Girl Gone Missing Read online

  As soon as she got to school, she stopped by the English department. She knocked on the professor’s door but there was no answer. There was an envelope taped to the doorframe with the name “Renee Blackbear” written on it. She opened the envelope. On a half-sheet of paper was written, “You passed. I’d like to talk to you about your essay.”

  “Leroy,” barely legible, was scrawled across the bottom.

  “Yes!” she thought, stuffing the note into her back pocket.

  Next she went to the campus library. The building was quiet and smelled of old paper. Dust motes drifted in the light from the windows. Cash looked around warily. She was used to the Bookmobile that would come to the farm towns every two weeks. You entered at the driver’s end. The mobile van had shelves of books lining either wall. One side held children’s books, the other adult books. When Cash first started going to the Bookmobile, the librarian tried to steer her to the children’s side of the van. Back then Cash didn’t talk to anyone, so she checked out Island of the Blue Dolphins and Treasure Island, along with four adult biographies of historical figures. This continued for a summer. The librarian checked out Cash’s books and asked her questions like, “Did you like that one?”

  Soon she started offering Cash other books by some of the same authors. She caught Cash’s interest in Indian war chiefs. Each trip a new Indian war chief book was on the ledge next to the librarian. When Cash started to read about Eastern meditation, books on meditating began to appear also.

  The campus library wasn’t the Bookmobile. It was a large brick building with row upon row of books, much darker and more intimidating than even the public library downtown. Cash found the seating area where the Fargo Forum was hanging on long wooden dowels. The oldest paper was the Sunday edition. There were a couple of other local papers and, of course, the ones from the Cities, but none from Milan.

  Cash walked to the reception desk. There were a number of librarians there. She took a deep breath, blew out air and approached the one who looked the youngest. She waited for the young woman to acknowledge her, but she just kept fiddling with some index cards. Cash coughed slightly.

  “Oh. May I help you?” She looked up with feigned surprise, speaking in a stage whisper.

  Cash whispered back, “Newspapers from Milan, Minnesota?”

  “I’m sorry?” the woman tilted her head, and flipped blond hair behind her ear. “Say that again?”

  Rather than speak, Cash grabbed a blank index card from the desk and a pencil and wrote, Newspapers from Milan, Minnesota.

  “Oh. Those will all be on microfiche. Student ID please.”

  Cash dug it out from her back pocket. The woman read her ID slowly.

  “We don’t keep local newspapers on fiche here. You’d have to go to the public library.” She handed the ID card back.

  Cash stuffed her ID back in her pocket and fled the building. Why didn’t the little twit just say that to begin with?

  The public library had more outstate newspapers than the campus library. It only took her about ten minutes to figure out the Chippewa County News was the paper that covered the tiny town of Milan. Sure enough, a little over a week ago the headlines of the county paper gave a detailed account of a young girl, Candy Swenson, a junior at Milan High School, who had won a Future Homemakers of America award. She had attended the statewide FHA conference in Minneapolis, where she disappeared from the Curtiss Hotel, the same evening she received the award.

  Vanished into thin air is how the reporter described it. Candy sang in the Lutheran Church choir and had two younger brothers. The reporter seemed to hint that farm girls often came to the Cities and got attracted to the lights and bustle, many never returning to their homes. Distraught, is how the reporter described the family and community. They vehemently denied their daughter would ever run away.

  Cash sat back and looked out the library windows. The chair she sat on was orange fake leather that matched some of the leaves on the trees outside. All the years when she had hoped to escape the foster homes, she had never achieved a workable plan. And here were two girls, not even a hundred miles apart, whose families loved them, wanted them—and they seemed to have disappeared into thin air. Both were excellent students. And, yes, her brother was right, both were blonde and blue-eyed. Cash shivered involuntarily. One for sure had disappeared in the Cities. The other was rumored to have gone to the Cities.

