Maiden Rock (2 page)

“Could their car have broken down?”

“We drove to the Lunds and back. No sign of them. I hated to call you, but I’m getting pretty worried.”

Rich clomped down the stairs in an old t-shirt and a pair of long johns. He sat at the bottom of the stairs and looked at her.

“Hold on.” Claire covered the speaker of the phone and filled Rich in, ending with, “Where do you think they might be?”

Rich shook his head. “Krista just got her license. They probably went for a joy ride.”

“I hope.” She turned back to the phone. “Could they just be out driving around?”

“I suppose. Let’s give them another half hour. If they don’t show, I’ll call you back.” When Claire agreed, Emily hung up.

Claire felt her bones stiffen. This was bad. Meg didn’t do things like this. She was almost too responsible. But it was hard to say what she might do if all the other kids she was with wanted to.

She turned to Rich. “Now what?”

“Take a deep breath.”

“Don’t do that to me,” Claire snapped. “Why did I let Meg go to this party and then stay over?”

“Because she’s a big girl.”

She stared at him, then let her breath out. “You’re right, Rich. I don’t want to be one of those mothers who’s afraid for their daughters to do anything, go anyplace. I don’t want to keep her locked up. But, tonight I wish she were upstairs in her own bed, safe and sound.”

Rich opened his arms and she walked into them. He kissed the top of her head and said, “Me too.”

***

“That’s it. She’s grounded.” Roger Jorgenson stood next to the kitchen window, staring out, watching for the car’s headlights to break the dark. Nothing.

“Roger, maybe there’s a good reason.”

“No good reason for not calling.”

“It would be easier for Krista to call if she had a cell phone.”

“She don’t need a cell phone. When I was a kid we weren’t even allowed to use the phone.” Emily just rolled her eyes.

“It’s that Curt kid.”

“I think he’s a nice boy.”

“You don’t know what boys that age are like.”

She looked at her husband. “I did. I haven’t forgotten.”

What Emily hated about how over-wrought Roger could get was his emotional state didn’t allow any room for her to be upset. She always had to be in control, the steady one. Inside, she was collapsing with worry over their daughter. Krista had turned into

even more of a wild child since her sixteenth birthday, almost as if her hormones had cranked up a notch.

Krista was what the parenting books called a “risk taker.” She loved to be thrilled, to be scared.

Emily had never been like that. She had never ridden on a motorcycle, never been on a Ferris wheel, could hardly stand to go out on a boat on the lake. She hated heights, was afraid of spiders and couldn’t even pick up a worm. So she had watched in astonishment as her oldest daughter had delighted in hanging by her knees from the top bars of the jungle gym, jumped out of the hay loft onto a thin mattress, and carried a garter snake around in her Halloween candy bag one year.

Emily tried to control her fears, tried not to let her children see how afraid she was—but sometimes it leaked out of her.

“Well, she’s certainly not driving the car again for a very long time.” Roger thumped the kitchen table for good measure.

Emily couldn’t stand it. What was he thinking? She could hear her voice had gone high and thin, but she said it anyway. “Roger, stop it. I just want her safe. I’d do anything to just have her here right now.”

***

A plume of gas hit him and Jared felt his face melting. He dropped the metal canister he was siphoning the ammonia into and put his hands to his face. All he felt was wet. His skin had turned to liquid. He couldn’t see, he couldn’t breath. He was dissolving.

Coughs racked his throat and his eyes cried and cried. The world spun in loops around him. Ride it out, he thought.

This had happened to him before. Damn ammonia was tricky stuff. Had to be careful. He hoped it wasn’t too bad this time. He couldn’t afford to go to the hospital. They would know what he had been doing. Hard to say you were fertilizing your fields at three in the morning.

Jared straightened up and walked away from the tank. He took deep breaths and tried to clear his head. Pulling his t-shirt up from his waist, he toweled off his face. His nose was running; his eyes were still watering, but he could see again. He was going to be all right.

