Big Woods Read online

  We are supposed to leave at ten. I stay frozen in place, staring at the wall until Dad pokes his head in, all perky, and says, “Shake a leg, buttercup! Breakfast is on the table!”

  I roll over and clutch my stomach. “Dad, I’m sick. I threw up all night.” And then for safe measure, I add, “And I’ve had diarrhea all morning.”

  He winces and calls downstairs for Mom, who rushes up and looks both concerned and crestfallen. “Oh, Leah, I’m so sorry,” she says, leaning over me and placing the back of her hand to my forehead. “You do feel a little warm, so you must have a stomach bug.”

  “Sorry, Mom, y’all just go without me.”

  “No way, sweetie,” she says, “It wouldn’t be the same. I’ll start unpacking the car.”

  “Mom! I’ll be fine. You won’t be gone that long.”

  “Well, let me see if I can get your grandfather on the phone.”

  “Mom, seriously, I’m fine. I’m almost fifteen. Plus, I don’t want to give this to Grandad. I’ll stay in bed and you can set the burglar alarm before you leave. I promise I’ll be fine, I just want to sleep.”

  Mom looks at Dad and he shrugs, saying, “Might as well take advantage of such a gorgeous day. I’ll bring you some Gatorade from the store, Lee.”

  Mom leaves and returns with a glass of water and a sleeve of Saltines. She drapes a damp washcloth across my forehead and squeezes my hand goodbye and says, “We won’t stay that long, we’ll be back by noon.”

  I check the time: 9:45. I walk over to the window and watch Mom pack the trunk with the wicker basket and thermos. I hear Dad punch in the alarm code and shut the door and watch as he shuffles to the car with his sunglasses on and the picnic blanket shoved under his armpit.

  I glance at my watch. It’s 9:48. I spring from bed. I have just over two hours. I get dressed, pull my hair into a ponytail, and put on a baseball cap. I sling my backpack over my shoulder and race downstairs, grabbing Dad’s keys off the hook as I go.

  It’s sunny out and a warm wind blasts the back of my neck as I climb in the truck. I twist the keys in the ignition and the truck springs to life, the cushioned seat humming underneath me. I put it in reverse and ease down the drive.

  When I get to the first stop sign, though, the truck grumbles and stalls. I jam it into park and then crank it back up again. It starts right away, but this spooks me and for a second I think about turning back, but I press on.

  I stick to the back roads, not wanting anyone in town to recognize me. I creep up to an intersection and hit a red light. There’s a car next to me, and I feel their eyes on me, but I force myself not to look over, my heart drilling in my chest. I pull the baseball cap down farther and sit straight up, trying to look older.

  My mouth is watering—I haven’t eaten a thing this morning—and when I pull through the intersection and pass by the Dairy Queen I’m tempted to get a cheeseburger, but I check my watch again: it’s 10:00, I don’t have time.

  As I leave Longview behind, the road slims down to two lanes and I feel a small relief knowing that no one can pull up next to me anymore. I reach in my backpack and find a sack of Fritos and I eat them all, licking my fingers.

  I’m almost to Big Woods when I realize that I don’t have much of a plan of what to do once I’m out there. Big Woods is enormous, but I’m just trusting that Lucy will guide me once I’m there.

  The trees are starting to thicken. I check the time: 10:13. I spot the turn-off on Seven Pines Road and carefully throw on the turn signal before making a right. The sun is bright and the sky is open with no clouds, but once I turn down Seven Pines, the road becomes even narrower and the tall trees cast shadows over the road so that it suddenly seems like dusk in the middle of the day. I have to blink a few times to clear my eyes of the sun spots.

  I ease off the gas and crank down the window so I can listen. A dog is barking in the distance, but I don’t hear much else. The smell of burning leaves fills the truck and I drive past an old man in coveralls tending a fire in a rusted barrel. He looks up at me and I wave, but he just stares back at me with hard eyes and turns away.

