by Lindsey Lane
“Dwight, do you really think it’s about money?”
“Yeah. I mean, that’s what he always got so mad about.”
Dwight heard her take a deep breath. “If you think we should go back, I will. But let me ask you this. When he hit you last night, did he do it because you did something wrong? Or did he do it because he liked hitting you?”
Already the car was chilling down. It was cold outside. Dwight shivered. He thought back to his father’s face last night. When he grabbed Dwight’s fist and twisted his arm, he looked pissed. When he was questioning his mother about the spatula, he looked mean and upset. When he held the plate of beans in front of her face, he looked—Wait. He was smiling. He knew what was going to happen. He made it happen. He wanted it.
“Let’s keep going, Mom.”
Now she’s asleep and he’s standing in an empty parking lot waiting for the sun to rise on Christmas morning. He’d left her gift under his bed. He should have grabbed it instead of the ornaments. It was stupid to take them. So what if they were the last breakable things in the house? Each year when he put them on the tree, Dwight watched over them, protected them, kept them from getting broken. He liked how they made their living room look less secondhand for the time they were up. When he took them off the tree unbroken, he felt proud. Like he’d saved the world from ending.
Dwight opens the car door so slowly it doesn’t make a sound. He reaches inside and grabs the box of ornaments. Carefully, he climbs up on the hood. One by one, he hangs the silver globes on the cedar branches above his head. It feels good to stretch his arm and ribs a little. Just as he is about to hang the last one, he see a pair of clear plastic goggles wrapped around one of the branches. They look like the kind he uses in science classes. It’s strange to think about school on Christmas morning. Then Dwight realizes he won’t be going back to his old school. Ever. He doesn’t know where he’s going next. Maybe wherever it is, he’ll have friends he can invite over to his house. Maybe it will be a place friends want to hang out.
He pulls the goggles off the branch, puts them on and tries to see himself in the side-view mirror but it’s still too dark. He probably looks like a science nerd. That’s cool. He likes science. Maybe he’ll use them at his next school. Maybe he’ll wear them a lot to look weird. Sometimes it’s cool to look weird.
Dwight squeezes back into the passenger seat. His mother barely moves. He looks up at the ornaments. At first, all he can see are round shapes in the trees. As the sky lightens, the ornaments turn gray, then silver. When the sun rises, they change from purple to rose to orange. They’re turning gold when he hears his mother yawn and sit up. Dwight slides the goggles up on his forehead and smiles.
“Merry Christmas, Mom.”
JANUARY 4 . EIGHT MONTHS MISSING
HALLIE
For crying out loud, Eugene Caldwell, I have known you since you were a spit of a thing. Don’t give me any that “Ms. Stillwell, I need to ask you a few questions” baloney. Knock on my door, say, “Hello, Hallie,” like you would any other day of the week. If you get all official on me, I’ll official you right off my property.
That’s better. Have a seat.
Yes, it is pleasant up here on the porch. Yes, the weather is mighty fine for January. Eugene, I’m eighty-four years old. Please don’t waste my time with pleasantries.
So what is it this time? Do you need to organize another search across the property? How many have we had? That first week, you pretty near combed every inch of the ranch. After that, it seems like we had a search every other week until well after school let out. I’ve lost count of how many times you’ve run dogs across the property looking for Tommy. My goats have done more running than grazing this year.
I know people are upset about the pull-out. What am I supposed to do about that? It’s a patch of dirt, for crying out loud. It was there when my granddaddy started ranching here. Hell, maybe that little ledge of land was beachfront a million years ago and dinosaurs stopped there like people do now.
We’ve had more than a few dramas at the pull-out over the years. Back when my daddy was alive, I remember the Texas Rangers combing the area looking for a girl and a boy. They’d run away to get married. I was a teenager. I remember thinking it was highly romantic. Only it ended in tragedy. The girl’s father found them in that outbuilding five hundred yards from the pull-out and shot them both. Should have shot himself too while he was at it. He went crazy. Hid in the back of what became Clark’s Salvage Yard until Sheriff Hamilton hauled him in. Yeah, that was well before your time.
