To See the Moon Again (18 page)

All at once this didn't seem like a welcome distraction at all. Sitting in traffic would mean more time for Carmen to ask questions. Julia sighed. “Must be an accident up there somewhere.”

Carmen seemed to have forgotten about the story already as she unbuckled her seat belt and reached into the backseat. “A GPS would sure come in handy right now,” she said, “but at least we've got this.” She pulled out the road atlas, opened it, and found the map for North Carolina.

Julia had declined the GPS offer from the rental place. The most advanced travel aid she ever used was MapQuest, of which she had, in fact, availed herself for this trip. Inside a folder, which was now tucked between the driver's seat and console, were many pages of MapQuest directions for all the planned stops along their route. They crept ahead a few feet and stopped again. Loud rap music was coming from a car nearby.

Carmen pointed ahead. “There's an exit coming up. Let's get off and see what happens, okay?” She sounded excited. Sudden glitches always seemed to rev up her can-do spirit.

Julia wasn't at all excited. Deviating from a prescribed route had always been equated with risk in her way of thinking. And risk could so easily mean failure.

They crept a little farther. Up ahead several cars were taking the exit.

Carmen looked back at the atlas. “Yeah, this should work,” she said. “We can take this exit and then—well, I guess Highway 21 runs up the right general direction. Maybe we can pick up the interstate again somewhere around Statesville.”

Julia wasn't comforted by the girl's word choices—
should work, I guess, general direction, maybe
.

Carmen glanced up. “You could go ahead and get off on the shoulder now, Aunt Julia. That would get us to the exit quicker. Other cars are doing it, see?”

“Those people probably live out that direction somewhere,” Julia said. “They probably know every inch of those back roads.”

“Well, then, if we get turned around, we can stop and ask one of them where we are,” Carmen said cheerfully.

Julia looked over at the opposite side of the interstate, where drivers were freely traveling toward their destinations, then looked again at all the lanes of traffic in front of her. No sign of a break. Behind her more and more cars were joining the backup. She looked at the car next to her, where a man was pounding on the steering wheel and shouting animatedly.

She didn't look at Carmen but was very aware of her presence.
You've kept yourself in a box for half of your life, all because of an accident.
It was something the girl had said just days ago, all the while weeping copious tears, after Julia told her about the child whose life she had taken.
You don't understand the definition of
accident, Julia had replied, dry-eyed, for she had cried all the tears she could cry many years ago.

And at some point Carmen had said this:
You're too hard on yourself, Aunt Julia. You're punishing yourself for no good reason. It won't bring the boy back.
As if anyone her age could understand the weight of such a crime and what kind of punishment was appropriate. Nothing could bring the boy back—that much was true. But some offenders deserved no amnesty, she told the girl. Certain sins were beyond atonement.

•   •   •

S
OMEWHERE
up ahead a car honked, then another, and a whole spate of honks ensued, different pitches and timbres—blares, beeps, toots, blasts—a cacophony of vented frustration. It sounded like a beginning band warming up.

Julia could feel the girl looking at her. More horns were joining in from all sides. It was amusing, really, to think that these were all adults.

Carmen raised her voice. “You don't want to sit in the middle of this, do you?”

No, Julia didn't want to sit here. She took a quick look behind, then checked the right side-view mirror, cautiously pulled out of her lane onto the shoulder, and slowly proceeded to the exit.

Carmen tapped her index fingers together. “And the crowd applauded wildly as Dr. Julia Rich bravely took a step off the beaten path,” she said. She directed Julia to turn right at the stop sign, and as they traveled down the road, the sound of the car horns behind them gradually faded.

Julia couldn't help thinking of the fact that this was exactly the mistake the family in O'Connor's story had made: getting off the beaten path. They had taken a hilly red dirt road and ended up getting murdered by a psychopath. Well, this wasn't a hilly dirt road. Not yet at least.

They drove for almost a mile before they saw a sign verifying that they were on Highway 21 North. It was just a plain, two-lane paved road leading . . . well, somewhere. Every road led somewhere.

A
NOTHER
C
LOUDBURST

“See? That worked out,” Carmen said as they pulled into Pamela's driveway a few minutes past five o'clock. “We didn't lose much time at all.”

Julia had to admit that the detour had turned out much better than she expected. She had almost forgotten how much was lost when traveling by interstate—all the local color of small towns and the surrounding countryside, such as the ramshackle diner named The Big Bad Wolf's Barbecue Pit and the backyard clothesline on which were hanging a half dozen of the largest men's jockey shorts she had ever seen, plus one pair of jumbo boxers, black with red lips printed all over them. Carmen had laughed at that and said, “Aw, look, somebody loves him,” then had taken several pictures of the clothesline with Julia's camera.

The front door of Pamela's house flew open, and Pamela stepped out onto the porch, waving with both hands. She was wearing an old-fashioned bibbed apron over a dark blue sweat suit and sporting a new hairstyle: a little round shrub of tight brown curls—inspired by Carmen's hair, she had told them over the phone. “Come on in!” she called. “We've been waiting! It's all ready to eat!”

