If You Find Me

  I see it in his eyes, fightin to sober up quick: He thinks I’m crazy. He must have me confused with Mama. I’ve never been like Mama.

  Once I hear the lock click, I turn to him.

  “I’m comin’ back for your sister, bitch. For both of you. And I’ll keep comin’ back, if you catch my drift.”

  He don’t think I’ll do it. My mouth slips into a crocodile smile. His stench lingers on my skin as his stickiness runs down my legs. I cock my shotgun. He runs.

  He’s off tramplin bushes, getting’ thwacked in the face by low-hangin branches. He cuts a careless, sloppy trail. It’s perfect for trackin’ an animal.

  I only have time to shove my feet into sneakers and grab the flashlight from a crate under the table before settin off after him, trackin’ him deeper and deeper into our Hundred Acre Wood. Soon, a heaven of stars map his trail. I see the violin constellation, the one I don’t know by its real name. More than once, its brightest star has been my point of navigation, leadin’ me back to the camper if I’ve wandered too far.

  The man is mak’ decent time, if all be told, only he don’t know he’s travelin father into Obed. I follow stealthily, thankin’ Saint Joseph for all those years of practice huntin’ our own food. I’m a sure shot, exerci-sin a precision that comes from those things we do over and over again, day in, day out.

  When I get close enough, I hear Mama’s voice in my head, her words slurred but true.

  “We get what we deserve, Carey. Sometimes we’re the getters, and sometimes we’re the givers.”

  I palm the flashlight, glad to have it. By the light of the moon, I see him bent over at the waist, palms on his thighs, breathin’ hard. When I snap a twig, he ups and dominates the clearin’, swackin and stabbin the night with a broken branch while turnin’ in circles.

  Lookin’ for me. He’s naked from the waist up. He’s tied his sweat-stained T-shirt tight around his upper arm, I reckon to stop the bleedin.

  When I’m close enough to smell him, I shoot straight toward his form, aimin’ at heart height. His mouth forms a scream that never comes. He collapses to the ground.

  I circle him, careful not to get too close. I sweep the flashlight over his chest, his face. I see no signs of breathin’. I feel nothin’—no triumph, no remorse. Bness. Although my body shakes against my wishes, and I let it. He’ll make a bear or a pack of coyotes a right fine meal.

  On my wrist, I’m wearin Mama’s watch, like I always do, the one she taught me time on. The one I’d used to teach Jenessa. Checkin’ it, I see it’s taken more than forty-five minutes to get back to the camper, and it’s a lucky thing. No one wants a corpse rottin close to their camper. He’s too heavy to drag or carry, and diggin graves is an act of respect.

  The river sees everythin’ and is cold to the marrow, but I peel off my T-shirt and wade in up to my chin, the moonlight blue on my bare skin. I hold the shotgun over my head; I can’t get myself to put it down. The river cools off the swollen parts, baptizin me back into skin and bone and savin me into a new Carey, a Carey who, tonight, let go of childish things.

  I shake so hard, my teeth clatter against each other. I’m standin nek-kid in the winter water, and I can’t do it for long. I command myself to put the jeans back on, crumpled atop the wanwood leafmeal. I only have two pair, and I need ’em both at night.

  My gait is thick and wobbly, my girl parts split like a wild turkey’s wishbone. I reckon Mama would say I’m a woman now. I lean over into a bush and retch and retch. I pull a clean T-shirt off the line and fumble with the arm holes.

  Afterward, I pretend I’m fingerin’ Dvorak’s Romance for Violin, usin the music to steady my breath. When that don’t work, I repeat the lines in my head, from beginnin to end and back again, only this time, I insert my own name.

  Carey, are you grievin

  Over Goldengrove unleavin ?

  Leaves, like the things of man, you

  With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?

  Ah! as the heart grows older

  It will come to such sights colder

  By and by, nor spare a sigh

  Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;

  And yet you will weep and know why.

  Now no matter, child, the name:

  Sorrow’s springs are the same.

  Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed

  What heart heard of, ghost guessed:

  It is the blight man was born for,

  It is Carey you mourn for.

  Against the walnut’s rough bark, the hatred slides down my face and my sobs are shardlike and stranglin. I pick up my pee coat and slide it on after pickin’ off chips of leafmeal stuck to the matted collar. I sit my butt right down on top of the metal table, reclaimin’ it.

  Accordin’ to the watch, it takes twenty minutes for the violent shudderin’ to stop. That’s when I get up, knock on the camper door.

  “Ness? It’s safe, baby.”

  No response. I swear under my breath, catchin sight of the camper window, screenless and unlocked. I squeeze my head through.

  I find Ness in the circle of my flashlight, her thumb stuck in her mouth and the cot’s thin blanket wrappin her up in a cocoon. Her legs are drawn up to her chest and she rocks back and forth, back and forth. She sees right through me, and it’s like she don’t hear me, neither. She don’t make one peep.

  I scramble through the window and scoop her up in my arms and out the door. When we reach the river, I strip her bare. One dunk, that’s all she can handle, and then I wrap her back up in the blanket and sit her in my lap in front of the fire.

  We watch her dress, the T-shirt, and our underwear curl into the flames, all reminders torched to ash in less than a minute. Her blond ringlets hang limply, all the light gone out of ’em. Droplets of creek water sit on her eyelashes, and she blinks them down her cheeks. When she’s warm again, I help her put on jeans and her sweatshirt, tyin the hood snug.

  “He won’t be comin’ back, Nessa. You don’t have to worry.”

  I reposition my legs beneath her, restin’ a hand on my shotgun.

  Not a peep.

  “I took care of it. I had to. Please say somethin’?”

  I jump at the touch of my father’s hand on my shoulder.

  “We’re here, Carey.”

  I blink at him, seeing someone else.

  “We’re here,” he repeats.

  He pulls onto the scenic overlook and shuts off the truck, then comes around to my side and reaches out a hand to help me down. I make pretend I don’t see it, skin and warmth, not foreign or strange like it should be. But I don’t deserve it. I don’t deserve the help.

  “Here.”

  He reaches into the truck.

  “Put on your hat and mittens.”

  I take my time, even though, at the sight of my trees, my heart leaps with joy. Will they recognize me, this girl of faux ermine and bedazzled jeans?

  He follows behind me. I know the way home like I know the sky at night. It’s as if no time has passed.

  When we reach our clearing, I stop, unsure for a moment. The fire pit is a charred black-and-gray circle, almost undistinguishable from the surrounding snow. The camper sags in its same old place, but looking much smaller and shabbier than I remember.

  I rush ahead through the brush, leaving him alone for a good ten minutes as I make my way to the hollow tree. Scooping out the accumulation of snow, the metal glints through, and I pluck it out. I reckon the string still smells like Mama. I take a sniff.

  “Carey?” He yells through the tiny window. “I’m already inside.”

  Up close, I see the front lock of the camper’s been busted and the door handle juts at an odd angle. In the doorway, my eyes water as the fumes sting my nose. I reckon the fire isn’t that old. I stare at the ruins.

  And then I remember. Frantic, I pull up the floor panel over the front left wheel, and it’s still there—Mama’s watch—passed down by my gran.

  I used to pretend watches were like o
utside hearts, caring about our lives. I used to hold up the watch and say to Jenessa, “Even though she’s gone, her heart is still with us.”

  Jenessa never met our Gran. She died during my third year in the woods. I used to wring my hands, imagining her driving by my parents’ old house, or back at her own, pushing aside the curtains to peep out the picture glass, watching for cookie- girl. Waiting for me.

  The second hand tick, tick, ticks. It’s like an omen, the fact that it still works. My father takes it from me. Recognition floods his face.

  “I’d as soon bust anything of Mama’s under my heel,” I admit, “but one day, Jenessa might want something from her gran. She learned time on that watch.”

  He tucks it into his pocket for safekeeping. I glance at the delicate watch on my wrist, the one Melissa gave me. Funny how we can’t hold on to time, even when it’s strapped to our wrists.

