Page 12

CHAPTER 11

August 12 th

8:14 PM

T H E DRIVE TO Long Grass takes me twice as long tonight. First it is because I convince myself to drive under the speed limit, a safety measure against my mental state and drunk drivers alike. Then it is because I put on my hazards, pull over, and use every trick in my therapeutic arsenal to bring me back from the brink. Focus on your five senses, exactly what is in front of you, nothing more.

Sight: the black, starless sky.

Sound: the rumble of my engine.

Smell: the cigarette I just ashed against the window.

Taste: cigarettes and chokecherry pie.

Touch: my clammy skin adhering to my fake leather seats.

I chain-smoke four cigarettes, smoking each one down further than the last. My father never smokes his all the way down to the filter. Suddenly I’m back at the dining room table, only now I’m a knock-kneed fifteen-year-old and the cigarette in my hand is the first one I’ve ever smoked. He watches me take drag after drag until it burns just past the halfway point, and then he plucks it from my lips.

“Never smoke further than this, butterfly,” he said, pinching the filter to a pulp between his ragged nails. “This is where the cancer is.”

As I light my fifth cigarette with the cherry of my fourth, a car pulls up behind me. The driver is illuminated by the cabin light, and even though his face is lowered, I know exactly who it is. I’d recognize that stupid cowboy hat anywhere.

“You stick out like a sore thumb with those Missouri plates.” Josiah stoops beside my window to meet me at eye level. Shadows obscure his face, only the whites of his eyes and the brown of his teeth visible. Together, we exhale a single noxious cloud of nicotine. My cigarette commingles with his chewing tobacco.

“There’s nothing illegal about pulling over to smoke a cigarette.”

“Technically? Shoulder’s closed here,” he says.

“Short on your ticket quota this week?”

“Believe it or not, Providence, I pulled over to make sure you were okay.”

“I don’t believe it.” I imagine him watching me. Staking out my father’s house. Biding his time. Following me into the inky darkness. My eyes drift toward the barren prairie surrounding us. We’re the only living souls for miles around.

A terrible thought emerges. “How did you know where I was?” I ask.

“Out on patrol, and like I said, those Missouri plates.”

“Or maybe my father told you I’d be in town tonight.”

Josiah chuckles. “See, that’s how I can tell you’re a city dweller now. In small towns, not everyone is out to get you.”

But Annesville is not like every other small town. This is my own personal haunted house with monsters lurking in every corner, distorted by every shadow.

“If I can be honest, I’m only interested in talking to you if you know something about my mother.”

“As soon as we find her, you’ll be my first call. You’ve got my word.”

I’m seduced by the thought of being the first person to know my mother’s fate—so seduced by it, I nearly divulge my conversation with Gil about Mitch Perkins, but I swallow the words before they take shape.

He sweeps his tongue over his bottom teeth, lower lip protruding from the disturbance. “Honest to God, I believe we’ll bring your mother home safe. I know the odds and the statistics, but I also know to trust my intuition when it feels this strong. She’s still alive.”

Grace and her podcasts. She’d have a sharp comeback for Josiah, but all I can manage is a half-hearted nod. Her words from yesterday rattle through my mind— you’re useless, Providence —but I drown them out before I can start to believe them. If I was useless, I wouldn’t have faced Tom Byrd at dinner.

“Mind if I take a look at your registration? I promise I’ll be out of your hair after that.”

I nod and reach for the glove box. When I open it, my gun stares back at me.

Fuck fuck fuck—

I grab my registration and slam the glove box shut. I can only pray I’ve moved fast enough for the gun to slip past Josiah’s well-trained eye.

I haven’t.

“What was that in your glove box?”

“Probably just my cigarettes.”

He takes a cursory glance at my registration. This is no longer of interest to him. “Very funny, Miss Byrd. Why don’t you open it up for me again?”

“No.” So much power in a single word. I lift my chin high and pretend like I’m not deafened by the blood rushing through my ears.

“I’d hate to search it myself.”

“You need a warrant.”

“I only need probable cause.”

“All I’ve done tonight is have dinner with my family.” I strain to keep my voice even. If I talk too loudly, he’ll think I’m defensive. If I talk too quietly, he’ll think I’m scared. He doesn’t need to know that right now I’m both. “I’m not stupid enough to do anything that would send me back to York.”

As he gnaws his tobacco, his face taut like a bungee cord stretched too far, I envision everything I’ve built turning to dust. My chair in the tattoo shop, my apartment, my peace lilies—all of it, gone in a single instant. I did my research before I got the gun: unlawful possession of a firearm is a three-year mandatory minimum, but with my history, I’d be facing a much longer sentence.

My powerlessness in this moment is suffocating. I am a snake with no fangs, a lion with no claws. I force myself to meet Josiah’s eyes. They say the left eye is the window to the soul, and I will him to see through my hardened exterior to the little girl still living inside of me.

