Going to Bend (38 page)

“Well, you be brave, honey.”

Petie gave Marge a quick hug. “I’ll pick you up at two,” she said.

“All right, honey, I’ll be ready.”

The household was stirring when Petie got back. Loose was padding around in Eddie’s socks, four times too big. Ryan was completely dressed, including his shoes, and was at the kitchen table eating Cap’n Crunch with chocolate milk, a combination that made Petie feel nauseous just to look at, but then she had no appetite these days. She kissed Ryan on the top of the head.

“Loose, you sure you don’t want to come with Ryan and me?” Petie said. “It might be kind of like a treasure hunt.”

“What kind of treasure?”

“Well, maybe junk treasure. My grandfather lived up there all his life. I don’t know what he might have left behind. No one lives there anymore.”

“I want to help Daddy with the dirt bike.”

“Okay, as long as you know you have a choice.”

Petie pulled mud boots from the closet for her and for Ryan. They’d change into them in the car.

“I’m ready,” said Ryan, taking his bowl to the sink and washing it
out—something he’d never done before. In the car she asked him why he did it.

He thought for a while. “I don’t know.”

“I don’t know why I do half the things I do, either, but it was thoughtful of you. If you hadn’t done it, Daddy or I would’ve had to.”

“Daddy doesn’t know how to wash dishes.”

“Of course he does.” She shot him a look. “What made you say that?”

“You always do them.”

“Well, that’s mostly true, but you know what? It doesn’t take a college education to run a sponge over a dish.”

“No,” Ryan said doubtfully.

“Are you worried about Daddy?”

Ryan nodded.

“I am too, a little bit, but you know what? Daddy’s a grown-up, and grown-ups know how to figure out the most amazing things. If he can figure out how to put a dirt bike back together, sweetie, he can certainly figure out what detergent to use in the washing machine.”

Ryan brightened. “Do you think so?”

“I know so,” Petie said. “Tell me this, kiddo. Do you think you’ll miss Loose?”

“Nope.”

“You sure?”

“He beats me up a lot.”

“Not so much since he’s been taking his medicine,” Petie said. Loose had been on Ritalin for two weeks, since they were told he had attention deficit hyperactive disorder along with dyslexia. Petie hadn’t wanted to drug him, but even she had to admit it was a big improvement.

The decision to split the boys between them had been Eddie’s idea, though she’d never tell Ryan that. Loose was Eddie’s sidekick and pal, his shadow, his accomplice. Petie agreed that he would probably do better living with Eddie, at least for now. Ryan, on the other hand, would suffer by staying. He was her son, as Eddie often pointed out in disgust, and she knew that Eddie, with his sarcasm and hurtful jokes, would just make a hard situation harder.

“It’s been a long time since I was here,” Petie said with undisguised trepidation as they turned onto the logging road that led to Camp Twelve. “It looks gloomier.”

“It is kind of spooky,” Ryan said.

“Mostly it looks drippy,” Petie reassured him. “Did I ever tell you about when I came here?”

Ryan shook his head. Petie decided to tell him the truth. “My mother died when I was your age. My grandfather lived up here, and Old Man figured he ought to know she’d died. So we came here to tell him.”

“Was he here?”

“Yes. I think he was the last person who ever lived here.”

“Oh.”

“You know the scar on my foot?”

Ryan nodded. He’d always been afraid of the rubbery look of the thing.

“Well, this is where I got that scar. My father and my grandfather talked and talked and I got so cold I lit a little fire to stay warm by, except that it spread. I stamped on it to make it go out, but I got burnt. That’s why I always tell you and Loose not to play with matches.”

“Did it hurt?”

“Holy cow,” Petie said. “I couldn’t walk on it for three weeks. And you know the odd thing? I never saw my grandfather again. I don’t know why.”

Ryan looked out the window for a bit. “Will I ever see Daddy again?”

Petie gripped the wheel a little tighter. “Oh, sweetie, of course you’ll see Daddy. You’ll see him all the time. Sometimes you’ll still sleep in your old bed, too, when you stay overnight with him.”

Ryan nodded, apparently reassured. Petie had already learned it wouldn’t last, that she’d be saying the same thing all over again tomorrow.

They bumped over the increasingly rutted and overgrown road for several miles, until Petie had begun to think they were in the wrong place. Then she saw a clearing ahead, and a minute later spotted the first of the little cabins she always saw so vividly in her dreams.

