Evidence of Things Not Seen (21 page)

Dwight nodded and got out. His mom shoved a baseball cap on her head and pulled it down really far so the bruises on her face weren’t quite as visible. He watched her walk into the convenience store and listened to the gas gush into the tank. The numbers whirled by on the pump. When it clicked off, the amount was $54.82. More than some of their grocery bills.

As he walked into the store, he saw his mom handing the clerk a hundred-dollar bill. He stopped and stared. She glanced at him. “The restroom is back in the corner. See you in the car?”

Dwight opened the door to the bathroom. It was cold in there. Like a refrigerator. He had to concentrate on letting go and peeing. It took a while. He kept wanting to think about the hundred-dollar bill. He wondered where she got it.

When he got back in the car, his mom handed him the Dr Pepper and a large opened bag of chips. She clinked her Coke bottle with his. Dwight did not clink back.

“Merry Christmas, Dwight.”

Dwight held the cold glass bottle in his hand. He could hear the carbonation bubbles fizz and pop. The cherry and cola smells made his mouth water. “Mom, where’d you get the money?”

She turned the car on and pulled out of the gas station. “Don’t worry. I didn’t steal it.”

Dwight took a sip. The soda tickled his tongue. He was thinking about all the arguments. All the bruises. All the stitches.

“But, Mom, I thought we didn’t have any money. I thought…”

“I know. Money was always the argument. So how do I have money?”

“Yeah.”

“I put a dollar aside the first time he hit me. That was before you were born. I told myself if he didn’t hit me for a whole year, I’d put it back in with the grocery money. I set aside ten dollars that first year.”

Dwight listened to the tires carry them down the highway. He wondered if they would be running away if she’d spent the money on meat last night.

“But, Mom…” Dwight tried to figure out what to ask. “How much…?”

“I withdrew a couple thousand dollars from the bank today.”

“Holy shit.” He did the math in head. They got married a year before he was born. He was fourteen, almost fifteen. If they had a fight every month, it still didn’t add up. “But that’s barely two hundred dollars.”

“I counted every bruise, every stitch, every broken plate and glass. When he beat you, I charged him double.”

“How’d you hide it?”

“Under your mattress for a while. Then I put it in a bank under your name. I’d always go make a deposit on Saturday morning.

Dwight knew that’s when his father was usually asleep on the couch. “Why didn’t you leave?”

“Sometimes he was nice. Sometimes he was sorry. When you were real little, he laid off me. When it started back up, I made a plan.”

“But, Mom, if you’d done what he wanted, if you’d bought the meat, maybe it wouldn’t have happened.” Dwight thought about their house. He never invited friends over because he never had any toys or games or balls. Every Christmas, he’d asked for a bike until he gave up last year. Every scrap of furniture, every book, every little everything was second- or third-hand. He’d thought his mom was scrimping and saving and trying to make his father’s paychecks last. He’d thought she was doing the best she could. Dwight touched his ribs. She might as well have kicked him, too.

He heard the blinker clicking and realized his mom was pulling off the highway. It was pitch-black except for their headlights. They must be in the middle of nowhere. She pulled the car onto the gravel shoulder and stopped, turning off the car and snapping off the lights. Dwight could hardly see her profile.

“Dwight, do you really think it’s about money?”

“Yeah. I mean, that’s what he always got so mad about.”

Dwight heard her take a deep breath. “If you think we should go back, I will. But let me ask you this. When he hit you last night, did he do it because you did something wrong? Or did he do it because he liked hitting you?”

Already the car was chilling down. It was cold outside. Dwight shivered. He thought back to his father’s face last night. When he grabbed Dwight’s fist and twisted his arm, he looked pissed. When he was questioning his mother about the spatula, he looked mean and upset. When he held the plate of beans in front of her face, he looked—Wait. He was smiling. He knew what was going to happen. He made it happen. He wanted it.

“Let’s keep going, Mom.”

