She had to find a phone, and there was no time to waste. The courage to turn her back on Willis and call her mother was fragile and certain to shatter if she took time for chores or thought too much about it. She remembered hundreds of phone calls to Kay-Kay in high school, conversations that lasted half the night. They had talked about homework and boys mostly. And gossip. If they had heard of a girl living at the end of a road without a phone or a television, taking care of another girl kept locked in a trailer, Madora and Kay-Kay would have laughed and asked each other how anyone could be so cracked.
Madora had to walk down the road and knock on the door of the first house she came to, no matter who lived there. Willis said three men lived in the first house, cooking meth. He had told her that one night he saw someone walking down the middle of the road, dead drunk and staggering. Maybe this was true, but she knew it could just as likely be a story he’d invented to keep her homebound. Now she didn’t care if there were drug dealers in the first house. She would go there anyway and take Foo with her. The dog was a softy, but a stranger would never know that.
There were many things she should do before she started walking; but she dismissed all of them, ran back to the house and dug her mother’s phone number out of the dresser drawer where she kept it, put on socks and tennis shoes, and slammed the kitchen door behind her. If her back and hip had not been hurting, she would have run down the road ahead of her fear.
One hundred yards beyond the house, Red Rock Road curved left around a boulder the size of a locomotive. To the right, the canyon bottom was half a mile wide and covered with rough chaparral, thickets of stiff, unfriendly bushes, interrupted occasionally by boulder piles and the white fountains of the yucca. The road went straight for a quarter mile and then turned, bordering the wall of Evers Canyon.
The first house was well off the road, a little distance up the side of the canyon in a grove of scrub oaks. Madora stopped at the tire tracks that marked the driveway. A runnel of sweat ran down her forehead and into the corner of her eye. Foo sat on his haunches beside her, looking up as if in expectation of good times to come.
“We should go back,” she said but moved forward.
The road to the house was not intended for walking and Madora’s back and hip soon began to hurt her. In her experience there had never been a fire in Evers Canyon, and the lemonade berry and deerweed bushes on either side of the driveway grew high enough to cast pools of welcome shade with their dense branches of leathery foliage. She stopped often to rest. An alligator lizard skittered out from a pile of rocks, startling her, and ran up the road ahead before darting into the litter of leaves beneath a chamise bush. Foo saw a rabbit and took off after it. The driveway dipped into a dry wash and then sloped up. Madora sat on a rock and rubbed her hip, wondering how much farther she had to go. At the top of the rise she saw the house again, and a few minutes later two or three dogs began yapping, small from the sound of them.
The house was trim and neatly kept, with a square of redwood deck out in front shaded by a bleached-out red-and-white-striped awning. A door and picture window faced the driveway, and a dusty Volvo station wagon parked in front bore a bumper sticker saying Teachers Do It with Class. A woman in Levi’s and boots opened the front door and stood on the deck. She rested her hands on her hips.
“I don’t like pit bulls,” she said. Two small, white dogs with woolly faces charged out from behind her and leaped off the deck, going for Foo as if they meant to kill him.
“He won’t hurt anyone.” Madora crouched and Foo ran into her arms, trembling and wagging his stubby tail. The little dogs made their stand a foot away, barking and showing their teeth.
The woman called a name, something that sounded to Madora like Shrek, and both animals ran back to her.
“Who are you?”
“I live up the road.” Madora felt fat and sweaty and ready to burst into tears. The little dogs had scared her. This woman scared her. The nervous hope vibrating through her body scared her most of all. “Can I use your phone?”
“How come I never saw you before?”
“I dunno.”
“What happened to your face?”
Madora put her palm up to her cheek to hide the bruises. “I fell out of bed.”
The woman harrumphed. “That’s a new one. You drive the big SUV?”
Madora nodded, feeling confused and exposed by her questions.
“You drive too fast.”
Madora pursed her lips together and nodded again.
“You can’t bring that dog inside.”
