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A new family, the Tibbits, moved into Fernando’s old house. I didn’t know much about them, only that my mom had taken welcome-to-the-neighborhood cookies to their house. She said they were from Texas and had a daughter and two boys, one who was about a year older than me.
We were hanging out in front of my house under the shade of a tree when a tall, stocky boy ambled toward us. He had a confident, sly stride and a gleam in his eyes. His thick hair sat on his head like animal fur that had been combed to the side with a wire brush, and his giant smile slanted slightly to the right.
“Well, ain’t you guys a sight for trouble with those shit-eatin’ grins a’ yers.” He was Southern, and his accent was thick.
To say he took us by surprise would have been an understatement. I’d never witnessed anyone introduce himself to new kids like that, especially using a cuss word. That was when I understood he didn’t care what anyone thought of him. He was who he was, like it or not, and no one was going to change him. I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t say anything.
“Rosco Tibbits.” He held out his hand, and we took turns shaking it. “Just moved in down the street.”
“Hi, Rosco. I’m Ret, and this is Jax and Gary.”
“Where are you from?” Jax asked.
“Texarkana. On the border of Texas and Arkansas. You ever been down that way?”
“No,” I said, and Jax and Gary shook their heads.
“The best things come outta Texas. Like me.” He laughed heartily at himself, and we laughed with him.
He snorted as if he had something in his nose to get out, then he turned and blew a glob of snot onto the sidewalk. He pinched the remaining strand from the end of his nose, flung it down, and wiped his fingers on his pants.
“I have some Kleenex in the house,” I offered.
“No need. I got it.”
Jax and Gary shared a disgusted look with me. He was gross, but I liked his confidence. I was drawn to him.
“What’re y’all doin’? Mind if I hang out with ya?”
We all nodded.
“Great!” His grin spread and took up half his face. “What’s there to do around here?”
“Well... we got a creek behind our house. We can catch water snakes. Or... do you have a bike?”
“Yeah, I got a bike.” With his accent, it sounded like “back.”
“We gotta show you the Moguls.”
We followed him to his house, and it was strange to see someone else living in Fernando’s home. I remembered his face in the crack of the open door and how withdrawn he seemed, and I felt sad.
Rosco opened his garage door and pulled his bike out from behind a stack of boxes and furniture I assumed were waiting to be unpacked and placed from their move. He pulled the door down and let it crash to the ground. Like mine, he had no electric garage opener.
“Let’s go!” he called, and we rode to the Moguls. We rode up top to the biggest hill, the one we’d performed our terrible show on, and looked out across the long line of dirt hills and trails worn into the ground from long hours of riding.
“Bitchin’,” he exclaimed.
“We do a lot of our bike shows on this mogul.” Jax puffed his chest out to impress him.
“I don’t know if I’d call them ‘bike shows,’” Gary said in a low tone of honesty.
“You got people to come see yer shows?”
“We’ve had some neighborhood kids pay to see it,” Jax said, and I wanted to roll my eyes and shake my head in embarrassment.
Rosco eyed the area slowly. Something was cooking in his head. “You guys do anythin’ else out here?”
“Like what?” I asked.
“Like build a fort. That hill over there’d be perfect.”
“What kind of fort?” Gary asked.
“A cave.” A grin slid across Rosco’s face. Then he bolted down the hill on his bike, jumped in the air off the second, smaller hill, lifted both hands into the air, and gripped the handlebars again in time to land.
“Whoo!” he called out and raced to the mogul he’d spotted.
“He’d be good in our show!” Jax said.
We tore off after him, each one of us taking the jump with more confidence than before, and rode up alongside Rosco, who was off his bike and scoping out the mogul for cave building.
“This’ll be perfect! We can dig into the side here, and it’ll be the entrance.”
“It doesn’t look like it will be tall enough,” Gary said.
“That’s why we gotta dig.” Rosco turned to him, crazy excitement in his eyes. “We’ll dig deep. I’ve built ’em before. It’s like buildin’ a mineshaft. We’ll have to use support beams for the roof.”
“Support beams?” I asked.
“Yeah. We’ll get some two-by-fours and stick ’em in there to keep the roof from collapsing. Anybody got wood?”
“I do have a pile at my house,” I said, thinking of the Millennium Falcon Jax and I had attempted to build.
We each went back to our houses to get tools. We all came back with shovels, except for Rosco. He brought a pick axe.
He stood in front of the hill, raised the pick axe high in the air, and drove it into the heart of the compacted dirt. He looked like a crazed hillbilly-murdering miner from Nightmare Theater.
We spent the rest of the day digging out our cave. I didn’t know what to think at first. I wasn’t much into it. But the farther we got, the more my excitement for the project grew. We got a lot of dirt out of that hill, enough that we could crawl into our small cave and start to picture the finished product.
“We gotta dig deeper,” Rosco said. “So we can sit up in here.”
The sun was going down on us, and I knew my parents would be anxious for me to return home, and the same went for my friends. We ended the day with a sense of accomplishment, excited for the next phase.
Arms shaky with exhaustion, I was hot and covered in sweat and dirt. As I lifted my bike to mount it, Morgan Anderson marched toward us. Her face was twisted in dismay and tight with fear, her eyes red and wet. Her body shook like a wet leaf, much more than my arms did.
“Hey, Morg,” I called out.
“Have you guys seen my sister?” Her voice shook as badly as her body.
“Joanna?” Gary asked.
Joanna was much older. She was twenty and had moved out months prior to go to college, but word on the street was that college hadn’t gone well and she’d moved back home.
“We haven’t seen her,” I said.
Tears that had been hanging on finally rolled down her cheeks and made me feel terrible for her. “She’s been missing all day.”
“Maybe she went somewhere and didn’t tell anyone,” Gary said.
She shook her head. “No. Her car is still at home. So is her wallet, and she doesn’t go anywhere without those.”
“Have you called the police?” I asked.
She nodded. “My mom did. They’re at our house now. We’re doing a search for her. Can you guys keep an eye out? Let me know if you hear or see anything.”
“We will,” I assured her.
She turned and walked away.
We were silent, but a thought kept racing through my mind: Lester and that house. Could it be a coincidence that Mr. Beaumont went missing just a week ago? And Mrs. Beaumont...
When I got home, all we talked about at dinner was Joanna. My dad wasn’t home yet, but we held a family prayer without him and asked for Joanna’s safe return.
My dad walked in on my way to bed, and I felt the tension heighten in the room as my mom’s face hardened. She glared at him.
“Hello,” he said sheepishly.
“Where’ve you been? I thought you were off at eight.”
“I was at work. Randy called in sick, and we had a big order to prepare.”
My mom pursed her lips and looked down, and I said goodnight to them both and hurried to my room. I heard their muffled argument through the walls for at least an hour.
I couldn’t get any sleep, and not just because my parents were fighting. I couldn’t stop thinking about Joanna’s disappearance and the terrified look on Morgan’s face. I had a sinking feeling that I knew what had happened to her—or at least who had taken her. Getting anyone to believe it would be impossible, though.