Personal Effects

by E. M. Kokie

  Crossing over the Susquehanna River feels like the last drop on the big coaster at Dorney Park. I’ve never been this far away by myself. I give the Williamsburg exit my very best one-fingered salute and pick up speed.

  Just outside DuBois, I take my first break, mainly because I’ve got to piss so bad my eyeballs are floating.

  The wall-size map next to the bathroom shows I’m already more than halfway to Ohio. I-80 stretches out to the left until it runs out of Pennsylvania and off the map. Long day ahead, but just a couple more hours and Pennsylvania will be behind me.

  Before heading back to the car, I splurge on provisions: a huge-ass soda, two kinds of chips, a couple of candy bars, and two hot dogs. There’s been no call yet from Dad, not surprising since Pendergrast probably doesn’t even know yet that I’m not gonna show. About another twenty minutes, at most, and Ms. Tine will send a note to the office. Toss up of whether Pendergrast will call Dad right away or wait. But eventually someone will ask Shauna. She’ll withstand Pendergrast, but she’ll crack wide open in a wave of guilt with just one long look from her mom.

  I chow down, leaning against the car. Driving through mountains, as opposed to over or around them, always amazes me, ever since I was little. And I always wonder the same thing: Exactly when did people start thinking of going through mountains? Did the first guy to suggest it get laughed at? Did they give him any credit at all when they finally tried it?

  As soon as the second hot dog is gone, I push the question aside and climb back into the car. It’s a long way to go before Madison. Time to gas up and drive on.

  Back on I-80 and safely coasting in the center lane, I picture the road stretching out in front of me, like on the map. I lean back and drive.

  The next time I stop, I switch iPods. Had to get one of those wall chargers. Couldn’t figure out how to sync it with my computer without messing it up, at least not yet. T.J.’s trusty blue was playing on shuffle, and it was fun at first to have a little bit of surprise with every new song, but too many of them were weird, or songs I couldn’t even recognize.

  Just from scrolling through the playlists, I know the bigger one has more songs I already know, some I can already hear in my head. I pick “Top 25 Most Played,” knowing this is pretty much my only chance to hear what T.J. listened to the most, before my replays and skips start messing with it.

  I can’t kid myself, even for one moment, into feeling like T.J. is here with me. But with his music playing, I pull back onto I-80, feeling better than when I pulled into the stop.

  Dave Matthews Band’s “Ants Marching” pours out of Shauna’s crappy speakers as I merge back into the flow of traffic. The summer I was seven was pretty much Dave Matthews 24/7, until Dad threatened to toss the stereo out the window if T.J. didn’t give it a rest. Before that summer, T.J. had been all about Bruce Springsteen, and even after that summer, he played a lot of Bruce and the posters stayed on the wall. But that summer was Dave Matthews all the time.

  Three more DMB songs, and then Bruce wails about the need to run. It feels like a good omen, and I can’t help but smile. I can almost hear T.J.’s scratchy voice in my head.

  The song pulls me back to lying on the floor of my room, elbows on the floor, face braced on my palms, listening to T.J. and his best friend, Dan, and the music drifting across the hall. I would close my eyes and pretend I was a part of it. All I wanted was to be in there with them.

  The songs flow past like old friends. The sounds of the year before T.J. left for Basic, and many of the times he’d been home since. And all those long nights when Dad was MIA, the music floating across the hall, or through my open bedroom window from the garage or the back porch or, later, Dan’s beat-up truck in the driveway.

  I’m slapping out the beat on the steering wheel with my fingers, and in an instant it’s like last spring, like being back in the truck with T.J., driving west toward Raccoon Creek State Park, all the way on the other side of Pittsburgh.

  After all of T.J.’s revelations on the side of the road, we were both pretty quiet. I was nervous to drive — I’d only had my permit for a few weeks — but T.J. insisted. With everything T.J. had said swirling around my head, and needing to concentrate on what I was doing, I didn’t really feel like talking. Seemed to suit T.J. just fine. He turned the music up and started singing along. Everything melted away until it was just us and the music and the road.

