I knock on the front door, but nobody answers.
So I ring the doorbell.
Then I ring it again before pounding my fist.
When the door finally opens, the red-headed man sitting in a wheelchair says: "Anyone ever call you a pest?"
"Yes. You."
"This doesn't exactly change my mind."
Teddy Chastain is my geology teacher at St. Catherine's. Next to my dad, he's the adult I'm closest to. Teddy never takes anything seriously
—
sometimes it's like he doesn't even realize he's paralyzed.
But right now he sees something serious written on my face.
He frowns. "You okay?"
"No."
"Good."
"
What?
"
"You Southern girls. Y'all got a bad habit of lying about your feelings. Speak the truth. You can start with why you're pounding on my door on a Saturday morning."
"I can't find Drew."
"Took off again, did she?"
"Why is everyone assuming she ran away?"
"Because the girl's rough as pig leather," he says. "Brilliant. But rough."
"Drew did not run away. This time."
"You're sure?"
"Positive."
"How many times do I have to tell you:
l
eave room for examiner error."
"Teddy, I found her notebook in the
Physics lab. You know, the one with all her
experiments? Drew would
never
leave her notes behind."
"Not unless she wanted to throw you off-track."
"For what reason?"
"She likes to experiment. Maybe you're part of one right now."
"I'm not!”
"Okay." He hikes his shoulders. "Go call the cops."
"I already did." I explain what Officer Lande said about her parents, and about needing
twenty-four
hours before Drew can even be called officially missing. As I talk, Teddy keeps his hands on the wheels of his chair, rolling forward two inches, back two inches, forward and back, like a paralyzed person's version of pacing the floor. "The only way the police will look for her is if there are signs of foul play."
"Proof," he says. "You need proof."
"I have proof."
"What you have is circumstantial."
"But you said everything's circumstantial."
"Raleigh, I was talking about geology."
"You also said geology is the best metaphor for life."
"I take it back."
"You can't, it's on the record."
He hangs his head, as if exhausted, and sighs. "Man, I hate talking to a judge's daughter." He rolls back, opening the door all the way. "Alright, c'mon, get outta the rain."
My geology teacher's house smells like minerals, like rock dust is floating in the air, rising off all the stones scattered around his living room. Schists and limestones and granites, sands and feldspars and silts. But I smell something else—hot, earthy—which turns out to be in the kitchen, where a cast-iron pan smokes on the stove like it's going to explode.
Ignoring the fire hazard, Teddy rolls over to his refrigerator and tugs on a knotted rope, wrapped around the handle. He's never said how he wound up in a wheelchair—and swears he never will—but whatever injury snapped his spine also curled up his fingers. He can work his thumbs okay, but his fingers look like their sides were super-glued and stuck together.
"How much bacon can you eat?" he asks.
"None."
"You don't want bacon? Man, something
is
wrong."
I regret my choice as soon as he lays the thick slices in the smoking pan. The sizzle of grease forces Teddy to turn his head. He doesn't consider turning down the flame.
He yells over the spattering, "You think something bad happened?"
"Yes."
"Drew ain't no shrinkin' violet."
"I never said she was."
He paws paper towels off the roll secured to the lower cabinet. As always, I feel an urge to help. But the one time I tried, he seemed insulted.
"Let's say Drew didn't high-tail it out of town. What would be your first step?"
"Identify the problem."
"Which is . . . ?"
"Drew is missing."
"Then?"
"Gather all the information."
"Then?"
"Form my hypothesis—Teddy, I know the scientific theory."
"You forgot the whole point of it."
"Test the hypothesis."
"Right." He looks over. The green in his eyes looks both wise and wicked. "Which part you expecting me to help you with?"
"Gathering the information."
Suddenly his mouth drops open, he looks down. "You see that?!"
I hurry over. "What's wrong?"
"I'm paralyzed!"
I glare at him. "Everything's a joke to you."
"Ain
’t
it? You want me
—a man in a wheelchair—to
gather information? Raleigh, that's what I hire
you
for."
For the past two summers, I've been Teddy's research assistant, collecting those rock samples.
"But you know things," I tell him. "Things I don't."
"Why don't you ask your dad to help?"
He waits. I don't reply.
"What I thought," he says. "You ain't told him."
"I told him Drew's missing. Last night."
"But I'll bet you left out this whole part about rootin' around for information. What else you hiding from him?"
"The point is: if her parents weren't retarded, I wouldn't even have to do this."
He cuts the flame and tongs the brown-almost-burned strips onto the paper towels. As the grease spreads through the paper like a flood, my mouth waters.
"Raleigh, do you know who pays my salary at St. Catherine's? Parents."
"So?”
"Parents pay my salary. Drew's parents, for instance."
"I'm sorry. But I need help, and my dad's got his hands full dealing with my mom. Okay?"
Teddy rolls over the sink, tosses the tongs into the stainless steel tub. Then looks at me. "Does it help, knowing you're part of a long Southern tradition?"
"The Harmons?"
"I don't give a flip about that landed-gentry stuff. I'm referring to your having a crazy mother. It's a Southern tradition."
"No, that doesn't help."
"Well, there's always bacon."
He offers me a slice.
