“It doesn’t matter,” Carly says.
She listens to the words as they come out of her mouth, and then later as they echo around in the cab of the truck, leaving a print of themselves, as if they hadn’t blown out the window yet. They sound terribly wrong.
“How can it not matter?” Pam asks at last. “I thought it was important to you girls.”
“It’s important to me to find him. And I will find him. I got enough to go on now. I’ll find him. You’ll see. I got all I need.”
Carly stares out the window, watching a cloud of dust follow some vehicle she can’t even see, in a far-off field that doesn’t even seem likely to have a road. They pass two girls riding bareback and double on a fine-boned gray horse.
“How?” Pam asks.
“We’ll just go there. We’ll go there and find him. Go to the market or ask everybody in town. It’s a small town. We’ll find him.”
“Awful long way for two young girls on your own.”
“We came all this way on our own.”
“And almost died doing it, the way I hear.”
Carly decides she’s done talking to Pam. She’s done talking, period. There’s nothing written into this work contract that says she has to tell her story to anybody. Justify her position to anybody. Get anybody’s permission for anything she wants to do.
She looks up to see Chester’s dogs in the road.
“I’m not going in there,” she tells Pam. “You let me off right here.”
Pam brakes in the middle of the otherwise deserted road. In the right-side mirror, Carly watches the cloud of red dust kicked up by the truck. Watches it settle behind them.
“Here?”
“Anywhere. I don’t care. Just not in there with that awful man and those awful dogs. Leave me far enough away that the dogs won’t mess with me.”
“Chester’s just—”
Carly stops her in midsentence by throwing open her door. She steps down into the road, feeling freer already. She slams the door behind her.
“What should I say you want for all this stuff?” Pam asks through the open window.
“I don’t care. Whatever he pays. I don’t care. I’ll be right here.”
A long pause, then the truck moves forward again, slowly, as if to spare Carly the bulk of the dust. It’s still plenty of dust. It settles over her like a red cloud. She brushes it off her shirt, then wipes her face on her sleeve.
Chester’s dogs follow the truck into the driveway, barking. Carly watches for a moment, but they don’t come back out.
She leans on a fence post, staring out at a long line of mountains. The sky looks bluer at the edge of them than it looks overhead. It’s a color of blue she’s never seen in a sky before. Almost a royal or a navy blue. She thinks of Jen’s pronouncement that the sky is somehow better here, then pushes it away again.
She’s still surprisingly angry. Even though she can’t put her finger on anything Pam did wrong. There’s a buckskin horse grazing on scrubby weeds in the distance, halfway between the fence and the mountains. In his general direction, Carly says, “If anybody thinks they can stop me from going to California to find him, they got another think coming.”
They ride home in absolute silence. It isn’t until the truck stops in front of Delores’s henhouse that Pam speaks to her again.
“Promise me you won’t make any decisions until Alvin comes by to talk to you. Promise me you won’t do anything. He’s not going to let you walk out of this place without a cent to your name. Without anybody looking after you. Alvin’s not like that. Besides, he has a responsibility now. To make sure you’re OK.”
Carly breathes in silence for a moment, realizing the sheer scope of her mistake. Alvin is the police. Carly just told the policeman’s wife that she and Jen are moving on alone. All the way to California. She should have known better. She should have known Alvin wouldn’t let her.
She gets down from the truck without answering.
Delores is nowhere to be found.
Jen is playing with that baby goat. The one they watched tormenting the barn cat, back when they were sitting across the road a few days earlier. Before they’d ever set foot on this property. It takes Carly back to a time when they were on their own. Unencumbered. Somehow it feels as though there was less to worry about then.
She walks up to Jen and the goat, both of whom take a minute to notice her. When they do, the goat startles. Bolts straight up in the air and then bounds three or four steps away. He stops there and looks over his shoulder at Carly. Carly is scary somehow. Jen is to play with. Carly is to run from.
“We don’t have time for foolishness,” Carly says.
