Everything I Left Unsaid

by M. O'Keefe

  “That’s a watering hole?” I’d been joking about a weedy watering hole last night on the phone, but this was ridiculous.

  “Kids play in it all summer, but it’s quiet now that they’re back in school.”

  “So…what is this supposed to be?” I looked at the surrounding field. It was huge. An acre at least.

  “The Flowered Manor Camp Ground,” he said.

  “You’re joking.”

  “Absolutely not.” Kevin looked only marginally affronted by my slack-jawed surprise.

  “People actually camp here?”

  “They will when you’re done.” He nudged my shoulder with his massive one and I was nearly knocked off my feet.

  “You really can’t believe the things you read in a bathroom stall,” I muttered.

  Dylan would laugh. The thought made me smile before I could stop myself and my lip split again. I licked away the warm copper tang of blood.

  Dylan.

  I remembered his laughing groan. Low and explict. Dirty, really. One of the dirtiest things I’ve ever heard. Last night, staring up at the plastic dimpled ceiling of the trailer, I’d convinced myself that the conversation had been a product of exhaustion. The fact was, stepping into the trailer for the first time, my fear slipping nervously into tentative relief, I’d been momentarily…not myself.

  It would seem only logical that after the stress and focus of the last week, I’d go a little nuts.

  And that’s what that conversation was. Nuts.

  That’s why I’m not talking to him again.

  Because in that wild nuts moment—that moment when I was just not myself—something had changed. Shifted.

  And I wanted to talk to him.

  I still did.

  Which was weird, if not terrifying, because that bikini girl in my dream looking over at that boy, saying everything was fine, whose skin was about to be shredded—I’d already been her.

  Only I had been wearing a wedding dress.

  “Come on, now,” Kevin said. “I’ll show you our tools.”

  Good. Right. Tools. Kevin led me over to a shed and opened the padlock on the door. “I’ll give you a key,” he said. “Once I’m sure you won’t steal nothing.”

  “Steal?” I’d never been accused of stealing in my life.

  “No offense,” he said. “But we’ve had some real unsavories looking in on this job.”

  Inside the shed it looked like I’d have everything I needed for campground cleanup: a tractor mower, a weed whacker. Rakes, shovels. Granted, they were all older than I was, but I could work with it. There were even some gloves and boots by the door.

  “You sure you want to do this?” Kevin looked sideways at me and I wondered what he saw. What story my scarf in August in North Carolina, my hair so black it swallowed the light, my increasingly alarming thinness, told him.

  Probably nothing good. And frankly, probably a story far too close to the truth.

  I am, after all, wearing the official costume of a woman on the run.

  “I mean…you’re a kid, ain’t you?”

  “No.” Childhood had blended right into adulthood for me, and there had been nothing in between. Like a rainbow that went from yellow right to indigo. “And I’m totally sure I want to do this.” I was used to physical labor at the farm. I liked it. And after a week on the road, I felt listless. Too in my head.

  And my head was a shitty place to be.

  “Suit yourself. Watch out for snakes.”

  “What?” I squeaked.

  “And bears.”

  “You’re joking, right?”

  He shrugged.

  “That’s not funny, Kevin.”

  “I don’t know, it kinda is.”

  Kevin winked—which was weird in and of itself—before he lumbered off, leaving me unsure if he was joking or not.

  For my own peace of mind I decided to go with joking. Physical labor—yes.

  Snakes? No.

  Bears? Hell no.

  I traded my tennis shoes for the boots and slipped on the gloves. There was a box of black garbage bags and I tucked five of them in the back of my pants. I grabbed a shovel and rake and headed back over to the weed-and-garbage-filled field.

  My feet slipped in the too big boots, but I was grateful for them when I stepped into the weeds and something squished underfoot and a wall of flies buzzed up and away.

  The smell made me gag.

  I pulled my scarf up over my nose. This is so gross.

  But it was still better than what I’d left behind.

