Bone Dust White (27 page)

20

Grace’s aunt leans back on the sofa and tosses her unfinished crossword puzzle to the side. “Where’s he taking you?”

“The mall and then maybe dinner.” Grace is hoping for dinner but it wasn’t really part of the deal she’d struck during the phone call with Jared. She casts around for her house keys, eventually finding them on the kitchen counter.

Her aunt reaches for the television remote. “I spoke to Detective Greeley earlier today and she assured me you’d be well cared for. I’m expecting you to be home no later than eight.”

“I’m eighteen years old now. I think I can stay out past eight.”

Elizabeth turns on the television and switches the channel to the local news. They’re talking about the weather, but at the bottom of the screen an update runs about Molly Parks and the two other little girls, same as they have been for the past couple of days.

Her aunt points to the screen. “I don’t think you realize how worried I am about you going out.”

Grace wishes her aunt wasn’t right. She leans over and kisses her on the forehead. “I promise I’ll be careful.”

Grace heads outside wearing a red coat and matching galoshes. The hem of a floral dress pokes out from beneath. Her shoulder bag is bulky and bangs against her hip.

Jared rolls down the window and she skips over to the truck, taking a drag off his cigarette like she’d done before.

“I’m late,” she says, smiling.

“And you’re smoking again.” He snatches the cigarette from her lips and flicks it into the slush.

“You’re not exactly taking care of yourself, so why should I?”

“I’m old and ugly. It doesn’t matter much.”

“You’re not that old.”

“I’m too old for you.” He gestures toward the house. “How are you guys settling in?”

“I hate it here.”

“What does your aunt think of you coming for a ride with me?”

Grace looks over her shoulder and squints into the front window where her aunt stands cross-armed and watching. “She’s worried.”

“I don’t want her getting the wrong impression.”

Grace runs around the other side of the truck and opens the door. “Then bring me back in one piece.”

Jared waves at Elizabeth. “Where does she think I’m taking you?”

“The mall.”

“But we’re not going to the mall, are we?”

“The mall in Collier has to be the most pathetic place on earth.”

He puts his truck in gear. “So where to then?”

“You know that truck stop south of town on Route 93?”

“Yeah, I know it. Of all the places in the world, why would you want to go there?”

“It’s where my mom and I used to live.”

“My question still stands.”

“I thought if I went to see the trailer where we lived, it might make it easier to move on.”

“Fair enough.” He glances over at her. “I want you to tell me if it gets to be too much. Will you promise to do that?”

“I promise.”

Grace keeps her eyes low to the horizon as they drive. She can tell Jared is ill at ease. He takes furtive glances out the windows and in the rearview mirror, looking everywhere but at her. Once they’re out on Route 93 his gaze shifts to the front and pretty much stays there. She watches him out of the corner of her eye and memorizes the landscape of his face: the nose that looks like it’s never been broken, the forehead that protrudes a fraction too far, and the sharply angled jawline that’s always locked in a clench.

She touches his arm to get his attention. “Do you really think you’re too old for me?”

“Grace, I was very clear on the phone. I’m your friend and nothing more. If you can’t accept that, I’ll turn around here and take you back home.”

She teases him for overreacting and instantly regrets it.

He speeds up to pass a slow-moving truck and when he speaks again his voice is clipped. “I’m not going to be sorry for taking you out here, am I?”

“No.”

“When did you live out there?”

She kicks her stocking feet up onto the dashboard. The socks are red and pink with little toe separators so they’re like gloves for feet. “On and off until I was seven.”

“That’s no place for a kid.”

In front of them, the road is pockmarked with holes and a black patchwork of short-term fixes. Wood smoke hangs in the air, hazing over the hillside views. The old snow has shrunken back. The landscape is spiked with the stalks of dead vegetation.

They pass a turnout that marks the farthest stop of the Collier town bus. As a young girl she’d sat on the bench in the wood enclosure, notching the soft wood with messages. More often than not her mother would forget to fetch her from the bus stop and Grace would have to walk home. When trucks barreled alongside, the ground would shake. She stayed out of sight, off in the shadow of the trees, her legs getting all scratched up by brambles.

