The Secret Life of Sam

by Kim Ventrella

  Aunt Jo revved the engine. The Big Mouth Bass started singing again, its death rattle echoing against the walls of the dumpster. Sam watched Baby Girl rumbling in the same patch of grass where Pa always parked, and he couldn’t help thinking of the Sunbird sitting in a junkyard somewhere, the front end a tangle of ugly, twisted metal.

  Something inside Sam snapped.

  He shot up, the De Havilland bomber tumbling from his lap, and made a beeline for the gray dumpster taking up half the yard. It looked like the back of a semitruck, only the top was open and it didn’t have any wheels. He started kicking it first, his sneakers clanging and vibrating against the metal. Then kicking wasn’t enough and he started punching, and then, when his knuckles hurt too bad to keep it up, he slapped it over and over with his open palm. Then with both palms.

  The whole time, Aunt Jo waited in the car, the engine idling and pumping out smoke. Sam’s toes and hands and arms ached, but it was like the feeling you got after staying out too long in the cold. They hurt deep down, but on the surface he didn’t feel anything, despite the blood trickling over his torn-up knuckles. He stood there for a long while, thinking how he should run away and where he would hide and how he’d come back out of the woods when the garbage men came to protect all of Pa’s things.

  But he didn’t run away.

  The car grumbled and popped, and inside Aunt Jo stayed quiet. The muggy breeze dried his bloody hands, and he could hear Pa’s beer-can wind chimes clinking all the way from the back deck. He didn’t know why he did it, not exactly, but he went back to the porch and picked up his plane. Two of the propeller blades had snapped, and a crack ran up the left wing. He slid the broken blades into his pocket and climbed into the car.

  It smelled like pine air freshener and Aspercreme and old Kleenexes. It smelled like a coffin filled with old bones and dead air. He settled the plane on his lap. The hinges squeaked as he slammed the car door with a hollow thud. He didn’t look at Aunt Jo, and she didn’t say a word as she put the car in reverse and then started the slow grind down the long, narrow driveway.

  Once they reached the smooth asphalt of Route 4, Aunt Jo switched on the radio. Instead of normal music, an airy voice crackled from the ancient speakers.

  “You are enough. Spread out your arms and embrace the universe. You are worth rooting for.” Behind the airy voice, ocean waves crashed.

  “Hope you don’t mind,” Aunt Jo said, tapping the stereo that, seriously, had an actual cassette player. “It’s my positive-affirmations tape. Thought it might be good for the drive.”

  Great. Sam rolled down his window using the rusty crank, but it would only go halfway. Whatever. At least it let in the humid air and drowned out the annoying positive affirmations, whatever the heck those were.

  They drove for hours on a two-lane road surrounded by wild, stooped-over trees. His cheeks grew red and raw from the wind and his eyes stung like sandpaper, but he refused to roll up the window. At least this way he didn’t feel so trapped. At least this way he didn’t have to think about Pa and the Sunbird and the way he must have felt on his last ride.

  “Your pa grew up in Holler,” Aunt Jo said, turning down the tape and speaking loud so her voice carried over the wind. “He ever tell you that? Back then it was me and your pa against the world. People couldn’t believe we weren’t twins, even though I was a year younger and a foot taller. That’s ’cause we were both what people called wayward souls. When we weren’t getting into trouble, you could be sure we were plotting and planning.”

  Sam looked over just long enough to see Aunt Jo studying him out of the side of her eye. He turned back to face the window.

  “We were supposed to head out together, the day after my graduation. Our next big adventure. Save up enough to buy a car and then drive out to LA or New York City and see where the road took us. Then I won Baby Girl, and all that changed. Your pa never had been any good at waiting.”

  Sam sat there wishing she’d hurry up and finish her story, get it over with already, but she drove on in silence. Probably this was part of some secret plan to get him talking, but he didn’t care. So what if he talked? That didn’t mean she won. Besides, where did she get off accusing his pa of being impatient?

  “So what happened?”

  Aunt Jo sucked in a deep breath and let it out again, giving Baby Girl’s dashboard a pat. “Your pa took off in Baby Girl first chance he got. I woke up one morning and found a note taped to the garage. ‘Sorry, Jojo. Got itchy feet. See you at Thanksgiving.’ And he was true to his word. Three months later he showed up on the doorstep like nothing ever happened. Got this paint job done up and everything, as a way to make it up to me, but Pops was spitting fire.”

