Whatever “this” was.
When she got inside, Wade was there. In the kitchen with her mom. They were wrapping dishes together. Her mom was up on a step stool, taking Grandma’s good dishes down and wrapping them in sheets of newspaper, then handing them down to Wade, who fit them into cardboard cartons.
Only then did Carly realize how unreal this had all seemed. Until just this moment. And how real it all was. How real it had been all along.
She stood in the kitchen entryway, her shoulder leaning on the doorframe.
They both looked up.
“What’s he doing here?” Carly asked.
Wade’s stare darkened.
“We’re leaving,” Carly’s mom said.
“I can see that. But why?”
“I’ll tell you later.”
“Tell me now.”
“OK, fine,” her mom said. Like it was Carly she was mad at. Like Carly had caused all this trouble. Like her mom had forgotten that Carly hadn’t been here a minute ago, wasn’t supposed to be here now. “You want to know? You want to talk about it right now? Fine. We’ll talk about it right now. We’re leaving because Teddy tried to rape Jen.”
Carly felt her head rock back a little. Teddy’s voice echoed in her head. Don’t believe everything you hear about me. So all her mom had to do was tell this vicious lie out loud. Then Teddy was out and Wade was in. And nobody would think any the worse of her mom for it. She’d be the heroine. The momma bear. Carly wondered why she hadn’t seen something like this coming.
“You’re unbelievable,” Carly said.
“I don’t know quite what that means coming from you right now, but go pack.”
“I’m not going.”
“Oh, hell yeah, you are. Now go pack up your stuff.”
Her mom stomped down off the step stool and grabbed up a box of dishes. Wade had barely finished taping up the top. The end of the tape hadn’t even been torn off the roll when she whisked the box away. She paused briefly to let him finish, then carried the box to the garage.
Wade stared into Carly’s eyes in a way that made her uneasy. She looked away.
“If I’d talked to my mother like that, I’d have been sorry.”
“Like I care,” she said, feeling brave.
“If you were my kid, I’d teach you some respect.”
“I’m not, though.”
Carly peeled away from the doorframe and marched upstairs.
Halfway up, it hit her what she should have said. You can’t teach respect. The person who wants it has to earn it. Those would have been the right words. But by then it was too late.
She marched into Jen’s bedroom. Jen was packing the clothes and shoes from her closet into cardboard cartons.
“Don’t,” Carly said.
“What are you doing back already?”
“Don’t pack.”
“I have to pack. We’re moving.”
“I’m not moving.”
“You have to, Carly. We can’t move without you.”
Jen’s eyes looked too wide. Like a spooked animal. Carly tried to remember if she had ever seen Jen spooked before. Nothing came to mind.
Carly flopped down on Jen’s bed.
“Can you believe this? How much does this suck?”
“I know,” Jen said. She stopped packing and sat on the edge of the bed. Near Carly’s hip. “All my friends are here.”
“She’s unbelievable. I can’t believe she did this. Wade’s going with us, isn’t he? She didn’t need to do this. She should have just told the truth. If she wanted to be with Wade, she should have said so. I’d hate her for it, of course. But not like this. Nothing could’ve been worse than this. She wants Teddy to be the villain, not her. Teddy could never be a villain. He’s too damn sweet. Nobody’s ever going to believe this, so I don’t know why she even tried.”
Jen opened her mouth to speak.
At that moment, their mom appeared in the doorway.
“Don’t talk. Pack.”
“I’m not going,” Carly said.
“Here’s how it’s going to be, Carly. You are going. That’s a legal fact. I can enforce that. The only question is whether you’re going with or without your stuff. When Jen and Wade and I get all packed up and ready to go, whatever of your stuff isn’t packed stays here. You don’t own it anymore. Now is that some kind of motivation?”
Carly sat up and looked straight into her mother’s eyes. Carly was set, planted as firmly as she had ever been in her life. But the look in her mom’s eyes matched all that. And raised it. Carly should have known. She could never out-angry her mom. Nobody could.
