Unfolding

  “So why do you climb in the car with every stupid guy who asks? There’s me and Connor off that list, but that’s pretty much it. Do you think they care, like, at all? Do you know how guys talk and what they say? Well, I don’t, because I can’t handle listening to them. What do they tell you? That they need you? Love you?

  “If you don’t believe me, listen to the guy who you think of like a mother. How can you see everything and be so dang blind?”

  “Oh. My. God,” she whispered.

  We drove for two silent hours. There was no way to fix it, fix us. I drove and hoped for a seizure to come and end the misery.

  “Do you enjoy my letters?”

  Her voice so cold, so distant.

  “No . . . yes. I read a bunch of them.” Stop. Stop. Leave it. “I thought you’d be happy. At least they reached your mother.” I shook my head. I couldn’t stop digging.

  “Good. I’m glad you enjoyed them. Since we’re coming clean, you selfish ape, I go out to prove to myself that my no still works, to remind myself that I’m worth . . . I’m worth it. You should stick around and listen to the fools in the locker room. Listen to what they say about me. Listen to what they can’t say.”

  “Who says you’re not worth—”

  She glanced sharply at me and swallowed hard and I knew.

  Had Connor been here, I would have at least tried to kill him. But he wasn’t. It was just me and my pain, and I didn’t know how to kill that.

  “Connor tries to take,” Stormi said resolutely. “But if you speak his name again, I will find some way to kill you.”

  “You just did.”

  Stormi blinked hard. “It shouldn’t be hard to forget him. We’re not going back.”

  “Whatever.” My mind whirred. “Wait. What about my parents? Ms. P? Of course we’ll go back.” I veered off the road, regained composure, and slowed. “Won’t we?”

  Stormi reached down between us, gently lifted the poster that had found its way into the truck, and flattened it over her thighs. She placed it so I could see it. “You didn’t pay for gas. Now they have our license plate for sure, they know this truck, they’ll know where I live. They’ll look for us there, and when they do . . .” She pointed at the photo of Tres. “We’ll have bigger problems.”

  “How is he bigger than what happened? And Con . . . the nameless guy? What is going on?” I rubbed my face with a gas-scented hand. “What bigger problems?”

  She was gone again, and I swallowed hard. How many hurtful things can a guy say in one conversation?

  “And Tres.” I forced a smile. “What idiot thought he was your grandfather?”

  In the distance, a lit-up squad car screamed nearer. It raced by, leaving a trail of sound.

  “Stormi? I’m sorry, Stormi.”

  “Turn off when you can.” She straightened. “It’s time that we talk.”

  Clouds gathered quick and ominous, and we drove off the main road, deeper into the hills. We’d left the wombing cover of the Ozarks back in Gullary, and I knew what lay west: they didn’t call it No Man’s Land without cause. Red dirt, tumbleweed, stretches of flat, and winds that stole your sight. A chest flutter sounded an anxious note. I was leaving all I knew, risking a future on the girl I suddenly didn’t. Not going back?

  This hadn’t been part of my plan, well, Tres’s plan.

  We wound through the gentle hills. My mind felt solid, but my dumb heart was broken.

  Connor. I knew it.

  Stormi scanned this way and that, asking me to slow at each rundown farmstead. I wasn’t sure what she was looking for, but one peek at that sky and I knew we didn’t have time to be choosy.

  The storm gust hit, pushing the truck off line and onto the chatter strips lining the shoulder. Stormi jumped.

  “Keep on the road, Jonah.”

  “We need to get off the road. There’s swirling up there. We need shelter.”

  Stormi closed her eyes. “Turn in to the next place. It’ll be vacant.”

  I took a quick right and snaked onto a property so decrepit, fears of breaking and entering vanished. We scrambled out and blew toward the boarded-up front porch.

  “Busted window!” I pointed.

  “Go inside.” Stormi pushed me forward. I wedged my spine through the opening and tumbled in, landing with a thud on hardwood. Stormi did not follow.

