by Kara Thomas
My gut tells me that Jos found our mother; she didn’t go to Deer Run looking for her. Possibly because Jos knew she wasn’t there.
Joslin is older than me—old enough to remember my father’s drawings of the cabin in Bear Creek. Maybe she’d even been there, before I was born.
The idea of driving two and a half hours to Bear Creek on a hunch that my mom may be there is nuts. Callie would tell me it’s a complete waste of time.
I find Decker’s number in my phone, thankful that I didn’t delete it. I send him a text.
What are you doing tomorrow? This is Tessa.
A minute later, he responds. NOTHING. WHY?
I gnaw the inside of my cheek. Then: Have you ever been to Bear Creek/do you want to go?
NO/HELL YES!!!
I can’t help the smile blooming on my face. I may have found someone as crazy as I am.
Decker offers to pick me up at the Greenwoods’, but I insist on meeting him at the Quik Mart. I don’t want him thinking this is a date or anything.
Admittedly, I’ve never actually been on a date, hence all the fretting about what constitutes a date and what doesn’t. The closest I ever got was in the seventh grade. Frank Tricarico sat behind me in science class. He was a full two inches shorter than me and always wore his hair gelled down with that little flip thing in the front. On Valentine’s Day he shoved a piece of folded loose-leaf paper at me and mumbled, “Someone told me to give this to you.”
There were pen drawings of all nine planets, with the explanation that he’d included them because we were studying the solar system. And then the message HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY, TESSA!!! plus a phone number, in Frank’s handwriting.
I threw it into a Dumpster behind the school before I got onto the bus, thinking I would die if Gram ever found the card. For the rest of the year I was careful never to make eye contact with Frank, even when I had to pass handouts back to him.
I’ve never told anyone this, but sometimes I pretend there are two shrinks arguing in my head—one looks just like Dr. Marano, the woman Gram made me see when I was younger. Dr. Marano argues that I threw the card away because of my avoidant personality and inability to form meaningful relationships; the second shrink says I just didn’t like Frank back.
I like the second one better.
Before I leave the Greenwoods’, I add some air to Callie’s bike tires with the pump I saw in the garage the other day. Just in case. I get to the gas station before Decker, so I buy two bags of Twizzlers and a bottle of iced tea from the convenience store. When he pulls into the space out front, I wave to him and he rolls down his window. When I hold up the candy for him to see, Decker lights up like a Christmas tree. He gets out of the car and helps me shove Callie’s bike in his trunk.
I pop open the door and climb into the passenger seat of the old-looking car that was in Decker’s driveway the other day. The leather is cracked inside and the dashboard is faded. “What kind of car is this?” I ask.
“It’s a 1992 Chevy Monte Carlo,” Decker says with pride. “It was my dad’s.”
“Cool.” I run a finger along the seam on the side of my seat, trying not to think about the odds of making it to Bear Mountain in a car that’s older than we are. Decker revs it out of the gas station parking lot; we hit the curb and bounce in our seats, my head almost hitting the ceiling. I close my eyes and try to relax once the sound of the engine evens out.
“The directions I printed said we should take the interstate.” Decker scratches his neck. “I think.”
He gestures toward my feet, where there’s an old Taco Bell bag full of garbage and a piece of paper. I unfold it and scan the route to Bear Mountain; it’s the same as the one I pulled off Google and wrote down this morning.
Decker gets onto the highway, and I settle back in my seat.
“I have gas money for you,” I say. Courtesy of the ATM inside the store. The number in my checking account is down to double digits, which worries me, but with any luck I’ll be out of Fayette and back to work soon.
Decker waves his hand dismissively—the hand that’s not submerged in the Twizzlers bag. “Man, these are my favorite, which sucks because my mom never lets me eat anything with red dye.”
“What’s so bad about red dye?”
“PKU,” Decker says, as if that were self-explanatory. I shrug, and Decker launches into the story of his birth, and how he was diagnosed with phenylketonuria, which meant he had to be on a super-strict diet or else he’d develop seizures or mental defects.