Now she’s asleep and he’s standing in an empty parking lot waiting for the sun to rise on Christmas morning. He’d left her gift under his bed. He should have grabbed it instead of the ornaments. It was stupid to take them. So what if they were the last breakable things in the house? Each year when he put them on the tree, Dwight watched over them, protected them, kept them from getting broken. He liked how they made their living room look less secondhand for the time they were up. When he took them off the tree unbroken, he felt proud. Like he’d saved the world from ending.

Dwight opens the car door so slowly it doesn’t make a sound. He reaches inside and grabs the box of ornaments. Carefully, he climbs up on the hood. One by one, he hangs the silver globes on the cedar branches above his head. It feels good to stretch his arm and ribs a little. Just as he is about to hang the last one, he see a pair of clear plastic goggles wrapped around one of the branches. They look like the kind he uses in science classes. It’s strange to think about school on Christmas morning. Then Dwight realizes he won’t be going back to his old school. Ever. He doesn’t know where he’s going next. Maybe wherever it is, he’ll have friends he can invite over to his house. Maybe it will be a place friends want to hang out.

He pulls the goggles off the branch, puts them on and tries to see himself in the side-view mirror but it’s still too dark. He probably looks like a science nerd. That’s cool. He likes science. Maybe he’ll use them at his next school. Maybe he’ll wear them a lot to look weird. Sometimes it’s cool to look weird.

Dwight squeezes back into the passenger seat. His mother barely moves. He looks up at the ornaments. At first, all he can see are round shapes in the trees. As the sky lightens, the ornaments turn gray, then silver. When the sun rises, they change from purple to rose to orange. They’re turning gold when he hears his mother yawn and sit up. Dwight slides the goggles up on his forehead and smiles.

“Merry Christmas, Mom.”

JANUARY 4 . EIGHT MONTHS MISSING

HALLIE

For crying out loud, Eugene Caldwell, I have known you since you were a spit of a thing. Don’t give me any that “Ms. Stillwell, I need to ask you a few questions” baloney. Knock on my door, say, “Hello, Hallie,” like you would any other day of the week. If you get all official on me, I’ll official you right off my property.

That’s better. Have a seat.

Yes, it is pleasant up here on the porch. Yes, the weather is mighty fine for January. Eugene, I’m eighty-four years old. Please don’t waste my time with pleasantries.

So what is it this time? Do you need to organize another search across the property? How many have we had? That first week, you pretty near combed every inch of the ranch. After that, it seems like we had a search every other week until well after school let out. I’ve lost count of how many times you’ve run dogs across the property looking for Tommy. My goats have done more running than grazing this year.

I know people are upset about the pull-out. What am I supposed to do about that? It’s a patch of dirt, for crying out loud. It was there when my granddaddy started ranching here. Hell, maybe that little ledge of land was beachfront a million years ago and dinosaurs stopped there like people do now.

We’ve had more than a few dramas at the pull-out over the years. Back when my daddy was alive, I remember the Texas Rangers combing the area looking for a girl and a boy. They’d run away to get married. I was a teenager. I remember thinking it was highly romantic. Only it ended in tragedy. The girl’s father found them in that outbuilding five hundred yards from the pull-out and shot them both. Should have shot himself too while he was at it. He went crazy. Hid in the back of what became Clark’s Salvage Yard until Sheriff Hamilton hauled him in. Yeah, that was well before your time.

You know what my daddy did after that murder? The ranch hands circled the property on horseback at night. Eighteen hundred acres. After two horses pulled up lame, he stopped that public service. I guess they came across a few illegals, but that was pretty normal. After a while, it didn’t make much sense to him. Anybody who stopped at that pull-out had a damn good reason: rest, lost, or broke down. Daddy had a ranch to run. He couldn’t be policing a dirt patch by the side of the road.

You can do what you want with that pull-out. Pave it over. Fence it off. I don’t care. But that’s not why you came out here to see me, is it, Sheriff Caldwell?

