Back Roads Read online

  It was early when I got home. The clock in my truck didn’t work, but I figured it was about 6A .M. I had left Jody and Misty alone all night. Amber had gone out. She was right about me being paranoid. If Jody and Misty could stay by themselves during the day, they could do it at night too. Betty had been right too, saying I was using it as an excuse to avoid visiting Skip.

  Maybe I would go visit Skip after all, I thought to myself as I crossed the yard. Maybe I could get Callie to come too.

  The idea was brilliant, so brilliant I had to stop and take a seat on the couch carcass.

  I wondered if she ever got to go away overnight like her husband did. She could make up a story and meet me there. She could meet me anywhere. It wouldn’t even have to be overnight. It could be more realistic. An hour. Fifteen minutes.

  Summer was just about here. The nights would be warm. I thought about how easily she slipped out our first night together. How her husband and kids never even knew she was gone. We could meet in the woods. We could meet in her clearing.

  We could meet at the old mining office.

  The front door opened and Elvis ran out. He went straight to the woods without noticing me. Amber stepped out on the porch.

  She wasn’t wearing one of my T-shirts like she usually did. She had on a short, silky red robe. Beneath it I saw the black lace nightie she had worn the night we had our last big fight. She reminded me of the times Mom put on slinky stuff waiting for Dad to come back from the bars after a bad fight. She only did it when she knew Dad had been right.

  It was way too early on a Saturday morning for Amber to be up already. Maybe she had stayed out all night too and just got home. She had done that twice before. Both times we had a big fight about it. I didn’t feel like fighting right now so I wasn’t going to ask.

  “What are you doing?” she shouted at me.

  I made myself more comfortable on the couch.

  “Where have you been?”

  I ignored her. I was busy thinking about the office. I could clean it out. I could fix it up. I could put curtains on the windows.

  She came over and snapped her fingers in front of my face. “What is with you? You look stoned. Are you stoned?” She bent over and sniffed me. “Where were you all night?”

  “I fell asleep in the woods again.”

  “The woods.” She rolled her eyes at me. “I swear to God, you are so fucked in the head. Do you know what kind of people sleep in the woods?”

  “Campers?”

  “Psychos,” she said, sharply.

  I glanced at the hills. The sun was coming up pink again, spreading a peachy-gold stain over the tops of the hills.

  “Well, while you were off communing with nature last night,” I heard Amber go on, “we had a crisis.”

  I sat up. “Is Jody okay?”

  “Yes.”

  “Misty?”

  “Yes. They’re fine. Nothing like that.”

  “The gun. Where’s the gun?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Probably where you put it. Harley, what’s wrong with you?”

  She reached out to touch me and I pushed her away. I got up from the couch. “Did somebody call? What day is today? Did somebody call about the house?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You said there was a crisis.” I grabbed her by the arm and shook her. “What’s the fucking crisis?”

  “Harley, stop.”

  “You said there was a crisis. Do you know what a crisis is?”

  “What’s wrong with you? You’re scaring me.”

  “Define crisis.”

  “Something bad,” she said, breaking into a sob.

  I squeezed her arms until I saw her skin between my fingers turn white. “The last time someone told me there was a crisis in my house it was a state trooper standing in Skip’s driveway with all those fucking blue lights going everywhere,” I shouted at her. “ ‘There’s been a crisis in your household.’ Who the fuck talks like that?”

  I started shaking her again. Her crying went from wild and terrified to steady and defeated, the way it always did with Dad. I never wanted to make anybody feel that way about me. I used to have nightmares about it before I stopped dreaming.

  She broke free of my grip and walked away rubbing at the finger welts on her arms. “What did you want him to say?”

  “The truth,” I shouted back. “Why can’t anybody ever say the truth?”

  “You wanted him to say your mom killed your dad? That would have been better?”

  “I wanted him to say your life is going to suck every minute of every day from now until you die. That’s what I wanted him to say.”

  She sat down hard on the ground, wrapped her arms around her bent legs, and buried her chin in her knees.

  “You think you’re the only one whose life sucks?” she asked the empty space in front of her. “You think you’re the only one who has a right to be miserable just because you have a job?”

  “I have two jobs.”

  “Big deal,” she said flatly. “I’d rather have a job than go to school and have to hang around this house pretending to be Mom.”

  I had one of my flashes of brotherly obligation. I wanted to tell her she had her whole life ahead of her, but it would have been like tossing her another white crayon.

  She straightened out her legs in front of her and started pulling up the grass between them.

  “What’s the crisis?” I asked defeatedly, all my anger and fear spent.

  She took a deep breath and blew it out through pursed lips. “I probably shouldn’t have called it a crisis.” She lay back on her elbows and arched her neck so she could look up at me. “I didn’t realize you had a thing about that word. It’s not such a big deal, I guess. Maybe it’s actually good.”

  “Tell me,” I said, impatiently.

  “I found almost a thousand dollars in Misty’s room last night.”

  “What?”

  “It belonged to Mom. It was her secret stash. She had been saving up for a long time, I guess.”

  “Secret stash for what?”

  “I guess she was going to leave Daddy. Isn’t that wild? I never had any idea things were that bad. Did you?”

