Castles (10 page)

A few of the local boys were out, no doubt looking for mischief. They followed me on the other side of the fence, casting glances back and forth and whispering to each other. It was uncomfortable, but I wasn't afraid of them. I knew them from school, from around the park, from here or there. I could only put one name to a face though: Steve, a bully a year or two older than me. He was built, and I won't pretend that his good looks were lost on me. He was also an angry man, however, and that didn't appeal to me at all.

"Walking the dog?" Steve called out from across the fence. I suppose it was a conversation starter, but one that could only lead to no good.

I didn't answer.

"Maggie. Can you hear me? I'm talking to you."

I yanked on Dusty's rope and stopped. "I can hear you. Yes, I'm walking the dog."

Steve walked over to the fence with the other boys and wrapped his fingers around the links. "What's wrong? Don't like talking to me?"

"No." I needed to start walking again, to turn my back and make the situation dissolve. I don't think they saw things the same way.

One of the other boys spit on the ground and nodded toward Dusty. "What's his name?"

"Dusty," I said. I looked to my right to see if there was anyone else around. I've found that when faced with uncomfortable circumstances, the company of complete strangers that are removed from the situation is helpful. They may not be, in fact, saviors, but there's always that hope.

"Isn't that Michael's stupid mutt?" The spitting boy smiled. "Gave him to you, didn't he?"

I nodded and looked to my left. No one there. "For my birthday a few years ago."

"Before you killed him?"

I turned and walked away. Dusty sniffed a little at the boys on the other side of the fence as they laughed at me. Michael's disappearance was always a mystery, and so often mysteries trigger legends. Since I was Michael's girlfriend at one time, those legends usually involved me. I heard mumbles in the hallway at school about me and saw judgment in the eyes of others that didn't know anything. It was unfair, but I knew I couldn't set the record straight. I had to ignore it all.

"Where you going, Mags?" Steve called out. "We were just asking about the dog?"

I looked down as I walked and quickened my pace. I knew they wouldn't do anything to me—although I won't lie and say those thoughts didn't cross my mind—but I felt even more uncomfortable than I was at first. They were taunting me, and I didn't like it.

Dusty must have felt the same. He pulled on the rope a little harder. I had to jog to keep up at times. I could hear the boys behind me, calling me names and making comments about Michael. One of them even called me a slut.

The last person to do that was Mama.

I cleared the end of the fence line that marked the boundary of the park and headed toward the other side. By the time I reached a broken section of the fence where I could cross over, I couldn't hear the boys any longer. They were gone, probably off to find more mischief or taunt someone else younger than them.

That's the way it is with bullies, Grandma told me once. You give them an inch, and they'll run you through with a knife.

I didn't get a chance to walk Dusty for the next two days. My time was spent helping Mama around the house, folding laundry or doing dishes. I think Justin grew on me as I scrubbed pots and thought of him. He was handsome, kind, and never once had anything negative to say to me. In one respect, he was much like Michael, but in others—in the goofy way he walked with his hands in his pockets or the way he tilted his head when he smiled—he was so much different. I liked the eccentricity, even if I didn't immediately recognize it as something out of the ordinary. Maybe we were two of kind.

A young girl's imagination is filled with vivid dreams. Some involve running away from home, marrying a man who is powerful, yet respectful. You have a few kids, move into a big house and live out your days like you thought they should be when Barbie and Ken were your biggest role models. This rarely happens, and if it does more often, I don't know about it. Still, the thoughts of such a life were there for me, and even if I couldn't be an innocent virgin for Justin, maybe he wouldn't mind. It was something to think about.

I didn't dare bring up my feelings to Mama, however. I'm sure the fact she refused boyfriends at the time coupled with my previous attempt at a relationship soured her to the idea that I should find love in the real world. Men weren't for me, and if they were to be in the future, I had to be older and out of the house. Our mother-daughter relationship was still relatively new, and I didn't want to jeopardize anything we had just to be with someone else.

I regret that decision to this day.

