Wandering Wild

by Jessica Taylor

  Now it’s time to make the switch from Wen to me. If Spencer refuses to play me, then we’ll have to take our chances with Wen, who’s only a fair player.

  I have a good feeling about Spencer, though. He’ll play me. Or I should say: let me play him.

  I pull two tens from my pocket, all I’ve got on me, set them atop Spencer’s bill, and take the cue from Wen.

  Hair hangs over Spencer’s right eye as he glances up from racking the balls. He’s still wearing that smile. “We really don’t have to play for cash.”

  “You’re insulting me, Spencer. It’s fine.”

  I close in on the table, and he pushes the hair from his eyes, those unruly strands the only thing out of place on him.

  Spencer Sway was no doubt born right here in Pike and is destined to die here, too, with his kind, light brown eyes, jeans a dark indigo like they’ve never been washed, and plaid shirt that’s all perpendicular lines and starch.

  I almost feel sorry for him. Every few months, I wake up somewhere new, with the forest, the river, or the ocean right outside the windows of my tent trailer. He’s trapped in this finite, small-town world while I have infinity at my fingertips. While the world is mine.

  “Would you like to break?” I say.

  Spencer chalks his cue stick. “Do you want me to?”

  “Oh, I think I can manage.” I brush my hand across his upper back as I navigate around him. His shirt feels stiff against my fingertips. Most of our clothes are threadbare and worn in a way that makes them so deliciously soft against our skin. Except Wen’s. He never keeps anything around too long. He prefers the finest button-downs we can swipe from department store shelves.

  The balls explode outward from my sharp break, two stripes disappearing in a corner pocket. It’s murderous and beautiful and everything I love about the game of pool.

  It kills me to have to miss the next shot, but it’s necessary.

  I line up my cue, strike, and the ball barely rolls a few inches down the bed.

  “Don’t worry about it,” says Spencer. “That was really good for a beginner.” He takes his turn, sinking a solid. “So you’re in town for a real estate thing. What kind of a transaction?”

  “You’re just full of questions, aren’t you?”

  “Guess so.” A cocky little smile spreads across his lips. “And I have a feeling you’re full of secrets.”

  I rest my elbows on the edge of the table, cradling my cheek in my hand while I look him up and down. “Our parents are transferring some property, if you must know. One of their old summer homes they’re sick and tired of.” I nod to the silver watch wrapped around his wrist like an expensive handcuff. “I’m sure you know a thing or two about discarding unwanted toys.”

  The cue pauses between his fingers. “Ouch.” Right then, Spencer makes a combo bank shot. This game is turning disastrous fast.

  “You’re breaking my heart, Spencer Sway.”

  He grins, lining up his next shot. I hold my breath, willing him to miss. He does.

  “Watch your weight distribution this time.” Spencer steps behind me, his boat shoe nudging my left foot backward. “Keep your left foot about two feet behind your right.”

  I take a long drink from my Coke, wipe my mouth on the back of my hand, and kick my shoes off. “Thanks for the tip.”

  Wen meets my eyes. I’m forgetting myself, caring more about the win than discretion. Letting my rules become a casualty of this game.

  “Fourteen ball, corner pocket,” I say.

  Wen shakes his head slightly. The key to hustling is to avoid pocketing too many impressive shots, or the mark knows he’s being had; at least that’s what I’m always telling Wen. Breaking my own rules isn’t wise.

  “That’s a difficult shot, Amy.” Spencer actually sounds a little concerned I’m getting myself in a pickle. He’s right about it being tricky. It’s one most players would miss. One a novice shouldn’t even attempt.

  What Spencer doesn’t know is that I am no novice.

  I blow the hair clear from my eyes as I bring the cue in line. Wen gives me a look sharp as glass. I ignore him and shoot the fourteen ball into the corner pocket.

  Spencer slides his hands deep inside his pockets and grins. “Impressive.”

  Wen stands away from the table with his arms crossed. “Beginner’s luck.”

  It takes every drop of restraint to miss the next shot.