  Cash sat and thought about the Cities. She had heard about them but had never been there. She had seen pictures in the newspaper and heard the Grain Report each day on the radio—in the morning and then again at noon. The noon report was always followed by Paul Harvey’s “News and Comment” program. His gravelly voice entertained farm families up and down the Valley.

  When Cash thought about the Cities, she imagined a place like Metropolis in the Superman comic books. Steel and glass. Men who wore suits every day and women in pencil skirts, wearing blouses with bows tied at the neckline.

  She had a hard time imagining anyplace beyond the Valley. It wasn’t something she thought about. As life became harder and harder in the foster homes, she stopped looking ahead. Gave up making plans for the future. There were mornings when despair rode the early morning sunbeams into her bedroom window. She didn’t think about her future—or the next growing season or even next week. If she woke up—and so far she always had—she kept going. Drove the next truck. Plowed the next furrow. Lifted the next bale. Took the next beating, the next berating. Drank the last beer. Smoked another cigarette. She didn’t know if places like the Cities really existed. She had given up thinking that anything might be more real than what she could actually touch or feel.

  Kinda like the brother sitting in her apartment. She had long ago given up thinking that they, the rest of her family, existed. Now here he was. Flesh and blood. Maybe he wasn’t there. Maybe he only existed in her imagination and was only real when she was in her apartment talking with him. Sitting at the table with him.

  The breakfast had been real. But maybe he wasn’t there now. Like maybe he was a wisp of smoke that appeared and disappeared, took on a physical reality only when she was standing or sitting next to him. Maybe the Cities didn’t really exist but were only a part of someone’s imaginations, like comic book drawings. Cash tried to think if she even knew anyone who said they had been to the Cities. No one came to mind.

  Shut the hell up, Cash. You’re gonna drive yourself crazy. Crazier.

  She slid the front page of the newspaper off the wooden dowel, looked around to make sure no one was watching her. She folded it up into a small square and put it into the pocket of her jean jacket. She hurried out of the library with her hands in her pockets.

  When she got back in the Ranchero, she grabbed the steering wheel. Just grabbed the wheel and hung on. It was solid. Real. She slapped the seat beside her. The one leftover Bismarck jumped up along with a cloud of field dust. Cash grabbed it, unwrapped it from the plastic wrap and took a big bite. Raspberry jelly squirted down either side of her mouth. “Shit,” she said around a mouthful of red goo, grabbing the plastic wrap and wiping her face off as best she could. Now she was really a mess. A real mess.

  On her way back to campus she stopped at the Standard Oil gas station, went to the ladies washroom at the side of the building and threw water on her face. Washed her sticky hands, came out and waved away the attendant saying she didn’t need gas, just some of his paper towels to wash off her steering wheel.

  She drove back across the river and into Fargo, ran up the stairs to her apartment. Her brother’s duffle bag was sitting against the north wall, an unfinished solitaire game laid out on the table. His half-empty coffee cup was cold. He might not be real but his stuff was. She dug the newspaper page out of her pocket, unfolded it and threw it on the table over his cards.

  By habit, she opened the fridge. Damn, he had stocked it. Bacon. Eggs. Milk. Butter. What the heck was this? She pulled out a white package. Written in black crayon was the word T-bone. She pu
t it back. She opened the tiny metal freezer. A frozen package of hamburger. The metal ice cube trays were filled. She had never checked them before so she didn’t know if Mo had done that or not. Back in the fridge, some cheese. Catsup. The bottom shelf was filled with Schlitz beer. She opened her cupboard where she kept her lone salt and pepper shakers. Elbow macaroni. Long spaghetti. Some cans of stewed tomatoes and tomato paste. Red kidney beans? Canned corn and string beans. The whole damn grocery store was in there.

  The phone rang. Cash jumped, felt as if she’d been caught stealing or looking into someone else’s closets. It rang again. She stood with her back to the counter. The only one who ever called her was Wheaton and she just wasn’t ready to talk to him yet. She had no idea how she was going to tell him about Mo. She should tell him about the girl missing from Milan, but not now.

