Red Weather

22. The Talladega Forest

156 22 TheTalladegaForest “I have to go back to the States,” Neva said, after she hung up the phone. “Some family stuff. I have to go. For a few days anyway.” “Now?” Deb asked. Neva nodded. Kira whistled. “Not likely. Pretty long wait for an exit visa right now.” “They always make exceptions,” Deb said. “Neva, is it serious? Did someone die?” “Not recently,” she said. She felt a giggle rising in her chest. Oh God, is this hysteria? she wondered. “Excuse me a minute,” she said. She went into the living room and sat on the couch. We never sit in here, she thought—only when there’s a party. And then everyone stands. The giggle had turned into a fist-sized lump of something, wedged deep behind her solar plexus. I would like to cry, she thought, to feel it dissolve and run out the ducts of my eyes. Enough salt to burn the skin of my face. She slid to the floor and felt the cold tiles pressing against her cheek. “There’s some news,” Harker had said. They didn’t even know the phone had started working again, were all startled when it rang. “For you, Neva,” Kira had called from the hallway. Some news, Neva thought. You and Rhonda are getting married. She thought of the brick house in Wisconsin, the snow piling in the yard. The antidote to this life’s fever. “Neva?” Harker asked. She saw the snow melting. The house a place where she visited, not lived. “I’m still here,” she said, trying not to begrudge him his good news, trying not to let it show in her voice. “They found the car,” he said. 157 “What car?” she asked. Then, before he could answer, she said, “The station wagon. Oh my God, Harker. Oh my God.” The tile had grown warm against her face. She could sense Deb and Kira in the other room waiting. The white station wagon in north Alabama, deep in national forest land, in the Talladega Forest, buried in scrub and kudzu. Spotted by teenagers panning for gold. Panning for gold. Surely they would laugh about that someday, she and Harker. “I have to tell you the rest,” he said. Bones, he said. There has to be an autopsy, but them, Neva. It has to be, he said. “I don’t think I could ask for an exception,” Neva said to Deb and Kira, who sat at the kitchen table. “Does this have anything to do with why you went to La Loma?” Kira asked. They waited. “Please don’t ask me,” she said. “All right,” Deb answered for both of them. “You could go to Guatemala,” Kira said. “I guess we could,” Deb said. “They didn’t have an earthquake.” “I can’t go to Guatemala,” Neva said. “I have to go home. I mean I have to go to the States. For a few days.” “No, I mean you could get out of Guatemala, Neva,” Kira said. “You can probably get a visa at the airport, but if not, you could always go to the embassy.” “Are you sure?” Neva asked Kira. She heard the teariness in her voice. “I’m pretty sure,” Kira said. “Worst-case scenario: take a puddle jumper across Guatemala, then cross the border into Mexico, at Chetumal.” Deb was nodding. “She’s right. It might take a few days, but it could take forever here and you know how it is.” Yes, Neva knew. A visa was supposed to take three days, but something almost always went wrong—a signature missing, a seal in the wrong place. “I’ll go with you,” Deb said. “We’ll go in the morning.” They must have headed north, Harker had said. After they left you at Grandmother’s. “Or maybe they were coming back?” Neva said. “Maybe,” Harker said. “But Magruder didn’t think so.” “It doesn’t seem real,” Neva said. “I can’t make sense of it—why they didn’t hike out, why no one found them.” 158 “You know what it’s like back there, those old logging roads, not really even roads.” “You just want it over,” Neva said. Harker was quiet. “You’re wrong. I want it not to have happened. I want them back, I want that life back. The life before, when we got to be kids—” “I’m sorry,” Neva said...