The truck stop is only a little farther along the road. There are no trees here, just fallow fields. Everything is windswept with dust and stained with smoke. Desperation hangs about the low-slung buildings and deep shadowing porches. Trucks line up in the gravel lot like tombstones and a row of Harley-Davidsons sit tightly packed together outside of the diner. A neon sign flashes the current prices of diesel and special offers:
All You Can Eat Buffet $6.99, Full-er-up Breakfast with free refills on coffee $3.99 and Ladies Night is Pretty Much Every Night—So Come on In
.

Jared pulls into the icy lot and parks well clear of the trucks. “Are you sure about this?”

Instead of answering, Grace slips on her boots and jumps out of the car.

“It’s this way,” she says, steering a course directly toward the maze of big rigs. In the gray afternoon light, her red coat stands out like a beacon.

In the narrow spaces between the trucks it smells of oil and burning brakes. There’s a long vertical slit of light at the far end and the space grows more confined as they move toward it. Jared stops short when she turns around. She tilts her head up at him, their bodies perfectly aligned.

“You don’t have to come with me,” she says.

Jared looks up at the containers that tower above them like buildings. “You’ve got no business being out here on your own.”

Grace turns away. Out in the open little eddies of wind blow dust up into the air and her hair swirls around her face. She brushes it out of her eyes with her gloved hands and points to a trio of mobile homes cowed down together in untouched snow. Rolled randomly like dice onto the small pocket of land, they are separated from the parking lot by a low metal fence.

Jared looks back at the wall of trucks. They’re all alone out here. “I never knew this place existed,” he says, raising his voice above the sound of the wind.

Grace makes her way through the deep snow, heading toward the farthest of the three trailers. At one end, the roof is caving in. The metal siding is rusted through in places, and tattered ends of curtains blow out from broken windows. There is a small set of steps leading up to the entrance. Grace pulls on the handle and the screen door falls from its hinges. She jumps back and watches it crash onto the ground. She looks at her gloved hand. A thin line of rust stains the palm.

“You okay?” asks Jared, his breath warm on her neck.

Grace says yes and pulls away.

Jared’s voice follows her, but she loses some of his words in the wind.

“Yeah,” she answers, peering through the small window cut into the front door. The dirty Plexiglas distorts the view. “It was just me and my mom.”

The door is locked. Even though she shakes it hard the handle doesn’t yield. So many memories pile on top of her that she feels she may buckle under the weight of them. The damp sweat of summer nights. Her mother’s manic laughter. The sour smell of morning. Surly-eyed men staggering from her mother’s room. Her mother’s first cigarette.

She turns to face Jared, relieved to find him there. He looks over his shoulder, back toward the trucks and the diner. The scent of fried food is heavy in the air. She sees what he sees: gray smoke rising from the chimneys stacked above the kitchen, large waste bins spilling garbage out from their tops onto the gray slush.

“Maybe they have a key back at the diner,” he says.

Instead of answering, Grace scrambles off the steps and scrapes about under the mobile home’s foundation. She finds the front door key lodged beneath a brick. She holds it out in front of her for Jared to see, but he doesn’t look pleased.

The place looks like it’s spent time in a twister. All the kitchen drawers and their contents spill across the dimly lit room. Odds and ends of cutlery, old phone books, and bits of clothing are scattered on the floor. The cabinets are open and broken crockery, smashed drinking glasses, and foodstuffs spill outward. A moldy patchwork quilt half covers a small sofa that has collapsed in the middle where someone has set fire to it. The wall behind the sofa is blackened.

Grace wades through the wreckage toward her mother’s room, and Jared shuts kitchen cabinet doors as he follows along behind. A short procession accompanied by steady percussion. The bedroom ceiling is half caved in so Grace has to stoop. A rust stain spreads across the bare mattress, mirroring the stain on the low-lying ceiling above their heads. In the windows, the strips of hard plastic blinds blow inward, rattling against the cracked glass.

