After a louder knock, he looked in the window by the swing, cupping his hand so he could see inside. The uneven, hardwood floors ran throughout the empty house. No furniture. No phone. Not even a kitchen table.
He walked to the side, hands on his hips, and saw movement at a farmhouse. He cut through the edge of a cornfield and up the long driveway. A man was working on the wheel of his tractor, his Razorbacks hat stained with sweat and axle grease.
“Excuse me,” John said. “I was wondering if you knew anything about the lady who lived in that house.”
The man turned, propping his arm against the huge tire, but it took him a few seconds to look John over and speak. “Mrs. Linderman?”
“That’s her. She didn’t pass, did she?”
The man stuck his tongue in his cheek and dipped his head to look over his glasses. “She passed from that place down yonder; that’s for sure. But not from this world. Who wants to know?”
“Sorry. I’m a friend of her son’s.”
“You knew Calvin?”
“We were in the service together. Fought in Afghanistan side by side.”
He wiped his hands on his coveralls and with great effort stood, sticking out a rough and rugged hand. Callouses from hard work. Lines on his face from years of life and dark veins that showed through sunburned skin. “Thank you for what you did for your country, son. You’re not John, are you?”
John let go. Surprised. “How’d you know?”
“Margaret mentioned you anytime she talked about Calvin. She hoped you’d come back around here.” He glanced at the house and a woman working in the kitchen. “You and your daughter want to come inside and have supper with us?”
“My daughter?” John said, confused. How would he know about June Bug?
The man nodded toward the road. “She looks like she’s with you. Isn’t that your daughter?”
John turned to the road. June Bug was bounding up the driveway toward him, a big smile on her face.
12
I hugged my dad, and I swear he looked like his teeth were going to fall out of his head. He just stood there, his mouth open, about a million questions in his eyes. I’d stayed as quiet as I could, singing into my pillow as we crossed bridges. The hardest part was finding something to eat. I’d brought some bread from Sheila’s kitchen and a couple of pieces of cheese, but after I ate those, my stomach started gnawing at itself.
One of the big draws of me coming with him was to find out what in the world he was doing and what was so all-fired important about the trip, and I figured I was missing something with this man. Maybe it was his daddy. Maybe the uncle he talked about from time to time who had taught Dad to fish. I wondered if this might be the man who made all the memories.
Instead of letting my dad ask me anything, I took his hand and swung it back and forth, smiling at the older man. “Are you friends with my dad?”
“I am now,” he said. “Just asked if he wanted to come have supper with us. Are you hungry?”
“I’m starving,” I said. “Can we eat supper with them, Daddy? Please? I know it’s going to be good because I can smell it.”
“I’ll go in and tell the missus to set two more places at the table.” The man walked off, leaning to one side with one of his arms held tight against him.
When he made it to the steps which were cinder blocks, Dad turned to me. “What are you doing? You were supposed to stay with Sheila. Have you been in the RV all this time?”
I nodded.
He ran a hand through his hair. “She must be going out of her gourd. She might have contacted the police, thinking you ran away.”
“She wouldn’t do that. She’ll figure it out.”
“I got to get to a phone.”
“The people in there will let you use theirs. Do you know them?”
A bunch of worry lines came on his face, and for once he didn’t seem fully with me. Most of the time when I had my dad’s attention, I had all of him. But I could tell there were things going on in his head now that took him away, took his thoughts to some other place, like he was on some deserted island but thinking about Alabama or Tennessee.
“I knew the lady who lived in the house next door. That’s who I came to see.”
“What for?”
He looked at me and gave me a stare that said,
I can’t believe you are asking me questions when there are so many questions I have for you.
But he also did it with a smile. “I have never spanked you in all these years, young lady, but I’m as close as I’ve ever been. What were you thinking hiding like that?”
I tried to pout and put my head down. He put his hand under my chin and lifted it up so he could see my face. I guess there were tears in my eyes because things were sort of blurry.
“I just want to know,” I said.
“You want to know what?”
“About you. About me. I knew if I asked you wouldn’t let me come. And if you found out I was in the RV anywhere close to Colorado you’d have turned around. So I stayed up there as long as I could.”
“I should put you on a bus in the morning. I should send you straight back there.”
