I have to pee, so I get out of the car.
My head is still spinning. My legs are stiff and my knees wobble as I make my way to the center of town, one block away. I walk up Main Street (you used to call it “the rabbit hutch” because all the meth heads in their trailers stayed up all night, scurrying, scratching like animals in cages). I walk past the police station—per Episode 7, open only four hours a day—past the Happy Camp Arts Center, with the confusing signage on the door: Don’t come in—this is a house!!!
The mill and the silver mine closed in the eighties; that’s also when Happy Camp lost the second grocery store and the Evans Mercantile and the video store and the restaurant with the twenty-page menu.
I find the only coffee shop and head inside. It’s narrow, with a kindergarten-classroom quality—clean but with too many amateur works of art. There are bookshelves along the wall, a rack of T-shirts in the corner. Six men in various stages of Hank Williams gather in one corner on foldout chairs, talking about lumber. I walk to the back and use the bathroom.
I wash my hands at the sink and ignore my face in the mirror. When I’m not wearing makeup, I generally feel that I don’t deserve to exist. I decide that I don’t need to ask for directions. What answer could anyone possibly give me? Twelfth tree on the fifth bend?
I duck out of the bathroom and rush across the floor as the men discuss wood infestations. A woman steps in front of me, an empty teacup in each hand. Long, thin dreads wrestle all the way down past her waist.
“All good,” she says, no inflection. I duck toward the bookshelves.
“I just wanted to see your books.” I lie, because I feel guilty for using the bathroom without asking. I want her to believe that I am a customer and my bathroom use was just incidental. I want her to think that I am a serious buyer in the market for a good book.
“We do exchanges, or the price is on the cover.”
I look at the books on the shelves. I am surprised by the selection, by the lack of religious books such shelves tend to collect. Instead they have Stephen King’s It, well-worn but priced by size at three dollars, A Room with a View and The Handmaid’s Tale for a buck fifty. I almost buy it just because I can’t believe it’s here.
The woman stands over me, watching, not saying anything.
I should ask her for directions; I know this, but it pings that I need to be careful. Anyone could be a suspect. Anyone could hold a clue. And I need to keep myself open. I need to hide my intentions until I find out whether you really have gone missing or you are actually here. I think of you, what you would do. How you would keep yourself aloof but innocuous, powered by righteousness.
“Do you know this area well?”
“I grew up here.” She steadies her clattering teacup. “What brings you to Happy Camp?” I am sure she knows that I am here alone and that she is judging me for it. In my mind, in that moment, she knows everything about me, and she is smug and superior about it.
“A friend,” I answer defensively, and immediately regret it.
“Who?”
“You probably don’t know her.” I cast my eyes around the store.
“I probably do.”
The six in the circle quiet and tilt their heads in our direction. It’s everybody’s business. The population shrank, and I crossed the line into everybody’s business.
“Dear Mad’m,” I say like a crazy person. I see three copies of a slim yellow book on a bookshelf, a poster on the wall.
The woman steps back, satisfied that I am a psychopath. “No offense, but I’m pretty sure she’s dead.”
“I’m a writer.” I straighten up. This is my official lie. I do write sometimes, journal entries about how I’m too depressed to write, mostly, but I like the idea of it. A traveling writer, always hunting for a story. “Like she was.”
“What do you write?”
“Mystery.” Mystery is what I write.
“Oh yeah? You gonna write about this place?” Whenever you tell people you’re a writer, they always assume you are going to write about them. Whatever your plans were before, whatever genre or category, you will find them so sublimely interesting that you won’t have a choice but to alter your angle.
“If I find a good story,” I say. She nods once, efficiently, picks up her cups, starts to move away. “I’m actually looking for a place to stay.” She stops. “Are there any guest ranches around here?”
She names a hotel and a ranch I read about online. She doesn’t mention your parents’ place, even though I know it’s within ten miles of here.
“Anywhere else?” Fountain Creek—the name is on my tongue. Just say it, I wish. Say it.
“Nope. That’s it. Small town. You’re better off going to Eureka.” I came from Eureka. Eureka is three hours and a few dozen hotels from here. It’s like she doesn’t want me anywhere near.
“I was hoping to find a place with horses.” I know your parents’ ranch is the only place with horses.
“No, there’s not any horse riding around here. You could go out to Yreka, probably.”
“I thought I heard about a guest ranch that had horses and fishing or something.”
Her eyes stiffen, drop darker. The group in the corner goes quiet again. They are mulling over their cold coffee cups. It’s noon at the OK Corral, and I expect a cowboy to stride through the front door at any second and shoot me dead.
“I don’t know the place you’re talking about,” she says, blank eyes, like I’m crazy, like I’m the crazy one, and I hate that. There is nothing I hate or fear more than someone else thinking I’m crazy. I almost say the name just to stop her in her tracks.
Fountain Creek Ranch. It bleeds through my lips, makes bugs burst on my skin, crawl up in radiating waves. “No? I must have heard wrong.”
“Probably.” She moves carefully away, like I’ve shat myself and she’s politely excusing herself from the smell.
I scan the room, but the men have their eyes trained on their cups and their callused hands.
I want to stay. I want to force someone to tell me the truth. Minutes in and I already feel like a failure and I came here to escape that feeling.
I want to scream your name. I want to shout Rachel Bard! at the top of my lungs until they quiver and tremble with guilt and with their lies, and I want them to know I’m your friend, you’re my friend and I came here to save you and I will. Because something has happened to you and everyone knows but no one will do something about it. But I hold myself in, I hug myself close and I start toward the door.
Before I can get there, a man drives through it like I’m not even there. The back of his neck is molted chicken skin; his eyes are strangely dim.