The Road to You

by Brant, Marilyn

  This was hard. I hadn’t been trying to get my way by bawling my eyes out, but Donovan didn’t know that. I hated the thought of being one of those girls who manipulated guys with her tears and, much as I wanted to go (and would go) to Oklahoma City, I didn’t want him agreeing to take me just because I’d turned into a human water faucet. I told him this.

  He leaned in closer to me and smiled. “You’re forgetting that I didn’t just meet you for the first time last week, Aurora. You’ve never been one of those types of girls. If anything—” He abruptly stopped talking, leaned back and fiddled with the corner of the tissue box.

  “If anything what?”

  I saw a fleeting grimace, as though he hadn’t wanted to reveal that much. But, nevertheless, he continued. “If anything, you’ve been too reserved with your emotions. Too careful. You’re always watching people. Hardly ever letting on what you think of them.”

  He put the box down between us on the bed. “I remember how strong you were during the memorial service. You and I were the only ones who didn’t lose it in front of everyone. I kept checking on you. Telling myself that if you could keep it together for an hour that day, so could I.”

  I exhaled and stared at him, not bothering to disguise my curiosity. During the service, I’d caught him watching me a few times, but I’d never had any idea that was what he’d been thinking then.

  He tugged a little at my shirt, a playful maneuver that normally would’ve made me smile. “And remember that barbeque we had at school when Gideon and Jeremy were just starting their freshman year?”

  I nodded. I’d been in junior high then. Donovan had been a high-school senior. But because they’d had a special event at school one night—some sort of “welcome” ceremony for the freshmen—he and I both had to go with our families.

  “I remember the badly charred hotdogs,” I said. “Unfortunately.”

  He laughed a little. “And I remember you with pigtails in your hair, sitting on the bleachers, taking in the whole scene. It wasn’t a good night for me. Lots of stuff going on at home that I didn’t want to think about. I’d thrown my jacket on a bleacher bench near you and just wanted to grab it, yank Jeremy away from there and go to Super-Tastee for burgers or fries or something. Anything edible.”

  In spite of myself, I grinned at that.

  “But, before I left, I asked you a question,” he said.

  “Yeah, you did.” I remembered every time Donovan and I had ever been alone. “You asked me what I knew about that high-school gym teacher, Mr. Morrigan.”

  “Right,” Donovan said. “‘Cause he was a dick. You’d lived in Chameleon Lake for longer than me. I figured you might know what his story was.” He looked at me. “And you did. You knew about his divorce and all the small-town gossip that came with that. You told me as much in a sentence, but you told me something else, too.”

  He moved a little closer in again. “You studied him standing there across the football field, as if you were seeing him for the first time, and you said, ‘He’s trapped. Like a lobster in a boiling pot of water with his pincers rubber-banded shut. He’s dying a slow death here and he knows it.’ And when I really looked at him, I could tell you were right. You were only twelve, but you sensed all of this stuff about him—things I just knew no one had told you—all from a quick glance. And it wasn’t like you had any bones to pick with him. It was pure insight. Amazing. And dead accurate.”

  I sniffled and he handed me another tissue.

  “So, let’s just say, that’s not a quality I’ve seen in a lot of girls I’ve met. Or guys, for that matter.” He pulled me to standing and waited until I met his eye. “We’ll go to Oklahoma City, but not just because you’re crying, okay? You’ve got good instincts and, I gotta admit, I’ve been reluctant to believe them. But I shouldn’t have been. Maybe there’ll be a solid clue over there.”

  He took a step forward and wrapped his arms around me in the first hug he’d given me since our brothers’ graduation party in St. Cloud. It brought back a rush of memories. Some sad, but some pleasurable, too. I held my breath as he pressed his body gently against mine, only long enough to brush my bangs to the side and peck a tiny kiss on my forehead. Then he stepped back really fast.

  “Minnesota is directly north, though, and I’m planning to head home just as soon as you’re done with Oklahoma,” he said. “We need to get back. We said we’d be home this weekend, and we will be.”

  “Maybe,” I murmured.

