Citrus County (9 page)

On his way to the taco place, Toby made another stop at the big bookstore. He dropped his bag off at the front and maneuvered back to the TV. The national news had abandoned Kaley, and Toby found that the Tampa news had let her drop off, as well. He figured out how to change the channel and watched for almost an hour. The weather in St. Petersburg. Sports in Tampa. A drowning in Lutz. Someone had driven an El Camino into the side of a flower shop. A girl at the university had blackmailed her poetry professor. A cemetery was being sued. These people didn’t give a damn about Citrus County. They didn’t give a damn about Kaley. They would if they knew she was alive and who had her. They’d give a damn then. Toby sat there before a bank of magazines—motorcycles, health food. All these interests. Everybody had all these interests.

The shop that sold used hardware and appliances was right up near the Chinese buffet. It was about a mile from Uncle Neal’s, which was a long haul with Toby toting a wide two-wheel dolly behind him the whole way. And he was going to have to drag it the whole way back, but loaded, right along the roadside, right through the weeds.

Most of the store’s stock was out front, sprawled over the yard, but Toby needed a stand-alone air conditioner and the lightest generator he could find. That sort of stuff would be kept inside. He rested his dolly on a refurbished pulpit and entered the store. The old woman who ran the place nodded at him and he nodded back. He went to the back aisles and quickly the items he was seeking appeared before him on the shelves. He felt grateful. They were right next to each other, kind of a set. It felt like an endorsement, finding exactly what he needed so fast.

Toby carried the items one at a time to the front counter and waited for the old woman to ring him up. He saw now that the woman had a little girl with her. She was hidden behind the counter, at the old woman’s knee. The little girl kept thrusting her fists into her pockets then slowly pulling them back out.

“Not taking no chances,” the old woman said. “I’m keeping my grandbaby right here. Her mama goes to work, this little one’s right here with me, not at the daycare with some pot fiend watching her.”

Toby dug his bills out and started straightening and sorting them. The old lady’s eyes were on him. She had ratty hair, but her eyes were clear and her posture was straight.

“What do you think of this one?” she asked the little girl, jabbing a thumb toward Toby.

The girl shrugged.

“I don’t know either,” said the old woman.

Toby dragged his stuff home and stashed it and then turned right back around and headed back to the dirt road. He’d forgotten. He’d meant to go to the drug store. He had to walk all the way to Route 19. He needed hair clippers. Kaley’s hair was riddled with knots and snarls and Toby couldn’t begin to loosen any of them.

The next day, Toby found a note on his dresser:
See me in the shed
. Toby had never been allowed in Uncle Neal’s shed, but he knew from looking in the window that it contained a stove and a bunch of potted plants that were likely some backwoods hallucinogen. Uncle Neal kept the place off-limits with a padlock. He went out there each Sunday, even in the crush of summer, and did a bunch of snipping and boiling.

Toby pushed the shed door open and found Uncle Neal standing before a mess of purplish stalks and a steaming stew pot. He wore rubber gloves and wielded a pair of tongs. An open bag of uncooked tater tots sat on the counter, and a forty-four-ounce soda with a long straw. There was a bowl of lemons. A bag of sugar. Cutting board.

Uncle Neal raised a heap of stalks over the pot and let them fall. He bent down and slurped some soda. “Drop one of those tots in my mouth.”

Toby reached into the bag and fed his uncle.

“Are you getting high?” Toby said.

“This isn’t drugs, it’s hemlock.”

The stalks were giving off an acrid aroma. Toby pulled the door open all the way.

“I keep a gallon in that fridge for one week,” Uncle Neal said. “Then I throw it out and make more. It’s the secret to my success.” His forehead gathered in appraisal.

Toby began coughing.

“The steam can’t hurt you,” said Uncle Neal. “Might make you happy. I used to look forward to breathing it, but I guess I built a tolerance. I built a tolerance to most things that might make me happy.”

Toby cleared his throat and wiped his eyes.

“This stuff wouldn’t really kill you,” Uncle Neal said. “If you drank the whole gallon it might maim you.” Uncle Neal sipped more soda. “Quarter those lemons.”

