”

  “Sure seems like it,” she said.

  I giggled and squealed quietly. “This is gonna be great. The best summer ever.”

  “We just gotta come up with something better next year,” Bo said.

  She turned on the TV, the way she always did before we fell asleep, and found a rerun of Bewitched before turning it down just a little, just enough to hear the voices of Samantha and Darrin as they disagreed about how much magic Sam ought to be using around the house.

  I dreamed Bo and I were walking down a dark path in a cave somewhere. Bo was holding my hand, leading the way as she held a lantern up for light. But when we reached the end of the path, we found a dead end. And when we turned back, the way we came was blocked.

  As usual, when I woke up the next morning, Bo was already gone.

  They let me sleep on the couch, with an old quilt and a flat pillow Vera pulls out of a closet.

  She don’t say a word to me as she hands them over. But I say, “Thank you, ma’am,” anyway. If this woman’s gonna be my stepmother, I oughta be polite.

  “See you in the morning,” Daddy says.

  “Good night.”

  They head off to their bedroom, and I set up camp on the couch. I lie there for a while, tossing and turning. I keep thinking of Agnes. Wondering how long she’ll be waiting in the gas station for her parents. Wondering what she’ll tell them about me. About the way I left her. I decide I’ll call her tomorrow. And maybe, in a few weeks, she can come here. Once being mad wears off, she’ll be happy for me.

  I hope.

  But I can’t get all the things she said in that parking lot out of my head. Plus, the TV across the room is turned off, and I ain’t sure if Daddy or Vera will be mad if I turn it on. So, in the silence, it’s impossible to sleep.

  I get up to look for the bathroom. I forgot to ask where it’s at, but this house ain’t real big. I head down the hallway, trying to be quiet so I don’t wake up Daddy and Vera. But I find out pretty quick that they ain’t sleeping yet.

  “What am I supposed to say to her?”

  Daddy’s voice. Coming from behind the closed bedroom door. I don’t wanna eavesdrop. Not the best foot to start off on. So I’m about to keep walking when I hear Vera, too.

  “That ain’t my problem, Wayne,” she says. “I don’t care what you gotta say—she ain’t staying here.”

  I freeze, my heart sinking down, down into my stomach.

  “Vera—”

  “I don’t want her around Brent.”

  “She ain’t gonna hurt Brent. She’s a good kid.”

  “How do you know?” Vera demands. “You ain’t seen her in years. You didn’t even tell me about her. The hell is wrong with you, Wayne?”

  Daddy sighs. “I thought her mama was taking care of it.”

  It.

  Not her. Not my daughter.

  It.

  “Well, she ain’t. And neither am I, Wayne. This is my house. I pay the bills. I’ve been letting you freeload off me for six years. I ain’t taking in nobody else.”

  I wait. Wait for him to stand up for me. Wait for him to say I’m his kid. Wait through the long space of quiet for him to be my dad. Just like I’ve been waiting for years.

  But it sounds like I’m gonna have to keep waiting.

  “All right,” he says, sounding defeated. Not defeated enough, though. “I’ll do it in the morning. I’ll get rid of her.”

  The sun ain’t even risen over the mountaintops when Daddy comes to talk to me the next morning.

  I couldn’t sleep. Not after what I heard. So I just been sitting here, staring out the window. Besides the smoky hills, surrounding the town like an army of shadows closing in, this place don’t look too different from Mursey. Trailer homes, houses that look like they’re about to fall apart, a church right down the road …

  It’s almost like I never left.

  Like I did all that running and only ran myself in a circle.

  “Bo,” Daddy says.

  I look up from the window and see him standing there in his old T-shirt and boxers. He ain’t even gonna get dressed for this.

  “You’re kicking me out, ain’t you?”

  He sighs. “I’m sorry.” And the way he says it, like he means it, like he thinks it makes a difference at all, makes it so much worse.

  “How come?”

  He scratches the back of his head. “I gotta think about my family, Bo. I gotta think about what’s best for them.”

  “But I am your family.”

  He opens his mouth, about to answer that, then shuts it again. Swallows. “Sorry.”

  “Where am I supposed to go?” I ask. “They’ll put me in foster care, Daddy. Last time I went it was … it was so scary.” I didn’t wanna start crying. Didn’t wanna beg. But without warning, there are tears streaming down my face, and a tiny voice scrapes out of my throat, against my will. “Please don’t make me go.”

  “Look, your mama and I had a deal.” He just sounds annoyed now, and it makes me cry even harder. “She was gonna take care of you. That was what we agreed on. You living with me was never part of the deal.”

  I wipe my eyes and take a few shaky breaths. “Was you not paying a dime of child support part of that deal?” I ask.

  He ignores me. Just like I expect him to.

  “Brent’s gonna wake up soon,” he says. “If you’re here, he’s gonna have … There’ll be questions, so …”

  “So you want me to leave right now.”

  He
opens his mouth again, then shuts it. The man’s got a lot of words he ain’t saying, it seems. Instead, he just nods.

  “Can I at least eat something first?” I ask. “I ain’t had nothing to eat since … night before last, I guess.”

  He hesitates, like this might be asking too much. But then he sighs. “There’re Pop-Tarts in the cabinet over the stove.”

  I almost say thank you out of habit, but I bite my tongue. I ain’t thanking him. I ain’t thanking him for nothing.

  I find the Pop-Tarts in the kitchen. I also find an unopened bottle of bourbon sitting next to the fridge.

  I ain’t sure why the thought crosses my mind. But when I look back and see that Daddy ain’t in the living room no more, I decide I’m taking that bourbon with me. I grab the bottle and my Pop-Tarts and run to the front door, where I left my bag last night. I shove the bottle into the bag and zip it up real fast.

  When Daddy comes back down the hallway, I’m sitting on the couch, eating my breakfast.

  He watches me until I finish. And when I finally stand up, he looks relieved.

  I walk back to the door and sling my bag over my shoulder. I ain’t gonna say good-bye.

  I ain’t gonna say good-bye, and I ain’t gonna break down. Not again. Not for him.

  My hand’s on the doorknob when he says, “Bo?”

  I stop. And for a stupid, breathless second I think he’ll ask me to stay. I think he’ll realize how awful he’s being. I think he’ll say, “Fuck Vera,” and put me first. I’ve been waiting so damn long for him to put me first.

  But when I look back at him, he’s holding his hand out. Handing me something.

  Money.

  “Just … in case you need it,” he says, giving me the hundred-dollar bill.

  I look down at it, wadded up in my hand. A crumpled piece of paper that’s supposed to make this better. To make him feel better about kicking his kid out the door.

  “Don’t … don’t tell Vera, though,” he says. “She don’t know about this or the Christmas money I sent you growing up. She wouldn’t like it too well.”

  I look at him. At that nervous shake of his hand as he scratches his head again. At the red in his cheeks. Agnes said I was a coward, and it seems like I get it honest. Because Wayne Dickinson is the biggest coward I ever met.