The Girl Who Slept with God: A Novel (37 page)

“Let’s just stop,” Jory said again.

“Please be quiet.” Grip leaned forward, peering intently through the small swath the lone wiper cleared in the windshield. “I think we’re not too far from Hope House. Hey, wouldn’t that be great? We could stop
there—I’m sure they’d like me to pay them another visit.” He laughed bitterly once and shook his head. His rain-wet hair was the color of old pennies.

The truck hit a pothole, probably the same one that Nick’s car had hit on the way out, and Jory slammed against the truck’s passenger door.
“Ow,”
she said as the truck now veered even more sharply to the right and began slowing. “What’s going on?” Jory asked. She rubbed her right shoulder.

“Flat tire,” said Grip. The truck made a loud
thwap
-
thwap-thwap
ping sound and they pulled off the road and came to a stop next to some sort of shadowy outbuilding. Jory tried to peer out her window but could see next to nothing through the downpour.

Grip rested his forehead between his hands on the steering wheel. “We don’t have a spare,” he said. His voice was directed toward the floor. “There’s not enough room in the back to carry one.” He turned his head and looked sideways at Jory with his head still resting on the wheel.

“Maybe this is inexorable fate,” said Jory. “The unexpected expected.”

“What?” said Grip.

Jory rolled her window down. “There’s a barn,” she said. “Or it could be a really weird house.” She opened the truck door and jumped down and ran toward the building. She could hear Grip calling her name from inside the truck. She splashed through the mud toward what looked like an overhang. There was a door underneath it with a curved top and a wooden handle at waist height.
Like a hobbit house,
Jory thought before she could stop herself. She pounded on the door and tried to stamp the rainwater off her shoes. Her moccasins were ruined. The door opened just as Grip came sloshing up beside her. Jory recognized the man in the doorway only after she had said hello, and even then for a second she wasn’t sure. It was the black eye and the bandage across his nose that made him look different. Plus the fact that he was no longer holding a guitar.

Inside there was a fire burning in a small stone fireplace and a large dirty brown dog stretched out next to it. “Some guard dog you are,” said the guitar man fondly. “We could all be dead by now.” The dog thumped its
tail lazily against the floor. “Yeah, you know we’re talking about you, don’tcha?” The guitar man stared at Grip. “I wouldn’t have let you in except for her.” He nodded his head at Jory.

Grip said nothing.

“Do you think we could maybe use your phone?” Jory asked.

“Sure,” the guitar man said. “If I had one.” He squatted next to the fire and placed a small log on top of the one that was already burning brightly. “No phone, no TV, no radio.” The guitar man was wearing what looked like buckskin pants—what Jory imagined buckskin pants would look like—and a long-sleeved undershirt with several large holes in it. He had two gold hoops in one of his ears and his hair was in a long dark braid that hung all the way down his back. “You wanna hang your clothes up by the fire? It’s the only way you’re gonna get dry.” The guitar man stood up and gestured at Jory.

Jory looked at Grip.

Grip shrugged.

Jory took off her wet moccasins and her jacket. She handed them to the guitar man.

“Anything else?” he asked, cocking his head and smiling.

Grip gave him a look.

He held up his hands. “Dude, I just meant, like, her socks or something.”

Jory peeled off her horribly wet knee-highs. “Ugh,” she said, and handed them to him.

The guitar man stretched her clothing out on the hearth. “Toasty in no time,” he said.

Jory sat down on an old green velvet couch. Or what used to be a green velvet couch. The velvet was now so thin and worn that there was hardly any velvet nap left at all. There was a coffee table of sorts in front of the couch that appeared to have been hewn out of a middle of a tree. Jory ran her hand over its smooth-ringed top. Everything in the little house—the walls, the floor, the ceiling—all of it was made of thick planks of wood, sanded smooth and varnished a glossy, almost glowing golden brown.

“Weird weather, huh?” the guitar man said. “Doesn’t usually rain like
this. I saw a double dog around the moon the other night, though, and sure enough—” He snapped his fingers.

“I think that means there’s going to be a frost,” said Jory. “It’s actually just the nearly frozen condensation in the air that makes it look that way. There really isn’t anything around the moon at all.”

“Her father’s an astronomer,” said Grip. “There’s no arguing with her.” He glanced grudgingly at the guitar man as if the two of them suddenly had something in common. “Her sister’s the same way.”

Jory turned to the guitar man. “You haven’t heard anything about a girl wandering around lost, have you? My sister—you maybe saw her on Halloween—she’s gone. We can’t find her.” Jory glanced back at Grip, trying to gauge from his expression just how much to say. Grip, for some reason, wouldn’t meet her eyes. Jory continued, “She sort of wandered away from our house a night ago. Last night, I mean.”

The guitar man leaned down next to the fire and poked at it with a long stick he had hanging below the mantel. Sparks, like angry insects, flew up out of the burning logs. “Are you sure she’s lost?” he said, looking back at Grip. “Maybe she doesn’t exactly want to be found.”

“Ah, the great philosopher,” said Grip, standing up. “Don’t get all voodooy with me. If you’re just dying to say something, go ahead. If you aren’t, then shut up.”

The guitar man held up his hands again. He was decidedly smaller and thinner than Grip. “This is my house, man,” he said. “You’re just standing in it. You asked to come in, remember? All I’m saying is that lots of times people leave places because they want to. You know?”

“Are your clothes dry yet?” Grip frowned at Jory. “There’s no point in sitting around here.” He marched over to a tiny window and looked out.

“Look,” said the guitar man. “Don’t get all jumpy. I’m just pointing out something, is all.”

