Reality Check (2010) (8 page)

Cody dropped out of school after Columbus Day weekend. He didn't make a formal announcement or discuss it with anyone--although he did write Clea an email about it, never sent because of how rambling and stupid it seemed when he read it over--but simply stopped going.

Junior came over. "What the hell are you doin', man?" "I'm sixteen. You can drop out when you're sixteen." "They changed it to seventeen."
"So? That's two months away. They going to arrest me?

School sucks."
"I know. Christ, believe me, I know, but what else is
there?"
"Real life."
"Real life?" said Junior. He gazed out the window of the
apartment. Rain was falling hard, slanting down at a sharp
angle. Junior pounded his fist into his other hand. "If I ever see
that fuckin' Martinelli . . . "
"Nah," said Cody, even though he'd had the same thought,
more than once.

Cody's father figured it out a few days later. He didn't argue, didn't try to change Cody's mind. All he said, after gazing at Cody lying on the couch, was: "Means you'll be getting a job, right? And soon."

Cody called Sue Beezon at Beezon Lumber. "Ms. Beezon? It's me. Cody."
"Hi, Cody. I hear you hurt your leg."
"It's not too bad. I, uh . . . "
"The team sure needs you. That's what everyone's saying."
"Thanks," Cody said. "Uh, Ms. Beezon? Remember when you mentioned about a job next summer and everything?"
"Sure," she said. "And I meant it."
"I was wondering if maybe I could start sooner."
"Sooner?"
"Like this week, if possible."
"We really don't hire any part-time help, Cody. With the paperwork and all it's just not worth it."
Cody cleared his throat, suddenly all blocked up. "The thing is," he said, "that's what I'm kind of talking about."
"What is, Cody?"
"Full-time," Cody said.
Sue Beezon was silent for a moment or two. Cody thought of his mother, something that didn't happen much anymore. "How's Monday to start?" she said, her voice a little softer than it had been.
"Thanks, Ms. Beezon," he said. "Seven sharp."

Cody spent most of the time till Monday at the gym. His range of motion kept improving. His strength rose up above pitiful. His knee swelled up at night. He iced. He slept.

He reported to the yard Monday at 6:55. Right from the beginning, things weren't the same as they'd been in the summer. For example, Frank Pruitt no longer worked for Beezon Lumber. He'd quit or been fired; Cody never did find out which. The new driver was called Dax. Dax was a poor driver, a horn honker who went much too fast, didn't see things he should have, rolled through every stop sign. He chewed tobacco all day long--spitting out the window when they were in the truck, spitting just about anywhere when they were on a work site--and also smelled bad. Worst of all, he was a bigot, and every time he opened his mouth, out came a nasty comment about anyone different from him. What made him think that a potbellied, bad-smelling white guy who never did any of the heavy lifting was somehow at the top of the heap? Cody thought of asking him, but he didn't know what would happen next and he needed this job. Mostly he stayed silent all day long.

But the pay was good--still $10.75 an hour--although overtime didn't seem to happen when the weather cooled. Probably a good thing: At first, Cody's knee swelled up terribly and he often limped while making the deliveries at the end of the day. If Dax noticed, he made no comment. After work Cody usually bought a sandwich at the Main Street Deli and stopped by the gym. His range of motion returned to normal; his strength improved, but oh, so slowly. From the gym Cody went home, iced, slept. He got into a routine. Sometimes he heard news from school--Tonya had started going out with Dickie van Slyke, Jamal had signed a letter of intent with Boise State--but it all seemed distant. He began to hang out with older kids, nineteen- and twenty-year-olds, not really kids, in fact, who had jobs in construction, or at the mine, or at Home Depot; or no jobs at all. He found himself at parties with lots of booze, went home one night with a waitress who had a baby sleeping in the next room. The weekend after that he stayed home.

At the end of the season the Little Bend
Guardian
, the local weekly, always published a special issue with pictures of all the players. Cody was at the Main Street Deli, picking up his after-work sandwich, when he saw the football issue in the rack. He moved toward the rack, wondering whether there'd be anything about him, going back and forth in his mind about whether to buy the paper or not.

Cody never got to the football article, because of something on the front page; something that got his heart beating fast, something, in fact, that woke him up and made him feel alive, as though he'd been in hibernation. Alive, but not in a good way: What Cody saw on the front page of the
Guardian
was a photograph of Clea. Over it, a big black headline read: "Local Girl Missing."

Author es in the town of North Dover, Vermont, have reported the d sappearance of s xteen-year-old Clea Weston of Little Bend. Ms. Weston, a boarding student at Dover Academy, was last seen on Wednesday, horseback rid ng on trails in a wooded area near the campus. With n hours of the horse return ng a one to the stab e, local po ce ass sted by vo unteers began a search of the area. The search cont nued yesterday, supp emented by the presence of Vermont State Po ce Search and Rescue and track ng dogs, but as of today at 2
A
.
M
. MST no trace of Ms. Weston has been found. Her father, we -known tt Bend nvestor Winthrop C. "W n" Weston, could not be reached for comment.

read the article three times, forcing himself to go slow, to try to make sense of it, to absorb all the facts. It made no sense, no matter how slowly he went, and he couldn't believe they
were
facts, any of them. When the paper started shaking in his hands, he dug out his cell phone and called Clea's number.

