The Long and Faraway Gone (25 page)

“Ha.”

“Do you mind if I bring a date for you? My elderly uncle. I think you two are a match made in heaven.”

“Sure. You've got an uncle in Oklahoma City? And you never told me what you were doing at Burlington Coat Factory at one o'clock in the morning.”

“We're on our way,” Wyatt said.

C
ANDACE
LIVED ONLY
a few miles from Wyatt's uncle, in a neighborhood of small, tidy ranch houses built in the fifties. When she answered the door, she gave Wyatt a glare. She gave his uncle a big white flash of a smile.

“I'm Candace,” she said.

Wyatt's uncle shook her hand, gravely. “I'm Pete,” he said, “and I'm an alcoholic.”

Candace laughed. “Hi, Pete!”

“Sixteen and a half years.”

“Good for you! My dad just got his ten-­year chip.”

“I stopped drinking the day of the bombing. Tell her, Mikey. Not a drop since.”

“It's true,” Wyatt said.

“Good for you, Pete!” Candace said.

“I didn't do it alone, I'll tell you that.”

Candace looked at Wyatt. “Mikey?”

“Middle name,” Wyatt explained. “I switched over a long time ago. There were four other Michaels in my senior class.”

He felt a small, warm hand work its way into his. He looked down. Lily, pale and solemn. Wyatt wasn't sure what to do with her hand, so he just held it.

“We're having a picnic, Wyatt,” she said.

“It's pretty chilly out, Lily.”

She looked up at him with the long-­suffering patience of a medieval saint. “In the living room.”

“Got it,” Wyatt said.

“I don't know what she sees in you,” Candace said. “It was her idea to invite you over.”

Wyatt doubted that, but Lily nodded. She tugged at Wyatt's hand and led him into the house. Candace took Pete's hand and followed them.

A picnic blanket was spread in front of the sofa. Lily served everyone chicken-­salad sandwiches that had been cut into triangles, with Cheetos and grapes. When she finished, she sat down next to Wyatt, so close he could feel her breathing. She watched him and waited until he took the first bite of his sandwich before she took the first bite of hers.

“There are three different kinds of grapes in the world,” she said.

“No!” Pete said. “I don't believe it!”

“Grapes that make raisins,” Lily said. “Grapes that you eat. Grapes that make grape juice.”

“Very good,” Pete said.

Wyatt picked up a grape and examined it. Lily watched him.

“This one might be the fourth kind of grape,” Wyatt said.

Lily looked at her mother for a ruling. Wyatt tried to remember how to do the trick, the only one he knew. O'Malley had taught it to him one night after he'd gone up to the bar above the theater to swap movie passes for booze. O'Malley had used a cocktail olive and told Wyatt that the secret to magic was a full commitment to believing your own lie.

“You know, this might be the kind of grape, Lily,” Wyatt said, “that is impossible to squash.”

He set the grape on the coffee table. He covered it with a napkin.

“You're cleaning that up,” Candace said.

Wyatt slapped his palm down hard on the coffee table. He felt Lily jump. He removed the napkin. The grape had vanished. Lily's eyes went wide.

“Take off your shoe, please,” Wyatt told her. “Unsquashable grapes sometimes like cool, dark, stinky places.”

Candace laughed. Lily pulled off her sneaker and handed it to Wyatt. He reached deep inside the sneaker and produced the grape. He sniffed it, wrinkled his nose, and then popped it into his mouth.

A beat passed, and then Lily giggled. It was the first time, Wyatt realized, he'd seen her look her age, five, and not a century or so older. Candace, laughing harder now, poked her daughter in the ribs, and Lily kept giggling. Wyatt's uncle laughed, Wyatt laughed.

It was a nice moment, a moment of simple, stupid human happiness, the best kind. And yet even as Wyatt sat in the middle of the scene, he remained outside it, apart, as if partitioned off behind special glass that let in light but not heat. He'd experienced this sensation before. It was like looking at a photo of a family gathered around a roaring fire. The fire warmed the ­people in the photo but not the person holding the photo. You'd have to be crazy to think it ever would.

After lunch Wyatt settled his uncle in the rented Altima. Lily waved good-­bye from the porch and went back inside to play.

“So everything's been quiet at the Land Run?” Wyatt asked Candace when they were alone.