Jory walked over to the fireplace and picked up one of her socks. It was slightly less damp than it was before. She turned to the guitar man again. “You haven’t seen her, have you? Or heard anyone say anything about a tall dark-haired girl? Well, she used to be dark haired—now she mostly doesn’t have any hair. She’s seventeen, and she’s . . . pregnant.”

“Pregnant,” said the guitar man, as if this were a slightly pleasing thought. “Well, well.”

“Well, what?” said Grip. “You have something to say about that?” He looked out the window again. “What I really need is a spare tire. Do you or any of your so-called friends have something I could use, even temporarily? I’ve got about five bucks”—Grip fished around in his pants pocket—“six bucks and change, if you can find me a truck tire.”

“You’re asking for another favor?” The guitar man smiled and pulled gently on one of his earrings. “Not quite as high and mighty as the last time I saw you. You nearly broke my nose, man.”

“Look, do you think you can just find me that tire?” Grip laid a five-dollar bill in the guitar man’s hand.

He shrugged. “There’s a couple of old ones in the woodshed. You can check it out if you want.”

Grip glanced briefly at Jory. “I’ll be back in a minute.” He struggled into his wet coat and went out the front door.

The guitar man sauntered into the kitchen and began opening some cupboards and setting things on the stove while Jory continued to sit by the fireplace. The brown dog was asleep, it’s rib cage rising and falling in short, slightly staccato movements. The dog’s paws twitched, and it made a softly muffled sort of bark, its dog lips fluttering. It was dreaming. Jory petted its flank and the dog sighed and lifted its head and then drifted back down into sleep again.

The guitar man came into the living room carrying two blue mugs and grinning with his chipped front tooth. He settled onto the green velvet couch, eyeing Jory. “It’s tea,” he said, smiling. “With nothing added.”

Even so, the tea tasted different from any drink she had ever had: slightly bitter and smoky flavored. She lifted the mug to her mouth again and immediately burned her tongue.

“Why’d she run off?” he asked. He meant Grace.

“I don’t know,” said Jory. She stared into the fire and watched as a small piece of wood burned and shrank and then fell down below the grate.

“I was fifteen.” The guitar man put his mug down on the tree ring table. “Best thing I ever did. Freud says the son has to kill off the father in
order to become a man, and in my case that meant killing off my mother, too.” The guitar man laughed briefly. “She was more of a man than my old man ever was. Jesus”—he shook his head—“she could make a person feel guilty just for breathing too loud.”

“How old are you now?” Jory took several more sips of her drink, trying to ignore the burned spot on her tongue.

“Twenty-five—going on sixty-five.” He chuckled.

“Have you lived here the whole time?”

“Nah. For a while I hung out in San Diego and then I went down to south Texas, Austin. Me and some of my friends down there, we had a nice little business going, pretty good bucks too, but then, well, things got a little too close for comfort—if you know what I mean—so I came on up here. Hey,” the guitar man said, “what exactly are you doing with Grip?”

“Oh,” said Jory, looking determinedly down into her mug. “He’s just my friend.”

“Yeah, I hope so. ’Cuz he’s, like, older than me even.”

Jory glanced back up in shock. “Wait,” she said. “You know Grip? Was he with you in Texas, too?”

The guitar man itched at his chin again, and then smiled a little knowing smile that made Jory feel about ten years old. “Maybe you should ask him about that.”

“He wouldn’t tell me.”

“Yeah, well, I s’pose that’s the best to stay out of trouble.” The guitar man set his mug down next to hers on the table. “Look. All I’m saying is that maybe you should be a little careful . . .” He shrugged. “’Cuz you seem pretty young and straight-edge, and you might not wanna get mixed up in any of that.”

“Any of what?” Jory knew she was sounding stupid and naive, but her drive to know now trumped her desire to look any type of cool.

The guitar man leaned forward and searched her face with his eyes. “Seriously?” He blinked and glanced away. “Jesus,” he said. He sighed and picked the two mugs off the coffee table and then stood up next to the couch. “What, you think he’s just selling ice cream out of that truck of his?” One side of his mouth crimped up in a half smile and he shook his
head. “He’s hiding out here. We all are. It’s the boonies and nobody knows us, okay?” He spread his arms out wide. “It’s Idaho, man.”

The front door opened and Grip stood stamping his feet in the doorway, rainwater dripping off his jacket. “All right,” he said, rubbing his hands together, “we’re good to go. Get your stuff back on.” After taking a quick scan of the room, he squinted. “Did I miss something here?”

Jory was tying and then retying her left shoe, looking down. “Not really.”

The guitar man cleared his throat and looked at Jory. “I wanted to tell you—I didn’t know you were so young. I mean, I can definitely see it now, but I didn’t know it that night on Halloween. I wouldn’t have given you the party favors if I’d known.”

“Hey, man,” said Grip with a warning note in his voice.

The guitar man put his hands in his pants pockets. He lowered his voice. “Hope you felt something cool, though. The first time can be pretty amazing—sometimes the best time ever.”

“Shut
up
,” said Grip, his hand now on the doorknob. “Don’t say another word to her.”

The guitar man shrugged. “Look, I’m just apologizing, man.”

“Fine,” said Grip. “C’mon, Jory.”

“Well,” said the guitar man, “all right, then. Don’t be a stranger.” He smiled and fingered the bandage on his nose. “Anytime you feel like beating someone up again, just come on out.”

Grip opened the door and he and Jory stepped out into the downpour. They ran through the wet weeds and grass toward the truck.