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“Home life as we understand it is no more natural to us than a cage is natural to a cockatoo.” - George Bernard Shaw

 

“Git up, Darlynn, don’t just lay there with all them blankets over yer head!  I got Dalton here!” 

Darlynn’s voice emerged, muffled, from beneath the pile of old blankets.  “What’r y’all doin here?  Nadine, an jist why did ya bring HIM here?”

“I’m sorry, sweetie… Darlynn, this is Dalton… the guy who took me out ta dinner last night!  He said he knows you!”

Darlynn emerged from under the pile of blankets… her long hair was tangled around her head, and her eyes looked up at Nadine and Dirk with an expression that spoke volumes.  “What did you jist say ta me, Nadine?”

“Darlynn, this is Dalton, the guy who took me out ta dinner last night!”

“Hi, Darlynn,” Dirk said sheepishly.

Suddenly and without warning, like a coiled rattlesnake, Darlynn leapt from beneath the pile of blankets, pushing Dirk backwards towards the electric space heater.  Dirk fell backwards over the heater, his head landing on a radio sitting on the floor of the school bus.  The radio broke into a hundred pieces of metal-trimmed plastic and component parts.  A shard of clear plastic from the radio dial flew towards Darlynn.  Landing upside-down on the floor in front of her, it read “MA.”  Darlynn scurried over to Dirk and straddled him, grabbing him by the lapel of his faux-fur lined blue denim jacket.  “What the hell are you doin’ here with my Deanie?  Are you doin’ it ta her now too?” 

[As a carry-over from the sexual revolution of the 1970s, in 1989 the phrase "doin' it" had broad sexual connotations which no longer exist.]

Nadine, eyes wide and mouth agape, sat down on the pile of old blankets.  “Darlynn, now I want y’all ta tell me… did you and Dalton have… sex?”  The look on Nadine’s face was thoroughly innocent and shocked.  “Darlynn, now you tell me girl, did y’all have sex with him?”

Darlynn, still straddling Dirk, turned around to look at Nadine, in a motion which flipped her hair back around her shoulders.  “Nadine, I told ya that Dirk was the one got me pregnant!”

“Darlynn, you made a mistake… this is DALTON.  Dalton McNiven!”

“Ya dumb skinny bitch, Dalton is Dirk’s real first name!  Dirk is his nickname, dummy!”

“Don’t talk to me like that, Darlynn… it’s ain’t nice, ’specially considerin’ what I done for ya!”  Nadine looked down and began to cry real tears.  She sniffled, then raised her head back up.  She then pointed with her index finger towards where Dirk was still lying on the floor of the bus.  “Darlynn, he ain’t movin’.”

“Wut?”  Darlynn turned back around and looked at Dirk.

“Darlynn, is that…. blood?”  A tiny stream of blood became visible, flowing ever-so-slowly across the dirty, non-level floor of the bus.  Nadine abruptly collapsed onto the soft pile of old blankets.

Darlynn stood up and looked at her hands.  “Oh my gawd… I’m a murderer, jist like on TV!”  Darlynn looked at back Nadine, now quietly passed-out on the soft pile of blankets.  The metal space heater had automatically turned off when it was tipped over during Dirk’s fall, so Darlynn turned it back upright and it came clicking back to life, the buzzing noise of its little fan cutting the sudden silence.  She looked back over at Dirk.  He groaned and reached behind his head.

“Goddamn what happin?”  Dirk sat upright.  “How did I git here on the floor?”

“Ya fell over the heater, Dirk.  What the hell are you doing here??”

“Goddamn, I’m bleedin’!”  Dirk stared at the spot of blood on his hand.

“Here.”  Darlynn handed him a towel that was mostly clean.  “Now tell me what the hell yer doin’ here, Dirk, and what the hell is goin’ on b’tween y’all.”

“When we was talkin’ this mornin’, Nadine toll me she knew where you was… and that you’s likely preg… expectin’.  I wanted ta see ya and talk, and I didn’t know how else ta git Nadine ta tell me where y’all was.”

“So ya did it to her jist ta find out where I was?  Yer a…”

“Darlynn, she hadn’t told me she knew ya ’til AFTER we…”

“Wut??”  Darlynn’s eyebrows were fully raised.

“It’s not like that, Darlynn…”

A faint voice came forth.  “Dalton, you told me you LOVED me!”  Nadine had revived and now sat upright.  “Dalton, you told me that I was special to you!  Y’all said I was the one!  You told me that you was my man!”  Nadine again began to well up with tears.

