can’t figure out why the man is living down there unless there’s something wrong with him. Her daddy says you’d have to be half stupid, half crazy, or half dead not to find work in Odessa right now. Everybody’s hiring. Maybe the man is all three—stupid, crazy, sick—but whatever his story, he poses no danger to her. She feels it down deep in her soul, feels convicted in the same way she believes that nothing bad can happen as long as she steps between cracks in the sidewalk and eats her veggies and doesn’t talk to any men she does not already know. D. A.’s confidence has been shaken this spring by Ginny’s leaving, and it is a relief to study this man and know: he will not hurt her.
She spits in the dirt and picks out her next rock. This one lands in a small thicket of mesquite trees next to the spot where the land begins to curve toward the flood channel. I’m going to get one over the canal before summer is over, she says out loud.
* * *
Every day for a week, she rushes home from school to watch him. The first three afternoons she gathers information—What time does he leave? Is it always the same? Does he always go to the titty bar? Then she waits for her chance to get a closer look.
It is nearly five o’clock and the sun beats like a fist against the top of her head. Her mouth and throat are so parched that they ache. The heat presses against her chest and stifles her breath, and because she sweated through her T-shirt an hour ago, she doesn’t have any sweat left to cool her off. When she pulls the fortune-teller from the pocket of her shorts, it is dry and brittle against her hands. Should I check out his camp? Yes. Should I check out his camp? Do not hesitate!
The drainpipe is tall enough that she only has to bend a little when she steps in and sees a trash bag with dirty underwear and socks hanging out of it. Next to the bag, a small stack of pants and shirts lies neatly folded. A pair of boots sits next to a wire milk crate that has been turned upside down to make a small table, upon which rests a ceramic bowl and razor, along with two manila envelopes. One has the words PFC Belden, Discharge written on it in black marker. Medical is written on the other.
Ten feet in, the man has constructed a wall to close off the rest of the pipe, which carries water all the way to a field outside town when it floods. These days, that means never. The last time this channel flooded, D. A. still had training wheels on her bike. On closer examination, she recognizes an old appliance box from the previous summer, one the girls had abandoned after it was battered by a dust storm. Lauralee’s awkward, loping cursive is still clear on the side—the word Hideout with a large smiley face and two hearts with arrows through their centers.
A backpack and neatly rolled sleeping bag are stacked against the cardboard wall. Debra Ann walks to the man’s table and gently runs her finger across a crack in his shaving bowl. She picks up his razor and his small black hair comb, turning them over in her hands while she looks again at the envelope with his discharge papers. He’s probably a hero, she decides. He was probably injured in the war. Ever since her mama left town, D. A. has been looking for something to do with her weekends. She’s been looking for a project, and this man might be it. Maybe he is there to help her become a better girl, not the kind who drives her mother so crazy she feels like she has to leave town without telling anybody where she’s going, or how long she’ll be gone. Will Ginny be home before the fireworks show on the Fourth of July? Yes.
* * *
She leaves his first gift in a brown paper bag at the mouth of the drainage pipe and scampers back to her box to wait and see what will happen next. The man opens the bag carefully, as if he expects it to be filled with tarantulas, or at least a couple of cow patties. When he instead pulls out a can of creamed corn, a package of gum, and a brown crayon