He listened closely, I guess trying to figure out what was really going on. Sometimes you tell people a story, and they can’t hear it because they’re trying to figure out some other question than what your story is about. “So your mama wasn’t with you?”
“I don’t have a mama.”
He groaned a little. “But that was your daddy driving?”
I nodded because I knew I couldn’t explain all about him not being my daddy.
“And you don’t know where they went?”
I shook my head.
He thought a minute, then looked at me with an angry or mean look and it kind of scared me. “Then let’s get to the truck. I need to call the police.”
That made sense to me, and I followed him back there with Fred going ahead of us, his tail wagging. The man opened the door, and Fred jumped in the passenger seat. It was a long climb for me, and as I was going up the man said, “No, get down, Fred. We got company.”
I know dogs can’t scowl or smile or anything like that because every time I say that I saw a puppy smile my dad tells me it’s not true, but I could swear Fred gave me a mean look before he jumped onto the floor. I got in and sat on his cushion.
The man took his phone down from the visor and dialed. “You know your license plate number?”
I told him I didn’t, and then he talked with the police and told them where we were on the interstate and that two people had abducted my dad. He answered all their questions, though there was a lot he didn’t know, and when he pushed the End button, he just sat there for a while chewing on his lower lip and the straggly hair below it.
“What did they say?”
“They’re sending somebody.” He put the phone back and looked straight at me, wagging a finger. “Your dad’s gonna be okay, you hear? I don’t want you to worry. I’ll bet he can take care of himself.”
“He was in the military,” I said, my voice shaking.
“Then he’ll be more than all right. I don’t imagine that RV will be too hard to find this time of night.”
Fred nuzzled my hand and licked at it, and I petted him on the head. It wasn’t exactly my dream to be sitting in a big old truck and petting a dog without my dad, but it did feel good.
“What’s
your
name?” I said.
“My real name is Ronald, but my friends on the radio call me Big Mac. You know, like Ronald McDonald and the sandwich?”
“What radio?”
“The CB.” He pointed to a little radio with a microphone attached to the side. “I use it to talk to my friends out here on the road. This is my office. I’ve run up and down these roads longer than you’ve been alive.”
“Do you like it?”
“I get tired of it every now and again, but it’s a steady job. What’s your daddy do?”
“Oh, he writes things on his computer and sends it off.” It was right then that I wondered if he really did any of that. Was the writing and sending off stuff a lie? Or maybe he did it but didn’t get paid for it. I went back to petting Fred.
Big Mac rummaged around behind him and brought out a bag of Lay’s potato chips. I was getting pretty hungry and the chips tasted good. I dropped one and Fred was on it fast, crunching the thing in his mouth. Big Mac and I laughed.
“You gotta be quick with that boy. He’ll eat your whole lunch if you don’t watch out.”
Big Mac looked out the window beside me and craned his neck.
“What is it? The police?”
“No, I thought I saw somebody. Probably just the shadows.”
He had the windows down to get some air in the cab. He handed me a Dr Pepper in a can that was so cold you could feel the sweat dripping down the side. I can never get my finger under that tab, and I asked if he would do it for me. When the top popped, I also heard a voice outside whispering my name. At first I wondered if it was the voice of God. I’ve heard people on the radio talk about following God’s voice in their life and telling people if they don’t listen when God calls they’ll be in big trouble. So when I heard that loud whisper, I thought that God was calling me and that he was going to make me some kind of prophet or maybe he was calling me to be a long-haul trucker.
But as it turns out, it wasn’t God—it was my dad. I saw him over by the bushes in the shadow of the lights, and I wondered how I had missed the rumble of the RV engine. I opened the door faster than a jackrabbit, and Fred must have heard the voice too because he barked and followed, with Big Mac trying to get him to be quiet. The dog ran straight for my dad in the bushes and barked, but I caught up and held on to his collar.
Dad hugged me and picked me up in his arms and just about squeezed the life out of me because I guess he was scared that something awful had happened. “I was so worried,” he said.
“Well, I was worried that guy was going to shoot you.”
Just then the trucker came over to us and Dad put me down.
“This is Mr. Big Mac,” I said. “His real name is Ronald, but people call him Big Mac because of Ronald McDonald. He called the police and let me pet Fred. That’s his dog. Isn’t he nice?”
