Uncertain, TX: Chapter Seven

Time to meet Ronnie, Jackson, and the enigmatic OSIRIS... "Have you seen me?"

Previously… (Chapter Six-Read) or (Chapter Six-Audio) or start from the beginning. Audio file to follow, read by me not AI so you get that East Texas twang.

CHAPTER SEVEN

With the volume low enough that Cherry could fall back asleep, Dana switched the TV in Cherry’s room to a home decorating show.

“Everything is beige or grey. No one does anything with snap. There’s no pizzazz,” Cherry complained. Dana, knowing her mother would be happiest with something to bitch about, left her to it in order to clear out more garbage and get the cans down the long driveway. They really would get raccoons if something wasn’t done soon.

Job done, Dana’s sneakers crunched on the gravel as she made her way back to the house. Something in the woods to the right caught her eye, and without thinking, she turned and followed it. The path she’d worn into the small forest of trees had almost grown over, but her feet remembered just where to go.

Where the gamma grass, gravel and scree gave way to sand, where the loblolly pines turned to cypress and cottonwood, she looked up, expecting to see an old orange fishing weight, stuck. That it had fallen away at some point didn’t matter. Muscle memory turned her to the right. Dana broke through the underbrush until the landscape gave way to a sandy shore. Burnett’s Marina still stood, a long, covered deck ringing the old, battered building that jutted over the water on stilts. Several canoes lay flipped upside down and stretched out on the gravel between it and the boat launch. Her eye naturally went to the furthest one closest to the scraggly stand of trees before the piney woods began in earnest, and sure enough, a busted old johnboat with a two-stroke motor sat elevated on a couple of truck tires next to a worn-out and time-battered canoe, paint chipped and hull rusted.

---

Addy clambered into the canoe, but before Dana could shove it into the water, a sharp whistle pierced the air. She turned to the deck and saw the red-ember glow of Ronnie’s cigarette in the recesses. Leaning forward into the light, he cupped his fingers at her, beckoning her.

Dana looped the rope end back over the pier’s cleat. “Sit tight.”

“Are we in trouble? I can pay for the rental,” Addy said.

“No, Ronnie doesn’t mind. No one ever rents this old thing.”

She jogged to the building. Ronnie, skin baked into leather, leaned against the railing, a longneck beer in the same hand as his smoke. He had a tattoo high on his chest: A green city population sign that read “Uncertain, Pop. 153.”

“Yeah?”

Ronnie exhaled a plume of smoke, then chased it with a swig of beer. “You stay out of Pine and Stumpy Sloughs, you hear me?”

“Why? We were going up to Clinton, then check out the north shore—”

“I know. You better not.”

Dana cocked her hip, irritated. “Don’t give me a ‘because I said so’ answer, Ronnie.”

“Dammit, Girlie. Just don’t. There’s… gator activity up there. Nesting. You just steer clear. And one more thing.” He tossed his empty into a bin and grabbed another from the Styrofoam cooler always stashed by his deck chair; he popped the top off on the railing with a sharp slap. “You see a Jack of Diamonds or Club card on the post of C and R—” Those were two boating lanes that intersected south of Pine Slough. “—then you know to stay away. That’s a warning to you, understand?”

She nodded even though she didn’t.

“Some official-types are tracking things, so seeing as you don’t have a fishing license…”

He drifted off with a pointed look and a draw on his cigarette, still holding the beer in the same hand.

“Yeah, okay, then.”

“Yeah, okay.”

“Thanks, Ronnie.”

“Don’t ever say I don’t look out for you, Girlie. Go on now. Have fun and y’all stay out of trouble.”

Dana threw a hand up in thanks as she jogged back to Addy and their canoe.

Addy shaded her eyes with a hand. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah, we have to skip the plan to find snapping turtles, is all.”

Dana, peeved, yanked the waterproof map she always brought with them out of her ditty bag. She looked for a new place for them to explore in the vast swamp, wondering why Ronnie would be so adamant about her staying away from the slough. It wasn’t like gators were active midday and Dana knew what gator nests looked like and how best to avoid them.

“Ooh, let’s go here,” Addy said. She tapped a finger on the map. “Are there any goats on Goat Island?”

Dana laughed and stowed away the map. “No. But there’s a few osprey nests. We might get lucky and see some woodpeckers. Definitely some skinks lurking about.”