  “Where’d he go?” Sam said. He had more questions, too, but each word was like a rock scraping its way up his throat.

  “How should I know? But that’s your pa for you. Always chasing after something. Same happened the summer he had you. Quit a perfectly good job at the gator farm to go off wandering around the mountains. How he came back with a baby in three months’ time, God only knows, but there you were.”

  “And Ma?”

  Aunt Jo got quiet. The car slowed and then sped up again as she shifted in her seat. Sam already knew part of the story. That Pa had fallen in love up on that mountain, and that he wasn’t Sam’s real dad, at least not in the biological sense, but that had never mattered a lick to either of them. Sam also knew that Mama had died when Sam was young, too young to remember her, except for what he’d seen in pictures. And whenever he asked how Mama died, Pa would clam right up, like someone had sealed his lips with a strip of duct tape.

  “What’d he tell you about her?”

  Sam watched Aunt Jo with her bulky, awkward shoulders, her droopy elbows and thin, chapped lips. True, they were family, but she was a stranger to him too. A face he hadn’t seen in so long he’d just about forgotten it, not all that different from Mama.

  “I want you to tell me.”

  He could see her thinking it over, her jaw bones working back and forth beneath her skin. They passed a billboard for Big Al’s BBQ Shack and Gator Farm, and Aunt Jo yawned. “Pit stop up ahead. Don’t know about you, but I could use a snack.”

  Sam just stared at her, but Aunt Jo kept on driving like she didn’t even see him. Like she could erase his words with a yawn and an offer of snacks. Well, two could play at that game.

  They ate in silence at Al’s BBQ Shack, sitting in a sticky vinyl booth by the window. Every time Sam went to swallow, it felt like he was forcing down a mouthful of rocks. He left most of his ribs on his plate and then went out to the car while Aunt Jo waited for a to-go box.

  Neither of them spoke at all after that, except Aunt Jo, who said, “Go buggy,” and punched the roof of the car every time they passed another VW Bug. Most of the time, when he looked over, she had one hand on the steering wheel and the other on this ugly poker chip she wore on a chain around her neck. As they headed out of Louisiana into Texas, Aunt Jo finally switched to talk radio for a while, until the voices got all choppy and turned to static. Aunt Jo didn’t seem to notice.

  About eight hours into their drive, they crossed the Red River into Oklahoma. As soon as they did, the wind picked up and rattled the half-open window like an invisible tornado. Sam stuck his head into the wind tunnel and let the drone fill up his ears and shake loose his dark thoughts.

  Something about that wind shook loose more than his thoughts too. The back of his throat got tight, and heat surged into his cheeks. The next thing he knew his face was throbbing and wet, just like some little crybaby.

  Aunt Jo turned off the radio, but he couldn’t stop the tears from coming—like one grape-soda earthquake after another, they shook his entire body in waves. He felt the car slow down and then bump its way onto the shoulder. Aunt Jo put the car in park. He wished she’d turn the radio back on or say something, but she just sat there.

  After a while she rested a heavy hand on his shoulder. The weight of it
helped to steady his breathing, and the waves smoothed out and his body went quiet. He sat there feeling like an old rag left out in the rain and wondering how his cheeks could ache so bad after only one round of tears. Once again, he was glad for the open window and the dry, hot gusts whipping past his face.

  “Your pa loved you, more than you could know.” Aunt Jo gave his shoulder a squeeze and let go. “And he was proud of you. I know I haven’t been around, not like I should.” Her voice grew tight, like maybe she was a big crybaby just like Sam. “But I can tell you that much.”

  Sam didn’t know what to say to that since they were just words and didn’t change anything, but some of the anger in his heart had drained away, and when Aunt Jo pulled back onto the highway, she switched the radio on and turned it to some real music. Twangy bluegrass, just like Pa would have liked.

  It turned out that Oklahoma looked a lot like Louisiana, only if you emptied out all the trees and flattened out the hills until all you had were wide-open fields and dead grass. Sam wondered if they had any gators, or for that matter, any swamps.