Inside, dinner was indeed ready and waiting, and within minutes they were hustled in and the four of them were seated around the dining room table, elegantly set with china, silver, candles, and cloth napkins. Since the last time Julia had seen Butch, he had grown a beard and mustache so that he now resembled a caveman more than ever—a middle-aged caveman going gray. He was wearing a faded turquoise T-shirt with
Cooper County Senior Athletes Cycling Club
printed on it. It was clear from its snug fit over his ample stomach that he was no longer an active member of the club.

Pamela began bringing in platters of food, talking the whole time. “I just
love
a formal dinner,” she said, “where you pass things around in serving dishes.” She jerked her head toward Butch. “We hardly ever eat this way anymore because
somebody
is always too impatient.”

Either Butch didn't hear her or he was too busy illustrating her point as he stabbed two thick pieces of grilled pork and deposited them onto his plate.

Finally all the dishes were passed, and the meal commenced. Right away Pamela introduced a subject dear to her heart: her grandchildren. She bragged in general for a while, then zeroed in on their oldest grandson, Cody, who wasn't even five yet but already knew how to log on to a computer using his father's password, had even found his way to the Lego website one day. From Cody, she worked her way down the ranks, detailing the skill set of each child, even the baby, who, to hear her tell it, was far ahead of other three-month-olds.

Carmen was all ears and eyes and smiles. Anyone watching her would think she really was interested in all of this. And, knowing her, she probably was.

Pamela's talk moved to her two grown children. Even when she stopped long enough to ask Carmen or Julia a question, she managed to make it a quick transition: “So did you finish the props for the Sunday school play?” she asked Carmen, but then allowed only a sentence or two before, “I remember a Christmas play Bobby and Kendra were in at church when they were kids. The two of them were a
donkey
in the nativity scene, and I had to make them a costume. Neither one of them wanted to be the tail, of course, so we had to make them flip a coin.”

Carmen laughed. “I get it—heads or tails. Who won?”

“Bobby got tails,” Pamela said. “To this day he still talks about it. Says it was bad enough being a jackass, but it warped him for life being a jackass's . . . well, rear end.”

Butch gave a snort of laughter. To this point he hadn't contributed a word to the conversation, of course. Ensconced at the head of the table, he was hunkered over, his hairy forearms flanking his plate. He was attending to his corn now. Ignoring the special little holders beside his plate, he simply picked the corn up with his hands and rolled it around on top of the butter in Pamela's fancy butter dish.

For being so untidy, however, he proved remarkably neat and systematic as he swiftly mowed his way down each row with a great deal of noisy crunching, always returning to the same end to start again. Julia kept imagining the ding of a typewriter bell. He stopped midway to take a long swig of his tea before getting back to work. By now his mustache and beard were flecked with bits of corn.

“Did I ever tell you how
thrifty
Kendra is?” Pamela said to Julia, and off she went, telling how Kendra made her own soap and baby wipes and granola.

When Pamela went to the kitchen for more rolls, Carmen took the opportunity to ask Butch a few questions: what kind of work he did, if he liked to read, where he grew up. Julia was surprised at his answers—he sounded far more intelligent than she had ever given him credit for.

When the meal was finally finished, Pamela looked at her watch and sighed. “It's already after six. This is
so
frustrating to have you for only a few hours! We're going to play a game after supper, then have dessert later. I sure wish you'd gotten here earlier.”

“Some people wish their lives away,” Butch said.

Pamela ignored this. She picked up some dishes and started for the kitchen, calling back, “I tried a new recipe for dessert. Something called Chocolate Satin Decadence. Don't even
ask
how much butter it called for!”

Butch looked at Julia and Carmen. “That means she's getting ready to tell you.”

“Snuff out the candles, Butch!” Pamela shouted from the kitchen. “And put on some music! We can listen to it while we clean things up.”

•   •   •

A
S
Butch rose from the table, Julia knew exactly what kind of music it would be. And she was right. Soon a twangy song could be heard from another room, quite loud, with the repeating phrase “a hundred years from now.” Julia didn't like to think of herself as a musical snob, but she knew she probably was. In her opinion, a little bit of bluegrass and country went a long way. Some of the titles were ridiculous. “All My Exes Live in Texas,” for example, and “Satan's Jewel Crown.”

As they worked, Carmen made the mistake of asking some questions about bluegrass music, and soon the dishes were forgotten. Pamela dragged out two shoeboxes full of photos taken at festivals and concerts they had attended over the years and spread the pictures out over the kitchen table. Before long they were all seated again as she and Butch told story after story, interrupting each other frequently to argue over details.

Carmen said, “What about this one?” and held up a photo in which a much thinner Butch and an obviously pregnant Pamela stood with their arms around each other in front of an elevated platform with a banner across the back that read
Sugar Pop and the Honey-Hill Express
. “Oh, I was a running joke that whole night,” Pamela said. “We were sitting right down front, and after every song Sugar Pop would point at me and say, ‘Hey, you still hanging in there, little lady?' He even asked if there was a doctor in the house just in case, and there was—but only a dentist.”