Mama was at work when Justin knocked on my door. He shook, and sweat covered his body. His chest heaved up and down. I put my kitchen rag on the table and smiled.

"You look tired," I said. I wanted to let him inside, but the fear of retribution held me back.

"You . . . have to come . . . see." His words were labored. I dropped my smiled slowly and stepped outside.

"What is it?"

"You just have to see."

He didn't say another word to me as we ran through the streets and along the fence. I didn't know what to expect. Did he have a gift for me? Had he found the treasure we thought was in the Bus at nine? What could a boy of fourteen have to show me that would make him so excited?

As I followed him to the back of the maintenance shed, my heart pounded with anticipation.

I saw Dusty's tail first, severed and leaning against the fence. Blood covered the brown mottled fur and dirt was caked on. I covered my mouth and stopped. I didn't want to see more. Justin grabbed my hand, and the horror in his face told me everything. I stepped slowly around the back of the shed. One of Dusty's legs was cut off at the hip. Beside it, lay the rest of my twelfth birthday present, mangled.

My body shook wildly, and I would have screamed had I possessed any sense of self. I stood in pure shock, a coma where the light at the end of the tunnel was full of blood and entrails. In the back of my head, however, a single thought sprung forth, triggered no doubt by my confrontation with the neighborhood boys a few days prior: they resented me. They all resented me.

I pulled away from Justin and ran home crying. There didn't seem to be anything pleasant in my life anymore, and what I did have was brutally ripped from me as if I wasn't allowed such pleasures.

Was this in response to Michael? Were they trying to pin the blame on me by slaughtering the only thing I had left to tie myself to him? I had questions but no answers, pain and no relief. There wasn't anything I could do.

Justin knocked on the door twice that night before leaving me alone. I'm sure he wanted to comfort me, but I didn't feel like opening up.

I didn't feel like living.

We buried Dusty in the desert by the Bus. Justin put the dog's body inside a black lawn bag and onto a wagon we'd borrowed from a neighbor's yard. I didn't want to tell anyone where we were going, but I couldn't help but think we were watched—more likely than not by the boys who did this in the first place.

The trip across the desert with our makeshift hearse was solemn. Justin and I talked of death, of Michael, and finally the body we'd found in the Bus so many years ago. It was the first time I'd mentioned the body to someone other than Michael, and although Justin was there, he wasn't a
part
of our adventure in my mind. He was a bystander, at best, much like Cade.

"Did you ever figure out who it was?" Justin pulled the wagon ahead of me while I walked beside it.

"No." I had my suspicions, but that was it. Nothing more, and certainly nothing I would tell Justin.

"Well, I think it's weird. I mean a body that disappears and all. It's like he was never there in the first place."

I stopped. "How do you know the body disappeared?"

Justin turned around and smiled. "Michael told me a lot of things."

My eyes narrowed. Judging by the twinkle in Justin's eyes, I assumed Michael told him a lot more than I would have liked.

When we reached the Bus, I realized I hadn't associated it with my thoughts of
that
night, when it was, in fact, that night when I'd last been there. I expected a rush of feeling as I stood at the passenger door wanting to go in, but it never came. Instead, there was a peace I've learned since is like knowing all the loose ends are tied up, the mess is clean, the trash taken out. Maybe the best way to understand it is to simply say, "It is done."

Justin dug a hole on the side of the Bus hidden from the trailer park. If we were being watched, at least we could feel veiled. It took more than an hour, and the sun had dipped below the horizon by the time he'd created a large enough hole. In the distance, clouds gathered on ridges, reds and oranges splattered among them in eerily similar patterns. In one more day, the winds would whip across the desert floor and pull up the sands.

The dust eels were coming again.

I helped Justin lift Dusty's makeshift plastic coffin into the hole and stood silent for a while next to it. I cried and leaned my head against his chest, taking comfort in his heartbeat and wondering if I would see Dusty in the carousel of singing men next to Michael.

Justin ran his fingers through my hair. "Are you going to be okay?"

I didn't think so at the time, but I lied and nodded my head.