Toby stepped up to the counter and positioned the cutting board. He was already getting used to the stench. Now he recognized it from Uncle Neal’s clothes, the clothes he always wore to do his Sunday chore in the shed—the faded blue T-shirt and worn jeans. The stuff
was
doing something to Toby. He felt light.

“Hemlock is potent when it’s young,” Uncle Neal explained. “The plants get over five feet tall, I get rid of them. They grow little white flowers sometimes.” Uncle Neal handed Toby a miniature spoon to dig out the lemon seeds, then he went about watering the plants, fondling their leaves.

“I don’t get this,” Toby said.

“Well, that’s because you’re a little slow on the uptake.” Uncle Neal smirked. “You’ll understand one day. Maybe one day soon.”

Toby waited.

“I got a .38 snub in the house. Every morning, I have to decide to let it rest or decide to take it out where the light can hit it.”

“So, the hemlock is—”

“The hemlock is to remind me of the choice I have to keep living or to stop. If I choose to keep living, I have nobody to blame but myself. Anything that happens to me, I signed up for it.” Uncle Neal set a mug in front of Toby. “Put the seeds in there. I’m going to plant them, in case I keep deciding to live.”

“Can’t the gun remind you? You always know it’s there.”

Uncle Neal looked disappointed. “How long does it take to pull a gun out?”

“Not long,” said Toby.

“What does it smell like?”

“What does a gun smell like?”

“Yeah.”

“Not like this.”

“That’s right,” said Uncle Neal. “Nothing smells like this.” He ground up a leaf in his hand and then sniffed his fingers. “Doesn’t matter what I’m doing out here. I could be playing solitaire. The point is to think about living and dying. If you don’t make yourself think about it, you won’t. It’s not in the nature of a human being to step back and consider big choices.”

Toby kept working at the lemons, wondering if Uncle Neal really had a gun, wondering what would happen to him if his uncle killed himself, where he would end up. Toby considered things. He considered things all the time.

“That’s some haircut,” Uncle Neal said. “You joining the service?”

“It’s for pole vault,” Toby answered.

“You’re still doing that?”

“Of course.”

“There’s a haircut for it?”

“There’s a haircut for everything.”

Uncle Neal helped Toby squeeze the last of the lemon quarters, then he pulled out a wastebasket and brushed the carcasses into it with his forearm.

“Do I get a key to the shed?” Toby asked.

“Why not?” Uncle Neal said. “I’ll have one made.”

Toby turned to leave but Uncle Neal called his name.

“One more thing. I’m going to start giving you an allowance—thirty-five dollars a week. In case you want to start… I don’t know, spending money. I can’t take it with me.”

Toby had never thought of getting an allowance. He’d always gotten by on his lunch money, but now, with Kaley, he had expenses. This felt like finding the bunker, like the rains that had fallen the night Toby took Kaley, like the air conditioner and generator. Something was on his side.

“Make it fifty,” Toby said, joking.

“Deal.”

“Just like that?”

“I never negotiated anything in my life,” Uncle Neal said. “I’m not about to start with a little shit like you.”

The churches, the Boy Scouts, the Little League teams—everyone had finally quit. Shelby’s father was losing weight and looked like a version of himself from fifteen years ago, a version Shelby had only seen in photographs. He was a boxer again, swinging and swinging because that’s what he knew how to do. He was growing a beard. The hair on his head was limp, but his beard was vital, aggressive in its takeover of his face. He stuffed flyers in the same mailboxes. He posted Aunt Dale’s $50,000 reward wherever he could. He joined an organization that raised money to publicize abductions and another that raised money to hire bounty hunters.

The police had tracked some guy to Alabama and, though he had nothing to do with Kaley’s disappearance, were able to arrest him for animal cruelty. They’d poked around a small trucking company based on the other coast of Florida. The last bit of aid the police department could offer came in the form of a therapist, a black man who hailed from New Mexico. Instead of business cards, he carried books of matches with his name on them: Cochran Wells.

“How long does this session have to take?” Shelby asked him. “Is there a certain amount of time?”

Cochran tipped his head at her. He looked like a stately, full-blooded dog. He had a controlled afro and wore a light-colored suit.

“Not long,” he said.

Shelby’s father looked like he was falling asleep. She touched his shoulder and he yawned.