The moment stretched out.
“You’re a liar,” Carly said. “And I hate you for it. And I’ll never believe another word you say. And I’ll never forgive you for this. As long as we both live, I’ll never…ever…forgive you.”
TULARE
December 21
It wasn’t until late the following day that Carly’s mother looked at her as though she were some kind of alien life-form and said, “Aren’t you supposed to still be at the lake?”
Carly told her they’d all come down early so they wouldn’t get snowed in for Christmas.
It was the first time she’d spoken to her mother since the previous night.
It was the last time she spoke to her mother in months.
In fact, for all intents and purposes, it was the last time she spoke to her mother.
PART THREE
Now Again
WAKAPI LAND
May 13
“Your first job…” Delores says as they file out of the henhouse like a chain gang of two.
Carly doesn’t even give her time to finish.
“Now? We don’t even get to wait till morning?”
“Nope. You don’t. Not in this case. You’re gonna get on over to that rock pile and haul a bunch of them big rocks and put ’em at the corner of the henhouse. Build it up there, so nothin’ can get through where it’s open, thanks to you. Otherwise I’ll just have to charge you another week for every hen I lose. But first lemme show you where you’ll bed down.”
Carly looks at Jen, who looks back wild-eyed. They were ready to drop from exhaustion before they ever crossed the road to this hell. And the adrenaline has drained away now, leaving Carly trembling from her belly out. She feels like she couldn’t lift an egg. How are they going to lift big rocks?
Jen sighs.
Carly sighs back.
The door of the hot-pink trailer screeches when Delores opens it. They barely have to step up to get in.
“Go on in an’ get settled. Gotta go get Roscoe.”
Carly’s stomach tingles in fear. There’s a man here after all. She prays the man is even older than Delores and can barely move. She looks out the little round window in the trailer door, waiting to see him.
But when Delores Watakobie reappears, there’s no man. The old woman is just leading an ancient dog along by the collar. He’s liver-colored and white, with liver spots on his white legs and a big, lumpy mass on his hip.
There’s no glass in the little slit of side window. Just a screen. So Carly can move over and speak to the old woman from there.
“How come your dog didn’t bark at us?”
“Old Roscoe’s deaf as a post. And don’t we just make a great pair? I can’t hardly see, and Roscoe can’t hardly hear. Gotta put the two of us together to get one good observation. Guess our creator figures we deserve each other. You. The little one. Come along with me to the well out back and we’ll get you girls a bucket of water and a couple of cups. Got to drink plenty of water so’s you don’t die.”
Jen slips out into the night.
Delores leads the old dog to a spot by the trailer door, where he happily sets his rump back down.
She lifts one of Roscoe’s heavy, droopy ears and shouts straight in, “Watch the trailer, Roscoe!”
Roscoe curls up and goes back to sleep.
Delores Watakobie waddles aw
ay with Jen following behind.
Carly lets Jen drink her fill first, even though it seems to take a year. Then she gorges herself. The water is vaguely warm and has an aftertaste like metal. But it’s still the most welcome sensation her body can imagine.
There’s a bare mattress at the other end that looks just big enough for both of them. Jen is already making herself comfortable on it.
“We’ll get away,” Carly whispers.
Now that they’ve had their fill of water, they have half a chance to make it. Then again, Carly thinks, is half a chance good enough? What about the other 50 percent of their possibilities?
“Might be nice to be someplace for a whole week,” Jen says.
“Yeah. Someplace. But not here.”
“But we’re here now. So this is as good as any place.”
“Are you kidding? At hard labor?”
“But maybe she’ll feed us at least.”
“Shhhh. I think she’s coming back.”
Carly leans over to the window and watches the old woman waddle across the dirt to the trailer. She’s holding something, a different something in each hand, but the moon is behind her, casting shadows, and Carly can’t see what she has. But she can clearly see the muzzle of the shotgun angling up from the crook of Delores Watakobie’s right arm.
