Wreath (5 page)

As she searched for a place to rest, she held the stick out in front of her, grasping it with both hands, like she had seen swashbuckling heroes do in movies. She pretended it was a saber and she could cut someone in half or evaporate them on the spot.

The marshy area behind the place, with a stream that would have to do for water, housed frogs croaking in an array of tones. She pulled out her notebook and squinted at her entries in the gloom, reading her research notes on creatures and night noises.

She had not expected them to be so loud.

Unnerved, Wreath chose a crazy van, a maroon color like the cover of an old record album one of her mother’s cousins had. The van, with tiger-striped shag carpet on the floor and walls, looked as though someone had left it in midsentence. Magazines and a faded photo album sat on a fake wood end table, a suitcase of rotten clothes and a stack of paperback books rested in the corner. The windows had been covered with old sheets so no one could see in, nice for privacy but no good for lighting.

Wreath chastised herself for heading out without a flashlight, mad that she had let the detail slip past her.

That meant she had likely overlooked other essential details.

Closing the doors, in the eerie night, she fidgeted with the locks until she made them work. For one frightening moment, she thought she had permanently locked herself in and panicked, imaging her decaying skeleton discovered years later. She frantically dug a pair of rusty pliers from the glove box and forced the side lock open, drawing a deep breath of fetid air when it worked.

Trembling, Wreath spread her blanket on the rough carpeted floor and laid out her clothes, ate a banana, and put her stick nearby. She lay awake for a long time, afraid to sleep.

A loud tapping noise caused Wreath to roll over and rub her eyes.

She needed to get to the door before the knocking woke Frankie up.

Frankie.

A sick feeling roiled in her stomach. Frankie was gone.

Wreath froze and tried to figure out where she was.

The rough carpet rubbed against her aching arm, her familiar blanket bunched up. A trail of ants inspected the banana she had left nearby.

The tapping continued, and Wreath reached for her stick.

“Who is it?” she asked, her voice sounding like one of the frogs the night before. The knocking noise went right on, as though she had not spoken.

“I’m armed,” she said louder, clearing her throat and trying to clear her mind. “What do you want?”

She heard the shrill call of a bird, and the noise stopped.

Crawling to the front seat of the van, she tried to roll the window down to peek outside, but corrosion had jammed it. Tentatively, she pushed against the door and looked, blinded by bright sunshine.

She jumped back, slammed the door, and waited.

Nothing happened.

Then the knocking started again.

Agitated, Wreath opened the van door, the branch in her hand. A large woodpecker sat at the top of a rotten tree, ignoring her as he tapped at the wood.

The bird sounded exactly the way the neighbor had in Lucky when she knocked on the front door, soup in hand or with a piece of misdelivered mail. Wreath’s anxiety vanished at the sight of the bird. She looked up at the clear sky and back at her watch. Twelve o’clock!

She had slept until noon.

In desperate need of a bathroom, Wreath wondered if any of the rotten trailer houses had commodes. She settled instead on a spot in the woods, embarrassed, and wandered back to her campsite, thankful no one was around.

As she strolled back to the van, a warm breeze lifted her hair. She yawned and stretched and savored the sunshine. Sadness lurked, but she felt rested.

Almost refreshed.

The junkyard looked slightly more inviting by day, and its vastness felt almost safe, like a giant metal cocoon where no one could find her. The panic of the night before seemed excessive.

Her original plan had not been off base after all. If no one knew she was here, no one could hurt her.

She rocked back and forth for a moment, the daytime thoughts more agreeable than the dark doubts of the night before. She felt almost giddy, although part of that could be weakness brought on by hunger. She knew she couldn’t eat nearly as much as she wanted, so she brushed the ants off the banana peel and wondered if it was edible.

Wrapping up half a package of peanut butter crackers instead, she decided to go on an expedition.
This is an adventure, Brownie
, she wrote in her diary.
I will not give up. Frankie taught me to be strong and brave. I will not let her down
.

Scouting nearby vehicles, Wreath found similar setups to the van, places that looked as though the owners had walked away with nothing. The Tiger Van already seemed more familiar and less foreboding than the other cars, trucks, and trailers, and her inspection revealed details of lives that reminded her of the home she had left behind.

