Walk Me Home (retail)

by Catherine Ryan Hyde

  He’s holding an unusually large road atlas of the United States, folded back to a page. He turns it around so she can see it.

  ‘Take a look here,’ he says.

  It’s open to Northern California and has two small sticky notes on it. One on the coast, another a hair farther south and much farther east, deeper into the state.

  ‘There’s a Trinity County.’ Alvin points at the mid-state sticky note. ‘And a Trinity River. And a Trinity National Forest. And if you put Trinity, California into a map search, it gives you back something. Points somewhere near the forest. But when you zoom in closer, it’s not so much of a town, exactly.’

  Carly looks closely at it, then shakes her head.

  ‘Ralph said it was on the coast. Up by Eureka.’

  ‘OK, then. Try this.’

  He points to the other sticky note. The one on the coast. It has a little pencil arrow drawn on it. It points down to a tiny town called Trinidad.

  ‘Trinidad!’ she says. Actually, she shouts it. ‘That’s what he said! Trinidad!’

  ‘Thought that might be the case, on account of here’s Eureka right down here. So just dry your tears for the night, ’cause it’s too late to call any businesses today. I already tried directory assistance up there, and there’s no listing on him. But I can call some contractors in the morning. Pretty small town. I expect somebody ought to know him if he’s there.’

  Carly rushes in and throws her arms around him, causing him to drop the atlas. Then, shocked that she would do a thing like that, she lets go and backs up suddenly.

  ‘Sorry.’

  Alvin only laughs, and picks up the atlas. ‘No need to be. Good to see you feeling better. Hope you’re hungry. Smells good in that kitchen.’

  He tips his hat to her and walks back to his truck.

  She watches him until the corner of the trailer blocks her view, nursing a feeling that’s the closest thing to love she’s felt since the last time she saw Teddy.

  Carly is washing her face in the sink when Jen comes bounding in.

  ‘You OK?’ Jen says, stopping suddenly.

  ‘Yeah. Fine.’

  ‘Oh. Good. So, I have to tell you this. When you were gone, this lady came by. Her name is Virginia, and she’s Wakapi. She’s a grown-up. But not old. Maybe like Alvin. Well, older than Alvin. But not old. And she’s pretty. She has this black hair that goes all the way down to the bottom of her butt. You never saw hair like this. She must have to pull it out of the way before she sits down. Can you imagine having hair you could actually sit on? Anyway, guess what? She has six horses, and three are paints. Three! And the old one, she says he’s really sweet, and if I come by I can even ride him. And she brought meat.’

  ‘Meat? What kind of meat?’

  Carly actually wants to focus on the horseback riding. When does Jen think she’ll have time to ride some Wakapi woman’s horse? They have to work all week and then they’re getting out of here as fast as their feet can carry them. But that feels like too big a subject. So she focuses on something simple. Like meat.

  ‘It’s mutton.’

  ‘Oh.’ Then she wonders why she even cared what kind.

  ‘She brought it for Delores and took a bunch of eggs in trade. And Delores made mutton stew with potatoes and onions. And turnips. I’m not so sure about turnips. But it smells really good. You should come in the house now. It’s almost ready.’

  ‘I’ll be there in a minute.’

  Jen bounds right back out again. Like a wind-up toy with plenty of wind left. Like a regular little girl. One who’s perfectly normal, and … there’s really only one way to say it. Happy.

  By the time Carly gets into the kitchen, there are three bowls of stew on the table. All she has to do is sit down in front of one. The smell floats up and fills her nostrils, maybe even her whole brain. She feels like she hasn’t eaten in days. Like she never saw anything so appealing sitting in a bowl on a table in front of her.

  Jen is already seated.

  Delores is pouring goat’s milk into cups in front of the open refrigerator. Carly can feel the cold air waft over her. It feels good. Everything does. All of a sudden, everything feels OK again.

  Carly slips the iPod out of her shirt pocket and slides it across the table to Jen’s placemat.

  ‘Here. Thanks.’

  ‘Well, it’s not like it’s mine,’ Jen says.

  ‘But he loaned it to you.’

  Maybe he likes Jen better. Or maybe … just maybe … Jen is better at asking for what she wants.

  ‘Eat,’ Delores says. ‘Don’t let it get cold.’

