Sway (22 page)

“N
o-good, sticky-fingered, kid-cheatin' con man!”

When I was six, this is what my mom yelled at the ice-cream man as she chased his truck three whole blocks because I'd paid for my push-up pop with a five-dollar bill and come back with no change. She ran on her heels, cotton balls separating her freshly painted toes. I mostly remember having to help her hold a bag of ice on her raw heels while my pop melted in the sink.

Now, in the RV, as Dad snored on the other side of the curtain, I lay across that old trick box that was my bed and realized for the first time ever how miserably uncomfortable it could be. I felt like a magician's assistant being cut in half for real, my insides hurt so bad from the Sway snatched right out of there. I thought about Syd warning me once that if you say a word out loud enough times, it will totally lose its meaning, and how I sure didn't have to do that with Sway now that Dad had just trampled the meaning right out of it for me. Then I considered all the things that M. B. probably really stood for. Like
Major Bunk
. Or
Mister Bull
. Perhaps
Mondo Bamboozler
. Something befitting a no-good, sudsy-fingered, kid-foolin' soap scum.

I closed my eyes tight while all the lies Dad had told elbowed and kicked each other around in my head. The soaps, the suit, the list, the attic, the limitless inheritance. And then I remembered the certificate.
The certificate
. I'd forgotten all about that thing, and I had to see it again right away. Careful not to wake Dad, I reached around the side of my curtain, opened the fridge, and slid the cold paper out from its frosty spot. I unfolded the paper and held it up to my little window, hoping against hope to feel some of the magic again. Like maybe Dad's carving thing was all some kind of weird misunderstanding. I mean, I'd seen with my own eyes what Sway had done for all those people.

But as the full moonlight shone through the document, there, plain as the zeeyut on my face, was something I'd missed before, something very telling in the bottom left corner. On a spot not quite as burned off as the other edges, I recognized the mascot's cartoon foot from the Olyn Middle School stationery. And as if that weren't enough, I could even smell the blackened edges of the paper, which made me instantly picture Dad burning it over the sink with the
flick-flick-flick
of a lighter. That thought alone made me so furious, I folded the paper again and again and stuffed it into the can it! box, which was now far beyond full—paper corners poking out of every side. How dumb could I be for not learning from Mom's SMART certificates that a document doesn't give you authenticity.

Overcome by the realization that I couldn't even trust my own smarts, or my own eyes, for that matter, I began to wonder: Had
every
thing important in my life been nothing more than imaginary? Not just soaps and the comfort they seemed to give people, but maybe even the biggest stuff…even my own parents' love for me?

My heavy thoughts and the sobs they squeezed out of me made it harder by the minute to keep silent, even with my face muffled by my pillow. I'd heard from Brother Edge about God not letting people suffer beyond what they can bear, but what I was feeling was surely as close to unbearable as it gets. In three weeks' time I'd been up, down, and all around. And now there was nowhere left to go but
out
.

Dad was so sprawled out across his space, there was no making it to one of the RV doors without getting caught, so I leaned beyond my curtain just far enough to grab the brown suitcase. Then I dragged my bed to the middle of my room, one little jerk at a time, and stood on top of the box, hoping hard that it wouldn't break underneath me.

The bed put me high enough to reach the moonroof, and as I worked to pop open its latch, my hands got all nervous and uncooperative, like they'd never even met each other before. When the door finally gave way, I lifted the suitcase above my head and pushed it out, slow and easy, where I let it rest on the roof to wait for me to join it. After that, I raised my arms and wriggled myself up through the opening. Once my top half was out, I had to slide on my belly along the roof until my legs were free as well. Suitcase in hand, I climbed down the back ladder of The Roast, stepping soft as I could; and as soon as my feet hit the ground, I ran.