You know what my daddy did after that murder? The ranch hands circled the property on horseback at night. Eighteen hundred acres. After two horses pulled up lame, he stopped that public service. I guess they came across a few illegals, but that was pretty normal. After a while, it didn’t make much sense to him. Anybody who stopped at that pull-out had a damn good reason: rest, lost, or broke down. Daddy had a ranch to run. He couldn’t be policing a dirt patch by the side of the road.
You can do what you want with that pull-out. Pave it over. Fence it off. I don’t care. But that’s not why you came out here to see me, is it, Sheriff Caldwell?
What do I think about particle physics? You’re kidding me, right? Yes, I’ve heard the talk. Tommy was very fascinated with all scientific phenomenon. I used to watch him out there, wandering around looking at flies on manure. He was a strange kid. So what? All kids are strange. You used to have quite a fascination with making fireworks as I recall, Eugene.
Do I think he’s gone into another dimension? Hell no. Now look here, Eugene. What’s going on is totally normal. A kid goes missing. The whole town is up in arms. Every day that goes by is worse. Of course they want to believe some extraterrestrial, time travel theory. They haven’t even found one shoe that belongs to Tommy.
Eugene, I’ve lived on this ranch my entire life. I am not a stranger to death. Between Mexicans crossing over, dying of thirst, and animals getting tore up by coyotes, I have seen my share of dead bodies. Now I know we haven’t found a body, so there’s still hope, but I wouldn’t blame you if you stopped actively looking for Tommy Smythe.
Isn’t that what you are here to tell me?
I understand. It’s been almost a year and there’s no sign of the boy. You can’t spend any more man-hours on it. Yes, I know the Smythes are going to be upset and I know that Simmons woman is saying if the pull-out hadn’t been there, that girl wouldn’t have murdered her husband. She might persuade the Smythes that the pull-out was the reason Tommy went missing. I know what people are saying. You’d be amazed at how news travels out here. Are you here to warn me that there might be some sort of backlash when you tell them you aren’t making Tommy your top priority every waking minute?
I know you want to find him. We all do. I thought pursuing that adoption angle was your best hope. Kids are curious about that sort of thing.
If he was picked up by a stranger, well, there’s no way to know what happened with that. You’ve still got his picture out there, right?
No, I don’t think he ran away. Kids leave clues.
Hell, Eugene, Mexicans are better prepared to cross the border than Tommy and they still die. There are some sad cases out here. I hate it when I find a pair of shoes in one of the goat paths. I know someone put them there, right at the end, so I’d find a body. And I always do.
You know I’ve also heard that Simmons girl is wanting to put together a memorial for Tommy. I don’t think that’s a bad idea. You might want to put your efforts toward that. It’ll help people move on. And body or not, we need to move on.
I appreciate the heads-up. I really do. I doubt they’ll bother me. Most people don’t take the time to come all the way up here, and when they do, they usually find I’m pretty hospitable. Sometimes I invite them to live here.
That ruffled a few feathers, didn’t it? Yes, she’s still living with me. We get on pretty good. She’s a good girl. She’s learning English. She’s helping me with e
verything from groceries to writing checks to paying the workers. I’m thinking about ruffling every feather in the county and leaving the entire Stillwell Ranch to her. You heard right. Who else should I give it to? You know my only child’s dead.
Who cares if she can’t hang on to it? It’s just dirt. If it belongs to anyone, it belongs to the animals. They use it more than I do. Look out there. This land has been in my family for three generations. We’ve paid taxes on it. We’ve worked it. It’s given us a good life. Before us, it belonged to the Mexicans, the Spanish, the French. At one time, we would have been the illegals. It’s land. People put borders on it and make laws around it. But I don’t really own it. I just walk on it. All I am is one person standing between earth and sky. If you start looking at the land that way, all the laws and boundaries around ownership seem silly.