He stretches his arm across the top of my window. “Where are you headed off to?”

“Long Grass. I’m staying with a friend there.”

“She’s a good friend?” he asks.

“The very best.”

“One who wouldn’t let you do something stupid?”

“Never.”

Josiah looks off into the distance, the flat landscape faintly illuminated by my headlights. He raps once on the top of the car. “Then you best get going before it gets much later. The drunks will be out soon.”

I don’t breathe until he pulls away.

I lied. I don’t go to Sara’s. I go to Daniel’s instead, and I check my rearview mirror all the way there to be sure I’m not being followed.

If Daniel is perplexed by me asking to see him so late, or if he can sense the distress percolating inside me, he is polite enough not to say anything. He sits on the front porch of his trailer, shrouded by a mosquito net pocked with gaps and tears, his feet elevated in a plastic lawn chair. His coffee mug reads WORLD’S BEST DAD in girlish pastels suggesting a daughter. “I think that’s my sister’s dress,” he says once I’m within earshot, maneuvering my way around the dismembered cars on his lawn.

“She let me borrow it.”

“She’ll probably let you keep it if you ask nice enough. Our mom always made her wear it to family dinners. Once she died, Sara was relieved she’d never have to put it on again.” Even during the only personal anecdote he’s shared with me, Daniel remains aloof. “You said you needed to talk about your mom?”

It was a weak excuse, but the only plausible one that could explain me arriving at his doorstep at this hour. The truth is, I’m still reeling from my brush with Josiah, and if he’s tailing me or planning to send a legion of deputies with a search warrant, I want to be around another cop when he does. Daniel won’t stand for Tillman County encroaching on his jurisdiction, and I’d like to think he’ll defend me, even if it’s mostly out of loyalty to his sister.

“Mitch Perkins,” I blurt. “She hung around someone named Mitch Perkins. He sounded like a pretty bad guy.”

Daniel moves his feet so I can sit down. “Been in prison since last summer. Fifteen years for arson. It was a hate crime to boot. Sounds like a real charming guy.”

Fifteen years is probably what I’ll be facing if the sheriff finds my gun. I’m stupid for leaving it in the glove box. I should have slid it under the seat, put it in the trunk, done anything with it except leave it in a compromised hiding place. “So he didn’t have anything to do with her disappearance.”

“Is that really why you called me this late? To ask about Mitch Perkins?”

“I spent the last couple hours with my father and my sisters. They talked about my mother, and now I can’t get her out of my mind. I know it could have waited until tomorrow, so I’m—” I cut myself off before I can apologize. All evening long I’ve felt sorry for existing. “Everything is so far out of my control and telling you about Mitch Perkins was the one thing I could control right now.”

Daniel sips his coffee the same deliberate way I take a pull from a cigarette, savoring every moment of the pedestrian pleasure. He sets the mug down beside his badge and his pistol. As much as he’s just a man enjoying a cup of coffee on a warm summer evening, he’s also an off-duty police officer surveilling his street at odd hours for mischief. “I understand. I appreciate you coming to me. I’m sure you don’t trust cops.”

“I went to prison.”

“And I think,” he begins, “I’m about to wipe away what little goodwill you have for me.”

“What?”

“They’re not interested in pursuing leads about your father.”

How convenient to have no interest in pursuing the one person who once wrapped his hands around my mother’s neck hard enough to leave palmprint-shaped bruises behind, who once crushed the bones of her feet beneath his steel-toed boot. Hell hath no fury like Tom Byrd. “They’re not even going to question him?”

“His alibi checked out,” he says. “He was at the liquor store.”

“I’ve seen Jell-O more solid than that alibi.”

“Eyewitnesses back him up,” he says.

“Because no one in the history of any criminal investigation has ever intimidated a witness, right?”

“Good God, you do not let up, do you?”

The purr of an engine jolts me to attention, but it’s only a lifted pickup truck barreling past the trailer. The neighborhood dogs bark and howl. “I’m sorry, I should have offered you a cup of coffee,” Daniel says as the dogs begin to quiet. “Can I get you one?”

Somewhere between my brain and my mouth, the no thank you I start to say transforms into “Yes, that would be nice.” I want to press pause for ten minutes and catch my breath. The trailer releases an air-conditioned sigh as he opens the door and goes inside. I comb the night sky for the few constellations I can recognize—Orion and his bow, Ursa Minor (or is it Ursa Major?), Scorpius and how its stars fray into a cat-o’-nine-tails. I reach my arms out in a dramatic stretch, Jesus on the cross, and when I lower them, I accidentally touch Daniel’s gun. He’s left it out here with me. I decide to see it as an act of trust rather than carelessness. Sheriff Eastman would never do it.

He emerges with my coffee, also in a WORLD’S BEST DAD mug, this one devoid of feminine design. “I can get cream and sugar,” he offers.

