Walk Me Home (23 page)

“I’m Carly. And you’re Leo.”

He’s looking straight up into her eyes. Fully unguarded. In that odd moment, Carly suddenly knows she wants one of her own. Not now. Not soon. But she does. And she never knew that before. His jet-black hair is so soft looking and so shiny in the sun. It’s all she can do not to reach down and stroke his head.

“How’d you know I’m Leo?” he asks. Half-surprised, half-challenging.

“I heard you tell
her
.”

“Oh. Right.”

Then he scampers away. Runs behind his mother and looks out from between her jeaned legs, one arm wrapped around each of her thighs. He smiles shyly, and when Carly smiles back, he buries his face in the back of his mom’s leg.

It strikes Carly odd that any living being could act so confident and so shy in such a short space of time.

“Alvin asked me to come by and see to you,” Pam says to Delores. “And he wanted me to meet your two new friends. Which I guess I’m about to do. Or maybe I’m doing it right now, already. And to take that last load in to Chester, if it’s loaded and ready to go.”

“Oh, it’s loaded,” Delores says. Implying some level of under-statement. “She had that done first thing this mornin’. Before I
even got breakfast down her. If there’s one thing this girl won’t put off”—she indicates Carly with a motion of her chin—“it’s anything might get her out of here.”

“Well, you can’t blame her for that,” Pam says. “Can you? Everybody always wants to get home. I bet both these girls are homesick like crazy.”

“No,” Jen pipes up. “Just Carly. I like it here.”

That stops the conversation for an uncomfortable length of time and makes Carly burn in a place deep in her chest, where a resentment, already smoldering, is suddenly fanned. But she clamps down on it and says nothing. She does her best to put it away again. She has no idea what else to do with it but keep stuffing it back into makeshift storage.

“Oh, and one other thing,” Pam says. “I got a note for Carly. That’s you, right? The homesick one?”

“Yes, ma’am. A note? From Alvin? Where is it?”

“Dashboard of the truck.”

Carly does not walk. She runs. Throws the truck door wide. Mangles the envelope tearing it open. Unfolds it without even closing the truck door.

It’s on a sheet from a yellow legal pad, folded into quarters.

It starts with the name of a contractor. Mel VanNess. And an address and phone number. Carly’s heart morphs into a flock of birds, all startled to the limits of their cage, suddenly, and at the same time.

Maybe Pam will take her to the pay phone on the way home.

But her heart folds its wings on the next line.

Carly Girl. Don’t get your hopes up too high reading that first part about Mel. I couldn’t find where your stepdad’s working. That name and address is just a place he used to work. But not now. The guy said Teddy
hurt his back, and as far as he knows, he’s not working now at all.

I was hoping it would be a workman’s comp case, but Mel says he hurt it on his own time. I tried to track him through disability insurance, but it seems like he wasn’t working long enough to qualify. His car is registered to an address in Tulare. Is that where you all moved from? If so, I don’t guess that helps.

Mel says he knows Teddy’s still in town because he sees him at the market. He’s always with this woman named Linda, who Mel knows to say hello to. But he doesn’t know her last name or where she lives. Or anything else about her, really. But he says he’s seen Teddy in the past two weeks or so. So I’m thinking he’s still in town. I just don’t know where.

Sorry, girl. Wanted to do better for you.

Oh. And Mel says to check the bar. I guess that means there’s only one. Make of that what you will.
—Alvin

Carly leans on the truck for a few minutes, digesting what she just swallowed. She can see Jen and Pam and Delores and Leo interact, but she’s too far away to hear them. It’s like watching a movie with no sound track.

Teddy’s with a woman?

That holds a surprising sting. He wasn’t supposed to be. He was supposed to be missing them. All of them. Nothing should have been able to replace them. Or at least…not so fast. Then she decides this Linda is probably just a friend. Teddy always did get along well with women as friends. Yeah. That feels more like the truth. That feels better.

She folds the note and tucks it into her shirt pocket.

A strong, sure thought emerges from the pile of conflict. Comes right up out of the middle of her and makes itself at home. As if to stay awhile.

“That’s all I really needed,” she says. Out loud but under her breath. “I can find him with that.”

