by Lindsey Lane
“My wife is locked in the bathroom. I need a key.”
“Just a minute, mister.”
“I don’t have a minute. My wife’s in there. She could hurt herself.”
“Okay. Okay.” The boy reaches under the counter and hands a key to Frank.
Frank’s hands shake as he puts the key in the lock and turns it. He pushes the door open slowly, carefully, because he can feel Stella’s weight against it. Her fists are clenched in tight balls and her forehead is bright red. She must have been banging the door with her fists and her head. Or the wall. Frank doesn’t know. He steps toward her and she puts her fists up.
“It’s me, Stell. It’s your Frankie.”
She doesn’t move but her eyes look jumpy. Like she’s seeing a monster. Frank steps toward her. Closer. Closer. Finally he puts his arms around her. “I got you, sweetheart. You’re all right.” He raises her chin to look at her face. No cuts. But her forehead is completely red. She might get black eyes this time.
Frank opens the door of the car and helps her in. The moment he sits down, she leans over and puts her head on his thigh. “No, Stella, you need to sit up and stay awake. I need to make sure you don’t have a concussion.”
Frank is helping her sit up when the boy from the counter comes out with a fresh chocolate shake and some ice in a towel. “I’m sorry, mister. Is she going to be all right?”
“Yes. She got a little disoriented. That’s all.”
The boy nods. He hands Frank the ice and the malt. Frank notices the boy’s name stitched on his shirt.
“Thank you, Sam.”
Sam smiles. “I’m sorry it happened, sir. My grandpa got that way. We finally had to put him at the Oaks.” Then he turns and goes back inside.
Frank holds the malt so Stella can take a few sips. It seems to revive her and she sits up straighter. Frank puts the towel on her forehead.
“Ow! What happened? That hurts, Frankie.”
“You tripped, Stella. The floors were wet in there and you tripped. They gave us a free malt.”
“Mmmm … I love chocolate.”
“I know you do, sweetheart. How about sharing a little?”
Frank leans over for a sip but Stella turns her head so Frank can’t have any.
She giggles.
Just like that, her confusion is gone and she’s with him again.
Frank backs out of their parking spot. Stella holds his hand and sips the malt. Frank hesitates. He can’t go to the VFW dance. Someone would notice her forehead. It might start purpling up. He could go back home, but she looks so happy sipping the shake. Truth is, he loves going out with her.
As he turns north out of the Whip In, he sees Enrique, standing under the Whip In sign. It looks like he’s waiting for his son Nando to pick him up. Maybe they worked on different farms today. The way the red neon light is washing over Enrique he looks like one of those saints on grocery store candles. When he waves at them, it feels to Frank like he’s just been blessed.
“I swear that man can make flowers sprout from rocks,” says Frank.
“Remember those herbs he gave us to help me have a baby, Frankie?”
Frank nods. He remembers. Those herbs didn’t work but he wonders if Enrique knows an herb that would stop his Stella from losing her mind.
About a mile up the road from the Whip In, the wrought-iron gates of the Oaks Rest Home march along the side of the road. Stella looks at the black vertical lines. “I don’t ever want to go there, Frankie.”
“I know you don’t, Stella.”
“But I heard that boy say that’s where they put old people like me.”
“Don’t you worry about what anyone says. I’ll take care of you.” Frank had always told her he would take care of her. It might be a little harder now. But he can do it. As long as he can drive, he could keep her with him. She loves to go on drives. It relaxes her.
Inside the car, they can stay Frank and Stella. If he turns around and goes back to their regular lives, he’d be an old man with his batty wife. He and Stella are so much more. They’re the first couple on the dance floor at homecoming. They’re the ones who ran away and got married after graduation. They’re never missing a dance at the VFW hall every Friday night. They’re six miscarriages until they gave up. They are sixty years of marriage.
If Frank keeps driving, she’ll stay with him. He can stop for gas and takeout and never have to be too far away from her. People run away all the time. Maybe that’s what happened to the Smythe boy. Tommy.
