“Where have you been?” the woman says, and suddenly, a teacup shatters on the floor near my feet, and I’m not sure if she threw it or if it just leapt out of her hands, and when I turn, they are embracing, almost a dancers’ choke hold.
On the other side of the shop, the six men ignore them. No one says anything, like it’s normal to drop everything the moment your man comes through the door.
* * *
—
I got fired, from my minimum-wage job, for allowing an old woman to shoplift. I saw her wandering around the store, ancient, invisible to everyone else. She put a pair of nail clippers in her purse, and I smiled. It made me smile. Then she took a silk scarf, a bottle of perfume. I imagined her at home alone, a glass of wine on the end table, scarf wrapped around her neck, spritzing perfume, clipping her toenails. I saw her gathering her spoils on a shelf like evidence, standing back and observing, cataloging, the evidence of her own disappearance.
My manager saw me watch her, but I don’t know if he ever saw her. He saw me watching her, and he heard the screech of the alarm as she passed through the door. The funny thing was, he never went to catch her. He let her slink on through the mall like he owed it to her, like she wasn’t even worth what she had taken. But he fired me.
I feel invisible now, as I do a lap around Happy Camp. As if I am blinking in and out of existence as I take in the abandoned storefronts and the trailers tucked behind brush and rough fences. One lone man has set up on a beach chair outside the Happy Camp Arts Center, where he sits as stiff as a corpse. His skin is so tight that his yellowed eyes seem to ooze in their sockets. If I had to choose a killer, it’d be him. He watches me walk past, and it’s enough to make my bowels loosen. What am I doing out here? Am I trying to save you, or am I trying to get killed?
A stray cat approaches, hops onto the chair and walks over him like he’s furniture. I’m afraid to look, afraid not to. Is it worse to look or not look? Still my eyes find his. He has an open hat in front of him, and I put a five-dollar bill in it. I try a smile; it’s loose on my face and it falls and it doesn’t matter. He doesn’t smile back.
“You lost?” he calls out when I’m so far past him, it’s unnatural to talk.
A shiver whips up my spine, and I turn around. The cat has burrowed into his lap. The man leans forward in one taut movement. “I said, you lost?”
I move toward him. I think he won’t judge me. Not like the woman in the coffee shop. Not like ordinary people with ordinary lives. “Yes.”
“You must be for Fountain Creek.” I stop in my tracks. “You have the look about you.” He draws his finger in an arc that could be a smile on my face or a noose around my neck. “You must be for the summer, the summer crew. That right?”
“Yes,” I lie.
“Good job. Get to work.”
“Do you know where Fountain Creek is? I couldn’t find it on the road.”
“Just look for the ‘no trespassing’ signs.” He explodes into laughter like a car backfiring, and the cat curls and hops off his lap, peals out like he’s caught fire. “Look for the ‘no trespassing’ signs! And make sure you use the bathroom before you go!” he says to his own private glee, and he whacks his leg, coughs on laughter.
I hurry away from him, toward my car. “Thank you.”
“Out here we take bets!” he shouts when I am too far away again. “On how long you all will last!”
* * *
—
Back on the road I feel anxious, like the town took me and shook me like a box of spare parts. And I know it’s unearned and I need to get it together, need to find a way not to be shaken, especially if I want to find you. I need to keep myself together. I need to hold myself in. I need to be like everybody else, but better. I need to be like you.
I hit gravel in the road and I bounce on my seat and your voice makes me nervous, so I turn you off. I remember a glimmer of “no trespassing” signs just down the road. I remember being surprised by their abundance, thinking to myself, That person really wants to be left alone. What a strange way to mark a guest ranch.
As I drive, I make a plan. The man from Happy Camp gave me an idea. I will pretend to be a traveler looking for work. I will establish where you are. If you are there and safe, I will leave (unless you want me to stay). If you are missing, vanished, murdered, I will do everything I can to gain entry to your parents’ ranch. I will use the things you told me to make myself indispensable. Luckily, I do know horses. I rode hunt seat as a kid, which isn’t quite the cowboy rough your parents espouse, but it’s close enough.
My hands grow waxy with sweat. My chest is so tight, has been so tight all day, that it aches, and I wonder, not for the first time, if heart attacks have an age requirement. I pass the Fata-Wan-Nun Karuk Spiritual Trails and Ishi Pishi Road. I swallow and I slow.
There are no trucks stacked behind me. The road has conspired to go quiet as I take that last bend. The turnoff lifts beside me, scattered with “no trespassing” signs like angry townsfolk carrying pitchforks. I lean forward and the sky grows bigger and I see the vultures circling overhead, the ones I noticed earlier. They were here all along, marking my destination. Are they here for you or me?
I almost duck out, drive on, back to Eureka like the woman in the coffee shop suggested. I grip the wheel and I allow myself to feel for a moment the freedom of turning away. Then I remember Episode 7 of your podcast, The Last Dance. Missy Schubert disappeared at a family camp in the mountains. Her family reported the disappearance to the staff when she didn’t come back to the cabin that night, but the staff refused to make an announcement; they refused to ask the other guests if they had seen her, if they could look for her. They said, to the parents of the missing girl, People come here for vacation. We don’t want to ruin anyone’s trip. And you said, This is what ordinary people are like. They don’t want to be bothered. They don’t want to care. They would rather let a few people disappear, a few families suffer and never recover, than ruin everybody’s vacation.
I seize the wheel and swing hard to the left, just as a truck going the opposite direction appears. I narrowly miss it. The underside of my car bangs as I right myself on your drive. As I careen up the road, the signs crowding my eyes:
No Trespassing
Private Property
No Public Restroom
Beware of Dog
And it’s too late to turn back.
Episode 7:
The Last Dance
It was the end of the summer dance. Missy Schubert arrived with her family, but she spent most of the night with the friends she had made at camp. She appears in a video taken by one of the campers, only shared with the family six months later, of her dancing with a member of staff. She throws her hands in the air. She shakes out her hair. Then he takes her hand.