The Girl from Charnelle (13 page)

I
n mid-May, a few weeks before school was out, Anne Letig had to go to Borger for several days because her mother had sprained her ankle. She took the boys with her. Laura heard about this from her father when he got home from work. The phone rang later that evening, and when Manny picked up the receiver, he shook his head and returned it to the cradle.

“Who was it?” Laura asked.

“Hung up.”

The next morning she left early for school, walked by the Letig house, saw his truck there, and knocked nervously on the door. The street was busy with activity—people opening their doors, kids in and out of houses. When he answered, wearing his undershirt, his hair floppy and wet-looking, he raised his eyebrows and smiled.

“Come in.” She shook her head. An old man across the street was out front with gardening shears. “Okay,” he said.

“Did you call last night?” she asked.

“I hoped you'd know it was me. Wait here.”

He disappeared into the house. She stood, fidgeting, on the porch. She smiled at the man across the street. He smiled back. After a few minutes, John returned with an old maroon sweater in his hand. Mrs. Letig's.

“Here, take this.”

“Why?”

“So Grampa over there thinks you have a reason for being here. There's a note inside. Tell me thank you and that you're sorry for the inconvenience.”

She felt confused. “What?”

“Just say loudly, ‘Thank you' and ‘Sorry.'”

“Thank you,” she said.

“Louder,” he whispered.

“Thanks. Sorry for the inconvenience.”

“Tell your father I said thanks too,” he said normally.

“I will.”

He winked at her. “Bye, now,” he said, and shut the door. She turned and put the sweater in her satchel. A piece of paper fell out, and she reached down, grabbed it, and walked quickly, but not too quickly, along the street. She wanted to run. When she had gone a block, she unfolded the note.

He had not signed it, not even his looping initials. She read it again, noting the misspelling of “you're” and the lack of apostrophe in “won't.” She clutched the note tightly. She walked to school, went into a stall in the bathroom, and peeled the note from her sweaty palm. She read it again. And again. Two girls came into the bathroom, chattering. She waited until they left. She wanted to save the note, his handwriting. But she slowly tore it into small pieces. The ripping seemed to thunder in the bathroom. She made sure that no sentence could be read, and then the pieces fluttered from her hand into the water and floated there, the blue ink
fattening on the pages. She flushed and watched it swirl away. Evidence. Gone.

 

Once, when she was twelve, she, Manny, and Gloria swam across a huge stretch of Lake Meredith. “Come on!” Gloria had shouted, and Laura and Manny dove in after her.

They just kept going and going. Laura expected they would turn back, but then they were halfway across the lake, and Gloria and Manny were ahead of her. Laura was a good swimmer, but every year the lake had to be dragged for bodies because two or three people would try to swim it and would cramp up or get hit by a boat or caught in the currents. She remembered worrying, as she thrashed after her brother and sister, if something horrible like that might happen to them, but she just kept on swimming, staying as close to them as she possibly could.

They waited for her at one point, treading water near the middle, and when she reached them, Gloria asked, “You okay?”

She nodded, sputtering water from her mouth.

“Too late to turn back now,” Gloria said, smiling. “Pace yourself. I'll keep an eye on you.”

And then they were off again, this time in a slower rhythm so she wouldn't fall too far behind. Her arms felt heavier and heavier. Twice boats whizzed by, maybe fifty feet from them, not head-clunking distance, but swimming through the wakes was hard, and a coughing fit seized her once when she swallowed water. Every few yards she would stop and see how far she had to go. Her legs felt so weary. She saw Gloria ahead, on her back, facing the sky. She turned over like her sister did, blinked water from her eyes, squinted into the glare of the sun, and floated, scissor-kicking so she'd make some progress. She finally got her wind back and turned over, but the shore still seemed too far away.

Her mother had once told her that drowning was the best way to die. Not nearly as awful as it seemed. Actually quite pleasant. It was a long time ago. They were at Lake Meredith then, too. Rich wasn't born yet, and Gene was only a toddler, playing in the sand under an umbrella. Manny and Gloria were chicken-fighting with two friends in the water, and her father was fishing. Laura and her mother were in the shallows so they could keep an
eye on Gene. Her mother lay on her back, her blond hair fanning out in the water like a painting of a dead woman Laura had once seen in an art book—just the pretty, barely wrinkled mask of her face floating above the surface, her eyes closed to the sun, her arms outstretched.

