If I Disappear

by Eliza Jane Brazier

  I find the only coffee shop and head inside. It’s narrow, with a kindergarten-classroom quality—clean but with too many amateur works of art. There are bookshelves along the wall, a rack of T-shirts in the corner. Six men in various stages of Hank Williams gather in one corner on foldout chairs, talking about lumber. I walk to the back and use the bathroom.

  I wash my hands at the sink and ignore my face in the mirror. When I’m not wearing makeup, I generally feel that I don’t deserve to exist. I decide that I don’t need to ask for directions. What answer could anyone possibly give me? Twelfth tree on the fifth bend?

  I duck out of the bathroom and rush across the floor as the men discuss wood infestations. A woman steps in front of me, an empty teacup in each hand. Long, thin dreads wrestle all the way down past her waist.

  “All good,” she says, no inflection. I duck toward the bookshelves.

  “I just wanted to see your books.” I lie, because I feel guilty for using the bathroom without asking. I want her to believe that I am a customer and my bathroom use was just incidental. I want her to think that I am a serious buyer in the market for a good book.

  “We do exchanges, or the price is on the cover.”

  I look at the books on the shelves. I am surprised by the selection, by the lack of religious books such shelves tend to collect. Instead they have Stephen King’s It, well-worn but priced by size at three dollars, A Room with a View and The Handmaid’s Tale for a buck fifty. I almost buy it just because I can’t believe it’s here.

  The woman stands over me, watching, not saying anything.

  I should ask her for directions; I know this, but it pings that I need to be careful. Anyone could be a suspect. Anyone could hold a clue. And I need to keep myself open. I need to hide my intentions until I find out whether you really have gone missing or you are actually here. I think of you, what you would do. How you would keep yourself aloof but innocuous, powered by righteousness.

  “Do you know this area well?”

  “I grew up here.” She steadies her clattering teacup. “What brings you to Happy Camp?” I am sure she knows that I am here alone and that she is judging me for it. In my mind, in that moment, she knows everything about me, and she is smug and superior about it.

  “A friend,” I answer defensively, and immediately regret it.

  “Who?”

  “You probably don’t know her.” I cast my eyes around the store.

  “I probably do.”

  The six in the circle quiet and tilt their heads in our direction. It’s everybody’s business. The population shrank, and I crossed the line into everybody’s business.

  “Dear Mad’m,” I say like a crazy person. I see three copies of a slim yellow book on a bookshelf, a poster on the wall.

  The woman steps back, satisfied that I am a psychopath. “No offense, but I’m pretty sure she’s dead.”

  “I’m a writer.” I straighten up. This is my official lie. I do write sometimes, journal entries about how I’m too depressed to write, mostly, but I like the idea of it. A traveling writer, always hunting for a story. “Like she was.”

  “What do you write?”

  “Mystery.” Mystery is what I write.

  “Oh yeah? You gonna write about this place?” Whenever you tell people you’re a writer, they always assume you are going to write about them. Whatever your plans were before, whatever genre or category, you will find them so sublimely interesting that you won’t have a choice but to alter your angle.

  “If I find a good story,” I say. She nods once, efficiently, picks up her cups, starts to move away. “I’m actually looking for a place to stay.” She stops. “Are there any guest ranches around here?”

  She names a hotel and a ranch I read about online. She doesn’t mention your parents’ place, even though I know it’s within ten miles of here.

  “Anywhere else?” Fountain Creek—the name is on my tongue. Just say it, I wish. Say it.

  “Nope. That’s it. Small town. You’re better off going to Eureka.” I came from Eureka. Eureka is three hours and a few dozen hotels from here. It’s like she doesn’t want me anywhere near.

  “I was hoping to find a place with horses.” I know your parents’ ranch is the only place with horses.

  “No, there’s not any horse riding around here. You could go out to Yreka, probably.”

  “I thought I heard about a guest ranch that had horses and fishing or something.”

