The Edge of Nowhere (38 page)

Tears were streaming down Mrs. Cartwright’s face. She said, “Thank you, Seth. Thank you for coming, dear,” and she went back into the house.

Seth saw Hayley watching him. She was soaked from the rain, but her face wasn’t red any longer, and her expression was odd. She said in an entirely different voice, a completely calm voice, what he would think of as the old Hayley voice, “What happened in the woods that day, Seth?”

But Seth didn’t know what her expression meant, and he didn’t know why the old Hayley voice was suddenly the one asking the questions. So he replied, “What the hell difference does it make?” and he got back into Sammy and drove away.

THIRTY-THREE

A
lot of things were messing with Seth’s head when he left the Cartwrights’ farm, but the subject of his sandals was front and center. If Becca had mentioned them to Hayley, she had a reason for doing it.

He was almost sorry he’d bought those sandals. They were all-weather and all-terrain. They were in-the-water as well as on-the-land. Provided your socks were warm enough, you could wear them year-round anywhere except in the snow. And that’s what he’d intended when he bought them: to wear them everywhere, all the time.

He wasn’t wearing them now because . . . because he wasn’t wearing them now. End of story. It wasn’t Hayley’s business why. It
also
wasn’t Hayley’s business to ask him questions about them. Or about anything, if it came down to it.

At this point, she was stressing him out. At this point, just about everything was starting to stress him out.

Part of this was his own fault. He’d had a deal with his parents and he wasn’t upholding his end of it. Hayley was right when she’d accused him of doing nothing to make the GED happen. There was no tutor and he wasn’t studying. And why was that? Because he couldn’t handle flunking the test and knowing for all time that he was a loser.

When he reached the highway and came to Freeland, Seth realized that there was
one
thing he could do to prove to himself that he wasn’t a hopeless case. He took himself to the farmers’ supply store.

He parked not far from some hay bales. They were covered with tarps against the weather, but you could still make out their sharp rectangular shapes. He went inside the building and prowled down the aisles till he found the dog food.

He heaved a forty-pound sack of it to his shoulder. Then he looked for something that Gus might like and might also not destroy in three minutes flat. He settled on a real bone with gristle attached, a huge thing that Gus would gnaw on for days.

Seth grabbed this bone and headed for the register. He was being rung up when a hand descended heavily on his shoulder and a voice he knew and loved more than anything said, “I’ll be paying for that. This, too.”

He looked up to see his grandfather. Ralph had an identical bag of kibble on his shoulder. Seeing this made Seth’s throat close because he knew that along with everything else he was supposing, Ralph was
also
supposing that Seth would forget to buy the food for his dog.

Seth said to the cashier, “Absolutely no frigging way,” and he handed over the money. He scooped up the food along with the bone and he strode outside. He went to the bales of hay, but he ran out of the gas of his indignation there. He dropped the bag of kibble and sank onto a bale. He turned the bone over and over in his hand.

He heard a
thump
, and someone sat down next to him. Then that beloved voice said to him, “I did you a grave wrong, Seth. I want your forgiveness. I hope you’ll give it.”

Seth said to his grandfather, “You even thought I’d forget to give you food for Gus.”

“I did. And I was wrong in that, too. I’m asking you to forgive me for that, too, Seth.”

“Grand, I didn’t steal your stuff,” Seth said. “And I
don’t
use drugs. My brain’s so scrambled anyway . . . C’n you think how much worse it’d be, if I used drugs?”

Ralph sighed. He took off his hat, scratched his head furiously, and reset the hat on his head. He said, “I know that. I had a moment of doubt, but doubt’s a human thing and I hope you know I’m human. But here’s the real heart of the matter: No matter what I think or what I thought, I never for one instant stopped loving you, boy.”

Seth thought about this and what it meant to be so wrong, to draw a conclusion without waiting for the facts that would constitute an explanation. He said, “I thought I had good reasons for taking your stuff without asking. I needed those things and someone needed my help. I’m sorry I didn’t ask you. But I thought if I did that, you’d ask questions.”

“So?” Ralph asked. “What if I had?”

“You can’t, Grand. Not about this. I need to help a friend and you need to have some faith in me.”

Ralph looked at him squarely for a very long time before he nodded and said, “I see.” He was quiet for a moment, during which he seemed to be studying the bone Seth was holding. He took one of his cowboy handkerchiefs from his pocket and honked loudly into it. He balled it up, eyed Seth again, and said, “C’n I ask you a question? How much of what’s going on these days has to do with Hayley?”

That was the real question, Seth thought. He hadn’t come close to answering it for himself, let alone to his grandfather.

“I don’t even know anymore.”

“Ah,” Ralph said. He leaned back against the hay bales. He looked up at the gray and angry sky. He blew out a long sigh and muttered, “Love sucks.”

Seth had to chuckle. “You got that right.”

“You ask me, the worst part of love is the not knowing part,” Ralph said.

“Not knowing if someone loves you back?”

“There’s that,” Ralph said. “There’s also not knowing what’ll happen next. Seems to me that there’s always one helluva big picture involved when a man and woman love each other. Problem is, no one can really see it.”

“I sure can’t,” Seth said.

“Believe me, you’re not alone in that.” Ralph put his hand on the back of Seth’s neck, and his hand was warm, calloused, and familiar. “Can I give you some Granddad information, Seth? It’s probably hogwash, but I’d like to say it.”

Seth wasn’t sure he wanted to hear, but Ralph’s apology had made things easier between them so he told his grandfather to go on. Ralph was glad to do so. He said the big lesson about loving someone was coming to understand that when love ended for one person, it ended for both people. He said the important part of this was recognizing
when
it had ended and not fighting against that. “Now, I’m not saying Hayley doesn’t love you any longer,” Ralph added. “All I’m saying’s you got to wait and see and not
push
so hard to make something where there might be nothing. Because I’m getting the feeling you’re pushing with Hayley. Would I be right?”