A guy in a truck in the parking lot yelled something about shutting that dog up, but Big Mac and my dad ignored him.
My dad shook Big Mac’s hand. “Thanks for taking care of June Bug while I was away.”
“She said you got abducted,” Big Mac said. He was squinting and looking sideways, like he wanted to hear more of the story before he believed it.
Dad nodded. “That was pretty much the size of it. What did the police say?”
Big Mac looked toward the interstate. “They should be on their way.”
Dad took my hand. “We have to scoot.”
“Hold on there,” Big Mac said. “What happened with the ones who abducted you?”
“I took care of them,” my dad said.
He held tight to my hand, and I noticed the blood on his forehead running down the side. I pointed it out and he just wiped it away.
“I’ve got a first-aid kit back in the truck,” Big Mac said behind us.
“We have to go,” Dad said over his shoulder. “I appreciate your help.”
We kept going at a fast clip, but Big Mac called to us. “Wait up.” I thought he was going to have a heart attack the way he was gasping. He put a hand on my dad’s shoulder and caught his breath. “I’m a vet too. Da Nang. ’68 to ’70. First Infantry.”
My dad nodded, like he knew that score, but I’d never heard of a team called Da Nang.
Big Mac took a deep breath. “If you’re in some kind of trouble, I can help.”
There were sirens in the distance, and Dad’s gaze darted from the man to the interstate. Finally he said, “The RV’s totaled. I swerved off the road up a piece and ran it into a few trees.”
“And those two probably went flying,” Big Mac said.
“Pretty much. I got the gun from the guy and tossed it into the woods a ways in case he came after me. Cops’ll find them and that stash of whatever they have in there.”
“Why don’t you wait for the police?” Big Mac said. “They probably have a reward.”
“Yeah, can we stay?” I said, kneeling and petting Fred. “We could use the money to get back to West Virginia.”
“I don’t think we’re going to make it back there, June Bug.”
“Why not?” I said, and the look on his face was what they call stern, I guess. I could see the lights of the police car coming down the interstate now.
“We have to go,” Dad said, pulling me up.
Big Mac grabbed Dad by the arm. “Wait a minute. Tell me what’s going on.”
Dad looked at the man a long time, like when he was going fishing and trying to figure out how deep to put the hook under the bobber. Then he said to me, “Stay here and pet Fred, okay?”
“Okay.” I sat down on the asphalt, and Fred leaned against me while I scratched his ears. I was trying hard to listen to what my dad was saying, but I could only pick up a few phrases.
“. . . headed back to West Virginia . . . when she was little . . . traveling around in that RV . . . the guy they have in custody . . .”
I wasn’t following it but Big Mac seemed to understand every word. My dad can tell a story better than just about anybody because he knows how to pull you in with details. Like what kind of trout he caught with the fly he tied that morning. I swear he could make the phone book interesting just reading it, and maybe that’s because he doesn’t talk much except when he has something to say.
When my dad finished, Big Mac stood there and watched the police car make a U-turn in the middle of the interstate. I wasn’t sure why we didn’t want to talk to the police because my dad has always been one to obey the law. He always drives the speed limit because the RV can’t do much over it.
“You two crawl on up in my sleeper and stay out of sight,” Big Mac said.
“All right, but we’re trusting you,” Dad said.
We crawled in the man’s sleeping compartment, which was so small I didn’t think he could ever fit in, and both of us hunkered down. There was a big man smell back there, but the bed was soft. Dad found a bag of barbecued corn chips, the Fritos kind, and he dug out a handful. I wished Fred were with us, but he was outside. I gave Dad the rest of my Dr Pepper, and he guzzled it in one swig.
“So, we can’t go back to the RV?” I said.
“Nope.”
“What about all our stuff?”
“Like what?”
“My clothes. My journals.”
He sighed. “I suppose we can get it from the police after they haul it away.”
“When?”
“Keep your voice down.”
“But when can we get it?”
“I don’t know. Now stay quiet.”
“What are you scared of? You didn’t do anything wrong. Those people came onto our RV and pointed a gun at you.”
“Yeah, but there’s more to it than that.”
“More to it? What do you mean?”
“It’s hard to explain. Just lie down.”
I whispered, “What did you tell Big Mac? Why did he agree to help us?”