Pam drives the dirt roads faster than Alvin. And she doesn’t slow down for the bumps. She hits them full on at twenty-five or thirty miles per hour, sending the suspension of the truck a foot higher off the road. Leo, who’s strapped into a car seat between them, giggles each time. Carly braces and winces, thinking Delores’s rusty old truck will hit the road in a thousand pieces each time it lands.

When they pass over a rutted, washboard section of road, Pam slows some, and Leo makes a low humming sound out loud, just to hear it warble as the truck bumps along. He saves the laughter until the road smooths out again.

Carly hasn’t said a word to Alvin’s wife or vice versa.

It’s Pam who finally breaks the silence.

“Not sure I’ve ever seen Alvin so heartbroken as he was on his way out the door this morning. He wanted so bad to find your stepdad. He knows you need some kind of good solution, and he just can’t stand that he didn’t rope it in for you.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Carly says.

She listens to the words as they come out of her mouth, and then later as they echo around in the cab of the truck, leaving a print of themselves, as if they hadn’t blown out the window yet. They sound terribly wrong.

“How can it not matter?” Pam asks at last. “I thought it was important to you girls.”

“It’s important to me to find him. And I will find him. I got enough to go on now. I’ll find him. You’ll see. I got all I need.”

Carly stares out the window, watching a cloud of dust follow some vehicle she can’t even see, in a far-off field that doesn’t even seem likely to have a road. They pass two girls riding bareback and double on a fine-boned gray horse.

“How?” Pam asks.

“We’ll just go there. We’ll go there and find him. Go to the market or ask everybody in town. It’s a small town. We’ll find him.”

“Awful long way for two young girls on your own.”

“We came all
this
way on our own.”

“And almost died doing it, the way I hear.”

Carly decides she’s done talking to Pam. She’s done talking, period. There’s nothing written into this work contract that says she has to tell her story to anybody. Justify her position to anybody. Get anybody’s permission for anything she wants to do.

She looks up to see Chester’s dogs in the road.

“I’m not going in there,” she tells Pam. “You let me off right here.”

Pam brakes in the middle of the otherwise deserted road. In the right-side mirror, Carly watches the cloud of red dust kicked up by the truck. Watches it settle behind them.

“Here?”

“Anywhere. I don’t care. Just not in there with that awful man and those awful dogs. Leave me far enough away that the dogs won’t mess with me.”

“Chester’s just—”

Carly stops her in midsentence by throwing open her door. She steps down into the road, feeling freer already. She slams the door behind her.

“What should I say you want for all this stuff?” Pam asks through the open window.

“I don’t care. Whatever he pays. I don’t care. I’ll be right here.”

A long pause, then the truck moves forward again, slowly, as if to spare Carly the bulk of the dust. It’s still plenty of dust. It settles over her like a red cloud. She brushes it off her shirt, then wipes her face on her sleeve.

Chester’s dogs follow the truck into the driveway, barking. Carly watches for a moment, but they don’t come back out.

She leans on a fence post, staring out at a long line of mountains. The sky looks bluer at the edge of them than it looks overhead. It’s a color of blue she’s never seen in a sky before. Almost a royal or a navy blue. She thinks of Jen’s pronouncement that the sky is somehow better here, then pushes it away again.

She’s still surprisingly angry. Even though she can’t put her finger on anything Pam did wrong. There’s a buckskin horse grazing on scrubby weeds in the distance, halfway between the fence and the mountains. In his general direction, Carly says, “If anybody thinks they can stop me from going to California to find him, they got another think coming.”

They ride home in absolute silence. It isn’t until the truck stops in front of Delores’s henhouse that Pam speaks to her again.

“Promise me you won’t make any decisions until Alvin comes by to talk to you. Promise me you won’t do anything. He’s not going to let you walk out of this place without a cent to your name. Without anybody looking after you. Alvin’s not like that. Besides, he has a responsibility now. To make sure you’re OK.”

Carly breathes in silence for a moment, realizing the sheer scope of her mistake. Alvin is the police. Carly just told the policeman’s wife that she and Jen are moving on alone. All the way to California. She should have known better. She should have known Alvin wouldn’t let her.

She gets down from the truck without answering.

Delores is nowhere to be found.

