stop!”
Gracie removed her lunch from the bag and began singing: “Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be morons…”
Jacko pointed a French fry back at her and said, “See? See what I mean?”
Gracie pulled the milk out of the bag and saw her picture on the carton under MISSING CHILD.
The off-road tires gripped the dirt-and-rock trail and the V-8 engine muscled the Land Rover up the steep incline while the plush leather seats cushioned the occupants as they bounced about, albeit less than one would expect due to the electronic air suspension system. For your off-roading needs, no other SUV measured up to a Range Rover product. John’s Range Rover back home was a sporty red job with four-wheel-drive, a neat feature even though the thought of actually taking a $75,000 vehicle off road had never entered John Brice’s mind. So when they crested the hill, John exhaled with great relief and his white-knuckled hands released their death grip on the steering wheel as he braked the Land Rover to a stop in front of a small cabin.
It was almost noon on the seventh day Gracie was gone.
A dog was on Ben before he had de-Rovered. Ben knelt and petted the dog; the beast licked his face like an ice cream cone. “How ya doin’, Buddy?” If a dog can cry, Buddy was. Ben stood and walked inside the cabin. Man’s best friend then greeted John, slobbering all over his jeans and Nike cross-trainers.
“Get away from me, you freaking mutt!”
John was not comfortable around dogs; he had had a dog for a while as a boy, but the dang beast had bit him every chance it could. Fido finally abandoned his attack on John when it spotted some kind of rat creature and gave chase into the brush bordering the cabin. John dehosed his jeans and checked out Ben’s cabin; it was smaller than the four-car garage at Six Magnolia Lane, but it was a neat log home just the same.
On both sides of the steps leading up to the porch were gardens; little sprigs stuck up out of uniform rows of black dirt. The porch floor was built of wood planks. Cacti in colorful pots, odd-shaped rocks, and painted wood carvings of coyotes and horses lined the porch rail. John followed the porch around the cabin and gazed out on the brown terrain that stretched to the distant mountains whose white tops were a stark contrast against the deep blue sky. As far as he could see, there was not another human being, not another house, not another anything. This was not an exclusive gated community constructed to keep the masses out. This was not a master-planned subdivision with an active homeowners’ association. This was not a place you came to for social engineering. This was where you came to leave the rest of the world behind.
On the west side of the porch were two wooden rocking chairs; one was half-sized with GRACIE carved in the seat back. John sat in her chair and imagined Ben and Gracie sitting there and talking, and he wondered what she had said about her father. He sighed. He should have come with her, as she had always begged him to, and sat in a rocker with JOHN carved into the seat back and talked to his father. But he had always been so brain-damaged about the past-a father not there to protect Little Johnny Brice from the bullies-and so focused on the future-an IPO that would make John R. Brice’s life perfect-that he had never found the reason or the time to forgive or forget.
He hoped Gracie had forgiven her father.
He stood and walked around back. Behind the cabin were a vegetable garden and a smaller structure accessible via a stone path. The door creaked as John entered Ben’s workshop; unfinished furniture and tools occupied the floor and walls. A rocking chair caught John’s eye. He ran his hands along the graceful wood armrests and down the curved back. He sat in the chair and leaned his head back. John had assumed the least about his father, that his woodwork would be crude creations, not works of art like this chair. Just as he had assumed a drunk would live like a drunk, sloppy and dirty. But the cabin and grounds and this workshop were meticulously maintained, as if Ben had a Sylvia Milanevic on the payroll.
John Brice didn’t know his own father.
“That’s for some movie star in Santa Fe.”
Ben was standing in the door.
“I’m going into town to pick up supplies,” he said. “There’s food inside if you get hungry. We’ll load up and hit the road as soon as I get back.” He held out an open hand. “Since you traded in my POS Jeep, I need to borrow your vehicle.”
John tossed the keys to Ben. “It’s yours.”
After the Land Rover had disappeared down the hill, John went inside the cabin. He was starving; all he had eaten that day was his normal breakfast of a dozen Oreos crushed in a glass of milk and the black coffee on the flight.
He walked over to the kitchen at one end of the main room and got a potent whiff of whiskey. Five empty whiskey bottles were sitting upside down in the sink. Looking at the bottles, John felt sure he was following a drunk on a wild goose chase; but there was no running home to Elizabeth now. He took the bottles outside to the recycling bin.
When he returned, he searched the cabinets for something decent to eat, but all he found were organic granola bars, organic oatmeal, organic pasta, organic peanut butter, vitamins, and health supplements. A drunk who takes care of himself? He opened the refrigerator: grapefruit juice, orange juice, yogurt, fruit, cheese, and a bag of bean tamales. Nothing worth eating. Which was just as well, because when he shut the door and saw Gracie’s photos stuck there with magnets, he lost his appetite.
He wandered around the main room and found a stack of newspaper and magazine clippings about BriceWare. com and its genius founder on a desk in the corner. On a table next to an old leather recliner by the fireplace was the Fortune magazine with John’s picture on the cover, opened to the Brice family photo and Gracie’s bright smile. Ben had kept up with his son all this time. But his son had never returned his calls or come to visit, convinced that at his age he no longer needed a father.
He was wrong.
The cabin had two small bedrooms, each with a tiny bathroom. One was Gracie’s bedroom: her clothes in the closet, her stuff around the room, an Indian headdress on the bed, a colorful totem pole in the corner, and a wooden headboard with Gracie carved in a neat script. He walked around the room and touched her things.
The other bedroom was Spartan, only a bed, a wooden chest in the corner, and a nightstand. The bed was neatly made; the ends of the blanket were tucked in tightly. It was an Army bed just like the bed John had slept in until the day he had left for MIT. He had never made his bed again.
Hanging in the small closet were jeans, corduroy and flannel shirts, a winter coat, and in a clear bag, the dress uniform of a full colonel in the United States Army. On the floor were jogging shoes and boots. On the shelf above were several hats and caps and a green beret wrapped in plastic.
On the nightstand were an old rotary dial telephone, a gooseneck lamp, a small framed photo of Mom, and a stack of letters from Gracie. An old phone, snail-mail letters, no computer in the cabin: his father was living in the past in every way possible. John picked up the top envelope; Gracie had drawn little happy faces around the edges. John sat on the bed and stared at the happy faces; he saw Gracie’s happy face. Could she really be alive?
So everyone back home thought she was dead.
Gracie wondered if they would have a funeral Mass for her like the one for the little boy two blocks over who had died a year ago from some disease he had been born with. The altar would be decorated with pretty flowers, Father Randy would be wearing his fancy vestments, and the choir would be singing “Amazing Grace.” Mom would look beautiful in a black dress and Dad would look… Did he even own a black suit?
Picturing the two of them together at her funeral, the beauty and the geek, Gracie found herself wondering again how they had ever gotten together… and if they loved each other. Dad loved Mom, that was like, obvious. He was a puppy dog around her, always licking her shoes. But did she love him? Gracie didn’t think so. She had asked Nanna one time, but Nanna said, “Of course she does, but sometimes grownups have issues that keep them apart.” She asked Nanna what issues were keeping her and Ben apart, but Nanna started crying so she never asked again.
