Be Not Far from Me(47)

“All the reporters, they’ve been going nuts since you got back,” he goes on. “They keep calling me, asking if I’ve come to see my girlfriend and how you’re doing and if you’ll talk to them sometime and I just keep telling them, ‘Hell, I don’t know. Ashley’s going to do what she’s going to do and you can’t make her do different.’”

That’s true enough. I can say a lot of things about this boy, but one of them is that he knows me, inside and out.

“Is there anything you want me to tell them?” Duke asks.

“Yeah,” I say. “You need to tell them to get their facts straight.”

“How’s that?” he asks.

“I’m not your girlfriend,” I say. “Not anymore.”

Duke nods like he’s just taking it in, but there’s tears in his eyes when he gets up. “All right then,” he says, hand on the doorknob. “Feel better, Ashley.”

“I already do,” I tell him.

When I finally get home there are reporters. The more industrious of the bunch have dug a little and found our address, something that makes me cringe. I’m not ashamed of the overgrown yard or the ripped trampoline, the cinder-block steps and the rusted spots in the metal siding. Maybe once I would’ve been, but not after I found out what it’s like to go without it.

Still, I don’t like people poking around outside, waiting for me to hobble out. It’s hot enough that we have to open windows, and when we do they call for me from the road, having been warned by Dad not to come into the yard. I ignore them, and eventually they do go away, except for the reporter from the local paper. He’s smart enough to know his audience and his people, so he waits until the city folks with their news vans are gone, then he takes a risk and knocks on the door.

I’ll talk to him, because I need something in return.

I told Dad about Davey Beet once we were home. Dad just put his head down while I talked about finding Davey’s hat, his name on the beech, and finally, Davey himself. Dad never interrupted except to shake his head and say, “Jesus,” every now and then.

So when the reporter comes into my room I tell him I need to talk to Davey Beet’s parents, and he gets ahold of them for me. They show up the next day, a little bewildered but happy I’m alive, like maybe I put one over on the woods that took their son. We’re sitting in the living room—I’m in Dad’s broken recliner with my foot up, so it’s all awkward when Davey’s mom tries to hug me, but I let her. She smells kind of like him, a bit of freshness and a little touch of lemon verbena. When I give her what’s left of Davey’s hat she just starts crying. Davey’s dad puts his hand on her knee, and they sit quietly together, finally knowing.

I tell them about how Davey was in my head the whole time I was out there, how I kept finding little hints of him along the way. I don’t tell them about the web of thoughts I’d constructed for myself in the woods, his and mine, pulling us together so that I’d find him. I don’t tell them about the picture of that girl, because I don’t know if his heart was broken or mine was just bigger, so I could come back home.

I keep those things to myself as I listen to Dad crack open a beer in the kitchen after they’ve gone. Small noises in a small house.

I’m so goddamn thankful I get to hear them again.

I get lots of visitors, all of them wearing smiles . . . except for one.

I’d been expecting a call instead, so when a car with the logo of the college I got a cross-country scholarship to pulls into the yard I’m flattered that at least they’re coming to talk to me themselves. It’s not a representative either, or even the scout. It’s the coach. He’s a good guy, doesn’t waste anybody’s time and takes the glass Dad offers him without flinching at the taste of sulfur in the well water. He drinks it down, then leans forward on the couch.

“So, Ashley, I was looking forward to you running for me after high school.”

“Except now I can’t run,” I beat him to the punch, saying it myself so that he knows I already figured out why he’s here.

“No,” he agrees. “You can’t.”

He gives Dad a folder outlining my options, says that the university has put together a scholarship for me that will help with tuition if I would still like to attend. But nobody here is a bullshitter, and nobody says maybe I’ll be a runner again someday. The truth is I’m still learning how to walk, going to therapy to figure out how to balance right without part of one foot, trying to find a way to hold myself that won’t throw my hips out.

I’ll be able to again, for sure, maybe even without a limp if I get everything right. But running is in my past, as is the thought of going to college. The scholarship is a nice gesture but an empty one. We don’t need help for me to go; we need it to be free.

At Camp Little Fish they liked to tell us that when God closes a door, a window is opened. That never meant much to me in a house where the door always fell off the hinges anyway and most of the windows were stuck shut, but I see things differently now.

So I wait, ready to hear the sound of that window screeching open.

The local paper runs my story.

I didn’t hold anything back. I told the reporter about being drunk and going to take a piss (though he said I was “relieving myself”). I told him about beating a possum to death and eating worms and cutting off my foot and popping oxy and pouring whiskey over my wounds and singing “The Bear Went Over the Mountain,” and even how I was bleeding from one place when I started out, and a bunch of others by the end.