Walking Dunes (34 page)

He carried his things around the house and threw them into the station wagon. He backed into the yard, right up to the door of the storeroom, and began hauling boxes out and shoving them into the car. He worked in a frenzy until he could not fit anything else in, then slammed the back door shut and jumped into the car. He pulled out of the yard, his wheels whining, and hit the street with a skid.

He had no place to go. He slowed down. He drove to Ellis' and parked with the motor running, staring at the dark quiet house. They probably all went to bed at nine, because Ellis had to. He would be up in the dark, driving off toward Roswell or Farmington or who knows where.

He cruised the streets, driving around the high school, then back past Leland's house. There was a light on there. David imagined Leland's mother sitting up with a magazine on her lap, staring off into the terrible vision of her son's crime.

He drove to Patsy's, parked and cut the motor. The house was dark. Across the way, there were lights at Ari's. Maybe she was there. Maybe they were drinking wine and listening to jazz. She had reason to sit up, reason to celebrate. He had heard from Mr. Turnbow, not from her. She never spoke to him. She had taken the bus to Dallas to a regional competition, and had placed first. There were people there from drama schools. Afterwards, she sent tapes and photographs and Turnbow called directors. She was going to California—Pasadena, wasn't it? A drama school. Going where her mother was, wonder what she thought of that.

Last he went to Glee's. He parked down the block and walked to her house. He crept down the side, to the back, and stood beneath her window, as he had done before. He was careful not to make any noise. There was a faint light in her room, not enough to be a reading lamp. He thought it was probably one of those lights you plug into the wall because you're afraid of the dark. Had she always done that? Had she always dreaded night? Or was it something that had come over her this spring, something to do with ending her days as a girl? Was she afraid, too?

Beth Ann would be sleeping soundly, afraid of nothing, rosily confident of her pampered future.

He headed to the Kimbroughs'.

He pulled the car along the curve of the street in front of their house, a car-length short of the arched open gate. He climbed out and walked onto the drive. There was an ornate gas lamp near the gate, smaller than a street lamp, and the porch light was on. In between, there were pockets of dark along the driveway, and his feet crunched gravel and sent bits of it off to make a pinging sound.

There were several lights on in the house. One, near the front, was probably in the entryway. Upstairs a light shone through a tiny window, perhaps a bathroom, and two rooms farther, a lamp in a window showed clearly, for the curtains were drawn back. Someone reading in bed, he thought. He had never been upstairs in the house. The bedrooms ran along the top on one end of the house; the rest of the house was a single story, sprawling in an L that cut around the courtyard in back. He did not know where Beth Ann slept.

He thought he would drive to Fort Stockton that night, or as far as he could go before he was sleepy. He could pull over anywhere and sleep in the front seat of the station wagon. In the morning he would go to see Teresa's grandparents, see if the beauty parlor was empty for the summer, see the preacher about tables, eat at the Brite Spot. Maybe he would ask how Teresa was doing, maybe not. He would stay a week, then drive to some of the other little towns. Maybe he would go farther south this time.

Missing graduation was nothing. It was like not picking up your receipt when you bought a shirt. You had the shirt, what did it matter?

He had been watching the front of the house, while slowly walking backward, as if to take in as much of the house as possible in his view. He backed out of the drive, and his heel caught against the slight rise of the curb, so that he slid and had to shuffle and throw his arms out to keep from landing on his buttocks. His maneuvering sent gravel in all directions. He landed on both feet, backed against a rose bush, caught his breath, and realized what jeopardy he had put himself in. He had to get out of there.

The front door was suddenly flung open and there stood Hayden Kimbrough, a pistol in his hand. He was wearing a plaid bathrobe over long-legged white pajamas. “Who's there?” he barked. David didn't think the light shone on him. He stood in silence, hoping Kimbrough would go back in, but the man stepped forward, making an arc with his body to search the yard. “Who the hell is there?” He stepped out, in David's direction. David's heart clunked.

“It's me, it's David Puckett,” he said as calmly as he could. He took a single timorous step forward, but it was enough to find the light.

