Rodney stood in the shade of a crooked larch while Nadine worked a load of laundry, humming a tune he knew, but couldn’t name. It brought back memories of his mother singing along with the radio in their kitchen back in Hope, when she still sang to herself, while his father sipped a beer at the table. Rodney pinched the towel around his waist and bunched the oversized, smoke-scented T-shirt of Lester’s that Nadine had given him to wear. He looked down the open slice of the gravel drive, through the trees and tufts of sage brush, the rocky landscape rolling all the way to the highway. In the distance, farmlands spread flat sheets of green, and a single water tower poked through a cloud of treetops, proof of a town somewhere over there.
Lester and Otis had been in the shed most of the afternoon, digging around and moving boxes, the noise of knocking metal and glass tumbling out and over the hills. They kept the door shut the whole time, even though it had been hot enough outside that the towels pinned to the line a half hour earlier were already stiff as tree bark.
Nadine drew a sheet from the barrel and twisted it into a long white snake, cloudy water falling over her arms.
“So, tell me,” she said, nodding her head back at the shed. “What’s his story, anyway.”
“Otis?” Rodney said, and then he shrugged his shoulders. “He’s just some guy my mom—” He stopped, not entirely sure how to finish.
Nadine smiled so her teeth just barely showed through her lips. “I get it. You could easily say the same about Lester and me if you wanted to. He’s my question mark.” She draped the sheet along the clothesline and clipped the edges, the low sunlight shining through like it was a movie screen. “He mean to you?”
Rodney looked through the trees to the shed. Someone had propped open a side window halfway, but he couldn’t see inside. “I’m not scared of him or anything.”
Nadine went back to the barrel and turned a spigot near the bottom. A stream of water poured from the nozzle, running in a tiny, gray river down the slope into the weeds.
“What about Lester?” she said. The front of her blouse was wet, and Rodney could tell from the way things settled that she was not wearing a bra under that shirt. He had heard his mother say things about women who did that. She asked, “Does he scare you?”
Rodney considered this. He’d not had reason or opportunity to feel one way or the other about Lester. Not yet. “He scares Otis,” he said finally. “He acts different when Lester’s around. Funny. When he talked about him, too, before we got here.”
Nadine looked at the ground and nodded, as if she were pairing two things in her mind. “He took the phone out,” she said all of a sudden. “When I asked him about calling your mom. I went into the kitchen not twenty minutes later and the whole thing was missing from the wall.”
“Did you ask him?”
She coughed out a laugh. “I don’t need to,” she said. “It’s just the sort of thing he does. I don’t know why I was surprised.”
The sky behind the tree line was sinking into purples and grays, and Rodney could see the flash of what looked like night birds zig-zagging from branch to branch with no clear pattern.
Nadine went to the farther line and pulled the clips from Rodney’s clothes, from the load they’d hung together earlier. “Here,” she said, bringing them to him. “They’re dry enough.” She turned her back to him and continued her work down the line. A tiny shape flickered above her, in a darkening space between the trees.
“Bats,” she said.
Rodney didn’t like the sound of that, though he knew enough not to say anything. He didn’t want her to think he was afraid. “They don’t hurt people,” he said, and the upswing in his tone made it a question, something he hadn’t intended.
“No,” she said, folding a sheet over her arms. “Unless they’re rabid; otherwise they’re harmless.” She added the last of the laundry to the basket and turned to look at the sky, her hands planted on her hips like a superhero. “We had one find its way into the house one time,” she continued. “It was all kinds of hysterical, more scared than anything. Cute little guy, like a little mouse. Lester was gone at the time and I knew if I didn’t help it to find its way back out again, he’d kill it once he got home.”
“How come?” Rodney asked. “Did it have rabies?”
Nadine shrugged her shoulders. “It didn’t matter. Lester assumes the worst in any critter and he’d just as soon kill it than help it.” She bent down and picked up the basket of laundry, and rested one edge on her hip. “He’s sour that way.”
Rodney finished dressing under the towel, and then Nadine took it from him, adding it to the basket. “Anyway,” she said, “between the broom and this exact towel right here, I managed to get it close enough to the door that it flew out on his own.”
“Escaped,” Rodney said.
“Into the night.”
They ate on the porch again, Otis still banned by Lester from setting foot in the house. The bugs were frenzied, and Rodney imagined be might take in half the swarm with his spaghetti by the time he finished. Lester and Nadine sat in the chairs against the wall on the porch, a layer of sweat over their faces shining like oil. On the porch step below Rodney, Otis shoveled in noodles, his shirt stuck to his back like paint. The air was thick; even the humming porch lamp made everything feel hotter.
“When did you get that Skylark?” Otis asked.
“A couple years ago,” Lester said, taking a bite of bread. “I traded a gutted Winnebago for it.”
“You need to decide on one color for it,” Otis said, and then he laughed so that noodles hung from his teeth like a stringy beard.
Lester looked over at Rodney, twirling his fork on his plate round and round, letting his eyes roll over the boy’s arms and his shirt, on down to his shoes.
“What do you know, little man?” he asked.
Rodney swallowed a mouthful of noodles, the food settling in his gut like concrete.
