“Would it be that hard to put them in the dishwasher?” Oma said.
I sighed and rolled my eyes. “I never know if the stuff in there is clean or dirty.”
“I’ll let you in on the secret: if there’s food on the dishes, they’re dirty.”
I went into the bathroom and ran a comb through my hair, washed my face and brushed my teeth.
I’d need to figure out what I was going to wear for the gig. Go back to torn jeans and a profane T--shirt, or maybe a skinny tie and suspenders? I wished I’d thought to ask Chad.
As I followed Oma out the door to my yellow Toyota pickup truck, my thoughts turned toward the girl I’d heard about but never actually met or even seen. I knew from talking to -people at K--State that every community has a weird family. The Moshens do the job not just for Saw Pole but the whole of Niobe County. They’re the Satan worshipers. The cannibal family. The Radleys. Take your pick. It’s all bullshit. Probably.
Charlie did odd jobs around the county but mostly kept to himself. He wore his shoulder--length graying hair back in a ponytail, and his face displayed the furrows and grooves usually seen on men decades older. His blue eyes were deep--set and haunted, and when I was little, if I saw Charlie Moshen on the street in Saw Pole, I’d cross to the other side.
Everyone spread rumors about the Moshens. Charlie was a white supremacist, a fundamentalist, a separatist. He had a concrete bunker beneath the house, he hunted humans for sport, and worse things than that.
Mostly, I felt sorry for the girl—-stuck in Saw Pole, no friends, no contact at all with the outside world.
I went around to the backyard to grapple with the washing machine. I secured it in the truck bed with bungee cords, then we headed toward the county dump.
Driving the dirt road out there, my nerves got the better of me and I lit up a Camel. Oma waved a hand through the air and wrinkled her nose but said nothing. She turned the radio to KYEZ, one of Salina’s country stations, and sang the whole way. I was glad for the irritation because it canceled out my case of jitters, right up until I caught sight of the little guard shack to the left of the dump’s entrance. Petty Moshen was in there, along with her guns and knives.
As I slowed the truck, I watched a hand appear, palm up, from the shack window. When I pulled up to it, I saw the hand was attached to a sinewy and finely muscled arm with a gnarly scar from elbow to wrist. Then I saw her profile. She was reading a book and didn’t bother to look at us or my vehicle. I sat gawking at her, this legend, this rumor, this cautionary tale. It was kind of like seeing the Aurora Borealis. You couldn’t stop staring, even if you wanted to. Which I didn’t. Because one of the things never mentioned in the wealth of information and rumors and stories that had circulated for years was that this girl was beautiful.
She was one of those girls you couldn’t look directly at for fear of burning your retinas. You needed one of those cards used to view a solar eclipse with a hole poked through it.
Petty’s neck was long and slender, and her caramel--colored hair hung carelessly to her shoulders. Her eyes were large and round and sparkling hazel, surrounded by more eyelashes than I had ever seen on a person, and I briefly wondered if she was wearing false eyelashes, then realized how ridiculous that was. When she licked her full lips, I saw a hint of dimples, which would deepen if she ever smiled.
I stared so long her head rotated toward me, shriveling my guts. I gulped.
“Five dollars,” she said, looking just to the right of my face.
“Hi,” I said, my mouth suddenly dry. “You’re Petty Moshen, right?”
“Of course she is,” said Oma, annoyed. She leaned forward and talked around me. “I’m Lena Sachs, and this here’s my college--dropout grandson Dekker.”
I turned to glare at her.
“Oh,” Petty said. “That’ll be five dollars.”
“Hon,” Oma said, “we were so sorry to hear about your daddy.”
“Okay,” Petty said, deadpan.
Okay? The correct response to this platitude was of course “Thanks,” but clearly Petty hadn’t been schooled in the small--town small talk like the rest of us. Which I found both exotic and slightly titillating.
Oma chattered on at my side. “We brought you a casserole and some Jell--O. Normally I’d bring it to your house, but I wasn’t sure . . . what I mean is . . . I didn’t know if . . .” She trailed off, waiting for this backward girl to finish a sentence she’d have no idea how to finish.
“ . . . I like casseroles?” Petty said.
I couldn’t help laughing.
“I never knew you were funny, hon,” Oma said.
I now felt Oma and me were the inappropriate ones. This girl’s dad died less than twenty--four hours ago, and here we were giggling at her social awkwardness, or so it seemed to me. I cleared my throat.
“Sorry for your loss,” I said to her.