He shouldn’t have tried to do this on his own, but Hitch had to go back to the trailer to get ready. They needed to make some more
glass.
The demand was increasing every day and he needed enough for himself. His demand was going up too. It always seemed to take a little more to get him where he wanted to go.

And he never got there. It was never like the first time. Now he needed meth just to get through the day, not to go crazy. It had become like oxygen, that necessary.

Jared looked across the field to the farmhouse. No lights on. Middle of the night and everyone was sleeping. He went back to the thousand-gallon fertilizer tank and resealed the hose to his canister, then started to fill it again.

He had dropped Hitch off at the trailer to get everything ready to cook up another batch. Jared had scouted out this tank yesterday. Since he knew the area, it was his job to get the ammonia. He had to be careful about it. Somebody told him the cops could arrest him just for having ammonia in his truck—in an improper container. A five-year felony, this guy said. Five years, that was more than a quarter of his life so far.

If he was careful, he could come back and get more ammonia from this same tank. The farmer might never know.

He had to watch what he was doing. The canister was full. Exercising great care, he got the top on without too much leaking out. He hoisted it to his hip and started to walk back to his truck.

His pants were falling down as he walked. None of his clothes fit anymore. He had lost about sixty pounds in the last six months. He had played football last year at the high school, but he didn’t even try out this fall. Hell, he barely went to school anymore. His mom had threatened to kick him out of the house. It didn’t matter. He was hardly ever home.

He jumped into the pickup truck and headed to the trailer Hitch was renting. His skin was starting to crawl. It felt like it was peeling off his face. Someday he’d wake up and he’d be so thin, he’d just walk out of his skin.

He didn’t feel like he existed anymore unless he had just gotten a hit. That seemed to be all he lived for.

Jared wondered what had happened to
Winona.
That’s what she had insisted on being called tonight, saying she was some kind of Indian maiden. It had felt a little weird to leave her out there at that rock, but she had a car.

Jared had always thought she was cute. He thought of driving back and checking on her, but he really needed to get the next batch made.

E
dwin Sandstrom had to pee. It was so hard to leave the warmth of the bed, but once he had the urge, he knew he wouldn’t be able to fall back asleep until he satisfied it. His middle-of-the-night wakings were becoming more frequent. Ella was bugging him to get his prostate checked. He didn’t really want to hear what the doctors might have to say. No sense in fussing around with his old equipment.

As he walked down the hallway, he calculated how much liquid he’d had to drink that evening: milk with dinner, a glass of water after, then a cup of tea with Ella before bed. Maybe he should cut back on his intake.

Then he remembered that it had been Halloween. Maybe it was the candy that did it. They had bought two bags of candy, but only three kids came trick or treating. Not like twenty years ago when a crew would show up. He had eaten quite a few of the Butterfingers, his favorite. Maybe the sugar irritated his bladder, causing him to pee. He thought it as good a theory as any.

After relieving himself, he washed his hands and stooped in close to the bathroom mirror. He wondered, as he often did, who that old man was. Going to be eighty next week. Too old. But since he had married Ella he felt a new lease on life. Maybe

a prostate exam wasn’t a bad idea. Ella was seven years younger than he was and he didn’t intend on leaving her alone at the end of her life.

Before going back to bed, Edwin peered out the bathroom window. That old beater car was still parked out by the Maiden Rock. If he could see better, he’d probably recognize it.

That old rock lured kids to it like bees to honey, always had. When he was growing up his mother had told him the ghost of Winona haunted the rock. She said sometimes at night you could hear her sing. She warned him to stay away from the rock, especially when there was a full moon, when the maiden Winona would be looking for her Indian brave. Of course, as soon as he was big enough to climb out his bedroom window, he would go out at night and sit on the rock. To his great disappointment, he never saw any ghost, but he learned to love that hypnotic view of the river sparkling in the moonlight.

He had heard a couple of cars drive out there earlier this evening. He didn’t care if the local teenagers parked out at the rock for a while, but these young lovers had been at it almost all night. He had half a mind to call the sheriff, but the house was cold and his bed was warm.

