8
Wyatt
Mrs. Greenwood’s Chevy was one of those old wood-covered station wagons from the 1980s. I tried three times before it turned over. “Maybe another day, I can take it for a tune-up. It’s not safe for you to drive it like this.”
I was setting the stage for another trip to town.
The Wi-Fi guy pointed me in the right direction, but he was going in the other. “Can’t miss it. There’s nothing and nothing and nothing. Then, there’s Hemingway’s Hardware and Sporting Goods.”
He hadn’t exaggerated about the nothing. I pulled onto Route 9, the supposed main road, heading south. About a mile away was a sign, advertising eggs for sale, and I wondered if it was the same Mrs. McNeill Danielle had visited years earlier. Eggs were on my shopping list from Mrs. Greenwood, and I thought maybe I’d buy them there. But when I got closer, I saw that the house was abandoned, boarded up. I remembered, then, that Mrs. Greenwood had said no one lived in the McNeill’s house, but it was strange that the sign was still up. After that, there was nothing but bare trees, ice-covered roads, snow, and more snow. The tires on the old car had looked close to bald when I left, so I drove slow. It was the kind of place where people just left things by the side of the road, abandoned. I passed a boarded-up bakery with a Closed sign and a hotel with a weather-beaten For Sale sign. I saw an old doghouse on its side, then an empty stand that had once held firewood for sale. Then, there was nothing but trees again for a long while. I checked my phone. Still no signal. I didn’t even want to talk to anyone, but still. Everything was white and gray and empty. It looked like the end of the world and the haze of nuclear winter. My soul felt like the landscape here. It was hard to believe that, back home, there were people wearing bright colors and going to the movies, too many people shopping at malls, buying things they didn’t even need, returning gifts they’d just gotten to get other stuff. Here, it felt like they didn’t even exist anymore. Maybe they didn’t. Maybe I belonged here, here with this mournful woman and the ghost of her dead daughter.
Finally, I saw a building, its sign barely visible through the snowy haze. Hemingway’s Hardware and Sporting Goods, it said with no irony at all.
I pulled into the nearly empty parking lot. I contemplated leaving the car running in case it didn’t want to start again after it stopped. Finally, I decided to chance it.
The hardware store wasn’t like anything I’d ever seen before either. In front was a bulletin board with items for sale, cats and snowmobiles. In its center was a Missing Person sign with a photo of a guy about my age. I examined it. The date he’d gone missing was a little over a year earlier. I counted him, Danielle, and the girl Danielle had mentioned in her diary, all missing. This place was starting to look like a rerun of Cold Case.
The sporting goods section was a wall devoted to fishing lures and guns. Another wall held secondhand items, waffle irons and battered board games, irons and baby dolls, model Hess trucks and vacuum cleaners. A fancy hairbrush that looked like silver lay on a shelf by a monkey made of coconut shells that someone had bought on vacation. Three golden retrievers lounged in various locations, and there were two white pigeons in a cage with a sign that said Wedding doves for rent. Ask Josh. The only other customer was a man in his seventies, examining a television set that had an antenna attached to the top.
“Hey, she’s got you running errands already.” Josh came up behind me.
“Yeah, I might need a jump-start—or a mechanic—if this car of hers doesn’t start again.”
He looked out the window. “Oh, that car’s not that old. People around here believe in keeping things. We don’t need any newfangled stuff when our stuff works just fine.”
I thought he was joking when he said “newfangled,” but I couldn’t be sure.
“I mean . . .” He held up the fancy silver hairbrush with engraved flowers all over it. “Why have a plastic brush when you can have this one that weighs ten pounds, and why have one of those big, ugly flat screens when you can have this cute one?”
I nodded toward the old man, who was trying the television’s knobs. “Can you even get cable on that thing?”
“If you can, he’ll do it. Jerry knows a thing or two about repairs.”
“Well, I’m learning. I’m looking for cabinet hinges. And I had a few questions.”
“Cabinet hinges. What kind?”
I held out the old one I’d taken off. “Like this.”
