The Decoding of Lana Morris (24 page)

“Yep.”

“Take it, then,” he says.

There is all sorts of litter in the well, including a Dorito bag, several Burger King wrappers, and a pair of boy’s gym
shorts. There are also two balled-up sheets of paper, which Lana smooths flat. One is a flyer for someone willing to paint address numbers on your curb. The other one is just a single word, and the word is
Lana
. The handwriting is Chet’s.

Lana flushes.
Lana
, not
Love
.

It’s flattering, being somebody’s wish, but beyond that, Lana isn’t sure what she feels. She stands staring at her name, trying to figure it out. She’s looked at her name thousands of times, so many times in fact that looking at it usually doesn’t mean a thing, but this is different. Here is her name, written on this sheet of paper because a boy named Chet has seen in her something more than anyone else has seen. She doesn’t feel suddenly, reciprocally smitten with Chet, but she does feel a pleasant warmth, a slow, unfolding fondness for him that goes with the way she felt when she kissed him. It was a guilt-free kiss, for one thing, and that gave it a feel she liked. Liked a lot, in fact.

Lana looks up, suddenly aware of something missing. It’s the
snip snip snip
of the hedge clippers. It’s stopped. The gardener is looking at her, but now, when he sees her looking back at him, he goes back to his cutting. He’s still cutting when she comes back with the rake.

“Find what you were looking for?” he says.

The sheet of paper with her name written on it is in her back pocket. “I did,” she says. “And thanks for the rake. I threw away all the trash that was in there, too.”

“Good.” The gardener looks off toward the well. “The city wants to fill in the well. It is a liability issue, they say. They asked me to come to a meeting one evening to give my good opinion. They said they hoped I would point out that the well is a maintenance problem and also
a health problem because once somebody threw a bag of dead kittens in there. I told them I would give my good opinion if they wanted it. I went to the meeting and stood up when my name was announced. I said, ’Mr. Mayor and Common Council, my good opinion is that sometimes people make wishes in the well, and if you fill in the well, they won’t do that anymore.” The gardener gives a small nod. “That’s all I said.”

“And?” Lana says.

“And what?” the gardener says.

“What did they decide to do?”

The gardener shrugs. “I don’t know. I went home. I have television shows I don’t like to miss.” He takes another long look at the well. “But it’s been seven years since the meeting, so maybe the well will stay.”

“Seven years?”

The gardener nods. “Seven or eight.”

She decides that, without question, this is the gardener Chief Chetteroid described as dry. It’s quiet in the park, and the quiet stretches into a kind of calmness. Without thinking about it, Lana says, “What would you wish if you had one wish?”

The gardener’s eyes blink slowly closed and open. “I’m not a wishing man,” he says, and then his lips stretch into something close to a smile. “But if I was a wishing man and had only one wish to wish, I would go with
being less stupid
.”

Lana can hardly believe her ears. “You listen to K-SOD?” she says.

The gardener seems to nod. He seems to say, “Now and then.”

And then he is cutting again.
Snip snip snip
.

G
overnment plates.

This is what alarms Lana as she pedals toward the gray Plymouth parked in the shade of a cottonwood a few doors down from Snick House. The car has government plates. She slows as she passes the Plymouth by. The windows are down, and a man sits dozing in the front seat.

Seconds later, Mrs. Arnot’s Camry pulls into the driveway, and Tilly, Carlito, Garth, and Alfred spill out. Lana greets them and glances toward the gray Plymouth. The man is awake now, sitting forward, watching.

“In, in, in,” Lana says, herding Tilly and the boys toward the house. She doesn’t know why she’s scared, she just knows she is. Inside, the phone is ringing. As she heads toward it, Lana picks up the note that Veronica has left her, along with a wad of eleven one-dollar bills.

Well, there’s some high-grade fostering for you
, Lana thinks.
Veronica goes off with Gooch and doesn’t come home by the time the Snicks are back
. Lana pockets the eleven dollars, drops the note on the floor, and picks up the phone. Her hello is sharp.

“Lana?”

It’s Hallie, and Lana asks the first question that pops into her mind. “Is something wrong?”

“Lana, listen. They’re coming for all of you. You need to keep the others calm. You can’t let them be alarmed.”