  “Not long now,” Aunt Jo said as they bumped over a set of railroad tracks.

  Sam watched out the window as fields of wheat and corn flitted past, broken up by the occasional electrical-power plant.

  “Sign’s up ahead.” Aunt Jo slowed down as they passed a hand-painted sign: Welcome to Holler, Oklahoma, only the letters were so worn and faded that all he could see were gray ghosts where the words should have been. The road turned from asphalt to gravel and the vibration made Sam’s teeth clack. Off to his right, he saw what looked like a Greek ruin complete with ivory columns sitting alone in a sea of overgrown grass.

  “That used to be the train depot,” Aunt Jo said, her face splitting into a smile. “Your pa and I would play invaders out there. He was the Trojan army and I was Odysseus, leader of the Greeks.” When she smiled, she almost looked like the Aunt Jo he remembered. Almost.

  Sam tried to imagine his pa running through the overgrown fields as a boy or climbing up the crumbling columns, but he couldn’t.

  “School’s not far,” Aunt Jo said as they drove up a hill and came upon the first trees he’d seen in just about forever. The dusty clock on the dash read 3:45 p.m. Aunt Jo kept on talking, but Sam was no longer listening. According to the article in the paper the next day, that had been the time of Pa’s accident. Aunt Jo’s words turned to an angry buzzing in his head. What were the chances they’d arrive at the same time Pa died? The heat wrapped around him, squeezing his chest, like he was a mummy in a coffin, only they’d accidentally buried him alive. He had to get out of the car. He had to—

  A loud pop interrupted his panic. Next thing he knew, the front tire was sending up smoke that streamed in through the open window and worked its way down Sam’s throat.

  Aunt Jo pulled over and they both stumbled from the car, choking.

  “Mother, Mary, and Joseph,” Aunt Jo said, bending down to look at the flat tire. Half a broken bottle had sliced into the rubber, tearing a hole the size of a fist. Aunt Jo had some choice words for that bottle, a few Sam hadn’t heard before, but Sam was almost happy. As Aunt Jo dug the spare tire out of the trunk and set to prying off the old one, all he could think was that he was glad to be out of that grape-soda car, where he could breathe again.

  “Your pa ever teach you how to change a spare?” Aunt Jo said, her butt waving in the air as she worked to loosen the rusty lug nut. “’Course, he was always more interested in fishing than helping Pops and me out in the shop. Did he ever tell you about that time he left the cap off a leaky radiator and . . .”

  Sam walked away and let the whipping wind eat up Aunt Jo’s words. Pa was a better mechanic than she’d ever be, even if he did prefer fishing. He’d fixed up his ’68 Pontiac Sunbird all by himself, hadn’t he? Well, with Sam’s help, and it had been good as new before . . . Dang! Why did his brain have to keep going back to the accident? And where did Aunt Jo get off calling his pa lazy and ignorant? Especially right now. 3:45 p.m. Hadn’t anyone ever taught her about respecting the dead?

  He headed up the road a bit, the school a collection of gray, squat buildings in the distance, until he came to a single scraggly tree. Unlike the other trees closer to the car, this one looked half-dead and rotten. He didn’t usually get carsick but something about being trapped inside Baby Girl and the dry, whipping wind and the field of dead grass that didn’t look anything like Ol’ Tired Eyes made his stomach churn. He felt like he was all dried out inside and no matter how much water he poured down his gullet he’d never get back to normal again.

  It was one thing driving away from the swamp and the tiny house in Bayou St. George; it was another standing here in grape-soda Holler, Oklahoma, while the wind kicked up a cloud of white dust. Maybe it was just that all the moisture had been sucked out of the air, or maybe it was the sea of tangled grass grabbing at his legs or the rattling of dead branches, but either way, he couldn’t stand to look at Aunt Jo or listen to her stories or ride in her coffin of a car for one more second.

  Truth was, he didn’t want to hear another word about Pa just now. He was here and Pa was there, dead and buried. And even if his spirit stuck around like some people thought, then how could it find him all the way out here in a town so small no one even bothered to paint the sign?