“Anyway, no one uses Red Dye Number Three anymore, but I’m pretty sure my mom thinks I’m not going to college because of that time I had M&M’s at Kevin Bishop’s birthday party in kindergarten.”
I don’t know if I’m supposed to laugh or not, but Decker is grinning.
“So what’s in Bear Creek?” Decker sticks another Twizzler between his teeth and lets it dangle there like an absurdly long cigarette.
“My mom,” I say. I feel it’s only fair to prepare him for the possibility that this will all be a huge waste of time, so I add: “I think. I’ve been looking for her since I got here, and I found this drawing. I think my family has a cabin up there.”
Decker looks enraptured, and not at all disturbed that we’re taking a five-hour journey, round trip, because of a drawing and a hunch. “So we’re kind of being PIs, or something?”
“Yeah.” I smile. It feels good. “Exactly.”
“Sweet,” Decker says. “This is so freaking sweet.”
“You really don’t mind?” I ask. “I’m sure you have a hundred better things to do.”
“Nah, I didn’t get that job at the bike shop,” Decker says. “I’m not qualified.”
He puts air quotes around that last part, and I laugh in spite of the growing knot in my intestines.
Even Decker can’t possibly talk for the entirety of a nearly three-hour drive, though. An hour in, he runs out of steam and turns up the radio, lowering it when I need to read him the directions. Bear Mountain and the town of Bear Creek are a straight shot up north, west of the Alleghenies. I tried to pull up satellite images of the area, but even Google Earth was like, I got nothing.
After two hours, the rest stops on the freeway become obsolete. Pressure builds in my ears with the increasing elevation, and the radio reception starts to sputter out. Decker shuts it off.
“Eh, I haven’t seen an exit in miles,” he says. “Where in tarnation are we?”
“I’m going to pretend you didn’t just say ‘in tarnation.’ ” I look over the dark, pixelated map printed below the directions. Whatever town we’re in now isn’t on the map. I defer to the directions.
“We’re supposed to get off at Wigwam Road,” I say.
“There.” Decker points to a sign about a quarter of a mile ahead. “That’s gotta be it.”
Decker slows and exits at the sign; there are no traffic lights to help us merge onto the main road. No other cars in sight. Just a lonely stop sign. Decker turns, and within half a mile the pavement runs into gravel, then dirt. We pass an abandoned gas station, with the old-style pumps that suggest it’s been abandoned for at least thirty years.
“I think we were supposed to make a left at the main road,” I say, after fifteen minutes of not spotting our next turn. My toes curl at the thought of getting lost up here with no cell phone signal.
“We can ask someone,” Decker says brightly, as if we were in Pittsburgh and not the freaking boondocks.
We drive for miles before we see someone—an old man in a lawn chair in front of a clapboard house, trimming his nails with a pocketknife. Decker slows down, but there’s no driveway to pull into, just grass and dirt. He shrugs and parks in the dirt.
The old man sets his pocketknife in his lap as we climb out of the car. “Well, you must be lost.”
His accent is thick, Appalachian.
“We’re trying to get to Bear Creek,” Decker tells him.
The man sits up in his chair, like this jus
t got interesting. “The hell for?” His gaze skates over me, then back to Decker. “You get her in trouble, and hiding from her daddy?”
He’s looking at my baggy T-shirt. He thinks I’m knocked up. I pull it flat across my stomach, to make a point. “We’re looking for someone.” I wave a cloud of gnats away from my face, noticing the half-eaten pear at the man’s feet. It’s swarming with black bugs. “How do we get there?”
“Back that way,” he says, almost as if it were one word. Backthataway. “Where the main road splits, stay on that.”
“Thanks, sir,” Decker says. “We really appreciate it.”
As we turn to get back into the car, the man clears his throat, and we stop.
“Y’all know what Bear Creek is?” He draws up a wad of phlegm and spits, narrowly missing the pear at his feet.
“The ski resort town?” I say.