I ran harder than I'd ever run before, even in a thousand races against Syd. I ran so hard, the taillights, the weeds growing up through the asphalt, the moist thickness of the air, everything that passed me was a swirly blur of smells and sights and sounds. I ran so hard that a million night bugs flecked me in the face, a whole new one for each terrible thought that passed through my mind. Like how cruel it was for heaven to assign two rotten-hearted parents to one girl. And that paper cuts caused by fake certificates are by far the most painful kind. And how I wished on all the crooked cucumbers in the world that I could dive to the bottom of that blue mailbox and get Mom's stupid, worthless postcard out of there.

When I couldn't move fast enough in my flip-flops, I took them off and carried them. Though a fresh cover of clouds kept the moon's light from guiding me, I felt like I could very well close my eyes and let my fury steer my feet. The loose pavement on the shoulder of the road was warm and smooth enough on my skin, and even smoother when it changed to just hard-packed dirt underneath me.

Even above the noises, which had turned from the
whush
of trucks into the fuss of crickets, I could hear myself panting like a dog, and my right leg itched where the suitcase pounded it with every stride. The blood in my cheeks made me feel like my face would catch fire, and I was sweating like I hadn't ever sweated before. Even so, it was like my body and soul were hardened and in full agreement, like my legs wouldn't get tired of running and that was okay because my heart didn't want them to anyway. Unfortunately, though, legs can be a lot more wobbly than hearts sometimes. Much like the wobbling my own did right before I came to a dead stop.

The way I saw it, though, my stopping just made for a good opportunity to deal out some revenge. So, best as I could while still holding it, I unlocked the brown suitcase and let the bottom drop open like a trapdoor, sending an avalanche of useless soaps tumbling onto the ground. After that, I took the open case into both hands and summoned what was left of my energy, shaking hard to loosen the stubborn, clingy slivers. In my head, I seemed to imagine a thundering sound that made the perfect companion for the disposal of such a heap of wrength.

Only, the next time the thundering happened, it came with a sharp flash of lightning and a tremble of the earth below me. Then, sudden as spit, the bottom dropped out of the sky, and huge, relentless raindrops smeared my vision. Between the drops, I took a good overdue look at my blurry surroundings.

And that's when I turned scared.
Really
scared.

It seemed in all my muddled rush, I had left our parking lot and even the main highway far behind, and nothing at all was familiar anymore. The night bugs had stopped their attack. Even the road under me was little more than a path, made by who knew what kind of wild Tennessee animal. If I was even in Tennessee anymore. It seemed I'd run so far, I could very well be in California. Only, I had a feeling it didn't rain this hard in California.

Just one yellow light hanging from a splintered pole poorly lit the scene around me. To my right, there was a rickety fence with rusty barbed wire across it. To my left, there was a ditch already filling with water. Behind me was a narrow woodsy clearing growing darker by the second. And the way I'd come from was merely a slick of shiny brown mud.
Or was that even the way I'd come from?
I wanted so bad to turn back, but I didn't for the life of me know how. Starting off in one direction and then the other only made me more confused.

Just when I chose a direction and began to walk that way, something suddenly made me slip and fall hard to my knees. As I struggled to free myself from the soaked overgrowth on the ground, there in the mud all around me floated the melty remains of dozens of little slick soaps that had made their own revenge. When I was finally able to pull myself up by a loose root, the soapsuds clung to a whole mess of scrapes on my shins, making them sting something fierce.

Feeling a braided chain of regret and fear cinch tighter around my gut with every breath I took in, I held fast to the nearest fence post, like an imaginary storm victim clinging to an imaginary church steeple in the midst of a not-so-imaginary flood. And just when it seemed the world didn't have enough oxygen for even one girl, I heard a voice.

“Cass!” Dad screamed, loud as the thunder, from somewhere way too far away. “Castanea!”

I let go of the post and scrambled toward his voice so desperately fast, I fell to my hands and knees again, with no regard for the scrapes and the mud. All I knew was every call of my name was louder and more comforting.

“Cass!”

“Dad!” I yelled, still running toward him.

Then finally, up ahead, the main road came into view.

“Cass!”

“I'm here!” I said.

Within a matter of seconds, The Roast appeared, taking a Biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiig Leeeeeeeeeft that almost sent it tipping over on its side. When Dad stopped, the RV hung off into the thicket by the side of the road, all leafy and twiggy like it had just busted through a wall of hedges.