“Yeah. Do you think it's over? Maybe he's mad it's over, so he beat you up.”

Wyatt didn't think it was over. He doubted that Candace did either.

“I may have a real lead, finally,” he said.

“It's about time.”

Wyatt dropped his uncle off at home and drove back up Classen. He didn't want to run into Chip at the hotel, so he found a bar on Western that had strong and reasonably priced drinks, with a bonus view of the Baptist church across the street. The sign in front of the church said
AUTUMN
LEAVES, JESUS DOESN'T.

Wyatt had purchased a pack of three-­by-­five index cards. He wrote down the names, one per card—­
“Tate,” “Janella,” “Haygood,” “Ingram,” “Steve Herpes”
—­and lined the cards up on the bar in front of him. On the other cards, he wrote down everything he could remember about each person, every point of contact, one memory per card.

Haskell called around nine.

“Brett Williams will talk to you,” he said. “Tomorrow morning at ten. La Oaxaqueña Bakery on Southwest Twenty-­ninth.”

“You're a prince, Bill,” Wyatt said. “Don't ever let anyone say otherwise.”

 

A
little before seven, Julianna called and told the supervising nurse in the ER she had a family emergency and wouldn't be in for her shift that night. She said she was sorry for the last-­minute notice.

Silence. Julianna waited. “Hello?” she said.

“Is there anything else?”

“Just that.”

“Okay.”

The supervising nurse hung up. Julianna went to the fireplace, opened the damper, and reached up into the chimney. She'd been too enthusiastic when she'd taped the packet of cash to the metal wall of the firebox. She had to yank and yank. Ash sifted down. The plastic Target bag, once it came free, now smelled like the ghost of fires past. So did she.

An hour before she was supposed to meet Crowley at the lake, Julianna drove to the Double R Ranch, the big barn of a bar where she'd watched him pick up the woman with the braid. She thought it had been around this time, eleven or eleven-­thirty. She hoped so.

She didn't see Crowley's truck in the crowded parking lot. Either he'd switched vehicles, which was likely, or he continued to avoid places he knew Julianna could find him. Also likely. She left the cash in her car, tucked under the seat, and went inside.

Her first scan of the room came up empty. The man next to her, a biker standing alone at the bar, gave her a nudge with this elbow. His beard was gray and long, trembling and nebulous, like the stuffing a dog might tear from a plush toy.

“How 'bout a drink?”

“I'm meeting a friend,” Julianna said.

“We can be friends.”

She scanned the room again, losing hope. And then Julianna saw her, the hard-­looking redhead, hitching her big turquoise purse onto her shoulder as she emerged from the ladies' room.

Julianna ignored the biker and followed the redhead to a booth in the back. The redhead slid in across from her drunk friend, who seemed even drunker tonight than before. She swayed back and forth to the song pounding from the speakers, so far out of rhythm she was almost about to be back in rhythm.

“Well, well,” the redhead said when she saw Julianna. “Look who it is.”

She patted the seat next to her. Julianna sat down.

“I need a favor,” Julianna said.

“You find that man you was looking for?”

Julianna leaned close. She lowered her voice. “I'll give you three hundred dollars to borrow your gun.”

The redhead lifted her drink, mahogany liquor on the rocks, and took a dainty sip. “You don't have to whisper. Does she, Carla May?”

The friend swayed to the music, her eyes half closed. “Huh,” she said.

“Three hundred dollars,” Julianna said. “Just for a ­couple of hours.”

The redhead turned to study Julianna. “You think I'm crazy?”

“It's just for protection. Just in case.”

“Don't answer that.” She laughed, turned away, took another dainty sip.

“I did find him,” Julianna said. “The man I was looking for. But he's not who I thought he was. He
might
not be who I thought he was.”

“Come on with us over to the Land Run. We'll find us a ­couple of college boys and dance all night.”

“No. How much?”

“What if you go off and shoot somebody? And they find out I gave you my gun?”

“I'm not going to shoot anyone. It's just for protection.”

“You can stop talking. 'Cause I stopped listening.”

“Five hundred dollars. That's really all I have.”