Dad looked at me with that stern look, and then he softened. “There’s stuff I can’t tell you. Stuff you deserve to know and that I want to tell you, but I don’t know how yet.”
“Just tell me.”
“It’s not as simple as that.”
“That’s not what you always say. You always say if there’s something on my mind I ought to say it.”
“You ought to be a lawyer is what you ought to be.”
“So tell me.”
His face was still half-worried or mad and half just melting because of something. “You’ll know the truth pretty soon. But right now here’s what’s on my mind. We need to make it back to West Virginia. We need to get that box of stuff from Mrs. Linderman. I need to clear up a couple of things, and then . . .”
“Then what?”
“I don’t know. We can move on.”
“What does that mean?”
“Keep your voice down.”
“What do you mean we can move on?”
“Get on with life,” he said. “Put the past behind us. Now we can replace all that stuff in the RV—”
“Not my journals!”
He clamped his hand over my mouth, not hard and meanlike, but just to keep me from squalling. I could see his eyes and there was something serious there. Something hurtful and kind at the same time. It’s funny how a person’s eyes can tell you so much, but I believe it’s true.
“June Bug, you have to listen. We can’t have those police finding us. As soon as we get to West Virginia, we can buy a whole truckload of journals and a new RV. And I’ll do my best to get those back. But I can’t promise you something I can’t be sure of. Understand?”
I nodded and he took his hand away, but I couldn’t keep the tears from rolling and I felt my chin puckering, which is a terrible feeling because there is nothing that will make it stop once you try to unpucker it. I’ve tried.
“Don’t cry. Everything’s going to be all right. I promise.”
I only half believed him. There was something bad waiting to happen. It felt right then like there were a million bridges between where we were and where we were going. It felt like I was losing something, and not just the RV and all the stuff in it. But I couldn’t put my finger on just what it was, and it made me more nervous than having somebody hold a gun on my dad.
20
Mae rocked herself as she prayed in the pitch black of night. Even with the fan going in the back room and all the windows open, it was stifling hot. She had soaked through her nightgown. And with Leason’s snoring and his hot body next to her, she had come to the screened-in porch and sat and rocked, trying to exhaust her mind.
She said the same prayer over and over, the same one she had prayed the first night Natalie disappeared.
Bring her back, Lord. Bring her back and keep her safe. And bring Dana to you. Don’t let her go so far that she can’t come back.
As she moved, the rocker creaking on the porch, she ran over the same verse that came every time she thought of her granddaughter—Romans 8:28. “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”
Mae didn’t care much for the new translations. If King James was good enough for Jesus, it was good enough for her. But no matter how many versions she read, she couldn’t make sense of those words in relation to Natalie.
Lord, you know I love you. I want to do your will. I have since I can remember. But I can’t for the life of me figure out how in the world this could do anybody any good. And I can’t see any purpose at all. You don’t have to explain anything to me. I know you’re God and your ways are not my ways, but I don’t see what’s all-loving about keeping us in the dark about her. It’s just stealing the life from me, and you said you came to give us life. This is not what I see as abundance, and I don’t mean to be ungrateful because you’ve done a lot, but I’m being honest that I can’t see it. I truly can’t.
Something moved in the front yard and she glanced out. There were no animals she could see, so she sat back and kept the
squeak-squawk
of the floorboards going.
Mae looked at her praying as a running one-sided conversation, much like the ones she’d had with Leason. She’d talk and he’d listen and sometimes grunt or scowl or roll his eyes or shake his head, but he pretty much listened. What he’d said the other day to her was as much as she’d gotten out of him in years, and to tell the truth she kind of liked it better when he was quiet. She’d wondered what she’d ever do if God would actually speak to her while she was praying. Some of her friends, particularly one over in Point Pleasant, had encouraged her to get slain in the Spirit as if that would change things between her and God. She’d already been slain as much as she needed as far as she was concerned.
As a young girl she’d attended a church with a friend who lived in some hollow where men had carried burlap sacks from a back room into the service and everybody stood and clapped. She pushed forward to get a look and wound up standing on one of the pews when a bag filled with snakes emptied. People danced and stomped, hopping around and whooping, and then somebody actually picked one up and danced around with it. A copperhead held so close to a guy’s face that Mae had to look away. And she had thought right then and there that if being a Christian meant making friends with snakes, she didn’t want anything to do with it.