  Spencer lifts up his cue, aims, and one after another, sinks the last of the solids. “Eight ball, side pocket,” he calls.

  All the blood drains from my face as the ball disappears from sight.

  If I had forty more dollars, I’d snap my fingers and say, “Double or nothing.” But I’m broke, and I’m honestly not sure I’d win anyway.

  He’s living proof I can be conquered.

  Collecting the cash from the edge of the table, I fold our money in half—his and mine—and walk to him, the crisp bills as good as disintegrating in my palm. I plant one hand on his chest and, with the other, drop the money into his shirt pocket.

  “Good game.”

  His cheeks darken as he retrieves the bills. “Take your money, please.”

  Wen’s words are hurried. “That’s really nice of you—”

  “You take it,” I interrupt, pushing Spencer’s winnings away. “It’s yours.”

  “No, really, I was just having fun. Been playing pool with my dad since I could see over the table.” He arches closer and brings his mouth beside my ear as he whispers, “I didn’t mean to hustle you.”

  The words pour over me, seeping into all the places where embarrassment settles and never lets go.

  I didn’t mean to hustle you.

  “Spencer.” I squeeze my hand around his, making his fist swallow up the money inside. “I insist.”

  As my brother and I step onto the dusty sidewalk outside, dazed and squinting against the sun, clarity washes over me like ice water. There won’t be any pizza tonight or any winnings to take to camp or any explanation that will satisfy Boss.

  I failed, and I’ve offered up my little brother as sacrifice.

  CHAPTER 3

  It’s just on the other side of the forest, that place where our existence bleeds into theirs. That’s where our new home always is, though the whole caravan is sweaty and road sick and dying for me to pick the exact spot.

  We’re parked a few miles outside of Pike, Wen and me and the rest of our Wanderer camp. Wen’s at the wheel, and I’m gooping another coat of red polish onto my toes.

  Lando, Boss’s son, stands beside me at the Chevy’s passenger window, baking under the summer sun in his crisp pin-striped wool. He dresses like his dad is dead and he’s been made Boss already, strutting around the dusty camp in his fine suits.

  “My temper’s getting hotter than a two-dollar pistol,” Lando says. “I do believe your talent is waning, Talia, and so is your usefulness.”

  Wen’s grip is nervous on the wheel, one hand squeezing tight and the other stroking the scabs on his knuckles.

  I twirl the ring on my finger, this oversized faux thing I stole from a secondhand store near Montgomery. “Does Boss think my talent is fading?”

  Lando ducks out of the sunlight and under the shadow of our truck. He isn’t much older than me, but he looks it—living out in the open has aged him at least ten years past his twenty-something.

  “You listen to me.” Lando stabs his finger through the air. “What my father thinks is none of your concern.”

  I’ve hit a sore spot, bringing up the idea that Boss might trust me more than he does his own son.

  “I’ll take that as a no. So I suppose I’m still your compass, and I suppose I’ll let you know when we’ve arrived.”

  A compass. It’s the only lie I’ve ever told that’s become unmanageable.

  Why Boss lets me choose our new destination—why he calls me his compass—I don’t exactly know. I am our camp’s compass simply because Boss proclaimed it. And because Boss says
it’s so, I am.

  I was seven the first time I chose the camp’s direction. We drove and drove until the light gray sky turned black and then light gray again. Rona was behind the wheel of Mom’s Chevy, with me balanced on top of a small ice chest in the passenger seat, clinging to the handles for dear life, and Wen low in the middle between us.

  It was some time after Mom got put away. I know it, because Rona, who was—and I guess still is—our mom’s best friend, was in charge of us by then. It could have been two years or two days after; I couldn’t say. Maybe childhood memories are that way for everyone—markies and Wanderers the same. But for Wanderers, I suppose, those memories are even more vague. When nothing is the same from day to day, there’s no anchor, only ambiguous, timeless, placeless years that flow together.

  All I remember is the trees rushing past our windows, their branches interlocking and turning the road into a tunnel. Wen ducked low as our truck passed beneath them, like the trees might smack him in the head.