Knock, knock.
“What?” Carly says.
“Open up. Move it, Roscoe!” With an accompanying nudge of her foot.
Carly does as she’s told. So does Roscoe.
Delores hands in a woven basket with something inside it, but it’s wrapped in a linen towel and Carly can’t see what it is. Then she hands in a white glass bottle. Or a clear glass bottle with something white inside.
“Couldn’t see fit to cook eggs after you tried to get ’em on the help-yourself plan. But I got to thinkin’…even the worst jailer in the world gives bread and water. I ain’t the worst jailer in the world. So I’m givin’ fry bread and goat’s milk.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” Carly says.
“Thank you, ma’am,” Jen echoes.
“You’re welcome. Part humane and part selfish. Gotta put somethin’ in you girls to get some good work out. Now hurry up and eat ’n then get on out here. You got a lot of work to do.”
Before she can hobble all the way back into the house, Jen runs to the window screen.
“Ma’am?”
“Yeah?”
“You know what day of the week this is?”
“Friday, I think.” The old head bobs thoughtfully. “Ninety-five percent sure it’s a Friday.”
“I knew it,” Jen whispers under her breath. “I knew it all along.”
Not ten minutes after the food is gone, they’re out hauling rocks in the moonlight. Delores Watakobie supervises. As does her shotgun.
About an hour after Jen begins snoring lightly, when she’s pretty sure Delores Watakobie will be asleep, Carly checks the trailer door. To see if they’re locked in.
The door squeaks open a few inches, then hits an obstacle. She sticks her head partway through to see what the trouble is. It’s Roscoe. He’s sleeping in front of the door, which has hung up on his rump.
He lifts his head and growls at her, a low, meaningful rumble in the depths of his throat.
Carly gives up. On everything. This trip. Her life. Everything.
She curls up behind Jen and tries to get some sleep.
WAKAPI LAND
May 14
A knock on the trailer door startles Carly out of a deep sleep and a deep dream. But she doesn’t know what the dream was. The knock sends it flying. She finds herself sitting straight up, looking around, literally not knowing where she is or why. And she can’t seem to figure it out, either. It’s almost as though she’s still sleeping but with her eyes wide open. It’s a panicky sensation.
A few seconds later it rolls back over her, like a wave that had only briefly pulled away from shore. It feels heavy and ugly, a twist in her belly.
She looks around for Jen, but Jen is gone.
Another knock, startling her just as deeply.
She walks to the trailer door and opens it to that same horrible metallic scream. Looks into the face of her dreaded captor.
“What?” Carly says, already defensive. “Am I not working hard enough?”
She notices that Delores Watakobie has no shotgun in the crook of her arm. Carly could just run. But in the next breath she knows she can’t because she doesn’t know where Jen is. She can’t leave without Jen.
“C’mon’n the house for breakfast,” the old woman says, then turns and waddles away.
Carly looks around for Roscoe, but he’s nowhere to be seen.
She crosses the dirt yard and ducks into the little house. It has an oddly low doorway. It doesn’t literally force her to duck her head, but it’s lower than usual, so she does anyway. Like a reflex.
Jen is sitting on a faded old couch with a colorful blanket thrown over it as a cover. She’s holding a woven basket in one hand, examining it carefully. With the other hand she’s scratching Roscoe behind the ears. Such a dirty, smelly old dog. It makes Carly’s stomach do a quarter turn just to watch it. Or maybe that’s not the reason. Maybe it’s the fact that Jen looks relaxed and at home. Almost…content. Sometimes the moments that bring happy responses from Jen make Carly think she doesn’t know her sister at all. And her sister is all she has left. That is, until they get home to Teddy.
Jen looks up, and Carly sees it in her eyes. Something like guilt. For being caught liking these miserable surroundings.