  “How did Misty get it?”

  “She found it and stole it from Mom. I couldn’t get her to tell me anything else. She clammed up the way she does. You know what that’s like.”

  I couldn’t think straight. Every thought I had ever had about my parents rushed into my brain. Every thought I had ever had about Misty followed. But the one that stayed the longest was the thought of a thousand dollars sitting in my house for almost two years.

  “How much money?” I asked.

  “Nine hundred and seventy-three dollars and fifty-four cents.”

  It was my turn to sit down hard.

  “Where did you find it?”

  “Do you remember that sunflower shirt you asked me about?”

  The sunflower shirt. I blinked at her. The bloodstained sunflower shirt was in my desk drawer with Skip’s letter and the latest Victoria’s Secret catalog.

  I nodded. I felt kind of sick. I tried to remember the last time I ate.

  “Well, you got me thinking about that shirt and how much Jody would like it. It would go perfect with that little wraparound denim skirt she has with the eyelet trim. Right now she wears that old pink shirt of Misty’s with the furry white bunny head on it. It’s way too small and the bunny is missing an eye and it has a mustard stain on it. She looks so Appalachia in it.”

  I put my head in my hands. I was getting a headache on top of feeling like I was going to throw up.

  “When Misty outgrows things, she usually gives them to Jody right away but sometimes she packs stuff in a box in her closet to save for her own kids someday. I’ve seen some of it. It’s not special stuff like Christmas dresses. It’s shit like that Joey Chitwood Thrill Show windbreaker she got at the fair and that ratty old T-shirt of Dad’s that says, ‘Old Hunters Never
Die. They just Lose Their Bang.’ Most of it’s really old and crappy and weird so I thought maybe she kept the sunflower shirt.”

  I looked over at her. “So you found the money in a box of old clothes in her closet?”

  “No. When I went in her closet, I found my Easy Bake oven. Do you remember how much fun we used to have with that? Do you remember the king and queen game? I was the Queen of Hearts and I made you pink cakes.”

  “I remember,” I urged her along.

  “Anyway, I opened it up to look at it. You know, for kicks. And I found an envelope stuffed inside the oven.”

  “I can’t believe this.”

  “You were the King of Pain. Remember?” She was still reminiscing. “After that one song you liked so much. They used to play it on the radio when we were kids. It was a hit or something. What was it called?”

  “ ‘King of Pain,’ ” I said. “Where’s Misty now?” I asked.

  “She’s probably still sitting on her bed guarding her money. She stayed up all night doing it. Jody slept with me.”

  I got up slowly from the ground. The pounding in my head, the sloshing in my stomach, the fear and confusion in my heart were nothing compared to the anger I suddenly felt.

  “She thinks she’s going to keep it?” I asked, my voice shaking with disbelief.

  “Yeah.” Amber nodded. “That’s what she said.”

  Misty was wide awake and sitting cross-legged on her bed just like Amber said she would be. She had on one of her own nightshirts—a big tie-dyed one that was mostly blue and purple—and the envelope full of money sat in the pouch of material draped between her knees.

  She gave me an odd, close-mouthed smile when I walked into her room.

  I walked right up to her. I wanted to hit her more than I had ever wanted to hit anyone in my life. I looked down at the envelope stuffed with bills and felt like I was going to faint. Her face was a deadly calm mask of superiority.

  “It’s mine,” she said. “I’m the one who found it.”

  I couldn’t unclamp my jaw to make words. “Where?” I managed to choke out.

  “In Mom’s underwear drawer,” she answered me. “That’s all I’m telling you.”

  My hand shot out so fast, I didn’t realize it had left my side until I felt something warm and living in its grip.

  Misty’s head hit the wall behind her bed with a hollow thud. Her hands flew to my hand clenched around her throat, and she started clawing at it with her blue fingernails.

  “You’re going to tell me everything,” I said.

  “Or what?” She coughed, trying to pry my hand free.

  I let go all at once, as quickly as I had grabbed her, and walked to the other side of the room holding the hand at arm’s length in front of me like it might attack me next.

  I heard her gagging. My hands started trembling. The right one had mean red marks dug into the skin. It already throbbed.

  I wanted to say I was sorry but all I could do was stare at the wall. It needed a fresh coat of paint.

  “You can’t do anything to me,” Misty said, her heavy stare numbing me from behind. “You can’t hurt me. You can’t kick me out. You’re my legal guardian. You have to take care of me.”

  I couldn’t look at her. I didn’t want to go near her. I was afraid of myself.

  “I’m not going to do anything to you. I don’t even want you to tell me about the money,” I said as calmly as I could. “I don’t want to know another goddamned thing about Mom or Dad for as long as I live.”

  I turned around and saw Jody’s empty bed. She had taken all her dinosaurs with her. It must have taken them forever to lug them all over to Amber’s room.

  Misty was rubbing her neck. She hadn’t changed her position except to take the envelope and push it deeper into her lap. In order to take it from her, I would have to touch her between her legs.

  “I had to take the money to stop her,” she said. “She was going to take us away from him. Don’t you understand?”