  —

  Back home, in the flatlands of Oklahoma, I’d been able to see for miles. And at the beginning of my marriage—not the very beginning, but when I realized that the chicken potpie incident wasn’t going to be a onetime thing—the openness seemed like protection.

  Like a moat around me.

  Hoyt couldn’t sneak up on me. I could be anywhere on the property, but I’d see the dust behind his truck rising up into the sky, long before I’d even see the truck. And in all that space, that open air, that blue sky with its towering clouds, my fear was like a radio signal that never bounced back. It just went and went and went—flying out over the prairie, fading away into silence.

  And at some point during those days, at the beginning, anyway, I could empty myself of that fear. For just a few minutes. As if the dust and the work and the emptiness sucked it all from me.

  It’s not like it was a huge transformative event. Like for a few minutes, I took off my clothes and sang Broadway tunes to the corn.

  Hardly.

  I just got to not be scared for a while.

  And it was enough.

  But here in Carolina, I was surrounded by a forest and insane amounts of kudzu vine. Which truthfully—as far as plants went—had to be the scariest plant. The way it climbed and grew over anything that stood still, preserving the shape of the thing underneath but killing it dead at the same time. Like a mummy plant.

  So damn creepy.

  There were strange animals in the forest. Strange bugs buzzing around my ears. Every noise made me jump and every shadow seemed to watch me.

  Here, my fear bounced back at me tenfold.

  Like I transmitted doubt and it came back as terror.

  By the second hour of working, my entire body slick with sweat, I started to doubt if I’d gone far enough to get away from Hoyt. Because I was partially convinced he was watching me from the weeds around the watering hole.

  “Hardly seems like a job for a girl,” a quiet voice said.

  Wild, I turned, shovel over my head like a weapon.

  “Whoa, there,” said an old man, lifting one arm up in the air. His other hand held a plate. “I take it back. It’s a perfect job for a girl.”

  Heart thumping, I lowered the shovel. “Sorry,” I said, with the best smile I was capable of. “You startled me.”

  “I can see that.” The man had a silver buzz cut and wore a pristine white tee shirt with a pair of jeans. On his forearm a tattoo snake twined its way around his elbow and an eagle was swooping down from his biceps, talons stretched to grab it.

  “Here,” he said, holding out a plate toward me. “Watching you work made me hungry, so I figured you had to be starved.”

  On the plate were two pieces of bread covered in mayonnaise and ragged slices of tomatoes, like they’d been cut with a spoon. The tomatoes were so red, so beautiful, they looked like gems. The juice like blood.

  My stomach roared.

  The old man’s lip twitched. “Go on,” he said pushing the plate toward me.

  “I’m fine,” I said, squeezing my hand around the splintery wooden handle of the shovel. Hunger made me dizzy.

  He shot me a puzzled look.

  “Really,” I said. “Totally fine.”

  “Well, I’ll leave it for you, then,” he said, setting down the old plastic plate on top of a boulder.

  “You don’t need to—”

  “I got about seven hundred pounds of t
omatoes right now. I can’t eat them all myself.”

  I had this half-clear, half-fuzzy memory of one of the last times Mom and I went to church, when it must have been getting obvious Mom was sick. The various circle groups and outreach ladies had unleashed an unprecedented wave of charity upon us. Tater-tot-covered casseroles, sheet cakes, a dozen kinds of chili, clothes, and blankets knit by hand—it all just rained down on us. So much that we couldn’t carry it all. There were hand squeezes and whispered, tearful promises to Mom that I would be looked after when she was gone.

  I’d been relieved, delighted even. My fear of what would happen when Mom died was washed away in that flood of care. I had friends, I had community. I wasn’t totally alone. I didn’t need to lie awake at night scared, listening to Mom shuffle up and down the hallway, restless from the pain, and wonder what would happen to me.

  Who would take care of me?

  These people would!

  Mom smiled at those friends, my potential new families, she nodded, made two trips to the car to get it all home, but once we were home and safe and alone, she went apeshit. Dumping all that free, delicious homemade food in the garbage.

