Girl Gone Missing Page 3

  Just as she raised her fist to knock on the door, a short bearded man wearing tortoise-shell glasses opened it. Cash stepped back.

  “Oh, I didn’t mean to scare you,” Professor LeRoy said, speaking with a rapid cadence, with an accent Cash had never heard before. “Come in, come in. I saw the shadow of your feet under the door. That’s how I knew you were there. I don’t have you in a class. Are you a freshman? Take a seat. What can I help you with?”

  Without giving Cash a chance to answer, Professor LeRoy plowed on. “Great weather we’re having, isn’t it? When I moved here from New York everyone told me to appreciate the fall, that the winters would be real kickers. They weren’t kidding. Just a matter of time before the snow falls, right? So what can I do for you? You want to drop your class? Switch teachers? In my experience, one teacher is as good as the next, present company exempted. Ha.” He took a breath while shuffling papers on his desk from one pile to another.

  In that space Cash blurted out, “I want to test out of English 101.”

  Professor LeRoy stopped shuffling papers mid-air and stared at her.

  “I’m a straight-A student.”

  “College is a little different than high school. I’ve been teaching here for fifteen years, and the English teachers at these farm schools have barely heard of Shakespeare, let alone Tennessee Williams or Truman Capote. Even with straight A’s, I don’t know how you can expect to pass a college-level test without taking the course.”

  “I can do it.”

  “Who is your teacher this quarter?”

  “Mr. Horace.”

  “You don’t like him? Other students love having him. He grades on the curve. Makes it easy to pass. You don’t want to get up that early, is that it?”

  “I was told students had the option to test out if they wanted. I want to test out.”

  LeRoy shuffled more papers. Cash watched him silently. She wondered to herself what it was about her request that was driving Mrs. Kills Horses and now Professor LeRoy crazy.

  “Most of the students who make this request were the top of their high school classes.”

  More silence. More shuffling of papers.

  Cash lit up a Marlboro. LeRoy pushed a green glass ashtray across his desk. Smoke filled the air. Some of the anxiety left Cash’s chest.

  “You’re a freshman?”

  “Yes. Do I have to fill out some papers or something to take the test?”

  “Well.” He moved more papers around, pulled a drawer open and brought more papers out. “This is the form to request the test.”

  Cash reached for the paper. Dean LeRoy put it down on his desk. “You sure you want to do this?”

  “What happens if I fail it?” Cash asked.

  “You would have to continue in Mr. Horace’s class. Did you talk to him about this? Does he know you want to test out?”

  “No. I talked to Mrs. Kills Horses. She gave me your name and sent me over here.”

  “Well, I don’t know that it’s such a good idea, but if you have your mind set on it, I suppose you can give it a try. You can fill out the form and then schedule a time to take the test. You would have to sit in my classroom and take it. Take it under observation.”

  “Today?”

  “No, no, no. Fill out the form, sleep on it. Come back tomorrow and let me know if you still want to do it.”

  Cash put out her cigarette and reached across his desk for the form. She picked a pen up off his desk and began to fill it out. LeRoy stood up and opened the window behind his desk to let some of the smoke out. He sat back down and shuffled more papers. Cash pushed the filled-out form toward him. “I’ll stop back tomorrow for you to tell me what day I can take the test.” She turned and almost ran out of the building, taking big gulps of air.

  She walked at a fast clip all the way to her Ranchero three blocks away. She jumped in, turned the key in the ignition and drove away. She used the cigarette lighter to light up. She drove straight to the Casbah, her home away from home. It was too early in the day for the brothers, Ole and Carl, to be there. None of the other regulars were there either, except ol’ man Willie.

  Cash realized she had never been at the bar in the morning. She usually arrived later in the evening when Willie, more often than not, was passed out in the farthest back oak booth. This early in the morning, he was sitting up at the bar, hunched over a glass of 3.2 tap beer. He looked at Cash, tipped his glass at her and said, “Oh, what is the world coming to when the young ones show up for breakfast?” He took a big gulp.