  Instead she went into the bathroom and ran herself a bath. She grabbed clean clothes from her room while the tub filled with steaming hot water. She brought a chair in from the kitchen and propped it under the door handle. She stripped and dropped into the tub. Steam rose all around her. She redid the pencil in the knot of hair on top of her head. Closed her eyes and drifted off into nowhere. Not asleep. Not awake. Not leaving her body. Just floating in steaming water.

  When the water grew tepid, she grabbed a washcloth and soap, lathered and rinsed herself off. The plug was on a metal chain that she pulled before she got out of the tub. The water gurgled going down as she dried off and got dressed. Clean jeans. T-shirt. Undies. Socks. She moved the chair and put it back by the kitchen table before she washed her hair in the kitchen sink. She noticed Mo had done the breakfast dishes. She looked under the sink. He’d even bought more dish soap.

  Now she was clean, she felt more settled. More together. Less scattered.

  It took hours for her hair to dry, so she brushed it as best she could and twisted it into a knot on top of her head with the yellow pencil stuck through to hold it up.

  Before she started out for school, she checked to make sure the wad of money was still under the seat of the Ranchero. It was. She checked behind the driver’s seat and her .22 was still there too, along with her cue stick. Eight bottles of Budweiser still in the twelve-pack from the other night and a full pack of Marlboros in her jean jacket pocket. All’s right with the world.

  She got to psych class just as the students were leaving. Breathing in courage, she walked in and apologized to the professor for being late and asked if there was an assignment for the weekend. She gave Cash the day’s handout without question and said, “See you next week.”

  From psych, Cash went to the science building. The Dean’s door was open. Without looking up from the papers he was grading, he gestured for her to come in. She stood right inside the door until he stood up, grabbed the papers he had been working on and another thin booklet and said, “Follow me.”

  Forty-five minutes later, Cash was exiting the science building. She felt confident that she had passed. The whole test seemed as easy as a ninth-grade multiple-choice final exam. Cash felt light. Things were going along as planned. Casbah, here I come. Once beet season was over, one more week, two at the most, and she would be home free. She started across campus to judo class.

  “Renee. Renee Blackbear.”

  It took a few seconds for it to register that someone was calling her name. Another adjustment in college. Folks called her by her legal name. She looked up as Professor LeRoy came scuttling across campus toward her. He was a little heavyset, and his pants were belted below his waist. His starched shirt stretched across his rounded belly. He had some papers in his hand, waving them in the air.

  “Did you get my note?”

  “Yes.”

  He caught up with her. “I need to talk with you about your essay. It was excellent! It was such short notice, I didn’t have time to get ahold of you. I did call your home once. No one answered. I tried again this morning.”

  “Oh.”

  “You wouldn’t have seen it—mostly the upper-grads applied—there was a statewide competition for essays by minority students. I couldn’t reach you, but I knew your essay was a contender, a real contender, so I, um, submitted it for you. As your professor. And by golly if it didn’t get accepted as one of the finalists for the state. They are deciding the winner next weekend down in the Cities, at Macalester College. Big honor. You gotta go.”

  Cash shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “Huh?”

  LeRoy slowed down. “The essay you wrote to test out of English 101? One of the best I’ve ever seen. I submitted it to the statewide competition. I got word this morning your essay is a contender. I already checked out a state vehicle. The award ceremony is next weekend at Macalester College in St. Paul, down in the Cities. I’ll drive us down. Great honor for you. Great honor for our English department. Such a stroke of genius to decide to test out of 101.”

  Cash took the piece of paper he was waving around in his hands. It was addressed to her, c/o Professor LeRoy, Moorhead State English Department. It said just what he was saying: Her essay was a contender for the state prize. Award Ceremony, Saturday, October 11th. Seven p.m. Cash looked at him. He was grinning. Pleased, almost as if he single-handedly had taught her everything she knew.

  “You’ll go, right? I already checked out a state vehicle. I’ll drive us down. Macalester has a Minority Students’ House they’ll let you stay at overnight.”