  That first afternoon, we hiked an easy warm-up trail. The ball of dread inside me loosened with every step. And as the days wore on, I started to believe that anything was possible. I started to trust that when T.J. came home for good, we’d have a real life. Together. Maybe start a business. I pictured us, someday, like Dad and Uncle Mac, poker nights and fixing the trucks and being together, like friends. Picnics with our wives and kids. Fishing out at the lake. I thought we’d have time for all kinds of stuff.

  All that week, even when he had to take it easy on me or when I puked twice the first full day of hiking, I’d never felt stronger or better than standing there next to him after each hard climb. He laughed when I puked, and when I lost my footing or tripped or stepped in the creek, but every time he was laughing, his smile was so big, his laughter so easy, I didn’t care. I finally felt like T.J.’s brother, instead of a lesser human who happened to share his last name.

  Sometimes he moved us at a vicious pace. But other times, when we stopped for a break, it was like he went somewhere else entirely for however long we stayed still. Most of the time he would come out of it fast and jump up ready to hike on, but a few times he came back slowly, quietly, and his eyes focused in on me for a long, charged moment before he moved.

  In the dark of the tent, T.J. talked about towns and buildings and mosques, about the kids he saw and the landscape, about mountains and deserts. He talked about some of the guys in his unit. He talked about sand. And about thirst. But he didn’t talk at all about what it was really like, what he did over there. When I tried to ask about war stuff — about suicide bombers, IEDs and ambushes, about what he’d seen and what he’d done — he shut down, with just a look in the fading light of the fire. And in the pitch-dark of the tent, just the angle of his face and his rough-drawn breath was enough to tell me I’d gone too far.

  I had never spent that many days in a row alone with T.J., but even for him, he seemed quiet and tense. That last night in the tent, the quiet stretched between us, and I think I talked for hours just to chase it away.

  When my cell plays Shauna’s ringtone, I jump and swerve, and realize I was barely paying attention. I scramble for my phone on the passenger seat while trying to stay in my lane.

  “Hey.” I brace for her mood after the scene this morning.

  “Hey, where are you?” Tight, but no tears.

  “About thirty miles from Ohio.” I can’t help but be a little proud at that. Like I had something to do with making Ohio appear in front of the car, as if I’m about to conquer Cleveland or something.

  “Wow,” she says, and I can hear her moving around. “You’re moving fast.”

  “Yeah. I’m making good time.” Dad’s said that a hundred times; makes me grin.

  “Well, that’s good, because I just got out of Pendergrast’s office. He knows you didn’t show. He wanted me to tell him where you are so that he could try to avoid, as he put it, ‘getting you into a world of hurt.’” I can hear Shauna’s air quotes. “He suggested that I call you, using the cell phone I’m not supposed to use at school, I might add, and try to convince you to get your butt here and to his office, pronto.” Her imitation of Pendergrast is right on. “He said if you don’t get here fast, he’ll be left with no choice but to call your dad. So, here I am, calling. I think he really doesn’t want to have to call your dad.”

  Probably doesn’t. “Thanks, Shaun.”

  “I’ll hold off on giving any of it away as long as possible, but we both know Mom’ll notice the car gone tonight, and then I’m done.”

  “Wait,” she says to someone
else. Then I can’t really hear anything, muffled sounds. Did she cover the phone? “Great.”

  “Gotta go,” she says to me. All bright and chipper.

  “What’s up?”

  “What do you care?” And there’s the edge again. “Look, they’re waiting. And since it’ll probably be my last social outing for a few weeks, you know, with the impending grounding and all . . .”

  “Yeah. No. Sure.”

  “So, just drive safe, and call when you get there.”

  She cuts the call. And I’m left wondering who “they” are. If “they” were Trish or Kara or whatever, she’d have said so and not bothered to cover the phone. Terrific.

  I toss my phone back onto the seat. My stomach roils with all the junk I’ve eaten.