“Maybe,” Seth said. “I don’t really know. I mean, I
think
I understand why I’m doing what I’m doing. But then, sometimes I turn out to be wrong.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning I go over there because something’s wrong with her dad—I swear it, Grand—and I think I know what it is. I want to tell her and to tell her whole family, but she thinks I’m there for something else.”

“What d’you think?”

“I think,” Seth said slowly, “that it’s somewhere in between.”

“What is?”

“The truth.”

“Ah.”

“See, she thinks I’m jealous. She thinks everything I’ve done—and everything I do—is because I’m jealous.”

“And are you?”

“I guess. And I
know
it’s totally stupid to be jealous,” Seth said. “What good is it doing me? I can see that. But I got to say that so far . . . Grand, I haven’t been able to
help
how I feel. It’s just
there
, asking me to do something about it.”

“That’s the kind of thing that can get you off course,” Ralph noted.

“I know that for sure. Like, is it helping me get a tutor? Is it helping me work on my music with the trio? Is it helping me at
all
? Hell no.”

“Good you see that.” Ralph sighed again. “Me, I like to stay away from the unproductive feelings in life if I can. Jealousy’s one of them.”

“So far it’s not done a heck of a lot for me,” Seth admitted.

“Glad we agree on something. Beside the importance of feeding that dog of yours.” Ralph slapped his hands on his thighs and got to his feet. He heaved the sack of dog food to his shoulder. Seth did the same. They walked to Ralph’s truck, which, Seth saw, was parked next to his own VW. Gus was inside. Seth opened the door and the yellow Lab leapt down and then leapt up, paws on Seth’s shoulders.

Ralph let this go on for a minute before he said, “Inside, Gus,” and the dog obeyed. Then he said to Seth, “I want to ask your permission to do something, Seth.”

Seth’s eyebrows rose.
This
was certainly different. “What?”

“I want to talk to Hayley.”

“Hell, no, Grand. No way. I mean—”

Ralph’s raised hand stopped him. “Not about you and her. At least not directly. But there’re matters she and I need to discuss and I want your okay. Say the word, and I fade away like a shadow. But if it’s okay . . . ?”

Seth thought about this. When had his grandfather meant anything but the best? He said, “I guess. Okay. But c’n I give you some advice?”

“Always welcome.”

“Don’t mention her father.”

Ralph considered this as he smoothed his mustache. “Seth,” he finally replied, “if I’ve learned nothing else in my life—and God knows I’ve learned precious little—I do know one thing. The things you shouldn’t mention to people are the reason you should talk to them in the first place.”

THIRTY-FOUR

W
hen Hayley quietly swung the door open, she saw that Rhonda Mathieson was in her son’s room. She was shaving Derric’s head, devoid of bandages now. It was smooth and round, without a single mark on it that Hayley could see. She’d asked him about this once, teasing him about shaving his head in order to show off his perfect skull. He’d laughed at this, his boisterous, joyful, Derric laugh. It was just the custom in Uganda, he’d said. He liked it this way.

Rhonda turned the electric shaver off and said, “There now, darling.” She turned from the bed to see Hayley standing near the door. “I didn’t expect to see you, Hayley,” she said.

“I’m not on the list to visit. I just wanted to see how he is.”

“The same.” Rhonda forced a smile. “And how are you, dear?”

“I miss him.”

“Well, let me tell you, I completely understand that.”

“How are you and Undersheriff Mathieson doing?”

Rhonda turned back to the bed. She made a little fuss over Derric’s top sheet and his blanket, straightening the first and rearranging the second. As she did so, she said, “We don’t see too much of each other right now. We spell each other here, so it’s mostly at breakfast. He’s in Langley a lot. He wants to find out who hurt his boy. He wants to know what Derric was doing in the woods. Me, though? I just want Derric back.” She touched her son’s cheek as she said this.

Hayley thought there was something more to be said between them, but she didn’t say her part, and Rhonda didn’t say hers. Hayley looked around the room and saw that the most recent balloons were deflating and needed to be replaced. Rhonda saw where she was looking and went to unfasten them from the foot of the bed.

She said, “I’ll give you some time with him, Hayley. It’s always nice to see you. Thanks for coming.”

Hayley said, “Sure,” and approached the bed as Rhonda left the room. At Derric’s side, she saw that his lips were dry, so she dug a small tin of salve from her purse, and she smoothed some of it on his lips, and then with what remained on her fingers, she smoothed onto her own. It was like a kiss, and she thought about the night they
had
kissed each other after the Rwandan dancing. She couldn’t get her mind around everything that had changed in that moment and everything else that had happened since then.

He was such a friend. He was so special.

Look, I’ll give you Africa till you can have it yourself
, was how he’d put it, and he’d pulled out the first of dozens of pictures he’d shown her from the orphanage where Rhonda had first seen him.
Check out this van we used in Kampala,
he’d said with a laugh.
Good thing there wasn’t much rain there or the thing would’ve fallen apart. See this village, Hayl? We went there for a soccer game once, only instead we played music. See that thing there? It’s like an African xylophone. See, this is Warren. He learned to play it when he was seven. For me, though, it was always the sax.

It hurt to imagine she could hear his words. Hayley put her head close to Derric’s on the pillow. She closed her eyes and whispered into his ear. “Please, come back, Derric. You’re the only one who knows, and I can’t do this alone. You’ve got to come back.”

When she opened her eyes, though, his were still closed, still with that slight crescent of white showing at the bottom. She said to him, “We’re here at the hospital, Derric. Mom, Dad and me. Derric, things are getting worse.”