But Lana already is alarmed. “Coming when?”

“Today,” Hallie says. “Any minute.”

“Where are they taking us?”

“To a group home.”

Group homes are bad, Lana knows, but at least they’d all be together. “And that’s where we’d stay?”

“No, Lana. They’ll just stage you there until they find places for everybody.”

“Different places?”

“Lana, sweetness, I told you they wouldn’t …”

Lana puts the phone down. Through the window, she sees the inflatable swimming pool with water still in it, she sees Garth’s little lilac room with its cardboard floor, and she sees Veronica’s car in the garage. She opens the spice cabinet and reaches to the far back for the cumin box. The keys are still there.

“Tilly!” she shouts. “Go next door and get Chet quick.”

“How come quick?” Tilly says.

“Tornado,” Lana says. “There’s a tornado coming.”

Tilly runs out the back door.

“Garth! Alfred! Carlito!” Lana yells. “Grab your tornado packs! We gotta go!”

They start to move, then stop. She’s scaring them. “It’s okay; the tornado’s not going to hurt us. We just have to get in the car and go now.”

She goes to the window seat, lifts the lid, and grabs their backpacks. “Here,” she shouts. “They’re right here! Take them out to the car!”

Garth and Alfred just stare, but big Carlito moves forward and takes three of the packs. As he goes outside, Garth and Alfred follow. Lana grabs two more packs and goes upstairs for the things she can’t afford to forget.

She finds the Ladies Drawing Kit, and she drags a box out from under the bed and pulls off the lid. She pulls the picture of her father from the black corners that hold it inside the souvenir album from the Hoover Dam.

She tucks the photo into her shirt pocket and glances out the window. The gray Plymouth is still down there, but now it’s been joined by a gray van, and three adults are huddled nearby, talking and glancing toward Snick House. Lana’s heart is pounding and she’s breathing through her mouth.

Chet’s waiting on the back porch when she comes down hugging the packs and kit to her chest.

“Tornado?” he says. He seems amused until he sees she’s not.

“It’s a kind of a tornado,” she says in a gasping voice. “It’s the state. They’re shutting down Snick House and sending all of us every which way.” She’s moving toward the garage as she speaks. “We’ve gotta go,” she says, tossing him the keys, “and you have to drive.”

C
het does a three-point turnaround in the backyard so he doesn’t have to take the long dirt driveway in reverse. He accelerates down the drive, spraying rocks and dust behind, fishtailing as he veers sharply right when the Monte Carlo hits asphalt.

The state people, two women and a man, all carrying folders in their hands, are halfway up the front walk when the Monte Carlo tears past. They turn and stand frozen for a second, though when Lana looks back through the rear window they’ve begun to move again, the man and one woman running a few steps in the direction of the squealing car and the other woman mounting the steps of the house.

“You think they’ll follow us?” Lana says to Chet.

Chet says, “Why? Because five minors are out in a car driven by someone without a license?”

Lana stares at him. “You’re right,” she says, deadpan. “They won’t.”

She turns to Alfred, Tilly, and Carlito, giddy in the backseat. Garth is up front with her and Chet, pressing himself nervously against the car door. “Hope somebody’s chasing us,” Alfred says.

“Nobody’s chasing us,” Lana says.

“Where’s the tornado?” Tilly says.

“Behind us,” Lana says. “The tornado’s behind us. We left in the nick of time.”

Tilly and the boys all smile.

Chet has brought the car to a stop at an intersection. “Since I’m driving, maybe I should know where we’re going,” he says.

“Fawnskin,” she says.

“What’s there?”

“A house Whit and his crew are painting five different colors.”

Though when they get to Fawnskin and they find the house belonging to the widow Mullins, there are only two colors, the white the house used to be and the pale yellow it was now becoming, if anybody ever painted it. At the moment, nobody is, though. Whit’s truck is parked in the driveway, and a boy wearing earphones and paint clothes sits on a five-gallon paint can under a tree.

When Lana comes up to the boy, she has to shout to penetrate whatever it is he’s listening to. He opens his eyes and looks at her uncertainly for a second or two before slipping off his earphones.

“You painting this house?” Lana says.

He nods. “I’m on my break right now. I’m going back to it in about three minutes.”

