Kind of Kin (17 page)

Monday | February 25, 2008 | 7:00
A.M.

Brown's farm | Cedar

W
ould they never get gone? Sweet thought. It seemed to take forever for all the ranchers to mount up and head out in the rosy predawn light, three deputies riding with them. The cameramen were still coiling up their lengths of electric cords, repacking their equipment, when Holloway strolled over to where she sat in her car with the motor running and the heater on. She cracked the window as he bent down to peer in. “Why'd you tell that sassy reporter we oughta check the back roads? You know we've done searched this whole valley.” Sweet didn't answer. “You might as well go on home,” Holloway said, his voice decidedly unfriendly. “We'll call if we find anything.”

“I'll wait here.”

“Suit yourself.” Holloway squinted at her a moment as if he expected her to say something, but Sweet turned her face to the windshield, stared at it until she heard the sheriff's cruiser start and drive off. Still for another few minutes she waited. She didn't trust but what Holloway would turn around and come back, just purposely trying to catch her at something.

The longer she sat waiting, the more convinced she became that Dustin really was hiding in the mine. It made some kind of crazy sense. He didn't want to be found. He thought he could stay hidden until people quit looking for him, and then he'd walk back here to the farm and stay by himself—and the old coal mine was a perfect hideout. She'd bet anything he liked to play there, the same way Sweet and Gaylene used to play there when they were kids. If their daddy found out they'd been in the mine, he would have a fit—the place was too dangerous for kids to play in, he said—but Sweet had usually managed to make sure he didn't find out. She had loved that place, she and Gaylene both. The clean, dry, shaley space at the mine's mouth, their perfect little room with its clear stream running through the center, and the air wafting out of the dark cave behind, always the just-right temperature, warm in winter, cool in summer. Sweet swallowed deep, put the Taurus in gear, headed across the barnyard toward the south pasture, her eyes skimming the rearview and side mirrors, checking all around.

Near the edge of the trash dump she stopped the car and got out. She couldn't see Juanito's truck anywhere. The tire marks were distinct along the rim of the gully right up to the wide sandstone place where the grasses gave way to rock and hardpan, and there they disappeared. She eased carefully along the edge of the gully. All the old junk was still here: rusting carcasses tipped along the ledge and down into the ravine, the dead water heaters and empty water cooler casings, worn-out pieces of farm equipment, the ancient white wringer washer she could remember from when she was a kid, and all the old bald tires and empty oil cans and plastic bleach jugs, and in the bottom of the gully piles and piles of blackened residue from the burn barrel dumped for decades from the back of Daddy's truck. But the huge white Dodge Ram was nowhere in sight. “Misty Dawn!” she called softly. “Juanito?” She listened, heard nothing. “Hey, you kids!” she said a little louder. “It's all right now. They're gone!”

At last she heard the crunch and break of sticks, the rustle of dried oak leaves, and soon Juanito emerged from the tangled underbrush on the other side of the ditch, way down to the left. He was carrying the baby, her lavender-clad legs dangling almost to his knees. Misty Dawn was behind him. Good Lord, how did they get all the way back in there? Sweet called across to them: “What did y'all do with the truck?” Misty Dawn motioned toward the creek. They came on, and Sweet made her way toward them until they were directly across the ravine from each other. “What was that all about?” Misty panted. “Who was it?” The girl's fear wasn't masked by fake boredom now—she was breathing hard, her face red and puffy, her eyes huge.

“Folks looking for your brother. They're gone now. Hey, it's good you hid the truck, though.” Sweet scrambled down into the gully. The bottom was pure muck—tannish wet clay mixed with God knew what kind of gunk. She reached up a hand and Juanito helped her climb up. “How did y'all get over here?” she said, scraping muck off her boots with a stick. Misty Dawn pointed farther east along the ditch to where it grew narrower and shallower as it ran under the old barbed-wire fence. A little farther along past that, the fence was down, and Sweet could see broken underbrush where the truck had busted through. The tailgate was just visible through the scrub. “Hooray for four-wheel drive,” Sweet murmured. “Listen, hon, y'all are going to have to stay here while I run to Wilburton and cash a check. I couldn't find my credit card.” She held up her hand at Misty's protest. “Not long! Forty minutes, tops. But let's drive over and take a look in the coal mine first.”