I bite down, and my mom's horror-breakfast evaporates. This bacon tastes of smoke and maple and meat. I close my eyes, feeling a dance on my tongue, and when I open them, Teddy is smiling.
"All right," he says. "What d'y
a
need from me?"
I smile back, relieved.
But my heart is some weird mixture of glad and sad.
Glad for Teddy's help.
Sad for why I need it.
Teddy's van belches black smoke all the way up Grove Avenue. I ride my bike behind it, grateful for the rain that washes the sooty clouds into the pavement.
When he pulls into St. Cat's parking lot, he bypasses the reserved space with its sign, "Science Teacher of the Year!" Teddy's won that award twice—once for Virginia, once for the entire United States. I'm pretty sure the award is the only thing keeping Ellis from firing him. They have a mutual dislike; you can tell because whenever Ellis comes around Teddy's classroom, Teddy will slip into even deeper hillbilly talk, just to drive our grammatically correct headmaster crazy.
I coast over to the van. The driver's side window is down, letting in the rain and letting out his cigar smoke.
He stares at the bike, tapping the cigar, sending the ash onto the ground.
"You need to look at her lock," I say.
He jams the cigar between his front teeth, raises the window and begins the long process of getting himself out of the van and into his wheelchair. The procedure never fails to provoke some new names for his chair.
Now I hear: " . . . conniving contraption from the clutches of Hades!" and wait for it to end—while fantasizing about using that example the next time Sandbag asks for alliteration.
I push my bike beside his chair, over to the rack. We stand under the eaves. My hair is dripping.
"See the lock?" I ask.
He yanks the now-wet cigar from his mouth. "Raleigh, I'm crippled, not deaf."
I shut up. For about five seconds.
"What—” I can't stand it, he's looking so intently at the bike. “What do you see?"
"Get my kit." He tosses me the van keys.
I climb through the vehicle's back end, coughing as the cigar stench coats the back of my throat, and clumsily dig through mounds of accumulated stuff. Hammer-shattered rocks. Rubber-encased glass jars of river silt. Science journals. Old empty film canisters. Boxes of who-knows-what. Finally I find the titanium briefcase buried in the corner, probably here since the summer.
I yank it out, set it on the ground under the eaves, and wipe the rain from my face.
"You're going to take the soil from her back wheel," he says. "But not all of it."
"Why not all of it?"
"And take photos," he says, ignoring my question. Which means, again,
shut up
. "Photos of the whole bike, close-ups on the lock, and the wheels."
I dig through the rock kit for the tools. Over the last two summers, working as Teddy's hands and feet, I've gotten to know this kit like my own as I help him collect geology samples for articles he writes in those science journals. He puts my name in there, too, as "assistant."
I take the photos, which make Drew seem really gone, then wedge a soil knife—kind of like a butter knife—into the tire's nubby treads. Carefully, I slide the grains into an empty film canister. Everyone's switching to digital cameras, so Teddy's collecting these little plastic cans. They're made to keep light away from film, but they also keep soil totally uncontaminated.
I press down on the canister's plastic cap. "Now what?"
"Now," he says, "it's time for fun and games."
***
Teddy's wet rubber tires squeal on the school's polished floors. The sound echoes off the lockers and sends a chill down my spine. My school has never looked so empty, especially with all the litter gone from last night. Now a gray gloom seeps through rain-streaked windows.
Teddy turns into the Earth Science lab. "Fire up the scopes, would ya?"
I crawl under the long counter and flick on the power strip. When a teacher wins national awards, science foundations donate all kinds of state-of-the-art equipment. Like two polarizing light microscopes, made specifically for geology samples. They cost about ten grand each.
I crawl out.
"You know what's good about dirt?" he asks. "It won't lie to you."
"Drew didn't lie to me."
"You gotta admit it's possible."
"You told me
possible
is not the same as
probable
."
"Man, I hate it when you quote me to myself." He rolls away.
"Where are you going?"
"You can do it."
"But this isn't some experiment."
"Use your noggin." He slides into his messy desk. "You'll figure it out."
I've learned a lot of geology from Teddy, but I've also learned that arguing with him is like trying to break glass by screaming.
I stomp over to the far wall, ripping off a sheet of butcher paper. Then I hold the paper up like a sail, letting the massive sheet thunder in the air as I walk back across the room.
Teddy starts whistling, some hick-sounding jig.
Laying the sterile paper on the counter, I deposit the soil from the canister and spread out the grains with a clean knife. I see taupe-colored sand, some bright pink pebbles, and some dark objects shaped like tiny icicles. I divide the tiny pile into quarters, placing one part in a glass beaker with just enough distilled water to make a slurry. After I swirl that mixture, I strain out the water and place the beaker under a heat lamp.
"Why can't you girls spell porphyry?" Teddy complains from his desk. He's grading papers.
I ignore him, practicing my petty version of the Golden Rule, and spread another dry quarter into a thin layer. I see some gray dust--so pale it almost disappears on the white paper. I decide not to focus on that right now, in case it dissolves in the water-washed sample. That would mean the substance isn't a mineral, but something soluble. Organic. Not geological.
I pick out the pink pebbles. They look like some kind of granite. Then I check on the weird icicles. They're long and narrow, tapered at both ends.