  Carly picks up a spoon and stirs the stew around, looking at the colors. There are chunks of fresh tomato in there, and carrots that look more orange than any carrot she can remember seeing. And the potatoes are gold instead of white. And there’s one vegetable she doesn’t recognize. That must be the turnips.

  ‘Where’d the tomatoes come from?’ she asks Delores absently.

  In her head, she enjoys picturing vegetables maybe hand-watered from a watering can. How does something so delicate come out of such arid, sandy red soil?

  ‘Where do they come from?’

  ‘Yeah. Where did they grow?’

  ‘Now how would I know that?’

  ‘I’m sorry. I thought you’d know where they’re from.’

  Delores places her hands on her ample hips. ‘They come from my neighbor, Virginia. Who works in Flagstaff three days a week. Where there are supermarkets. So that’s where they come from. The supermarket. Where they grew from, well … feel free to go into Flagstaff ’n ask.’

  ‘Oh,’ Carly says. ‘The supermarket.’ She feels oddly disappointed.

  She looks up to see Delores staring at her intently.

  ‘You must just think we’re awful quaint around here, don’t you, girl?’

  ‘Um. No, ma’am. I didn’t mean it that way at all. I was just interested.’

  She looks away. Lifts a chunk of vegetable on to her spoon. Looks up at Delores, who’s still watching her closely. As though she’s yet to figure out something crucial.

  ‘Is this a turnip?’

  Delores seems to hear the question as a potential challenge. ‘Yeeeaaaah …’ she says, drawing the word out. As if bracing to hear what argument Carly is about to hammer home next.

  Carly pops it into her mouth and bites down. It’s a little spicy, but also savory, because of the gravy. Because of being cooked with the meat. It makes her close her eyes, in order to better taste it.

  ‘It’s good.’ She opens her eyes. Delores looks surprised. ‘Thank you,’ Carly adds.

  The old woman’s bushy white eyebrows arch up a little higher. ‘OK …’ Delores says. Like there might be more to that sentence. But then there isn’t.

  ‘And thanks for what you did for my boots. They’re so much better. And for leaving more of that salve in the trailer while I was working yesterday. It helps. And that oil you left with it. We used it on our lips and our sunburns. Works just as well for both. That was nice. Thank you.’

  Delores closes her mouth. Also the refrigerator door.

  ‘You’re welcome,’ she says. Like it’s the last thing she ever expected to have to say.

  Delores sits at the table, tucking a napkin into the collar of her sacky dress.

  Carly looks down to see Roscoe staring up at her hopefully, tail swishing.

  ‘Roscoe!’ Delores bellows. ‘Go ’way. We don’t stare at you while you’re eatin’.’

  Carly thinks that should be enough volume. Even for Roscoe. But he just swishes his tail. Oblivious.

  ‘Tell ’im, little one,’ Delores says to Jen. Probably because Jen is closer to the dog.

  Jen reaches over and lifts one of Roscoe’s enormous ears. Puts her mouth right under the great, soft flap of it. ‘Roscoe! Go lie down!’

  Roscoe lowers his head and slinks into the living room, where he circles six times before lying on the one woven rug. The house falls strangely quiet.
<
br />   They eat together in what feels almost like a stunned silence. Something that works without any of the parties seeming to know why.

  Wakapi Land, 16 May

  ‘Bet there’s nothing even left to do,’ Carly says. ‘What are we supposed to do for the rest of the week?’

  She’s proudly standing by the fully-loaded pickup. One elbow leaned on the edge of the truck’s bed. There’s no junk left on Delores’s property. Carly can look around in any and every direction, and nothing offends her innate sense of order.

  ‘Hah!’ Delores spits the word out hard. She’s sitting in the shade, on a webbed nylon lawn chair. She seems not so much to be supervising as breathing in the day. ‘You ain’t seen the inside of that shed yet.’

  Carly sighs. Looks over to Jen, who’s milking goats, nearly obscured by the oversized cowboy hat, ear-bud cords dangling.

  ‘What time do you think it is?’ she asks Delores.

  ‘That’s the third time you asked so far this mornin’. Got an important appointment? Hot date? What?’

  ‘Just wondered.’