Jen is playing with that baby goat. The one they watched tormenting the barn cat, back when they were sitting across the road a few days earlier. Before they’d ever set foot on this property. It takes Carly back to a time when they were on their own. Unencumbered. Somehow it feels as though there was less to worry about then.

She walks up to Jen and the goat, both of whom take a minute to notice her. When they do, the goat startles. Bolts straight up in the air and then bounds three or four steps away. He stops there and looks over his shoulder at Carly. Carly is scary somehow. Jen is to play with. Carly is to run from.

“We don’t have time for foolishness,” Carly says.

Jen’s mouth drops open at the sound of her tone.

“What’s left to do, anyway?”

“We have to clean out that shed.”

“OK, fine. Let’s clean out the shed. Geez. What’re you in such a bad mood about?”

“Nothing. I mean, I’m not. I just want to get done with everything and move on. I’m just so done with this place.”

Jen follows her to the shed without comment.

“Careful opening the door,” Carly says.

“Why?”

“I don’t know. There could be something in there.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know, Jen. Just be careful, OK?”

Jen opens the shed door. Nothing runs out.

Inside they see gardening tools, pallets, a manual mower, plastic milk crates, metal gas cans, glass bottles, more paint cans, plus dozens of items Carly can’t even categorize in her brain.

“Damn,” Jen says. “This’ll be a big job.”

“Why do you think I wanted to get started?”

Jen looks up to see the baby goat wiggle back into the enclosure and try to nurse from his mother, butting hard underneath her.

“You won’t get anything from her,” Jen shouts. “I took it all this morning. Besides, you’re too old to nurse. Grow up.”

They set about hauling things out into the light.

Carly says, “How do you know how old a goat is supposed to be before it stops nursing?”

“Delores told me. Said she didn’t start milking that goat till it was high time for her little one to stop.” Jen sticks her head into the shed again. “Hey. Look. Work gloves!”

Jen tosses out three and a half pairs of heavy leather gloves. Which is good. Not everything in that shed looks like something you’d want to touch with your bare hands. It’s all been sitting a long time, and mice and insects and God only knows what have left their marks.

It takes probably the better part of an hour just to get it out where they can see it and sort it.

Jen shakes off her gloves, then takes off her hat and wipes sweat off her face with her sleeve. Carly just lets it drip.

“You’re awful quiet,” Jen says. “What’s wrong with you today, anyway?”

“Nothing,” Carly says. “I’m just thinking is all.”

Alvin comes around near the end of dinner. Just as Delores’s apple pie is being served. It’s big enough to feed an army, made in a deep, square baking dish, with a second crust covering the mountain of its top.

“Good trick on that timing,” Delores says.

“I smelled it from home,” Alvin replies. He pulls up a chair and sits. His eyes look red and tired, like he hasn’t slept enough. “So, I hear you girls met my two favorite people today.”

He’s trying to catch Carly’s eye, but she won’t allow it.

Jen says, “Leo is so cute!”

“That’s how I look at it, but I don’t guess I’m what you might call impartial.”

Alvin waits for some comment from Carly. Everybody does, it seems. But Carly isn’t talking. Talking has caused Carly enough trouble for one day.

“You want me to cut that and serve it?” he asks Delores.

“My hands ain’t broke yet,” Delores says.

He doesn’t argue with her.

She serves Alvin first. Sets a square of pie in front of him. It’s enormous.

“Holy cow, Delores. That’s a whole dinner.”

“Do your best with it.”

More silence. A square of pie appears in front of Carly. She starts in on it immediately.

When everybody has pie, Delores sits back down at the table again. They eat in silence for a few bites.

Then Alvin says, “Miss Carly.” In a big, solid, definite voice.

Carly jumps.

“What?”

“You’re being awful quiet.”

She shrugs. Nothing more.

When the dishes have been swept off the table and into the sink, Alvin reaches out and puts his hand on Carly’s elbow. She pulls her arm away again.

“Take a walk with me,” he says.

“What for?”

“Give us a chance to talk.”

“I don’t feel like walking. All I’ve been doing is walking and working for as long as I can remember. I’m sick of it. I’m tired. I just want to sit still. Do nothing for a change.”