  We don’t need their pity, she’d said.

  I do, I’d wanted to cry. I need their pity. And their chili!

  We never went back to church after that and Mom died a few months later.

  “Honestly, you’re doing me a favor,” the old man lied, but he did it without blinking, without smirking.

  Oh, for God’s sake. Take the sandwich, I told myself, staring down at the juicy tomatoes resting on the bed of creamy mayonnaise. Wanting something doesn’t make it bad.

  “Thank you,” I said. “I’ll eat it in a bit.”

  I’d take the charity; I just wouldn’t eat it in front of him. Seemed reasonable.

  He nodded as if accepting my terms. “How old are you, girl? If you don’t mind me asking.”

  “Twenty-four.” Twenty-five in two months.

  I waited for that “old soul” comment I used to get a lot. Old soul was code for a lot of things, and I figured most of them had nothing to do with my soul and more to do with growing up with my mother.

  He nodded, saying nothing about my soul or age one way or another. “If I could offer a little advice, about the work?”

  “Sure.”

  “Start earlier. Out of the heat. Quit at noon. Ain’t nothing gonna come from working outside in August past noon except heatstroke. And drink more water.”

  All of it I knew, but I’d been so flustered starting the day by sleeping in. Still, it would be rude to say “I know” when all he was doing was being polite. And frankly, he’d been kinder to me in two minutes than anyone had in a very long time.

  So, I said, “Thank you for the advice. And the sandwiches.”

  In reply, he ducked his head and walked away. Beneath the thin fabric of his white shirt I saw the shadow of a black tattoo in a strange shape, like a big square.

  “I’m sorry,” I called out, though I was pretty sure I knew the answer to the question I was about to ask. “What’s your name?”

  “Ben,” he said. “Yours?”

  “Annie.”

  “Pleasure to meet you, Annie.”

  “Likewise, Ben.”

  He walked back over to his trailer, the one two north from mine.

  Ben was the man Dylan had watched.

  Why?

  Once he was out of sight I dropped the shovel and picked up the plate, nearly shoving one of the open-faced sandwiches in my mouth.

  “Oh God,” I moaned around the mouthful of food. And then again because really…I’d had tomatoes before, and mayo and toasted cheap white bread. But somehow this combination, on this day—it was transcendent.

  Flavors exploded in my mouth, sharp and sweet and tangy.

  I scarfed both of them down, and used my finger to pick up the crumbs on the old plate.

  If there were a dozen more on that plate, I’d eat them too.

  The sun blazed overhead and my clothes were soaked and exhaustion made my feet weigh a hundred pounds.

  My stomach was full, my hunger satiated.

  Suddenly, I wished I could tell my mom that sympathy, pity, or concern—whatever it was that came with those tomatoes, much like the tater-tot casseroles—weren’t anything to be afraid of. Or angry over. They were no slight to pride or self-sufficiency.

  All they were, really, was delicious.

  And when you were hungry, they filled you up.

  DYLAN

  It was late. So late it was about to be very early. The gearbox design was done, his team was manufacturing the prototype, and Dylan should be collapsed, face-first on his bed, beginning to sleep the first of two days away.

  But instead, Dylan stood at the windows, looking out at the black night.

  There was a glimmer of a campfire on the mountains on the other side of his valley, just visible through the dark trees.

  He used to camp with his brother. Well, not so much camping as sleeping outside when shit got bad with his parents. But Max had made it seem like an adventure.

  Max. He pressed his forehead against the glass. Why am I thinking about Max?

  He’d put these memories, these thoughts away. Because they hurt. Because they made him angry. Sad. Thinking about Max led to missing him. And nothing good ever came of that.

  I’m tired, he thought. Exhausted. That’s why he was thinking of Max. And Layla. Thoughts of her were a burning coal in the center of his brain. A constant hum while he’d been retooling the design.

  Was she still at the trailer park? Was she okay?

