“Give me one day,” he begged, turning in the seat to raise one leg up beneath himself as he shifted his torso to face me. “Twenty-four hours. All I want to do is run up there to the ruins—that’s all I came here to do.”
“There aren’t any ruins. There’s nothing. And if that was all you wanted, why did you go out to the Bend?”
“A couple of reasons.” He crossed his arms.
“Well, now is the time to discuss them,” I said. “Because you’ve got another five minutes or so before we get to the airport; and if you don’t convince me by then, you’re completely out of luck.”
“I went back to the Bend because I couldn’t find Pine Breeze when I went looking for it, and you wouldn’t talk to me. Kitty grew up around here. I thought she’d help me find it.”
“Ah, so you’re back to blaming me for this.”
“No, I’m not. Sheesh! Why do you always think everyone’s blaming you for everything? I didn’t want to go out there by myself, that’s all, and I don’t know anyone else up here. I thought Kitty would be a good choice, because she can see ghosts—or she says she can, anyway.”
“This is the woman who killed her sister’s kids?”
“Uh-huh. She’s really nice once you get to know her.”
“I’m sure.”
“Well she is. And she’s not under very heavy security there. I thought I could spring her for a night and then sneak her back in, or something. It wouldn’t be too hard, probably. Or it wouldn’t have been, anyway, if they hadn’t moved her since I was there. It took me almost an hour to find her. They moved her over to solitary.”
“How come?”
“How should I know? I’ve been in Florida for the last year, remember? That’s just what I found out when I got there. She wasn’t in her old room, so I had to go looking for her.”
He shook his head and peered anxiously out the window as an airplane swooped down low, loud and blinking over the road, coming in for a landing. “She’s never been a problem patient. But the file I found in records storage said she’d started making a big fuss, saying over and over again that he was there. She called him the Hairy Man, and I think that’s who we saw today. She’s not that kind of crazy. She saw him too, and he scared her.”
“Yeah,” I said, not really affirming anything at all, but feeling the need to agree.
“Yeah,” he said it back.
I turned into the airport complex and made sure I was in the right lane. It’s not a big airport by any means, but it’s laid out in such a way that it’s easy to wind up driving someplace you didn’t intend.
“Wait a minute.” I stopped myself before pulling into the airport’s parking lot. “We can’t put you on a plane, can we?”
“Why not? I don’t have any scissors, or anything….” He patted at his pants pockets.
“And I bet you don’t have an ID, either—at least not anything that won’t have you arrested as soon as you fork it over.”
“Oh. Um. No. I don’t. You’re probably right. I guess I’ll just have to stay here for a few days, huh?”
“Fat chance, buster. The Greyhound station is right over there. And it’ll be cheaper, anyway.”
Neither one of us spoke while I wound my way into the parking lot across from the airport runway. I took the car out of gear and removed my keys, but did not open the door. I closed my eyes and put my head back, leaning it against the seat.
I think Malachi was sucking in his breath and holding it in his throat. I only noticed him doing it because it’s something I do when I’m nervous. This small thing we had in common made me hold my words for a few seconds. It made me reluctant to be too mean.
“It goes like this,” I finally told him. “First of all, I’m sorry I didn’t answer the phone more often, and I’m sorry I didn’t at least hear you out before ignoring you. But that doesn’t change the fact that you shouldn’t be here—for a million and one reasons that I trust I don’t have to elaborate upon. Also, you shouldn’t have come up here alone. You should have at least come with Harry.”
“Harry said no when I asked if he’d come here with me. He said I should leave you alone and stay out of state a while longer.”
“Yes, he’s a sharp guy. I know you want to know about Pine Breeze and whether the presence there was your mom; so I understand your impatience, but it was still a terrible idea for you to venture this way by yourself.”
“But Harry—”
“I heard you. Let me talk to him and see if I can change his mind. I bet I can. Give me maybe a week—can you do that?” I lifted my head and swiveled it to look him in the eye. “But not today. Not tomorrow. Lu and Dave will be back tomorrow night, and I just can’t deal with that much lying in a forty-eight-hour period. I’m already working on a story about the car—”
“A deer,” he interjected. “You can say you swerved to avoid hitting a deer.”