“Damn it, Nadine, y’all better not a let this heartless redneck stick his thang in you!”

“We made love, Darlynn… it was special… really special.”  Nadine began sobbing.

“OH MY GOD!”  Darlynn was suddenly speechless.  “Dirk, yer evil!  FUCK!”  Darlynn covered her mouth with both her hands after unwittingly issuing the profanity.

“So, whose bus is this?”  Dirk smiled at both girls.

*  *  *

“Now, why did y’all wait so long before ya called us?  You said she’s been missin’ now for purt’ near a week.”  The sheriff’s officer did not look up from his notepad as he questioned Carolynn.

Carolynn wrinkled her face like a prune.  “God damn it, what the hell is this?  My daughter is missin’ and yer askin’ why I didn’t call ya SOONER?  How the hell am I s’posed to know she’s missin’?  I work, ya know.  Alot a hours.  I sometimes don’t git back here ’til real late.  What… am I s’posed ta have Z.S.P. er something?”  She ritualistically took a sip of her reheated coffee, apparently to underline her salient point.

The social worker, sitting at the dinette table next to the sheriff’s officer across from Carolynn, leaned forward and spoke in a clear but sympathetic tone.  Her speech was precise and without discernable accent.  “Mrs. Storm, we understand that you are significantly distraught over your daughter’s disappearance.  This officer is merely attempting to understand the circumstances under which your daughter went missing, and how this may have occurred.  The information you provide will assist him in ascertaining the best course of action to pursue in his search.”

The leathery skin on Carolynn’s face belied her young age.  The ravages of cigarettes, alcohol, self-imposed poor nutrition, and a life of anger and deception aged her beyond her years.  She painted her face in a clown-like manner using available cosmetics, in an attempt to conceal the ravages of self-abuse.  This only made her appear as a caricature, and her inner ugliness continued to shine through.  Her brow now wrinkled further, cracking the surface of her dried heavy make-up.  She took a puff of her cigarette, then exhaled a cloud of smoke.  “First off, I can’t unnerstand half of what you jist said, may’am.”  Puffs of smoke emerged from her mouth and nose as she spoke.  “Second, I ain’t Mrs. Storm no more.  I gone back ta my maiden name, Johnson last year when I done de-vorced that cheatin’ asshole.  Third,” Carolynn placed the palms of her hands down on the table in front of her, her cigarette now strategically upright between her index and middle finger, “MY GODDAMN DAUGHTER IS MISSIN’!  Now, YOU tell ME what the hell yer gonna do about it!”  She raised her hand and flicked an ash into the ashtray, then took another ritualistic sip of reheated coffee. 

The sheriff’s officer reached his hands forward across the table closer to Carolynn.  “Now, Ms. Storm… sorry, Miss Johnson, we need ta git certain facts so’s we can figger out what happin!”

Carolynn abruptly extinguished her cigarette butt in the ashtray.  “GOD DAMN IT TA HELL, Ryan.  Hell, I knowed ya when y’all was jist a kid an’ we used ta steal candy t’gether at the Piggly Wiggly after you ‘n yer fam’ly first moved up here from Oklahoma.  Don’t you dare ‘Ms.’ me, Ryan… y’all KNOW Darlynn, and you KNOW she’s always been trouble fur me.  Hell, I thank she done missed a period even.  I bet she got her self knocked up by that punk Harley she’s been hangin’ out with.”  She continued poking the cigarette butt into the ashtray, despite the fact that it was now long extinguished.

“Ms. Johnson, may I call you Carolynn?”  The social worker effected a saccharine smile. 

“Yes.”  Carolynn got up and walked toward the coffee pot to refill her cup.

“Carolynn, you mentioned that Darla Lynn has been seeing a boy named Harley?  Can you tell me more about this boy, and perhaps provide some insight into the nature of their relationship?”  The social worker used hand gestures to emphasize specific words.

“Wut?”  Carolynn’s expression turned to a sarcastic grimace as she walked back to the table with her refilled cup and sat down.  Cigarette smoke swirled around her as she moved, visible in the light from the dinette fixture.

“Carolynn, wut she’s tryin’ to ask you is… was they… I mean, ya know… was they?”

“You mean was they doin’ it?”  Carolynn posed the question an inflection which specifically suggested euphamism.

“Yes, Carolynn, were they… sexually intimate?”  The social worker now looked entirely serious.

“Hell, Darlynn’s fifteen.  How the hell am I s’posed ta know what the hell she does when she’s ain’t here?”  Carolynn removed a fresh cigarette from the pack in front of her and lit it.

Click HERE for Chapter 13!