With her eyes focused in on a low section of veneered wood paneling, she trips across damp bedding, her clumsy boots getting caught in the folds. Squatting low, she runs her fingertips across the walls, leaving parallel trails in the thick dust. There is a ridge where two of the panels meet. It is raised just a fraction and her hands stop moving when she finds it. She digs her fingernails beneath the veneered wood and pulls. A short length of panel pops off and dust blows outward. The cavity behind the wall is cold and damp. The draft blowing through it echoes the gusts of wind building outside. Her hands reach through a web of dusty insulation. She finds what she’s looking for low down toward the bottom. Her fingers fold around the unfamiliar shape. It’s a package about the size of a brick. She puts it aside and grabs hold of the coffee tin.

“What is it?” asks Jared.

Grace struggles to her feet. Her legs feel thick. Only a tornado could make them move. “It’s my mother’s.”

Jared gives her a sympathetic tilt of the head but he doesn’t step forward like she wants him to. He just points at the tin. “Is that what you came for?”

Grace mumbles something he doesn’t catch before forcing her legs to walk to the door. She stops inches away and waits patiently for him to let her pass. His warm breath skims off the top of her head.

He’s not done talking so he doesn’t move. “You okay?”

Grace shrugs, unsure of what to do next. It’s more difficult being here than she had thought it would be. “I need a Coke or something.”

Touching her for the first time that day, Jared takes her arm and leads her back to the front door. “I think I better take you home. I don’t like this place.”

Grace is losing her nerve. Something inside her tells her it’s now or never. “I’d rather order something at the diner.”

Jared looks at her for a few seconds and she can tell he’s thinking things over. His gaze shifts to the diner and then back to her. “You best put that tin you found in your bag.”

Grace turns away and struggles to open her bag. Tears cloud her vision and her hands shake from more than just the cold. She slips the tin inside so it’s resting next to the bottle of lighter fluid she’s brought with her.

They head across the parking lot, walking side by side, but moving like two magnets, twisted so they won’t touch. She steps closer and he shifts his course so the distance between them never alters. Her bag feels heavy and she’s not sure how she’ll manage. Within the canvas tote, the tin and bottle of lighter fluid bang against her leg.

The wooden boards that lead to the front door of the diner creak underfoot. The air inside is saturated with greasy talk. It takes a moment for them to adjust to the steady thump of country music and raised voices. Booths run up and down the length of the building and a long counter stretches out in front of them. Jared coughs and eyes settle on them from underneath baseball caps. A waitress working from behind the bar tilts her head toward the booths. Grace looks at the woman, waiting for recognition that never comes.

The waitress has a voice that’s been working hard all its life. “I think you’ll find some seating down at the far end. I’ll be with you in a sec.”

Jared follows Grace along the length of the building, passing booths that house diners like prisoners in cells. They’re about halfway along when a man jumps to his feet and blocks Jared’s path, separating him from Grace. He is reed-thin and hopped up on something. He shoulder checks Jared and heads off in the direction of the exit. The other men at his table laugh and Jared takes in their dilated eyes and nervous banter.

Grace grabs his hand. “Come on.”

The men make little walking motions with their fingers and laugh some more. Behind them the waitress comes tripping along with a tray of drinks and plunks it down on their table.

“Real mature,” she says.

Jared and Grace find an empty booth at the far end of the diner. The emergency exit sign looms over them. Jared keeps looking at it, sitting forward in his seat like he’s getting ready to lunge for the handle.

Grace shrugs out of her coat and places her bag next to her on the seat. “You worry a lot.”

Jared slouches back into the cracked red cushions, trying to look relaxed, but failing. Unlike her he hasn’t bothered to take off his coat.

He pulls out his packet of smokes and taps it on the tabletop. “So what’s in the tin?”

Grace doesn’t answer. She instead looks up and smiles pleasantly.

The waitress is standing next to their table, her eyes flitting back and forth between Jared and Grace. She pulls her pen out from behind her ear and turns her eyes to Jared. “I know you. I never forget a face.”

Grace thinks
yes you do
but says nothing.

“I’m normally in uniform when I’m here.”

The waitress shifts her weight from one foot to the other like she has to go to the toilet. She looks back toward the bar, checking things out before her eyes settle back on him. She speaks in a whisper.