She preferred a silent God who just listened and helped her make sense of life by going along with whatever she said. Until times like these, when the weight of the world hovered over her like some tornado and she wanted answers. She wanted God to tell her exactly where that little girl was. Even if it meant finding a body.
Bring her back, Lord. Bring her back and keep her safe.
Mae knew one reason she hadn’t slept was her dreams. The recurring one of men combing the woods, dogs barking and sniffing the earth. It was fall and the men wore coats and the trees were bare. They moved in a line across the hillside, trying not to trip over downed trees and stumps. Then someone would yell, and the men and dogs would run to a shallow grave and a tiny, decomposed hand sticking out of the leaves. That was the one she had most often.
But there was another dream. She’d be in the field, bent over and weeding the garden, when she pulled up what looked like the top of a turnip. Instead, a baby came out and it was Natalie. It sent her reeling each time.
Maybe that’s what kept her awake, the risk of dreams. Maybe that was God speaking to her, getting her ready for the truth, softening her heart for the discovery of the shallow grave. That was another reason she liked the God of silence, the God who slumbered and listened, if he listened at all. She liked to think she was in control and not him, because if he really was in control and would allow some of the things to go on that she’d read about every day, then she wasn’t too sure how far her faith was going to take her.
A train whistled in the distance. Two longs, a short, and another long, which meant the train was approaching the crossing in Dogwood. Her dad had been a trainman, and she knew all the whistle codes. When her mind was active and her body fatigued, she could slip into that netherworld of the past and see him at the swimming hole, down from the ramshackle home of their youth. They’d grown up dirt-poor but made great fun out of the little they had.
Mae remembered the bucktoothed grin of her brother and the sight of him jumping from the creek onto the bank naked. None of them could swim, but the creek wasn’t deep enough for anyone to drown.
At times like this, deep in the night and with nothing to hold on to but her faith and the worn edges of the rocking chair handles, she found it easier to chase the days of the past rather than the pain of the present. She had always wondered what her mother went through, watching them grow up to find their way—or not find it. She wondered what her mother would say about Dana and what should be done, as if anything could be. She was sure what her father would say: that she needed a good switching until she changed her ways.
She craned her neck to see the kitchen clock, but it didn’t matter what time it was—she wasn’t going to sleep much, if at all. Her eyes were heavy, her legs and back ached, and her face felt so hot she thought it would melt.
Mae picked up an old newspaper on the table and began to fan, which brought back another memory. That’s all she had now. Dana had come down with an earache—she always had the most piercing illnesses, that child. Mae would try to rock her to sleep and sing her songs to calm her. One night she was rocking Dana, singing “The Old Rugged Cross.” She was on the final verse, the one that said:
To the old rugged cross I will ever be true,
Its shame and reproach gladly bear;
Then He’ll call me some day to my home far away,
Where His glory forever I’ll share.
Dana looked at her with those big eyes, and she could see the pain on the little girl’s face. “Mama, why do you always sing about the cross?”
She’d thought about giving her a theological answer, something about the substitutionary atonement for little minds, but then thought better of it. “I suppose it’s like singing about somebody you love,” Mae had said.
“Like ‘Tom Dooley’?”
“Not exactly. ‘Tom Dooley’ is a tragic song about losing love. ‘The Old Rugged Cross’ is a victory song because love didn’t lose; it won.”
“Don’t sing it anymore. I want to hear ‘Tom Dooley.’”
That was the first time Mae had felt Dana reject her faith, and it was a small thing that had grown bigger. There had been distance between them off and on, especially at the end of grade school and into junior high. Mae had taken a job at the bank about that time, and she always wondered if not being home when Dana returned from school had been the start of the trouble or if it was something inevitable, that she was just going to go her own way no matter what.
Of course, Mae had blamed herself when Dana had run off with boys in high school, a different one every weekend it seemed, and she’d be gone from Friday until late on Sunday. Mae considered calling the police, but the girl would eventually drift home, half-drunk. Leason had scowled and huffed about the house, talking about “raising a hussy,” but he didn’t do anything more.