  “Stormi?” I winced and stared out the window. She walked into the distance, lit like a strobe in the afterglow of lightning strikes. Rain poured down on arms spread-eagled. Her face was upturned, soaking in the wet.

  “You’ll get killed out there,” I called, but my voice was feeble.

  She needs you.

  I heard it, plain as plain, but my legs were rooted. The next bolt cracked nearby, and by this time Stormi had fallen to the ground. She pounded the earth again and again, screaming into the night. I’d spent hours staring at her curtain, but this felt so private, so agonizing, I couldn’t watch, and slumped down to the floor.

  Stormi fell apart, and I was afraid.

  She needs you.

  When next I peeked, she stood at the window, soaked and shivering, tears streaming down her face. I backed up as she crawled in and fell into my arms. We found the corner and huddled, as ancient boards creaked with each gust.

  Forever passed, and in the blackness of the main room, I stared up.

  “Do you think she’ll hold?”

  Stormi’s breath came in staccato bursts. “Yes.” Her hand found my arm in the dark.

  There are places filled with memory, where the past hangs thick like dough. This old place was like that, refusing to crumble, though countless storms had certainly come to call. Ma would say the spirit was strong in those walls. Stormi seemed to be fighting that spirit. Finally, the words.

  “Let me talk, and don’t interrupt. Let me get this out while I can, here, where you can’t see me.”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  She smacked my arm, but in the darkness her fist glanced off my shoulder and cuffed me across the jaw. “I said, don’t interrupt.” Again, Stormi gripped my forearm.

  “But—”

  She released me long enough to smack again, and I held my tongue. Soon she softened, laying her head on my lap.

  “Have you ever felt summoned?”

  “Dad was summoned for jury once, down to Tulsa.”

  “Shut up!”

  “Sorry, it just sounded like a question.”

  The storm crackled overhead, and above us, the busted chandelier tinkled. Each remaining shard of dew-drop glass reflected the sky’s light show, creating a disco ball effect. The flashes were tough on an epileptic, but my mind remained my own, and I waited, and waited.

  “I got the first letter when I was ten. Remember Danny?”

  Of course I did. Dad fired him from the gallery without cause—well, without good cause. Truth is, Dad needed a job for me. Danny was gone from Gullary the next day, and nobody had heard from him since.

  Stormi continued, “He hand delivered it.”

  “I’m not following.” I slapped my hand over my mouth.

  She sighed. “Tres wrote to me. When I was a little girl, he introduced himself. Of course I showed it to Martha, and she had the test done immediately.”

  “Test?”

  “A grandparentage test. It turned out Tres was my grandpa after all.”

  I winced my back into a new position. “You’re kidding! Well, that’s great, right? I mean, you actually know someone from your family! You know, maybe a violent-convict-type of family member, but still . . .” She was silent. “That is great, isn’t it?”

  More lightning.

  “His letters started coming every week.” Stormi tapped my thigh, slow and metered. “Each one ended the same. ‘Do your job, Stormi. And whatever you do, don’t get hooked up with that Jonah.’”

  “Me?”

  “No. The other Jonah. Of course you.” She exhaled, and her voice softened. “But I did. I fell for Jonah.”

&nbsp
; “Me?”

  Another smack. “Don’t go there. Not now. Tres wrote more than once that you’d keep me from ‘carrying through my summons.’ He said that the more I felt for you, the less I’d see. The less I’d let myself see.” Stormi paused. “But I was ten. None of it made sense. It does now. Tres was right. I feel it. I was summoned, and I think Tres was the one who called me, called me to do something, something big and important and terrible, but I can’t see it, Jonah. I still can’t. And you’re all rolled up in it. But all I see is you.”

  “Me?”

  “Could you use another word?”

  “Uh—”

  “Then you took over at the museum. Tres took to you. He was pulling you in, and it scared me, but I figured, what could he do to you from behind bars? But now . . .”

  I tried to reason out her story, but I kept getting stuck at the same point.

  “You felt for me?” I asked.

  Stormi sat up. “Seriously? That’s all you heard of what I said?”