  I was tired of driving, of staring at the taillights of an RV. The more restless I became, the less I worried about causing a ruckus. At the fork in the road, Rona came to a stop and cranked the wheel hard left.

  “Stop!” I shrieked. “Stop! Stop! Stop!”

  Rona slowed, and while her tires were still spinning, I pulled on the door handle and rolled off the ice chest and onto the road.

  It was a stupid thing to do—a childish fit—but I was a child.

  I took off, running over the edge of the asphalt, between trees and over brush until the tantrum inside me calmed to a quiet still.

  The whole caravan had come to a halt when I jumped out, all of them filing from their vehicles and searching past the boundless line of trees. All looking for me.

  Lando was the one to find me. He grabbed a handful of my hair and wrenched me by my roots all the way to the Chevy. I fought him the whole distance with nails and teeth and swift kicks to his shins.

  Rona was hysterical, pleading with him to let me go.

  Lando froze when we heard Boss’s wheezing—this was back when he could still talk—through the open window of his air-conditioned RV.

  “Let me speak to the girl,” he said. Boss’s legs had long since gone out, so Rona lifted me up to reach him. I clung to the frame of the window while his soft hand covered mine. “What’s the problem, child? Do you have some reason you feel we should be here?”

  “Uh-huh,” I said. It was a lie, though.

  “What did it feel like?”

  “Like—like I just had to get out of the truck.”

  “Ah, yes. A tugging from within you, telling us we should camp here?”

  I nodded.

  “And so we shall.” He looked past my shoulder, scanning across the bank where I’d been standing. “The Spirit of the Falconer,” he said with reverence. “He’s revealed your talents. You are our compass. From now on, we won’t find our luck, Talia. Our luck will find you.”

  From that day forward, I became our compass, building lies around this fictional tugging inside me that took us to lucky places. Not everyone in camp believed right away. No, that took time. Time, and another lie. But now everyone calls me their compass. Everyone except Lando. I’m not sure he’s ever believed in me.

  I take the camp wherever I claim that feeling inside me tugs. North, east, south, or west. What nobody knows—not even Wen—is that I’m the one doing the picking.

  My talent is a lie. And there’s nothing I do as well as lying.

  “We’re close,” says Wen to Lando, arching across me and speaking in his confident mid-con way. “Don’t you think we’re close, Tal?”

  Lando leans deeper inside our truck when I don’t answer. “You said we were close back ’round the other side of McClellanville, Talia.”

  “Well, now we’re a hell of a lot closer.”

  He kicks at a patch of ground, sending up a dirt cloud around his black pants, and points a finger at me. “You better take a shine to somewhere before nightfall.”

  He walks off toward the fourteen vehicles idling on the side of road—RVs, campers, and trucks—our whole caravan.

  Wen starts the engine. “You like getting a rise out of him. It’s no good, Tal. No good.”

  Soon everything will be Lando’s, us included. When that happens, I don’t know how we’ll keep going, how we’ll keep our wheels on the road. The only change scarier than Lando in control is sitting still.

  In the side mirror, I watch the rest of camp trickle into line behind us. We could settle here. That was my plan all along—to pick a spot near Pike. Now I’m dead set on getting far away from this town. I can’t chance ever coming across Spencer Sway again.

  We drive another hour or so, toward the wide blue sky, with me whispering a few vague directions at Wen.

  “Am I on the right track?” he asks.

  I open one eye. “North for three more miles.”

  When my “gift” made its miraculous appearance, Wen was five years old, a kid who might not hold my secret so close to his heart. I’d tell him now—how the aching, the tingling, they’re figments of my imagination—if I didn’t know he’d be hurt by years of my deception.

  I pick a place a short distance ahead, a dirt road leading off the mountain into a patch of trees. That’s the spot I’ll tell Wen to turn.

  I wonder what would happen if I claimed we were supposed to be on the other side of the world. What would they say if that fraudulent feeling took me where our wheels couldn’t travel?

  In the rearview mirror, Rona guides her Mazda truck behind us.