“Your lungs just fill up,” her mother said. “You think it's amazing that you're breathing water, and then you're dead.”

The thought terrified Laura, both then and now. Her choking earlier had panicked her. She didn't want to breathe water; she didn't want to drown. Each time it sloshed into her mouth, she spit it out immediately, fearing that she might lose the ability to distinguish water from air, and then she'd go under. It wasn't much farther, not much more, and finally she just closed her eyes and mindlessly windmilled until she paddled past the point where she could stand up.

When she opened her eyes again, Gloria and Manny were there beside her, the water just above their kneecaps, each of them with an arm hooked under hers. They heaved her to a standing position. Laura's legs were rubbery, unable to support her body. Gloria and Manny helped her to the bank, where they all collapsed and lay staring into the sky, now overcast. Or was it almost night? Had it taken them all day to swim across the lake? She felt like she might throw up.

“We did it,” Gloria said, out of breath, her rib cage heaving. Gloria already had a woman's body, full breasts, beautifully curved hips, which Laura admired and envied. “We damn well did it.”

“Fucking-A!” Manny shouted. He was only thirteen then, but in the previous year he'd grown seven inches, his voice had dropped, and hair had begun to sprout above his lips and under his arms. He no longer seemed like her brother, but rather some alien creature that delighted in tormenting her.

Laura felt a sudden sense of alarm at Manny's exclamation, but Gloria only laughed. Laura was too tired to laugh, but she felt proud of herself for having made it. For not having slipped under. After they caught their breath, Gloria stood up, wiped the sand and twigs from her butt, and then held out her hand to Laura.

“Come on,” she said. “We have to get back.”

Laura looked across the lake despairingly. “I can't,” she said.

Gloria laughed. “Walking, not swimming back.”

She shook her head.

“Come on. It won't even take us half an hour.”

Laura looked at the long, arching ring of shoreline back to where they had left their father's truck. That seemed worse than the swim. But her sister pulled her up. Laura's muscles stiffened and tingled. She felt like a newborn foal, all wobbly spindle legs.

“I don't know,” she said, dropping down to the ground.

“Maybe we should walk back and get the truck,” Manny said to Gloria. “Let her rest here.”

“No, I don't want to leave her here alone,” Gloria said. “I'll go. You stay with her.”

“I could go,” Manny said.

“No. It'll be dark, and you shouldn't drive the truck at night. I'll be back soon. Will you be okay?” Gloria asked.

“Yeah,” Laura said.

Gloria set off as Laura sat on the edge of the bank. Manny waded into the water again, floating peacefully on his back for a few minutes, and then he stretched out on the bank a few feet from her and closed his eyes. His body seemed so long.

She watched Gloria walk, barefoot, stopping one time when she stepped on something. It was almost dusk when she reached the truck. Laura could see her barely, a small speck, as she gathered their things, got into the truck, and then disappeared. After what seemed like forever, but must have been only minutes later, she heard the truck on the road behind the bank. Laura was cold by then. Her legs still wobbled when she rose. Gloria helped her put her clothes on and wrapped her in a blanket for the trip home. With her eyes shut, Laura could hear the water in her ears; she felt as if she were tossing again in the wake of the boats. She opened her eyes and watched the horizon so she wouldn't throw up.

“What do we tell Momma and Dad?” Manny asked.

“We don't tell them nothing,” Gloria said dramatically. “Nothing. We don't need them worried. You got that, Laura?”

She nodded.

“Tell me.”

“Nothing,” Laura said weakly.

“Okay, good.” Gloria patted her gently on the knee. “You did great
today. You know that. Great! You're probably the only twelve-year-old girl who's ever swum that lake.”

“You think so?”

“Damn right I think so.”

“Yeah,” Manny said, putting his arm around Laura's shoulders, surprising her with his gentleness. “You did good.”