As if Stella can hear what he’s thinking, she says, “Frankie, remember that time we went driving and we tried to get lost? We kept driving and driving trying to end up someplace where we’d never been. Remember that?”
“Except we forgot about getting gas. Remember? We ran out and got stuck.”
Stella giggles. “I remember we kissed for a long time in the middle of some field.”
Frank remembers.
“Wanna go get lost, Stella?”
“I do, Frankie.”
Frank notices the city limits sign flash by their headlights when Stella says those words. Franks takes it as a good sign, like another blessing to begin their adventure.
Frank keeps driving and driving. He stops for gas and coffee. He turns on the radio and changes the station until he finds a song they like. Sometimes, when the radio doesn’t pick up a station, he sings Stella some of their favorites. “Love me tender. Love me true.”
When she falls asleep, Frank worries she’ll be disoriented when she wakes up. But she isn’t. She’s still with him.
“I love you, Frankie.”
Frank can hear the smile in her voice. He can’t see her face but he imagines her lying in their bed on their wedding night, her chestnut hair all over the white pillow and a dreamy, sleepy smile on her face.
When she falls asleep again, Frank has no idea where they are or how far away they are from where they started. It’s pitch black outside. The moon is past full but it’s slipped behind some clouds. He guesses it’s two or three in the morning. Maybe later. The roads are starting to curve and it seems like they’re driving through some hills, but he isn’t sure. At first, not knowing where he is keeps him awake. The wondering excites him. The plan is working. If they stay in the car, Stella won’t ever leave him. He’ll keep driving and they can slide back and forth across every dance floor they’ve ever danced on. The Fred High gym at homecoming. The VFW hall every Friday night. Their living room. It won’t matter. He’ll dance every dance with her. All he has to do is reach across the seat and hold her hand. He can close his eyes and she’ll be in his arms. They’ll be floating across the dance floor. He’ll be leaning in for a kiss. He’ll be falling into her.
He’ll land in her arms like always.
OCTOBER 4 . FIVE MONTHS MISSING
NANDO
I’m here to pick up some workers, Sheriff. No, sir, I do not know if they are illegal or not. You can ask them. Of course, they probably won’t show up while you’re here.
One of the vineyard owners called my father last night and said he needs some extra hands. We got the word out pretty late so I’m not sure anyone is going to show up. I’ll wait another half hour.
What are you doing?
Are you still looking for him?
Yeah, I knew Tommy. I went to school with him. Also, I work with my father on all the farms around here. We saw him everywhere. Not since last May, though. Wow. Five months already.
My father called him a brujo.
It means magician. I think he called him that because of how he’d show up out of the blue. We’d look up from whatever crop we were picking and he’d be standing there. Sometimes he’d be looking at us. Sometimes at the sky or the dirt. Then we’d go back to our work and when we’d look up again, he’d be gone. Like he disappeared.
At first, my father thought he was a bad omen. But I told him he’s a kid at my school. A weirdo. An outsider. My father stopped thinking he was a bad omen but he still
called him a brujo. He said he walked with the spirits. Not like he’s dead or anything. More like he has an ability to, I don’t know, interact with that world.
That’s what my father believes. I don’t know if it’s true. My father sees things. And then he sees the thing behind the thing. The life force. The energy. In Mexico, they call people like him a curandero. Healer. He knows what plants cure headaches and sore joints. He knows what to put on crops to keep grasshoppers away. That’s why the farmers around here hire him. Sometimes when he’s working a field, he will taste the dirt and know what it needs to make their crops stronger. He’s usually right. My father is smart in a different kind of way.
He could charge a lot more money but he says money has no energy. That’s how he thinks. He takes money, just enough to live on, but he gets a lot of food as payment. Eggs. Bean. Squash. We always have plenty to eat. When someone slaughters a pig and we’ve worked their fields, they always give us meat. My father says he’d rather die with a full belly than a full wallet. Me, I want both. I’m starting to manage the money now that I’m older. I’m glad. I charge more. We have a little bit of money now. There are things I want to do. Sometimes when you’re Mexican, even if you’re born here, people look at you like you can’t do anything but manual labor. I love my father but I don’t want to work in the fields my whole life.
