The Removed(44)

“Of course,” I said.

“You’d love them,” he told Wyatt. “I remember recovering them, removing the seat-back rubber bumpers and hog rings to get to the burlap. I stripped the backrest, popped off the headrest. Remember, Maria? My pal Otto helped me. We used a special set of wires to hog-ring the upholstery to the foam.”

“What kind of Chevy?” Wyatt asked.

“Nova.”

Wyatt nodded approvingly. “A good solid car.”

“I had sideburns back then,” Ernest said. “Otto worked at the body shop downtown. We would listen to rockabilly on the radio. Elvis and Eddie Cochran. Oklahoma’s own Wanda Jackson. Otto worked with a guy named Phil who picked a guitar as fast as Chet Atkins or Jerry Reed. You heard of them guys, son?”

“True pickers.”

“Goddamn legends. I got records in the basement.”

“Trippy.” Wyatt nodded.

They headed downstairs, Ernest leading the way. He was energetic. His posture and overall body structure even looked different. How had his posture improved so quickly? While they were downstairs I called Irene, and told her what was happening to Ernest.

“Are you kidding?” she said. “He’s cured? Is that even possible?”

“It sounds crazy, but it’s true. He’s cured.”

“I wonder if his medication is finally working?”

“He’s happier. He feels alive. He’s standing up straight.”

“Strange his memory improved so suddenly.”

“His memory is sharp,” I said. “Earlier he even told me about the upholstery in our Oldsmobile forty years ago. Forty years ago. I can barely remember what color that car was, much less remember the upholstery.”

“Maybe you should call and talk to his doctor? If he can suddenly recall specific details from so long ago, that seems so odd to me. But how wonderful he’s talking like his old self again.”

“It really is wonderful,” I said, a little uncertainly, looking out the window at the dim shapes of trees and their complicated, twisting branches.





Sonja


SEPTEMBER 4

I WOKE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT from a horrible dream. I was in Quah, being chased down the street where Ray-Ray had died. Vin and Calvin Hoff were running after me, gaining on me, until Calvin was close enough to grab me and press his hands against my throat. I looked into his face and saw his sagging jowls, his furious eyes. He tried to choke me. Suffocate me. He pressed his body against mine, but all I could feel was his hands on my throat. Vin yelled at me to keep my mouth shut, not to move. I struggled, unable to break away, and when I woke I felt a heaviness in my chest like never before.

I didn’t sleep well after that, only a few hours. Finally I got out of bed and sat in the kitchen with my morning coffee. I left Edgar a voice message for what felt like the hundredth time, then went outside to work in the flower bed. The sun was out, and it was warm and humid. Bugs and mosquitoes were swarming, so I didn’t work too long. Inside, I took a long shower and got dressed. When I checked my phone, I noticed that Vin had left a message.

“Come over tonight,” he said. “I want you. I wanted you last night, babe. Call me when you get a minute.”

I didn’t call him back. Whatever desire I had felt for him, I’d lost, but I still held my anger toward him. Since last night at the casino and that awkward goodbye, my feelings for him had fluctuated between anger and apathy. It saddened me a little, because I’d developed such a connection to Luka, sweet Luka, who reminded me so much of Ray-Ray. But I knew that I had let things go too far with Vin. I wondered if he would say something to his father about me. Every time I thought of that dream I’d had, I felt weirded out. Was the dream a warning to stay away from the Hoff family? Were the spirits telling me I was wrong?

In the kitchen I rifled through the cabinets for a Valium, but I couldn’t find one. It took me a while to let my frustration settle. I thought my parents might have a Xanax or something to calm my nerves, so I walked down the road to their house. “Hi, Mom,” I called out as I opened their front door. “I’m here to meet the foster kid.” I felt a little bad for lying.

“Wyatt’s at school,” my mom said from the living room. I told her I needed to use the bathroom and rummaged through the medicine cabinet, but I couldn’t find anything. My mom asked me to take a walk with Papa, which I thought might take my mind off Vin, so we walked down the road to a spot in the trees where Papa used to like to paint, a place we had both come to often throughout the years when we wanted solitude and quiet. Papa talked about wanting to paint an orchard full of apple, pear, and plum trees. He liked to paint in concentrated colors, yellows and reds and greens. I remember watching him, as a girl. I would study his hands, his grief-stricken eyes, noticing how he worked with such precision and heightened sensitivity. I saw artful shadows and reflections in his work, beauty in an unstable world. I recalled the sheer brightness of a lazy afternoon when I played in the area so long ago, the tall grass and thickets of maple and oak around me.

“I loved to paint when I was a kid,” he said. “We lived out near Briggs in a small house, all eleven of us. Did I ever tell you about the creaking floorboards in that house? My sisters and I used to step on them over and over just to annoy my mother.”