  “Well, not all, but it seems to be the sticky part—good sticky, you know? Well, sticky isn’t really the right word. Maybe consequential is a better word. Consequential with hopeful implications. Right? Or not.”

  She started to stand and I grabbed her arm. “Hang on, I’m pressing out the me part and now do recall the rest. Let me get this straight. We’re running from Gullary, because toothless Tres, from inside his cell, called you forth from wherever you came from and placed you down in a sleepy town to do something terrible, but you couldn’t do it because of me. Now you’re scared that, what, he’ll find us and gum us to death?” I chuckled. She didn’t, and I cleared my throat. “You said it yourself—he’s just an old guy.”

  “He’s more than that.”

  I shivered. Because I knew she was right. Like Stormi, he also knew too much. He may have slept behind bars, but I couldn’t recollect a conversation in which he wasn’t in control.

  The door rattled hard, and Stormi scampered to her feet. “He’s here,” she whispered.

  “The wind is here,” I whispered back.

  She pulled me into the kitchen, and then beneath the table. “No, he’s found us. He’s been following us the entire time.”

  From outside, “Jonah.” My name swept away with the wind, but I had heard it.

  “Tres.” I sustained the whisper. “Your grandpa is not going to kill us. He had a chance and he didn’t.”

  I climbed out from beneath the table, walked toward the window, and froze. A silhouette, dark against dark, stood in the room.

  “I tried the door, but you didn’t answer, so then I tried the window. This might be illegal. I’ve never been illegal before.”

  “Arthur? What are you . . . ? How did you . . . ?”

  He shifted, and in the dark I could tell he walked on unfamiliar footing. “You’re a friend. I have to warn you. You and Stormi are in a fierce zugzwang.”

  CHAPTER 10

  “Something murky is happening in Gullary.”

  Arthur sat at the kitchen table, staring out the broken window. The wind and rain relented, and we joined him in the darkened room.

  “The older ones are scared. My parents. Your parents. And those older still. Everyone is scared, and everyone is talking about you and the prisoner. A bunch have set out after you. Some want to bring you back, and then there’s Mr. Cartwright.” Arthur pulled a candy bar from his pocket, removed the wrapper, and took a large bite. “He’s why I’m here.”

  “Cartwright?” Stormi tensed; I could feel it even in the dark.

  Another big chocolate bite. Arthur nodded. “He was going door to door asking everyone if they knew where you were. I couldn’t have him ask me. I would have had to tell him what I suspected.”

  “Why?” Stormi asked.

  “He just would,” I answered.

  “So I had to leave, because I knew.”

  “And you found us in an abandoned house?”

  His chewing slowed. “I don’t have a good explanation. I drove past a gas station, saw commotion, and knew I was close. I knew you’d get off the highway. But I kept driving until the storm and, I don’t know, I felt summoned. Then there was Stormi’s truck.”

  “Summoned? By who?” I turned to Stormi, who slowly shook her head.

  “So Arthur used a familiar word, a really unusual, coincidental word. It doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t mean Tres had anything to do with him finding us. And, Stormi, none of what you said means we should be afraid of the guy, but Gullary is. Do you know anything else? What did he do? What does he know?”

  Ringing in my ears drowned out her answer, and I slumped to the floor. Old Rickety was also summoned, and had his sights aimed directly at me. He struck with a force I hadn’t experienced in years. There was no gradual lead in—no easing into hell—and my brain raised the white flag without a fight.

  I was out.

  I came to in the truck, with my head bouncing against the passenger side window. Stormi drove with purpose, and Arthur sat squeezed in between. Control of my mouth didn’t return to me for some time, but thoughts that made little sense flooded in.

  Arthur found us.

  Tres was looking for us.

  Stormi hated Tres.

  Stormi liked me.

  Stormi liked me? A drip of spittle fell from my mouth, traced down my chin. All her teasing was real? No, locker room stories about her; they were real. How could she fall for the monster? She deserved someone better. Or maybe I did.

  I am never going home.

  The thought rattled around in my mind. A life on the run. A life with Stormi. Never going home. The idea didn’t shock me. It didn’t frighten me, and the wildness of it would have made me smile were I in control of my mouth. Bonnie and Clyde. Stormi and Jonah.