  Her eyes stiffen, drop darker. The group in the corner goes quiet again. They are mulling over their cold coffee cups. It’s noon at the OK Corral, and I expect a cowboy to stride through the front door at any second and shoot me dead.

  “I don’t know the place you’re talking about,” she says, blank eyes, like I’m crazy, like I’m the crazy one, and I hate that. There is nothing I hate or fear more than someone else thinking I’m crazy. I almost say the name just to stop her in her tracks.

  Fountain Creek Ranch. It bleeds through my lips, makes bugs burst on my skin, crawl up in radiating waves. “No? I must have heard wrong.”

  “Probably.” She moves carefully away, like I’ve shat myself and she’s politely excusing herself from the smell.

  I scan the room, but the men have their eyes trained on their cups and their callused hands.

  I want to stay. I want to force someone to tell me the truth. Minutes in and I already feel like a failure and I came here to escape that feeling.

  I want to scream your name. I want to shout Rachel Bard! at the top of my lungs until they quiver and tremble with guilt and with their lies, and I want them to know I’m your friend, you’re my friend and I came here to save you and I will. Because something has happened to you and everyone knows but no one will do something about it. But I hold myself in, I hug myself close and I start toward the door.

  Before I can get there, a man drives through it like I’m not even there. The back of his neck is molted chicken skin; his eyes are strangely dim.

  “Where have you been?” the woman says, and suddenly, a teacup shatters on the floor near my feet, and I’m not sure if she threw it or if it just leapt out of her hands, and when I turn, they are embracing, almost a dancers’ choke hold.

  On the other side of the shop, the six men ignore them. No one says anything, like it’s normal to drop everything the moment your man comes through the door.

  * * *

  —

  I got fired, from my minimum-wage job, for allowing an old woman to shoplift. I saw her wandering around the store, ancient, invisible to everyone else. She put a pair of nail clippers in her purse, and I smiled. It made me smile. Then she took a silk scarf, a bottle of perfume. I imagined her at home alone, a glass of wine on the end table, scarf wrapped around her neck, spritzing perfume, clipping her toenails. I saw her gathering her spoils on a shelf like evidence, standing back and observing, cataloging, the evidence of her own disappearance.

  My manager saw me watch her, but I don’t know if he ever saw her. He saw me watching her, and he heard the screech of the alarm as she passed through the door. The funny thing was, he never went to catch her. He let her slink on through the mall like he owed it to her, like she wasn’t even worth what she had taken. But he fired me.

  I feel invisible now, as I do a lap around Happy Camp. As if I am blinking in and out of existence as I take in the abandoned storefronts and the trailers tucked behind brush and rough fences. One lone man has set up on a beach chair outside the Happy Camp Arts Center, where he sits as stiff as a corpse. His skin is so tight that his yellowed eyes seem to ooze in their sockets. If I had to choose a killer, it’d be him. He watches me walk past, and it’s enough to make my bowels loosen. What am I doing out here? Am I trying to save you, or am I trying to get killed?

  A stray cat approaches, hops onto the chair and walks over him like he’s furniture. I’m afraid to look,
afraid not to. Is it worse to look or not look? Still my eyes find his. He has an open hat in front of him, and I put a five-dollar bill in it. I try a smile; it’s loose on my face and it falls and it doesn’t matter. He doesn’t smile back.

  “You lost?” he calls out when I’m so far past him, it’s unnatural to talk.

  A shiver whips up my spine, and I turn around. The cat has burrowed into his lap. The man leans forward in one taut movement. “I said, you lost?”

  I move toward him. I think he won’t judge me. Not like the woman in the coffee shop. Not like ordinary people with ordinary lives. “Yes.”

  “You must be for Fountain Creek.” I stop in my tracks. “You have the look about you.” He draws his finger in an arc that could be a smile on my face or a noose around my neck. “You must be for the summer, the summer crew. That right?”

  “Yes,” I lie.

  “Good job. Get to work.”

  “Do you know where Fountain Creek is? I couldn’t find it on the road.”

