Bonnie Nadzam - Lions

“Not like we’d know if he’d been missing for years,” the representative from Nebraska told Chuck on the phone. “But you do sometimes hear a story like that.”

“What about before that?” Boyd asked Chuck later that week. “Like, you know, a hundred years back?”

May set her hand on Chuck’s shoulder as she passed behind him with two cold beers on a tray. “Don’t encourage him, Chuck.”

Chuck didn’t think it was funny. He’d dropped the ball. He should have taken a photo. Wired out the details. Put all the information in the bank. He should not have visited the man in the night and brought him beer. He should not have booked him informally, or at all. The dog, the man, all the people sick, it was his fault, in a very real and legal sense. He wondered why everybody blamed Boyd instead of blaming him. It was a whole godforsaken county of ardent belief and powerful imagination; he couldn’t always tell which they were guided by, or whether there was much difference between the two.

On the night they found the body in the water tower, Leigh stepped over the dull metal guardrail on the frontage road and over the same loose wire the man had crossed some few weeks before. She held her breath as she neared the Walkers’ house. The old orange reading lamp was lit over John’s chair. She half closed her eyes and looked at the living room window through a blur of eyelashes, then let herself in through the back door. Georgianna was alone in the kitchen in John’s giant slippers and a long workshirt that came down past her knees.

“Oh,” she said, “come in, dear. Come in, oh you brought us pie.”

“Rhubarb,” Leigh said. She set the Styrofoam carrier on the counter. “From Edie’s garden. But I only brought two slices.”

“You have Gordon’s,” Georgianna whispered. “I won’t tell him.”

“Is he back?”

Georgianna smiled at Leigh. “He’ll be back. Don’t worry. Would you like some tea?” Georgianna set the kettle in the sink to fill it. “That goes good with pie, right?”

“It’s so hot out, though.”

She went on filling the kettle.

“Georgie, did you hear what happened?”

Georgianna turned the faucet off and faced Leigh. “It’s terrible,” she said, opening her arms and folding Leigh in. “My poor husband. He’s died.”

Leigh started, then relaxed in the woman’s familiar hug.

“I keep looking for him.”

“Your shirt smells like him,” Leigh said. The same Lava soap Gordon used. The same deodorant. Almost the same sweat.

“I don’t want to wash it.”

“You don’t have to.”

They stood there in the kitchen, holding hands, sweating, swaying. The ceiling fan whirred overhead. Leigh could smell the sweet, cheap White Shoulders perfume from the Walgreens in Burnsville that Georgianna had worn as long as she could remember. The feel of Georgianna’s hands, soft and old. All of it knit up into a memory Leigh would push out of her mind in the years ahead, a moment of communion in a kitchen as familiar as her own, with a woman as familiar as her own mother. Georgianna put her hands on Leigh’s shoulders and surveyed her face. “What else do you want to eat? I have meat loaf, tuna casserole, a sheet of lasagna, macaroni and cheese, peas and corn, Jell-O.”

“Oh my God,” Leigh laughed. “Who brought you all this stuff?”

“Everybody.”

“We should call Boyd and Dock.”

“Bring ’em over. Bring the boy too.”

“Can I call them?”

“Call them up. We’ll have a birthday party. You got to have something, right?”

So Dock and Annie and Emery came over in their truck and they all sat outside in the grass beneath the cottonwood and ate cold meat loaf and pan-fried lasagna and Jell-O.

“They have their own well, don’t they?” Annie asked Leigh in a hushed voice as they were gathering up dishes and carrying the pans outside.

Leigh nodded.

“It’s horrible,” Annie whispered, leaning in. “Dock’s really spooked.”

Leigh nodded, eyes glazed.

But for Emery, whom Dock took to the shop to retrieve his helmet, they were all quiet as they ate. Annie poured them sticky, pink wine from a gallon bottle. The breeze was warm and Dock made a cheerful fire in a ring of stones. Emery roasted marshmallows, howling from inside the helmet at the flames and swinging the burning sugar around in bright red and yellow circles in the dark. The weedy yard was alive with firelight.

“Summertime,” Dock said.

“Emery and fire,” Annie said. She poured Leigh another plastic cup full of wine and refilled her own. “Who else wants more?” Annie raised the jug.

“That stuff is awful,” Dock said, and extended his empty cup. “Fill me up. Where’s that boy of yours, Leigh?” He nudged her with his shoulder. “It’s his best girl’s birthday, for Pete’s sake.”

“He’s fine,” Georgianna said. “He’s camping.” She shook her head, smiling. “Lions, population a hundred seventeen. Too crowded for the Walker boys.”

Dock caught Leigh’s eye, and she glanced back at him with a look of fear. At least, that’s what he told everyone in town.

If Gordon was going up there to see someone, they said, he would’ve told her.

If he didn’t tell Leigh, he wouldn’t tell anyone.

“Well, happy birthday, anyway,” Annie said, and they raised their plastic cups.

“Happy birthday, precious daughter.” Georgianna smiled wide. “Three pieces of advice for our new adult,” she said.

Dock took a sip of the sweet wine, then tipped his head back, consulting the stars. “Here’s one I learned from John.” He glanced at Georgianna. “Four words you need to ask yourself every day: what if I’m wrong?”

They’d heard John say it before.

“Oh yes,” Annie said. “That’s a good one. My turn?” She touched her fingers to her chest and Leigh nodded. “Advice for our new adult. Here you go.” She looked into her cup, then turned to Leigh. “Never have more than two drinks?”

Dock laughed. “Is that a question?”

“Two?” Leigh said. “This is my second already!”

“Cut her off, people,” Dock said.

“Georgie, your turn.” Annie nudged her.

“Oh, dear,” Georgianna said. “This was my idea, wasn’t it?”

They waited. She scanned the horizon with a faint smile on her closed lips, then settled her gaze on Leigh. “Don’t go anywhere,” she finally said.

“Don’t go anywhere?” Leigh smiled, not understanding. She wasn’t going to die, if that’s what Georgie meant.

“Stay with us.”

“Aw, come on,” Dock said, “that’s not fair.” He shook an index finger at Leigh. “Don’t you listen to that.”

“Gordon won’t go,” Georgianna said. “Not now.”

They all looked at each other.

“So you ought to stay with us,” Georgianna said.

Stay in Lions? It was unthinkable. It was not only bare, but cursed, the whole county comprised of no more than searing light and eddying dust. Nothing but wind and white sun. It seemed even you weren’t there. It seemed you were standing nowhere, on nothing. No ground. And there was no future in Lions. No matter how many stories you heard about years gone by, no matter how many plans you had stocked up for the future, you were confined to a never-ending present.

Dock flashed his eyes at Leigh. Emery plunged his stick through the heart of another marshmallow and torched it, spinning fire in spirals in the darkness behind them.

“What if,” Georgianna said, and blinked at Leigh, “what if you just stayed?”

Leigh shook her head. No one could stay sane and remain in this place of stillness, emptiness, and unbearable light.

Georgianna shrugged and smiled. “My advice,” she said.