  “Definitely,” he countered. There was an intractable degree of conviction in his voice, but I wasn’t going to fight him tonight. I’d bought myself another full day of investigating, and I planned to use every second of it.

  As he turned the TV on and flipped between stations, finally settling on CBS and a repeat episode of “Hawaii Five-O,” I wiped away the last of my tears and, admittedly, felt better for having shed them.

  It wasn’t as though I thought Donovan really understood me or that the world suddenly made more sense than it had a half hour before. It didn’t. But I appreciated his efforts to reach out to me and, most of all, I was grateful he wasn’t afraid to try.

  TURNED OUT, Andy Reggio’s name wasn’t in the Oklahoma City phonebook either—something I discovered about four minutes after we got into town. Fortunately, that hadn’t been the only clue Gideon had given us. Seemed there was a place on 100 North Street that sold bikes. Motorbikes, to be exact. And I made Donovan take me there right away.

  “In the market for a Harley?” a sales guy with a scraggly salt-n-pepper beard asked Donovan when we walked in together. I’d grown accustomed to being overlooked by most salespeople most of the time, either because I was with one of my parents and the store owners were trying to win them over, or because I was with a guy, like my brother or Donovan, and everyone knew they were the ones with the money.

  Not so true in our case, though.

  Donovan hadn’t let me spend much of my own cash since we’d hit the road, so I still had a couple hundred dollars left. I wasn’t planning to use it to buy a motorcycle, but Donovan, of course, looked intrigued by them.

  “Maybe,” he told the guy, skimming his fingers down the body of a sleek red one. “Man, she’s beautiful.”

  The salesman nodded, looking half in love with the gleaming chrome and scarlet body of a motorcycle that was curvy in all the right places.

  I wandered away, hearing them delve into talk of horsepower, paint detailing and bike accessories. Meanwhile, I glanced around the shop, giving measured, deliberate attention to its wares. There were probably eighty-five motorbikes on display in a range of sizes, shapes and styles. All of them Harley Davidsons. The kind of place my brother and his best friend would have liked. It was a Route 66 “freedom on the open road” dream come true.

  I imagined a slew of college guys, perhaps just having read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, bursting into the store and impulsively buying bikes to take the rest of their way westward. Something Gideon and Jeremy might have done if they’d had the chance.

  And then there was this Andy person. If he was from anywhere in Oklahoma and was someone my brother had trusted, then they had to have crossed paths somewhere. Might have even been here.

  “Excuse me,” I said and, then, repeated it a little louder, having to interrupt Donovan and the salesman in the middle of a clearly life-affirming discussion about performance tires. “Do you know anybody named Andy Reggio? A...friend told us he might live in the area.”

  “Why, sure,” the man said, scratching the bottom of his beard where it connected to his leathered skin. “Everyone knows Andy, but he’s a Texas boy. Used to work here more, but he’s got an elderly momma living in Shamrock, so he’s gone a lot these days. Did see him on Tuesday, though. And he said he’d be in over the weekend.”

  “He’s an employee?” My excitement rose at the thought. “And he’s scheduled to work this weekend? Like, tomorrow?”

  The sales guy shook his head. “Andy’s hours ai
n’t regular like that. He works on special repair projects mostly, but he’s got a mailbox in the staff room and he checks it every day he’s in town. So, if you wanna leave him a note…”

  “Okay.” I wasn’t entirely sure what to say to Andy, but I figured it ought to be worth a shot trying to contact him. What Donovan and I had learned from Amy Lynn had been tremendous, and I couldn’t help but get my hopes up that a conversation with Andy would be just as helpful.

  The guy handed me a pencil and a slip of cream-colored notepaper. “Put down the number where you’re stayin’ and he’ll for sure get back to you. He’s real responsible that way.”

  I shot a look at Donovan, who said, “Aurora, no. We need to get going. Why don’t we give him our home phone numbers, and he can call us in Minnesota?”

  I crossed my arms, shook my head and prepared for a stare down.

