Nick and June Were Here

by Shalanda Stanley

  What I’d forgotten about was that after you walked a couple of hundred feet into the woods, the trees became a vacuum. They sucked everything in, even the light. It was impossible for me to get my bearings. One group of trees looked just like the rest, and I didn’t know how to get back to the cabin. I remembered what Uncle Hank had said about the moss growing on the north side of the trees, but all of the trees around me had moss on all sides.

  I didn’t panic right away. Panic was something I knew I had to put off for as long as possible. When the sun started to set, I let go and started yelling. I yelled and yelled until I was hoarse. I was only making things worse by walking, so I stopped and sat down. I thought I’d die out there, until I heard John’s voice. He yelled my name over and over again and I ran toward the sound.

  I pushed through the trees and was out of breath when I got to him. He let out a long sigh of relief when he saw me. I was worried he’d be mad but he didn’t say anything. He just gestured with his head for me to follow him and turned, leading me out of the dark. Neither of us could talk for days after that. We’d lost our voices yelling for each other.

  * * *

  John was standing right in front of me, but he didn’t look like the John I’d left in the airport, or the guy in desert camo in the photo that he’d mailed with his letter. This John looked like the John in my dream, except there was no way he was dead, because June saw him, too. He looked like he’d been left outside too long. His face looked tan from so many days in the desert. I wondered if he hadn’t been back long.

  It was like that day I’d been lost in the woods, except the roles were reversed. It was John who’d gone rogue this time, who was somewhere he wasn’t supposed to be. I knew I should be angry, but the relief in seeing him won out over everything else.

  We didn’t say anything, just stared at each other. If I was still a kid, I’d forgive him for not letting me know he was back and he’d tell me everything was going to be okay.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  That was my line. I’d been gearing up to say it and now I had to think of what else to say. We were closer to each other, each moving to the other one.

  “We’re headed to Hank’s.”

  He looked from me to June.

  “It’s a long story,” I added.

  By the look on his face, he had one of those, too. I was ready to hear it.

  It was my turn now. “What are you doing here?”

  He shrugged. “I was out for a walk and I heard y’all,” he said.

  But what are you doing here? I thought. “We’re miles from Hank’s,” I said.

  He shrugged again. “We’re closer than you think, only a couple of miles, and I like to take walks at night,” he said. “You know that.”

  We stood right in front of each other. I could reach out and touch him if I wanted.

  He looked at our campsite, assessing.

  “We’re bringing Hank home,” I said.

  His eyes darted around like he expected Hank to walk out from between the trees. June ducked into the tent and came out with the box. John’s eyes locked on it. He took a step toward June but then stopped. When he looked back at me, I saw a glimpse of the brother I’d left at the airport, but then he blinked and he was gone again.

  He walked to the fire and sat down.

  “Mom wouldn’t listen to me,” he said. “I told her not to mail him to Creed, that he’d want to stay out here, but she doesn’t listen to anybody.”

  “How did it happen?” I asked. How are you here right now? I wanted to ask.

  “The doctor said it was heart disease. He said Hank should’ve died a long time ago. I’d thought I’d caused it, but he said I couldn’t have.”

  “Why did you think you caused it?” I sat next to him now.

  “We’d been working from sunup to sundown,” he said. “Hank knew I needed to stay busy. We were fixing the fence on the north side of the property. He wanted to replace all of the fence posts out there.”

  It was something he’d talked about doing last summer. I was supposed to help him with it.

  “He sent me to his workshop to get a second ax, and when I got back, he was on the ground.” He shook his head, like he was trying to shake free from the memory. Then he stood. “Your fire’s getting low,” he said.

  He bent down and picked up some sticks and branches, like this was a normal thing for him to do. He gathered the kindling and came closer, stoking the fire. His head turned to every sound coming from the forest.

  “Have you eaten?” June asked.

  We’d both forgotten that she was there. He shook his head, and she brought out the bag with the food and spread it out for him.

  “As you can see, it’s a cornucopia of goodness.” Her voice was quiet, like she’d noticed how skittish he was and thought normal voice volumes would scare him off.

  He grabbed a bag of Doritos.

  We sat around the fire in silence. He knew what I was waiting for but he didn’t say it. I wanted to hurl questions at him but he felt so different. It was awkward to throw questions at someone I didn’t know.

  I remembered what Aunt Linda had said about them having to pull him off Hank in the hospital. She’d said that John had gotten him there by himself. It was at least an hour to the nearest hospital from Uncle Hank’s cabin if you were racing, which John probably had been. It had been an hour of him and a dying Uncle Hank alone in the cab of his truck. I shouldn’t have been jealous, but I was. I wanted it to be me who’d been with him. I wanted to be the one who’d gotten that last hour.

  He reached for another bag of chips, and I saw that his hands shook. He saw me notice and he put them in the pockets of his jacket.