“There,” she said, pointing. “There it is.” She steered them into the clearing, though it was smaller than she remembered, and shut off the engine. While they put on their mud boots, Petie made sure her voice was hearty, the voice of an adventurer instead of a coward preparing to face down her past. Ryan went ahead, peering into one tumbledown shack after another. Several that had been standing when Petie was here before had fallen in, undermined by blackberries and rot.

“Look!” Ryan came running up with a battered tin cup. “There’s one house with a door!” He pointed at what Petie recognized as her grandfather’s house. With considerable dread she pushed open the door. It shrieked but yielded.

“It’s creepy,” Ryan moaned, standing behind Petie. She had to agree. The interior was still relatively intact, with the crude table and chair she remembered, and the bedstead against the far wall. Pill bugs littered the floor, and part of the roof had fallen in. On the table there was a jar with a brown residue in the bottom. Tobacco spit. There was nothing else, at least not that she could see from the door. She stepped inside, and as her eyes adjusted she saw a mouse nest, a piece of the old curtain, an empty snuff tin, a stub of pencil.

As she stepped the floorboard gave beneath her. Petie cried out, jumping aside as though something living had grabbed her, but it was only rot. Her foot hadn’t gone all the way through the board, but had displaced it enough for her to see the tatters of a plastic bag. She reached down and carefully pulled up the floorboard, which came to pieces in her hand like rotten honeycomb. Grouching, she peered into the space beneath, and then quickly ripped up the adjacent floorboard and reached inside.

“Oh my God.” She pulled up a plastic bag filled with ashes.

Ryan tugged on her sleeve. Petie said, breathing hard, “Get in the car. It’s warmer there. Go.”

He scuttled off to the car and shut himself inside.

The bag was completely intact, though there was no sign of the cardboard box that had once held it. She stared at it dumbly, these last abandoned remains of an unmourned life barely lived. Gently she carried the
bag outside, putting it in the trunk of her car with shaking hands. Then she climbed into the car beside Ryan and fumbled for the keys.

“You’re crying,” Ryan said, frowning. “Why are you crying, Mommy?”

“Oh, sweetie.” Petie drew a deep, shaky breath. “It’s just the cold. It makes my eyes water.”

“It’s okay.” He patted her arm awkwardly and watched her. “Are you sad?”

“Yes,” Petie said, wiping the snot from her nose with a limp Kleenex. “I’m sad, but in a good way. I came up here to say goodbye to someone I used to know. I didn’t think I’d find her here, but now I have.”

“Who?”

“Someone you never met,” Petie said, turning the key in the ignition. “Someone I knew a long time ago.”

“I didn’t see anyone,” Ryan said, frowning. “Was she a ghost?”

Petie smiled, drying her face on her sleeve. “No, not a ghost. Maybe more like an angel, sweetie. Well, maybe an assistant angel, because she was very shy, I think, and very afraid, like you get sometimes. She wouldn’t have wanted to be an angel herself, having to make decisions like they do.”

“What decisions?”

Petie pulled away from the camp, picking her way around the worst ruts. “Oh, there are lots of them, like whether to turn on a rainbow or not, or whether to make the sun come out and shine because someone’s done something kind. Like whether to bring a sweet dream to a little boy in the night because he had a hard day.”

“Yes,” Ryan said solemnly, nodding his approval.

Petie drove in silence until they were clear of the woods and back on a paved road. She had four dollars and fifty-nine cents in her pocket. She said, “I’ll tell you what we need. I think we need a Dairy Queen. Don’t you think so?”

He did.

·   ·   ·

T
HEY GOT
into Hubbard just in time for Petie to drop Ryan off with Eddie, turn around and pick up Marge, who was waiting for her at the Sea View office door. Petie swept the mud from Ryan’s boots out the car door and closed it again once Marge was settled.

“Here you go, honey,” Marge said, and put the master key to the Sea View Motel in her hand. “Now you know after spring break’s done you can close the place up again if you want.”

“I know,” Petie said. “I won’t, but I know.”

“Well,” Marge said, watching pensively but dry-eyed as Petie pulled out of the parking lot. “I never expected I’d want to leave this place, honey. But you know he’s not here at all. The things he made are here, but he’s not anywhere. Do you think it’s for the best? Maybe the good Lord spares us the things He knows we can’t bear to live with.”

“Maybe,” Petie said, and reached over to squeeze Marge’s hand. “Maybe that’s what’s happened to me all these years. Maybe I was spared.”