  I survey the skeletal remains of the rest of my poetry books, burned to a crisp. I thought I’d be taking them back with me, the stack sliding back and forth across the backseat as we drove. Something for me to read in prison. Instead, the sight of them hurts so hard, I can’t breathe.

  My father clears the snow from the rickety stairs, using the rake that’s missing two teeth. I watch him, his red scarf a streak of color against the gray surroundings, this man who doesn’t fit in here at all. Willing my feet to move, I gather wood, branches and kindling, and he uses the matches from his cigarettes to light the fire.

  It’s time.

  I swallow hard, raising my eyes and then lowering them. It’s not so much what the man did to me. It’s what I did to him.

  The savage in humanity.

  Funny how a person knows what shame is, even when you don’t have a name for it. No matter. It feels the same.

  “Something happened out here, didn’t it?” he asks, lighting a cigarette.

  “Yes, sir.” Please, Saint Joseph. “I did something wicked wrong.”

  I look straight into his eyes, gathering myself into the baptized Carey, shoulders back, ready to put a finish on things.

  “Tell me.”

  “I was the real thirteen, and Jenessa was five. . . .”

  I pause, wavering.

  “Go on.”

  “We were eatin’ dinner by the fire. A man came out of nowhere, lookin’ for Mama. He said she owed him money for drugs.”

  His jaw sets. The cigarette burns down toward his fingers, but he doesn’t smoke it.

  “He was on the meth. Drunk on moonshine, too.”

  My father eyes are so sad. Pained.

  He already knows.

  “He took off my jeans and he hurt me,” I whisper. “I couldn’t push him off.”

  I look away, but not before I note the tears slipping down his cheeks.

  “I fell asleep in the middle of it.”

  “Passed out,” he says gruffly. “It happens to people when they’re seriously hurt or shocked.”

  I nod in agreement, filing the phrase away for future use.

  “Where was Jenessa?”

  His words cling thick as tree sap, hoping against hope.

  But I can’t give it to him.

  “She was sittin’ right there, like you are now.”

  I flinch when he stands up suddenly, turning away from me. He swears under his breath, kicking the ground with his boots, his hands in fists.

  “She saw what happened?” he asks.

  I talk to his back.

  “Yes, sir. When I woke up, he was gettin’ ready to hurt her like he hurt me. So I snuck into the camper and got my shotgun.”

  He spins around and finds my eyes. I nod. He heard right.

  “I shot him in the shoulder. I was aimin’ for the heart, but he moved. I told Ness to lock herself in the camper and not come out until I gave the say-so.”

  He watches me with eyes I can’t read. No matter.

  I pause. “He promised he’d come back to hurt us. He said he’d keep comin’ back.”

  I kick dirt, leaves, and snow onto the fire until it sputters and dies, then motion for him to follow. I retrace the trail we trekked that night, not surprised I remember the way, as these woods were my whole world. The trail leaves off and the undergrowth thickens, the tree branches blocking the sunlight. I move by instinct, noting the terrain and the sound of the creek, the babbling water first to my right, then over my shoulder.

  In the light, it takes only thirty minutes to reach the spot. I know it’s the place because of the tire graveyard. We both tripped over the discarded tires that night. I slide down the bank of the ravine. The body will be just like the bear carcass we found last year. Aheap of bleached bones and telltale hide.

  My father slides down behind me, his breath heavy with exertion. He stands next to me, surveying the area.

  We kick around.

  “Here,” I call.

  Side by side, we stare at the hump under the cover of leaves and a dusting of snow. I push the end of it with my toe.

  A jawbone falls away, stopping against a rock. Some teeth are missing; others are rotted. Meth, I think.

  This time, it’s my father who turns and retches.

  I chant to myself.

  Ness will be okay. Ness will be okay. That’s all that matters. Ness will be okay.

  My body shakes. I can’t make it stop. My father holds me against him, warming me like he’d warmed Shorty. I close my eyes, making a memory.