  I keep driving down the tar-topped road. It dips down even farther. The surface is pock-marked with craters and entire chunks of road are missing so that I have to swerve to miss the holes. I squeeze the steering wheel even tighter for balance. So far, all I see are tiny roads leading to oil and gas wells. I start to see a few mailboxes, but the driveways are so long and winding I can’t see any homes.

  The trees are really thick now, their shaggy trunks coated in ivy, and the sun cuts through the pines in thin, jagged lines, making me feel even more disoriented.

  I look at my watch: 10:24. I have just over an hour left. “Guide me, Lucy. Give me some sign,” I say under my breath. I come upon a road that veers off to the left and decide to swing down it. It’s just a dirt road and even more narrow than the last one. Tree branches scrape the truck and I feel like I’m being squeezed. My breath is shallow and quick and I realize there’s no way to turn around if I need to.

  I’m inching along the road when I spy a makeshift greenhouse to my right. It sits about a hundred feet away from a dirty trailer that faces the road. Next to the trailer is a pyramid of empty, crushed beer cans.

  The greenhouse looks unusual—it’s not like any kind I’ve ever seen before. We have one in our own backyard—an old glass one that Mom has turned into her art studio. But this greenhouse looks like a miniature A-frame house, like the bottom half of it is sunk into the earth. It has a little wooden door on the front that is closed, and like the trailer, it’s covered in dark green mold.

  I’m underground. By the woods.

  I pull the truck over and kill the engine. I look all around but don’t see anyone, so I open the truck and climb out and as I do the door creaks loudly. I can hear a cry from inside the trailer. I press the door shut as softly as I can and circle behind the truck toward the greenhouse. I walk past the mailbox and make a mental note of the name, Haines, scrawled in black paint on the side. I creep toward the greenhouse, but the leaves under my feet crack like a pop gun.

  I get down on my stomach, so I won’t be seen, and pull myself by my elbows to the little door. I reach up and grab the wooden handle, and as my palm catches a splinter, I hear the trailer door snap open behind me.

  I scramble to my feet. A man steps out onto the rotted front porch. He looks to be in his early thirties. He’s got thick black hair that’s swept to one side like pudding and when he opens his mouth to speak, his parted lips reveal a ragged row of gold front teeth.

  “You lost or somethin’ darlin’?” He isn’t wearing a shirt and he’s got on a pair of dirty jeans with the top button undone and the belt splayed out to one side.

  I swallow hard and just stare back. I can feel his eyes all over me and I’m suddenly aware of how my sweater has crept up around my waist, exposing my belly. I pull it down, not answering him.

  From inside the trailer, I hear a baby crying and on top of that cry, a little boy shouting. I can hear the sounds of other children crying too, building up to a pitch until I see a silhouette pass in front of a window, followed by a series of slapping sounds and muffled cries.

  I crane my neck to try and see around the man and into the trailer, but he shifts and slaps the door shut behind him, stepping toward me.

  My mouth tastes like pennies and I stay rooted in the same spot. I can’t help it, but I turn and look back at the greenhouse.

  “Lookin’ for somethin’?” He’s getting closer. He keeps walking until he’s right up on me. He reeks of beer and cheap cologne; his breath is stale and hot on my face. I can’t decide if I should risk turning my back on him and running for the truck so I just stare blankly at the ground.

  “You’re awful pretty to be out here all alone, doncha think?” he says with a crooked smile. My stomach turns sour and I’m about to respond when I hear an
other cry from the trailer, a little girl’s cry. I can’t place it for sure as Lucy’s but I can’t swear it off either.

  “Is your wife at home? I’d like to speak to her,” I manage to ask, the words coming out soft and small. I want to lunge for the trailer, and as if he can sense this, his face darkens and he reaches up and places a strong hand on my shoulder.

  “Wife’s not feelin’ so well. I’m gonna kindly ask you to leave,” he says, turning me around toward the truck and giving me a firm shove. I walk as fast as I can without looking back. When I reach the truck, I turn around and he’s standing right behind me.