I sat outside on the porch and watched the storms brew. Dusty was with Michael again, but I felt uneasy. The peace that filled me while I stood at the Bus was gone, and in its place, I felt something missing—a piece of the puzzle I didn't see before. I thought burying Dusty would be akin to burying Grandma; in the end, we're all fodder for the maggots, the worms and time. What is left is trivial: a coffin, a few bones and nothing more.

I wanted to cry again, but I knew it was pointless. The tears would run from my eyes, dry on my cheeks, and Dusty would still be dead. He was a victim of mischievous violence, and I had projected that sentence on Dusty myself. I knew it was my fault. Michael bought the dog for
me
, after all. It was put in the trailer park with those other kids because of
me
.
I
took the dog on walks, and if I had
paid more attention
to my surroundings and avoided the confrontation with Steve and his gang, Dusty would still be safe.

I
had made the mess.

What if someone walking around the Bus found the freshly moved dirt that covered Dusty's body? It was something I hadn't thought about before. After all, we didn't plan to bury the dog, nor did we plan to tell anyone where he went. If Michael's parents cared, signs might be posted about a lost dog. People would keep their eyes open, and if one those eyes turned to the desert, they might find something of interest. People would know.

I left too much unraveled. Rather than a spotless floor, I'd swept my problems under a rug. Time would pass and the rug would be moved, exposing the truth. They would pin the blame on me and tie Dusty's death to Michael's disappearance. In no time, I would be suspected of more than I could handle.

"You're not done."

I looked to my right. Grandma stood on the patio, the nightgown she wore the day she died was as clean as ever. In the faint, humid breeze, I thought I smelled her—a memory released by scent and scent alone.

"Grandma?"

"You need to clean up your mess."

"I did. I buried Dusty in the desert by the Bus."

"You're not done."

She vanished as quickly as she came, but the scent lingered for moments after. I thought at the time I was dreaming, but I've seen her since. Between her words of warning, her persistent instructions on the folds of my brain and her unexpected appearances, I knew I had lessons still to learn.

The wind picked up a little more and I looked out toward the storms. The tops had collapsed, too heavy for the air to keep them suspended. In moments, I knew their flattening would create a swirl of wind that would pick up the dust from the desert floor and construct a wall that would sweep across the land. Inside that wall, the eels would ride.

Memories flashed though me. The mysterious body, Michael's death, my father, the carousel of singing men: they all had one thing in common.

The Bus.

Mama would be home in a few hours, and I had to move fast.

Dusty wasn't light, and I'm not the strongest person in the world. I'm thankful he was buried next to the Bus in a shallow grave; I don't think I could have carried his body any further. It took enough effort to drag the bag of parts that was now Dusty and lift it onto the passenger's side, but it needed to be done. The driver's side door was rusted shut.

I could see the wall of dust a few miles away. It was only a matter of minutes—maybe fifteen—and the Bus would be engulfed by the tempest. The eels would come through the broken windows and clean up the mess I had made. I shuddered at the thought. The last time I'd seen them work their magic was on Michael's body, and I won't lie and say his death wasn't at the forefront of my mind.

I finally pulled Dusty's body into the back and rested. I could smell death in the air mixed with rusted metal, humidity and dust. My nose twitched involuntarily.

I didn't want to stay there. I wanted to run home before Mama got off work, but again the sight of death tempted me. Or was it the eels? They had always captivated me. Sure, they were frightening and I could never get those translucent teeth out of my mind, but they were there for
me
, to clean up
my
mess and—apparently—the messes of other people. What Grandma told me when I was six was gospel: storms are God's way of sorting it all out.

"I think God was trying to work on your mother, tonight."

I frowned as Grandma's words wormed their way out of my memory. Were the eels there for Mama as well? What messes did she have to clean? Grandma never did tell me what happened to Joe, nor did I ever learn about all the other people that came into the house, made Grandma say mean things after they abused Mama and were never heard of again. Maybe Mama had learned to clean up her own messes, and all those men in the carousel were . . . were . . .