“Lead on, Bird Girl.”

---

Dana smiled down at the old canoe. Finally, it felt like she’d come home. The boat, like everything from her past, was in bad shape. The yoke had been repaired, poorly, and it had buckled. The johnboat was even worse off. Rust-ringed holes peppered the hull and in fact, some grass was growing up through one of them stern-side. It looked like someone had blasted the boat with buckshot. Knowing how stupid folks could be with a belly full of beer and nothing to do but knock bottles off a fence, that seemed likely. It wasn’t water-worthy, so Dana wondered why Ronnie kept it instead of sending it off to the dump.

---

The river current that cut through this part of the lake was running slow, a gentle rushing sound barely audible over the susurration of leaves and the occasional call of a migratory bird, the flat caws echoing off the water and the close trees. The parking lot and boat launch had seen better days. Broken glass sparkled in the midday sun and weeds took advantage of every crack in the pavement. The length of the marina ran along the parking lot and inside, she knew, was a wall of life vests, paddles and waterproof maps, a beer and soda fridge should be angled next to the register. A couple of Heinz-57 dogs—what older folks in East Texas called mutts—crawled out from under the deck and barked at her, tails wagging, then trotted off into the woods. Deep in the shadows of the deck, Dana could see a red ember glow briefly. Grinning, she made her way to the steps, hand up in a hello.

“Hey, Girlie-girl,” came a voice, as worn and rusted as the old water-logged and sunbaked canoe from her girlhood. “Wondered if you’d ever come see me again.”

“Hey, Ronnie,” Dana said as she climbed the stairs, her eyes slowly adjusting to the change in light. “So, you heard I was in town?”

“Nah,” he said, taking a long drag from his cigarette. “Don’t talk to too many folks anymore. Heard about your mama, figured you come in the end. Guess that’s now, huh.”

Ronnie, reclined in an old metal rocking chair, had clearly continued living the same way as when Dana had grown up in Uncertain: drinking, smoking, fussing, and cussing. His hair was a shock of white against his overly tanned face; a life on the water had baked him into a brown carapace. Where he’d had a small odd-shaped freckle at his left temple when Dana was young, he now sported a full-blown melanoma, a black, twisted mass that crawled across his cheekbone and pressed fat like a satisfied tick under his left eye.

Dana had always appreciated how Ronnie had talked to her straight back then, not like she was a dumb kid. He’d always treated her like he cared, been a steady force in the chaos of her youth. She nodded. “Guess so. Been a while coming.”

“Yup.” He flicked his spent smoke into the water and tapped out a fresh one. “You lookin’ real good, Girlie-girl. Whatever you’re doing suits you. Always knew you had it in you to really be something.”

“Eh, it’s all right,” Dana said, self-conscious yet pleased.

Ronnie chuckled softly. “’Fraid your boat’s no good, if you came to take her for a spin. Fish ain’t biting much anyhow. Don’t know if you remember that, being all fancy and citified now.”

“I remember.”

“Mm.” Ronnie hid his grin behind his beer. He gestured at her with its base. “You want one?”

“Nah, I need to get back. Cherry’s sleeping, but she doesn’t sleep well.”

“She shouldn’t.”

Dana blinked at that bald statement, the simple way in which Ronnie said it, as if he was telling a customer where to find the oar drop.

Ronnie leaned back in the rocker. Dana could see a few more melanomas on his forearms. She wondered if they hurt.

“My sister Jeanie, you don’t know her, lived in Houston. She went slow. Stomach cancer. The way I see it,” he said, lining up his empty beer on the rail, his head twisting to watch the water, “you got one of two ways to go, when it’s like that. You come clean, or you get mean.” He cast a sharp, knowing glance at Dana. “Except knowing your mama, she’s not going to fit in them boxes. No, Cherry’s gonna do both. You get ready, Girlie. And remember I’m always here for you.”

Acid settled low in Dana’s gut. She knew he was right, but there was something embarrassing about people knowing who her mother really was. Then again, Ronnie had been more of a parent to her than her own had been. He’d never said anything about it before, just always seemed to know when Dana needed an escape on the water, a cold drink from the marina’s soda machine, a bit of praise or a new set of pens and notebooks, things like that. Gave her her first real job and could be counted on for a safe space, when it came to it. Never charged her, never made her feel bad about the state of things back home. Not until now, that was.

