Lassen County

Kathleen J. Woods Lassen County

Johnny resolved to steal his sister home before dusk. He threw a backpack in his truck and kissed their mother goodbye. Be careful, she said. And don’t kill him. The road from Susanville to Eagle Lake was clear, familiar in its winding, narrowing roads. October was not a time for tourists or hobby fishermen. Only those without much else to do would set out on the lake now, as the cold crept in, willing to bob for hours before a bite. It was their father’s favorite time of year. Johnny remembered how his legs had numbed as he sat on the fishing boat’s metal bench, watching the cooler empty. He’d drunk one can of the cheap beer that flattened halfway though, sneering as he sipped. His father had laughed and tossed him another can.

Johnny fiddled with the truck’s radio. Styx battled against the mountain static, and Johnny let them. It was better than country. Better than nothing. He tapped his fingers against the steering wheel and dreamt, for a moment, of robbing a gas station and continuing on, turning for Las Vegas and driving east and east and east. He was nearly done with high school anyway. What more could he learn in seven months? He laughed to himself. There were no gas stations in these woods. Next, in another year, the Navy. He would travel then.

When their father had called about the camping trip, Johnny had been ready to refuse him. He hadn’t seen the man in a year. But he heard April in the background. She’d begged for the phone.

“I expect you to join your family, son. Here’s your sister,” their father had grunted.

“I really think you should come camping with us,” April said.

“What, you miss me?” Johnny said. “Wait, he’s going outside,” she whispered. “You have to come get me.” “Is he hurting you?” “It’s the same,” April said. “How’s Cheyenne?” Johnny said. “Jesus. The dog is fine. Aren’t you even worried about me?”

Their father’s husky was beautiful. As a boy, Johnny would sit by the dog on the back porch and stroke her ears. She’d lunge at anyone coming for him. She’d go for the throat. And their father knew it. Sometimes Johnny lay awake at night picturing his father smashing the dog’s head in with a shovel. “I don’t want to see him.” “You and Mom were right, okay? All Reno’s got is prostitutes and strippers. He keeps joking that in two years, I can start my career,” April said.

Johnny imagined her standing at the phone, wrapping the coil around her arm as they had as children, pretending to mummify their fingers.

April had left in a fit. Their mother had forbidden her to spend a weekend in Reno with a boy. She packed a backpack and announced that she and the boy were going, and she wasn’t coming back. She’d already talked to her daddy, and at least he wanted her to be happy. He understood that she was an adult. She’d screamed as their mother started to cry and bit Johnny’s arm as he held it across the door. The boy was waiting outside. Johnny started after her, but their mother told him to let her go. The car tore down the street. Their mother had

touched the bite mark on his arm and sighed. Let her go. And pray to God she isn’t pregnant.

“Please, Johnny,” April said. “He won’t let me leave. Just pretend to come camping and take me home while they’re sleeping.” “I’ll do it for Mom,” he’d said. Johnny slowed the truck as a blue Mustang roared past. He never understood why people sped along these snaking roads. When they were children this drive had made April cry. Their father would laugh and take his hands off the wheel.

Johnny liked to drive fast on a highway, where he could imagine himself slicing through the sky and golden fields, not here, where one careless turn meant a head-on collision or pinball down a mountain. He taught April to drive in the fields. When she failed her first test, he took her out for ice cream. She’d forgotten about stop signs, she said. Oops.

Once, he’d seen April’s boy road race. He’d just finished a night shift at the bowling alley and joined his classmates in the parking lot. The boy drove a red Challenger with a broken driver door. Everyone cheered when he jumped in through the window. They cheered again when he took a shot. The cars had revved their engines and taken off down the main strip, towards the end of the streetlights and back again. The boy had lost by a mile.

Weeks after he drove off with April, the boy had gone bowling. Johnny had walked out from behind the lanes, hands black with oil, and saw him sitting in a blue half-moon seat, his arm around a redhead.

“Hey,” Johnny said, wiping his hands with a rag.

The boy looked at him and blinked. He and the redhead stunk of pot. She stood up to bowl, her lips pursued around a cigarette. “Hey,” Johnny repeated. “You’re back in town?”

“Looks like it,” the boy said, grinning with teeth like a hand of cards. “And April?” “April? Man, that girl is crazy,” the boy said. Johnny stuffed the rag into his back pocket. “You left her there.” The redhead knocked down seven pins, and the boy applauded. Johnny watched him watch her bend down over the ball return.

“In Reno? Well, yeah. I was never going to live in that shit-hole. Your sister’s hot, but she’s crazy,” the boy said. He grinned again and cracked his knuckles. “We were just there for a little fun, you know?”

The redhead’s pins clattered. She’d made a spare. The boy turned to cheer, and Johnny grabbed the back of his shirt. He hadn’t realized how small the boy’s body was. No shoulders to speak of. He imagined the boy’s sallow bones on a motel mattress, undressing his little sister.

“Watch your fucking mouth,” Johnny said. He tossed the boy into the lane. He slid a good four feet before his skin screeched against the varnished wood. He scrambled upright.