Be patient with her, Carly thinks. That was a pretty close brush we had with…she still doesn’t want to use the awful D-word. With being nowhere. With never being found. Not in time. Jen is probably just happy to be alive and to smell breakfast cooking.
Carly sits in the kitchen—though there’s no formal division between that and the living room—at an old Formica table that looks like a throwback to her mother’s childhood. Hell, her grand-mother’s, maybe.
Jen sits down, too. Without a word.
Delores sets a heavy pottery plate in front of Carly, with three small fried eggs and a disk of the same bread they had last night.
“Thought we didn’t rate eggs,” Carly says. “You know. Since we tried to get them on the help-yourself plan.”
Delores sweeps the plate away again.
“Fine. Don’t have ’em, then. You just made Roscoe’s morning.”
“Wait!” Carly shouts.
The old woman stops, plate at about her chest level. Which isn’t very high, in the world of average-height people.
“I’m sorry. I really do want them. I’m sorry.”
The plate clatters down in front of her again.
“Thank you,” Carly says. “Thank you for making us eggs.”
Delores wrinkles her already wrinkled brow. “You got a lot of attitude, you know that? Darn shame it’s all bad.”
“My attitude’s no worse than yours.” The words come out before Carly can stop them.
She looks down at the eggs, ready to watch them disappear again. She briefly mourns their loss.
Then she looks back at the old woman’s face, just in time to see Delores toss her head back and shake, seemingly to her bones, with a weird laughter.
“Now there’s a true thing,” Delores says. “No arguin’ with you there.”
She fetches a second plate of eggs and bread and sets it more gently in front of Jen, who smiles up at the old woman. As if with some kind of affection.
First, Carly thinks, Don’t bother kissing up. She probably can’t even see well enough to tell. Then she wonders what happened while she was sleeping. How long was Jen in the house with the horrible old woman? Do they somehow know each other already? And, if so, can that be anything to smile about?
Carly waits for the old woman to sit down so she can start.
Delores only putters around at the porcelain counter. After a moment, she turns her head, as if listenin
g for something.
“Well, don’t let it get cold,” she says. “Eat.”
Carly grabs up her fork and does as she’s told.
The more real, more permanent fix to the henhouse involves first moving away all the rocks they so carefully stacked last night.
It’s still early-ish morning, with the sun on a long slant, but Carly can feel sweat running down into her collar as she works. The cores of her arms and legs feel shaky, and she can’t tell if it’s a physical or an emotional response.
Delores Watakobie is sitting in the shade, watching them. Or, at least, following with her eyes. Carly has no idea how much the old woman sees. She can never be quite sure what the old woman’s vision will hide, will allow Carly to get away with. Maybe nothing that Delores’s unusually sharp hearing won’t take back again.
Roscoe is sitting in the shade, leaning on one of the old woman’s legs, panting amicably.
The more Carly moves around the dilapidated property, the more she sees it’s not as clean as it looked from the road. Behind the house, there’s junk stored. Behind the henhouse, more junk. Old bedsprings and rolled metal fencing material. Rusted paint cans. Behind the little barn, it looks like somebody tore a vehicle of some sort apart with their bare hands.
It seems wrong to Carly to just throw or stack all that stuff behind something. Like that solves it. Out of sight, out of mind. Carly is anything but a neat freak, but it argues with her sense of order.
Someday, she thinks, I’ll have a sweet little piece of property. But not here. Someplace that’s nothing like here. Someplace that’s not so hot. And dry. And empty. And depressing. And I’ll keep it nice. Not like this.
“What’s wrong with your feet?” Delores asks. Suddenly.
It startles Carly out of her thoughts. She stops and drops her rock, careful not to drop it on her foot. Jen keeps hauling.
“Who, me? Or Jen?”
“You.”
“Nothing’s wrong with my feet. Why would you ask that?”
Her blisters are killing her. But she doesn’t want to admit it. She feels like a wounded deer being watched by two coyotes. I am not lame. I am not lame.
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