“And for what it’s worth,” Ronnie continued, “I’m sorry. I tried. Coulda tried harder, I guess. Definitely coulda tried harder.”

Ronnie wouldn’t look at her. For the first time in all the years they’d known each other, the cocksure smart-ass who enabled most of Dana’s best traits couldn’t or wouldn’t make eye contact. That unsettled her more than anything, leaving Dana to wonder what Ronnie could be sorry for, because it certainly wasn’t that her mother was dying.

“Better go check on her, then. I know we ain’t spoke in a New York minute, but I’m still trying my best to look out for you, Girlie,” he said, nodding her off. He set himself to rocking once more, looking out at the water instead of her. “Come see me again if you’re of a mind to. Maybe tell me all about your big city life.”

“I will.” She raised a hand in farewell, uneasy from all the echoes of her past tripping her up and entangling her, pulling her further into the depths of Uncertain.

---

THEN, 1986

“I can’t hang out tomorrow or the day after,” Addy said.

“Oh?” Dana looked out at the water and dug deep for some bravado to hide her shock. “Finally found someone cooler than me to hang out with, huh?”

Addy laughed and kicked Dana’s shoe under the table. “No. My mom wants to go to Dallas for a couple of days to do my clothes shopping for the school year. It takes her forever. I asked if you could come and she said no.”

Dana couldn’t imagine spending the day with Addy’s mom; Katherine Winn remained a faceless unknown.

Addy brought along some catalogs and magazines, so they spent the rest of their afternoon in Dana’s tree getting tan and flipping pages. Finally, Addy admitted she had to get back so she wouldn’t get in trouble. They didn’t talk as Dana rowed back to the marina.

By the time they disembarked and got the boat tied off, there was a barrel-chested, mustached man in reflective sunglasses standing next to an elegant car, engine running. He leaned against its gleaming metal side, arms crossed and a dangerous scowl twisted onto his scarred face.

“Shoot,” Addy muttered. “That’s Wayne. He looks mad.” To the man she chirped, “Hi, Wayne! Took us forever to row against the current.” She shook out her arms and nudged Dana’s side. Addy didn’t row; it made it harder on Dana to overcorrect.

“Your mama said six. It’s after six,” Wayne said, the words clipped and curt.

“Don’t worry. I won’t say you made us late talking and playing poker. Can we take Dana home, first?”

“Addy, you don’t need to—”

Addy gave Dana’s hand a squeeze, then towed her to the car. “Of course we do. I made you late, too. Wayne?”

Wayne didn’t move from the passenger door.

“Wayne, we’re taking Dana home, then you can be mad at me for being a few minutes late. You know my mom won’t be mad at you.”

Wayne chewed the inside of his cheek for a moment, shoved off the car with his backside and growled, “Not your mama who’ll rip me a new one, and you know it.”

Dana felt a tremor run through Addy as Wayne opened the back door, silvery metal gleaming on the cuffs of his dress shirt to match a fat, shiny watch at his wrist. Dana slid across the leather bench seat to make room for Addy, but before Addy could climb in, Wayne pulled her back by her elbow and shut the door, then opened the front passenger seat and guided her inside. Addy caught Dana’s eye in the rearview mirror, rolled her eyes and smiled.

Wayne shifted the car to reverse. He draped his arm across the seat back to view the turn, and Dana saw that there were fancy square metal buttons on Wayne’s cuffs. They had a picture or design pressed into them, but before she could make out what it was, he brought his hands back to the wheel and drove off, asking, “You live off North Cypress, right?”

Dana, startled, nodded. “You… you can just drop me off at the mailbox.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Addy replied. “We can drive you to your door.”

“No, we can’t,” Wayne said. “Those roads are all rutted and ruined. I’m not busting your daddy’s shocks for politeness. She can walk. She’s used to it.”

“Addy, it’s fine,” Dana said. The sooner she could get out of the car, the better. She wished she could take Addy with her. Wayne gave her the major creeps.

The drive was short. Wayne shifted the car to neutral, the big engine rumbling like a panther on the gravel scree to the side of the narrow country road. Dana had to mind the row of mailboxes when she opened the door. A thrill of horror raced through her at the thought of hitting them with the Winns’ car door, how Wayne would react. She caught Wayne’s face in the rearview, watching her every move with his sunglasses low on the bridge of his nose, like he wanted her to see him watching her.

