Melanie Thon - Meteors in August

“Nobody’s home.” I was ready to turn around; we weren’t going to get any help from a man who lived in a hole like this.

“Hard to tell unless you knock.” Mom patted my leg. “Come on, Lizzie, just get out of the truck with me.”

As soon as our doors slammed, a hairless yellow mongrel tore around the side of the cabin, yipping and snarling, running back and forth across the path; he wouldn’t let us near the hut.

The door of the cabin split open a crack, and a voice said, “Get on outa here. We don’t want nothin’ you got to sell.”

“I’m not selling anything,” Mother said. “I’m here to talk to Red Elk. Is he home?”

The door slammed. I heard the wood splinter on the hinges. “Guess he’s not here,” I whispered. Mom stood in the yard with a look that said she could wait, an hour, a hundred years, what was time to us? The hairless dog circled us, cowering but slinking closer every second, his ragged, chewed-up ears flat back on his head.

The door squeaked again and Mary Louise Furey stomped out on the porch. Her long hair was scraggly, streaked with gray. She wore a man’s shirt, size extra-large, and her jeans were ripped and ragged at the knees.

“I know who you are, lady,” she said. “I gotta gun. I don’t got no sentimental feelings for children, either.” I believed her. A woman that ugly wouldn’t be burdened with any feminine softness. She jerked her head in the direction of the house, and I thought I saw the glint of a silver barrel, the gun propped in the doorway.

“You won’t be needing a gun, Miz Furey,” Mom said. “We’re not here to stir up any more trouble. We just want to talk to your husband for a minute. Could you ask him?”

“Ain’t here.”

“When will he be back?”

“Next month.”

The yellow dog seemed to grin, exposing his stained teeth and dark gums.

“You know how I could find him?” Mom said.

“No way to find him. He’s trapping. Gone in the mountains.”

Mother and I both knew he wasn’t trapping in August. Animals have more skin than hair in summer. Mom coughed. “It’s awful hot out here, Miz Furey. Could we just trouble you for a drink of water before we go?”

She pointed one thick finger toward Bear Creek. “There’s a whole river, and I won’t stop you from drinking as long as you do it downstream.”

“Miz Furey,” Mom said, “I don’t believe Red Elk isn’t here.”

“You callin’ me a liar?”

“No, ma’am. All I’m saying is I’d like you to let him decide whether or not he wants to talk to me.”

“He did decide. He said, ‘Get ’em off and don’t take too long.’ He said, ‘Tell ’em the dog got bit by a rabid skunk.’ And I’m saying it might be true. That dog don’t look too good to me and he won’t drink.”

She was right. The yellow dog’s tongue hung out of his mouth and his ribs jabbed at him from inside his mangy hide.

“You give him a message,” Mother said. “You tell him my husband’s sick and I want to find my girl. You tell him if he knows where she is, he can call me. I’ll write down my number.”

“We ain’t got no phone and your husband can die and rot in hell for all we care.”

“I’m sure that’s true,” Mom said, “but I’d appreciate it all the same if you’d just give Red Elk the message.”

“I’ll think on it.”

The hairless creature crouched lower and lower till I thought his belly might scrape the ground. He looked more lizard than dog; I imagined him flicking his tail and skidding across the dirt, snapping my leg before I had a chance to unroot my feet.

“Come on, Lizzie,” Mom said, “no sense in wasting the day.”

I backed up all the way to the truck — that dog wasn’t going to get a look at my hind end.

By the time we got the truck turned around, Mary Louise had disappeared, and I saw a hulk of a shadow in the doorway. Mom saw him too. She stopped and told me to keep my eyes on the road, not the house. We waited. I thought we’d fry in the cab of the truck with the sun beating down on us through the glass and the air still as the last breath in a closed box. Finally I felt him coming toward us. “The road, the road,” Mother whispered, as if glancing his way might make him vanish, as if he were a spirit we had to charm.

He stuck his head in my window. I flattened myself against the seat. He smelled of sweet tobacco and wood fires, of the animal fat that greased his braid. “I’ll look,” he said, “but I won’t promise. She’s not with my boy.”

He was already walking back to the house, stooping to pat the yellow dog, before Mother could thank him.

THE BIG Indian rolled up to the house two days later. He’d brought some girl. She hunched in her seat, and he had to yank her from the dusty blue Dodge. She shook off his grip, but he stayed close to her, just in case she tried to make a break. The girl was small and skinny, no match for the man; he could have snapped her in two with one hand. She wore tight jeans and a sleeveless blouse that might have been white before she made the long drive with Red Elk. Her peroxided hair frizzed, a head of yellow wire.

I stood with my nose pressed to the screen door, wondering why Red Elk was bringing a girl like that here. Maybe she knew Nina, I thought, but she wasn’t the kind I expected my sister would choose as a friend.

Just then Mother pushed past me saying, “Oh God, my baby.” I thought all the fuses in Mom’s brain had finally blown. This girl looked less like Nina than I did. But my mother grabbed the stranger’s hands and squeezed. Funny little sounds caught in her throat as if she were being poked from the inside. She tried to hug the girl, but the wire-haired stranger smirked and cocked her head. She knew my poor mother was crazy, but she had no sympathy.

Mom invited her up on the porch, real polite, keeping a proper distance. She said, “Lizzie, Lizzie honey, look who’s here.” Red Elk climbed back in his car, turned the key and revved a tired engine, pulled away and left the girl with us.

Mom said, “Come out here, Lizzie, say hello.”

I pushed the screen door open with my forehead. I didn’t like anything about the way that girl looked. She glanced my way now and then, throwing me half a grin, as if we were playing a nasty trick on my mother. Finally she said, “That really you, Lizzie, or is that some no-tongue ghost standing in your skin?” She giggled and I knew, but I was still pretending it couldn’t be. I was five-eight; my shoes were nines. I had four inches on this girl who was supposed to be my big sister. She was Mom’s height but scrawny in a sick way. The only curve on her body was a little pouch of a tummy, the kind you see on underfed children. Her hair was fried, all its golden light burned out. My heart knew, but my head kept saying the devil had put my sister’s voice into this stranger’s throat.

She lit a cigarette, and when she sucked on it, dozens of tiny lines creased around her lips. “What’re you staring at?” she said to me.

“I’m not staring. I’m just looking.”

“Well, you sure are looking hard .”

She squinted and peered at me the way I must have been eyeing her. I don’t suppose she much liked what she saw either.

“Why don’t you make us some iced tea, Liz?” Mom said. “Your sister must be parched after that drive.” She turned to the girl she called Nina. “Unless you want to see your daddy right away.”

“No,” the girl said, “plenty of time for that. I’m dry from my throat to my knees. That damn Indian didn’t stop once. Thought I’d make a run for it. Might have too, but here I am.”

When I returned with the three glasses of iced tea on a tray, the girl was gone. I was relieved. This was all some middle-of-the-day dream brought on by the heat. Mom was going to wonder why I had three teas instead of two. But she didn’t wonder. She said, “Nina went to freshen up.” Then she whispered, “What’s wrong with you, anyway? You’ve barely said a word to your sister.”