That’s probably why I let Tommy wander around here. Why I didn’t throw him off. He seemed to appreciate the notion of standing on some dirt between heaven and earth.
I keep thinking he’s going to find his way back if he isn’t dead. People are mostly law abiding. You have some bad ones, but really, I think people tend to choose kindness over cruelty. That golden rule? Treat people like you like to be treated. It’s in our DNA.
Yes, Eugene, things get a little odd from time to time. That girl with the pickax, for one. But I bet at one time she was a sweet little girl who played with dolls. Something happened to her that twisted her up inside. She wasn’t always like that, I guaran-damn-tee you.
What would have happened if I’d turned Maricela away when she came wandering up here with that boy on her hip? How do you think that little boy would do if she were desperate and scared and hungry? You never know how you are going to touch some people. I think people are basically good. Really good. That golden rule has been working on us for centuries.
People think this world is much crueler and more brutal now. But it’s not. We only hear about it faster. People have those little computer phones in their pockets and they hear about disasters and meannesses at the speed of light. They think things are worse. But I don’t. You go stand on some dirt between heaven and earth and see for yourself. Life is pretty fine.
I think, wherever Tommy is, he knows it.
MAY 4 . ONE YEAR MISSING
CHUY
Excuse me, sir. Is this where the trucks pick up workers?
I’ve been working on a farm nearby. The Traverses’ place. You know them?
Yes, they have a lot of work, a lot of planting. I could stay on but I made a promise to someone I’d keep going north.
You need some help? With the shovel, I mean. You want me to dig something while I’m waiting?
Sure. Where do you want it? Here? Okay. One post hole coming up.
Thank you. Consuelo made me speak English all the time. Even watching television. No telenovelas. If a show came on with Spanish subtitles, she’d tape paper in front of them. You know how I learned the most English? Comic books. I love them. I read as many as I could. Superman. Batman. The Avengers. Consuelo didn’t mind. As long as they were in English. She said I had to dream in English. I guess it worked, but I can’t tell if I dream in English or Spanish. They both sound normal to me.
You could call Consuelo my mother. She raised me.
My parents live in Mexico. They never got papers. We lived across the river from the American colonias. I went back and forth all the time when I was little. After a while I stayed with Consuelo. My parents wanted me to learn English and have a better life, so I stayed and went to school on the American side. I never got papers either, but everyone thought I was Consuelo’s boy. The people who knew didn’t care. Consuelo had papers and her three daughters were born here. She was glad to have a boy. One more mouth to feed is hard, but one more mouth also means two more hands to work. As soon as I could hold a shovel, I went out to work. But only after school.
Consuelo made sure school was first. She made me pronounce every word right. No share for chair. She is fuerte. She’s the reason I’m headed north. She made me promise I’d leave as soon as I graduated high school. She says living down there is like dying and if I don’t leave, she’d kill me. She might. She carries a knife at her waist.
The colonias. You ever been to the border? No, they’re not even towns. And the houses aren’t really houses. It’s a hard place. It’s kind of nowhere. You’re not in Mexico and you’re not in America. Well, you are but you’re not. Consuelo ended up in the colonias because she didn’t have much money after her husband left and never came back.
I told her I would send her money when I was working but she said not to. She says it takes five minutes to get used something better but it takes a whole lifetime to get used to ugliness. She says she’s used to the ugliness now. It’s a hard place.
No, she never adopted me. My parents tried to come back across the border several times but they got stopped. Finally, they stayed in Mexico. For a while I sneaked across to see them. But then one day I stopped. When you’re young, immigration doesn’t see you. But as soon as you start to look like a worker, they hassle you. And if you don’t speak English, they really hassle you. I haven’t seen my parents since I was ten.