A new song began to play. Julianna recognized the simple, gritty guitar lick, as rough and elemental as a cave painting: Lou Reed's “Turn to Me.” Genevieve had played it incessantly when the album the song was on first came out. The spring of 1984? Genevieve would have been fifteen years old, Julianna ten. Genevieve said the song cheered her up—­the idea that there was one person out there in the world you could always turn to. If your car broke down, if your apartment had no heat, if your father was freebasing.

Julianna, age ten, had thought freebasing was some kind of sport. With Frisbees, maybe? She disliked the song. She thought the man singing sounded menacing, his voice sinuous and insinuating—­he seemed like he
wanted
your car to break down so you would
have
to call him. Julianna had been grateful she already had someone she trusted, Genevieve, who for the rest of her life she could always turn to.

The redhead was studying Julianna again.

“Scootch on over,” she said.

Julianna slid back out of the booth so the redhead could slide out, too.

“I need to use the ladies' room,” the redhead said. “Wait here and we'll head on over to the Land Run.”

Julianna knew it was hopeless. She'd never be able to talk the redhead into loaning her the gun. This woman wasn't crazy. Julianna's idea to borrow her gun
had
been, all along, crazy.

“We never had this conversation,” the redhead said. “All right?”

Julianna nodded. She turned to leave.

The redhead caught her by a belt loop and reeled her back.

“Where you going?” she said.

“I have to go.”

“I need to use the ladies' room,” she said again, more slowly this time. “And you need to keep an eye on my purse, 'cause Carla May's too drunk to do it. All right?”

She waited until she saw that Julianna understood, then walked away. The drunk friend swayed to the music. Julianna sat back down. The big turquoise purse was on the seat next to her, unzipped. Keeping her eyes straight ahead, following the swaying beat of the drunk friend's head, Julianna reached into the redhead's purse. She felt a wallet, a cell phone, a tube of lipstick, a box of what were probably pads or tampons, and then she found the gun, small but heavy. The drunk friend watched Julianna through half-­closed eyes as under the table Julianna moved the gun from the redhead's purse to her own.

Julianna wondered if the redhead would report the gun stolen right away or wait to see what Julianna did with it.

“Where'd that bitch go?” Carla May said, slurring her words. “She was just here.”

“She'll be right back,” Julianna said. She stood up and left.

J
ULIANNA HAD T
HOUGHT
the entrance to Stars and Stripes Park would be gated after hours, but it wasn't. She turned off the lake road and drove a few hundred yards through the darkness, past stands of trees and a baseball field. At the playground area, the road branched. She couldn't tell in the darkness if the rocket-­ship slide was still there or not. She steered right and made a long, slow loop around the flat brick pavilion that you could reserve for family reunions and T-­ball team picnics. The parking lot in front of the pavilion was empty.

Julianna kept driving. She saw a solitary car, a small sedan, parked near the slender finger of land that poked out into the lake. Where the nail of the finger would be was a round plaza with a flagpole. No flag flew this late at night, but when Julianna parked next to the sedan and walked closer, she saw that the surface of the plaza was itself a flag—­colored tile formed white stars on a blue background, red stripes on white.

Crowley was standing out past the plaza, at the very edge of the park, where the red-­dirt bank crumbled into the water. It was dark and very quiet. No wind. In Oklahoma you never noticed the wind, did you? You only noticed that one day out of a hundred when it took a breather.

Julianna had removed the gun from its turquoise holster. It rested naked now in her purse, a small snub-­nosed revolver, next to the bundle of cash.

The ground was uneven. She stumbled and almost fell. Crowley glanced at her, then back at the water.

“You know what I heard?” he said. “Just the other day. I don't know it's true or not, but a lady I met told me. We was driving along, and she said when they built that highway over there, they drained part of the lake and found a '63 Cadillac with a skeleton behind the wheel.”

The highway was less than half a mile away, but due to some trick of topography the sound from it didn't carry this far. Julianna watched headlights float silently along, the glowing bellies of fireflies that had paired off to mate.

“The old duck pond,” she said. She knew the story.

“It was a lady been missing thirty years. All that time police thought her husband must have done it, made her disappear 'cause of an inheritance she came into. Turns out the road was icy and she just missed a curve in the dark. Went under and never came up.”

He looked out at the water. Julianna knew why he was telling her the story. He was letting her know how easily she could disappear, too. He was playing his game, enjoying it.

“It was the woman and her daughter,” Julianna said. “They disappeared the night before Kennedy was shot.”