I stopped in my tracks and stood firm between the cockeyed headlight beams, waiting for Dad to get out. He tried and tried to fight his way past a branch that slapped through his window, to push what he could of his face out through the leaves. I wondered if he'd be relieved that he'd found me, or mad that he'd had to come looking at all. Then, soon as I caught sight of Dad's face, I silently cursed how very instant tears can be, and how the sudden slowing of the rain sure did make them hard to hide.

“Cass, baby, are you all right?” he said.

“Not really,” I answered. “How did you even know I was gone?”

“Your curtain,” Dad said, all out of breath like he'd had to power The Roast with his own feet. “It was blowing like crazy from the wind through the moonroof.”

“But how did you find me?”

Dad held up a familiar flip-flop. I didn't even realize I had dropped it.

“I found this at the turnoff,” he said.

My ears itching like never before, I lifted the other flop up to the light so he could get a good look before I threw it hard on the ground in front of me.

“Well, here's the other one,” I said, wrestling back my tears. “Two matching shoes. Now we
have
to go home.”

D
ad shook the leafy mess from his hair.

“Come on,” he said. “Get in.”

There was a no trespassing sign so close to us on my side of the RV, I had to slide up into my seat like a thief between laser beams. Dad found a big towel and draped it across my shoulders, lingering a moment to squeeze me close to him.

“Cass, are you hurt?”

The relieved part of me wanted to turn and hug him back. Even so, the mad part of me won out.

“I'm okay,” I said, slowly scanning the insides of the RV. With books and wagon and banner and tambourine all wet from the open moonroof and strewn everywhere, The Roast looked like it was going to a costume ball dressed as a shipwreck. I thought about how, on the day we left for this trip, Uncle Clay had wished us a clean start. And how this didn't feel like a clean start at all, but more like a really dirty finish.

After pulling the moonroof lid shut with the Sneaker Reacher, Dad got back into his seat and squeezed the steering wheel so tight his knuckles turned white.

“
Why
, Cass?” he said. “Why would you do this?”

As I tugged and tugged on what was left of my eyebrows, I felt the words fight their way upstream from my gut to my lips. I knew I needed to confront Dad about what I'd seen. To see what he'd do if given the chance to confess the ugly truth to his daughter, face-to-face. The chance that Mom never got.

“Are you a con man?” I tried to say, but it came out kind of lockjawish.

“Excuse me?” he said.

The rain outside had stopped completely, but inside it suddenly felt like Dad and I were two empty Coke bottles taped together, with a little cyclone swirling between us.

“I said, are you a con man? And is that really why Mom left?”

It was a lot less lockjawish that time, and inspired a total deer-in-headlights look on Dad's face.

“Dad, I
saw
you. Tonight, with the hotel soaps and the encyclopedias. I saw you carving.

“You
lied
to me.” My voice got even louder. “You said they were special, that they were part of our heritage, that we could change the world with those things. That's what you said.”

Dad put his head in his hands for a few seconds. Then he turned toward me and laid his hand on the armrest of my seat.

“Cass, please just hear me out,” he said.

He was shaking a little.

“It's just that…The reason I…I mean, you need to understand…”

Dad began three speeches, but couldn't seem to find the rest of any of them.

“Just go from the beginning,” I said.

“All right,” he said. “Here's the beginning.” He looked at me sheepishly, like he wasn't sure I was prepared for his next words. “I made a wish on Abe Lincoln.”

He was right. I wasn't prepared for those words.

“You mean that funny piece of soap we saw in the kitchen with Mom?”

“That very one,” he said. “The thing is, Cass, I've always known how much you admired your mom, how you looked up to her for the good she does—well, the good she
did
. And believe it or not, I do understand those feelings. I've worked a lot of years digging holes in the dirt and selling raw meat to make sure she could keep doing that stuff.