  Then: “I reckon you won’t be wantin’ me no more, sir.” I shove out from under his arm, ready to accept my punishment. “But Ness had nothin’ to do with this. I put her in the camper, and took care of b’ness.”

  “Listen to me, Carey. Look at me.”

  I wrench my eyes from his boots.

  “It’s called self-defense, you hear me? You had a right to protect yourself and your sister.”

  His eyes shift to the mound, but I’m woods-smart; I can see he’s shocked. I can feel the distance, falling cool between us. I stand frozen like Jenessa, bean- spoon bouncing off the leaves. His voice fills the woods from far, far away as I remember what I spent the last year desperate to forget.

  “Carey?”

  And then he looks like him again. Looking at me.

  He believes me.

  He extends his hand.

  But hands hurt too much. Again, I pretend I don’t see.

  It’s almost dusk when we reach the camper. He sits on a stump, the one I used to sit on when I played for Nessa, the notes weaving through the firelight, the music adding its own color to the yellow, orange, red.

  He lights a cigarette, the tip glowing like a star that’s fallen to earth. Finally, as the shadows grow long, he turns to me.

  “And that’s when Jenessa stopped talking,” he says, but it’s not a question.

  “Yes, sir. What happens in the woods stays in the woods.”

  He inhales, then exhales a trail of smoke.

  “We’re going to need to tell the police. Fill out a report. We’ll have to take them back to the body.”

  “I understand, sir.”

  “I want to be honest with you, Carey. I don’t know what might happen. I’ll do all I can to help you.”

  “Saint Joseph’s son said, ‘The truth will set you free.’ I reckon it’s true.”

  “It’s a good start. And I want you to tell them everything. You hear me? Everything that was ever done to you. Everything that happened that night. You know why?”

  I have no idea.

  “You were the victim, Carey. Not him. And sweetie—”

  My eyes well, the eyes of the girl from before the woods.

  “You have nothing to be ashamed of.”

  I nod at his boots.

  Flooded with feelings I don’t have words for, I bend down to fetch the old lantern, which is lying on its side under the picnic table. When I turn the key, the light shines out of my hands.

  He waits on the steps while I enter the camper, holding the lantern in front of me and searching for anythin
g salvageable. I never thought I’d cry over this place. I push aside debris, the remains of Nessa’s blankie blackened and hard to the touch. It’s gone, all gone—our old life is gone.

  “You tell anyone about this and I’ll come back and snap both your necks,” he grunts, each thrust like a bolt of lightnin’ rippin’ through my body.

  I slip my skin and rise into the inky dark, sit on the arm of one of the white stars, my legs swingin’.

  “I might have to hit this again sometime,” he says. “I’ll give your Mama a discount.”

  One hundred dollars, I think. One hundred dollars, for breakin’ and enterin’. Before the white-star night, that was one of the lucky things. None of those men ever had one hundred dollars.

  I’ve detailed every mole, freckle, and mark on the dark underbelly of the Hundred Acre Wood. Looking through the doorway, my father’s eyes are bright, but I don’t feel it, none of it. I am ice over the creek. I am as emotionless as a hundred-dollar bill as I close the camper door forever.

  Standing in the snow, I reach into my pocket, the key cold against my palm. Using all my might, I fling it far into the trees.

  The man didn’t know that I knew his name—Josiah Perry—or who he was, his evil, gap-toothed grin a photo negative of the angelic smile that sleeps each night in the bedroom across from mine, Shorty curled up around her like an aura.

  A trick baby. A fuck for a fix. The words are as ugly as what Mama did to bring Nessa into the world.

  “You’re making a big mistake!”

  I reckon I’ll take the secret of his identity to my grave, but not for my sake. For Nessa’s.

  When we leave camp, the only thing I take with me besides my g’s and Gran’s watch is my dad. Until he offers his hand. This time, I take that, too.

  The ride home is silent but different. We’re both different. Somehow, I’m older. Somehow, he’s realer.

  If the newness had a sound, it would be the sound of the last puzzle pieces snapping into place, the kind that fit even when you don’t want them to.