Out to Grow

Northern California smelled like hot pine, dust, and something green Jay couldn’t name.

Three days out of Cahokia, the paved road narrowed, then surrendered to dirt. Trees crowded Uncle Stan’s truck. There were no sidewalks, no corner stores, no houses pressed shoulder to shoulder. When Jay’s phone lost its signal, he held it toward the window as though the right angle might bring Illinois back.

Stan noticed. “That thing won’t help you up here.”

“What if Mama calls?”

“Landline at the house.”

“Y’all got dinosaurs too?”

“One. He answers to Tank.”

Jay lowered the phone. His mother had sent him west to straighten out. She hadn’t mentioned how far the houses would be from each other, or how quickly the road behind them would disappear.

The property appeared gradually: a mailbox scarred by buckshot, a gate made from pipe, then a weathered house in a clearing. Beyond it stood a barn, a workshop, two motorcycles, a vegetable garden, and a faded bus painted with suns and blue birds. Wind chimes turned beneath the porch roof.

Three more motorcycles stood behind the barn. Two men in Hells Angels colors smoked beside them. One watched the truck arrive without waving. The other looked directly at Jay, then asked Stan a question with his eyebrows.

“Family,” Stan said through the open window.

The man nodded once.

Jay waited for more. Nothing came.

Stan parked beside the house. Before Jay opened his door, another truck growled through the gate, black beneath a coat of mountain dust. It stopped close enough for the engine’s vibration to travel through Stan’s open window.

The driver climbed out first.

Tank was huge and bald. He stood beside the truck for a moment, rolling one shoulder, then looked over the clearing as if checking that everything remained where he had left it.

A woman stepped down from the passenger side wearing a patchwork skirt and leather sandals. Silver rings flashed when she lifted both arms and stretched. Tiny bells on her bag chimed as she reached back into the cab.

“Jewel,” Stan said. “You buy the whole store?”

“Only the parts you forgot.”

She handed him a grocery sack with a loaf of bread sticking out. Her long hair was streaked with gray, and a joint rested behind one ear. When Jay finally stepped out, she set the remaining bags on the hood and came straight toward him.

“You must be Jay.”

“Yeah.”

She hugged him before he could decide what to do with his hands. She smelled like lavender and woodsmoke.

“Welcome home, baby.”

Jay stood stiff inside her arms. Nobody had ever welcomed him to a place he had never seen.

“Give the kid air, Jewel,” Tank said.

She released Jay and straightened the collar of his shirt.

“He looks like he’s had plenty of air. Could use some dinner.”

Then the truck’s rear door opened.

Alexis stepped down in faded jeans, worn boots, and an open flannel shirt. She pushed her hair off her face and looked across the clearing. Jay was still watching when her eyes found his.

He forgot, briefly, that anybody else was there.

Tank didn’t.

His gaze moved from Jay to Alexis and back again. He held Jay’s eyes without changing his expression.

Jay understood him perfectly.

Don’t even think about it.

Alexis saw the exchange. One corner of her mouth lifted, but she said nothing. She pulled two bags from the back seat and headed toward a cabin at the edge of the trees.

Jewel followed with the groceries, calling for her daughter to hold the door.

“Dinosaur,” Stan said quietly.

Jay looked back.

Tank was standing in front of him now.

“This the nephew?”

“Depends. You friendly?”

“No.”

“Then I ain’t him.”

For a second, Jay wondered whether he had made a serious mistake.

Tank barked a laugh.

“He might survive.”

Jay smiled, relieved enough to glance toward the cabin again.

Tank stopped laughing.

Jay found something interesting on the ground.

The screen door opened behind them. Lacey came onto the porch, wiping her hands on a skirt covered in tiny yellow flowers.

“Ignore both of them,” she said. “I’m Lacey. You hungry?”

“Always.”

“Good answer.”

By the time evening settled, Jay had eaten roasted chicken, potatoes, and tomatoes sweeter than anything he remembered from home. People kept appearing. Red carried a battered guitar. Carla wore silver jewelry she had made herself. Two men came from the workshop arguing about a generator. An old hippie named Moon claimed he had once shared breakfast with Willie Nelson.

“He was three tables over,” Lacey whispered.

“Still shared the breakfast room,” Moon said.

They ate outside beneath strings of mismatched bulbs. Jewel moved between the tables with a bowl tucked against her hip, insisting everybody try something she had grown. Tank accepted a helping without asking what it was.

Jay watched him take a bite.

“Well?” Jewel asked.

“Needs bacon.”

“You think everything needs bacon.”

“Been right so far.”