Jen’s mouth drops open at the sound of her tone.
“What’s left to do, anyway?”
“We have to clean out that shed.”
“OK, fine. Let’s clean out the shed. Geez. What’re you in such a bad mood about?”
“Nothing. I mean, I’m not. I just want to get done with everything and move on. I’m just so done with this place.”
Jen follows her to the shed without comment.
“Careful opening the door,” Carly says.
“Why?”
“I don’t know. There could be something in there.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know, Jen. Just be careful, OK?”
Jen opens the shed door. Nothing runs out.
Inside they see gardening tools, pallets, a manual mower, plastic milk crates, metal gas cans, glass bottles, more paint cans, plus dozens of items Carly can’t even categorize in her brain.
“Damn,” Jen says. “This’ll be a big job.”
“Why do you think I wanted to get started?”
Jen looks up to see the baby goat wiggle back into the enclosure and try to nurse from his mother, butting hard underneath her.
“You won’t get anything from her,” Jen shouts. “I took it all this morning. Besides, you’re too old to nurse. Grow up.”
They set about hauling things out into the light.
Carly says, “How do you know how old a goat is supposed to be before it stops nursing?”
“Delores told me. Said she didn’t start milking that goat till it was high time for her little one to stop.” Jen sticks her head into the shed again. “Hey. Look. Work gloves!”
Jen tosses out three and a half pairs of heavy leather gloves. Which is good. Not everything in that shed looks like something you’d want to touch with your bare hands. It’s all been sitting a long time, and mice and insects and God only knows what have left their marks.
It takes probably the better part of an hour just to get it out where they can see it and sort it.
Jen shakes off her gloves, then takes off her hat and wipes sweat off her face with her sleeve. Carly just lets it drip.
“You’re awful quiet,” Jen says. “What’s wrong with you today, anyway?”
“Nothing,” Carly says. “I’m just thinking is all.”
Alvin comes around near the end of dinner. Just as Delores’s apple pie is being served. It’s big enough to feed an army, made in a deep, square baking dish, with a second crust covering the mountain of its top.
“Good trick on that timing,” Delores says.
“I smelled it from home,” Alvin replies. He pulls up a chair and sits. His eyes look red and tired, like he hasn’t slept enough. “So, I hear you girls met my two favorite people today.”
He’s trying to catch Carly’s eye, but she won’t allow it.
Jen says, “Leo is so cute!”
“That’s how I look at it, but I don’t guess I’m what you might call impartial.”
Alvin waits for some comment from Carly. Everybody does, it seems. But Carly isn’t talking. Talking has caused Carly enough trouble for one day.
“You want me to cut that and serve it?” he asks Delores.
“My hands ain’t broke yet,” Delores says.
He doesn’t argue with her.
She serves A
lvin first. Sets a square of pie in front of him. It’s enormous.
“Holy cow, Delores. That’s a whole dinner.”
“Do your best with it.”
More silence. A square of pie appears in front of Carly. She starts in on it immediately.
When everybody has pie, Delores sits back down at the table again. They eat in silence for a few bites.
Then Alvin says, “Miss Carly.” In a big, solid, definite voice.
Carly jumps.
“What?”
“You’re being awful quiet.”
She shrugs. Nothing more.
When the dishes have been swept off the table and into the sink, Alvin reaches out and puts his hand on Carly’s elbow. She pulls her arm away again.
“Take a walk with me,” he says.
“What for?”
“Give us a chance to talk.”
“I don’t feel like walking. All I’ve been doing is walking and working for as long as I can remember. I’m sick of it. I’m tired. I just want to sit still. Do nothing for a change.”
Alvin sits back and sighs. Folds his arms across his chest.
“Well, we do need to have a talk. One way or the other. I just thought maybe you’d rather do it in private.”
Carly sits still, silent, feeling her skin and bones set like plaster of Paris. Feeling heavier and more dead in that chair with each second that passes. She doesn’t want to move forward into the next part of her life; she can’t move backward in time even if she tries. And she doesn’t much like where she is.