  She knows by now that Delores doesn’t wear a watch. Probably couldn’t see to tell the time if she did. But twice already the old woman has been able to make a good estimate by stepping out into the sun to get a sense of where it sits in the sky.

  ‘Might be near on eleven.’

  ‘Isn’t this late for Alvin to come?’

  ‘Oh. So that’s what you’re waitin’ on. Why so anxious to see Alvin all of a sudden?’

  ‘No reason. I mean … he just said he’d try to find something out for me, is all.’

  ‘Must’ve had some official business to see to,’ Delores says. ‘Want some cold water?’

  ‘Yeah. Sure. Thanks.’

  While Carly’s waiting, she wanders over to the shed and opens the door. Something scurries out of the utter, fully-entwined chaos. Carly doesn’t even see what, it’s traveling so fast. Doesn’t even want to know.

  She shuts the door again, ready to pretend, at least for the moment, that she never peered in at all. It’s a problem she’s all too happy to postpone.

  Right around the time she and Jen finish their water, Alvin’s truck pulls into the driveway. The off-duty truck.

  Carly feels a strain ease and untangle in her gut. She’s shocked by how big it was. She’s been ignoring, denying, the stress of not knowing yet. It’s quickly replaced by the terror of being about to find out. In many ways, that’s worse. Certainly more acute. More impossible to ignore.

  The truck stops in the dirt near the henhouse, and a woman steps out. Carly’s heart falls again.

  ‘Who’s that?’ she asks Delores.

  ‘If it ain’t Alvin it might be Pam and Leo,’ Delores says. As if that’s all the explanation the situation requires.

  It’s not the woman who brought the mutton yesterday. Because her name was … Carly can’t remember. But something else. Something longer. It wasn’t Pam. And this woman’s thick black hair only extends a few inches below her shoulders. Nowhere close to the bottom of her butt.

  The woman is leaning back into the cab of the truck, like there’s something on the bench seat she needs to untangle. A moment later she lifts a little boy out and sets him on his feet in the dirt. He’s somewhere between two and three, as best Carly can figure. Then she lifts out a basket, drooping from its handle, looking loaded and heavy.

  The boy runs straight for where Delores sits. Hugs her around the knees. He’s not quick to let go, either.

  ‘Howdy there, Leo,’ Delores says, patting him on the head in hard pats that Carly would think he would mind. But he doesn’t seem to.

  ‘Alvin had a call this morning,’ the woman says. ‘He and Ray had to go into the village. Help take care of a … situation. You know. That usual situation. Here, I brought you a basket of apples. Figured you got more mouths to feed and all.’

  Carly immediately wonders if that means he’s had no time to look into her situation.

  Pam sets the basket of apples by Dolores’s chair.

  Delores says, ‘Thank you kindly. Maybe I’ll make us a pie. You mean the situation that goes by the name Rodney?’

  ‘That’s the one,’ Pam says.

  She’s pretty, Carly decides, but in a way that’s totally natural. Almost accidental. Pam seems like a woman who couldn’t care less if she’s pretty or not. But, as luck would have it, she is.

  Leo lets go of Delores’s knees and strides up to Jen, like a gunfighter trying to keep his holster up. Like those old caricatures of bow-legged cowboys.

  ‘Who’re you?’

  ‘Jen,’ she says.

  ‘Jen.’ He repeats the word as if it had a flavor. ‘I’m Leo.’

  He points to himself with a hook of his thumb. As though Jen might not know which Leo he had in mind without explicit directions.

  ‘Pleased to meet you, Leo.’

  ‘Sure,’ he says. The way he’d say, ‘You’re welcome,’ after doing something nice. Then he swaggers up to Carly. ‘Who’re you?’

  ‘I’m Carly. And you’re Leo.’

  He’s looking straight up into her eyes. Fully unguarded. In that odd moment, Carly suddenly knows she wants one of her own. Not now. Not soon. But she does. And she never knew that before. His jet-black hair is so soft-looking and so shiny in the sun. It’s all she can do not to reach down and stroke his head.

  ‘How’d you know I’m Leo?’ he asks. Half-surprised, half-challenging.

  ‘I heard you tell her.’

  ‘Oh. Right.’

  Then he scampers away. Runs behind his mother and looks out from between her jeaned legs, one arm wrapped around each of her thighs. He smiles shyly, and when Carly smiles back, he buries his face in the back of his mom’s leg.