B
y the time she and John arrived at Lake Meredith, it was almost dark. Since school had not let out, there weren't as many campers as there would be in June, July, and August. Still, there were several tents at the first site, fewer the farther they traveled. He drove past any sign of campers and then down a bumpy dirt road that led to a small clearing right by the southern bootheel of the lake. He cut the engine.

“How did you know this was here?” she asked.

“Oh, I've been coming here for years, ever since I was a kid. My grandfather and me and my brothers used to fish here. Hardly anyone knows about it. Too far off the main road. Everybody's too lazy to look for it, which is great. It's like my own private spot. I love it.”

She started to ask if he'd brought his family here, but she held her tongue. Surely he had. And besides, she really didn't want to introduce Mrs. Letig and the boys into their conversation. Not again.

She woke that morning feeling nauseous, off kilter. When she arrived
at his house with her satchel, sneaking through his backyard, she had asked when Mrs. Letig and the boys would be back. He'd sighed audibly in a way that suggested he would have to settle something and it'd be best if he did it now.

“Let's not talk about them, not for this trip. This is just you and me. We don't have to think about other people. Okay?”

He'd said it gently, without condescension or guilt or any hint of resentment, and she appreciated his directness. It made her feel better. She had nodded, and he pulled her close to him and held her against his chest.

“Let's go, then,” he said.

But after that moment there had been the awkwardness of him driving around to the back of his house and her having to skulk to the truck and hunker down in the passenger seat, her head against his thigh, while he drove away from his block and out of town. On the highway, she still felt strange, the same off-kilter sensation from the morning. She figured it was just nerves because they were exposed in the truck, and in a small town like Charnelle, even if you left the town limits, you never knew if someone was going to pass you, waving, curious, but suspicious if you happened to be driving alone with Zeeke Tate's daughter. Gloria's elopement with Jerome and then especially their mother's disappearance had caused quite the scandal, though few people seemed willing to say anything directly to them about it. After Laura's mother left, she grew tired of the hushed whispers in school when she walked by; the covert pointing on the street; the stares; the cars driving by their house, slowing down and then speeding off; the feeling, unsubstantiated but palpable, that her family was the subject of an odd blend of gossip, pity, and scorn; the sense that she—as the only female left in the house—was under particular scrutiny, as if the whole town was waiting for her to follow her sister and mother.

Several miles out of Charnelle, she sat up for a few minutes, but then he thought he saw a truck coming that he recognized, one of the Somersby brothers. It turned out to be a false alarm, but he said, “Why don't you just stay there and sing me a song?”

She was reluctant to sing at first, sullen, feeling as if this trip was a huge mistake, but then he started singing loudly, “I've been working on the railroad,” tapping the beat on the steering wheel and on her kneecap, bobbing his head goofily. She loved this boyishness, his obvious delight in his off-key crooning. She looked up at him, the way his teeth slightly overlapped,
the mustache that he'd trimmed (for her?), his almost-pretty lips, and that long, beautiful face. She loved him at that moment. She raised up and kissed him quickly on the mouth and then turned on the radio.

For most of the hour it took them to get to the lake, she lay with her head on his thigh, beating a rhythm on his legs and chest, her voice rising above and around his. They sang along to Patsy Cline's “Lovesick Blues” and Elvis's “Hound Dog” and Buddy Holly's “That'll Be the Day,” and Bobby Darin's “Mack the Knife,” which had been the number one hit last year, and the radio seemed to play it every ten minutes. She propped her foot on the window and watched her toes wiggle in the wind, and it was a good time, loose and easy, as if they'd done this before and were comfortable with each other.

He lit up a cigarette and offered it to her.

“I've never smoked before,” she said.

“You want to try?”

“Sure, why not?”

She choked at first, and he told her how to let it just swirl in her mouth and out, and then she did it until her head felt light and tingly, like the way it felt after drinking the champagne on New Year's Eve. She gave him back the cigarette.

“You can keep that one.”

“No thanks.”

She watched the sky and ran her fingers over the hair on his arm.

“That's nice,” he said and smiled. And then, a few minutes later, he told her to sit up; he rearranged his pants.

“Am I hurting you?”

He smiled and said, “No, honey. Not at all.”