“What for?”

“Your brother.”

“Dustin's in the coal mine?”

“I don't know. I just . . . got a feeling. Come on.” She squeezed past them, began to wind her way down the old abandoned mining track toward the creek. The kids stayed close behind as she picked her way through the scraggly young cedars and scrub oak growing up in the road, but Sweet could hear, before she saw, that they were going to have to go back and get Juanito's truck. The rock low-water bridge was ordinarily dry, the creek a sluggish brown moccasin flowing underneath, but a good rain like they'd had on Friday could turn the creek into a torrent. If Dusty did go to the mine, Sweet thought, he couldn't have gotten back to this side if he'd tried—and pray God he hadn't tried. The water wasn't exactly a torrent now, but it was well up over the bridge, muddy as creamed coffee, and rushing fast. It could sweep a person away easily, especially somebody as light as Dustin—or Misty's skinny husband, for that matter. Sweet motioned them to turn around and go back. The baby stared at Sweet over her daddy's shoulder as they retraced their steps. Juanito unstrapped the car seat and set it in the truck bed while Sweet tried to tell him that he should let her drive, she knew the old track, exactly where the bridge was, but he acted like he didn't understand. He climbed into the driver's seat and started the truck. Misty sat in the middle holding the baby, her thighs jammed up high because of the hump under her feet. “No, mami,” she said. The child was squirming, trying to wiggle off her lap. Misty Dawn rattled off some Spanish, but Lucha wouldn't quit wriggling.

“Come here to Aunt Sweet.” Sweet reached for her and took her on her own lap, and the little girl settled down with two fingers in her mouth. The truck bumped hard as they started down the steep, washed-out track. “The bridge is there,” Sweet said. “See where the water's swirling? See the rock ledge?” Misty Dawn repeated the words in Spanish. Juanito inched the truck slowly forward. Sweet tried to remember how much water it takes to swamp a vehicle. Two feet? This didn't look like two feet. Did it? The little girl snuggled against her, leaning toward the window so she could see the water; she didn't look scared, merely interested. And somber.
Do not drive into moving water
. Sweet knew that. Everybody knew that. The officials were always warning idiot people, who were always doing it anyway. Like us, she thought. We are driving into moving water. She kept a tight hold on the child, her right fist on the door handle. If they got swept away, she would try to save the baby. She would try.

“
Cuidado
, Juanito!” Misty Dawn's fingers were clamped tight on Sweet's knee.

“It's fine,” Sweet said lightly. “We'll be fine.” The driver's side suddenly dipped as the front tire dropped into a washed-out place, and Misty Dawn screamed. Sweet grabbed her hand, dug her own fingers under the vise grip, held on tight, her other arm clamped around the child's waist. Juanito eased the tire up out of the hole, steering a little to the right, and Sweet cried, “Watch out, watch out! You're driving off this side!” Juanito straightened the wheel, kept easing along, slow and steady, until they made it across, started up the far bank, which was steeper and even more washed out than the first. The truck swayed and bounced like a tractor.

At the top of the track, in under the cottonwoods, they stopped. “See?” Sweet exhaled long and deep. “I told you we'd be fine.” Her voice was shaking. She let go of her niece's hand. “God. That was scary,” Misty said. She reached to take her daughter onto her lap. “Plus, now we got to go
back
.”

“Tell him to drive yonder.” Sweet pointed to the knot of purplish shale showing like a bruise on the side of the ridge through the leafless trees. Misty rattled the Spanish, and Juanito put the truck in gear, headed across the bumpy ground, seesawing between shrubs and thicket, the truck bouncing worse than ever as they neared the slate-colored boney pile at the base of the ridge. A deep blue-black gash slashed from the mine mouth all the way to the foot of the ridge, carved right through the boney by the clear, constant stream. “This is probably as close as we're going to get,” Sweet said, and at once Juanito put the truck in park. She cut him a look. He understood English when he wanted to.

Misty said, “I thought they supposedly searched this whole place already, all Grandpa's land.”