Almost without realizing she’s about to, she jumps to her feet and walks the seven short steps to the door. There she stops and turns around. Alvin is still sitting at the table with his arms folded. Watching to see what she’ll do next.
“Well?” she says. “You coming or not?”
It’s nearly sundown as they scuff along. Not on the road, but in a straight line toward the big mesa, though Carly can’t imagine why. Just right into the heart of nowhere. Alvin is wearing brown cowboy boots. She watches them kick up dust.
She looks up to see a thin, grayish dog with a narrow muzzle loping along through the weeds. The animal spots them, stops, puts its head down. Watches them with suspicion.
“Get on, then,” Alvin shouts.
He picks up what only amounts to a handful of dirt, but when he aims it, the animal spins on its heels and takes off. As if anticipating the hurling of large, painful rocks.
“Whose dog?” Carly asks.
“Dog? That’s no dog. That’s a coyote.” He pronounces it as two syllables. Kie-oat. Without a long e at the end. “You never seen a coyote before?”
“I don’t think so.”
It scares her, after the fact. Even though the animal is gone now. But then she remembers that Alvin is here. No coyote would dare come after her when Alvin is here with her.
“Don’t want you and your sister leaving this place on your own,” he says.
So there it is. She knew it was out there. Waiting for her. She felt it. She’s been braced for it, seemingly forever. And now it’s landed.
Carly stops walking. It takes Alvin a step to notice.
“I thought you were my friend.”
The urge to cry bends her lower lip around. Causes it to tremble. But she doesn’t cry. She holds firm.
“I am your friend,” he says. “What kind of friend would I be if I let you and your sister go all the way to Trinidad, California, on your own? You know how far that is, girl? I bet you don’t. I looked it up. It’s nearly twelve hundred miles.”
“No way. Couldn’t be.”
“It could be and it is. I looked it up. Can’t drive over the Sierra Nevada. Can’t walk over them, either, in case you were getting any big ideas. So you have to go south to the Interstate 40, then drive all the way into Bakersfield or so. Then you have to go north for the better part of the length of California. California’s a long state.”
Carly’s still rooted to the spot, an odd cross between stubborn and scared.
“I know California’s a long state. I lived in California all my life.”
“Oh, that long, huh?”
She turns away from him and begins to walk back to the relative safety of the pink trailer.
“Hey. Hey. You,” he says, catching up fast.
“What?”
“Notice I never asked you about your mother? I never asked you if you ran away from her. Did you notice that?”
She stops. But she doesn’t look at Alvin. She keeps her gaze leveled at about their boots. Maybe the bottoms of the legs of their jeans.
“What about it?”
“Know why I didn’t?”
“No. I don’t know anything.” It strikes Carly as an expansive statement. Maybe more so than she meant it to be.
“Because a runaway, now that’s a kid somebody wants back. A mother of a runaway, now she goes to some lengths. Provides photos to the police. Calls a million times a day. I checked to see, but there didn’t seem to be anybody wanting you and your sister back. Now a throwaway, that’s another thing altogether. A mother who would do such a thing, you want to make sure not to get kids back into a home like that. Because that mother doesn’t deserve to have them.”
“Unless she died.”
Then she kicks herself for saying it. Hard.
“I see,” Alvin says. “That would be a whole different story. I’m sorry.”
“What are we supposed to do, then? Just stay here the rest of our lives?”
“You’re supposed to give me some time and trust me to figure something out.”
But Carly doesn’t trust much of anybody anymore. Just Teddy. And herself. And she’s pretty sure she was wrong to even begin to trust Alvin. He’ll try one more time to get an address or phone number for Teddy. Then he’ll turn them over to the authorities and let it be somebody else’s worry. That’s pretty much what everybody does when the chips are down. They say they care. Until you get to be too time-consuming. Too much of a bother.
“Fine,” she says. “Whatever.”
