The Spite House(13)
Dess eventually saw her phantom running up and around decent-sized hills. What she’d seen of Texas so far—by way of Houston, then heading northwest—had been low and flat, its trees unremarkable, the occasional lake or river providing a slight change-up. From what her father had told her, his grandparents’ hometown was more of the same, except drier, and with even fewer trees. What she saw now had some genuine beauty to it. Broad hills that seemed to have been imported from elsewhere. Big trees, wider at the top than they were tall, but still notable, especially the ones that stood alone, like they’d stretched out their limbs and chased all the others off. They didn’t have quite as much character as the ones back home, or some of the mossy trees she’d seen in Mississippi or Georgia, or the ones coming up out of that swamp basin they’d driven over in Louisiana, but they were still a sight.
“You see this, Staze?” Dess said. “All the hills?”
“Uh-huh. It’s nice,” Stacy said, sounding far less enamored than her sister. Dess glanced back at her and saw that the ride was lulling Stacy to sleep.
“I’ll be fine if you want to grab a quick nap, too,” her father said.
Dess shook her head. “Yeah, nah. I’m okay.” She didn’t sleep while her dad was driving, just like he didn’t let himself sleep on the rare occasions when he let her drive. It was important to have more than one set of eyes on the road, especially when driving through what they termed “the Red.” Places where WE BACK THE BLUE bumper stickers or star-spangled Punisher skull decals and the like became more prevalent. Places they wanted to get through as quickly as possible, but where they absolutely couldn’t afford to drive too fast or even too slowly.
They didn’t exactly have a set strategy for evading a squad car if lights started flashing directly behind them. Their plan was simply to stay out of trouble, so it was important for the passenger to remain reasonably attentive in case the driver had missed a speed-limit sign or might be succumbing to highway hypnosis that could cause them to drift out of their lane. Nothing but luck could keep them from getting pulled over by an officer determined to pull over some black or brown people for no reason, but for those who needed a reason, they would deny them one by keeping careful.
Still, even while trying to remain vigilant, a little bit of daydreaming was permissible. Dess was glad to have a chance to do that now. Picture herself running the hills, not toward any destination or for any preset distance or time. Carrying nothing but her own weight, no anxiety or responsibility. For a few seconds at a time, between glances into the rearview and side mirrors and through the front windshield, she could almost feel what it might be like to have a normal life again.
* * *
Just before they passed the big, rustic sign that welcomed travelers to Degener, Texas, Dess noticed without commenting that the cars here were different than they had been ten or so miles back. Not all of them, or even most, but enough to stand out. There were fewer pickup trucks and more entry-level luxury cars. Far fewer bumper stickers, more cars adorned with a simple magnetic cross on the back, if anything at all. These were the kinds of cars her crew back home used to talk about buying after they graduated and “made it.” Not the super exclusive foreign ones certain rappers bragged about, but the ones driven by a friend’s oldest brother, or your homegirl’s cousin who was making so much money as a nurse it made you think about majoring in medicine. The one difference between these cars near Degener and the dream cars her friends had talked about was that these Cadillacs and BMWs and Infinitis were all either silver, black, or white. “Adulting” colors, she thought. Not a sports-car red in the bunch, much less a yellow, blue, or—the color she’d have picked for her first Lexus—pink.
As they made their way deeper through Degener, Dess noticed how clean and kempt and similar the houses were. Throughout the South she’d gotten used to seeing a fair share of proudly weathered little houses sitting on about half a football field of land, septic tank in plain sight, an old truck around the side, maybe. A fence up, possibly a flag or two as well, either celebrating the country they lived in or the rebel army that lost to said country two hundred years ago, or, incongruously, both. Some of those houses looked nicer than their brethren, but they all had a fair amount of age and even more character. Those houses didn’t appear to exist in Degener, or at least not in the part they were driving through. On the edges of town, maybe, but every house visible in every direction off Main Street fit the description of neat, tidy, pleasant enough, and unremarkable. She wondered how much of it was really like this but knew her curiosity would go unsatisfied. They weren’t here to tour the town, just to get a look at the spite house prior to her father’s interview.
They were leaving the more congested and developed part of Degener when she finally said, “This place is different.”
“I think I see it too,” her father said. “It’s a good sign, isn’t it? Should mean the money is real.”
Dess nodded, but didn’t really feel the same way. She didn’t find what she saw directly suspicious, either. She didn’t quite know what to make of it, except that it was unexpected, and they both knew well that the unexpected could be a curse or a blessing.
The directions her father had printed took them four more miles down Main before they took a right onto a road that wound toward two hills in the distance. Once they cleared an initial canopy of trees they got a clearer view of the hills and saw that the one to the left, the taller of the two, had a house on top, right at the lip of its slope, like it wanted to lean over for a look but was a little too scared. That was how it looked to Dess, anyway, and thinking of it being scared instead of being scary kept her stomach from completely rolling over at the sight of it. Because its strangeness was otherwise as off-putting as it was magnetic, even at a distance. She had figured the picture was exaggerating to some degree, making the house seem leaner and more bizarre than it really was. Really it was the opposite. What she felt now was the difference between seeing a photo of a house fire and witnessing the flames in person.