He gestured me toward another section, sort of hidden, considering this was a hardware store, behind the duck decoys and the tents and looked around. “We don’t seem to have those in stock. I could order it, though, and you could pick it up in a few days.”
The internet would probably be faster, but I wasn’t really in a hurry. My grandfather always said it was important to patronize local businesses. Besides, I wanted info from Josh. So I said, “That would be great. Thanks.”
I followed him to the counter, making conversation about another topic. “So, what’s with the pigeons?”
“We rent them out for weddings and stuff. They look like doves, but pigeons always come back home. We’ve got a falcon too, but he can’t stay at the shop because he eats road kill.”
“Good to know.” Trying to sound casual, I said, “Hey, have you ever heard of a place called the Red Fox Inn in Gatskill?”
Josh thought. He even said, “Hmm.” Finally, he shook his head. “Doesn’t ring a bell. Gatskill’s the next town over, and it’s pretty small. I’d think I’d have heard of everything in Gatskill.”
“It’s okay.” I tried to hide my disappointment. “My mom and her friends used to go there when they were teenagers. It’s probably closed now. She used to date a guy who played guitar there, a guy named Zach.”
“He’s not your long-lost father, is he?”
“No, nothing like that.” Though that would be a good cover story. “She just wanted to find out if anyone had heard from him.”
“Zach Gray.” The old man with the TV suddenly came up behind us. “That’s Rebecca Gray’s grandson. He came to town eighteen years ago, then left.”
“Eighteen?” It seemed pretty exact.
“Yup. I remember because that was the year of the big snowstorm.” And then, he started in on a long, irrelevant story about the storm itself, the height of the snow, the number of days it fell, and how long it took for the flowers to come back afterward. But I was thinking eighteen years was right before Danielle had disappeared. Maybe he’d run away with her. Or maybe he’d killed her and gone on the lam.
The old man finally concluded his story, saying to Josh, “Will you take twenty for this TV?”
I thought he’d be lucky to get five, but Josh said, “I’ll have to ask my dad. He only authorized me to sell for thirty. And he’s not here today, so if you want it for the bowl games . . .”
“You drive a hard bargain, son.” The old man took out a faded wallet and extracted some folded, soft-looking bills.
After he left, Josh said, “I don’t know if you have plans for New Year’s.”
“Oh, yeah.” I nodded. “I’m going to Times Square to celebrate with Ryan Seacrest.”
“Whatever, man. If you don’t have plans, a bunch of us are getting together. My family has a place on Grouse Lake. It’s a three-season house, so it’s almost inaccessible right now. Good for partying. I could pick you up if you’re interested.”
I nodded, realizing at that moment how much I really did miss hanging out with people. “That’d be great.”
We made plans for the next day at ten, and Josh said he’d call when the hinges came in.
When I got home, Mrs. Greenwood was asleep on the sofa in front of the TV. An old rerun of Star Trek was on, the creepy theme song that sounded more like a theremin, this weird instrument, than a human voice. I wondered if that was what I’d heard earlier, the voice I’d heard on the wind. But it seemed unlikely that the old lady was a Trekkie. I figured her experience with science fiction was more along the lines of H. G. Wells. I tried to tiptoe past her, but she woke up.
“Oh, there you are. I can’t believe I fell asleep during Star Trek.” She picked up the remote and started rewinding. At least she had a real television. “I got cable just so I could still see William Shatner. That is one handsome man.”
I grinned. “He’s about your age now too.”
“Well, I know. He was my age back then. Are you a Trekkie?”
“I can’t tell a Vulcan from a Romulan.”
“I could teach you.”
I smiled. “Maybe later. I want to check out the connection.”
Of course, I didn’t do virtual school. The week between Christmas and New Year’s was sacred, even for the virtually bored. Instead, I went on Facebook. They’d made Tyler’s page into a memorial one with hundreds of messages, all talking about how they’d loved him, from people who wouldn’t have loaned him a pencil when he was alive. I checked my own. No one was posting on it, only a few invitations to play CastleVille and Texas HoldEm, from people I didn’t really know. Bored, I looked through my duffel bag and found the notebook from last night.