  I wish she would’ve talked to me — more than just grunt the bare minimum — sometime in the last three days. I’ve replayed Saturday night over in my head, over and over. There was no way it was gonna go well. Sure, I could have not wimped out and kissed her, and then I think there would have been a whole lot of kissing, and maybe more. But eventually she would have asked to come with me, and I would have said no. And somehow I think it would’ve been even worse if we made out and then I said no. But maybe now she’s come to her senses. Remembered I’m not really boyfriend material. Maybe all I’ve done is shove her faster and harder toward Michael. Maybe he’ll round the bases while I’m gone. Shit. Fine. Whatever.

  I grip the steering wheel and try to just focus on the road. But I keep hearing that muffled part of the call, trying to decipher the muffles. Maybe it was just Trish or the team, and she’s just trying to get back at me? Would be like her, when she’s in proving-someone-wrong mode.

  And Pendergrast . . . she said he didn’t want to call Dad. I don’t blame him. I wish I could call and explain, but he probably wouldn’t care anyway. I skipped my finals and broke the contract thing they made me sign to stay out of trouble. And even if he would understand, it’s too much to risk. Dad won’t call the cops, but Pendergrast just might.

  Better to just turn up the music and drive.

  There’s a rhythm to the driving: the sound of the road and passing cars adding to the music. Rivers and cities, bridges, houses, animals, all give me something to look out at, when the thinking gets to be too much. I pass farms and stores and schools, and wonder what it’s like to live there.

  Mostly, and despite every effort not to, I think about T.J., and the fact that he didn’t trust me enough to tell me any of the important stuff.

  I pass a sign for 79 South. My foot hits the brake and the car slows, swerves. I recover and look in the mirror. Everyone slowing. My bad. I pass the actual exit. Just another reminder that T.J.’s gone. When he got home, we were gonna spend a few days at McConnells Mill State Park, about a half hour south down 79 — wicked hikes, rafting, good fishing. No overnight camping, but enough places nearby to make it work. A great warm-up to some serious climbs. He was gonna teach me to climb. Now we’ll never do it. Any of it.

  For most of Ohio, I think about all the things T.J.’ll never get to do. And I can’t stop seeing Zoe’s face in my head. I’ve stared at the pictures of her for hours, reread all the letters. She has to be his. I’m sure of it. Well, as sure as I can be with the what-ifs that keep creeping in.

  Shauna went through the rest of the letters last week, pointing out all the places where Celia talked about Zoe like she was theirs. And I reread Missy’s, just to be sure. Nothing. At least nothing that says she’s not T.J. and Celia’s. But there’s this little voice in the back of my head, reminding me of the obvious — that she never actually said daughter, or father, or anything like that. Shauna had a point, that if they know Zoe’s their kid, then they don’t have to say it. And the picture — the picture he had of just them, just Celia and Zoe. Cut so that it showed just Celia and Zoe. Why would she send him that unless they were T.J.’s family? With that picture, nothing makes sense except for her being his daughter. She has to be his.

  When I see her, will I know? Just know for sure? Will she look even more like him in person? Or do something just like T.J.? Like in this one picture of them, the way she made her mouth just like his — and the one with the ice cream, her head tilted, both hands on the cone. In both she looked just like T.J., like the way he would do those things. I just have to believe. Believe that she’s his. And when I know for sure, I’ll tell Zoe about him. She’ll never know him, not really, but I’ll tell her stories, the good ones, not the crappy times.

  A groaning truck horn jolts me. My car is straddling the line, half in the left lane. Cars and trucks are passing blurs to the right. The truck horn blares again, closer behind me, and then the grinding brakes kick in. I swing the car to the right and barely miss a minivan shifting into the center lane to pass a clunker crawling along in the right. The truck driver glares as he accelerates past. Time for more caffeine.

  I pull to a careful stop in the parking spot closest to the rest-area building. My hands are shaking. Well across Ohio, spitting distance from Indiana. Got to keep going.

  Splashing cold water on my face wakes me all the way up. Not taking any chances on running out, I get a huge coffee and a bottle of soda, though the kid who sold it to me called it pop. I stretch my back against the car and sip at the coffee, waiting for it to cool enough to gulp.