  “You best be findin’ your way outta here,” he says, his mouth a sneer.

  I climb into the truck, my hands are shaking, I close the door. My window is still down and the man leans in and shakes his hands beside his face, saying, “Or the devil worshippers will get ya!” He steps back, clutching his dirty belly and howls with laughter.

  I roll up the window and put the truck in reverse, backing out slowly the whole way until I reach Seven Pines Road. As I’m slipping the gear shift down into drive, a mud-covered black truck with its headlights on approaches me. It slows down as it passes by and almost comes to a stop. I try to look through the windows but I can’t—they’re too heavily tinted—and then the truck speeds off.

  My hands are still trembling when I check my watch: 11:35. Just enough time to beat Mom and Dad home. But when I pull up to the main road, I find myself turning left instead of right, toward the police station and Sheriff Greene, the only adult who I think will listen.

  I ease out onto the country highway and roll down my window and release a deep sigh. Warm air hits my sweat-soaked neck and I’m peeling off my damp baseball cap when I hear a loud rumble behind me.

  I look in the mirror; it’s the same black truck. I’m pretty sure I’m being followed.

  37

  Sylvia

  The other nurses, I could tell, didn’t believe Delia. They were rough and coarse with her; they thought she was a floozy and a looney. Not that she told them much, but everyone on the floor had heard her that first night she came in. And then folks whisper. But I believed her, and Hattie did, too. And because we showed her a kindness, she trusted us. Especially me.

  At night, when she was certain that the others were sleeping, I would step into her room and we would talk; Hat would cover all of my other rounds. Delia would speak in a whispered voice while fingers of moonlight poked through the chunky slats of the venetian blinds.

  Once she had drifted off into medicated sleep, I would find a quiet corner in the lounge and write down everything she had told me.

  It was on the third night, when I delayed giving her the meds even longer—hoping for a longer window of clarity—that she began to tell me her story.

  They raped her, they tortured her, they beat her. They took what little shot she had at a life and snuffed it out, these men. When she first told me about them that night, I doubted it because it was so unbelievable, but only for a minute: sometimes you just know when you’re hearing the truth. And off her meds, she was as clear as a bell.

  I started out gently, by asking her questions about herself.

  She was nineteen. She had been working as a dancer at a nightclub—a strip club—and had graduated from high school the spring before. She had been a good student, she was smart, but her family was quite poor and she hadn’t come from a good home. Her mom had run off when Delia was still little and her father was a mean, bitter drunk who despised all women, even his own daughter.

  The strip club was set back off the highway in a low-roofed, black-bricked building. Delia started stripping there the summer after high school. She wanted to save enough money to move to Dallas. She had dreams of becoming a model and going to college. On her first few nights, she was shy about taking off her clothes, but she soon learned if she had just the right amount of beer before she went onstage, she could look out and the men’s faces would blur together into a comic nothing.

  At first, she thought the men were just really good tippers, so she’d give them her special dance and treat them extra nice, but one night after the club closed, when she was walking across the gravel parking lot to get into her car, the man she knew as Sheriff Meeks approached her. She assumed he was going to ask her for a special favor—something she would never do and something her boss forbid—but when she opened her mouth and said in her friendly, open way, “Hey, Sheriff,” he began reading her her rights and arrested her.

  In the car, on the way to the police station, she kept asking him why she was being arrested. All he would say, in a nasty voice, was, “You know why.”

  He was fat with thinning red hair, his face pocked with dark brown freckles. She was crying hysterically by the time they got to booking, her vision a blur of hot tears. Did someone plant drugs on her? One of the other girls? Out of jealousy? Even then, she knew she hadn’t done anything wrong and figured she would come out all right.

  When the sheriff ushered her into the police station, there was another deputy there, as if he had been waiting for her. They took her fingerprints and mug shot and when she asked again why she was being arrested, the sheriff said, “You’ve violated state and county law. At the strip club, it is illegal to show your private parts.” So they booked her on trumped-up charges about her being too risqué (which she hadn’t been).