 

At the campsite, he turned off the engine and put his arm around her shoulder, and they stared at the whitecapped, reddish lake. The sun had fallen beneath the horizon, but there was still light.

“I'm glad you came,” he said.

“Me, too.” But she felt dizzy and too hot.

“Let's set up camp before it gets dark,” he said, and kissed her softly. He lit the kerosene lamps so they'd have light later, hammered in the tent stakes, and she tightened the lines and helped raise the poles. The tent was
small but comfortable, and he'd brought along some old blankets, which he threw down on the tent floor. She was embarrassed when he unzipped two sleeping bags and zipped them back together as one big one. He looked up to gauge her expression.

“Would you rather I keep them separate?” he asked earnestly.

She shook her head.

“I'm hungry,” she said. She hadn't eaten lunch, and in the excitement of the trip, she'd not thought about it before, but now hunger seized her stomach.

He scavenged in a duffel bag and brought out some potato chips. “Here,” he said. “Do you like hot dogs?”

“Sure.”

“Let me start a fire, and we'll roast some.”

She poured herself some water from the jug he'd brought and sat on a stump as he gathered the rocks in a ring and then added sticks and leaves. He lit the fire, got it going good, and put a log on top. Out came the franks, and he shaved the ends of two long branches with his knife, put the hot dogs on, and held them out to her. She rotated the sticks while he fixed the buns.

“You like mustard and ketchup?”

“Just mustard.”

“They ready?”

She pulled them from the fire, where they had blackened on one side, and she held them out as he grabbed them with the buns. They ate the hot dogs quickly, along with the chips. He pulled out two bananas and a couple of not-quite-ripe peaches, and they ate them as well, and then he opened a tin of homemade oatmeal raisin cookies. She felt guilty eating them, because she knew that Mrs. Letig must have baked them for her husband before she left.

It had been hot during the day, and though it had cooled down with the dusk, it was still summery. John had broken a good sweat. He guzzled water, took off his shirt, and mopped his face. He sat on the ground next to her feet and stretched out with his head against the round boulder she was sitting on. Neither of them spoke for a while, but that was nice. She felt better now that she'd eaten.

“My God, it's beautiful here,” he said.

The water was calm and seemed purple and silver in the dusk. Red and
orange streaked the sky, still thickly textured with clouds. He jumped up and went to the truck and came back with a small tablet, a little kit, a tin cup.

“What's that?”

“Just some paper and paints,” he said.

“You're an artist?”

“I fiddle around sometimes.”

He opened the sketch pad and the paints, and he dipped the cup into the lake. She sat beside him. As the light faded, he quickly painted the whole scene. He managed to capture the rich sense of color and the stillness and depth of the lake. In the picture, he'd moved a large willow that was off to the right to the other side so that the leaves created a frame for the water. At the bottom center, barely visible, were a woman's legs—
her legs!
—on the bank, her toes in the water. He'd done all this in less than half an hour.

“You're good!”

“No, not really.”

“Yes, really. How long have you been doing this?”

“Since I was a kid.”

“Did you ever want to do it for a living?”

“Yeah, for a long time,” he said.

“Why didn't you?”

“I guess it seemed frivolous, and when my dad died, my family needed money. I could make decent money as a welder.”

“How did your father die?”

“In a railroad accident, when I was about seventeen. He was an engineer for Santa Fe. Cattle on the tracks. The brakeman tried to stop, but it was too late. Engine went right off the rails, flipped on its side.”

“I'm sorry,” she said and felt a new sense of compassion for him, as if a secret window had been opened to her.

He leaned back against the rock with his hands cupped behind his head and closed his eyes. “Oh, don't be,” he said. “It was a long time ago.”

“I like this picture,” she said, picking it up, studying it though it was hard to see now that night had fallen. “Can I have it?”

“Nah, it's not very good.” He propped himself up on his elbow and smiled. “Maybe I'll make something else for you sometime.”

A truck rattled in the distance and then it got closer. They turned and saw lights about a hundred yards away. The truck stopped and then the
headlights went out. A door slammed, and a flashlight flickered along the path. They both rose and moved toward the truck. John got out his tire iron and gripped it tightly. Frightened, Laura stood a few yards behind him. She wondered if someone had seen them, had followed them here.
Her father? Manny?