  Shorty Nelson, owner and bartender, stood behind the bar, a white towel slung over his shoulder. His shirt actually looked ironed. He looked neat and put together. Not how he normally looked at the end of the night. “What are you doing here? Aren’t you s’posed to be in school?”

  “Give me a Bud.” Cash pushed money across the polished counter. “Those folks drive me crazy.”

  “You drive me crazy,” Willie slurred, wrapping a gray-haired arm around Cash’s waist and pulling her against his side. The smell of stale armpits mixed with morning-after beer almost made Cash gag as she pushed away and jerked out of his arms.

  “Creep!”

  Willie rubbed his thigh, close to his crotch, with the hand that wasn’t holding his beer glass. He grinned, yellow tobacco-stained teeth appeared beneath his Hitler-style mustache. For a split second Cash wondered how, in his constantly drunken state, he managed to maintain the perfect square above his upper lip, but then an involuntary shudder shook her body as she noticed the bulge in his pants, the pants still stained from last night’s drunk.

  “Jeezus,” she said, grabbing the Bud, taking a big drink and heading to the coin-operated pool table. She dug four quarters out of her jeans pocket, put them in the coin slot and listened to the comforting sound of billiard balls dropping. She grabbed a house cue because she hadn’t even thought to bring her own, rolled it across the green felt, saw that it was warped a bit, put that one back and grabbed another. That one was a bit straighter, if a tad lighter. But it would work. She racked the balls into the familiar triangle. In one fluid movement she removed the wooden triangle, grabbed the cue stick, leaned over the table and sent the cue ball flying into the racked balls, causing three of them to drop into separate pockets.

  Shorty leaned on his forearms across the bar, watching Cash play against herself. “You know, Cash, Willie here used to be one of the richest farmers in the Valley.”

  “Still am,” interrupted Willie.

  “Until he took to coming in here mornings. Soon he was spending more time drinking than plowing.”

  “I can still plow.” He leered for Shorty’s benefit, rubbing his thigh again, tipping his glass in Cash’s direction before killing it off. He wiped the beer foam from his mustache with his forearm and pointed the glass at Shorty. “Another. That’s why I had sons. They run the farm for me since my arthritis kicked in. They don’t need a college degree to farm.”

  Shorty refilled his glass saying, “Just shut up and drink, old man. Cash, you got a good thing going, kid. What are you doing here instead of at class?”

  Cash leaned on her cue stick. She stared hard at Shorty, willing him to shut up.

  “Don’t you know Ole and Carl are in here every night bragging to anyone who will listen about how you are going to college. Everyone’s proud of you.”

  “Damn straight,” said Willie, lifting his refilled glass.

  “Shut up,” Cash said under her breath, sending the 9-ball into a side pocket. To Shorty, she said, “I just don’t know, Shorty. It’s a whole different world.”

  “You’re smart, Cash.”

  “I don’t think smart is the issue,” said Cash, lining up the cue ball on the 2-ball, sitting three inches off a corner pocket. “These folks talk a different language. Dress different. Sit inside brick buildings all day and think of fancy ways to string words together instead of just saying things plain out. And I think the teachers all think I’m stupid just because I’m Indi
an. I’m not used to folks treating me like I’m stupid. Being mean, or calling me names or being disgusting,” she said pointing her cue stick towards Willie, “that, I’m used to, but being thought of as stupid just because I’m Indian? Pisses me off.” She dropped the 8-ball into the same corner as the 2. With the table cleared, she put four more quarters into the table and racked the balls.

  As she broke and started shooting, she said, “And these beginner classes are dumb. I learned all this stuff in high school. I don’t see why I have to take it all over again. I heard that students can test out of these baby classes, but when I asked, everyone treats me like I’m just a dumb Indian.”

  “Are they gonna let you though?” asked Shorty, flicking his rag across the counter again.