  That first night in jail, when she begged for water, they gave her some in a dirty glass, spiked with drugs. And from then on, until she escaped, they kept her drugged up and locked away.

  They only kept her sober on Fridays, just before their Friday night rituals.

  Sometimes when we were talking, Delia would retreat from me, too exhausted to go on. Other times, the horror of what she was remembering would send her into an agitated state and I would give her her meds and leave her be for the night.

  Certain details were fuzzy, just out of her mind’s reach, and she would knit her brow and just shake her head. But she was clear about the men involved: Sheriff Randall Meeks and his deputy, an oil man (his first name was Charlie, she recognized his voice from the strip club), and a preacher (she didn’t know his name and never saw his face; they all wore hoods while they raped her).

  38

  Leah

  Saturday, November 4th, 1989

  Lucy missing 5 weeks, 1 day

  The black truck is still behind me. I hit the gas and try to speed away but the truck speeds up, too, and as it’s approaching, I try and make out the license plate number. But just as it’s coming into focus, the truck swerves and makes a U-turn, heading back for Big Woods.

  My heart is thundering in my chest as I pull into the police station. I park as far away from the entrance as possible. As I’m walking to the front door, I pass by a huge magnolia tree, the shade of which has killed the grass beneath it. Curled up at the base is a tanned, homeless man smoking a cigarette, his head propped up by an Army green duffel bag. I guess it’s my nerves but for some reason I find myself saying, “Hello!” in a chipper voice and waving at him enthusiastically. He rolls up on one elbow and gives me the peace sign.

  I climb the concrete steps and walk inside. My pulse quickens as I approach the front desk, and when I ask to see the sheriff, my voice sounds mousy and small, like someone else’s. The clerk nods and disappears down the hall. I sit down in the corner on a fake leather bench. The cushions have split open and I pick at the cottony-white fibers until Sheriff Greene comes out.

  “Leah,” he says, his voice warm and deep. “Want to chat in my office?” He tilts his head in the direction of his office and I follow him down the wood-paneled hall.

  His office smells like furniture polish and is neat and tidy. On the wall, I study a row of pictures—one of him in his high school football uniform and one from a family cruise in which he is hugging his tanned, blond wife and two sons. A turquoise globe sits on a corner of h
is desk next to a crystal paperweight that catches the light from the overhead fluorescents.

  The sheriff looks concerned but before he even asks why I’m there I find myself telling him everything—about Big Woods, about the black truck, about Mr. Haines, and about the dreams. He takes notes the whole time I’m talking and when I mention the dreams, he doesn’t break my gaze or look at me like I’m crazy, he just nods his head as if in understanding.

  “This Mr. Haines,” he asks. “Did you by chance get the spelling of his name?”

  I smile and write it out for him. “Good, that’s great,” he says. “I’ll check it out and if this man is connected at all to Lucy’s disappearance, I will find out.” He leans back in his chair and folds his hands behind his head. “I’ve got another question for you, Leah.”

  “Sure, of course,” I say, sitting straighter.

  “How did you get out to Big Woods and to the station all by yourself?” My cheeks burn and I dip my head down before stammering, “Umm, well I do have my learner’s permit and my parents—” My throat sticks on the word parents and I look at my watch: 12:05.

  “Want me to call them for you?” he offers.

  “That’d be great,” I say, sheepishly.

  “Tell you what, your house isn’t all that far from here. I trust you can make it home by yourself?” he asks, a trace of a smile warming his face.

  I nod yes and stand to leave. Sheriff Greene picks up his phone and cups it in his hand and says, “Drive straight there and I’ll call them and fill them in. And try and smooth things out for you,” he says, adding, “And Leah, please promise me you’ll never go out to Big Woods alone again.” His eyes are searching mine for some kind of compliance, so I nod my head in agreement before heading down the hall.