“What you and I both have to realize is that your mom's leaving has been brewing for a while, and there wasn't anyone or anything that could stop it. Not you. Not me. Not a trip in a cruddy RV. So the way I saw things, I had no choice but to try and rescue what was left of our family. That day in the kitchen, when your mom made a wish on that silly Abe Lincoln soap sliver, I made my own wish too.”

“You did?”

“Yeah, and I knew it was a long shot,” he said. “But I wished that I could stop being a total nobody in the eyes of my own daughter.”

“But I never thought you were a nobody,” I said, instantly flashing back to a hundred reasons he might have thought that.

“Well, I've sure never been much of a
some
body to you.” Dad wiped his face on his sleeve. “I guess I just wanted to come up with something special that you and I could share, something that was just about
us
.” He paused. “And that's when I got the soap sliver idea.”

I gave Dad a hard, hard look. I wanted to make sure my next words sunk in good.

“You made me believe those soaps were magic.”

He drew in a deep breath. “I know. I made
me
believe those soaps were magic too.”

“But what about all the people we met?” I said. “The kids, the soldiers, the Belfusses, Ambrette?” A bunch of suckers, I thought. Just like me.

“All believers,” he said.

“All lied to,” I said.

“But all
helped
.”

That one truth plopped on top of the pile of lies made me feel more confused than ever.

“The thing is, Cass,” Dad continued, “I think sometimes,
believing
is all the magic you need. Don't you see? They all believed so much, they made their own wishes come true. And didn't we give them a fun way to do it?”

I scooted my arm out from under his hand.

“I just don't understand how you could lie about something like Sway.” Even saying the words
lie
and
Sway
in the same sentence made my voice crumble.

When the storm ended, an unbearable first-morning ray of sunlight flashed through the windshield. Dad flipped down his shade visor, and I did the same.

“You're right, Cass,” he said. “I did lie about Sway, but not like you think. The thing about Sway is, well, Sway
is
genuine, but as it turns out, not so rare.”

Dad took a slow look around the shambly insides of The Roast.

“Think about it this way,” he said. “It's like we're all born with our souls real sticky, and we pick a little something up from every person we've known.”

“Sticky souls?”

“Yeah, well, a lot like that lint roller we've got back there,” he said.

I must have looked as puzzled as I felt.

“I've been thinking hard about this, Cass, and here's what I figure,” Dad began. “It's like we all keep a little something from everyone, past or present, who touches our lives. Some of it's as cruddy as beef jerky crumbs. But then there's the sparkly glitter scattered in between all that. That glitter, it's the part you want to keep—the pieces you take from others to help make a better you.
That's
the real Sway.”

I felt a rush of relief to hear the words
real
and
Sway
back together again.

“And the soap,” he added. “Well, that's just a mighty fun way to make it come to life for people.”

His words punched and kicked their way through replayed memories of our entire trip. “Oh,” is what I said.
Whoa
, is what I felt.

“Even for a muddy, meaty bore like me,” said Dad. Then he puffed his cheeks and let the air out in a slow-leak sigh, aiming his face upward, like you do when you're either trying to stop a sneeze or send some sadness sliding back inside. Just above his head, the photo of baby him and toddler Uncle Clay had slipped and was dangling from his visor by one corner. Peeking out from under it was another picture, one I'd never seen before. It was a shoeless Mom and a beardless Dad hugging on each other, soaking wet, standing in the rain with umbrellas at their sides.

“When's that picture from?” I said.

“The year your mom and I got married,” he said, tucking it under like he couldn't bear to look. “Back then, all she knew of storms was that April showers bring May flowers.”

From the dashboard, Gordon Lightfoot sang about reaching the part where the heartaches come. Even just the wordless stuff was so sad I could hardly stand it.

“Don't you have any other music?” I asked.

“No, but I guess I ought to find some,” Dad said, ejecting the CD. “You know, your mom gave me this thing the very same week that picture was taken, as a first anniversary present.…Long before
every
thing went stormy.”

As he pushed the photo of him and Uncle Clay back on top of the other one, I thought about how he could have used his own can it! box on this trip too. But he sure couldn't borrow mine. Mine was simply too full.

“May I ask you something?” Dad said.