  With faithful sidekick Arthur.

  We bumped on through the night.

  “There.” Arthur pointed at the turnoff. “There’s the sign. Bishop, Oklahoma. That’s where we need to go.”

  Stormi lowered her voice. “Why Bishop? Jonah still hasn’t told me. He only said he knew a place.”

  I peeked at Arthur. I could see him thinking, trying to find a truth that wouldn’t get me killed.

  “It just played out that way.”

  Stormi was quiet. “Okay, then.”

  Well done, Arthur. Well done.

  Bishop, Oklahoma

  The Jewel of Red Carpet Country

  Population 102

  Stormi rumbled to a stop at the hand-painted sign on decaying wood, ominous in the headlamp’s beam. “Are you back, Jonah?”

  I blinked my eyes. Sleep must’ve found me, and I pushed myself higher, peered around.

  “Yeah, that was a tough one. Sorry. Can you see the town?”

  Stormi slowly shook her head. She knew what I knew; we’d reached the end of the world, the Oklahoma panhandle.

  Though I’d never been, we spent a good deal of time discussing the panhandle in school. That Bishop was nowhere to be seen on any map did not surprise me; panhandle history was filled with places that were, and then weren’t.

  Okie towns disappeared for many reasons. Those in the northeast vanished due to the poison man dug up. But panhandle ghost towns, they just blew away. Some started as Native American settlements. Tribes held the land gently, loosely, letting the ground shift like the sand dunes near Beaver. White folk thundered in, determined to fix those towns to earth. The lack of trees should’ve been the tell; panhandle roots don’t stretch down deep.

  When times got hard, when the dust came, people blew away, leaving remnants, remnants of lives. Soon the wind reclaimed the remnants, leaving no trace of man.

  Except perhaps this population sign.

  Arthur spotted it first, a dot of light in the distance. After a nod from me, Stormi eased toward a bar that seemed to rise out of the earth. We pulled up, our truck awash in dust, and joined near thirty others parked every which way, headlamps on full. That was it. This was the dramatic culmination of Tres?
??s plan.

  Bishop consisted of one bar.

  Moonlight refracted in the glimmer of those headlamps, casting mini rainbows all around. When the wind died, it shone down large and bright, and to each horizon, the world turned flat. No hills to cover us or valleys to shield us. No trees. Just space, wide and dark and lonely. And a lit-up bar.

  “What exactly made you think this would be a good place to hide?” Stormi chewed a nail.

  I couldn’t tell her that we were here because of Tres, because he had suggested it.

  “I knew Bishop was in the panhandle, that it was far away without being too far.” I waited, knowing Stormi would sense the stupid in my answer. But she didn’t. She scanned the jostling kids—most of them seemed a whisker above drinking age—bit her lip, and shrugged.

  “Tell me where to go,” Stormi said quietly.

  “I think inside.”

  And with the direction came the thought. I had no idea why we were here. Not one to follow without cause, I had done so given Tres’s directions. In that way, he was a bit like Stormi—authoritative—and I hadn’t questioned.

  Until now.

  We pulled into the parking lot, which looked little different than the plain around it, and quieted the engine. Stormi and Arthur both turned to me, and I forced a smile. “This can’t be all of Bishop, right?”

  I pushed out of the truck and stretched. Long drives took a toll on my spine and I forced it vertical. I weaved through the laughter. It wasn’t directed at me, I knew that, but it cut just the same. A lonely hurt. An outside-looking-in hurt. It had been that way in Gullary, when kids would gather and I would stumble on their mockery.

  Here, the three of us passed through like ghosts. Unseen. Unnoticed.

  “Hey, girl!”

  Well, two of us passed on through.

  Stormi’s hand found mine, and she pulled me onto the porch and inside.

  We stood blinking in the doorway. It was silent, motionless, as if the place had somehow been turned inside-out. There was a bar on the right, a bartender reading a paper behind it, and three haggard men sprinkled about the tables.