  Cash stood up from the table and looked at him across the bar. She took a drink of her Bud and a drag of her cigarette. “I filled out the form to test out of English this morning,” she said, with heavy sarcasm. “I’m going to go talk to the chair again tomorrow to find out when he’ll let me take the test.” She shot a couple more balls into the table before continuing.

  “Then I’ll go talk to the chair of the science department about trying to test out of his class too. I can already recite the periodic table frontwards and backwards. I know photosynthesis is what makes us rich here in the Bread Basket of the World.” Cash waved her cue stick and beer bottle in a wide arc. “I don’t think I need to be in a classroom, getting a sore ass sitting on hard chairs, smelling some strange oil these hippies wear to cover the smell of the marijuana they smoke, just to have some old guy tell me that corn and sugar beets need sun to grow.” Cash started furiously shooting balls into pockets. “If I test out, I can just take my psychology and judo classes. Classes I might actually learn something in.”

  “Can you do that? I mean, do they let students just test out of classes?” asked Shorty.

  “That’s what it says in the student handbook,” answered Cash. “If I can test out, I’ll be free for the rest of the quarter.” She swung her cue over the pool table. “And I can get my game back. I don’t think I was cut out to sit inside brick buildings.”

  “You’re still driving truck at night, right?”

  “Yeah, that’s why I haven’t been in to shoot. School all day, driving truck at night. I just couldn’t take it anymore this morning. At school, they have these big 9-foot tables. I go over there and play between classes, but I miss this,” she said, waving her cue around the bar, taking another drink of beer and a drag of her Marlboro. “Did you hear about that girl from the college who is missing?”

  Shorty wiped the bar with his rag, sopping up the beer Willie had spilled while pushing himself off the bar stool for an unsteady walk to the bathroom. At least he was making it there, not using the back booth as was his nightly habit. All the regulars knew never to sit in that booth. Newcomers soon moved because of the stench.

  “Some of the folks were talking. Then there was an article in The Forum.”

  “Oh? I didn’t see that.”

  “Yeah, just how she seems to have gone to the Cities and hasn’t been heard from since. Her folks are all worried.”

  “She’s in my science class. Was.”

  “Whaddya think happened?

  “I don’t know. I talked to Wheaton last night. He’s asking around.” Cash cleared the table of all the billiard balls. “I s’pose I better go back.” She returned the bar cue to an empty slot on the wall rack. “Guess I’ve missed my English class, but I can still make science and then this afternoon, my last class is judo. Soon I’ll be able to kick fools off bar stools.” She pantomimed a sidekick in Willie’s direction.

  “Keep your nose in the books,” Shorty hollered as the bar door closed behind her.

  Back at campus, she lucked out and pulled into a parking spot just as another car left, right in front of the main buildings. She grabbed her science book and papers off the passenger seat and went to class. The stream of students passing in the halls from class to class made her feel claustrophobic. She was used to the open fields of the prairie. The crush of human bodies, people rushing with no regard for the space around them or the presence of another being, made it hard for her to breathe. She clung to the brick wall and sidled past folks in a hurry, not wanting someone else to grab her seat at the back of the class.

  This classroom had old-fashioned wooden desks, leftovers from the ’50s. The English Department had newer metal desks and plastic chairs. These desks had names and chemical formulas carved into the wood, which meant you had to write your notes on top of a book or your paper would end up with holes every time you hit a carved indent.

  Mr. Danielson was at the front of the room, erasing the previous teacher’s scientific equations from the chalkboard. He was wearing blue jeans with a white shirt tucked in. Close to six feet tall, he had his pale blond hair pulled back in a ponytail, loose strands escaping the rubber band. Cash supposed he looked “hot” in a Rod Stewart kinda way. He started writing notes on the board.

  Sharon walked in the door, wearing a miniskirt that barely covered her hind end. She winked at Cash and then took a seat in the front row, crossing her legs seductively just as Mr. Danielson turned around from the board. Cash shook her head and opened her science book to the day’s assigned page.