  Wen catches me looking and says, “I think you need to stop giving Rona the silent treatment.”

  “And I think you need to pay attention to the road.” I notice Wen isn’t braking for our turn at the same time I realize I never told him to make it. “Hey, hey, slow down. Left here.”

  He brakes so hard the tires screech, and the tent trailer we’re hauling gallops.

  The truck ambles down the road to the place where cement ends and dirt road begins. Wen steers us around potholes as best he can. The seat bucks under my hips as he yanks the wheel straight.

  “Up there.” I point to a clearing.

  Wen slows the truck under the cover of high-up branches.

  They come. The last of the trucks and RVs and cars fall in behind us. Eleven families—thirty-eight of us, in all—circle up vehicles and trickle into the woods.

  The sun dips low in the sky, and we keep our hideaway aglow with lantern light to finish settling in. Wanderers carry baskets and boxes, building a home beneath the shadow of trees.

  “It’s a lovely day for moving,” says Wen.

  “Yes,” I say. “Yes, it is.”

  CHAPTER 4

  In the clearing, a few miles north of a town called Cedar Falls, we’re safe from discovery. It’s a curious thing how nobody finds us, with us parked right beneath the great big sky, in the stretches of wilderness sprawling between markie homes.

  I suppose I’m the only one who lies in the dark at night half asleep and prepared for that moment when an outsider stumbles into our camp. It wouldn’t take much: a crop duster flying overhead, a lost troop of Boy Scouts peeking through the pines.

  Everyone in camp is sure it won’t happen—just as certain that no outsider will plant one toe inside our camp as they know the sun will come up tomorrow. They believe we’re protected—that the Spirit of the Falconer protects us. No matter how hard I try, I can only stretch my beliefs so far before they get so thin they disintegrate.

  We sit around the fire at the heart of camp, ice chests for chairs and no ceiling except the night sky. Smoke burns my throat while we eat a dinner of barbecue and iced tea.

  Through the flames of the campfire, Sonia’s stare catches me. Her eyes are blurs of smudged eyeliner and mascara. There’s a longing there, in her eyes and inside my chest.

  For most of my life, I thought Sonia was my best friend. Now something’s shifted. I want to find a way t
o glue those pieces back together, but there’s nothing I can do to make them fit, especially now that she’s pregnant.

  Wen balances his paper plate on his knees as he mops up barbecue sauce with his napkin. “To think, we could have had pizza tonight.”

  “He won the game,” I whisper. “It was only right he keep the money.”

  “When did your moral code make an appearance?”

  I silently sip the last of my iced tea because I’m all out of answers, and his questions are limitless.

  While my dinner is still digesting, I lose Wen to a pack of whooping boys.

  His words linger.

  I’m not sure when my moral code showed up or if it was always there, under the surface like a disease, waiting for the day when some markie would actually beat me fair and square. If that’s true, I’m in desperate need of a cure.

  Rona crooks her finger for me. I pretend I don’t see her and play with the strands of leather that have come unbound from my bracelet.

  It isn’t long before the blanket shifts, and she crouches beside me. I tuck my legs to my chest, resting my chin in the dip between my knees. We haven’t spoken since we left Greenville—that was four days ago. In a way, we haven’t spoken in months.

  “Wen told me what really happened today,” she says. “About that markie giving you the runaround, getting the best of you. Damn if I can’t believe he beat you.”

  When it was time to hand in our offerings to the family bank, we had to give an explanation for our empty pockets. We didn’t tell the truth.

  “Yeah, even a blind squirrel finds an acorn every now and then.”

  Her fingers comb through my hair and catch on the tangles the rolled-down windows made. “Honey, I won’t tell nobody.”

  I nod a little, tapping my chin against my kneecaps.

  “Your hair is so long now. And dark. Much darker than Greta’s at your age.” That name steals my breath. It’s been years since I’ve heard my mother’s name pass anyone’s lips. “You haven’t let me cut it since Kentucky.”

  Gathering my hair up in one hand, I pull it over my shoulder and outside her reach. “I like it long.”