  Donovan gave it his best shot, but I held out for longer. Finally, with a resigned sigh, he said, “Fine. We can stay at the motel down the block for tonight. Just tonight.”

  “Great!”

  He chuckled at my burst of enthusiasm. “You get to write the note, though. I’ll go check us in quick so you can tell him our room number.”

  It took me almost the whole twenty minutes he was gone to compose a five-sentence message, but it had to be written just right. Something anyone could read without raising suspicion. In a spurt of inspiration, I finally scribbled:

  Hello, Mr. Reggio,

  I think my brother Gideon and his friend may have visited your shop two summers ago. Do you remember them? Perhaps they’ve come back to see you since? My brother thought highly of you, and I’d love to hear about your meeting. Please call room #6 at the Prairie Pine Lodge tonight, if you’re able, and thank you.

  Sincerely,

  Aurora

  Donovan, who’d returned with the room key, okayed my note with a shrug when he read it. I’d purposely avoided mentioning anyone’s last names, and I hadn’t even given out Jeremy’s first name. Amy Lynn had known exactly who I’d been talking about when I called her in Chicago. This Andy guy would have to bring some extra knowledge to the table before I’d believe we could trust him, too.

  The call, when it came that night, wasn’t quite what I’d expected, though.

  “Mrs. McCafferty?” the weary front desk clerk asked when he telephoned our room at 10:37 p.m.

  “Um, yes?” I still wasn’t used to being called that, no matter how many times Donovan and I lied to motel clerks about being married.

  “I hope I’m not waking you or your husband—”

  I gazed at Donovan, who was sprawled on the bed, flipping with great amusement through last month’s issue of Seventeen magazine, which he’d found on the nightstand. He sat up fast when I caught his eye.

  “—but the lodge just received a call from a delivery service asking us to make sure you received your package. Should’ve been dropped off by your door tonight.”

  “At our door?” I asked. “Let me just check.”

  But Donovan jumped off the bed and raced me there, literally pushing my hand away from the knob and motioning for me to stay back. He first glanced through the peephole. Then he shoved aside the heavy curtains to look out the front window and, finally, spotting nothing yet that alarmed him, he cracked the door open—leaving the chain still on—and cautiously peered into the night.

  A large, thick, light-brown mailing envelope leaned against the doorframe.

  Donovan prodded at it a time or two with his fingers, then he snatched the package and pulled it inside the room.

  “Uh, yeah. Thanks,” I told the desk clerk. “We did receive it.” I said a quick goodnight to the guy and hung up, watching as Donovan cautiously sliced the side of the large envelope open with his pocket knife. “What’s in it?” I asked him.

  “Papers. Lots of them.” He showed me the stack of sheets he’d pulled from inside the package. There were a bunch of newspaper clippings, a few mimeographed pages of what looked like police reports and a neatly typed note paperclipped to the top of the stack. Donovan unclipped it and handed it to me. “You should read this.”

  I took it from him and scanned the page. It said:

  Aurora,

  Got your message at the bike shop tonight. Last time I saw Gideon, he told me that if you ever came looking for me that I should give you this packet. It has some info about what happened in Amarillo, and he said you’d know what that meant.

  I really liked meeting both your brother and his buddy Jeremy and wished we all could’ve talked for longer.

  It’s late and I need to head back to Texas real early in the morning, but if you have any questions, just leave me a message at the bike shop with the direct phone number to wherever you’re staying tomorrow. I can give you a call from Shamrock later in the day.

  Andy R.

  Donovan and I spent half the night going through the clippings page by page. Unlike the two brief newspaper announcements we’d read on the microfilm at the public library in Joplin, these actual pages were from several Texan newspapers, a few of them smaller, less conventional publications. They contained longer and more speculative passages about Americana Trucking and the Amarillo disaster in early August 1976. And though the information provided might have been less reliable than a mainstream paper, it did seem to fill in some possible missing gaps.

  According to one clipping, the driver of the truck, whose name was still not officially released to the public, “disappeared after the incident, but a search of private Americana correspondence suggested that a trucker with a last name of Chaney was reported missing from work the following week.”