“I won’t. He’s good, though. He’ll just stay here and wait for me.”
The woman seemed to be thinking. “You drive that SUV too fast, you’ll run someone down. There’s dogs up and down this road.”
“Not me. I don’t drive it.” Not for months. This woman would think Madora was a freak or a monster if she knew that all she did was care for a girl locked in a trailer.
“Must be a hermit.”
Madora didn’t know how to respond.
“Come on in, then.” She held the screen door open with her foot. “It’s cooler inside.”
The air-conditioned house was a relief. After a couple of minutes in the house and a drink of water, Madora felt less stunned and took a moment to look around her. The room was sparsely furnished with a couch and chairs, but the walls were covered with framed photographs, groups and portraits, of children at all ages. There did not appear to be room for even one more.
“I used to teach school. They gave me a golden handshake because of budget cuts.”
“I thought they were your children. And grandchildren.”
“Never been married.” The woman looked at the photos. “But I guess I had plenty of kids, huh?”
“My boyfriend says guys’re cooking meth around here.”
“Boyfriend.” She harrumphed again. “What’s he think of that face of yours?”
Madora wished she could hide from the sharp blue eyes.
“No meth on Red Rock. I’d call the cops if there were. There’s just me and a retired sailor who lives in a trailer and drinks too much, gets to wandering sometimes. A guy way back off the road raises emus. The big birds, you know? For their meat.”
Madora would have liked to see an emu up close.
“What happened to your phone?” the woman asked.
“I lost it.”
“They make them too little. I can’t even see the keys without my specs.” She patted the pocket of her plaid camp shirt and pulled out a pair of metal half-frames that she positioned near the tip of her nose. They magnified the size of her eyes, making her scrutiny even harder for Madora to bear. “I asked what your name was.”
“Madora.”
“I’m Ellie Dutton.” She stuck out her hand.
Madora rubbed her palm on the back of her shorts. She regretted not taking the time to comb her hair and brush her teeth. “Nice to meet you.”
Ellie handed her a small cell phone. Madora didn’t know which key to press first.
“You want me to dial for you?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Madora handed her the slip of paper with her mother’s number.
“Where is this? I don’t know this area code.”
She also should have brought some money to pay for the long-distance call.
“Sacramento?” Madora said.
Ellie pursed her lips and made a clicking sound with her tongue against her palate.
“Okay,” she said, adjusting her glasses. “Shoot.”
Madora’s hands were slippery as she took the phone from Ellie and held it, her whole arm shaking as she listened to the sound of ringing in a room far away. She sat on the nearest chair, not waiting for an invitation.
“Hello.” It was the voice Madora had been trying to remember. Not sweet but not hard either, a mellow, husky voice. “Hello? Who is this?”
Me, Mommy. Me.
“Madora?” Rachel made a choking sound. “It is you, isn’t it?
Madora? Oh, I know it’s you, honey. Talk to me, baby. Talk to me.”
Madora held the phone away from her ear and looked at the display. A dozen thoughts ran through her mind, but the one that ran fastest, the one that wheeled and turned and screamed, was the one that said if her mother knew about Linda and the trailer, she would turn her back on Madora and never speak her name again.
She pressed the red button.
Ellie Dutton looked at her curiously.
“No answer.”
Chapter 24
Coyotes woke Robin a little before dawn. They often came at that hour, when the rabbits were in the garden feasting on chard and parsley. She put on slippers and went downstairs. She stepped outside armed with a saucepan and a big metal spoon and went up the path toward the vegetable garden. In the moonlight the rabbits skittered for cover. Yellow eyes of the wild dogs gleamed from the bushes. For an instant, she felt a primal fear, the residue of time beyond memory; and then a flood of something more than courage washed it all away, and she dashed at the pack, banging on the pan, yelling at the top of her lungs.
Did she dream this?