“A chiropractor, not a dentist,” Butch said.

“No, it was a dentist.” They debated this at some length.

Pamela picked up another photo. “This one was on our very first date—Pete Chisholm and the Mighty Fines. I'd never had such fun in my life. It was like a brand-new world after all those years of listening to nothing but
folk songs
plunked out on a piano.” She rolled her eyes at Julia. “And, of course, Mother had those favorite hymns of hers, too.” She paused. “Which she sang only when she could get away with it.”

“I wonder if those were the same hymns Daddy used to sing to me,” Carmen said. “He knew all the verses. And a lot of folk songs, too.”

Pamela put both hands over her heart. “Oh, sweetheart, your daddy had a voice like pure liquid gold. I always knew he could've made it big as a singer if he hadn't . . .” She suddenly looked as if she might break down and cry.

Butch laid a finger on one of the photos on the table. “This gal right here,” he said, “she could
whistle
. She did these bird trills during ‘Wings of Bright Feathers' that made you think you were inside a dang bird sanctuary. Remember her?” He pushed the photo toward Pamela.

Pamela picked the picture up and held it close. “Oh, it just tore my heart out,” she said. “Absolutely tore my heart right out.” Julia assumed she was talking about the woman who did bird trills until she added, “I was only fourteen when he left home. It was like he died. And that's what I wanted to do, too—just shrivel up and die. I cried myself to sleep every night.” She dropped the photo among the others on the table and buried her face in her arms.

During the silence that followed, a question hit Julia hard: What had she done to comfort her little sister in the wake of their brother's disappearance? Well, she knew the answer to that. Nothing. The real question was why. And she knew the answer to that, too. She had been too busy thinking of herself. She had gone back to college a few weeks later and had stayed away for the next nine years. She tried to imagine now what it must have been like to be the only child left at home, in such a home as theirs.

Butch patted Pamela's arm and picked up another photo. “And this here is Horace Pitts,” he said loudly. “He sang tenor with the Mountain Laurel Boys, and their encore was always ‘Fly Away Yonder Where the Wind Blows Sweet.' On one whole stanza Horace would hum and whistle at the same time in two-part harmony.”

Pamela's head snapped up, and she glared at him, her eyes filled with tears. “What in the world are you talking about? You must be losing your mind. Benny Bellis was the one who always sang ‘Fly Away Yonder,'
not
Horace Pitts. You're thinking of ‘Tread Soft on My Bruised Heart'—that's the one the Mountain Laurel Boys always ended with.”

The dispute didn't last long, for Butch soon conceded—so quickly, in fact, that Julia felt sure his error must have been intentional. Butch handed the photo to Pamela, who studied it briefly. “That Horace Pitts was sure a handsome man,” she said. “He was engaged to be married, but he got hit on his motorcycle a week before the wedding. He wasn't wearing a helmet.” She proceeded to quote some statistics about helmets and motorcycle fatalities, then pushed the two shoeboxes over to Butch and said, “Here, put the pictures back in.” She stood up and clapped her hands. “Okay, chop-chop, let's finish getting things cleaned up so we can play some Rook!”

•   •   •

B
UTCH
and Carmen disappeared to the dining room to clear the rest of the table. Thankfully, the music had stopped by now. Julia heard Butch talking. Carmen laughed and said something, and then they both laughed.

“It's funny,” Pamela said. “Butch doesn't usually warm up that fast to strangers.” Julia was tempted to point out that he didn't warm up to people who weren't strangers either, like his own wife's sister. But she knew the logical response to that, since his own wife's sister had never shown the least interest in him. Over the years she had exchanged maybe a dozen words with him, the few times she had called Pamela and he had answered the phone. Until Carmen asked him about his job tonight, Julia hadn't even known what kind of work he did except it had something to do with computers and he had an office at home.

The only things she knew about him came from comments Pamela had made, mostly about unfavorable aspects of his character. At least those were the comments Julia had stored away. She thought of something now Matthew told her once, during a rare argument over something she couldn't remember:
You always hear what you want to hear.

“I sure hope you've given some thought to Carmen's education,” Pamela was saying. “She can't do much of anything unless she at least has a high school diploma. She could get a GED without much trouble. You can probably get those online now.”

As usual, Pamela seemed to think she was the possessor of knowledge no one else had thought of. “We've already talked about that,” Julia told her.

“So is she going to do it?” Pamela said. “If I were you, I'd get her started on it as soon as you get back home from this trip. The longer she puts it off, the harder it'll be.”

“She knows it's important,” Julia said. “She plans to do it.” She knew she should go ahead and tell Pamela they had already paid the money and gotten Carmen enrolled in an online course of study, that it had been Carmen's idea to begin with, that she intended to take the test by spring, but she didn't say any of that either.

They worked in silence for a while. More music started in the other room.

“Turn that up a little!” Pamela called. “Hey, you two, is everything off the table?” The music got louder, and she started singing along as she put up leftovers:
If blue is the color of lonesome
, all the way through to the end.
And left me to cry all alone.