I insist I like my coffee black even though this tastes like burnt firewood. Each sip intensifies my need for a cigarette. Caffeine is the poor man’s nicotine.

He notices me looking at the stars and asks about constellations, not because he is eager for an astronomy lesson but because he wants to be polite and we aren’t familiar enough to ask personal questions. He shares the Lakota name for Orion’s Belt, Tayamnicankhu. He talks fondly about Sara, and the depth of his love for her makes me dislike him a little less. At least we have that in common.

He excuses himself to get a sweatshirt from the trailer, once again leaving his gun behind. I’m so distracted by it that I reach for the wrong cup of coffee and gag when an unexpected flavor hits my tongue. Cutting through the coffee is the unmistakably smoky, nutty taste of bourbon.

A well-mannered girl would keep her mouth shut and put her head back in the sand where it belongs. But I’ve never been a well-mannered girl, and I can’t pretend to be one now. All that time waxing poetic about his sister and he can’t be bothered to uphold her deepest conviction, his own tribal law: no alcohol. When Daniel comes back onto the porch, I toast him with his own mug.

“You’re holding out on me,” I coo. “Maybe I wanted a splash of bourbon too.”

He looks at the mug. He doesn’t lie or invent an excuse. All he says is, “Please don’t tell my sister.”

Back at the trailer, Sara is curled up on the couch like a shrimp. A bowl of cornflakes teeters on her chest and threatens to spill when she waves at me. “You made it back alive,” she says, muting the TV. It’s a reality dating show, women in string bikinis and chiseled men frolicking around a beach house, not a care in the world beyond maximizing their camera time.

“I’m a cockroach. I’m unkillable.”

She points to the empty couch cushion with her foot. “Do you want to talk about it?”

I sit. “It was exactly what I expected. Triggers on triggers on triggers.”

“How were your sisters?”

“Damaged.”

“How could they not be?”

On the TV, a freckled girl sobs into the camera. Her eyes are swollen shut from the violence of her tears. The primal grief of first heartbreak.

“I think I was the nail in their coffin,” I say. “Maybe if I hadn’t done what I did—”

Sara’s rebuttal is lightning quick. “It’s not your fault.” She takes a bite of cereal.

“I certainly didn’t help.”

“Your sisters … I know this is bleak, but there was nothing you could do, good or bad, that was going to make them happy or well-adjusted. You grew up in that house. You understand what they’re up against. It’s like all that ‘pull yourself up by your bootstraps’ shit they preached to us in prison, remember? It’s bullshit. You can try and try and try, but in the end, you can’t brute-force your way into a normal life.”

“I’m not used to you being that fatalistic.”

“Some of us have longer odds than others,” she says. “You. Me. Your sisters.”

“What about someone like your brother?”

I haven’t forgotten about the bourbon. The taste lingers heavy in the back of my throat like a half-swallowed pill.

“Ah, yes,” she says, “because nothing says well-adjusted like becoming a cop. You know he used to drink too? My aunt and I took out loans to send him to rehab in Rapid City a few years ago.”

Of course it can’t be as straightforward as him simply being a hypocrite chafing against their restrictive tribal laws. “I had no idea.”

“I prefer not to think about it. I didn’t talk to him for almost a year after it happened.” She refocuses on the TV, where the teary girl with freckles has been replaced by a teary girl with a lip ring. This girl is much prettier when she cries, face less red, eyes less swollen. Her tears shine like diamonds as they blaze salty trails through her blush.

“But you still love him,” I say.

“He’s my brother. I could have done worse in the sibling department.”

Our conversation peters out to silence, the perfect opening to tell her about Daniel’s bourbon. But my voice stalls. Were it any other vice, I would keep my nose out of it—but it’s alcohol. It’s the very thing Sara despises most in this world.

I know the toll alcoholism has taken on her family: the bottle stole both her parents and indirectly stole her sister, T-boned by a drunk driver and crushed like tinfoil at nineteen years old. Right now it gnaws away at aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends, and it has returned to gnaw away at her brother once again. I don’t know if she can forgive a second betrayal from him. Sara does not bend for people. And if she can’t forgive him, if she lapses into the same acrimonious relationship I have with Harmony, then who does she have?

She has no idea how calamitous it would be to lose the last piece of her family. As much as I like to tell myself family is just a word, the truth is that it is an essential piece of the human experience. There are found families, families you choose, families born out of unimaginable circumstances with bonds stronger than steel, but blood is different. Blood is innate. Blood is animal.

I’ve yet to find something that can replace it.

I choose to see my silence as an act of mercy, not an act of cowardice. I ask Sara to turn the volume back on and lie down on the opposite end of the couch. The trailer has finally cooled enough for a blanket, and she tosses an afghan the size of a parachute over us. We tuck our feet beneath each other’s bodies and watch the pretty girls cry on their white sand beach.

I think of my mother then. How she has probably died without ever seeing the ocean.