Business and personal, all in order, every item checked off. Lights out, time for bed.
Worrying always exhausts me. So Im out cold moments after my head sinks into the pillow. The only dream that sticks is something about being at the beach. Its night and Im a kid, my daughters age, looking for something along the shore. Is it my keys? How will I get home if I cant find my keys? I search and search, sinking deeper and deeper into the sand. And then my alarm sounds and its a new day.
Seven oclock, lots of things to do, not least of which is a very frank discussion with Kelly over breakfast. Or maybe Ill wait until were in the car. Shes got a job at Macys for the summerthe cosmetics counterand that will give us twenty minutes or so to discuss the new boyfriend, see if I can figure out how serious it is.
Kitchen or car, one way or the other well sort it out.
In my bathrobe, hair still damp, I knock on Kellys door. Part of my job, playing rooster.
The unlocked door swings open.
Kel? Rise and shine.
At first I cant comprehend what Im seeing. Her bed is already made, throw pillows in place. Not possible, not at this hour.
Kelly?
Thats when I see the note. A note prominently displayed on her desk, held down by her South Park pencil holder. A note written in her usual florid felt tip, abbreviated as if it were e-mail.
Dont worry, Mom, its not what u think. Something came up. Will call u 2morrow at high noon. Luv u tigers and tons(really!),
K.
Shes gone. Run away.
5. Somebody Special
The way Roy Whittle figures, theres white man crazy and theres Indian crazy. Both are bad, but Indian crazy is worse cause in his opinion Indians are all crazy to begin with. Your average swamp injun is a few shy of a load for starters. Add liquor and syphilis and crazy aint far behind.
You figure Rickys lost it? Roy asks his brother.
Dug is driving, bumping their brand-new Dodge Ram over the rutted road that leads to the old airfield. He shoots a puzzled look at his brother. Huh? Dug not being one to jump into conversation without prodding.
Acting weird, Roy says. The big chief. Ricky Lang.
Dug shrugs. Cant say.
Theyre fraternal twins, but its always seemed to Roy that he got all the words, the conversational ability and most of the brains. You cant say Dug is simple, exactly, not if you dont want him pounding you, but hes not a man given to speaking much, or expressing opinions. Or other normal stuff like reading a little and planning aheadRoy does that for the both of them.
Ricky pays us, Dug points out, nodding to himself in satisfaction, having solved the question.
Yep, he does. Roy sighs. Might as well be talking to himself. But he cant let go of the idea that Ricky has been acting peculiar. For instance his recent Superman talk. Staring at Roy with his hard little eyes and saying he can see into his head, hes got X-ray vision. Like he can read Roys mind. A scary thought indeed.
When the big man first approached them, Roy thought it was strange, a Nakosha sachem wanting to hire a couple of local white boys. But when hed explained the situation with his tribe, and what he intended to do about it, it sort of made sense that he needed outside help. Any reservations Roy had got erased by the offer of a new truck with a legal title, insurance paid for, the whole bit. Plus cash money in the very near future. But the last few days he had occasion to wonder if maybe Ricky wasnt, when you got right down to it, bat-shit crazy. At the very least he was totally unpredictable, and that made him dangerous.
Roy vows to be extra damn careful with Ricky Lang, truck or no truck, money or no money.
They come around the last snaky turn in the old logging road. Ahead is the airfield, wide and clear. Not paved, because paving would draw too much attention, but scraped and leveled and hard-rolled, and suitable for everything but the very largest aircraft. Five thousand feet from end to end, straight as a string. A much improved version of the old, rutted clearing where, once upon a time, smugglers limped in, flying wheezy old DC-3 Dakotas loaded with bales of whatever, no runway lights to guide them other than a few pools of smoky kerosene set afire. Wild times that more or less ended before Roy and Dug were old enough to participate.
Unlike their poor pappy, who died in Raiford Correctional, basting in his own bitter juices.
Dont trust nobody, boys, least of all yur so-called frens.
That was Pappys only song, for years before he died. How he was ratted by friends and associates and blood relatives. A long story, partly true, mostly bull. The sad fact was, the old man was the last in a long line of willing rats, with nobody left to rat out. Boys who started out jacking gators ended up rich, wrecking fifty-thousand-dollar Jaguars on backcountry roads for the sheer stupid fun of it, until they were spent out, broke, back in the cracker swamplands where they started.