But you know what? He won’t work for anybody. Certain farmers, he won’t go on their land. Like that man who got killed in the pull-out. He said no to his lavender fields even though he knew how to cure that mold. He said the man had a shadow around him. He won’t work for certain people if he sees that they are malo. Bad. I’m glad he says no, that he has a choice. He can’t be bought by anyone. I think it’s the way my father keeps his dignity. I’m not sure I would be able to do the same thing.
No, he’s not a fortune-teller. He doesn’t see the future. It’s more like he sees an energy. Remember that old couple who drove off the cliff together? I was picking up my father at the Whip In last week. I saw him waving to them. I asked who they were and he called them los pájaros. The birds. I asked him what he meant and he shrugged his shoulders. When I heard they went missing and the police later found their bodies at the bottom of a cliff, I showed my father their picture in the newspaper. I asked him if he knew they were going to fly off a cliff and he said no. Solo vi como los pájaros bonitas. He only saw them as beautiful birds.
About Tommy? That’s all he said: brujo. Yeah, he called him that before he went missing. Afterwards, I asked him if he thought Tommy was dead. Like no longer breathing dead. He said what I thought he would say, that ghosts aren’t dead. Ghosts are spirit bodies. They’re alive to him. He talks to my mother all the time.
Me? I have no idea. I don’t see the spirit world the way my father does. To me, Tommy was a loco kid. On that red bike, wearing those safety goggles from science class. Sometimes he had a girl with him. That gave me hope. If a weirdo like that could get a girl, maybe I could. Someday. My father says it will happen. He says everything takes time. Just like plants growing.
Yeah, I talked to Tommy. Not a lot. Like I said, he was strange. One time, my father and I were at the pull-out picking up some extra workers to go out to the Traverses’ other farm near Poteet. It was early morning. When? Let’s see, I think it was about a week or two before Tommy disappeared. Yeah, that’s right, because we were pulling beets and potatoes that day so it would have to be April.
I heard that high-pitched whine of his bike coming up 281. He skidded into the pull-out and started tearing through that trash can. He threw the trash everywhere. You should have seen it. Styrofoam cups. Empty water bottles. Soda cans. Bags of half-eaten food from the Whip In. He went through all of it. Nasty. No one musta emptied that thing for a while.
Then he started searching under the trees and cedars. Only he didn’t put the trash back. I went up to him and asked him what he was looking for. He kept saying, “My notebook. Have you seen it? My notebook. Have you seen it?” And the whole time he was digging around in the bushes. Even the cactus. It was a good thing he had those safety goggles on and a long-sleeve shirt, but I am pretty sure he got spines in his hands.
I told him I hadn’t seen it and it looked like he was going to have a fit. His eyes were darting around and around. Then he jumped on his bike, peeled out of the pull-out without looking if someone was coming, and left all the trash everywhere. Fucking weirdo.
My father made me clean up the pull-out. I was so pissed. The white kid makes the mess and the Mexican cleans it up. But you know what? I kept looking on the side of the road for the notebook. Why? Because he looked so desperate. Like he’d lost the most important thing in the world. You want to help someone like that even if you’re pissed at them. I stopped the truck a couple of times because I thought I saw something white in the grass by the road. It wasn’t the notebook. Just some pages. It had some writing on it. Stuff about particles and space. I don’t know if they were from the notebook. They could have been. I mean, everyone knew he was a freak about science. His notebook could have blown off the back of his bike. Anyway, I picked them up. I was going to give them to him, but he disappeared before I could.
You know what my father said every time I got back in the truck with another scrap of paper? “Buen corazón.” Me. I have a good heart. Me. I’m pissed at that kid and I’m looking for his stupid notebook. Why should I help him if he can’t keep track of his own shit? Or clean up after himself? You know? But my father’s right. Even if I don’t want to, I help people. If you have a good heart, you know when you’re doing the wrong thing. You know it and you can’t do it.