  Another clipping stated that “there was one man confirmed dead on the scene and, though the police would not verify the identity of the victim, a hospital source leaked his name to be Rick Brice of Chicago, IL.”

  There were mimeographed pages of police reports that showed this Rick Brice person as being “a former Chicago cop, wanted in connection with some still-unsolved labor union dispute that resulted in the mysterious deaths of two union leaders back in 1974.”

  “Can these be real reports?” I asked Donovan, who looked alarmed when he read what they said.

  “I don’t know,” he replied. “Maybe. But how would your brother have gotten them?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Still, the name of the guy mentioned looked unsettlingly familiar to me and, when I flipped back through my translation of Treak’s shorthand notes, I saw why. The name and place, Rick Brice - Chic, stared up at me from the middle of the page.

  But that wasn’t all.

  There was another police report for Timothy Wick, that Americana Trucking executive who’d gotten jail time for his involvement in ordering the explosives to be shipped to Albuquerque. The private report stated that he had “a verified association to Chicago crime boss Vincent Leto and to Leto’s right-hand man, Rick Brice.”

  Guess whose name and city was right above Rick Brice’s on Treak’s note page?

  Yeah. Vincent Leto - Chic.

  Somehow all of these bad men—Leto, Wick, Brice and more—were connected. And somehow my brother had an important reason to be interested in them.

  AS SOON as the bike shop opened the next morning—“Not ‘til ten o’clock on Saturdays, dammit,” Donovan muttered—we telephoned them and left a message for Andy to call us at the Prairie Pine Lodge.

  “You realize this means at least one of us has to stay here all day,” I told him. “We’re not missing this call.”

  He was striding around the room like a wild animal held in captivity, but he nodded. “Dammit,” he said again. “Why couldn’t he have just come over last night? Talked to us then? He had to know we’d have a thousand questions.”

  “Maybe, maybe not.” For the trillionth time, I flipped through the pages we’d gotten the night before, shaking my head. “We don’t know what Gideon told Andy about Amarillo when he gave him these papers. Or when my brother gave them to him.
It could’ve been a year ago. We don’t know how well Gideon and Andy even know each other, just that my brother must have had a good reason to think him trustworthy.”

  “Well, we were supposed to check out of here by noon,” he said. “You’re right. We can’t drive home until he calls us back, but that might not be for hours.”

  “Look, why don’t you go out for a little while? Get some fresh air,” I suggested.

  “I don’t feel comfortable leaving you alone here.”

  “I’ll be fine,” I said. “See if the desk clerk will give us a later check-out time. It’s possible, if no one’s waiting for the room, they might let us stay until three or four this afternoon.”

  He shrugged. “Worth a shot, I guess.” He slipped on his sneakers. “I’ll get us something else to eat, too.” He tossed the now-empty bags of cookies and potato chips into the trash bin with a heavy sigh.

  “Some fresh fruit, perhaps?” I suggested, given that we’d eaten nothing but junk food for the past twenty-four hours.

  He laughed. “Yeah, okay. Some fruit…and maybe a couple of Kit Kats.”

  I smiled and watched Donovan close the door and, for my safety, lock it securely behind him. “Don’t open this for anyone,” he threatened from outside the room.

  “I won’t,” I called back.

  He might not be quick to think of healthy dining options, but he never stopped remembering his promise to my dad to protect me. And, on top of that, every night—unfailingly—he was a gentleman when it came to our sleeping arrangements. If we could get a room with twin beds, he opted for that. If we couldn’t, he scrupulously stayed on his side of our double bed.

  In an irritating way, he’d taken on the role of both father and brother for this trip. I sometimes wondered if he ever even saw me as that girl who had once kissed him at our brothers’ graduation party. If he ever even thought of me as someone who would become a legal adult in just a week.

  Donovan returned to the room long before the phone rang, bearing a bottle of orange juice, crunchy red apples and fresh chicken salad on sliced wheat bread. He also brought news of a new four p.m. checkout time and was in possession of two slightly melted Milky Way bars.