  “Just look for the ‘no trespassing’ signs.” He explodes into laughter like a car backfiring, and the cat curls and hops off his lap, peals out like he’s caught fire. “Look for the ‘no trespassing’ signs! And make sure you use the bathroom before you go!” he says to his own private glee, and he whacks his leg, coughs on laughter.

  I hurry away from him, toward my car. “Thank you.”

  “Out here we take bets!” he shouts when I am too far away again. “On how long you all will last!”

  * * *

  —

  Back on the road I feel anxious, like the town took me and shook me like a box of spare parts. And I know it’s unearned and I need to get it together, need to find a way not to be shaken, especially if I want to find you. I need to keep myself together. I need to hold myself in. I need to be like everybody else, but better. I need to be like you.

  I hit gravel in the road and I bounce on my seat and your voice makes me nervous, so I turn you off. I remember a glimmer of “no trespassing” signs just down the road. I remember being surprised by their abundance, thinking to myself, That person really wants to be left alone. What a strange way to mark a guest ranch.

  As I drive, I make a plan. The man from Happy Camp gave me an idea. I will pretend to be a traveler looking for work. I will establish where you are. If you are there and safe, I will leave (unless you want me to stay). If you are missing, vanished, murdered, I will do everything I can to gain entry to your parents’ ranch. I will use the things you told me to make myself indispensable. Luckily, I do know horses. I rode hunt seat as a kid, which isn’t quite the cowboy rough your parents espouse, but it’s close enough.

  My hands grow waxy with sweat. My chest is so tight, has been so tight all day, that it aches, and I wonder, not for the first time, if heart attacks have an age requirement. I pass the Fata-Wan-Nun Karuk Spiritual Trails and Ishi Pishi Road. I swallow and I slow.

  There are no trucks stacked behind me. The road has conspired to go quiet as I take that last bend. The turnoff lifts beside me, scattered with “no trespassing” signs like angry townsfolk carrying pitchforks. I lean forward and the sky grows bigger and I see the vultures circling overhead, the ones I noticed earlier. They were here all along, marking my destination. Are they here for you or me?

  I almost duck out, drive on, back to Eureka like the woman in the coffee shop suggested. I grip the wheel and I allow myself to feel for a moment the freedom of turning away. Then I remember Episode 7 of your podcast, The Last Dance. Missy Schubert disappeared at a family camp in the mountains. Her family reported the disappearance to the staff when she didn’t come back to the cabin that night, but the staff refused to make an announcement; they refused to ask the other guests if they had seen her, if they could look for her. They said, to the parents of the missing girl, People come here for vacation. We don’t want to ruin anyone’s trip. And you said, This is what ordinary people are like. They don’t want to be bothered. They don’t want to care. They would rather let a few people disappear, a few families suffer and never recover, than ruin everybody’s vacation.

  I seize the wheel and swing hard to the left, just as a truck going the opposite direction appears. I narrowly miss it. The underside of my car bangs as I right myself on your drive. As I careen up the road, the signs crowding my eyes:

  No Trespassing

  Private Property

  No Public Restroom

  Beware of Dog

  And it’s too late to turn back.

  Episode 7:

  The Last Dance

  It was the end of the summer dance. Missy Schubert arrived with her family, but she spent most of the night with the friends she had made at camp. She appears in a video taken by one of the campers, only shared with the family six months later, of her dancing with a member of staff. She throws her hands in the air. She shakes out her hair. Then he takes her hand.

  I stop short of the mailbox and gaze out at the property. It’s Sleeping Beauty’s dude ranch: a low lodge, a row of cabins, a collection of horse pastures with cobbled fencing, all buried under a tangle of blackberry brambles. It doesn’t look like the pictures from the website. The advertisements—Your Wedding Here! A Fun Place for the Family! It looks like it’s been cast under a spell.

  There is a small parking lot on the right. I can see your parents’ house, deep brown clapboard with red accents. A single vine snakes up one side, pointing at a window where a golden telescope winks.