Edwin steadied himself by running his hand along the wall as he walked back down the hallway. If the car was still there when he got up in the morning, he’d call. He didn’t want kids camping out there. Too dangerous. The Maiden Rock had been in his family for over a hundred years. He felt like it was his responsibility

Addison Spaulding had purchased one hundred and twenty-six acres of land that included the Maiden Rock from the Indians in 1873. Edwin’s great-grandfather, Gaylord Sandstrom, had bought it seventeen years later, along with forty acres of land.

As far as Edwin knew—since Winona—no one had ever fallen or jumped from the rock. He didn’t want the first accident to be on his watch.

***

Yesterday, Meg had sworn him to secrecy when he picked her up from school. She was bursting with the news that she liked a boy and he liked her. However, she hadn’t said the kid’s name.

Rich hadn’t wanted to promise, but she assured him that she would tell her mom in the immediate future, right after the party. He wondered if he had made a mistake. Could this late night prank have anything to do with Meg’s secret? He didn’t see how.

Rich decided he might as well put on some coffee. Claire had left a few minutes ago to go to the Jorgenson’s, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep. He wasn’t as shaken by Meg staying out late as Claire was, but he didn’t feel easy about it. Meg was one of his favorite people in the world and he certainly didn’t want to think about anything happening to her.

Claire took the cell phone with her. She asked him to call her if he heard anything, although reception was spotty along the bluff.

As far as he was concerned it was about time they gave Meg a cell phone. Then incidents like this would never happen. Although kids can always come up with an excuse for not answering their cell phones when they didn’t feel like it. He hated the contraptions himself; he especially hated the tall blinking

towers they were constructing all along the bluffs on both sides of the river so people could communicate with each other no matter what hollow or hillside they were on.

Was he a bit of a Luddite, or just turning into a crotchety old man? He liked being someplace where no one could reach him. Wasn’t that what the frontier was about? Being out on your own in the wilderness? But there was little wilderness left in this world. By the time he died there might be almost none. Morbid, middle-of-the-night thoughts.

He glanced at the kitchen clock. It was a quarter after four. This time of year, it would get light shortly after six in the morning.

Meg would show up before then, he was sure. She said she would tell her mom today about this potential boyfriend.

“He’s smart. He reads. He likes to talk about books and he notices things.” Meg said when she tried to explain to Rich how great this kid was.

“Sounds like a real scholar.”

“You know, I think he is and that’s unusual these days. I’ve liked him for a couple months, but I never imagined he felt the same way about me.” Meg bounced in the car seat next to him.

“It’s a little complicated,” she explained, “Another girl’s involved. I’m sure it’ll all work out.”

“So’s this guy going to be at the party tonight?” Rich asked.

Meg beamed and nodded. Rich was happy for her. She sounded ecstatic and he remembered for a flash what that burst of young love could feel like. Euphoric. Life-changing. All consuming.

Rich wondered if Meg had decided to stay out all night with this kid, if they had driven down some deserted farm road to make out and gotten stuck. But what about Krista? Maybe the three of them had driven up to the Cities on a lark. Who knew what kids would do these days? Certainly nothing he hadn’t thought of or done when he was their age.

He remembered the first time he stayed out all night. He had been seventeen. Old enough to join the army, but too young to vote or drink. His father was making coffee when Rich walked in the kitchen door. He had barely glanced at Rich. Then he said, “I’m going to Wabasha to get some feed. I’ll talk to you when you wake up.” Rich had wished he would have blown up at him right then. Waiting had made it harder. In the end his father hadn’t even been that mad. Just gave him more chores to do.

Rich was more worried about Claire than he was about Meg. She took these escapades very hard. She saw the world as an evil, dangerous place and her daughter as its primary target. He neither believed in the safety of the home, nor feared the dangers of the larger world. He figured you took care of yourself the best you could and rolled when the punches came.

He had all the confidence in the world that Meg would make her way through the worst of it better than most. She was more than a survivor; she was an adventurer.