“So it's true, then?”

“You don't have an alibi.”

He chuckled again. “You don't need an alibi, darlin', if you don't get caught. I'd be halfway to California by morning.”

“No,” Julianna said. “I mean the night my sister disappeared.”

He turned to her. In the darkness his blue eyes were a pale gray. He reached up to hook a strand of his long, greasy hair behind his ear, and Julianna almost flinched. Crowley smiled, then lowered his hand, his big gut shifting beneath his plaid shirt.

Because the bank sloped a little, he stood a ­couple of inches below her. But he was still so much taller than Julianna that she had to look up to look him in the face.

“I was in jail that night. If that ain't an alibi, I don't know what is.”

“The woman who said she saw my sister after she left your trailer never really saw her. She saw a girl who looked like my sister.”

Crowley mused. He stroked his goatee.

“You bring my money?” he said.

Julianna reached into her purse and handed Crowley the packet of cash. He tore open the plastic Target bag, removed the three envelopes, then dropped the bag to the ground. He kicked the bag away.

“How much?”

“Twenty thousand.”

He licked his thumb and counted the money in the first envelope. Julianna held her purse tight against her, a hand resting on top of it. Crowley counted the money in the second envelope.

“What did my sister say to you?” Julianna said.

He counted the money in the third envelope, taking great care to make sure no bills stuck together. When he finished, he put the three envelopes in the back pocket of his jeans.

“She turned up at my trailer, and we talked for a minute or two. Like I told you. I don't remember what all we talked about. I probably told her my name, she probably told me hers. I said I had a guitar and we could make some music together. She said—­what was it?

“Let's not and say we did.”

“Let's not and say we did.”

Crowley had turned back to look out at the lake. The water, with no wind, was a flat, impeccable black. So, too, was the sky to the north. Julianna could barely make out the hinge between sky and water—­a line of faint light running along the top of the dam.

“I was a young man,” he said. “Shit.”

“Keep going,” Julianna said.

“So I said, ‘Okay. Why don't you come on inside then and party with me.' Don't tell me your sister didn't like to party. I could tell. I didn't have no dope on me at the moment, but I knew where I could get some. There was so much dope in that camp ­people was giving it away.”

He made Julianna wait.

“What did she say?” she finally had to ask.

“She just started walking off. Not the way she came, though. I remember that. Not back toward the rides, I mean more off toward the sideshows and such.”

“What did she say to you?”

“ ‘First things first.' ”

“I gave you the money.”

He laughed. “No. That's what she said. I told her, ‘Hold on a minute now,' but she just kept on walking. She looked back over her shoulder and said, ‘First things first.' ”

Julianna waited. Crowley yawned.

“What does that mean?” Julianna said.

“You tell me.”

“So was she planning to come back?”

“Struck me that way at the time, but she never did.”

First things first?

“Where was she going? Why was she heading toward the racetrack?”

“No idea.”

“So that's all she said?”

“That's all. ‘First things first.' So I ran out to buy some beer and find some dope. Glad I did it in that order, the beer first and not the dope. Glad that cop stopped at 7-­Eleven for doughnuts. Hell. Otherwise I probably woulda ended up in the electric chair.”

Julianna had her hand around the grip of the revolver before she was even aware of it. She had dropped her purse and was pointing the revolver at Crowley.

“You told me it was important,” Julianna said. “What my sister said to you when she left.”

Crowley regarded her. His eyes stayed on her eyes. The barrel of the revolver was a foot from his chest, but he ignored it.

“I never did,” he said calmly.

Julianna's finger was tight on the trigger. She could feel the trigger begin to give. You were supposed to squeeze, she remembered hearing somewhere once, not pull. She'd never fired a gun in her life. She told herself she was too close to miss.

She tried to keep her voice calm, too. “You told me I'd want to know what she said.”

Crowley gave Julianna his innocent look. “Didn't you?”

“What did you do to her?”

“I ain't giving you your money back, if that's what you want. We had a deal.”

“What did you do to her?”

“I fucked her first,” Crowley said. “Backwards and forwards. She couldn't get enough of it. She rode me so hard that I—­”

And then out of nowhere his hand was on the revolver, wrenching hard, and Julianna's head exploded—­a slap, or a punch, from his other hand. She stood frozen while the ground rushed up and slammed against her.