“Maybe so, honey. He must have decided you’re strong enough, now, and I believe He’s right.”

Petie had her doubts.

They didn’t say much the rest of the way into Sawyer. Marge located and relocated her bus ticket in her purse, and fussed with her various pillboxes and packets of Kleenex and hand lotion. Her mind was already hundreds of miles down the road, running south into Tempe. Her bus was already waiting when they got there. Petie pulled out Marge’s suitcase and loaded it into the baggage hold of the bus while Marge presented her ticket. The driver closed and latched the baggage doors the minute Petie backed away.

“Oh!” Marge said, tearing up. “I’m going to be praying for you, honey, I’ll pray for you every day. You’ve got a long road ahead of you, but it’s the right one, I know. You let me hear from you sometimes.” Petie wept and Marge wept and the bus driver cleared his throat. Marge grasped Petie in one last rib-crushing hug and fierce clap on the back, as though the strength of her conviction and love alone could see Petie
through. Petie waved until the bus reached the corner and turned, passing out of sight.

E
DDIE WAS
waiting for her when she got home. The boys had their suitcase by the door and were arguing bitterly over some toy.

“Jesus, Petie, you sure took your sweet time. It’s been like this since you left, they’re so keyed up.”

Petie walked past him and barked orders. “Loose, go use the bathroom one last time. We’ve got a long drive. Ryan, you use it after Loose is done.” To Eddie she said, “I’ve left the Bachelor Butte phone number on the refrigerator door. One room’s in Schiff’s name because it was originally his invitation, and one’s in Jim Christie’s. We should be home by Sunday night. Will you be home then?”

“Fuck, I don’t know,” Eddie said bitterly. “What do you care, anyway?”

“Habit,” Petie said. “Pretend I never asked.”

Loose came out, and then Ryan. Petie ushered them into the car, loading their suitcases and her own into the trunk. “Wave bye to Daddy,” she told the boys as they turned around in the driveway. Eddie stood there watching them, his hands jammed into his pockets, lifting his chin at them only at the last minute.

Rose and Carissa were ready when they pulled up. They switched all the luggage into the trunk of Rose’s huge Ford, which, thanks to Jim Christie, ran like a Cadillac, though it sucked gas. The boys and Carissa piled into the backseat, with Carissa in the middle so the boys wouldn’t start punching and hitting each other an hour into the trip. Rose tucked a picnic cooler under Petie’s feet, reeling off the contents. “Pretzels, Oreos, string cheese, Pop Tarts, apple slices and juice boxes, but no one can drink anything yet because if they do they’ll have to stop and pee.”

Rose pulled down Jim Christie’s invitation from the sun visor. “Do you have yours?”

Petie dug it out of her bag. “Got it.” She watched Hubbard recede behind
them. “Schiff’s the only one who’s been there. He told me where we should eat. I didn’t have the heart to tell him wherever it was, we probably couldn’t afford it.”

“Do you think he’ll be there?” Rose asked.

“No. I asked him to give me some time.”

“He knows you and Eddie split, though?”

Petie gave Rose a look. “Is there anyone who
doesn’t
know me and Eddie have split?”

Rose frowned. “That’s true. You know it seemed easier when Pogo and I went through it. Maybe it was just because we were younger and stupider. Plus Carissa was just a baby. It’s so much harder, watching you.”

Petie sat quietly looking out the window. “Ryan and I went up to Camp Twelve today.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. We just did. It was creepy and sad, like those husks that bugs leave behind when they die.”

“No one lives up there anymore?”

“No, not in a long time. I bet my grandfather died pretty soon after I went up there with Old Man.”

Rose shuddered. “I remember your poor foot.”

“No kidding.” The pain had been so bad that at first she’d thought she would die of it. Old Man had made her drink whiskey to deaden it, but the stuff made her vomit. She’d never been able to stand even the smell of whiskey after that.

The sky over the ocean was leaden and boiling, bursting into squalls all the way to the horizon. They were less than a mile from the turnoff that would take them inland to Bend. Petie watched the last of Sawyer disappear in her side mirror. How many times had she driven this way without taking the turnoff, without wondering what lay at the end of that road? Her people—Old Man, Paula, Eula, Eddie, Rose, Petie herself—didn’t travel, didn’t drive down new roads. They lived and died in a dead-end place where roads ended instead of began, where the skies wept harsh tears and the ocean hemmed them in as surely as any prison wall.