As I was finishing the abbreviated version of the story, one of the men frowned toward the dock. “What’d y’all do with Reverend Hay?”
“We dropped him off at the church. He said something about having a card-making class tonight.”
The tall, thin man who looked like a cartoon cowboy widened his eyes. “It’s card-making evenin’, fellas. You know what that means.”
“Night fishin’,” one of his companions surmised. “Those women’ll be at the church clippin’ and pastin’ and hen talkin’ ’til after the late evenin’ news. Maybe later.”
“Boys, let’s hit the lake.”
Our conversation ended abruptly. I took the opportunity to hurry to my vehicle and head home.
Ansley and Sydney were cleaning up their lemonade stand for the night as I pulled in. Business hadn’t been too brisk, judging by the look of things.The lemonade pitcher was three-quarters full. The girls paused, tracking me with curious looks. One of them turned a few cartwheels in the dusky light, blond hair tumbling over her face as she checked to see if I was watching.
“Nice cartwheel,” I said as I gathered my things from the backseat. That was all it took to bring Sydney and Ansley across the property line to introduce themselves – Sydney, who was twelve, and Ansley, who was ten.
“You need any help with your stuff?” Ansley inquired, leaning around me to check out the house.
“No. I’ve got it. But thanks.” Juggling my briefcase, laptop, and purse into one hand, I slipped my key ring off my finger, in case Dustin had the front door locked.
Sydney grabbed a pencil that was about to slide off my clipboard. “I can open the door for you.” She, too, peered toward the entry, clearly seeking an invitation to follow me. As cute as they were, I was too tired for company tonight.
“I’m fine, but it’s nice to meet both of you.”
“Want some lemonade?” Ansley rushed out.“We’ve got cookies, too. They kind of melted together, but they taste good.”
I declined again, and then promised to buy lemonade tomorrow when I came home.
“Your shoes are muddy,” Ansley observed. “They’re, like, ruined.”
“I know,” I lamented. “I got in kind of a mess at work.”
When I turned toward the house, Sydney had moved in front of me, forming a blockade, so to speak. She handed my pencil back. “Can he play?” She thumbed toward the house, and all of a sudden, I understood. It wasn’t me they were interested in. It was Dustin, which made sense, considering that he was the only other person under sixty living in close proximity.
“Who? Dustin?” I asked, as if I didn’t know.
Sydney’s eyes narrowed, as in,
So that’s his name . . .
“Mmm-hmm. He said he couldn’t. He said his mom just makes him work all the time. And then his aunt came, and she said he can play, but then we had to go to Catfish Charley’s for dinner, and then when we got back, he went in the house.”
I imagined the conversation that had probably taken place sometime earlier, when Dustin was out in the yard. “Well, he is grounded,” I admitted. “But just from leaving the property. He doesn’t have to spend every minute working.”
The answer seemed to satisfy Sydney and Ansley. “Cool!” Sydney said, and the two of them scampered away, whispering and giggling amongst themselves, making plans for tomorrow, I suspected. Maybe I’d suggest to Dustin that he see if they were interested in kicking the soccer ball around or doing a little fishing off the dock. Younger girls probably weren’t his first choice for someone to hang out with, but at least they wouldn’t be showing up with beer and speedboats.
The lights and the television were on inside the house when I started up the walkway. Dustin must have heard me coming. By the time I’d unlocked the door, the living room had been abandoned, a sweating glass of iced tea still on the end table, Dustin’s sneakers underneath, the television playing some overly comedic show about teenagers in a high school.
I hit the Mute button and went to find him. He was in his bedroom, of course, strung across his bed with his laptop computer, trying to look like he’d been there all along.
“Hey,” I said, leaning on the doorway, emotion thick and doughy in my chest. I’d never get used to having the person I loved the most not even look at me when I came into the room. There was a time when he lit up whenever he saw me. “Did you have a good day?”
“I did the stupid chores.” It was neither a yes, nor a no. Just a statement of fact with no warmth in it. A passive-aggressive complaint.