“What the hell?” Kimbrough's arm fell, and the gun pointed down along his thigh.

David walked toward him. He was mortified and desperate, too flustered to think of anything to say. “I'm sorry, I'm sorry,” he mumbled.

Kimbrough's anger faded. He reached out and put his hand on David's shoulder. “What's wrong with you, son?”

David felt tears welling, felt his chest tighten and burn. He put one hand up in front of his eyes. “This is awful,” he said.

Kimbrough pulled him into the house. David heard voices and movement in the house. They went into the kitchen, Hayden flipping light switches as they passed through other rooms. He motioned to the table. “Sit,” he said, and left the room. Tears spilled over onto David's cheeks. Hurriedly he wiped them with the back of his hand, then wiped his hand on his pants. He would rather be dead than caught like this, spying and lurking. Why had he done it?

Hayden returned with Laurel. She had a worried expression. She knelt in front of David and took his hand in hers. “Whatever is going on?”

David shook his head. “This is awful,” he said again, and he began to babble about the baby, and Joyce Ellen, about going to Fort Stockton and skipping graduation. Laurel rose and filled a kettle and put it on the stove. Hayden pulled a chair closer to David and sat in it, facing him, their knees almost touching.

“I know how late it is, I don't know what I was thinking,” David said.

“Shush about that,” Laurel said gently. “I'll have coffee in a minute.”

“Are you hungry, David?” Hayden asked.

David realized he was starving. He was shaky with hunger. He did not answer, but his eyes widened. Laurel moved to the refrigerator and began to pull out food: a platter of sliced roast beef, some pieces of chicken, a block of cheddar cheese, mustard. She opened cabinets and suddenly there was bread, all this food spread out on the table in front of him.

Hayden took a small slice of meat and began to chew it vigorously. He told his wife, “I'll take a cup, too,” and in a moment the coffee appeared, steaming, in front of them. David ate.

“I didn't know it was so bad for you,” Laurel said, sitting across from him at the table. She leaned on her elbows, her soft silky robe falling away from her arms.

David chewed and nodded.

“I'll put you in the guest room. It's down here, you'll have your own bath. You stay here tonight, David. We'll talk in the morning.”

He shook his head and swallowed a big lump of bread and meat. “I couldn't.”

Hayden clapped him on the bicep. “You can't go prowling around any more houses,” he said jovially. “And you don't want to go home.”

Beth Ann appeared in the door of the kitchen. She looked sleepy, but she had dressed in cotton pants and blouse and had combed her hair.

“Are you okay, Davy?” She leaned against the door. “Did something happen?”

He put his hands on the edge of the table, as if to shove it away. “I'm okay, except for making a fool of myself.”

Laurel touched his cheek with her delicate fingers. “We're family, David.”

He stood up quickly. “It's hot,” he said. He had worked up a sweat, eating. He surveyed the mess he had made, the empty cup. He had not even taken time to put sugar in his coffee.

“We could go out on the patio,” Beth Ann said. She glanced at her parents. They looked at one another, then rose.

“I'll put fresh towels in the bathroom,” Laurel said. “Beth Ann can show you where the guest room is.”

Hayden said, “I'll see you in the morning.” David wondered where the gun was, then saw it lying on the corner of the cabinet, near the breadbox. Hayden was not angry. David wondered if he pitied him, or if he thought he was mad.

“I need to show you something,” David said to Beth Ann. Her parents paused in their exiting. “Could we—” his eyes flitted to Laurel, Hayden, then back to their daughter. “Could we go for a ride? It's like summer.”

“It's late,” Laurel said.

“I'd like to, Daddy,” Beth Ann said.

Hayden glanced at the watch on his wrist. “Not yet midnight,” he said. He put his hand on his wife's arm. “Let's go to bed and leave them.” He remembered the gun then, and picked it up tenderly, as if it might easily bruise, and took it with him. “Not too long,” he said as he left the room. “And lock the front door when you're back.”

David gulped. “Thank you sir. Thank you both.”

Beth Ann took his hand. The moment her parents were out of sight, she said, “Where do you want to go?”