  She had just started re-reading the assignment when she heard a soft cough from Sharon. She looked toward the front of the room where Mr. Danielson had gone back to writing on the board. Cash could tell from the way Sharon was leaning back grinning at her that she was sitting with her legs sprawled wide open. When Sharon caught Cash’s eye, she laughed and sat up straight. Mr. Danielson turned around at the laugh, looking at Sharon, who turned back to look at Cash again. When she did, Mr. Danielson followed her eyes to the back of the room. Damn, thought Cash, dipping her head downward, pretending to read from the book.

  The classroom filled. For the next forty minutes, Mr. Danielson expounded on the virtues of photosynthesis, all the while talking about the hibiscus plant and trees in the rain forest. It wasn’t until he briefly mentioned that algae also use photosynthesis that Cash wrote in her notebook—horse tanks.

  Cash was more intrigued by the interplay of personalities happening at the front of the room anyways. Sharon would raise her hand and ask a random, useless question. When Mr. Danielson looked at her to respond, Sharon would posture in ways that sent a signal to everyone in the room that she was flirting with him. Her antics weren’t lost on Mr. Danielson. He stood a little straighter when answering her. By the end of the class, he was sitting on the large wooden desk facing the class, his long legs, in blue jeans, stretched out in front of him, feet crossed at the ankles, while he and Sharon talked about whether or not plants needed photosynthesis to reproduce. No one in the class was taking notes. They were all watching the not-at-all-subtle dance happening between teacher and student. When one of the male students slammed his textbook shut, some kids in the class jumped. They all looked at the clock and started shifting out of their chairs, getting their books and other belongings together as Mr. Danielson stood up quickly and said, “Read Chapter 7, pages 212-245. There will be a test tomorrow. See you all then.”

  Cash was walking out the door when Sharon called her back. Cash turned. Sharon was standing by the desk with Mr. Danielson standing right next to her. “Cash, do you have a piece of paper I can borrow, to write down tomorrow’s assignment on?” Sharon asked with wide-eyed innocence.

  Cash almost kept on walking, but Mr. Danielson said, “Cash. I haven’t seen that name on the class roster. Is that a nickname?”

  Cash took a step back into the room and looked up at him. He was looking at her the way she had seen farmers look at livestock—curious, interested, assessing the livestock’s temperament, determining how easy they could be led into the chute that got them on the truck to take to the slaughter market. Cash shivered, pulling her books close across her chest.

  Sharon answered for her. “She just goes by Cash. Her r
eal name is Renee. Do you have a piece of paper?” she asked again.

  Without moving farther into the room, Cash set her books down on the closest desk and ripped a piece of paper out of her notebook. She held it out at arm’s length so Sharon had to walk toward her to get it. “Come on, let’s go.” Cash looked hard in Sharon’s eyes as Sharon took the paper. “Come on.”

  “I have to get the assignment,” said Sharon, smiling stupidly.

  “Looks like you have gotten all A’s on your quizzes so far, Renee. Renee Blackbear?” said Mr. Danielson looking through his grade book.

  Cash stayed where she was, close to the door. The thought flashed through her mind that maybe it would be a really good idea to test out of this class for more reasons than just not having to sit in class. Cash stood silent as Sharon walked back toward Mr. Danielson, her hips swinging under her miniskirt. When she bent over the desk to write, the skirt rode up indecently. The move was not lost on Mr. Danielson. “Sharon, let’s go,” said Cash.

  “Do you offer a way to get extra credit for those of us who don’t quite understand the sciences?” asked Sharon, finally standing up and tucking her pencil behind her ear. A couple students entered the classroom, jostling past Cash who was still standing by the doorway.

  “You could stop by my office at the end of the day,” he answered Sharon with a smile that made Cash want to gag. “I have a class in here in three minutes.” He gestured toward the students filing into the classroom.

  Sharon turned toward Cash, hips still swinging. At the same time, a slender blonde approached the teacher. He turned his full attention, the attention he had just poured out on Sharon, on the blonde, who laughed and smiled hello to him.