To cheer herself, she pretended to be honest-to-goodness house shopping, like she loved on those home channels on TV and in magazines that Frankie brought home from the café. Within a few minutes, Wreath assumed the role of both buyer and real estate agent. She spoke aloud to calm her nerves, finding the lack of human noise unnerving.

“This van is small enough to be safe, has several exits in case of emergency, and is carpeted from top to bottom, floor to ceiling,” Wreath said, using her stick as a pointer. “The previous owners might have gone a little overboard with the furry, tiger-striped carpet, and I am not thrilled that the wall and ceiling will require vacuuming. Perhaps it comes with air freshener?”

Realtor Wreath was gregarious. “Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer one of our larger models, maybe the school bus that can accommodate a crowd, or one of these tiny sports cars that are cozy and easy to heat in the winter? You might find a camper trailer to your liking. They’re musty, but they have breathing room. You’ll have to commit soon because the property is flying off the market.”

Wreath laughed out loud, the game of charades a relief. “I’m quick to know what I want,” she spoke aloud again. “I’ll stick with my original choice. Have your people get in touch with my people, and perhaps we can discuss a Tiger Van reality show.”

She took a small bow and then felt ridiculous rather than playful, the woodpecker still knocking in the distance. She heard another bird call, and it sounded as though the woodpecker paused and answered.

Even the birds had more friends than she did.

She inhaled deeply, the air a mix of fresh summer and moldy ruin. A breeze moved through the trees, and she felt a moment of calm.

During her explorations in various trailers, Wreath pilfered a half-dozen tiny painted flowerpots, made in Mexico, a cracked mixing bowl, and a mildewed Bible that reminded her of her grandma. She took a tire iron to replace the tree branch as a weapon, removing it from an Opal GT, a car she’d never seen before.

She was disappointed but not surprised to find no lights and no running water in the area and began to consider her first trip into town.

Too soon
, she told herself.
Wait
.

As evening fell, the mosquitoes were big and aggressive, and she added insect spray to her shopping list. As she wrote, she knew that no matter how good she was with money, hers would not go very far. She would have to find a job.

She hoped Frankie’d had a nice funeral and wondered who had paid for it.

Chapter 5

A
fter three sweltering, unnerving nights in the junkyard, Wreath thought there must be truth to Frankie’s motto.
Where there is a Willis, there’s a way
, she wrote time and again in her notebook. She considered putting it at the top of every page.

Without a strong will, she never could have survived. Her brain was shaken up, like the snow globe Frankie had brought her from a weekend trip to Hot Springs.

By night four, filthy and hungry, her meager food gone, she yearned for a break from what she now called Wreath’s Rusted Estates. Worried that it was too early to show her face in town, she longed for a shower and a real meal and was willing to trade precious cash for cleaning supplies.

She had spent most of the first stifling forty-eight hours huddled in the van, exploring only briefly before scurrying back like one of the mice she saw every time she turned around. At least she preferred to think of them as mice. Some looked big enough to be rats, and they grew when she sketched them in her notebook.

On the fifth morning, Wreath emerged from the van, forcing herself to look around, happy to hear the familiar
tap-tap-tap
of the woodpecker. After a brief walk through scattered car bumpers, stacks of old tires, and briars that lay across her path like booby traps, she pulled out pen and paper and catalogued what she had seen.

She huddled back in the van, allowing herself a few ounces of water each day and a scant amount of food. For four days she had eaten berries growing on vines and peaches on a gnarled tree near the back of the property. Even with wormholes in them, they were delicious, and she hoarded them like the finest groceries.

Finally, she could stand it no longer. On the seventh day, she gave in to the urge to go into town.

Assignment: fact-finding mission
, she wrote.
Explorer: Wreath Willis
.

Before she settled into sleep the previous night, she had made plans for the day, going through them again and again. She stepped out of the van and observed her new hideaway with a tiny degree of pleasure and a medium helping of pride.

The sun blasted the hot van by the time she woke up, and she wolfed down the last of her peanut butter crackers and drank a few sips of water, nauseated with excitement and fear of the day ahead.