“Yeah. She was acting like I was gonna deflower you or something. And maybe I’ve been guilty of that in the past,” he said, “but we both know I didn’t lay a hand on you.”
She blushed so hard she wanted to pull the neck of her shirt over her face. He’d seen it for sure, because he seemed less angry at her.
“Screw her,” Charlie said. “Why should she stop us?”
“I’m sorry, man,” he said. “You keep your crazy. I’ve got enough of my own.”
She didn’t know what to say, and all of this was making her miserable. She was getting the feeling this might be the last time she talked to Dirk.
“Why didn’t you, then?” she asked.
“Why didn’t I what?” Dirk said, all perplexed, and again she had the urge to punch him.
“Kiss me, you idiot. Why didn’t you make a move? My breath smell like dog shit or something?”
Dirk shook his head and took a step back toward his goober friends. “You’re just a kid, Walker,” he said. “Go home.”
Charlie wanted to say something cruel to him, but she was out of juice. The thing she had with Dirk had been so fleeting, she never really got a hold on it. He’d wandered by and slipped through her fingers. Yet she felt such loss. Maybe she had hoped for too much too soon.
The strikes against her mom kept piling up, and her disappointment was turning into hatred. Just when Charlie was on the verge of feeling like a half-normal teenager her mom went and blasted it to bits. The fact that Dirk had been such an asshole to her was the shit icing on a garbage cake. She hadn’t even gotten a chance to kiss him, she thought bitterly, though she knew the real loss was that feeling she’d come here with: the lift in her heart when she thought about jumping in his truck, driving off somewhere, and forgetting how much she hated her life.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Kit churned over the evening with Manny as she drove a shipment of supplies from the post office to Doc’s place. Ever since she’d told Charlie about Manny, it was like she had dropped the weight of an unbearable load, but now its contents were scattered asunder. Though the secret had plagued her, she had enjoyed the protection of control. She wondered what Manny had told Charlie, how he had cast their relationship. Would he know to protect their daughter from the whole truth? Would he reveal things just to spite her? Still, there was, in the telling, a restoration of Charlie’s dignity, the dignity of knowing where she came from. There was humanity in knowing. Kit had not been granted the same, and because of it, she might never feel whole. What scraps she had been given, she had clung to—the note, her mother’s name, the few stories of cattlemen and dancers and hurricanes. But they were only scraps. Charlie could have more.
She felt for Charlie, wished she could see inside and know what her daughter’s heart was doing. Kit couldn’t help but worry that the knowledge of her father would drive Charlie further away from her. Would Charlie feel cheated? Would she hate Kit for leaving a hole where her father had been? She had envied how sweetly Charlie had smiled up at him; Kit knew better than anyone how alluring Manny could be. With a sickening twinge, she considered that he might want Charlie all to himself, that she might want to go with him.
She was approaching Doc’s when a possum family crossed the road, a fat mama with three miniatures clinging to her back. To avoid hitting them, Kit turned wide into the shallow end of a ditch. The back of her truck clipped a culvert and dislodged something, which now dragged behind her making an awful racket. She cursed, slowed and stopped, but in truth was glad to have a diversion. Whatever had happened to the truck, she was sure she could fix it.
She walked around and clawed through the odds and ends in the bed of the truck. Rubber boots, a poncho, a shovel. She opened a cooler and found a couple of short bungee cords that just might work. Kit got on her back and wriggled under the truck. The muffler and tailpipe were almost completely disconnected from the body, all but one bracket having been destroyed. She started to dismantle the rig but remembered to put on gloves so her fingers wouldn’t blister. When she shimmied back out from under the shade of the truck, she startled to see Manny standing there.
“Goddamnit!” she said.
Manny laughed. “Whoa there, easy, girl. I just got here, I swear.” He helped her up. “Can you use a hand?”
Kit shook her head. Manny was wearing his old jeans and a tissue-thin western shirt. He looked so much like his old self that she half-expected to see the Mustang parked nearby. “What are you doing here?” she asked.
“I was headed back to church from the vet. Dropped off Jobeth’s little dropkick dog for some shots and stuff.”
“Yeah, I heard you’ve been do-gooding all over town,” she said. “Hang on, I just gotta strap this thing down.” She didn’t like that he had been by Doc’s. It seemed he was working his way into every corner of her life. She lay back on the ground, shifting sideways under the truck, and snaked the bungees around the exhaust pipe and through what remained of the brackets. She just needed a quick fix to get her to Doc’s and back home and could weld everything into place at the house.
“What did you do to your leg?” he said. She looked down and squinted. The heat and the movement had caused the scabbed-over gash on her shin to split open again and blood was soaking through her jeans.
“It’s nothing, just a cut.” Her voice was a cramped echo off the undercarriage. Without asking, he gently pulled the cuff up over her shin. She let him look. He pressed on the center of the gash.
“What are you doing?” she asked, bothered by his touch.
“I’ll never get over that,” he said, rubbing the jam of her blood between his fingers. “It’s such a blessing.”
“It’s a damn curse,” she said. “It keeps me from knowing when to stop getting hurt.”
She secured the last section of the bungee and tugged the muffler to see if it would hold. “That’ll do it.”
Before she could get out herself, Manny took her by the boots and dragged her from under the truck, the gravel scratching her back and collecting under her shirt. He took her beneath the arms and lifted her up to stand, batted away the dust and the grit. She felt immobilized, like a pup taken by the scruff of its neck. He searched her face, then moved closer, a hair’s breadth between them. She felt an old, familiar wanting, a heady flush fanning across her cheeks and down her chest, a weakness in the muscles of her legs. The smell of his sweat and shampoo and a candied fragrance she recognized but couldn’t place. She could feel Manny wanting her, too, in the way he stood so still as if waiting for a shy bird to light.
A black car approached—was it police? As it neared, she thought she saw Caleb. She felt embarrassed, even after she saw it was no one, a stranger passing through. The man lifted his open hand off the wheel, a country greeting, and passed them by. Something locked up inside and she pulled back, stuffing her fists in her pockets.