that he didn’t wear dentures. Probably a tooth grinder. He was the type. He told me in his self-righteous way that he had “severed all ties with Tyler Moldenhauer.” Except that he’d pronounced “severed” like the adjective “severe.” Which described him pretty well. He’d probably “severed” a lot of people in his life.
“Hines already told me everything he knows, which was nothing.”
“I guess this means …”
“What other choice do I have?”
“Animal House it is.”
Animal House is what Dori had dubbed the shack that Tyler has been renting with some of his football-player buddies since graduation. We’d located it after my visit with Hines, when the one thing he’d told me then was that Tyler had moved “out past El Dorado Estates somewhere.”
Drawing on Dori’s extensive training in reconnaissance acquired during her years as a groupie, we had taken her Toyota RAV4 and done a drive-by. That’s when we discovered that El Dorado Estates was located on a farm-to-market road just off the interstate and that the Golden Estates consisted of a few acres of mobile homes permanently immobilized on blocks curtained behind sheets of flimsy wooden lattice. A few miles farther down the country road that had once been surrounded by nothing but acres of sorghum and alfalfa, we had spotted Tyler’s truck parked in front of a shotgun shack.
Headbanger music had boomed out of the house. A couple of football players who looked like they’d been carved on Easter Island sat transfixed on a broken-down brown Herculon tweed couch, the blue light of the TV they stared into flickering across their faces. One other light was on in the house. I had edged the car forward so we could peek into that window.
“Are they playing Monopoly?” Dori asked when we caught a glimpse of Aubrey and Tyler seated at the kitchen table beneath a wagon-wheel chandelier.
“That’s what it looks like.”
“What do you want to do?” Dori had asked.
“Hmm.” I pretended to ponder the question. “I guess I could either have a screaming fight with her, drag her out by her hair, shove her into the car that I’ve removed the inner door handles from like a serial killer so she won’t immediately bolt, or just accept that she’s safe and go home.”
That day Dori and I had gone home. Today, I am determined, will be different. I am going to go completely Jerry Springer on her “sorry ass!” Even if bodily force is required, I will drag my daughter to the bank with me.
Once we’re on the highway, Dori turns the radio on, hitting “seek” until something comes on that’s loud enough and mindless enough to derail the worry loop that’s twisting my expression.
Slow ride! Take it easy!
“Oh, Foghat, can you do no wrong?” Dori asks, cranking the volume, then screaming along, “ ‘Slow ride! Take it easy!’ ”
I turn the volume up even louder and scream with her, “ ‘Slow ride! Take it easy!’ ”
Dori throws in a “Woot!” and, for a split second, it’s almost like we’re having fun.
We exit onto the farm-to-market road and follow it past the crusty rash of El Dorado Estates trailers. A few miles on, we find the shotgun shack again. Tyler’s truck is nowhere in sight. We pull off onto the shoulder, the car tipping a bit where the road slopes into the drainage ditch running alongside it.
We cross the yard that has been reduced to a few patches of abused grass making a last stand on the hard-packed, cracked dirt. With the toe of her sandal, Dori taps a rusty Road Runner–and–Coyote whirligig and makes it spin so that Coyote is forever, futilely, chasing Roadrunner, and says, “I see the boys have decorated.”
I climb the concrete steps up to the front door and knock, dreading having to face whatever bullet-headed throwback answers and the white-trash extravaganza that is sure to ensue. But there is no response. I knock again, harder.
Dori leaves me on the porch and walks around, trying to find a window not covered from the inside by blinds. When she does, she stands on tiptoe, shades her eyes, peeks in, and yells back to me, “Check this out!”
I take her place at the window and stare into a living room that is completely empty except for a few scattered crushed beer cans and a poster of “Chopper Babes” drooping from one tack.
A “Chopper Babes” poster? That is where they have all led, all the lies that started in earnest when? Sometime last November? What would I have done