Chicken (33 page)

A cloud hovers over the trailer, gray on the bottom, white on the puffy edges, and lined with silver, not that it means anything. It changes shape every ten seconds. A turtle becomes a duck becomes a boomerang that never comes back because now it’s a snake and now it’s a dotted line and now the sky is a blank blue page.

The trailer door stands open, letting in the breeze and letting out the news. Wings of Glory has already fallen from the cycle, replaced by the gathering storm of the presidential race and the brave little rover that will land on Mars this evening. Curiosity is its name.

Curiosity killed the cat.

Brant Mitchell turned into a cat.

I saw. 

I can’t possibly have seen.

But if Sister Bonnie’s story is true, if I never went to the cabin that night, if I never even saw Shetan because he was out with her son, then where did I lose my boot? When Daddy brought me home with one socked foot, Mama was so mad at me for running away that she told me I could just deal with it, I could just walk around without shoes until I learned to make good choices.

We skipped church again—me and her and Laramie. She didn’t have to convince Daddy I was sick; he already knows I am. Everyone at church knows. I don’t know if Mama will ever be able to bear walking through those swinging wooden doors again.

But even so, I know the Mitchells did not show up for church this morning.

I know because Daddy called to let Mama know he was joining the search party

I know that I can’t possibly have seen the things my brain keeps showing me. 

I know that teenage boys do not turn into mountain lions. 

I know that if Brant Mitchell is missing it’s because of my stupidity. 

But I also know my boot is in that cellar.

THURSDAY, AUGUST 9, 2012

We go in circles, me and Shetan. Around a wheelbarrow, a lawnmower, an old plastic dog crate that Debbie ate her way out of. We take it slow, an easy canter, because it’s not like I’m ever going to train him to run barrels for real. He’s too old. But I’m too young to let all my own training go. So I guide him in loop after loop after loop. Because one day, I won’t live here. One day, I will live in Austin, Atlanta, or Asheville. One day, I will own a cat named Garth Vader Mitchell Quinn, and if anyone asks why his middle name is Mitchell, I will tell them about my best friend.

Tires crunch on the gravel out front, and Debbie begins to bark. I start Shetan on another loop, remembering to keep my heels down, toes up in the stirrups. When I called Sister Bonnie on Sunday evening to let her know I couldn’t come to work because I only had one shoe, she went to Walmart and bought me new boots. Then she had a good long talk with Mama that didn’t change anything, except I did get to come back to work.

On the turn around the last barrel—the old dog crate—I see my parents standing at the green gate. This is normally the part of the pattern where I’d kick Shetan into high gear for the straight stretch to the finish line, but instead I rein him in, down to a trot, and then a walk. I can see squiggly black lines down my mother’s cheeks, and I guess I’m a better big brother than I thought because my first though is that something happened to Laramie, but then I see her too, sitting with Sister Bonnie on the glider on the porch, looking even more shell-shocked than usual.

I can’t breathe. 

I drop the reins and twist my fingers into Shetan’s mane, until his coarse hair cuts into my knuckles. My father’s arms are crossed over the top rail, and he lowers his head to his wrists and his shoulders start shaking. Mama rubs his back, leans her forehead against his bicep. I pull on Shetan’s mane, try to turn him around, pretend I didn’t see any of this, but it is too late. My father fumbles with the chain and comes through the gate, stumbling in the hoof-pocked manure packed around the troughs. Sister Bonnie’s little goats scatter, bleating in terror, and I’m with them in spirit even as my horse carries my body closer and closer to my unraveling father.

He holds out his hand, presses it against Shetan’s nose because I have suddenly forgotten how to make a horse whoa. Shetan stops and snorts into the unfamiliar palm, but Daddy comes around to his left side, and before I can even begin to dismount, his hands slide into the crooks of my armpits and lift me out of the saddle. My right leg catches on the saddle horn, and Shetan snorts and side-steps, throwing us off balance, and I topple into my father’s arms, driving him onto his knees.