"Hi, this is Clea. I'm not here right now, but please leave a message and I'll get back to you."
"It's me," Cody said. "I--are you all right? You're in the paper but I just can't believe . . . Call if you--when you get this. I hope everything's . . ." He clicked off.
"Next," said the cashier.
Cody paid for his sandwich and the paper, went outside. For a moment or two he couldn't breathe. A cold west wind was blowing down Main Street; dark clouds, almost charcoal colored, swept across the sky. Cody turned his face to the wind, took a deep breath. He had air in his lungs, plenty of it, but still felt like he couldn't breathe. His cell phone rang. He snapped it open. Clea?
Not Clea. "Hey," said Junior, "heard this news about Clea?"
"I just--yeah, it's in the
Guardian
. But is it true?"
"Everyone's talking about it. You know Matty Karlinsky?" Cody had a vague memory of a skinny kid with glasses. "His old man works for Mr. Weston, and he says they think she must of fallen off her horse and gotten lost in the woods. Mr. Weston flew out there yesterday. It's gonna be on the news."
"She's a good rider," Cody said.
"Anyone can fall off a horse," Junior said. "Horses suck, you know that."
"Was she riding Bud?"
"Who's Bud?"
"Her horse."
"From here? She took her horse with her?"
"Why not?" Cody said, annoyed by the question--as though Junior had made some criticism of Clea.
"Hell, I don't know," Junior said. There was a silence. "How's the knee?"
"Gettin' better."
"Nice," said Junior. "Everything's so fucked up, you know?"
"Yeah."
"They say there's a party tonight, up by the lookout. You wanna swing by?"
"I don't know."
"Come on."
"I'll think about it," Cody said.
"You broke up, right? You and her?"
"Right."
"Okay, man. Later."
"Later."
Cody clicked off. He didn't feel like a party, getting drunk on a cold night, fifty-fifty chance of the cops busting it at any moment. Where he wanted to be was in those Vermont woods, searching for Clea. He went back to the apartment over the Red Pony, switched on the TV in time to catch a still photograph of her.
Clea was sitting in a lawn chair, one wing of Cottonwood in the background, a big smile on her face. Then a reporter with a microphone came on-screen, a tag at the bottom reading
_NORTH
DOVER
,
VT
. The reporter stood beside a big red barn in bright daylight, meaning they'd taped the coverage earlier. Speaking at first with the camera on him, then over video footage, the reporter said what Cody already knew from the
Guardian
article. Cody concentrated on the video footage: views of the most beautiful school he'd ever seen, huge buildings of brick and stone facing each other across broad green quadrangles; twenty or thirty people, some in uniform, working their way up a wooded hillside, yellow leaves clinging to a few branches, but most of the trees bare; a horse--Bud, as Cody could tell from that diamond-shaped blaze--munching hay in a stall. Then the reporter was back on the screen, with two people beside him, one a cop in uniform, the other a blond-haired kid a little older than Cody.
"On my right is Sergeant Ted Orton of the Dover police. Sergeant, what can you tell us about the progress of the search?"
"At this point," said the sergeant, a burly guy with a red nose and a bushy white mustache, "we're still working on the assumption that the girl got thrown from her horse, maybe losing consciousness for a while, and then became disoriented and wandered off in the wrong direction. It's easy to get lost in these woods even for a local, and the young lady in question was new to the area. If the weather holds, we should have a state police helicopter on scene in an hour or so."
"You mention weather, sergeant. What role does weather play in the search?"
"Weather's been warm for the time of year, low forties at night," the sergeant said. "Could be a lot worse."
"Sergeant Ted Orton of the Dover police, speaking of the chances of survival in the night woods," said the reporter. "And on my left, a senior at Dover Academy and fellow member of the equestrian team, Townes DeWitt. I understand, Townes, that you were one of the last people to see Clea Weston."
Townes DeWitt nodded. He was tall and strong looking, his blond hair very straight and kind of long, drooping down over one eye.
"What can you tell us about that, Townes?"
"We were coming back from practice a little early," Townes said. "Clea wanted to try one of the trails in the woods. No one thought much about it--she's done it before, and she's an excellent rider."
The reporter nodded and said, "That's the latest from North Dover, Vermont. Now back to the studio." There was a pause with the three of them standing in front of the big red barn, the reporter and the sergeant gazing into the camera, Townes DeWitt glancing at something off to one side--maybe something amusing, from the slight change in his expression.