I have papers but they’re fake. Consuelo paid a lot of money to get them. That’s why I am walking and sleeping in fields. She told me to get very far away from the border before I use them and start acting like an American. She said the farther I get from the border, the less people will know what official papers look like. I know it will be hard, but I think I can make it. Consuelo told me wherever I end up, I should go to school. She said immigration wouldn’t look for me there. I don’t know. She might be right.
Consuelo will tell my parents I went north. They will be happy. I know they want me to have a good life. It seems like my parents gave me up, but that’s not true. When you’re on the bottom and you’re sinking in the mud, you push your children up and hope someone will catch them. Even if it means you drown.
Is this deep enough?
Oh wait. You need some help carrying that?
That’s a beautiful cross, sir. I like the way the wood is curved on the corners and the bronze is set into the middle. It looks strong. It looks like your love for that person is strong. Someone is lucky to be remembered with this cross.
Your son? Oh, señor, I’m sorry.
Here, let me help you. Hold it straight. I’ll pack in the dirt. My name is Chuy, by the way. Jesus. But everyone calls me Chuy.
Nice to meet you, Mr. Smythe.
When did he die?
He disappeared? That means he could come back. People can disappear like ghosts and they come back. It happens all the time on the border. You never know. Some people get picked up by Immigration and get sent back to Mexico. Some people go north. And then they come back.
What’s his name? Tommy? In the colonias, if you never find the body, you always have hope. They can come back. People disappear. Parents. Sisters. Even the drunk old men. They come back. Sometimes with a lot of money. Sometimes beat up. If they don’t come back, you never know. They could be in Hollywood. They could be rich. You never know. Tommy could come back.
A year is a long time. But it could happen.
It took me six months to walk here from the colonias. I took my time. I worked on the way, but walking is like digging a big hole with a shovel. It takes time, but you get there.
You want me to get some rocks to put around the base? Don’t worry. I don’t mind. This land has a lot of rocks.
I wonder if that truck is coming. I probably got here too late. Mr. Travers said I could get more work around here. He also said the woman who owns that land out there always needs help with her goats and sheep. He says she takes in boarders like me. Has a girl and her son living there now. I could walk up there. If the truck doesn’t come, maybe I will.
Yeah, I slept out there last night. Did you know there was an old stone house straight out that way? It’s falling down but I slept there. No, I never make fir
es. It’s too dangerous.
No, I’m not scared. I mean, I keep to myself. I watch out. I learned a lot listening to people who crossed over. If you are traveling alone, you look for a place to sleep while you are walking. Under a tree is good. Or sometimes you pass by a ledge with flat ground underneath. Somehow you have to mark the place in your mind. But you keep walking. Then when the sun is setting, you stop and you wait. When it’s dark, you go back to that place you found. You need to go back to it in the dark because you don’t want anyone to see you. If someone sees you go back to the place, they could rob you when you are asleep. Or worse.
I’ve walked a mile, or more, back to a place. Sometimes, if I don’t see a place during the day, I walk a long time after it’s dark and then I lie down and hope for the best. Once you lie down, you listen. You listen for any sounds. You learn the difference between a man and an armadillo. They are difficult to tell apart. The armadillos are so loud they sound like men stumbling around.
Gradually, I stop listening for the sounds and I breathe. After a while, it’s like I become the air. I start to disappear into the night. Then I fall asleep.
Sometimes strange sounds wake me up and I see people, sometimes three or four, walking through the field. They look like ghosts. You can’t see their legs. Just the shapes of their bodies moving over a field. That’s another way to travel. At night. I couldn’t do it. It’s too hard to find a safe place to sleep during the day. Plus I would be too nervous to fall asleep. Someone could walk up on me. At least, at night, it’s easier to hide in the shadows.
Is that enough rocks? I think we need two more.
Yes, I see a lot of things at night. Sometimes I think that all the people sleeping in their beds have no idea of the life going on around them. There is a whole highway of people, traveling in the night, out in their fields, crossing their roads. We are invisible to them.
Sometimes, there are people out there who are invisible even when we see them.