“I’m taking diving lessons,” he said. “The police have no budget for divers, so I’m going to search all the springs myself. Is that something I should tell you?”

“You said something there.” Cochran had to push back from the table to cross his legs. “You said you’d search
all
the springs. That means you don’t expect to find anything.”

“I don’t,” Shelby’s father said.

Shelby had hardly slept the night before. She’d stayed up watching comedians. One of the comedians would get her laughing and the next thing she knew her face would be slick with tears. Last night it had been a nasally guy who told jokes about the state of Texas. Shelby had felt light and giddy for a moment and then she was muffling her sobs so she wouldn’t wake her father.
This
was her therapy, she supposed, not anything Cochran Wells could tell her. He was explaining something about emotional perseverance to Shelby’s father. She interrupted him.

“I have a question,” she said. “What’s the difference between therapy and psychotherapy?”

“Psychotherapy is the Jewish word for therapy.” Cochran allowed himself to laugh.

“Do you dislike Jews?” Shelby asked.

“I don’t like or dislike anyone. I apply my empathy one case at a time.” Cochran paused. “I evaluate circumstances, not individuals.”

“Lucky us,” Shelby said. “We got plenty of circumstances.”

“I finally had a dream,” Shelby’s father put in.

Cochran bellied up to the table and uncapped his pen.

Shelby’s father’s dream took place in the woods, at night. He couldn’t see anything but he could smell the woods, could smell tree bark and old breath. He was lost. Sometimes he smelled car exhaust or meat grilling. It was almost dawn. Suddenly, all the scents were blown away and bright artificial light flooded down. Shelby’s father had wandered into a small, shipshape warehouse. It was full of damp socks. They were Kaley’s socks, hung to dry on clotheslines.

Shelby’s father returned to the mosquito control offices on a Monday. Shelby fixed him a lunch and saw him off, then she watched a documentary about fighter pilots. The narrator was English and favored English pilots. Shelby enjoyed knowing that her father wouldn’t bust in at any moment, vine wrapped around his ankle. She had the house truly to herself. The sun was up, finding its way through the blinds. First period would begin in seven minutes. Shelby drank some orange juice and found her school bag. She sat on the couch. She pictured her father at work, doing familiar things with his hands, driving familiar roads, filling out paperwork. It would be good for him. People would walk on eggshells around him for a couple weeks, as they continued to do around Shelby at school, but in time his work-life would be monotonous and consuming and his sleep patterns would return to normal and his crazed gloom would break like a fever, would turn to a reasonable sadness. That’s what happened. Eventually your gloom listened to reason.

The next show was a history of the World Cup. They had grainy footage of Pele and they kept replaying one of his moves. First period was starting. Shelby let her school bag slide to the floor and stretched out on the couch. She wasn’t prepared to gaze at chalkboards and projector screens, to hurry from place to place so she wouldn’t be late. She especially wasn’t prepared to explain to earnest-eyed teachers why she wouldn’t be participating in their spring clubs. She’d been all set to go around with Interact, painting houses for poor people. She’d been set to join and possibly captain the debate team. The lady who ran the French group had made her silky overtures. These were possibly the three things Shelby felt least in the world like doing: painting, debating, pronouncing.

Shelby watched the soccer players. They had wonderful hair. She muted the commercials and she could hear the faint shouts of the kids who had PE first period. It was an enchanting, crushing sound. Maradona’s hand-of-God goal. Maradona was very short. Shelby knew she would skip the whole day. She would skip and tomorrow none of her teachers would say a word about it.

She went to the pantry and found nothing—healthy cereal, tuna. She knew she didn’t want to eat anything out of the fridge but she couldn’t stop herself from opening it. Shelby thought of her father again. She could not keep up this petty grudge—leaving the Cracker Barrel food in the fridge as it molded. She set the garbage can near and began dumping the foam boxes into it. She tied the bag up, put in a new one and continued, a sharp stink escaping each box as she transferred it. She fetched disinfectant and scrubbed the shelves of the fridge. She saw, sitting on the floor of the pantry, the bag of religious teen paraphernalia that girl had come to the door with, and she dropped that in the trash as well. She took the garbage bags outside, then lit a candle in the kitchen.