Alexis sat on the porch rail, peeling the label off a root beer bottle. She laughed into her sleeve. Jay looked down at his plate before her father could catch him looking again.

Somebody passed a joint through the circle. When it reached Jay, the man holding it hesitated and glanced at Stan.

Stan held out his hand.

Jay expected him to put it out.

Instead, his uncle inspected the crooked paper, lit the end, and took a pull.

“Terrible,” he said. “Who rolled this?”

Tank pointed at Moon.

“Traitor.”

The laughter loosened something in Jay. Nobody asked what grade he was in. Nobody knew about the cough syrup Renee had found in his dresser. They argued about music and weather and whether tomatoes belonged in chili.

He could sit there without explaining himself.

Red handed him the guitar.

“You play?”

“No.”

“Perfect. Ain’t learned bad habits yet.”

He showed Jay where to put his fingers. Jay pressed hard, strummed, and produced a sound that made Tank turn toward the woods.

“Coyotes fighting?”

“Art takes time,” Red said.

“That needs medical attention.”

Jay laughed until his stomach hurt.

Across the yard, Alexis smiled at him. This time, he was sure.

For a while, he forgot to worry about Tank.

The property changed after eleven.

Red stopped playing halfway through a song. Headlights moved between the trees, disappeared at the bend, then returned brighter.

Tank got up and switched off the porch lights.

Nobody asked why.

Jewel collected the empty bottles. Alexis slid down from the railing, her smile gone, and helped her mother carry them inside. Moon set his beer beneath his chair.

A pickup rolled through the gate.

Two men climbed out. One wore Hells Angels colors. The other had a pressed shirt, a gold watch, and shoes that looked wrong in the dirt.

Stan embraced the man in the vest.

He only nodded to the other one.

Tank opened the barn door. All four men went inside.

Jay stood up.

Lacey caught the back of his shirt as he passed her.

“You don’t need a better view.”

“What’s happening?”

“Stan’s working.”

The barn door stayed partly open. From where he stood, Jay could see a narrow strip of light across the ground and the toe of somebody’s boot.

Containers scraped over the floor.

A man said a number. Somebody corrected him.

Jay had heard conversations like this through Renee’s bedroom door—voices kept low until money made somebody forget. He stayed beside Lacey and listened.

“That wasn’t what we agreed,” the man with the gold watch said.

Stan’s reply was too quiet to hear.

“No. You listen—”

Tank said something.

Jay couldn’t make out a word of it. He didn’t need to. The man stopped talking.

Inside the house, dishes knocked together at the sink. Jewel asked Alexis for a towel. The ordinary sounds made the barn seem stranger.

Lacey let go of Jay’s shirt.

“Come help me clear.”

He carried plates into the kitchen. Alexis stood beside her mother, drying a bowl. She looked at him, then past him toward the open doorway.

Whatever she saw on his face wiped away the last of her amusement.

Twenty minutes later, the men came out.

The gold-watch man walked straight to the pickup. He didn’t look at the porch. Stan spoke briefly to the other man while Tank shut the barn.

When the truck left, Stan carried a canvas bank bag into the house.

Tank remained at the gate.

Jay watched through the kitchen window until the headlights disappeared. Only then did Tank begin walking back.

Behind Jay, Jewel turned on the radio. Lacey put the leftover chicken in the refrigerator. Alexis folded the dish towel and laid it beside the sink.

Nobody mentioned the visitors.

Later, when the kitchen was clean and the others had gone to bed, Jay stepped onto the porch.

The sky held more stars than he knew what to do with. He searched for a familiar sound: traffic, a train, somebody shouting down the block. Water ran somewhere beyond the house. An insect buzzed against the screen.

Stan came out carrying two bottles of soda and handed him one.

“Too quiet?”

“Little bit.”

“You’ll get used to it.”

Jay rubbed his thumb over the cold glass.

“Those guys come here a lot?”

Stan looked toward the gate.

“Some of them.”

“What about the other ones?”

His uncle took a drink before answering.

“You stay out of the barn when I’ve got visitors. If Tank tells you to go inside, you go. No argument.”

Jay wanted to remind him that he wasn’t a little kid.

Instead, he asked, “Mama know about all this?”

Stan rested his forearms on the railing. Somewhere down the mountain, an engine changed gears.

“Your mama asked me to look after you.”

“That ain’t what I asked.”

“No,” Stan said. “It isn’t.”

Jay waited, but his uncle offered nothing else.

Through the kitchen window, he could see the phone hanging on the wall. Renee would ask about California when he called. The mountains. The house. Whether people were being good to him.

They were.

That was the part he couldn’t figure out.