  It strikes Carly as odd that any living being could act so confident and so shy in such a short space of time.

  ‘Alvin asked me to come by and see to you,’ Pam says to Delores. ‘And he wanted me to meet your two new friends. Which I guess I’m about to do. Or maybe I’m doing it right now, already. And to take that last load in to Chester, if it’s loaded and ready to go.’

  ‘Oh, it’s loaded,’ Delores says. Implying some level of understatement. ‘She had that done first thing this mornin’. Before I even got breakfast down her. If there’s one thing this girl won’t put off …’ She indicates Carly with a motion of her chin. ‘It’s anything might get her out of here.’

  ‘Well, you can’t blame her for that,’ Pam says. ‘Can you? Everybody always wants to get home. I bet both these girls are homesick like crazy.’

  ‘No.’ Jen pipes up. ‘Just Carly. I like it here.’

  That stops the conversation for an uncomfortable length of time, and makes Carly burn in a place deep in her chest, where a resentment, already smoldering, is suddenly fanned. But she clamps down on it and says nothing. She does her best to put it away again. She has no idea what else to do with it but keep stuffing it back into makeshift storage.

  ‘Oh, and one other thing,’ Pam says. ‘I got a note for Carly. That’s you, right? The homesick one?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am. A note? From Alvin? Where is it?’

  ‘Dashboard of the truck.’

  Carly does not walk. She runs. Throws the truck door wide. Mangles the envelope tearing it open. Unfolds it without even closing the truck door.

  It’s on a sheet from a yellow legal pad, folded into quarters.

  It starts with the name of a contractor. Mel VanNess. And an address and phone number. Carly’s heart morphs into a flock of birds, all startled to the limits of their cage, suddenly, and at the same time.

  Maybe Pam will take her to the payphone on the way home.

  But her heart folds its wings on the next line.

  Carly Girl. Don’t get your hopes up too high reading that first part about Mel. I couldn’t find where your stepdad’s working. That name and address is just a place he used to work. But not now. The guy said Teddy hurt his back, and as far as he know
s, he’s not working now at all.

  I was hoping it would be a workman’s comp case, but Mel says he hurt it on his own time. I tried to track him through disability insurance, but it seems like he wasn’t working long enough to qualify. His car is registered to an address in Tulare. Is that where you all moved from? If so, I don’t guess that helps.

  Mel says he knows Teddy’s still in town, because he sees him at the market. He’s always with this woman named Linda, who Mel knows to say hello to. But he doesn’t know her last name or where she lives. Or anything else about her, really. But he says he’s seen Teddy in the past two weeks or so. So I’m thinking he’s still in town. I just don’t know where.

  Sorry, girl. Wanted to do better for you.

  Oh. And Mel says to check the bar. I guess that means there’s only one. Make of that what you will. – Alvin

  Carly leans on the truck for a few minutes, digesting what she just swallowed. She can see Jen and Pam and Delores and Leo interact, but she’s too far away to hear them. It’s like watching a movie with no soundtrack.

  Teddy’s with a woman?

  That holds a surprising sting. He wasn’t supposed to be. He was supposed to be missing them. All of them. Nothing should have been able to replace them. Or, at least … not so fast. Then she decides this Linda is probably just a friend. Teddy always did get along well with women as friends. Yeah. That feels more like the truth. That feels better.

  She folds the note and tucks it into her shirt pocket.

  A strong, sure thought emerges from the pile of conflict. Comes right up out of the middle of her, and makes itself at home. As if to stay a while.

  ‘That’s all I really needed,’ she says. Out loud, but under her breath. ‘I can find him with that.’

  Pam drives the dirt roads faster than Alvin. And she doesn’t slow down for the bumps. She hits them full on at twenty-five or thirty miles per hour, sending the suspension of the truck a foot higher off the road. Leo, who’s strapped into a car seat between them, giggles each time. Carly braces and winces, thinking Delores’s rusty old truck will hit the road in a thousand pieces each time it lands.

  When they pass over a rutted, washboard section of road, Pam slows some, and Leo makes a low humming sound out loud, just to hear it warble as the truck bumps along. He saves the laughter until the road smoothes out again.