“Where’s the rest of the crew?”

The boy seems confused. Lana guesses he goes through most of the day confused. “I’m it,” he says. “Except for Mr. Winters.”

“Where’s he?”

“He’s with Mrs. Mullins running errands.”

“You mean like picking out paint?”

The boy nods. “Yeah, either that or something else.”

“They run errands a lot?” Lana says, and she wonders if her eyes are growing up, just like Veronica said they would.

“Quite a bit, yeah,” the boy says. His cheeks and chin are smooth, but he has a cluster of swelling pimples on his forehead.

“So he doesn’t help with the actual painting very much?”

The boy gives this a little thought. “Not so much, no. Mrs. Mullins has a lot of inside projects for him, too.”

“And you believe that?”

The boy seems even more confused. “Believe what?” he says.

Lana looks back toward the Monte Carlo. Everybody has gotten out, and Tilly is squatting in the dirt studying something she’s found there. It could be anything—a stick, a beetle, a smelly pod. The painter boy has opened the lid of a five-gallon paint can and is stirring easily with a long stick. It looks like buttermilk. She says, “When Mr. Winters comes back from his errands, tell him Lana and the Snicks came by to see his five-color house.”

The boy stops his stirring. “Lana and the who?”

“The Snicks. Lana and the Snicks. Tell him we came by to see his five-color house. Tell him we were disappointed.”

The boy nods, but he’s distracted by something behind her, and Lana follows his gaze to Chet, who’s climbing an elder tree while the Snicks stand at its base looking up, watching his progress.

“What’s he doing?” the painter boy asks.

Lana shrugs and walks over to the tree to find out.

“Returning an egg to its nest,” Chet says when Lana asks what he’s up to.

Lana sees something brown on one of the upper branches. When Chet gets near it, he eases a tiny pale blue egg from his shirt pocket and sets it into the nest.

Tilly says, “All back now!” and begins to clap while Alfred and Carlito stand by beaming. Even Garth seems pleased. Carlito steadies himself against the tree so Chet can step onto one of his big shoulders before springing onto the soft dirt.

“Okay, back in the car,” Lana says, and the others follow. Chet starts the car but doesn’t put it into gear. He’s waiting on instructions. They sit there in the driveway, listening to the engine tick, and Lana wonders what to do next.

“Where’re we going?” Tilly asks, and when Lana doesn’t answer, Chet asks it, too. “Where to now?”

Everyone turns toward Lana and their eyes seem to push her up against a wall. She doesn’t know where to go next. She doesn’t know what to say and she doesn’t know what to do. She reaches to touch her two-dollar bill, and when it isn’t there, she fights off the impulse to cry. “Okay,” she says. “Just a second.”

She closes her eyes.

She inhales, exhales. Inhales, exhales.

Then, suddenly, an idea slides into her mind.

She turns to Chet. “How much gas you got?” she says.

Chet checks the gas gauge. “Half a tank,” he says.

“Remember the town you and K.C. and those guys found when you were chasing the dust devil that day?”

Chet inclines his head. “The historic town of Hereford.”

“Yeah, that one,” Lana says. “Do you know how to get there?”

“Maybe,” Chet says. “But why would we want to?”

Lana doesn’t know. She has no idea. So she says, “I’ve got my reasons.”

A
s they’re leaving Fawnskin, a black-and-white cruiser approaches from the opposite direction, and Lana sees the deputy behind the wheel glance at the Monte Carlo and glance again.

When she looks back, the cruiser has pulled over, and then, perhaps five seconds later, it wheels into a quick U-turn.

“Police,”
Lana says in a tight whisper to Chet, who immediately takes a hard right into an alley and then turns into an empty garage, slams the car to a stop, and jumps out to pull the garage door closed. They hear the crunch of gravel as the cruiser passes by. Lana pushes the garage door up and peers down the alley just as the cruiser turns off in another direction.

“Okay!” she yells, and Chet reverses out of the garage. Lana jumps in, the Monte Carlo weaves out of the neighborhood, and they’re soon flying down the highway. Lana watches the speedometer climb to almost eighty.

“Easy, Chester,” she says. She’s been keeping an eye on the road behind them. “I think we’re fine.”