She strides for the safety of the trailer.
“That’s not what I wanted to hear you say.”
She stops dead in her tracks. Suddenly. A sundowner wind is coming up, blowing hot on her face and through her hair. Tears are leaking out no matter how hard she clamps down on the seal.
“What do you want me to say, then?”
“That I can trust you to stay put.”
“You can trust me to stay put.”
Then she stomps all the way back to the trailer. He doesn’t seem to be following. Then again, she doesn’t look back.
Without a watch or a clock, it’s hard to know how long she waits for Jen. It feels like three hours. Carly guesses it’s half that.
The longer she waits, the madder she gets. Here she is, sitting in this trailer by herself, while her sister chooses to sit inside with Delores. Are they talking? And if so, what about? What could they possibly have in common? What about all the years she and Jen have been family? What about everything Carly’s tried to do to get them both to safety? Isn’t that supposed to count for something? Isn’t that supposed to be almost impossible to breach?
By the time Jen walks though the squeaky trailer door, one look at Carly’s face stops her in her tracks.
“What?” Jen says.
Carly sniffs the air. There’s a new smell. Jen brought it in with her. For a split second, Carly thinks Jen has been smoking pot. But that’s not quite it. It’s smoky and pungent, but not quite that.
“What’s that?” she asks Jen.
“What’s what?”
“That smell. Like you were smoking something.”
“I wasn’t smoking anything.”
“Then what is that?”
First Jen seems unwilling to answer at all. But Carly just keeps staring. And the weight of her stare seems to be wearing Jen down.
“It’s white sage. But that’s all I can tell you.”
“W
hat do you mean that’s all you can tell me? Who says?”
“It’s just the way it is, Carly. It’s…it’s personal. It’s a ceremony. There’s nothing wrong with it. It just protects me and helps for grief. But it’s between the person who gives it and the person who gets it. And that’s all I can say.”
“So Delores was doing some kind of magic on you?”
“Not magic. More like…religion.”
“Not your religion.”
“Can be if I want it to be.”
“Get your stuff packed,” Carly says. Nice and calm. “We’re leaving tonight.”
“But—”
“No,” Carly says. “No buts. That’s the only way it can be.” She keeps her voice low, because of Delores and her amazing ears.
Carly gets up and begins to gather her belongings. Toothbrush and hairbrush from the counter in what they laughingly call the bathroom—the space behind the partition in the back of the trailer. Her jacket and spare shirt from the tiny half closet.
She stuffs everything in her backpack.
Meanwhile Jen sits down on the bed.
“It’s already dark,” Carly says. Barely above a whisper. “Get a move on.”
“I’m not going,” Jen says.
Then she starts to cry.
Carly walks to the bed and stands over Jen, making herself as big and as tall as she needs to be to get through this. She feels as if it’s somebody else’s body she’s standing in. As if she’s watching a movie. As if the ending doesn’t have to matter so much. Not the way it would in her real life.
“So, you’re splitting us up?” Carly asks. “After everything we’ve been through?”
And, with that, Carly starts to cry, too.
“Stay, Carly. Don’t go. If you don’t go, we won’t have to split up.”
“We have to go find Teddy. Teddy’ll take us in. You don’t know Delores will let you stay here.”
“You don’t know she won’t,” Jen says, sounding stronger.
Carly says nothing. Because she’s suddenly seized with a sick feeling in her gut. Maybe Jen isn’t just making assumptions. Jen’s spent a lot of time alone with the old woman. Maybe these things have been discussed.
“I’m not going back to live with Teddy,” Jen says. “I don’t know why you’re so sure about that. I don’t know why you think that’s such a perfect plan. Like all our problems’ll be solved the minute you get him on the phone. He’ll just drop everything and come save us, and we’ll live happily ever after. He’s not even our stepdad. You keep calling him our stepdad. He’s not. They never got married. He’s just a guy Mom used to live with.”
Walk Me Home Page 18