“Sure.”

“When you ran away,” he said. “Why did you take the MBM suitcase with you?”

Oh no, I thought. Those poor slivers, they are gone and they are mush. Guilt pricked at my gut again.

“Oh, um, I dumped the soaps out,” I said in a small voice.

“And I left the suitcase too,” I said in a smaller one.

“Well then, that settles it,” Dad said as he cranked the engine. “I guess you're right about going home. We'll just pick us up a map and take the shortest way back to Alabama.

“Unless, of course, you want to go on,” he added, with a hint of hope in his voice. But despite how disappointing the thought of us breaking Rule of The Roast Number One and buying a map, I just shook my head
no
to playing assistant to his big hoax anymore.

After that, Dad inched and scratched us along the shoulder of the main road, trying again and again to knock a limb off the windshield with the wipers. As we picked up speed, all manner of prickles and pollens and pine needles blew off The Roast. He didn't even bother to merge back onto the highway, but just stayed on the shoulder until the next exit, where we found the D-Lux Truck Wash just beyond the Ekim, Tennessee, city hall. The wash had a grand-opening sign that looked like it had been there for years.

When it was our turn at the washing station, I watched Dad vigorously squeegee the windshield, my brain doing the same back-and-forth dance. Mostly wondering how everything in my life could be so full of opposites at the same time. Hero, scam. Inspiration, frustration. Truth, lies. For a moment, it seemed that the collection of bad thoughts and good thoughts inside me was as unmixable as oil and water, like maybe I'd have to shake my head to make sense of anything.

Before I even realized Dad had stepped away, he reappeared inside the RV with a folded map of the Southeastern United States, two matching honey buns, two cartons of milk, and a box of Band-Aids. And not the little wimpy kind for paper cuts either. This was a box of wound-worthy Band-Aids.

“Look, Cass,” he said, arranging our breakfast on the center console before he took to ripping open three of the extra-large bandages. “I know I might have blown it big-time. And you have every right in the world to be mad at me. But please know that all this pretending—all the silly pretending I've
ever
done—has been done with your happiness in mind.”

I wiggled the little side mirror control on my door while Dad leaned over and carefully dabbed my legs clean with a napkin before placing the bandages on for me. He was beyond gentle enough for the job, and I was relieved that he arranged them perfectly, so that none of the sticky parts were attached to actual scrapes.

“It's just, I knew that pulling your mom's glory right out from under you wouldn't be smooth, like yanking a tablecloth and leaving the dishes undisturbed,” Dad said, pressing lightly on the last corner of adhesive. “I knew that without some magic to fall back on, you'd have been hurt beyond what's fair for a kid.”

“Like surplus suffering?” I said.

“Exactly,” he said. “And then I thought about who you'd want to be like, if not your mom, and I realized it sure wouldn't be your dull, faded dad.

“But I
so
wanted it to be me,” he said.

As he tucked the flap on the Band-Aid box shut, I couldn't help but think about Scrabble games and pipe-cleaner scenes and a stupid cell phone and the endless list of ways that Dad had tried to make things good. So many things that M. B. McClean just seemed to be the exclamation point at the end.

“You wanted to be the cheese,” I said.

“The what?”

“The cheese, the gooey good stuff that fills in the empty space when a slice is taken away.”

“Oh.”

I picked at a little crusted honey bun sugar on my palm.

“But it was still wrong to lie to all those people,” I said. “And to me.”

“I know,” he said. “And for that I am truly sorry.”

Dad twisted around, lifted the fringy green-and-yellow suit jacket from the back of the driver's seat, and held it up to himself.

“Guess we won't be needing this stuff anymore,” he said, feeling for the tarnished chain that was tucked down in the tiny front pocket. Then he hunched over so I couldn't see, gave the chain a good tug, and pried something off the end before tossing the jacket in a lump under the coffee table.

“Hold out your hand,” he said.

When I did, he laid a little golden silhouette-head of a girl in my palm. The head had
Cass
engraved in bad cursive across it. It was so lovely, I gasped out a little squeak.