  He looked right at me for the first time since he’d walked out of the trees. “I can’t shoot anymore,” he said. “So they sent me home.”

  There was no more explanation. John got up and walked behind the tent, like he was inspecting how I set it up. Apparently he figured I did an okay job, because he said, “I’m gonna head back. You’ll come to Hank’s in the morning, right?”

  It seemed we weren’t invited to go back with him that night, so I nodded.

  Looking at the box, he said, “We should bury him tomorrow. It’s been too long already.”

  He turned and headed back the way he’d come.

  “Wait,” I said.

  I’d wanted to see him for so long and I wasn’t ready for our reunion to be over.

  John faced me. He looked tired. It wasn’t a normal kind of tired. His eyes looked like June’s had right before she’d been admitted to the hospital. That kind of tired. “I’m glad you’re home,” I said. Even if him being home meant something terrible had happened.

  “I’m glad you’re home, too,” he said. Because this place was always home.

  He disappeared the same way he’d come, and I didn’t know what else to do, so I just stared after him. Even though we were finally in the same place, I’d never felt farther from him.

  * * *

  Morning came early in the mountains and we started packing up our camp as soon as day broke. We’d slept like shit. June had woken with every noise. She’d tried to act like she wasn’t scared, but I could tell she was. I’d told her I’d stay awake and keep a lookout.

  We were getting close to the cabin now. I could see it in the distance and the workshop behind it and that spot on the hill where we’d bury him. I felt tears forming. I didn’t know if it was the relief that Hank was back where he belonged or the sorrow that he was coming home as ashes.

  The door to the workshop was open and I wondered if John was already out there working on something. When we were here, we spent more time in the workshop than we did in the cabin, using the cabin just to eat meals and sleep. The workshop was where me and John had really gotten to know Uncle Hank.
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  There was one night when me and Uncle Hank had been in the workshop, cleaning up. We’d been painting all day. There was a record player in the room. It was like the one we had in the barn. It was the only kind of sound system he ever owned. “Nothing beats vinyl,” he’d say. He kept playing this one song over and over. It was Tommy James and the Shondells’ “Crimson and Clover.”

  “This used to be my favorite song,” he said.

  He said used to, not is or was. He always looked back on his life in Creed like it belonged to someone else, like he had a new life in the mountains, like he’d been reborn in the Ozarks. It was rare that he let his two lives share the same space. Over and over he played that song, until I’d memorized the words.

  We were almost to the cabin’s front door and I felt nervous, worried that I’d built it up in June’s head and no way would the reality measure up. I tried seeing it through her eyes, worried about what she thought, but I shouldn’t have worried. She looked at the cabin the same way she looked at the barn.

  “It’s just like you painted it,” she said.

  I pointed to the hill in the side yard that butted up to the woods on the far side of the property. “That’s where we’ll bury his ashes.” Maybe once I’d done it, I’d be able to breathe easier.

  We walked up to the front porch, the second step squeaking just like it was supposed to. Everything was like I’d left it. Except Uncle Hank wasn’t inside. He wasn’t in the workshop out back. My backpack felt heavier.

  “Are you ready for your tour?” I asked, opening the door and trying to push back unwanted feelings. It wasn’t locked. No need for that out here.

  “Yes,” she said.

  I could tell she was excited and I led her into the living room. The last time I’d seen Hank had been in this room. We’d been fighting because he didn’t want me working for Benny anymore. All summer he’d been trying to get me to promise to quit. He and June always gave me the same argument.

  “There are better ways to make money,” he said.

  “Doing what? Working at one of the mills like you did? No thanks.”

  “Working at the mills won’t get you sent to prison.”

  “Benny—”

  “Doesn’t give a shit about you. You are a way to make money and that’s it. That’s all your dad was to him and that’s all you’ll ever be to him.”

  I’d always known that was true, but it hurt and embarrassed me that Uncle Hank knew it, too.

  “You come here every summer. And every summer I think you’ve finally gotten your head on right and then you go back home and do the same things that got you in trouble in the first place. How many times have you been arrested now?”

  He didn’t wait for my answer.

  “You’re not making any changes,” he said. “You’re just spinning your wheels.”

  “You don’t know what my life is like,” I said. “You only pretend to.”

  “That’s not true. I know your life.”

  “It’s easy to say that from out here, but you don’t know Creed anymore.”

  “Tell yourself whatever you need to. Creed isn’t as bad as you make it out to be.”

  “For people like us, it is. You ran away as soon as you got out of high school. You didn’t even stop to take your stuff from the barn. You left. John did, too. God, Mom skipped town with the first guy who asked her to. She barely even knew Larry.”

  “Don’t talk bad about your mom.” He was always so quick to defend her.

  “That’s just your guilt talking because you know it’s your fault she is the way she is.”