Roy, twenty-four years old and barely out of the same neck of the Everglades, has no intention of going back, not without a wad of cash in his pocket. Enough for him and Dug to live decent. And near as he can figure, Ricky Lang is the man to back, moneywise. That is, if he dont go totally squirrel.
What we do? Dug wants to know, gazing at the empty airfield.
Ricky wants us to wait, Roy explains, patient as always. Hed started out life five minutes ahead, is still waiting for his brother to catch up.
Huh? Wait for what?
Somebodys coming, Roy says. He opens the glove compartment, takes out his brand-new ten mil Auto Glock 20 with the fifteen-round magazine. Somebody special.
6. Worse Than Sex
Fern has been my best friend since the first day of first grade. She sealed the deal by finding my shoes. Brand-new shoes strapped onto my pudgy little feet by my mother barely an hour before a group of marauding third-gradersbig as invading Huns to meknocked me down on the playground, pulled up my dress and threw my brand-new shoes into the woods behind the school.
There must have been adults overseeing us, but I have no recollection of that. All I remember is being devastated. Destroyed. These were the shoes Id insisted on when shopping for my new school outfits. Expensive, from the way my mom pursed her lips and looked worried, but Id made a fuss and shed given in. Now the precious shoes were gone. I couldnt go into the school barefootmortal shameand I couldnt go home. I was lost. The new world of first grade had ended before it even began.
I cried so hard I couldnt see. And then this big girl came out of the fog of tears, a lovely girl three years older than me, with bright, beautiful, almond-shaped green eyes and wonderfully curly hair. She put her arm around my shoulders and helped me smooth down my dress and promised to find my shoes. She did find them, and helped me strap them on, and twenty-five years later whenever I get irritated with Fern, or find her wearisome, I think of the shoes, and that seals the deal all over again.
So its Fern who gets the first distress call.
Kelly ran away, I say, my voice breaking. With a boy.
Oh, Jane! No way! I have to sit down.
Fern has the wireless, carries it to her favorite chair, the soft leather recliner that belonged to her ex-husband. Poor Edgar. A sweet guy but no match for Fern, not in marriage, not in divorce, not in life. I know shes using Edgars old chair because I recognize the sound of the squeaking springs as she settles in, pushes back, lifting her size-ten feet. There, she says. Tell me everything.
I cried so hard I couldnt see. And then this big girl came out of the fog of tears, a lovely girl three years older than me, with bright, beautiful, almond-shaped green eyes and wonderfully curly hair. She put her arm around my shoulders and helped me smooth down my dress and promised to find my shoes. She did find them, and helped me strap them on, and twenty-five years later whenever I get irritated with Fern, or find her wearisome, I think of the shoes, and that seals the deal all over again.
So its Fern who gets the first distress call.
Kelly ran away, I say, my voice breaking. With a boy.
Oh, Jane! No way! I have to sit down.
Fern has the wireless, carries it to her favorite chair, the soft leather recliner that belonged to her ex-husband. Poor Edgar. A sweet guy but no match for Fern, not in marriage, not in divorce, not in life. I know shes using Edgars old chair because I recognize the sound of the squeaking springs as she settles in, pushes back, lifting her size-ten feet. There, she says. Tell me everything.
I try, but naturally, Fern being Fern, she interrupts long before everything gets told. So youre telling me Kelly stayed out all night and skipped out on her summer job? Welcome to the club, Jane.
But shes never
That you know of. Please. Shes sixteen. Everything but their name is a lie. Sometimes the name, too. I got these calls for Cheyenne? Frat boys looking for Cheyenne. Is that like a stripper name? Jessica was calling herself Cheyenne at some club, gave out her home number. Unbelievable. Jess has a tested IQ of one thirty-five, but at clubs it apparently drops to about sixty-five.
So youre telling me not to worry.
No, no, no. Be very worried. Just dont think youre alone.
But what if shes having sex? I ask plaintively.
That gets a laugh out of Fern. Laughter so hearty it seems to warm the receiver on my phone. If, Jane? Did you say if? Of course shes having sex! Why else would she stay out all night with Smike?
Seth. His name is Seth.
He told Kelly his name is Seth and she told you. He could be Smike for all you know. Or Squeers. Or Snagsby. Probably something with an S. Like Sex.
Fern is riffing now, trying to make me laugh. I know what shes doing, but I cant help responding, and my heart unclenches. A big, tension-relieving sigh and anxiety begins to recede like the tide.