“That’s good.” I swallowed hard.
Don’t break down. Don’t.
Just because I was feeling needy, just because it had been a long afternoon didn’t mean I could allow teenage emotional blackmail to work. “Anything else happen today?”
Like a group of hooligans stopping by
in a boat? Unauthorized rock climbing? Anything like that?
His lips pursed and his eyes narrowed. “I’m doing my summer reading for the stupid English class, okay?” He snorted at the end of the words to let me know what he thought of summer reading.
The muscles in my back tightened, and in the space of an instant, I went from depressed to irritated. “I asked you a question, Dustin. I know you were just in the living room watching TV, so I doubt that you’re too engrossed in your studies. When I ask you a question, I expect a civil answer. I haven’t seen you all day, and it isn’t too much to expect you to fill me in on what you’ve been doing, especially after what happened yesterday.”
Pushing the computer out of the way, he swung his legs around and sat up, the slouched posture intended to let me know that I was bothering him. “Well, let’s see. My awesome, exciting, wonderful day. I did the stupid chore list. It was, like, a hundred and ten flippin’ degrees out there. The little girls from next door followed me around the stupid yard all afternoon. The weed eater jammed up about eight times. Grandma and Grandpa came by and griped about the weed eating – by the way, Grandpa’s keeping our car until he can get some new tires put on it. Then, Grandma found out her . . . some stupid . . . something-or-other plants were all broken off and stuff. First, she said I did it with the weed eater that doesn’t even
work
, and then she decided the kids next door did it – like Ansley and Sydney just ripped up her plants. Grandma went over there and got in a fight with the neighbors. Aunt Megan came for a while, and just now the game warden dude called about the water safety course. It was a really
great
day. That what you wanted to hear? Thanks a lot for getting me hauled to the stupid safety course by the water cop. Like you can’t just trust me to go on my own?” Capping the sentence with a wounded, narrow-eyed look, he ricocheted from angry, to hurt and insulted.
Take a deep breath. Take a deep breath before you say anything. He’s
just trying to push your buttons.
“In the first place, you don’t have any other way to get to the class, and by the way, make sure you read the brochure so you’ll know if there’s anything you need to take with you. In the second place, it’s only for a week, and in the third place, you’re in no position to be giving attitude. It’s just fortunate that nothing worse happened yesterday. Do you know that two different people today have told me about recent accidents at the Scissortail? One boy died and one is in a wheelchair for life. Both teenagers.”
Dustin scoffed, sagging over his knees and picking bits of grass off his foot. “Who told you that?”
“The game warden, for one, and my boss at work, Mr. Tazinski, for another.”
Dustin stopped picking grass, seeming to briefly consider that yesterday’s reality could have been terribly different.
“We’re just lucky you’re all right. Very lucky.”
Stiffening, he sat up and looked toward the window, as if he were seeing the lake through the mini blinds he kept closed, giving his room a cave-like pallor. “Yeah, we’re
lucky
.” The last word was laced with hidden meanings I could only guess at.
Momentarily, I considered telling him about the places I’d been today, describing the tumbledown home in which Audrey and John lived or the little patch of dirt at Len’s, where a child had been playing. Lucky was all in your perspective. There were people with problems worse than a painful divorce, a broken weed eater, and a mandatory water safety course.
If he could see some of the things I’d seen . . .
But did I really want him to? Those realities were hard for adult eyes, and he was still a child, working through his own difficulties with only adolescent coping mechanisms to rely upon.
“Did Dad call about me going to Houston for August?” His gaze fluttered my way, a bit hopeful, a bit guarded, a bit belligerent – as if to point out that, if I made him too angry, he’d pack his bags and go live with his dad and Delayne. The truth was that he hadn’t been invited there. Karl was busy settling into a new life with Delayne and her two little girls. He didn’t seem to have much interest in the ties to his old used-up life.
Dustin didn’t need to hear that, although to some degree, he already knew. Karl had been missing weekend visitations even before we’d left Houston. Dustin’s acting as if, any minute, the
good
parent would swoop in and save him from Mean Mom was just another way of lashing out at whomever was near. Right now, I was the only one near.