He holds me around the waist, presses the side of his head against my chest as the sobs rack his body. His hair is full of leaves, and a little black seed tick crawls across an old rope burn scar on his arm. I look to Mama for help, but her face is hidden in her hands. My ankle twists on the uneven ground, and I drop to my knees.

Daddy takes my face in his hands, stroking my cheeks and my hair like it’s been years since he’s seen me, and he’s saying something over and over, but I can’t make it out because he’s choking on his tears. His leg gives out and he crumples onto his butt, but he drags me with him, pulling me into his lap like a little boy, rocking me, rocking the tears right out of my eyes. It’s only when my face is buried in his neck that I hear him saying, “You complete me, you complete me, you complete me.”

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 15, 2012

It’s a memorial service, not a funeral.

You need a body for a funeral.

Early Thursday morning, on the wild side of the Mitchells’ mountain, strewn among the boulders and rotten logs, my limping father stumbled across a gruesome scene—a boot bitten in half, a dog tag with its chain snapped, a shred of his youth group shirt, no longer soft and nude but stiff and brown, and a white cowboy hat, two holes on either side, its interior caked with blood—but not a body. The Mitchells wanted to keep searching, but the sheriff said it was doubtful they’d ever find enough to bury, and so the coroner was called to examine the evidence, and Brant Mitchell was pronounced dead on his seventeenth birthday.

I sit on the back row with my sister and my parents and Hannah, who is making it hard for me to maintain a discreet presence because—not to make light of the situation—she literally can’t even. Her body quivers under my arm, not so much crying as hyperventilating. I rub her shoulder and murmur, “Breathe,” into her ear, over and over, knowing it’s useless and annoying, but clueless how else to comfort her, short of whispering, “He might not be dead; he might be the mountain lion.”

The communion table beneath the pulpit is draped in white and holds Brant’s Bible and his fiddle along with an enormous portrait framed in barn wood. The Brant trapped behind the glass is at home in his Sunday morning suit, is excited for Bible college, can’t wait to give his parents twenty grandchildren. That Brant never bites his hangnails, never swears, and never smokes weed. That Brant has never kissed me, never unbuckled my jeans, never broke up with me. That Brant is even more of a mystery than the Brant I saw last. The one I can’t possibly have seen.

Brother Mackey’s message is titled “We Know Not Where They Have Laid Him,” and I have to admit it is one of Mackey’s finest hours, maybe because it only lasts fifteen minutes. He talks about the disciples’ grief when Jesus’ body went missing, the anger they felt believing it had been stolen by the enemy. He talks about their joy when He returned to them, a joy we have all been given the chance to feel when we get to Heaven and Brant Mitchell is waiting there. I wait for the twist, the turn of the knife in my back, the insinuation that some of us will not make it, but for once, it doesn’t come.

Brother Mackey finishes by reading from the Book of Revelations, his voice soaring over the distraught congregation. “And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away. And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new.”

Beside me, Hannah wails, and I remember the last time I sat beside her and heard those words, when the priest performed last rites for the doomed and dying passengers, and how those words came true at the end of movie when Old Rose dies and the music swells and the doors open and everyone is waiting there, Jack Dawson is waiting there, and he holds out his hand and she takes it not because she needs it but just because she can, and for a moment, it all makes sense, these people, this place, this hope in their hearts, this dream or a reunion beyond all time and stars. 

“And now,” Brother Mackey’s voice finally breaks. “I’ve asked Brant’s girlfriend to sing a special song while we watch a slideshow commemorating Brant’s beautiful life.”

Hannah puts her hand on my knee, but I look past it, all the way down to my Sunday shoes. The lights go off, and I hear the creak of the piano bench as Lauren takes her seat. 

“A few weeks ago, Brant talked about this—this idea that there’s only one story—Who am I? And Brant—he was lucky enough to know the answer. And so—I wanted to pick a song that would really express that, really express what kind of person Brant Mitchell was, what mattered—” She takes a deep, shaky breath, “—what mattered most to him.”