“’Bye, Dana! I’ll call you later,” Addy shouted through the opened window as Wayne peeled out, the tires kicking up enough dust and debris that Dana had to turn her face.

The taillights flashed at the distant intersection, then the car turned and was gone. Dana trudged up the road to her cul-de-sac. Her mom’s hand-me-down Datsun was nowhere to be found. The porch creaked under her weight. As dusk settled on the quiet house, she wondered how Addy managed to sit in a car with that man every day, just to spend time with Dana. Dana didn’t think there was anything about her worth that trouble.

---

“So like… what does he do for your dad? Is he just y’all’s driver?” Dana asked, stretching out along the blankets. It was overcast, the humidity oppressive. They’d boated to Dana’s tree, hoping to catch the breeze above the treetops. The little battery-powered radio only picked up the local AM station filled with reports of a new teen runaway, a boy. Dana switched it off with a distant thought that maybe that boy knew Divine. A woodpecker jackhammered away nearby.

Addy cracked open a can of soda, took a long sip and handed it to Dana. She wrapped her chilled, damp hand around Dana’s ankle, who shivered. “I don’t want to talk about Wayne.”

Dana passed the can back to Addy to finish off and laid back down. “What do you want to talk about?”

Addy sat with legs crossed by Dana’s side and took her hand. She lightly traced her nails up the inside of Dana’s forearm; the sensation made every hair on Dana’s body stand at end. “I don’t know. Ugh, I don’t want to go back to Shreveport next week.”

A wave of sorrow washed over Dana. Summer was coming to an end.

“So that’s when y’all’re leaving? Next week?”

Addy shifted closer, using both hands to lightly twist and tickle random patterns into Dana’s skin. She nodded. “Thursday. Mom wants the full weekend to get the house together for school and stuff.”

Dana swallowed; her sadness stuck in her throat like a physical lump. “I’m… I’ll miss you.”

Addy nodded. “Me, too.” She ran the flat of her palm over Dana’s forearm, then twisted to lay with her head on Dana’s lap, her feet propped up on the bark of the tree. “I never would have made it through this summer without you.”

Dana wondered how she was going to make it through the rest of the year without Addy.

---

Addy could only have a quick lunch with Dana at the Shady Glade the next day; her mother wanted her home for “fittings,” whatever that meant.

Bored, Dana took the long walk home along the actual road instead of cutting through the woods. She’d forgotten her bug spray and couldn’t take one more mosquito feasting on her. At least along the road she’d only have to worry about chiggers in the unmown grass. She pulled her socks up to her knees as protection and began the long walk home. Everything without Addy seemed dull, irritating, worthless to do. How on earth was Dana going to get through the school year without her?

Dana trudged along the edge of the blacktop, the cicadas screaming down at her from high in the trees as sweat bloomed between her shoulder blades, running in an itchy tickle down her spine. Sun-bleached and humidity-warped papers stapled to a telephone pole flapped pitifully in the scant breeze.

Have you seen me?

Divine’s school picture, her brilliant smile and dark, shining cheeks had yet to fade from one of the notices stapled to the pole. A new sign had appeared, one of the two runaways from a nearby town, a pretty girl with long, curly hair and an innocent tilt to her chin. She wore a gold cross at her neck in her photo. A grackle flew overhead and landed on the phone line ahead, warned the area with its revved up, cacophonic caw.

A truck with heavily tinted windows came lumbering at her, towing a large boat, large enough to have caution flags at the corners and ride slowly down the center of the two-lane blacktop. She found a bare patch in the gravel to stand and watched them pass: a flat-bottomed river boat with plenty of deck for people to amble about plus a protected interior in case of rain, and a second floor on the back half. Atop that was the pilot house, a rounded lookout, partially covered with the back open to the sky. Two side-mounted paddlewheels graced the back third, with two smokestacks, each with ridged tops like black crowns and positioned toward the front. Heavy cables connected them to the pilot house, balancing the whole look. The white metal railing had elegant curlicues that made her think of New Orleans and the French Quarter. The boat was as wide as the road with the side-mounted paddle wheels, so Dana stepped back into the overgrowth to keep from getting run over. The name OSIRIS was painted in a fancy script on the hull, and below that, a smaller block-print with Shreveport, LA, its port of origin. Painted just above the registration number near the bow was an Aces-high straight—a ten, Jack, King and Ace of Spades and a Queen of Hearts in the center.