  And as if on cue, my cell plays Dad’s ringtone. For a second it’s like he’s here, and I have to clutch the cup to keep from dropping it. But once I’ve caught the panic, I climb into the car and open the phone.

  “Hi, Dad.”

  “Where the fuck are you?”

  Sounds like he’s in the truck. “Uh, where are you?”

  “What?”

  My head jerks away from the phone.

  “What do you mean, where am I? I asked you a question. I got a message from Pendergrast that you didn’t show for your final today. Where are you?”

  “There was, uh . . . there was something I had to do.”

  “Wh-what do you m-mean?” He’s probably spitting all over the phone. “You get your ass home now.”

  “I can’t.”

  “What?”

  How long has it been since I openly disobeyed him? “I, uh, can’t come home right now. Listen, Dad —”

  “No, you listen. If you don’t get your ass home right now, you’re gonna wish —”

  “Dad, I left you a note. On the table. Read it, but, uh, I needed to, uh, take a trip. But don’t worry. I’ll be home in a few days, a week at most.”

  “You w-what? Trip? What the hell do you mean you had to . . . ?”

  Car horns. He swears. I can hear his blinker. He’s probably getting to the side of the road.

  “Where the hell are you?” I can hear it, the second it hits him. “And where’s the goddamn money?”

  “I needed to do something, for T.J. I . . . I went through his stuff.”

  Gulping breaths and I can practically hear the sound of his veins popping out all over. His jaw working against the phone as he grinds his teeth. “I told you —”

  “Dad, he’s gone. He’s not coming back. And there’s this one thing I can do for him. So I’m doing it.”

  He sucks in air, furious and harsh. “You get your ass home!”

  “No.” There’s a calm in it. One I don’t feel, yet, but one I can see, in front of me. I’ve rehearsed this call in my head, over and over, and while it went a dozen different ways in my rehearsals, I knew we’d get to this part. “I have to do this. Just . . . if you just let me do this, for T.J., I’ll come home and you can yell or whatever then.”

  I can hear the battle on the other end of the phone. I close my eyes and swallow the fear.

  “What is it you think you’re doing?”

  “I’ll tell you when I get back.”

  His grinding teeth chill me. Despite the slick of sweat all over me and the heat of the sun broiling through the windshield, I’m shivering.

  He could probably stop me. I’m only sevent
een, and he could call the police and make them find me. There’s no way he could figure out where I’m going, unless the police can trace my cell, like on TV, or Shauna cracks wide open. But I’m banking on his ego to make him wait until I’m home, to deal with me then, himself. No witnesses.

  “Dad, I have to do this.” I hate how I sound, like I’m begging. I owe it to T.J. to do this right. I clear my throat. “Read my note. But right now, I have to go. I’ll call you. I promise. A week at most, but . . . I need to do this. For T.J.”

  I wait a few seconds to see if he’ll respond, and then I close my phone. I haven’t even pulled out of the space yet when it rings again. I ignore it. He calls two more times before he gives up. I don’t think he’ll send anyone after me or call the cops or anything, but I can only shudder at what he’ll be like when I get home.

  Crossing into Indiana, and then for all the miles dancing along the Michigan border, I think about all the places T.J. will never get to go, and all the places he went I’ll never know about. And I think about what would have happened if I had chickened out and not gone through his stuff.

  Just before the Illinois border, I stop for gas — hopefully, my last refill before Madison.

  In the gas station, I get another soda and some chips and, on impulse, a pack of gum from a bin by the counter. The price tag on the side is bright pink, slapped on by one of those handheld roller things, one edge still sticking up. There’s a place at home that still does the price stickers by hand, too. Even the gum and candy. I thought they were the last people on earth who did that. I smooth the sticker down so it wraps over the edge of the pack while I wait in line. Almost there.

  Back in the car, I fold the map open on the seat so I can look at it if I get confused.

  Just as I cross into Wisconsin, my phone beeps at me. Text. Has to be Shauna. Busted but ok — call when u get there.

  Almost there. By this time tomorrow, I’ll know everything.