  I shut off the engine when I see the hounds of the Baskervilles rushing toward me en masse. Behind them is a woman on a red ATV, kicking up dust, riding like a witch somewhere over a rainbow. The dogs surround the car, so I don’t open the door. I just roll down the window as the ATV curves in front of me and I recognize your mother’s face from the website.

  I remember everything you said about her.

  Episode 7: My mother has a tincture for every problem.

  Episode 66: My mother is a “truther.” She believes every fact is a lie spawned by the government to target her specifically.

  Episode 54: The Murder of Dee Dee Blanchard: I get that. I get that so much.

  She must be over sixty. She has winding dark hair with the kind of volume you only see in commercials. Her roots are gray and her eyebrows are blond and it surprises me that she chooses this matte, lifeless color.

  The swarming dogs are rough and sickly, coarse fur full of burrs, bodies warped by uneven lumps like tumors. One is wheezing so loudly, I think it should be read its last rites.

  “What are you doing here?” she demands like we know each other personally.

  I think of you, what you told me. My mother likes strong people. Cold people, like her.

  I try to be strong and cold, but my lips are weak, my face collapses and my voice makes a plaintive whine when I say, “I heard you might have work?”

  “Where did you hear that?” she says like that is more pertinent than whether or not she does.

  “The store, um, just down the road.”

  “Where?”

  “In Happy Camp.”

  “Don’t talk to those people about us. Those people hate us. They’ve always hated us.”

  I glance around me, searching for clues. The air is different here, as if the pressure dropped and we are in our own separate universe, a bubble of life surrounded by trees. The highway is below us, but I can’t hear it now. The sky is above us, but it looks pushed back. The air has a rich quality that makes me want to breathe deeply.

  “Um, do you? Have work?” I want to ask about you. I want to ask about you right away, but I can’t. I have to play it safe. I have to keep my mouth shut and my eyes open.

  She scoffs. Her head rocks slightly on the exhale. “What can you do?”

  “Anything,” I say. “I can do anything.” I am qualified in almost nothing. I dropped out of college when
I met my husband. I have never earned more than minimum wage. But this looks like a place where that might be a good thing.

  You told me that your mother liked her people strong, but I can see she is drawn in by my weakness, like a shark by the scent of blood.

  She leans in. “Work hard?”

  “All I do is work.” This is a lie. All I do is listen to murder podcasts and obsessively check my phone. I want to check it now, even though I don’t have service.

  “Where’d you come from? What about your family?”

  “I’m thirty-three,” I say like that explains it.

  She jerks the key and shuts off the engine. My adrenaline is so high, I hadn’t even noticed the sound, how loud we’ve been talking. We drop into the silence.

  “Adelaide, but everyone calls me Addy.”

  I consider giving her a fake name, but it crosses my mind that I want to get paid, even if I am here for you. “Sera.”

  “Well, Sera.” She takes off her gloves and wipes her hands on her leg as if preparing to shake my hand, but she doesn’t. Her hand stays on her knee. “Do you know anything about horses?”

  “I’ve been riding since I was five.”

  “English, Western?”

  “English.”

  “That’s okay. If people know English, they can usually do Western,” she says like she wants me to succeed. “Why don’t you hop on back and I can show you the place?”

  As I unbuckle my seat belt, I am slightly unmoored by how easy this is. Is it fate, or is it a red flag? I open my car door carefully, and the dogs swirl around my feet. I try to pet them as they pass, but they’re lumpy and odd, like they have bones and body parts ordinary dogs don’t.

  She scoots forward and starts the engine as I climb awkwardly on behind her. The ATV jumps and I make a grab, grab her by mistake and she laughs, a solid bark. “You can hold on to the back.” She means the basket behind us, but she jerks forward before I catch it. It is filled with cleaning products and potions that clatter together when we move. She laughs again and I scramble, wind my fingers through the bars and hold on tight as the ATV shoots forward.