What do I think about particle physics? You’re kidding me, right? Yes, I’ve heard the talk. Tommy was very fascinated with all scientific phenomenon. I used to watch him out there, wandering around looking at flies on manure. He was a strange kid. So what? All kids are strange. You used to have quite a fascination with making fireworks as I recall, Eugene.

Do I think he’s gone into another dimension? Hell no. Now look here, Eugene. What’s going on is totally normal. A kid goes missing. The whole town is up in arms. Every day that goes by is worse. Of course they want to believe some extraterrestrial, time travel theory. They haven’t even found one shoe that belongs to Tommy.

Eugene, I’ve lived on this ranch my entire life. I am not a stranger to death. Between Mexicans crossing over, dying of thirst, and animals getting tore up by coyotes, I have seen my share of dead bodies. Now I know we haven’t found a body, so there’s still hope, but I wouldn’t blame you if you stopped actively looking for Tommy Smythe.

Isn’t that what you are here to tell me?

I understand. It’s been almost a year and there’s no sign of the boy. You can’t spend any more man-hours on it. Yes, I know the Smythes are going to be upset and I know that Simmons woman is saying if the pull-out hadn’t been there, that girl wouldn’t have murdered her husband. She might persuade the Smythes that the pull-out was the reason Tommy went missing. I know what people are saying. You’d be amazed at how news travels out here. Are you here to warn me that there might be some sort of backlash when you tell them you aren’t making Tommy your top priority every waking minute?

I know you want to find him. We all do. I thought pursuing that adoption angle was your best hope. Kids are curious about that sort of thing.

If he was picked up by a stranger, well, there’s no way to know what happened with that. You’ve still got his picture out there, right?

No, I don’t think he ran away. Kids leave clues.

Hell, Eugene, Mexicans are better prepared to cross the border than Tommy and they still die. There are some sad cases out here. I hate it when I find a pair of shoes in one of the goat paths. I know someone put them there, right at the end, so I’d find a body. And I always do.

You know I’ve also heard that Simmons girl is wanting to put together a memorial for Tommy. I don’t think that’s a bad idea. You might want to put your efforts toward that. It’ll help people move on. And body or not, we need to move on.

I appreciate the heads-up. I really do. I doubt they’ll bother me. Most people don’t take the time to come all the way up here, and when they do, they usually find I’m pretty hospitable. Sometimes I invite them to live here.

That ruffled a few feathers, didn’t it? Yes, she’s still living with me. We get on pretty good. She’s a good girl. She’s learning English. She’s helping me with everything from groceries to writing checks to paying the workers. I’m thinking about ruffling every feather in the county and leaving the entire Stillwell Ranch to her. You heard right. Who else should I give it to? You know my only child’s dead.

Who cares if she can’t hang on to it? It’s just dirt. If it belongs to anyone, it belongs to the animals. They use it more than I do. Look out there. This land has been in my family for three generations. We’ve paid taxes on it. We’ve worked it. It’s given us a good life. Before us, it belonged to the Mexicans, the Spanish, the French. At one time, we would have been the illegals. It’s land. People put borders on it and make laws around it. But I don’t really own it. I just walk on it. All I am is one person standing between earth and sky. If you start looking at the land that way, all the laws and boundaries around ownership seem silly.

That’s probably why I let Tommy wander around here. Why I didn’t throw him off. He seemed to appreciate the notion of standing on some dirt between heaven and earth.

I keep thinking he’s going to find his way back if he isn’t dead. People are mostly law abiding. You have some bad ones, but really, I think people tend to choose kindness over cruelty. That golden rule? Treat people like you like to be treated. It’s in our DNA.

Yes, Eugene, things get a little odd from time to time. That girl with the pickax, for one. But I bet at one time she was a sweet little girl who played with dolls. Something happened to her that twisted her up inside. She wasn’t always like that, I guaran-damn-tee you.