Page 26 of Be Not Far From Me

I was fifteen then, had just gotten my permit and took any excuse to drive, like running into the gas station for a gallon of milk even though there was at least two inches left in the one we had. Davey was twenty, three months from disappearing, and working for a landscaping company. He was tan and fit, hair a little long and curling from underneath his baseball hat.

I could tell he didn’t quite know what to think of me, or where to look. My body had filled out that summer, and Meredith had taught me what to wear to show it off. It wasn’t so bad that Dad wouldn’t let me leave the house, but my cleavage cast a shadow, and I had legs up to my shoulder blades. I hadn’t minded the attention I was getting, but I hadn’t liked it until that moment.

“Hey, Davey,” I said, leaving behind the blast of air-conditioning from the gas station and letting the door swing shut behind me. “What’ve you been up to?”

Not much, it turned out, but all of it was still fascinating because it happened to Davey Beet, and because it was him standing there telling me about it like maybe he was trying to impress me, just a little bit.

“So what’s up with you?” he asked, and I told him about getting my permit, kind of leaning hard on the fact that I could go anywhere I wanted now and didn’t have a curfew. Technically I was supposed to have an adult in the car with me, but I didn’t know too many of those, and Dad was pulling double shifts.

Davey kept nodding, and I don’t think I’m flattering myself to say that there was a pause when I think maybe he was going to ask me for my number or see if I wanted to hang out sometime. I was holding my breath, heat coming back up off the asphalt and baking me, mouth drier than it’s ever been, even now.

Maybe Davey did the math in that moment, remembered I was only fifteen. Davey Beet was being a good guy when he let that moment pass, and damn if I didn’t wish he would’ve gone ahead and been questionable, just that one time.

His buddy yelled at him from the landscaping truck, and he said it was nice talking to me but he better get back to work, and then Davey walked away, turning back to say something I’ve carried with me forever.

“You did a good job growing up, Ass-kicker,” he called.

I didn’t know what to say, so I just nodded. Maybe if I’d been a little older or surer of myself I would’ve asked him out instead of waiting for him to ask me. Maybe he would’ve said, “No, but call me when you’re eighteen.” Maybe that little bit of something I saw in his eyes might’ve grown into something else, and maybe he wouldn’t have gone into the woods when another girl broke his heart.

And maybe I wouldn’t be standing here right now, staring at words written by someone who never came back, and was never found.

I go until I can’t go no more.

It’s not pain or hunger that stops me but pure exhaustion. There’s nothing left inside of me but tired when I fall under a big maple and can’t get back up again. I lie still, slipping my foot out of the sling and rolling onto my back so that I can look up at the canopy, and the bits of darkening sky in between.

It’s evening. Frogs are singing, and the light has that special kind of tint to it that used to make me want to go outside and stay there, which is pretty funny to me now. I might’ve left Davey Beet’s name behind me on that tree, but it’s burned onto my eyes, and all I can think about as I stare is that my mind has spent so much time thinking about Davey that now, somehow, I’m following him.

It’s a crazy thought, and yes, I did pop an oxy when I refilled my whiskey bottle at the last bit of running water I found, but I’m not sure it wouldn’t have occurred to me even without the drugs. Davey’s always been a safe place to return to, a what-if that kept me going through bad fights with Duke, or rough patches at home, like the time I told Dad that maybe if we didn’t live in a trailer I’d bring my friends over more often.

I’m embarrassed thinking about that, even out here.

It’s one of those moments that’ll dog me the rest of my life, like the first time I was invited to a birthday party and was the only kid who showed up without a present, or when Kate Fullerton recognized the shirt I was wearing because it used to be hers and she gave it to the Goodwill. Shame burns over time, leaving behind a scar that puckers up and shines so that it can’t ever be quite forgotten.

It happened after I started driving and Dad made the comment that I’d been making myself so scarce that he might start calling me Wendy (my momma’s name), and I don’t know if it was his timing or the fact that it was just a bad thing to say to a motherless girl, but I lit into him like it was Fourth of July and he had a fuse sticking out.

I told him maybe I’d stay home more if there was something better to eat other than venison and mac and cheese. I said maybe I’d spend more time with him if we actually played catch instead of just watching baseball on the TV, or maybe I’d even bring my friends over to our place instead of going to theirs if it didn’t risk them seeing him running around in his tighty-whities, beer gut hanging out over them while he made the trip to the fridge for the next one.

I said all those things to the person who raised me, the parent who stayed, the one who fed me and dressed me and read me books every night and made high-pitched voices for the girl characters. And every word I said cut him deep, down through skin and bone and biting into the soul. I watched it happen, and I kept going, saying all the bad things I could think of until he shoved open the screen door and told me to leave if things were so bad. But he cracked it open so hard it snapped right off in his hand, leaving him holding a door with no hinges, owner of a house with no proper entrance.

His face just kinda fell, like the world had ganged up on him in the form of his daughter and his own home. I was pissed too, at our trailer for being so shitty, at the door for falling off right then, even if all it did was prove my point. I didn’t need fate on my side to illustrate how bad off we were, so I took the door and threw it out in the front yard and stomped on it until my feet went through the screen and the metal frame was bent to hell.

It wasn’t the smartest thing I ever did, but it felt good. And after that Dad and I went to the hardware store and got a new door and put it on together and had some beer and watched a ball game. We didn’t talk about the fight, just slipped into our old routines and did them like always, working together without saying much, knowing what the other was going to do, or what tool they needed without words.

Dad and I were always like that, not needing to talk to communicate. As I watch the light fade out of the sky, I wonder if he could hear me right now if I told him that I love him and that I’m sorry about all that and about all this too. I wonder if he’s watching a baseball game right now, or how many beers he’s had, or if the door is slapping in the wind that’s kicking up because he managed to fuck up the whole doorframe when he tore it off.

The truth is I miss my shitty house, and not just for the shelter.

It is home, and has someone in it who loves me.

I tried going to church for a bit.

The memories get into my head because I’m looking up at the maple branches and there’s a spot where one overlaps another and damn if I didn’t lie down with a cross right above my head.

Dad always said there were enough people in his life asking him to be grateful for this or that, and forgiveness didn’t come easy when his days were mostly filled with people doing him wrong, like the guy who took his overtime shift when we were in the kind of tight spot that meant the electric might get turned off. But he didn’t care if I went, and Camp Little Fish was associated with some sort of Methodist group, so I ended up displaying enough interest the second summer I was there to get involved in a carpool.

There was a nice lady that came to get me every Sunday morning, her own kids in the back with their shirts buttoned up and their nylons tight on their legs like sausage skins. I didn’t have anything of the sort, so I just wore clean jeans and a T-shirt that didn’t have bad words on it, and nobody seemed to think sideways of it. True, people from church did start giving me bags of clothes, along with casual comments like it was spring-cleaning time, or it didn’t fit their daughter anymore and would save them the bother of doing a garage sale if I took it.

I didn’t mind so much because they weren’t ever giving me silly dresses or stuff that I couldn’t get good wear out of. One guy even gave me what he claimed was his son’s old hiking boots, but if they were used then his son never set foot outside because they smelled like fresh rubber and fit snug like they just came out of a box. The people there were nice enough, and I never once felt talked down to or lorded over.