“Who is that?” John shouted, a warning.

The flashlight stopped on the path and pointed up toward the truck. “Park ranger. Okay if I come in?”

“Yeah, I guess,” John said, easier, but he still held the tire iron until the ranger came into view. John grabbed his flashlight and shone it on the man, who wore a uniform and a hat.

“Thought I saw your truck drive past. Been looking for you. Not many people know about this spot.”

“My grandfather used to bring me here when I was a kid.”

“It's a beaut, all right. Solitary. I don't tell anyone. Mostly only rangers know about it. What's your name?”

“Letig.” They shook hands. “John Letig.”

“Cleavis Peterson.” He eyed Laura and tipped his hat. “You the missus?”

She hesitated, didn't know how to answer. John laughed.

“No, this is my niece.”

The ranger stepped closer and squinted at them. “Niece?”

“Yep. Whole family was supposed to go camping, but my mother-in-law sprained her ankle, so my wife had to help out. The rest of the family's planning to meet us tomorrow. Isabel and I thought we'd come on ahead and see how the fishing was.”

The ranger looked in the back of John's truck. John had brought three poles and a tackle box.

“Anything biting?” John asked.

“The carp, of course.” The men laughed.

“Any perch?”

“Not really. The trout on warm days. Some channel cat. Today was pretty warm, so maybe if you set out a trotline, you'll catch something.”

“Forgot the trotline—and the boat.”

The ranger smiled. “Well, then try about midnight and again around sunrise. Fellow the other day caught himself about a dozen good ones, including an eight-pound cat. All around those times.”

“Thanks. Appreciate it.”

“You like to fish, Isabel?”

“Yes, sir,” she lied.

“Oh, yes. We call her Lucky.”

“Is that right?”

Isabel. Lucky.
Just who in the hell was she? She was beginning to feel nauseous again.

“She attracts the fish like bait,” John said.

The ranger laughed. “Well, good luck to you. I just wanted to make sure you knew where you were and what you were doing. How long you here for?”

“Just a few days.”

“Well, okay. I'll get out of here before I scare all your fish away.”

“Thanks again,” John said.

“You bet. I'm up on the southeast ridge, about four miles from here, the fourth cutoff to the right if you need anything. Bye, miss.”

“Bye,” she said, too quietly. She could hear the caution in her voice.

“Thanks again,” John said. The ranger tipped his hat and then worked his way up the path, got in his truck and drove off.

She was glad when she could no longer hear the engine. She went back to the rock and sat down. The ranger had put her on edge, reminding her of the long series of lies she'd told. She'd never lied so much to her father before. The earlier lies—like back in February, when John had said they were buying a dress for his wife, and then after spring break, when Jimmy Cransburgh drove her home—seemed minor compared to what she'd done today. These had been the most dangerous, because they involved other people. She'd told her father that she was going camping with a new girl from school, Pamela, and her parents. There was no Pamela, but she was afraid to tell him Marlene or Debbie, since he knew their parents and might call them, and then she'd be in for it. She'd given him a made-up telephone number, so that if he called, it would be wrong and she could pass it off as a simple mistake. And when he offered to drive her over or have Manny do it, she said that the girl didn't live far away and she wanted to walk since it was a beautiful day. And her father had raised his eyebrows but agreed, mainly because he'd already sat down to the dinner of baked chicken and potato salad that she'd made him. “Well, okay,” he'd said and shaken his head to indicate his resignation to the whims of teenage girls, and she had set out on a circuitous path to the Letig house,
practically slinking down the alley and into his backyard so that no one would see her, tapping on his window until he let her in. Driving away, slunk down, wasn't much fun either, a deception through hiding, but then it had been okay, with them singing and her foot catching the breeze from the window, but now again they were almost caught, and if John weren't so quick on his feet, transforming her into Isabel, then they'd be caught for sure. Though what would the ranger have done? It didn't matter. It was all these near misses. They had been sort of thrilling at first, a game, but now this latest close call soured her mood. She felt dizzy again, a little bead of sweat breaking over the top of her lip and around her hairline.