Stranded (14 page)

“Are you all right?” Mr. Gruber asked.

I scrambled to tuck and brush myself as if, like Ms. Duncan, I had suddenly been caught with a smooch of chalk on my behind.

“Are you all right, Kelly Louise?” he asked a second time.

I didn’t answer him right away. He seemed sad, like Obi-Wan Kenobi when he lost Anakin Skywalker to the dark side. Sadness employed correctly, in the way Mr. Gruber must have learned it in principal school, is a powerful mind trick. Many times I had passed his office and seen him holding a pencil pinched between his thumb and forefinger near the point. He often had the look of a man who found his duties not where his mind really tended. He probably had had other aspirations besides becoming a principal. Maybe he hated that
he knew more about other people than they knew about themselves.

The wind kicked in gusts and tore at my tights and flipped my hair over my face. There was something flapping behind the house across the street, a loose tarp, a flag that someone had forgotten to bring in. The first snow of the year had been predicted for the weekend and the chill in the air bit at my lungs.

“Mr. Gruber.” I began to cry.

It was odd that I didn’t use his first name. We
were
friends. If I was going to be his stepniece someday, I would have to call him Uncle Robert. A neighbor pulled up in a minivan behind us.

Just my luck—rush hour traffic.

“Do you think your brother and my mother are right for each other?” I asked. “Do you think their relationship has a chance?”

Mr. Gruber pressed the button to release his cup holder and slid it back, ignoring the tap the driver of the minivan gave his horn. I couldn’t tell where his thoughts were leading. I sensed he wanted a reason for why I asked. He could have lied and told me what I wanted to hear, that Harvey would save us.

“Stranger things have happened, Kelly Louise,” he said.

I told him he better move his car because the neighbor behind him owned a shotgun. The man didn’t own a shotgun. Every fall, he would come over with a ladder to help my grandmother pull leaves out of the gutter. He beeped at Mr. Gruber’s car because he recognized it. I closed my eyes trying to see my future. If I told Mr. Gruber what I knew about Natalie, he might misunderstand. Could I trust my principal? I stared into Mr. Gruber’s sad, serious eyes. I reached into my backpack, fiddled until I found the journal. I put it in his hands.

MR. GRUBER DROVE ME TO THE SHERIFF’S OFFICE,
and Mom arrived from Bonny’s Salon as soon as she was notified of my whereabouts. In a room with a table and several metal chairs, we waited for an officer to drive in from the county seat and for Sheriff Boogman to look at the journal. When the officer from Tama arrived, she asked Mom whether she would be willing to submit DNA evidence. The police hoped to positively identify our genetic relationship to Baby Grace before they brought Natalie in for questioning. Apparently there had been rumors about other members of the community that had proved untrue, and the police didn’t want to jeopardize the investigation by following false leads. Mom agreed to have her mouth swabbed more readily than I expected. Up until then, I
believed she might still try to make a case for Natalie’s innocence, since it meant keeping Harvey. The officer, a woman, rubbed a stick with a piece of cotton on the end on the inside of Mom’s cheek.

The truth—whether you admit it or not—lives in your cells. Mom’s bit of internal evidence and the diary allowed the sheriff to take Natalie into custody without giving anyone a chance to cast doubt. She was questioned and sent to a juvenile facility as soon as all of the evidence was secured. I missed her even before she left home and kept her puppies and kittens on the wall. A lawyer from the state arrived to help map out her defense strategy and see if the courts would provide counseling and a psychiatric evaluation. Mom, Nana, and I huddled mostly in our kitchen during Thanksgiving break, afraid of leaving for fear of what kind of ugly opinion would stick to us.

We visited Natalie when we could since bail was denied, the fear being that public outrage might put her in danger. I didn’t attend school after the holiday but had my assignments sent through Mr. Gruber, who didn’t abandon us when he learned the news. Neither did his brother. Nana, who had so much practice shooing Kenny Stockhausen out of the yard, tried to scare the media away when they began camping on
our doorstep, but some of the life had gone out of her now that our secret was in the open. Reporters asked all kinds of weird questions about Aunt Denise and the devil-worship angle, which had somehow swelled beyond Ms. Duncan’s Earth Science class, Carrie Nation High School, and even Heaven.

I guess people like to believe in simple explanations.

Natalie’s story sparked national interest. People were excited by the idea that someone her age and with her looks had a dark side. They let their own issues cloud their judgment about how she had come to do what she had done. I think it is hard for people to see young girls as making choices, even bad ones.

It was a good thing that Mom volunteered DNA evidence when she did, because if the police suspected her of not coming forward earlier, they might have challenged her custody of me, possibly charged her with child endangerment, and put me in a group home. We came very close to losing each other.

I couldn’t imagine life without Mom. Even though she clung to Harvey hard, she went out of her way to help me adjust to having him around. We spent a lot of time painting each other’s nails. I think Harvey helped with finances since Mom got laid off from her job. I didn’t ask. It didn’t have to be “our little three-way
secret.” Harvey looked good in coral pink.