“Do you have some matches?” he asked her. “Get some matches, and I'll show you.”

36.

He thought he remembered the place where he had pulled off the road to pee that August afternoon when he had first seen Sissy, but everything looked the same in all directions, once he was off the highway.

Beth Ann acted a lot more concerned about what he had done than her parents had. When she got in the station wagon, she made a big fuss about all the boxes. “What is all this stuff?” she said, getting on her knees and pawing at what she could reach. “What are you doing?”

He told her to sit down. The notebooks were on the floor at her feet. She said, “What's wrong with you? I like to died, seeing you in my house at that time of night. You're lucky my daddy didn't shoot you.”

He turned off on this lease road and then that one, backing out, hardly seeing where he was going. “What are you looking for!” Beth Ann demanded shrilly.

He drove around for twenty minutes, a whole crisscross of dead ends and false leads. He could not find the stockpond where Sissy had died. Finally he pulled up not far from a thumping pumpjack and turned off the motor. The night was clear, the sky high and milky with stars. He got out of the car. There was a little pond there, but it was not much more than a puddle. It couldn't be the one where Sissy had waded in to await the blast from her father's gun.

He ran back to the car, on the passenger's side, and pulled the door open. “Davy!” Beth Ann cried, as he reached down to grab Sissy's notebook. She followed him out of the car, down beside the puddle of dank, dark water. He squatted on the ground and tore out a page.

“That's her notebook, isn't it? Give me that, David Puckett!” She grabbed, he pulled it out of reach, she fell abruptly onto the ground. “Ow!”

He struck a match and the page caught fire immediately. He held it for a moment, then dropped it onto the ground in front of them, where it was quickly extinguished.

“I want it!”

“You said to get rid of it. Here I go.”

“I wanted to read it first.”

In a singsong voice, he said, “David kissed me and he wanted to. I saw David in the hall today. I want to die. I'm crazy, crazy craz—”

“Oh stop it, stop it right now!” She put her hands over her ears.

He had several pages wadded into a ball on the ground, he tore out more pages. Soon he had a little pile, for a bonfire. He struck several matches, trying to light it, but they blew out. He lit a single page, then held it to the pile until it caught. With a whoosh! the balls fell apart, one of them burned for a moment, then they were all out. The smell of smoke made his nose itch. “Damn,” he muttered. Furiously he tore out more pages and ripped them into tiny pieces and threw them into the air. There was a breeze, and it caught some of the pieces and took them a few yards away, but mostly the paper fluttered down around them like heavy snow.

Beth Ann reached for the notebook and tore pages out, too. She ripped them into long strips, as he remembered doing years ago in school, for a papier maché project. They had made little dinosaurs with pipe cleaners for the skeleton, then pasted on the wet newspaper strips.

He kept lighting matches and setting pieces of paper alight until the matches were gone. Some pages caught and burned to ash. Most burned part of a corner away, then sputtered out. He was too hasty, too careless. He could not make paper burn!

He picked the notebook up, what was left of it, and grabbed sheets of paper that were loose, he took up all he could hold and went over to the water and shoved all of it under with both hands. The cold water shocked him. He saw himself at the edge of the puddle, pushing under Sissy's notebook, and he saw himself for the idiot he was. Beth Ann crouched beside him. “Will it rot in there?” she whispered.

He grabbed her shoulders. “No, summer will come and the water will dry up, and the pages will still be there, and they'll dry too, and a dusty wind will pick them up and carry them all the way back to town!”

She began crying.

He got up, pulled her to her feet. “Of course they'll disintegrate in there. And what if they didn't? Who goes around oil leases looking for things to read? Snap out of it. I've done what you wanted me to do.” He snapped his fingers. “Wait, done half of it.” He ran to the car and got his own notebook, then ran back to the water. He took his shoes and socks off, and then, on second thought, stripped off his trousers, too. He waded to the center of the little puddle and laid the notebook on the water's surface. It floated, one end dipped, very visible in the starlight. He lifted his foot and stamped it down. The water was about eight inches deep, and muddy. His feet sank into the soil.