“Your dad hasn’t called. He just started that new job, though.That could be keeping him pretty tied up.” After months of unemployment and searching, Karl had finally settled for a teaching position at a rehab center for teenage boys.
“Yeah.” Dustin stared a hole in the blinds, his chin trembling almost imperceptibly, until he swallowed hard and wiped the expression away, hardening himself against it.
My heart split open. I wanted to do something to take away the pain and disappointment, to make everything better. To fix things. There was no
right thing
to say, no verbal magic bullet. If I shared my opinions of Karl, I would hurt Dustin. If I made excuses for Karl, I would be silently saying that I supported Karl’s moving on and leaving his son behind.
Finally, I settled for changing the subject altogether. “Tell you what. Why don’t we run to town? We’ll pick up some line for the weed eater, and then we can grab some cheese fries and an ice cream at Catfish Charley’s out on the lake.”
“I ate already. And the hardware store’s closed.”
I should have thought of that. Everything in Moses Lake was closed by this time of the evening. Catfish Charley’s was only open because it served the tourist crowd, who didn’t come in to eat until the day on the lake was over. “We can still go get an ice cream. We haven’t been to Catfish Charley’s in forever.” When Dustin was small, lake house visits had included frequent stops at Catfish Charley’s to enjoy a hand-dipped ice cream and toss food off the dock to waiting ducks, or visit with Charley, the primordial giant who lived in a huge fish tank in the back of the restaurant. “I’ll bet Charley is over a hundred pounds, by now.”
Dustin seemed to considerer it briefly. I took another step into the room, dangling the olive branch, in the form of ice cream and a hundred-pound catfish. I waited, ready for a little time that wasn’t spent struggling, or fighting, or butting heads.
“I’ve gotta do my stupid summer reading for the AP English class.” Dustin was already sinking back onto the bed, slowly, like a wrinkled piece of paper unfolding.“It’s not like I’ll get anything done while I’m sitting in some stupid class with the water cop.”
Disappointment and a sense of hopelessness fell over me like a wet, heavy tarp, making it hard to breathe. Were Dustin and I ever going to find a new kind of normal? Were we doomed to wallow in this mire of guilt, conflict, and emotional blackmail forever?
I steeled myself against letting the wound show. First and foremost, I had to be the parent, the adult. “All right,” I said, and feeling the need to leave behind a droplet of hope, I added, “Maybe tomorrow, then.”
Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers.
– Alfred Lord Tennyson
(Left by an anonymous fly fisherman)
Mart McClendon
A fter another day of passing by Andrea’s lake house and watching the kid out there mowing, cleaning flower beds, and trimming trees, I was actually starting to feel sorry for him. His mom ran a tough ship. I doubted he’d be climbing any more rocks anytime soon. He had a little company now, at least. Whenever I drifted by, the neighbor’s little blond-haired granddaughters were tailing after him. When I called to give Andrea an update on Len, she told me that Dustin had an admiration society forming next door. We laughed about it. “Well, there are worse things than having girls follow you around with lemonade and cookies,” I said.
Andrea chuckled. “I told him that.”
When we got done talking about Dustin, I didn’t have much to report about Len and the little girl. “Haven’t caught up with them yet, but it’s not for lack of trying. He’s laying low. And for a simpleminded fellow, he’s good at it. I figure he’s hiding out at one of his deer camps during the day, then coming back to his place at night to feed his livestock and look after his garden.”
The more time went by, the more I worried that I might be wrong about old Len, and Andrea might be right. I didn’t want to believe the worst, but why would a man go to so much work to hide out, unless he was doing something he shouldn’t be?
Finally, after two days with no luck, I settled on a plan with my partner, Jake Moskaluk. He’d meet me on the lake tomorrow morning, and we’d catch Len when he hit his trotlines at first light. Jake would hang back in the brush while I talked to Len, so as not to scare Len any more than necessary.