The man rocks forward and lets out a hooting laugh. “Friendly word of advice. They don’t much appreciate folks casually dropping in up there. Spooks ’em.”
“Because they’re squatters?” I ask.
“Least of their problems,” the man mutters. “If you’re hidin’ out in Bear Creek, usually means you got nowhere else to go.”
“Whoa.” Decker looks at me. “Like, criminals and stuff?”
“Some.” The old man picks up his knife and goes back to trimming his nails. “Just don’t ask too many questions up there.”
There’s a pit in my stomach as we get into the car and pull away. Questions are all I have.
•••
We head back west on the main road.
“There.” I point at the fork in the road, a little panicked at how quickly it comes up. Decker has to slow to a stop for us to creep around the fork; the road is so narrow that low-hanging tree branches graze the side of the car.
The elevation climbs, slowly. I see a sign for a cabin rental community nestled in the trees. A sign advertises VACANCY and cash deposits.
“Is this it?” Decker slows to a stop in front of the sign. He sounds almost disappointed.
I twist around to get a better look out my window. A gravel driveway disappears into the trees, and I can see a few cabins. A woman stands over a barbecue on the nearest one’s deck. Her back is turned to us, but I can see that she’s hugging her arms around her waist.
Goose bumps run up my arms. The pose is familiar. Too familiar. My mother stood like that, waiting for me by the flagpole, the days she got out of her housecleaning job early enough to pick me up from school.
My stomach twists. The woman turns around, glares at us, and I let out my breath. She’s not my mother.
“Keep going,” I tell Decker. “Look up.”
Decker lifts his gaze; in the distance, a mountain looms, its two smooth peaks like humps on the back of a camel.
“Still got a ways to go,” I say. “We’re not even on the mountain yet.”
Decker and I continue up the road, passing a rotted-out wooden sign announcing that we’ve entered Bear Creek. There’s another sign advertising the ski resort in ten miles, the resort that closed twenty-five years ago.
The road up the mountain narrows into a concrete bridge; two men stand fishing off the side into the creek below. As Decker drives over the bridge, they stare at us. I sink lower into my seat, avoiding their gaze. I’m terrified that we’re walking straight into a potential Deliverance situation, but Decker is bouncing in his seat with excitement.
“This is a real, serious backwoods experience right here,” he says, echoing my thoughts. “And people say we’re rednecks in Fayette!”
“Yeah,” I say. “Just don’t say that too loud.”
“Right, right. Got it.” We hit a dip in the road as we roll off the bridge, and we lurch forward. Decker slides forward in his seat, catches himself, and tightens his seatbelt, even though we’ve slowed to a crawl. There’s a sign pointing up to the mountain; we’re on a narrow gravel road dotted with shacks and trailers on each side.
Two women watch us from the porch of a bait-and-tackle store. We stay on the road, because there’s nowhere else to go, and creep past a saloon, a breakfast joint in an old metal trailer, and a mini-mart.
“What a cute little town,” Decker says. “They even have a gas station.”
Decker nods toward a slab of wood with the word GAS spray-painted on it outside the tackle shop.
“Let’s park by the mini-mart,” I say, uncomfortable with how the two women are watching us. I think of the two men fishing at the bridge and wonder if everyone travels in pairs here. I’m suddenly even more thankful to have Decker as he pulls in front of the mini-mart. I hop out of the car, kicking up a cloud of dust where my feet connect with the ground.
“Y’all lost?” The voice comes from the side of the mini-mart. A man sits on the edge of his flatbed, shucking what looks like a bucket full of crawfish. Before I can stop him, Decker steps forward.
“No, sir. Visiting family.”
The man pauses, a gray, spindly creature in his grasp. My father used to say he’d never touch a fish from a Pennsylvania stream. Too much contamination from the coal plants.
“Family,” the man snorts. A bit of gray dots his beard along his jaw. He’s not wearing a shirt, and he has a deep suntan and broad, weathered shoulders. There’s a scar on one of them, like a brown dash cutting a sentence off.