Though I kept hinting, Mom didn’t want to move back to Des Moines, not with Nana fading and Harvey helping us. Maybe it was just as well that Katy stopped returning my text messages. Nana’s house, which had formerly buzzed with the noises of the vacuum, dishwasher, and dryer, vibrated with silence most of the time.

One morning, a local station arrived to see if they could get Nana or Mom to comment on Natalie’s attorney’s motion to have her file a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity. Brent Stockhausen burst out of his house and urinated on the camera crew and, I think, the camera. I saw Brent’s good deed as a possible end to the Sorenson/Stockhausen feud over pansy beds.

A few days later, Mom picked up my cell phone in the kitchen.

“You have a call,” she said.

“Who is it?” I asked.

“I have no idea,” Mom said. “A boy.”

“Hello.” I half expected another reporter.

“Jesus, Sorenson, where have you been?” Kenny skipped a greeting of his own.

He had somehow gotten my number from Boog, who had it from when we worked on our Earth Science
report, the only person besides Natalie to have asked for it. The stupid thing was, Kenny was probably standing about a hundred yards away, and if I looked out my bedroom window into his, I probably would have seen him prowling around his room in his dirty T-shirt. I could hear water running on his side of the line.

“Since you ditched me, you owe me a favor,” Kenny informed me.

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

“You used my services,” Kenny said.

“Your services?” I echoed. Mom returned to the business of washing the dishes, and I took the phone into the living room.

“My band is playing at the last ever party at the Quonset huts and I need a groupie.” I heard Kenny switch the phone from one shoulder to the other.

He might have been eating. I hoped to God he wasn’t peeing. Stockhausens had bladder problems.

“I don’t think so,” I said.

Since I hadn’t gone even to the Jack and Jill or the QuickMart for the last two and a half weeks because Mom drove out of town to do our shopping, it seemed a stretch for Kenny to imagine I might want to party with the student body of Carrie Nation High School at the Quonset huts. I had leaked it to the media that Steve Allen was probably Baby Grace’s father. I
doubted it would do much damage to Steve’s reputation, but I might have made enemies.

“Don’t be shy, Sorenson,” Kenny said.

“I’m not shy,” I explained. “I just want to be…” and then I realized I didn’t want to be invisible, not really.

Kenny crunched something loud, a Dorito maybe.

“Hate makes the world go round,” he said, attempting to be some kind of wise man. He sincerely didn’t care that being at the Quonset huts might be uncomfortable for me. It was quite the attitude.

“There’s another reason you should come,” Kenny said.

I waited.

“I’m moving to Binghamton.” The Dorito must have caught in his throat. He coughed.

“Something sort of ugly is going down with Uncle Brent,” he explained.

I put my hand over the mouthpiece and asked Mom if I could go with Kenny. She slowly nodded an acceptance and made me promise I would be careful. Kenny asked me if she was for real.

I think both Nana and Mom wanted me to be less housebound, though neither one of them were taking up civic projects yet either. Mom would have to wait a little longer for me to be ready for student council. I told Kenny I would meet him and his band (who were these
mysterious traveling minstrels?) at the QuickMart, where Kenny said they were gathering. Mom told me to speak to Nana before I left. I had been avoiding talking to Nana since she had stopped being a mad cleaning woman, but I tiptoed to her bedroom.

“Are you awake?” I asked her.

“I’m fine, Kelly Louise. Thank you for asking.”

I knew that by telling me she was fine, she was implying she wasn’t.

“You are a good girl.” Nana stretched a hand in my direction.

It was the complete break with reality I had been fearing. Nana had never once told me I was good before. It was a word that she reserved for Natalie, and it didn’t describe her either.

“You run along now,” Nana told me. “Give your old Nana some peace.” A lack of sharpness in her voice made me also wonder if she had been drinking. I had seen Nana at the medicinal gin on
Dancing with the Stars
nights, but she had never sounded quite as deep underwater.

Nana’s fifty-two years weren’t as many as she thought. She had a lot of life left in her. I kissed her on the cheek, and just to jump-start her heart, I told her I was meeting Kenny. Her brow twitched, but I left before I could see if I had begun a cure.

“Bye, Nana.” I grabbed another sweater on my way out the door.

I set off on foot toward the QuickMart, polar trekking. The store was an oasis of warmth after the fifteen minutes it took to get there. A teenage clerk rang up purchases at the counter. He and the people in line in front of him didn’t seem to know me, or if they recognized me, they weren’t angry enough to spit at me. I milled around until I spotted Pete Phelps.

“Hi.” I tapped him on the back. I had no real fear of Pete since he had told me about the magically multiplying piglets.

“Oh.” He jumped, not having expected a tap. I was what my grandmother’s novels described as windswept.

“Have you seen Kenny Stockhausen?” I asked.

“Are you riding out to the party with us?” He held a bag of potato chips, a liter of soda, and a six-pack of beer against his chest. The soda and the fact that Pete was a member of Kenny’s band surprised me.

“I guess so.”

Pete stepped up to the counter and dropped his purchases next to the register. The clerk rang them up and lowered them into a bag.