  Her stomach clenched. Cash did not ride anywhere with anyone, other than the occasional ride with Wheaton. And since getting her own apartment, she’d never slept in another bed except her own. She wasn’t about to start now.

  She read the letter again. Never in her life had she imagined anything like this. She looked at Professor LeRoy. The excitement in his eyes and his silly grin made her smile.

  “I got a car,” she said. “I could follow you down.”

  He took the letter from her hand. He seemed perplexed. But he brightened quickly. “Sure. We can do that. It’s about a four-hour drive. If we met here at ten next Saturday morning, we’d be there early afternoon. Plenty of time to sightsee and find the minority house.”

  Cash didn’t tell him she had no intention of sleeping in the minority house, whatever that was, but she would deal with that issue later.

  “Let’s meet at the school carpool. You know where that is? Over by the field house.”

  “Yep.”

  “Ten a.m. Sharp!” He waved the paper in his hand.

  “Sure.”

  He spun and walked away bouncing on his toes.

  Cash didn’t know what to think. The Cities. Guess she would find out if they were real. Like everything else in her life, a possible award was another blank molecule, an unknown in the universe, not another thing to hope for or not hope for. Just something to tuck away in the deeper recesses of her mind and see what might happen, if anything.

  After judo she took a quick shower in the girls’ locker room, keeping her head and hair out from under the water spray. If she didn’t get it wet, her hair might be dry enough to brush through by the time of the potluck tonight. She looked at the clock on the gym wall. Four-thirty. Plenty of time for a few practice shots on the tables in the rec hall.

  At six-thirty, she couldn’t avoid it any longer. She’d bought the cookies, she had committed to going to the potluck, now she had to go. She brushed her hair out with her fingers, then pulled a hairbrush out of her glove box. She managed to get it into a loose braid before driving to Mrs. Kills Horses’ house.

  Cash was so nervous she didn’t dare drink a beer on the way even though she knew that would have calmed her nerves. She sat in the Ranchero, watching the Kills Horses’ house. The sun was going down, but the curtains were still open. The lights were on, and she could see people by the front window. Mrs. Kills Horses was talking rapidly with her hands and arms.

  A tap on the car window made her jump. She looked over to see a longhaired Indian dude grinning at her through the glass. As she rolled down
the window, the smell of Patchouli almost knocked her out.

  “You must be Cash. Sharon told me you drove a Ranchero. Sweet ride.” He leaned back on his heels and whistled softly, stretching his arms out the length of the truck. “Sharon’s gonna be late. Said she had an important meeting with her science teacher. Discuss her grades or somethin’. I don’t know what she’s worried about. She always gets A’s. You goin’ in or you just gonna window peep?”

  Cash reached over and grabbed the cookies and beer off the car seat. “I was just getting ready to go in.”

  “Here, let me grab the beer.”

  Cash would have felt silly with just the cookies in her hand so she shook her head no and held on to the beer. The guy was carrying a paper bag. He held it up.

  “Sharon came by early this morning and made tuna hot dish in our dorm kitchen.”

  “She’s talking to the science teacher?”

  “Yeah. You know these people here?”

  “No. Just the counselor, Mrs. Kills Horses.”

  “Sharon said she thought you were gonna get jumped in the rec hall.”

  “Nah.”

  Just then, Mrs. Kills Horses opened her front door. “Come in. Come in,” she gushed. She was wearing skintight blue jeans, a white blouse opened to show lots of cleavage. She had pounds of turquoise and silver jewelry on her neck, her arms, and fingers, displayed as if her blood quantum were equal to silver grams. She was wearing the new platform heels all the hippie chicks were wearing. “You can put the beer in the fridge. Help yourself to food on the table. Let me take that from you.” She took the paper bag from Sharon’s boyfriend, saying, “I haven’t seen you around school.”

  “I go to NDSU. From the Aberdeen area.”

  “Well, welcome. Good for everyone to meet everyone. And your name?”

  “Chaské.”

  “Kids! Everyone. This is Chaské. He goes to NDSU. And some of you know Renee?”