“But I want to go with you and find out.”
“Find out what? What are you talking about?”
The screen door creaked, and the old man stuck his head out. “You two come on inside and get washed up.”
“We’ll be right there,” my dad said. He got down on one knee and put his arms on my shoulders. “What’s this about? I thought you’d be happy to stay with Sheila.”
And then the tears started to roll, and once they start there’s no way you can stop them; I don’t care how old you are. I didn’t like to cry in front of him, and most of the time when I do, I make sure it’s in my bed at night when he’s asleep or out getting food. But I couldn’t help it. “I want to go back with you to Dogwood.”
He squinted at me like I had three heads. “What do you know about Dogwood?”
“My mama is back there. I just know it. And I thought if I came with you, you’d explain things. Explain why we’re not living there and what happened. I want to know what happened to her.”
My nose was running now, and I wiped it on my shirt. Then I wiped my eyes and wasn’t able to see much, but I could see the look on his face. And that was enough to send me into more crying and snorting. I fell into his arms, and he gathered me onto his chest and held me there as I sobbed. Getting it out felt good in a hard kind of way. It was sort of like eating way too much candy, like one time I had a whole bag of Twizzlers. I made it to the parking lot before it all came spilling out, and Daddy said he was afraid I had burst something inside because it was red. I told him it was just the Twizzlers, and then he laughed and shook his head and gave me a wet paper towel.
He kept patting me on the back and whispering in my ear. “Shh. It’s going to be okay. It’s all right,” he said about a hundred times.
Then he pushed me away so I stood on my own, and he took out a handkerchief from his back pocket. I blew my nose hard, and we both laughed because I can really make it sound like an air horn.
“How did you find out about Dogwood?” he said.
And then it all came spilling out. I told him about the poster I saw in Walmart that had my picture on it and recited exactly what it said, like I’d done about a million times in my head.
Daddy kept wringing his hands, folding them over and over like he was trying to wash something away. Again I asked about Dogwood and if we could go back, and he shook his head and muttered something about never being able to.
“Why not?”
“It’s complicated.” He looked toward the road, and there were lines on his face I’d never seen before. Finally he said, “Which do you like better, June Bug or Natalie Anne?”
“I don’t think I could ever get used to anything other than June Bug.”
His chin trembled and he pulled me close.
The screen door squeaked behind us. “Food’s on the table,” the old man said.
“We were just coming,” Dad said.
He picked me up and walked into the house and took me to the bathroom down a long hallway with hardwood floors that creaked underneath our weight. I had a feeling that they’d creak under the weight of a mouse. The house smelled musty and old, and there was dust in the corners that old people must not see. The bathroom fixtures were rusted and dripped even when I turned the handle off really hard, and there were brown spots on the towels.
I tried to make it look like I hadn’t been crying by rubbing cold water on my face, but my eyes were still red.
Daddy’s hands were brown and strong, and he cupped my face in them from behind and kissed the top of my head. “You look great. Come on.”
The old woman wiped her hands on her apron and smiled like I was her grandbaby. She shook my dad’s hand and told him she was proud to meet him. Then she hugged me so tight I thought I wasn’t going to be able to breathe for a day.
She showed me my place at the table while she turned down the TV volume. I couldn’t believe all the food she’d prepared for only two people, and I wondered if she’d pulled out more stuff just for us. A big plate held a mound of meat that she called her special recipe meat loaf. There were green beans in a bowl, still steaming, and a dish of red things that I found out were beets. She had baked four of the biggest potatoes I had ever seen—they were almost bigger than me—and she cut mine open and put a slice of butter on there and it melted.
“That’s cow butter,” she said. “And there’s homemade apple butter for your biscuit. Try some.”
Her face was kindly, with more lines than the map we kept in the RV, and she had a way of talking that her husband didn’t. She’d talk and talk and ask questions, and the old man would just sit there like he was watching a ball game. Then, on the off chance that he got a word in, she’d correct him and he’d go back to eating.
“Warren tells me you knew Margaret and her boy. Served with him over in Afghanistan.”
“That’s right,” Dad said. “I was through here a few years ago to see her after Calvin died.”
She shook her head. “Her life’s changed a bit since then. We’ll call her after supper.”