Once the boat passed, Dana stepped back into the roadside clearing and slapped at her leg where a bug or three were chomping at the back of her knee. A familiar car followed the boat at a similar crawl, Addy’s family car. Instead of Wayne in the driver’s seat, however, there was another man, broad shouldered with a thick head of blonde or maybe grey hair. He had a moderately tanned, square face and older movie-star good looks. The driver’s window was open, his hand casually dangled out, a lit cigar stuck between his fingers.

This must be Addy’s dad.

The man stared at her as he passed, head turning to keep her in his sights, eyes flat with tiny dark pinpricks swimming in a sea of faded blue, and although it only took a moment, Dana felt like she’d just been x-rayed, he so thoroughly looked her over. She shivered and hurried along home. She didn’t look back.

---

The girls didn’t speak much as they tied off the boat at Dana’s tree. Addy still couldn’t manage a proper bowline, so Dana usually waited for her to climb the ladder and quickly retied it so as to not hurt Addy’s feelings. Dana handed up the little cooler of snacks through the trap door, then joined her on the sun-drenched deck covered haphazardly in blankets and discarded beach towels they’d added over the weeks. Dana wondered if Addy would want to take her additions with her when she finally left.

Addy pulled Dana down next to her, laced their fingers together.

“I’m almost as tan as you,” she said pressing her forearm against Dana’s.

“Your legs are darker, though,” Dana replied, pointing her toes. She’d finally gotten the hang of shaving her legs without looking like she lost a battle with a cheese grater.

Addy leaned her head onto Dana’s shoulder. They sat quietly, holding hands, the sounds of birds chasing cicadas and the water—low at this time of the year—bumping the boat into the cypress knees all there was to hear. No one fished in late-August for sport, not many wanted to be out in the heat and humidity, so it was as if they had the whole place to themselves.

“Dana.”

“Mm hmm?”

Addy’s breathing hitched.

“Hey. It’s okay.”

Addy shook her head, turning her face into Dana’s neck. Dana could feel the tears on Addy’s face. “I’m going to miss you.”

“I’m—” Dana cleared the lump in her throat so her voice wouldn’t crack again. “I’m going to miss you, too.”

“You’ll forget all about me.”

Dana laughed, working her arm free from between their bodies to wrap around Addy’s shoulder. “How in the hell do you think I’d forget you? You think I meet rich girls crying in the swamp every year?”

Addy laughed. “Probably.”

“Oh yeah.” Dana shifted so Addy could lean more comfortably against her. “This swamp is just teaming with pretty girls our age.”

Addy shuddered.

---

NOW

Dana stood in front of her Mom’s dilapidated house, Ronnie’s warning and weird apology pressing at her back; in front, her mother’s irascibility and growing needs almost a physical weight trapping her here, feet rooted in the grass. Her car was right there. She could get in it, leave, leave her mother, Cherry’s cancer, the cancer that was this town, and just go. Things in Uncertain had a tendency to just vanish, after all.

Have you seen me?

Dana flashed on Divine Moore walking through the junior high’s hallways, shoulders back, eyes sparkling with mirth, beautiful. Gone. There were a few other girls who ran away from home the next year—one white, one Black—and then two more the year after that. There’d been a boy, delicate boned and teased mercilessly, gone in the night a few years later. This week, another girl from the nearby Walmart, Francesca. The posters dotted the surrounding towns: Have you seen me?

Disaffected youth. People looking for something better than the town had to offer. Or Cherry’s theory that they’d run away for sex and adventure. No answer ever satisfied Dana, particularly in the case of Divine, a straight-A student and future class president with nothing but a bright future before her.

Nonetheless, everything in Uncertain and its neighboring towns continued as they’d always done, gossip and drama ebbing and flowing like the bayou’s water line, and another person disappeared in the night, and another, and another, each disappearance ripples on the surface of the water carried off with the current like so much flotsam.

Beau. That had been the boy’s name, Dana remembered, her throat closing briefly with an odd panic. One of the girls had been named Krystal. She couldn’t remember the rest, her mind struggling to open the closed file that was high school to pluck out those memories. Why couldn’t she remember the names of the missing?

Adelaide Winn.

“Well… shit.”

Where the hell had she gone?

---

_{Next chapter on Tuesday, August 11th at 8am CT, with audio book at 8:30am.}

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