For Mae, it ate at her every day, and as Dana’s ways became more erratic—dropping out of school and moving in with a guy on Barker’s Ridge—Mae became more spiritual, more in tune with God. She always felt the folks at church judged her and didn’t understand. How could they? The worst thing their kids did was toss toilet paper at some trees in people’s front yards. Other than that Hatfield boy who ran those kids down on the road early one morning, most of the people in town were upstanding citizens. But instead of giving in to the pressure and cutting off the relationship, Mae tried to love her daughter through the hard times. She wasn’t sure that was the right thing, but when she looked back at it, she believed keeping that door unlocked was a good idea.
It wasn’t until Dana showed up on their doorstep with a muskmelon-shaped belly that things changed. She had moved on to several other guys and was living in Huntington with a “roommate.” She was thinking about going back to school, but whoever was paying the bills at her place had thrown her out when she wouldn’t have an abortion. She’d come home asking for help. Begging, actually. Mae saw the whole thing as a second chance and an answer to prayer.
There was a rhythm to the hills, a certain cadence to life that she had grown up with. Living and dying and living again, with life springing from the most unlikely places. Sometimes trees grew at odd angles right out of the sides of rocks or plants grew between the cracks in the concrete. There were some things you simply couldn’t pave over, and life was one of them, and that girl having a baby was a sign to Mae that there was a God and that he was faithful to his promise, just like “The Old Rugged Cross.” Sin would not only find you out, it would hunt you down and stick a foot on your neck. But the fruit of this sin had come home in a car seat and was so cute Mae could hardly breathe.
Mae had set Dana up in the side bedroom that used to be the laundry room and put fresh linens and soft pillows on the bed. She loved her with kind words that would have turned around the most hardened criminal, but instead of being thankful, Dana had almost punished Mae. She laughed at Mae. Leason asked Mae why she endured it, and she shook her head. “The Lord put up with a lot from me. I reckon I can put up with some from her.”
There was talk of adoption and even selling the baby to some rich couple over the state line, but once that red-haired beauty had come into the world, Mae knew it wouldn’t happen. Surely Dana would see the error of her ways and would become a responsible mother.
Mae began caring for the child full-time, being more than a mother to her, and letting Dana go about her life. Mae couldn’t remember Dana ever changing one of Natalie’s diapers. She’d just let the child sit in her own mess. Mae knew she had raised a monster—or as near as you could get to one—but every time she looked into that angel’s eyes, her little Natalie, she forgot about the bad choices and knew God had brought something good out of something bad. Natalie was living, breathing proof of Romans 8:28. Mae even called the girl Roma after that verse, but now the taste of it on her mouth felt bitter and useless. All the work of loving and what good did it do?
The moon was bright and almost full as a car came around the bend in the road. One headlight was out, and it slowed at the downward slope and stopped altogether by the line of rosebushes on their side of the blacktop. The road had been just a rut-marked patch of dirt until a few years ago when the county paved it. Now cars flew in and Mae knew it was going to get somebody killed.
The car inched forward, then turned into their driveway. Gravel crunched under the tires and the engine bogged down as the car came over the incline. She wished she’d kept the light on at the end of the walk so she could see who it was. The driver parked and just sat there.
It wasn’t the sheriff’s car; she knew that by the sound of the engine. She equally hoped and feared the sheriff had caught Graham Walker and that he’d confessed and told them where he put Natalie. As she peered into the darkness, she wondered if this could be Walker himself, needing to make amends for what he’d done.
She stood, her nightgown stuck to her back. Half-wanting to run in and get the loaded .22 Leason left by the trash can at the back door (for the groundhog he was constantly warring) and half-wanting to just stay and watch, she edged toward the screen door and opened it, standing there in the moonlight. If it was the wiry man she saw on the news, she swore she would scream, doubting that would wake Leason with the fan on, but still it might scare Walker away.
The car door opened and out stepped a female with straight hair and an angular nose.
Mae squinted. “Dana?”
The girl sauntered up the walk like she’d never missed a day of calling and checking on her. Straight up to the porch she came, arms dangling, staring at Mae.
Mae tried to hug her, but it was clear from the stiffness Dana wasn’t going to return the affection.
“I been driving by here at night looking for a light on,” Dana said.
“
You
been driving by? What for?”
Dana looked at the floor. “Just to see if anybody’s here. If anybody cares.”
Mae edged back. “I’m not sleeping too well these days. Came out here because it was hot. It must be two o’clock in the morning.”
“Three thirty,” Dana said. She looked stick thin and almost haunted.