“I don’t know,” he said.
“I think you do,” Lester said. His eyes narrowed, and he leaned over onto his knees. “I think you do.”
“What year is it?” Otis suddenly boomed.
Lester gave him the side-eye. “What do you care?”
“It’s a ’70,” Otis said, answering his own question. “I’ll bet you didn’t know that once upon a time a certain fella tried to get into business with none other than Henry Ford.” He stuffed another forkful of noodles in his mouth. “Ford told him to go straight to hell,” he mumbled with his mouth half full, “and just to show him what was what, the sonofabitch turned around and started his own car company.”
“So the hell what?” Lester spat.
“GM, that’s so what. Now you got your Skylark there,” Otis said.
Lester gave a breathy whistle. “To think I lived all these years without having that little nugget of information.” He reached his leg out and gave Rodney a nudge against the back. “Did you know that, sport?” he said. “They teach you that at school?”
Rodney slid forward, hugging the edge of the step. He shook his head.
“Well, what kind of tidbits do they teach you?” Lester pressed. “Enlighten us with your knowledge.”
“Lester,” Nadine said, getting up from her chair. “Enough.” There was silence as she reached down to take Rodney’s plate, then Otis’s. “It’s late.” She took Lester’s plate last, picking up the brown bottle at his feet by sliding her finger into the long neck. “Come on.”
“Who gave you the keys to the kingdom?” Lester asked.
She said nothing to him, and he stood up, saying, “See you boys in the morning,” before swinging open the screen door and letting it slam shut behind him.
Nadine took hold of the post, just waiting there above Rodney. When he turned to look up at her she was gazing down at him, her hair loose and falling over her shoulders, much like his mother’s would sometimes do, before she’d cut it all off.
“Good night, Rodney,” she whispered. Then she slipped through the front door and into the house, the sound of dishes tumbling into the sink, and then there was that song again.
Rodney and Otis made their way to bed, Otis stopping at the outhouse, where he proceeded to sing a cowboy song over and over while he did what was needed. By the time he got to the van, Rodney was already under the covers, wedged against the back doors. The windows had been left open all day and the space was a cloud of mosquitoes, humming in Rodney’s ears and piercing any bit of flesh they could find.
“We can’t stay here much longer,” Otis said. “Lester’s hospitality never lasts but a few days at best.”
Rodney said, “Are we going home then?”
Otis gave a heavy sigh and slid the side door closed. “I got some ideas,” he said.
He was quiet then for a bit, and Rodney wondered if he was expected to ask Otis about those ideas. But then he started up with that cowboy song again, and Rodney felt his body start to settle into his blankets, the cradle of sleep taking him under.
Just as quickly he was pulled from his sleep by a painful high-pitched wailing, and in that curious space between the cry and the awakening, Rodney imagined it was his mother calling out. He bolted upright, unable to untangle where he was as the darkness around him bound his eyes. In time, he found the back-lit window squares edged with fog, and the deep and guttural breathing and smell of Otis Dell, and the confusion lifted from him.
“You awake, kid?” Otis was sitting up in his bed, the ashy moonlight washing over his heaving silhouette.
“You awake?” he repeated. His voice shuddered as he spoke, almost like they were riding over a long gravel road together. It was a strange feeling, Rodney thought, to hear Otis sounding like that. Like he was afraid.
Rodney sat up and studied the windows, searching for standing shadows, or perhaps the whisper of branches that could have frightened Otis. There was nothing outside but blackness.
“I ain’t a murderer,” Otis said. “If someone tells you I am.”
“What are you doing, Otis?” Rodney asked.
“I didn’t mean for it to happen,” he went on. “I didn’t plan on it. He was there.” Otis swallowed hard, like a drop in an empty bucket. “The phone never rang and then he was just there.”
Rodney considered what must have happened next. “Was it Mr. Kruger that hit you on the head?” he asked.
“I didn’t have no choice,” Otis whispered, as if it was a secret. “He got in the first hit. At that point it was him or me then, right?”
There was a strange feeling that came from those words, from the desperation that seemed to fill the space inside that van, anguished and suffocating like Otis himself. He wanted an answer from Rodney.
“Did you kill him, Otis?”
Otis didn’t say anything at first, and Rodney could see that the shape of Otis had turned now and was facing in his direction. He stayed like that for a good half minute, the shape moving in and out with the breathing.
“I’d say no,” he said finally. “Not really, not when you look at it real close.” He laughed, a squeaky noise that labored behind his breathing. “I gave him a good shot to the jaw is all. The stairway behind him—that’s what killed him.”
“But you hit him.”
“He was standing too close to the top step. It wasn’t my fault.” Otis leaned over to Rodney then, his breath sour and raw. “You hear me?”
Rodney pulled back so that his body pressed against the metal side panel, the cool seeping through to his skin, as Otis slid the side door open, flooding the van with the gift of oxygen and moonlight. He swung his legs out and stood up. His underclothes glowed blue as he walked away from the van, a ghost moving further into the clearing. And just as Rodney drew in his breath to call out to him, Otis’s body folded in place, bending sideways like a closing pocket knife, collapsing onto the ground.