“See you later, Sean.” I noticed that Pete knew the clerk’s name.

“Yeah, I’ll catch you at the party,” Sean answered.

When their illegal, unscrubbed, Pastor Jim–disapproved exchange was finished, Pete, who was in no way of legal drinking age, turned to me. “Are you sure you want a ride?” he asked. He seemed genuinely concerned.

“I’m not sure.”

“Is your cousin…?”

“She’s still in jail,” I told him. She was in juvenile detention, but I didn’t feel like explaining the difference.

“Really?”

“Yes. Really,” I said.

The details of Natalie’s arrest had been in the news, but maybe Pete hadn’t heard, or for a boy like Pete, politeness trumped curiosity. He brushed the hair above his forehead and pulled on his gloves. The door dinged and Kenny strode in, telling us it was time to get the fucking show on the road, what were we waiting for? When we were outside, he asked Pete if he had gotten the beer. Apparently we weren’t going to wait for any other band members, or Pete and Kenny were the whole group. On the way to Pete’s truck, the wind changed my hairstyle from windswept with a left-hand part to windswept with a right. The air wasn’t bitter so
much as in perpetual motion and freezing against my face. Pete stowed the six-pack in the bed and I went around to the passenger-side door.

“Would this thing even pass an emissions test?” I asked, referring to the rust holes and dragging bumper. The machine was a travesty.

“It’s a work vehicle,” Pete explained, which meant, I gathered, that the motor vehicle department had thrown their hands in the air in desperation and Pete could pollute with it as much as he wanted.

He explained that he didn’t technically have a license but was allowed to drive if he stayed on his own property. Trips to the gas station were also allowed. There were holes in the floorboards, the springs were shot, and the passenger seat had been stripped down to foam. I slid into the middle and Kenny climbed in next to me, slamming the door. My thighs brushed both boys. Pete couldn’t stop fiddling with the knobs on the radio. (That’s how old the truck was—knobs instead of dials.) Kenny inched closer to the window, but I could tell it made him happy that I had come. Pete finally found a country station he liked and twisted the volume.

“Please,” I said, “no,” at the blast of Kenny Chesney’s voice.

“What is this shit?” Kenny echoed.

Pete blinked and shut the radio off.

We rattled along County Road 14, never making it above forty, the engine laboring when we reached an incline of the kind normally found in Iowa, somewhere in the less-than-1-percent range. I watched the long expanse of treeless land lurking in the dark on either side of us. We passed familiar farms segmented into sections, twisted fences lining the edges of fields. The landscape was beautiful even in the dark. The roads were straight lines that led through and through and through toward the shadows gathered at the horizon.

“So, do you want a beer?” Pete asked. He gestured toward the back of the truck.

“Sure,” I replied, but he didn’t stop or slow down to get me one. If anything, he depressed the gas pedal.

He turned the truck onto the dirt drive that led to the Quonset huts. The surface of the access road was pitted and hard from the tracks of vehicles that had passed through. I jounced and nearly incurred a brain injury on the ceiling. Pete thought my bumping around was hilarious, sort of like the city slicker stepping into the saddle backward on her way to bust a bronco. He and Kenny somehow managed to keep themselves rooted to their seats while I was in serious danger of
peeing in my pants, bouncing up toward the ceiling and back down again. When I said so, Pete made the truck rear and buck harder, laughing at the hilarity and making Kenny laugh too. We bobbled along and then the truck hit a rut that knocked the bed sideways so that we tipped, nearly going into the ditch. Pete gunned the motor to pull us out in time, but his beer in the bed slid and careened into a spare tire, crushing two of the cans on one side. They began to ejaculate foam.

“Oh, crappers,” Pete said, realizing what had happened.

“Fuck goddamn it.” Kenny loved city words.

I looked over my shoulder. “Only two cans are crushed.”

“Yeah, but the others will spray.” Pete slowed the truck down.

The Quonset huts loomed closer, and we pulled through a gap in a wire fence into a mowed pasture alongside a slue. Thirty or more cars attempted to form a row at the border of the field. Both of the big garage-style doors were open and lights were on inside both huts. Lawn chairs ringed a fire pit but nobody was sitting in them, and most of them had blown over anyway. Pete waved at one of his friends and parked the truck next to a minivan that looked
so muddied and distressed from the trip in, only a miracle would get it home.

“I lost two,” Pete said to Bill after he wandered over. Bill rushed to the back of the truck, reached in, and cradled the dented cans in his arms.

Kenny told me he would catch me later and rushed off, leaving me in the dark without any good ideas about where it would be most safe to go. I was having trouble telling who everyone was. The glare of so many headlights only allowed me to see that small groups of people hovered near the parked cars. Every once in a while a door opened and emitted a glow that gave a view of couples inside or someone passing a bottle. A lot of people hadn’t bothered to shut off their engines, so a fog of exhaust added to the haziness. Tinny music wafted from all directions. The ground was frozen, uneven, and I went in search of where Kenny might have gone. I tripped in a rut and lost my balance.