John Brandon - Citrus County

Most of the store’s stock was out front, sprawled over the yard, but Toby needed a stand-alone air conditioner and the lightest generator he could find. That sort of stuff would be kept inside. He rested his dolly on a refurbished pulpit and entered the store. The old woman who ran the place nodded at him and he nodded back. He went to the back aisles and quickly the items he was seeking appeared before him on the shelves. He felt grateful. They were right next to each other, kind of a set. It felt like an endorsement, finding exactly what he needed so fast.

Toby carried the items one at a time to the front counter and waited for the old woman to ring him up. He saw now that the woman had a little girl with her. She was hidden behind the counter, at the old woman’s knee. The little girl kept thrusting her fists into her pockets then slowly pulling them back out.

“Not taking no chances,” the old woman said. “I’m keeping my grandbaby right here. Her mama goes to work, this little one’s right here with me, not at the daycare with some pot fiend watching her.”

Toby dug his bills out and started straightening and sorting them. The old lady’s eyes were on him. She had ratty hair, but her eyes were clear and her posture was straight.

“What do you think of this one?” she asked the little girl, jabbing a thumb toward Toby.

The girl shrugged.

“I don’t know either,” said the old woman.

Toby dragged his stuff home and stashed it and then turned right back around and headed back to the dirt road. He’d forgotten. He’d meant to go to the drug store. He had to walk all the way to Route 19. He needed hair clippers. Kaley’s hair was riddled with knots and snarls and Toby couldn’t begin to loosen any of them.

The next day, Toby found a note on his dresser: See me in the shed . Toby had never been allowed in Uncle Neal’s shed, but he knew from looking in the window that it contained a stove and a bunch of potted plants that were likely some backwoods hallucinogen. Uncle Neal kept the place off-limits with a padlock. He went out there each Sunday, even in the crush of summer, and did a bunch of snipping and boiling.

Toby pushed the shed door open and found Uncle Neal standing before a mess of purplish stalks and a steaming stew pot. He wore rubber gloves and wielded a pair of tongs. An open bag of uncooked tater tots sat on the counter, and a forty-four-ounce soda with a long straw. There was a bowl of lemons. A bag of sugar. Cutting board.

Uncle Neal raised a heap of stalks over the pot and let them fall. He bent down and slurped some soda. “Drop one of those tots in my mouth.”

Toby reached into the bag and fed his uncle.

“Are you getting high?” Toby said.

“This isn’t drugs, it’s hemlock.”

The stalks were giving off an acrid aroma. Toby pulled the door open all the way.

“I keep a gallon in that fridge for one week,” Uncle Neal said. “Then I throw it out and make more. It’s the secret to my success.” His forehead gathered in appraisal.

Toby began coughing.

“The steam can’t hurt you,” said Uncle Neal. “Might make you happy. I used to look forward to breathing it, but I guess I built a tolerance. I built a tolerance to most things that might make me happy.”

Toby cleared his throat and wiped his eyes.

“This stuff wouldn’t really kill you,” Uncle Neal said. “If you drank the whole gallon it might maim you.” Uncle Neal sipped more soda. “Quarter those lemons.”

Toby stepped up to the counter and positioned the cutting board. He was already getting used to the stench. Now he recognized it from Uncle Neal’s clothes, the clothes he always wore to do his Sunday chore in the shed — the faded blue T-shirt and worn jeans. The stuff was doing something to Toby. He felt light.

“Hemlock is potent when it’s young,” Uncle Neal explained. “The plants get over five feet tall, I get rid of them. They grow little white flowers sometimes.” Uncle Neal handed Toby a miniature spoon to dig out the lemon seeds, then he went about watering the plants, fondling their leaves.

“I don’t get this,” Toby said.

“Well, that’s because you’re a little slow on the uptake.” Uncle Neal smirked. “You’ll understand one day. Maybe one day soon.”

Toby waited.

“I got a.38 snub in the house. Every morning, I have to decide to let it rest or decide to take it out where the light can hit it.”

“So, the hemlock is—”

“The hemlock is to remind me of the choice I have to keep living or to stop. If I choose to keep living, I have nobody to blame but myself. Anything that happens to me, I signed up for it.” Uncle Neal set a mug in front of Toby. “Put the seeds in there. I’m going to plant them, in case I keep deciding to live.”

“Can’t the gun remind you? You always know it’s there.”

Uncle Neal looked disappointed. “How long does it take to pull a gun out?”

“Not long,” said Toby.

“What does it smell like?”

“What does a gun smell like?”

“Yeah.”

“Not like this.”

“That’s right,” said Uncle Neal. “Nothing smells like this.” He ground up a leaf in his hand and then sniffed his fingers. “Doesn’t matter what I’m doing out here. I could be playing solitaire. The point is to think about living and dying. If you don’t make yourself think about it, you won’t. It’s not in the nature of a human being to step back and consider big choices.”

Toby kept working at the lemons, wondering if Uncle Neal really had a gun, wondering what would happen to him if his uncle killed himself, where he would end up. Toby considered things. He considered things all the time.

“That’s some haircut,” Uncle Neal said. “You joining the service?”

“It’s for pole vault,” Toby answered.

“You’re still doing that?”

“Of course.”

“There’s a haircut for it?”

“There’s a haircut for everything.”

Uncle Neal helped Toby squeeze the last of the lemon quarters, then he pulled out a wastebasket and brushed the carcasses into it with his forearm.

“Do I get a key to the shed?” Toby asked.

“Why not?” Uncle Neal said. “I’ll have one made.”

Toby turned to leave but Uncle Neal called his name.

“One more thing. I’m going to start giving you an allowance — thirty-five dollars a week. In case you want to start… I don’t know, spending money. I can’t take it with me.”

Toby had never thought of getting an allowance. He’d always gotten by on his lunch money, but now, with Kaley, he had expenses. This felt like finding the bunker, like the rains that had fallen the night Toby took Kaley, like the air conditioner and generator. Something was on his side.

“Make it fifty,” Toby said, joking.

“Deal.”

“Just like that?”

“I never negotiated anything in my life,” Uncle Neal said. “I’m not about to start with a little shit like you.”

The churches, the Boy Scouts, the Little League teams — everyone had finally quit. Shelby’s father was losing weight and looked like a version of himself from fifteen years ago, a version Shelby had only seen in photographs. He was a boxer again, swinging and swinging because that’s what he knew how to do. He was growing a beard. The hair on his head was limp, but his beard was vital, aggressive in its takeover of his face. He stuffed flyers in the same mailboxes. He posted Aunt Dale’s $50,000 reward wherever he could. He joined an organization that raised money to publicize abductions and another that raised money to hire bounty hunters.

The police had tracked some guy to Alabama and, though he had nothing to do with Kaley’s disappearance, were able to arrest him for animal cruelty. They’d poked around a small trucking company based on the other coast of Florida. The last bit of aid the police department could offer came in the form of a therapist, a black man who hailed from New Mexico. Instead of business cards, he carried books of matches with his name on them: Cochran Wells.