Johnny had watched the boy struggle to stand and noticed that he’d smudged oil over the boy’s shirt. This made him smile. He weaved through the bowlers clutching their drinks and sat in the back room. He counted his breaths.

Johnny hadn’t been fired. He was too good an employee, too responsible. Besides, his father had worked there from the moment the alley opened, and the boss refused to break a legacy. He didn’t tell their mother anything about the fight. If she’d heard, she kept it to herself.

Last he’d heard, the redhead was pregnant, and the boy, racing drunk, had rolled his car, crushing his leg. What a shame, people said. He’d been counting on the Army. Johnny wondered if April knew. Susanville, it turned out, was a shithole too.

Johnny turned off the main road onto the stretch of dirt that would lead him to their father’s campsite. The radio gave up. He hummed to himself and imagined April struggling to assemble the tent—a tent she wouldn’t even sleep in. Years past, their father and his girlfriend had taken the shelter and left April and Johnny sleeping bags and a tarp in the bed of the truck. They’d huddled together and told ghost stories, trying to cover

the yelling or the moaning coming from the tent. As they grew older, they slept farther and farther apart. He’d begun waking up before her. He’d learned to make coffee. He’d learned to sit quietly by the lake and watch the morning herons dip into the water for fish.

Johnny whistled as the lake came into view. The mountains spread wide and flat, and the water stretched through them to the horizon. Johnny saw no one, and his heartbeat quickened. He thought of their father discovering their plan and waiting, gun ready, for Johnny to arrive. But the gun misfires and shatters April’s skull. Blood sprays the boat, the tree trunks.

When he was thirteen, he’d found blood in the bathroom. There was red tissue in the garbage can, pink swirling in the sink. He watched plum clots dissolve in the toilet water. He’d known someone had died. He’d screamed for his mother, and she and April both came running. April blushed and fled back to her room. Their mother had done her best to explain.

Johnny gripped the steering wheel. Their father’s truck sat a few feet offshore, rusty and dented, its boat trailer empty. Johnny looked out across the water. Before he could make anything of the black shapes blotting the lake, April pounded on his passenger door. He opened it, and she threw herself inside, hair wild. She clutched her backpack to her chest. “C’mon,” she said. “Let’s get out of here.” “Where’s Dad?” “Fishing. They’ve been out on the lake for an hour. I said I would wait for you, and here you are. My hero,” April said, dancing in her seat. Her bare arms were tan and covered in freckles. Her face looked strange to him, puffy though the rest of her body remained so thin that he saw the shape of her ribcage as she breathed. She still had no chest to speak of. Not pregnant then. She pulled a cigarette from her backpack and lit it. He watched her exhale. Smoke twisted through the truck. Their mother would make her flush the cigarettes one by one. Johnny squinted again at the water. He could make out no bodies. He started the truck and angled back toward the road, just brushing the corner of their father’s tent. It bent and sagged, and April laughed. He watched his rearview mirror, waiting for a gun. The lake disappeared from view, and the radio crackled to life. April reached out and twirled the dial. Dime-sized bruises spotted her forearm.

Once, long ago, the family had spent a day at the lake together. Their father taught Johnny to skip rocks. Their mother stood in the water and held April’s hands as she kicked. Soon Johnny’s stones made one hop, then two. Their father patted him on the back.

“Watch this,” he’d said. He picked up a wide, flat stone and snapped it over the lake. It struck their mother in the hip. She and April splashed under the surface, yelling. Their father laughed and laughed, his hand on Johnny’s shoulder. Johnny had giggled too. Their mother scooped April into her arms and carried her to shore. It had taken another three years to teach her to swim.

“Never try that again, okay?” Johnny said. “Mom missed you.”

April looked up from the radio and nodded. Her hair fell over her eyes. “Sure.”

“You’ll go back to school next week.” “Sure,” she shivered. “There’s a sweater in that bag there. Put it on.”

She reached into the truck’s narrow back seat. Her shirt rose as she stretched, exposing the way her hipbone pressed through her skin. She pulled the sweater over her head. “Don’t singe it,” Johnny said. The radio played an advertisement for McDonald’s. Another for mattresses. Johnny listened to the air moving past the truck. “Hey, have you heard anything about Michael?” April said, still clutching the cigarette. The sweater swallowed her. She shook the sleeves away from her hands.

“Who?” He watched her tap ashes into his cup holder. She wore a big silver ring on her thumb. It was green around its edges.

“My old boyfriend. Some help you are,”

she smiled and punched his shoulder. “God, I wish I could see Dad’s face when he pulls into camp.”

Johnny looked again in the review mirror. Nothing. Though their father could follow them later and pound on their mother’s front door, demanding that his son face him. They’d keep everything locked. They’d change their phone number. And in one year, the Navy. He wiped his palms on his jeans, one at a time, and eased the truck through three short curves, seatbelt heavy on his chest. His legs ached. April stretched her feet out on the dash. Pink nail polish clung to the ends of her big toes. She took a drag on her cigarette as the truck began its descent.

“Go faster, Johnny. I’m not scared.” He looked at his sister, at her puffy, freckled face, so flat in the shadows of the trees. He pressed down on the gas. He’d get them home.