“They might not have thought to look inside,” Sweet said. “I'll be right back.” She got out and began to climb along the side of the coal-colored gash until she reached the mine entrance, a black, low square, timbered across the roof and along both sides; it was so much smaller than she remembered. From the dark mouth the familiar soft breeze wafted. Sweet held still a moment, smelling the earth smell, the water smell, the pure stream. God's breath. She cupped her hands. “Dusty?” The sound came out choked, too soft. She cleared her throat. “Dustin Lee!”
Lee, lee, lee, lee . . .
The brief, hollow echo, then nothing. Only the sound of trickling water and, far back in the depths, a slow constant plink. Water dripping. She remembered the dripping.

Abruptly Sweet crouched over and squat-walked in. Beyond the timbers, the ceiling was higher, and she could stand, but she couldn't see anything past the first few feet. The smell was overpowering, though, sweet and earthen, so familiar it made her chest ache. “Dustin?” she said softly. “Honey, it's all right. We're not mad. We just want you to come home. Okay? Dusty?”

She listened again, heard only the continuous rippling song of the water. Their little river, that's what she and Gaylene used to call it, although it was never more than a few inches deep, clear as glass, flowing out of the darkness across the smooth shale floor. Outside in summers: the parched land, the fierce glare. Inside, the cool dark. They would bring flashlights and play house here in summer, or school, or Belle Starr and the outlaws. In winter, most often they used candles and sat in the warmth and told ghost stories, or Sweet told the stories, and Gaylene huddled against her, listening, thrilled. Sweet stared into the blackness. Why hadn't she thought to grab Juanito's flashlight? Even that weak beam would have been something. “You're not in trouble, honey,” she said toward the darkness. “I promise.”

Far back in the black depths she heard a child's voice:
Jaja, come heah!
Her breath stopped. The sound of water. “Dustin?” No, it wasn't Dustin, couldn't be Dustin. The only one who'd ever called her Jaja was Gaylene, when she was very little and couldn't say Georgia, couldn't pronounce the
r.
At once Sweet felt her little sister beside her, the wiry tense pliable presence, Gaylene waking in the night, frightened, reaching across the bed for her, the soft word whispered.
Jaja?
Because Daddy would be in the front room, yelling, stacking the furniture, stumbling from wall to wall, cursing, weeping, and Sweet would lay her arm outside the covers for Gaylene to hold.
You're dreaming, Sissy. Go back to sleep.
But Daddy was honking the truck's horn back at the house, calling them, they had to get home, fast! They had to—

Sweet blinked, shook her head, a fierce pinch-me-awake shake. “Dustin, if you're here, honey, answer me. It's Aunt Sweet.” Only the water echoed. The earthen empty blackness. The boy was not here. Nobody was here. She could feel her certainty draining away. Why had she believed so hard he would be here? But she knew why. Her aching throat told her. The old hurtful longing. The quiet. The scent of earth and water. Her baby sister. God's breath.

Far away and faint, the truck horn sounded again. She hadn't dreamed it—it
was
their daddy's signal, the one-note tattoo he used to call them home for supper. For an instant her heart lifted, until she realized it couldn't be Daddy. It was Terry, sitting in his truck in the yard at Daddy's house, calling her the same way she called him in from the deer woods: when she needed him during deer season, she would drive up as far as she could get in the mountains, park at a gas well pad site, and honk out Daddy's same staccato rhythm so that Terry would know it was her and not some other wife trying to reach her deer-hunting husband. Sweet's first impulse was to ignore him, wait until he gave up and went away. But then she remembered her Taurus sitting at the trash dump, its nose pointing directly to the torn fence where Juanito's pickup had rammed through. She couldn't let her husband find that.

She bent double again, scuttled back outside, stood blinking in the sunlight, cold and clear, a brilliant crisp February morning. Then she scrabbled and skidded back down the ridge. The kids were outside the truck now, Misty Dawn holding the baby. “Who's that honking?

“Uncle Terry.” Sweet walked past them, tossing the words back over her shoulder. “I gotta go back to the house for a minute. Y'all stay here.”

“Why can't we come with you?”

“He might not be alone.” Which was true, actually—Carl Albert would be with him, and no telling who else—but that wasn't why. “Y'all sit tight. I'll be back in two shakes.”