  “Shut up,” he said.

  “You didn’t just leave Creed. You left her, too, and you never came back. You’re the one that taught her how to leave her family. You’re the one that showed her it was okay.”

  His face fell and I knew I’d gone too far.

  “Do what you want, kid,” he said, his voice quiet. “You’re just like your dad.”

  “Fuck you.”

  It was the last thing I said to him.

  And now he was gone and I couldn’t make it right.

  June walked down the hall, tiptoeing, probably to keep from waking John. I should’ve told her that no one ever woke up before John and that he was more than likely in the workshop.

  A hall led to the bedrooms and a bathroom.

  “This was my room when I was here,” I said as I showed her the room.

  The room was bare except for a bed in the center and nightstands that I’d built. June didn’t say anything, just went straight for the bed and crawled under the covers.

  “It’s the first bed I’ve seen since we left Creed,” she said.

  She curled on her side and closed her eyes. I didn’t think she was asleep but she wasn’t moving. I was about to join her when I heard the front door open.

  I followed the sounds John made into the kitchen. He stood at the sink, looking out the window. The anger hit me suddenly. I was supposed to know him better than anyone. He’d said so right before he left. Now he was back home with shaking hands and I didn’t know why and he didn’t even care enough to tell me. I wanted to punch him. I took a step toward him. He turned to face me. He knew what I meant to do, because he squared off, like he was getting ready for it. It wouldn’t be our first fight.

  But I didn’t hit him.

  “What happened to you?” I asked instead.

  He just stared at me.

  “When you got sent home, you should’ve called me to let me know you were back. I could’ve come out here. I shouldn’t have had to find out you were back the way I did.”

  I left the one question I couldn’t ask hanging in the air.

  Why didn’t you want me to know?

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Hank wanted me to tell you I was back, but I worried if I called, then you would come up here, and I wasn’t ready to see anybody.”

  “I’m not anybody.”

  “I know that. I’m sorry,” he said again.

  “What happened to you?” I repeated.

  He walked to the table in the center of the room and sat down in one of the chairs. I sat in another one.

  “How’s Tommy?” he asked.

  “Good. He quit Benny’s.”

  John looked surprised. “That is good. Uncle Hank had been filling me in on what’s been going on with you.”

  Then he knew what an asshole I was. He knew how we’d left things.

  “How’s Aunt Linda?” he asked.

  “She’s good, too.”

  “Hank said she—”

  “What happened to you?” I asked again.

  We stared at each other. I wouldn’t drop it and he knew it.

  “I couldn’t tell what day of the week it was,” he said. “It’s all the same. Every day. If it wasn’t for the watches they made us wear, we’d never know the date or the time. I started to wonder if it was all a game, like a trick.”

  He leaned closer to me. “You know how mom used to set her clock in their bedroom ten minutes fast so she wouldn’t be late for work?” he asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “I worried that it might be like that, that the army set everybody’s watches ahead, so we wouldn’t know how much time had really passed. They kept saying we’d only been gone a few months, but it had to have been longer than that. It felt like it’d been years. I couldn’t stop thinking about it, worrying about it. I don’t know why. I just wanted to know if it was really Tuesday or not, you know?”

  I didn’t know.

  “Nobody else was hung up on it. I tried to let it go and do what I was told.”

  He wasn’t looking at me anymore. I’d noticed that he couldn’t do that for very long. It was like he could only meet my eyes in short bursts and then he’d have to turn away. He was looking to
ward the window again.

  “We had a routine inspection of an abandoned building,” he said. “We did it at least once a day. There wasn’t supposed to be anybody inside, much less a kid.”

  He met my eyes for two beats and then looked back toward the window.

  “It was over before I knew what happened. I didn’t even realize I’d fired my weapon.”

  I couldn’t say anything, because what could be said. I tried to hide the emotion in my face.

  “Everyone said that these things happen. That I was okay. That what I did was forgivable, but how can it be? He was just a kid. I couldn’t let it go. I couldn’t fire my gun anymore. I kept hesitating.

  “I saw a doctor when I got back. She gave me meds. They’ve helped some.” He put his hands on the table, pressing down so they didn’t shake. “It’s better if I stay busy.” He looked around the room. “I gotta figure out who I am now. Hank was trying to help.”

  John needed someone to tell him what to do next. That was the difference I felt between this John and the one I’d left in the airport. This John didn’t have a plan.

  There was a deck of cards on the table. It was the only entertainment the cabin had to offer. I picked it up and shuffled it. Uncle Hank had taught us every card game imaginable. But we had a favorite.

  I kept shuffling the cards. I didn’t know what to tell John. I never knew the right next step, but I could deal cards.

  “Wanna play Bullshit?” I asked.

  He thought about it, and when I thought he was going to tell me no, he smiled.

  “Sure,” he said.