Dad looked at me. “And if it’s okay, I need to make another call. Long distance.”
She flung a withered hand in the air. “Call as much as you like. And park your RV by the barn tonight. You two are staying here.”
“We couldn’t do that,” Dad said.
“Nonsense. This little thing needs some meat on her bones. Least we can do is fatten you up a little and give you a good breakfast.”
“Can we stay?” I said, mashing the potato down with my fork and getting the butter mixed in until it turned yellow.
“We’ll talk about it,” he said.
I’d never tasted anything better in my life. The meat loaf had a red sauce like ketchup on top of it, but it was sweeter. Part of it was that I was starving after all that time eating next to nothing in the RV, and part of it was the freedom I felt now that I had my secret out. It felt like the pack off the back of that guy in the
Pilgrim’s Progress
story. Daddy started reading it to me but it got a little hard to understand and we moved on to something else.
“And what’s your name, young lady?” the woman said to me.
“It’s Natalie, but everybody calls me June Bug.”
She covered her mouth with the paper towel in her lap and put her head back to laugh. “If that don’t beat all. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a name that fit a person any better. We had a boy who lived down in the hollow, went to high school with him . . .”
Her husband smiled and nodded as if the man were sitting right in front of him.
“Cow Pie Reynolds,” she said, tapping her husband on the shoulder. “You remember Cow Pie?”
“I do.”
“I don’t know where he got it, but everybody called him that all through school, at least until he dropped out and started working at the plant. His mama had the pleurisy and his daddy died years before that and he basically took care of her the rest of her life. He was one to tip back the bottle, if you know what I mean, and that did him in.” She shook her head, and the gray hair waved like a lion’s mane.
“He sat in a cow pie once,” her husband said.
“That’s how it got started?”
He nodded. “Sat in a cow pie.”
She took a bite of a biscuit with apple butter on the edge and wiped at some sweat on her forehead. “I think he was sweet on me, to tell you the truth. Spent his days just filled with regret that I wouldn’t marry him.” She stole a glance at her husband, and he gave a sheepish grin. “Warren here stole my heart.”
“I married her for her meat loaf.”
Daddy pushed back from the table. “Then I’d say you made a good decision. That was the best meal I’ve had in years.”
I wanted to ask if that was a criticism of Sheila’s cooking because of the good food she’d made, but I didn’t get the chance because Dad went for the phone. The black one hanging on the kitchen wall looked like it had survived a war. I pointed it out, but the woman seemed to know he needed privacy and showed him the one in the living room, around the corner and into the dust.
“Where are you two headed?” the woman said when he’d gone. “Do you go to school anywhere? You must be in about the third grade, right?”
“I don’t really go to a regular school. My dad teaches me in the RV.”
“Homeschooled. That’s what they call it.”
“RV schooled,” I said.
“What’s that?” She leaned closer.
I repeated it, and she covered her mouth with the paper towel again. And then she started in on another story.
Pretty soon Daddy came back in and sat down at the table.
“Did you make your call?” the woman said.
“There was nobody home. I’ll call again later, if that’s okay.”
The woman was up like a flash. “You call as many times as it takes. You want some coffee?”
“Love some.”
“Get me a cup too,” the old man said.
She picked up a small towel and uncovered a pie on the desk in the corner. “And I baked this cherry pie this afternoon. Let me heat it a little in the oven so it’ll be nice and toasty when I put the ice cream on it.”
Dad drank his coffee black, which I could never understand because I tried it once and it tasted like drinking week-old rainwater out of a shoe. The four of us sat around the table listening to the old woman talk about her pains and ailments and how doctors didn’t care about people anymore.
I focused on the TV and the news stories that were flying by. There was something on about the economy and the words
Economic Crisis
flashed up there with a jagged arrow pointing down. I finished all but the skin on my potato and the green beans, which I am not as thrilled about as old people seem to be.
She got the cherry pie out of the oven and pulled a plastic tub of vanilla ice cream from the freezer, all the while talking about her diverticulitis and how she couldn’t go to the bathroom—if you can believe that. I glanced at the TV again and saw a reporter holding a microphone in front of a police station. He was older, with gray hair and a face like a mole. The words in the corner of the screen said
Dogwood, WV.