  Besides, Sam didn’t believe in ghosts. That was Pa’s thing, ghosts and will-o’-the-wisps and dragonflies that brought seven years’ good luck. Pa could believe in just about anything, and he was always clipping articles from sketchy tabloids about swamp monsters or planes that went missing and were never found.

  Sam didn’t believe in any of that. He didn’t even believe in heaven and hell when it came right down to it, which meant his pa wasn’t anywhere, not back home and not here. He was gone. Just a bunch of dry bones and white dust.

  The wind whistled inside the hollowed-out tree.

  It went in hot and dry and came out cool. Sam stepped closer, shaking all the grape-soda thoughts from his brain, and ran his fingers along the hole in the tree. The hole was deep and dark, like someone had scooped away the insides of a pumpkin and left nothing behind but jagged scars. He leaned in, pressing his face into the cool darkness, and it smelled like that time Pa had taken him down into Wolf Rock Cave: wet and old and vast.

  He closed his eyes and thought he heard water dripping somewhere in the distance. He leaned in deeper still, the gentle pressure of the shadows sending a shiver through his skin. As the darkness closed around him, the rest of the world faded away—Holler, Aunt Jo and her grape-soda car, the dumpster full of Pa’s things, the Big Mouth Bass still singing somewhere under all that trash.

  A bead of moisture trickled down his forehead. Somewhere below, a small, insignificant voice was calling his name. He pressed in deeper. A waxy leaf touched his cheek, a trail of wet moss. He coiled his fingers into the cool wetness, pulling himself forward. For a moment, his body tipped forward and it was like he was teetering on the edge of a cliff, but then a weight slammed into his shin and he pulled back. His head cracked into the bark on the way out, and he fell, butt-first, to the hard-packed earth.

  When he looked up, he saw a cat poised between his feet, head tilted to the side, appraising him with one silver eye. The other eye—in fact, the entire other side of his face—looked like it had been smashed in and then sewn back together again. Where his ear and eye socket should have been were lumps of puckered skin covered in mottled gray fur. He was by far the ugliest cat Sam had ever seen, with a bony back that twisted to the left and sharp hip bones that stuck out on either side of a long, bottle-brush tail.

  The strange thing was that the cat seemed familiar somehow, though Sam couldn’t say from where. The cat stretched, arching his back and licking his needle-thin claws. The wind died down, the skeletal branches settling into place, and suddenly Aunt Jo’s voice cut through the silence.

  “Did you hear me? Tire’s fixed! We’re good to go!”

  “Comi
ng,” he said, but he never took his eyes off the cat. He watched as it leaped into the hollow of the tree, the same hollow that seemed to be watching him like a great, gaping eye. The cat glared back, his single eye sparkling, his lips curling into a strange, saturnine grin. A rush of fear coursed through Sam, like icy fingernails trailing down his back.

  Then the cat turned, slashing his tail at the air, and disappeared into the blackness of the hollow.

  For a moment, Sam couldn’t move. The wind picked up again, and suddenly he could hear the dying cries of the Big Mouth Bass as it sang its final notes, trapped inside its metal prison. 3:45 p.m., though it must be later now. Still, he could hear radio static and beer-can chimes and a voice from the tape deck telling him, “Every day is a new tomorrow.”

  Fingers numb, he stood and peered inside the tree. Where could the cat have gone? He searched for signs of the strange creature, the hint of a silvery eye, a hank of matted gray fur. The hollow was empty. He leaned closer. Inside the cavity, sunlight cast acorn shells and dead leaves in a soft, golden glow. He touched a brittle stem, a gum wrapper, a piece of dry bark.

  No cat.

  3

  SAM JUMPED AS A BUZZING something landed on the back of his neck. He swatted at his invisible attacker, wondering if the cat had somehow leaped down on him from above. But it wasn’t the cat.

  It was a dragonfly.

  He looked down at its broken body twitching in the dirt.

  “What in gravy’s name?” Aunt Jo came up behind him, leaning down to examine the insect. “Haven’t seen one of those around in, well, just about forever. It’s too dry out here. Ain’t that something.”

  They both watched as the dragonfly gave one final twitch and then went still. Sam’s stomach clenched. Now he really was gonna be sick. What was a dragonfly doing here in Holler, Oklahoma, and why’d he have to be the one to kill it?