She woke feeling pinched and achy, as if she had not done more than skim the surface of sleep for seven hours. Overnight every doubt and worry and question that had arisen since Django’s arrival seemed to have taken up residence in her back and joints.
Across the room on her dresser there was a business card with Mr. Guerin’s name on the front. On the back Caro had written their father’s address and phone number in her swooping forehand.
Django wondered if his aunt was sick. She stayed in her room until the middle of the morning and when she left the house she didn’t pause on her way out the door to list a dozen things he couldn’t do or should be careful of. She just left, wagging her hand over her shoulder, saying she would be back.
Alone, he spent the morning wandering around the house, opening drawers and closets, poking his nose into cupboards. His snooping failed to uncover anything of interest, just sheets and towels, and plastic bins of junk he couldn’t imagine anyone wanting: heating pads and a hot-water bottle, a Water Pik and lots of sample-sized tubes and bottles of hand cream and mouthwash. The tidy ordinariness depressed him.
Mr. Guerin had said he would arrange to have the piano sent to Arroyo. Django wished it were in the house now.
His father had promised that when he completed five years of piano lessons, he would teach him to play the guitar. For a long time his twice weekly piano lessons were just a means to that end, but now he missed the piano in a way that was almost a physical need. He wished that he had asked Mr. Guerin to send it right away, the next day. When it came it would be both a link to his father and an escape, a way to pass time and lose time.
He sat on the couch and texted Lenny and Roid. He did not think they would answer him. They had their lives and he had his, a boring new life in Arroyo until he moved up to Los Gatos. That morning he had wanted to ask his aunt if she had called Huck, but she was so weirded out since they went to LA, he didn’t think she would know what he was talking about. After he moved north, Lenny and Roid would start paying attention to his texts. They would go crazy when they found out he had a helipad in the backyard and be begging him to send the chopper down to pick them up. Django might get Huck to do it, but no hurry. First he’d make his so-called friends wish they had been nicer to him.
He was in the kitchen thinking about lunch when the phone rang. He looked at the retro white instrument hanging on the wall and waited for the answering machine to click on. In school he had learned about an old-time scientist who trained dogs to respond when they heard a bell ring. He was like those dogs. The phone rang, and he automatically thought it was his mother. Automatically. She was dead—he finally believed that; but he was still like one of those stupid dogs. As soon as he heard the phone, her voice clicked on in his head. Django, darling boy, it’s Momma. There was nothing he could do to stop his response and he feared that when he was an old man he’d still hear Django, darling boy, it’s Momma whenever the phone rang.
“Django, you there?” It was his aunt. “Django, pick up the phone.”
She sounded even more tense than usual, and out of nowhere Django thought about the piano again, remembering the German piano tuner who came to the house several times a year. If he wasn’t in school, Django hung out with him the whole time, watching how he fingered the strings inside the big instrument, listening to the different tones they made as he loosened and tightened them, fascinated by his trade that was at once an art and a craft and yet neither of those really. Some of the sounds made Django wince, they were so off-key.
Aunt Robin said, “Okay, here’s the thing, Django. I’ve got to meet with Mr. Conway—the lawyer, you know? There’s some stuff I’ve got to settle with him.” She rushed from one sentence to the next, not stopping for breath. “And then, I’m not sure, but I think I’m going up to Temecula. Do you know where that is? It’s in Riverside County. I don’t know for sure if I’ll go but I didn’t want you to worry if I’m late getting home.” She stopped talking. Then, “This is too weird—I know you’re listening… Okay, so here’s the deal. I might go, I might not, and I’m not sure when I’ll get home. Or if I’ll go. It’s just something I might do. Spur of the moment. So, I don’t know how long I’ll be. You can fix your own dinner, right? There’s pizza in the freezer.” Another long pause. “Use the microwave, not the oven. And, Django, don’t go off on your bike. Stay home. The boxes of stuff we brought from the house… you should empty those, okay? You might find something to play with. Just don’t go off on your damn bike. Stay put, Django.”