  The confession didn’t bring any satisfaction into her eyes but it livened them a little as if she had begun to eat after days of hunger.

  “I don’t care,” I said. I held out my aching hand. “Give me the money, Misty.”

  “No.”

  “I don’t get it. Even if you don’t care about the rest of us, you could have been spending the money on yourself. What are you saving it for?”

  “College,” she said, triumphantly.

  The urge ripped through me again. I imagined slapping her would feel like coming.

  CORRUPT flashed across her chest, the letters molding the new little breast bumps beneath her shirt. I shook my head, but the word wouldn’t leave.

  Tears started spilling out of my eyes like blood, calm and steady and without emotion. They tumbled down my cheeks and dripped off my chin and made dark spots on my Shop Rite shirt.

  “Give it to me,” I said hoarsely.

  “It’s mine.”

  “It’s not yours. It’s Mom’s. She doesn’t know you have it, does she?”

  She didn’t say anything.

  “We’ll ask Mom what she wants us to do with it.”

  “She can’t have any visitors thanks to you freaking out.”

  “She can have calls,” I said.

  Misty put her hands on the envelope.

  “Give it to me now, Misty,” I said. “You know I can take that money from you. I might have to hurt you to do it, but I can do it.”

  “No, you can’t,” Amber announced.

  Her voice surprised me. She had been silent the whole time. I had forgotten she was still in the room.

  “You can’t hurt anyone,” she added. “But I can.”

  She hauled off and smacked Misty, open-handed, full across the face. The impact threw her sideways off the bed, and the envelope went with her. Amber walked over, picked it up, and left the room waving it at me.

  Misty glanced my way. Her eyes sparkled with tears in a face full of deliberate emptiness. “She did that because of you,” she said.

  “You brought it on yourself.”

  “No. That’s not what I mean. She’s not ever going to behave until you take care of her.”

  A chill curiosity kept me from moving.

  “I want you to take care of her,” she repeated.

  I wanted to get out of there, but her eyes held me the way a stagnant well forced me to stay and drop stones in it.

  “You’ll be happy and Amber will be happy,” she further explained. “Then me and Jody can be happy too. It’s hard living with you guys.”

  Her one cheek blazed red.

  “I just want us to be happy,” she said before disappearing into her preferred silence. “That’s all.”

  It sounded like a threat.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” Amber said when I joined her in the kitchen. “I knew you wouldn’t be able to do it. We’d have to spend the rest of our lives trying to get ownership by signing the proper legal documents.”

  She paused and brought her palm to her lips and blew on it.

  “God, that hurt,” she said.

  I took a stunned seat at the kitchen table. The envelope sat in the middle of it. I had never seen so much money in my life.

  “I guess things were worse between Mom and Dad than I thought,” Amber said, “if she was going to leave him.”

  I looked over at her. She was pouring water in the coffeemaker. She hated coffee.

  “Are you making me coffee?” I asked.

  She turned around smiling in her skimpy robe, caught in a lazy shaft of white sunlight coming through the window, holding the coffeepot out to one side like a newlywed in a Folger’s commercial.

  “Don’t you want some?”

  She flipped on the machine and came and sat down across from me.

  “I guess it all makes more sense now,” she said. “I mean, what happened.”

  “It makes less sense,” I told her. “Why shoot somebody you’re going to leave?” />
  “She couldn’t leave. Remember? Misty took her money.”

  The brewing coffee smelled great. I wished I had a big greasy breakfast to go with it: bacon, pancakes, sausage gravy over biscuits, home fries. My stomach rumbled and my dick stiffened a little. I bet Callie Mercer could do incredible things with an egg.

  “Anyway.” Amber sighed. “Now I can get my license.”

  “Huh?”

  “You said we needed a thousand bucks, right?”

  I laughed at her. “Are you nuts?”

  Our hands shot out at the exact same moment. I was faster. I scooped up the envelope and backed off from the table.

  “That’s mine,” she said, lunging for me.

  I shoved it into the waistband of my pants. “We need it for taxes on the house.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Eleven hundred dollars,” I explained. “It’s due in two weeks and we don’t have any of it.”

  “Whose fault is that?” she cried.

  “Fuck you, Amber.”

  “No. Fuck you.”

  “Hi,” Jody said, coming into the kitchen, frowning, and rubbing her eyes with a little fist. “What are you guys fighting about now?”

  “Nothing,” I said. I closed my eyes and slumped back into a chair.

  “Nothing to you,” Amber shot back.

  Jody took a seat at the table and set down her notebook, pen, Sparkle Three-Horn, Yellowie, and a pink plastic tyrannosaurus she won at the fair the year before, picking a duck.

  “You just don’t want me to ever get my license,” she went on.

  She leaned over the table toward me when she realized I was done fighting. I thought she was going to sniff me again. I wondered if she could smell a woman on me.

  “Something’s wrong with you.” She said it with authority.

  “Nothing’s wrong with me. I just don’t have the energy for this right now.”

  I put my head down on the table the way I had seen smart kids do my entire life when they finished their tests early.

  “Will you play with me today?” Jody asked.

  I heard Amber’s chair being dragged out from the table and being pushed in again.

  “She’s asking you,” she said.