I find my voice. “Her name’s Annette, but she may be going by something else. She’s fair-skinned, average weight…” I falter, suddenly realizing I can’t really remember what my mother looks like. It’s as if someone had asked me to draw her, and I’ve come up with a stick figure devoid of details. Panic creeps in; Decker is eyeing me curiously.
“Um, she has freckled arms,” I continue. “Light brown hair. And on her neck, there’s like a patch…of discoloration.”
Something flits across the man’s face. Recognition, maybe. He turns his attention back to the crawfish. “Don’t know nobody like that.”
Decker must have seen it too—the brief second where the man looked like he knew who I was talking about—because he opens his mouth. Before I can grab the sleeve of his T-shirt, Decker says, “I think you can give us a little more than that.”
The man stops cleaning the fish. “I’ll give you five seconds to get the fuck out of my face, Boy Scout.”
My heartbeat stalls. Decker’s gaze drops to where mine is—on the knife in the man’s hands. The one he’s using to clean the fish.
I drag Decker into the mini-mart. “People aren’t very friendly here,” he mutters as the door tinkles overhead.
The mini-mart is about a thousand degrees. The fans overhead do little more than blow around the hot air. The cash register is conveniently positioned next to the icebox. A sign printed on computer paper says BAG OF ICE TWO FOR $3 in bleeding ink.
The girl behind the register barely looks up at us. Her face is youthful, but she has the type of tired skin where she could look either really good for thirty or really bad for twenty.
Decker drank all the iced tea in the car, so we head straight back for the fridge where the bottled waters are. I open the fridge door and grab one, while Decker reaches for a Coke.
“Let me handle the talking this time,” I say as we approach the counter.
“Sure, sure,” Decker says.
The register girl looks up and blinks at us.
“Hi there,” Decker says. I elbow him.
“Hi,” the girl says, slowly, tentatively, as she rings up our drinks.
“I was hoping you could help me with something,” I say.
The girl tenses. “Yeah?”
“The mountain,” I say. “People live up in the woods, right?”
She crosses her arms across her chest.
I lower my voice. “I’m not here to bust anyone. I’m just trying to find someone.”
The girl scratches the back of her neck. Glances at the door. “Yeah, there’s a lot of people livin’ up on the mountain. Sheriff came and ticketed so
me a couple months ago, but they always find their way back.”
“How many houses are up there?” I ask. “If I went to look around—”
“You go knocking on doors, and you’ll be looking down the barrel of a gun.” The girl’s voice has a new sharpness to it—one that makes me think that she is older than me, after all. “If you found your own way up here, then you’re looking for someone who doesn’t want to be found.”
“Not someone,” I say. “My mom.”
The girl’s face softens a little. Next to me, Decker sticks his hands into his shorts pockets and rocks back on his heels; he has to physically hold himself back from talking.
“Is this the only place to get groceries around here?” I ask the girl.
“The next place is twenty miles south,” she says.
I describe Annette as I remember her. The girl nods, a quick, almost imperceptible dip of the head.
“Yeah. She comes in here, sometimes.”
The adrenaline zips to my toes. My mother is here. I try not to sound overeager. “When was the last time?”
She shrugs. “Last week, maybe.”
My head swims. Last week. “If you see her, could you tell her that her daughter is looking for her?”
The girl hesitates, and nods. “Should probably leave your number for her.”
She pushes a pen and an old receipt toward me. I scribble my number on the back. As an afterthought, I write Tessa beneath it.
“Thanks,” I say, breathless.
The girl nods again, holding my gaze in a way that makes me feel like I can trust her. If my mother comes down to the grocery store, she’ll know I was here, know I was looking for her.
As we leave the store, the man with the crawfish eyeballs us. He’s talking to another man now, one with a shaved head and hollow black eyes. I look away.
“So what next?” Decker asks. “Should we head up the mountain and see if your mom’s up there? My car can’t handle that terrain, but we could hike.”
“Um. I don’t know.” I give Decker a look that I hope he’ll understand means, Please lower your damn voice. The men are still watching us, and they don’t seem happy.