Drives me crazy.
That loco kid is gone and I’m still looking for his notebook.
DECEMBER 25 . ALMOST EIGHT MONTHS MISSING
CHRISTMAS ORNAMENTS
As soon as the car slows down, Dwight wakes up. The wheels turn and drop into what feels like a rocky field. Dwight grabs his ribs and braces himself against the seat. When the car stops, he sits up carefully and looks out the passenger window. It’s dark. All he can see is the black shapes of trees. A few branches hang over the hood of their car. He looks out the other side. They’re sitting in an empty parking area on the side of a road.
“Holy crap, Mom, where are we?”
“Texas. We passed Austin about an hour ago. You were sound asleep.” She turns off the car. “I’m tired, Dwight. The lines on the road are starting to skip around. I need to close my eyes for a bit.”
“What time is it?”
“About four in the morning,” says his mother, yawning. “Merry Christmas, sweetheart. We’ll stop and get a nice meal somewhere after a while. Okay?”
Dwight is about to say okay but he hears his mom’s deep breathing and keeps silent. Texas. They’re eight hours away from Doddridge, Arkansas. Dwight leans forward and looks up. Texas stars don’t look any different from the Arkansas ones.
He presses his feet into the floorboard, trying to stretch his legs and reposition his body so his ribs don’t hurt so much. The more awake he gets, the more they ache. Creaking open the door, he mumbles, “Gotta stand up,” in case she hears him. He squeezes outside, careful not to scrape the car door on the branches. He knows no one is around but he doesn’t want to leave her alone so he stands a few steps from the car.
Four in morning. Dwight looks around. It’s pitch-black. The moon must have already set. He wonders which direction the sun will rise. Wow, they’d driven all night. He’s standing in a whole other state. Dwight has never been out of Arkansas before. He’d never stood up to his father before yesterday. He and his mom had never run away from home before last night. The thing is: all these “never before”s came after the same old thing.
As soon as his father walked into the kitchen and sat down for dinner, he looked at his plate, piled high with beans, picked it up and said, “What is this shit?”
His mom didn’t say anything right away, so Dwight tried to make light of it. “Bean helper.”
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“Shut up, boy. What is this shit, MayLynn? Where’s the meat in my dinner?” He waved the plate in front of her face and dropped it on the table. “Don’t I make enough money to have meat in my dinner?” Beans slopped everywhere on the table. Nobody moved. One bean fell off the edge of the plate.
“I’m sorry, Wes. I budgeted as best I could but we had some expenses this week.” Her voice was a monotone. She didn’t look up. “I’ll do better, Wes. I promise.”
A fly circled the table. It landed on the light fixture above them. Dwight wondered if it could feel the tension rising. Dwight could. He could almost hear it.
“What were your expenses, MayLynn? Huh?”
“We had to have a new spatula. I didn’t have enough money to get a pound of hamburger and a new spatula.”
“What happened to the old spatula?’
“The old one melted.”
“Why’d did you cook the spatula, MayLynn?”
His father leaned across the table. Dwight knew his father was about to pounce. The minute he twisted his mother’s words so it sounded like she did something intentionally wrong, Dwight knew his father’s fist was starting to close. Dwight could feel the pulse in his own fists. They closed around the edge of his chair.
Part of him—it used to be the biggest part of him—wished he could disappear at this moment. He didn’t want to see what would happen next. But ever since he started high school, ever since he’d gotten a little bigger, he wished he could stop his father. He wished he could beat his father with his own fists. This part felt larger in him right then.
The fly’s wings twitched. Its back legs rubbed together. It looked like it was planning its next move.
“I left it too close to a burner.”
“Why’d you do that, MayLynn?”
“It was a mistake.”
“Why do you make mistakes, MayLynn?”
This time she didn’t answer. She’d admitted her guilt. As soon as she admitted her sin, he was going to punish her. Dwight knew it didn’t matter if she followed it up with a dozen “I’m sorry”s, the punishment was coming. Everyone at the table knew it. They were seconds away.