Something to play with. His aunt didn’t have a clue how funny she was.
He made two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. He liked iceberg lettuce with PB and J, but the crisper was empty except for a few limp carrots. In Django’s home the refrigerator had been twice as big and always full of good stuff. Aunt Robin never had time to go to Whole Foods and no matter how often she went to the regular supermarket, there was never anything to eat. No cold cuts, no iceberg or good tomatoes, no juice boxes, no cookies. He made another sandwich and stuck all three in a plastic bag and put it in his backpack.
In his bedroom he found the money he’d taken from his father’s study and stuck the roll down deep in his jeans pocket. He didn’t care what Aunt Robin said; he was going to buy Foo. Madora might not want to do it at first, but when she saw a thousand dollars in cash, she would change her mind. He would tell her to use it to leave that freakazoid, Willis.
He ditched his bike behind a boulder and approached the house from the back, crossing the dried creek bed and pushing through a thicket of cottonwoods. His shoes scrunched on the sandy ground where the grains were as big as BBs; and gnats and no-see-ums swarmed around his head, exploring his ears and going for the moisture in his nose and at the corners of his eyes. From the treetops, the crows announced his arrival. He took off his baseball cap and flapped the bugs away, but they returned as soon as he stopped.
The trailer’s curbside door was open and Foo lay in the dirt near the steps, his bony head resting on his paws. Inside, Madora was talking to someone. Django heard only a few words every now and then, but it was her tone that interested him. It slunk down like a dog caught creeping up on a butter dish. It upset Django to hear her speak that way. She was his friend and he did not believe she could ever do something so bad she would sound that ashamed of herself.
The bugs were making Django crazy; plus he was curious, and he wanted to defend Madora, though he wasn’t sure against what.
He stepped out of the cottonwoods and into the clearing. Foo whirled and began barking. In a few steps Django stood at the trailer’s curbside door. Foo charged, barking and looking lethal, but when he realized it was his friend Django, he stopped barking, wagged his tail, and wriggled his back end.
With a quick glance Django took in everything of importance.
In the trailer, a stringy-haired girl lay on
a cot, her hands cuffed in front of her and one leg dangling off the side with something around it and attached to a wire rope that ran across the floor and up the wall to an eye hook screwed into the skin of the trailer near the roof. Madora stood on a chair with a hammer in her hand, trying to pull out the hook.
“Hey.” He put one foot on the brick-and-board step up to the door, but Foo stopped wagging his tail, growled, and wouldn’t let him go any farther. Django knew the dog and the dog knew him, but Foo was a pit bull and he decided not to push their friendship.
“Get out of here.” Madora waved her arms and almost fell off the chair.
Foo began barking again and the girl on the cot saw Django and started screaming for help. High in the trees, the crows announced trouble to the length of Evers Canyon. Madora jumped off the chair and ran to the door and tried to pull it shut. She stopped, listening. Django heard the sound of a big car coming up the road fast. He wished he’d stayed where he was in the cottonwoods, but he could not run away now and leave Madora. He wished Lenny and Roid were with him.
“This isn’t your business,” Madora said. “Go while you can.”
The way she leaned against the door, Django knew that she was still in pain. From her fall out of bed. He knew Willis had hurt her. A righteous rage flared up in him and burned away his fear.
The girl lunged off the cot toward the door, dragging her tether. Her screams were like nails down an old-fashioned chalkboard. A car door slammed and Foo shot off around the trailer, more barking. A man’s voice yelled for him to shut up.
“Go!” Madora cried.
“I’m not scared of him.”
“You should be!”
Willis wheeled around the corner of the trailer, looking twice as big as he had standing in the supermarket parking lot. Django felt the temperature spike ten degrees.
“What the fuck?” Willis gawked at Django and then at Madora. “You bitch! You stupid bitch!”
Django started to protest but no sound came out of his mouth. The temperature went up another ten degrees.
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