“I’m more likely to tell them a skunk.” I used enough droll overtone to imply a bad joke, but he missed the punch line altogether and I was sort of glad. I had felt dumb for it as soon as I said it. Going after his feelings with a rusty steak knife wasn’t going to get anyone anywhere.
“A skunk would work, yeah. No one wants to hit a skunk. You’d never get the smell off the hood.”
“Right. A skunk, then. But I’m not going to throw you into the mix too. Give me a week or two to work on Harry, and then I can tell them that he’s coming up and I’ll be getting together with him. I can even, if I have to, arrange for him to meet them for coffee or something. It’s far less conspicuously dishonest, and therefore more likely to work.”
He dropped his jaw and arranged some objecting syllables to launch from it, but I stopped him before he got going good. “And between now and then, I will make a point of going out to the hill where Pine Breeze used to be. I’ll poke around and see if anything turns up. And if anyone or anything makes itself known, you’ll be the first one I inform.”
Malachi sagged in the seat. “I was really hoping we could do it tonight.”
“Well, we can’t. And we’re not. I believe you when you said you couldn’t find it, because God knows that even when it was standing it was a pain to locate unless you knew exactly where it was. And at night? There’s nothing anywhere around there, Malachi. No streetlamps. No stores. No people, except those who live farther on down the hill—and they would probably call the cops if they saw headlights going that way at this hour.”
“So you’re making me leave.”
“Yes, I’m making you leave. But I’m also telling you that I’m open to the idea of you coming back. And I’m making you a series of promises that go contrary to all common sense. I promise you this: I’ll answer the phone when you call, assuming you don’t abuse the privilege. I promise I’ll go up to the hill and look for your mother. I promise I’ll talk to Harry and see if he won’t bring you up here for a fact-finding mission sometime soon. But at the same time, I am most definitely making you leave before you get either one of us into any more trouble.”
He sulked hard, but I stood firm.
“I don’t have any more money.”
“I will buy you a bus ticket.”
“Now?”
“Yes. Right now. Get out. You didn’t bring any stuff, did you?”
“No. Just an overnight bag, and I think I lost it in the river when I fell in and got bitten by the snake.”
“Marvelous. Now come on. You can clean yourself up in the bathroom while I arrange a ticket for you. I don’t know how soon I’ll be able to arrange your departure, but there ought to be something going south before morning comes. I hope.” The sooner the better, I added to myself. The longer he stayed in the Tennessee Valley, the more trouble he was likely to get himself into.
We went inside together and parted company while I hit the nearest service desk. Malachi slunk out of the restroom a few minutes later, and I handed him the packet. “The good news is, you’ve only got two hours to stew here.”
“And the bad?”
“It’s going to take you a while to get home—but it was the best I could do on short notice. I got you as far as Orlando by 6:45 tomorrow night. Here’s fifty bucks. Get a magazine or something when they stop. Maybe a razor, or a fresh T-shirt. You’ll be okay. And I’ll call Harry in the morning”—I glanced at my watch and winced—“well, later on in the morning, and let him know you’re coming. He’ll have to drive down and pick you up, but it’s not that far and it shouldn’t be a problem.”
“All right.”
“All right.” Everything had been said, at least everything pragmatic and utilitarian. He was set. The bus was waiting. But the dead air between us seemed to call for something more, so I stammered on a little. “So…are we good, here?”
“We…? Um, I guess. I’m good, yeah.” He was disappointed; that much was obvious. But he wasn’t at the bottom of the river or back in the Bend with a lifetime membership, so things could have been much worse. He knew it, but he didn’t pretend to like it.
We stood there awkwardly, trapped in one of those moments where two ordinary people might hug and say proper good-byes. But between the pair of us, all we managed was a halfhearted shoulder swat and wishes of good luck and safe travels. I also extracted, with some difficulty, a promise from Malachi that he would not leave the station until his bus saw fit to collect him.
And he dragged out of me the assurance that yes, I wanted him to call me when he’d arrived safely. But that was all the familial intimacy we were able to conjure up on such short notice. He’d spent half his life trying to kill me, after all. Understanding the misunderstanding doesn’t make everything spontaneously uncomplicated.