The slideshow begins to flicker as she plays the first few notes, but I can’t look, can’t bear to see myself erased from his life like I’m sure they’ve done. Lauren begins to sing, and the lyrics are familiar somewhere in the back of my head, but I can’t place them, and then from the other side of Laramie, my mother squeaks, and when she reaches across my sister’s lap and grabs my trembling hand, I realize—Lauren is singing the theme song from Casper.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2012

Someone bangs on the front door, shaking that whole side of the trailer. I roll out of bed, slip on last night’s jeans, thinking Mama or Daddy forgot their keys, but a flash of silver out my window catches my eye. I lean down and crane my neck so I can see the side of the front yard, and there it is, peeking around the corner of the house. The right rear corner of Brant Mitchell’s pick-up. 

I make a sound. I don’t even know what it is. An animal sound.

Then I’m crashing through the house, an earthquake to match what’s happening inside me, and I don’t care if anyone’s home and I don’t care if anyone sees what happens when I open that door because Brant Mitchell has come back for me. I trip over the baggy cuffs of my yard-sale jeans, sprawl head over heels into the living room, skin my ankle against the corner of the TV stand, but then I’m back on my feet, fumbling with the knob.

The knocking has stopped. I yank the door open, ready to jump off the steps into his arms and—

Sister Cindy gazes up at me from the bottom of the metal steps, a paper bag clutched to her breasts. My legs buckle and I’m down like a shot buck. On my knees in the doorway, knowing this is it, this is when I finally bleed out. 

Sister Cindy’s hands fly to her mouth. She looks back at Brant’s truck and then back at me. “I’m so sorry. You must have—oh my goodness, I should have—I’ve just been driving it—feel close to him—”

When I look at the truck, I hear a dozen songs all at once. I smell bacon and chocolate chip cookies and weed. I feel his hands on my face and his head on my chest and all those things I wanted to feel but never had the chance. He is not here. He will never be here. Brant Mitchell is dead.

Sister Cindy thrusts the paper bag at me. “This is yours.”

I stare at it, shake my head. “What?”

She pulls it back to her breasts. “I found it in his—going through his things—donating—you must have left it.”

I don’t remember leaving anything at Brant’s house, but curiosity floods my veins, lifts my arms. She hands it to me. Light, but heavier than expected. Beneath the crackling of the paper, I hear a faint jingling.

“Thanks,” I say.

She stands there, smoothing the wrinkles in her denim dress over and over again. I’m suddenly aware of the hot breeze on my bare chest, but when I look down, there is no blush fading out my freckles.

“Do you want to come in?”

“I just wanted to return this. I’m sorry I made you think—” 

She shakes her head and waves a hand in front of her face like tears are mosquitoes that can be swatted away. She turns back to the truck. I should let her leave. I should go throw on a shirt and take this bag into the woods or maybe to Sister Bonnie’s barn in case I need to fall apart on Shetan. But there’s something I need to know. I drop the bag.

“Sister Cindy.”

She doesn’t turn, but she stops.

“Where were you going to send him?”

Her body looks still, but her fountain of hair trembles just enough to let me know she’s crying. I cross the yard until I’m standing right behind her. I stare at the hazy reflection of my face beside hers on the hood of Brant’s truck. She takes a deep, shuddering breath and turns, looks me in the eye. 

“All I do is pray that he had time to repent. But that’s pointless, isn’t it? Either he did or he didn’t. My prayers can’t change the past. If they could, I’d use them to bring him back.”

She takes me by my bare shoulders. Squeezes so hard.

“So I’m not going to pray for Brant anymore. I’m going to pray for you.”

Her nails dig into my arms, desperate, but not mean.

“I’m going to pray that you repent before it’s too late.”

We stand there like that for so long it feels like we’ve already reached eternity, like we are both in Hell. Finally, I wrap my fingers gently around her wrists and pry her hands off me.

“I am sorry that Brant isn’t here now. But I can’t be sorry for what he meant to me.”

She takes a step back, and her brown eyes look more lost and bleary than her son’s ever did. “You had a choice,” she whispers. “You still have a choice.”