Its so much easier on the phone. If Fern was here Id be worried shed see the tears in my eyes and go all soft, and then wed both be blubbering.
I hate it that they grow up, I tell her, taking a deep breath.
No you dont, she responds. Not so many years ago you were praying shed get the chance to grow up. Your prayers were answered.
True.
The miracle kid. Shes a character. They broke the mold. What a personality she has! If the average person has a hundred watts, Kelly has five hundred, all of it beaming. One day shell make you proud, but right now all she wants to do is blow your mind. And maybe Smikes little thingy.
Fern! Please!
His little mind, too.
Nobody enjoys her jokes better than Fern herself and that gets her laughing until she can barely breathe. After a while, after weve both enjoyed a few moments of silent communion, she goes, So, you got a battle plan?
Grounding doesnt seem to mean much.
Means nothing. Not unless you can lock em up and throw away the key. What you gotta do, you gotta scare some sense into her.
And how do I do that?
With Jess I used to grab my chest, make my face go all white. Make her think my heart was about to stop.
You can do that, make your face go white?
Years of practice scaring my own mother.
I cant fake a heart attack, Fern.
A seizure then. Thats easier. All you gotta do is drool.
Im crying now, but tears of laughter.
Itll be okay, Fern says, shifting to serious. Youll see. Kellys a good soul. Shell know what to do, even if you dont.
You really think so?
I really do. But just in case, can you fake a nosebleed?
Im still smiling ten minutes later when I enter Kellys room. My intention is to rummage around, see if she left a contact number for Seth. No doubt its right there on her computer somewhere, but her computer is forbidden to me. The personal computer, Kelly has explained, is like a diary. Therefore no peeking, on pain of death. To which I agreed. Not the death part, of course, but the general idea. So in my mind her computer is off-limits until one second past noon. Until then Ill stick to her address book, the handy little purse-size one I gave, assuming she hasnt taken it with her.
Cant find the address book. What I do find, nestled way back in the drawer, very nearly gives me that seizure Fern was suggesting. A photo album Ive never seen before. Quite new, very slick.
Pictures of my daughter doing something really awful. Something worse than sex. Far, far worse.
7. When Sleepy Voices Make It Snow
Once when Roy Whittle was a boyjust the one timePap took the whole family to a carnival in Belle Glade. Some kind of harvest jubilee thing, where they blessed the dirt and prayed for the sugarcane, or anyhow thats how Pappy explained it, in the brief interval when he was sober and smiling.
The thing about it was, the memory Roy savors, he and Dug got to pretty much run wild because Pappy was off doing whatever he did, and their momma went to the bingo, and the Whittle boys were left to their own devices. They didnt have money for rides or cotton candy, so they took to sneaking into the sideshow tents. Crawling under the heavy canvas, flat on their bellies, the smell of wet grass in their faces. Saw Howard Huge, the blubbery fat man, big as a whale and sitting on a scale that proved he weighed a thousand pounds. Saw a boy using a hammer to drive big spikes up his nose, which Dug thought was funnyit was a rare thing, hearing his brother laugh out loudand a skinny old woman with really disgusting scaly skin calling herself the Real Fiji Mermaid.
What Roy remembers best though, is getting hypnotized. This man in a shiny black suit and western string tie, the Amazing Mizmar, had the ability to control minds not his own. Picking folks out of the little audience for his famous experiment in mass hypnosis, hed pointed out Dug to his pretty assistant, but Dug wouldnt have none of it. He wasnt one for talking to strangers, or drawing attention. So Roy took his place up on the stage with the other victims, all of them looking pretty sheepish, and then the Amazing Mizmar produced this truly amazing device, a glittery little ball on the end of a wand. He clicked the wand and the glittery ball shot pulses of light. Alluring, rhythmic pulses that blended in with the Amazing Mizmars sleepy voice, urging Roy to stare at the wand and feel the light and then to close his eyes and still see the light through his eyelids, and in less than a minute Roy was really and truly hypnotized. It was like being awake but sleeping somehow, frozen in a half-dream, in-between state, and it felt good. Felt right somehow. When the voice suggested it was snowing, Roy looked around, delightedhed never seen snowand then set about dusting the big wet flakes from his shoulders. The laughter of the crowd was like the sound of flowing water or the crying of distant gulls, and when the voice told him to wake up at the sounda sharp hand claphe tried resisting. Wanted to stay in the between world, where sleepy voices made it snow.