  He couldn’t outrun thoughts that something might have happened to her. He couldn’t outrun the fact that he wanted to hear her voice again. Wanted that brief and strange moment of intimacy repeated. Again. And again.

  The usual chorus of dissent was too tired to stage an intervention. He knew all the reasons why Layla was a bad idea. He just didn’t care anymore.

  This is fucking idiotic, he thought and finally grabbed the phone, because he couldn’t stand himself anymore. Just call her.

  He paused with his thumb over her number on the screen.

  It was very nearly dawn. Phone calls at this time were only scary.

  And I made a promise.

  She had to call him. It was the only way it could work.

  Resigned, he tucked his phone back into his pocket. Margaret had made him some dinner before she left and it was bubbling away on the stove.

  Margaret was his business partner Blake’s mother. And somehow the care and feeding of Dylan had slipped under her umbrella. She was his half-cook, half-housekeeper, all pain in the ass. Though he imagined she was exactly what a mother would be like, if one managed to get a good one.

  But as good as whatever she’d cooked smelled, he wasn’t hungry. Not for food.

  Two years since he’d ended things with Jennifer. He was twenty-nine years old and he lived like a monk. Margaret said it was because he had trust issues. He didn’t argue. Though Margaret was implying that he didn’t trust other people.

  Which was true—to a point.

  The person he really didn’t trust was himself.

  What would he do to someone as innocent as Layla? How would the blood and dirt on his hands ruin her?

  But Layla didn’t know anything about him. The accident. His past. His money.

  She knew nothing. And her voice had still broken with interest and desire.

  That’s what he couldn’t shake.

  It was obvious she’d lied to him about not living at the trailer park. Probably her name, too. So maybe he wouldn’t tell her about himself. Those things he didn’t want anyone to know. He wouldn’t lie; he just wouldn’t tell her.

  If she was going to pretend to be someone else, so would he.

  As long as she didn’t find out his last name, or what he’d done, he could be anyone.

  Suddenly the ache was back in his flesh. In his blood.

  Think
ing about her—the potential of her, the potential of who he could be with her—he was hard, again.

  He sighed and put his head against his fist where it rested on the window. It was dark out there, the only light the bright spark of that campfire in the distance. And it was dark in his house.

  It was dark in him. Always had been.

  How easy it would be to lick his hand, slide it into his pants, and take care of this ache. Hard and fast, until at least for a brief bright moment, he could let himself go. Let all of it go.

  But he didn’t much like easy.

  He didn’t question how he knew it, but Layla would call him.

  And he would wait for her.

  But perhaps he would send her something. Just to move things along.

  ANNIE

  The next afternoon, there were sixteen bags of garbage stacked out near the road for trash pickup. Blistering and sunburnt, I stumbled back to my trailer only to find, there on my stoop, three giant tomatoes, each the size of my fist, and a small jar of mayonnaise.

  Oh.

  I glanced around, looking for Ben. But the park was quiet in the late afternoon hush. His garden was empty. Clutching the tomatoes and the mayo to my chest I brought them back inside, a smiling squirrel with forbidden nuts.

  Despite being gross and in need of a shower, I toasted the last of the bagels that I’d bought from—believe it or not—a truck stop and slathered them with mayo and tomatoes. And I ate my lunch standing up.

  Truck stops were kind of amazing places.

  Once I’d bought the car, I made a study of truck stops from Pennsylvania down to North Carolina. And in most of them I’d been able to take a shower, as well as buy fresh fruit and some milk. And car parts, because the POS Toyota leaked oil like a sieve. Once I even splurged and had a club sandwich delivered to my parking spot. For a few quarters I’d been able to check the internet. Which I did religiously, searching the online versions of Oklahoma newspapers for news of my disappearance.

  Everyone slept in their cars at truck stops, so no one came around at dawn to shoo me away.

  If I’d wanted to, I could buy a new cell phone. A pet dog. A time-share in Florida. A gun. And jerky made out of camel meat.

  But that was nothing compared to what I could have gotten at night.