Chapter Eleven #3
Tasha turned her eyes back to Johnny. “Well, I took Sue’s number, but I don’t know if she’ll want to talk to me for an article now.” She still hesitated to mention her book idea. “You think she called it Mazywood as a dig at you? To randomly piss you off?”
“That’s how it sounded to me. After the way she was watching the girls?”
“It sounded to me like she had great memories of Mazelle and would be a perfect person to interview. Her grandfather knew the lodge in a different time, just like she said. I think maybe it sounded like a dig because you’re sensitive about those movies.”
Her voice had taken on the gentle prosecutorial tone she might have inherited from her father, who was a retired civil rights lawyer in Oakland.
She waited for him to respond, but he only shrugged.
Maybe she was right. Either way, he wasn’t going to argue about his instincts.
It was done now. If Tasha wanted to interview Sue about Mazelle Washington, she could talk to her on their way back without him.
“Is this what happened in your meeting?” Tasha asked him so quietly that he almost didn’t hear her.
But her words were loud in his head, clapping his eardrums. His anger was so sharp that it surprised him, like something physical scurrying inside of him.
When he was a kid having a temper tantrum, Mom used to say, There’s that Washington in you coming out.
Johnny breathed. He felt ambushed, but he hated arguing in front of the girls. Hated arguing with Tasha, period. He was a Washington in name only—not in temperament.
Another vow from childhood.
Besides, none of it was Sue’s fault. Sue hadn’t forced his grandmother to play that demeaning role—where she was half asleep on her feet like Stepin Fetchit—and Sue hadn’t glorified the character by making her lodge a namesake the locals still talked about.
Johnny felt an urge to go inside to apologize to Sue, until he remembered the way she’d tracked the girls.
“Maybe I overreacted over the Mazywood thing,” Johnny said evenly, in the voice Imani called his robot voice. “You could be right.”
“I don’t know if I’m right,” Tasha said. “But thank you for hearing me out. Stress—remember?” She reached over to squeeze his hand on the steering wheel. She lowered her voice to a whisper. “I feel it too.”
For two whole minutes, Johnny had forgotten that Tasha was pregnant.
He glanced at his rearview mirror and saw Sharise staring, solemn. She didn’t blink away from his gaze, as if she might see an answer to her questions if she waited long enough.
“Imani, you need help out there?” Johnny called over his shoulder instead, avoiding Sharise’s eyes. The sooner they got to Bear Creek Lodge, the sooner they could turn around and go back home to their normal lives, or whatever would pass for normal from now on.
Maybe Money and Tasha were right. He should do another polish on his script. He would have to figure out a way to convince his execs that he wasn’t a lunatic. If that were true.
“Just finished!” Imani said. She slammed the rear hatch shut. “Let’s go so we don’t lose the light. Driving with chains is so slow.”
“You got everything in?” Johnny asked.
“Yes,” Imani said. The “Washington in her” peeked out in her tone: She hated to be reminded of how forgetful she was. She climbed in beside Sharise and shut her door.
“Seat belt,” Tasha reminded her.
“I am,” Imani said. She also hated being treated like the child she was.
Slowly, Johnny began pulling out of the space in the empty parking lot near the mini-mart’s entrance. As soon as the car moved, Sharise let out such a yelp that Johnny jammed on the brakes, lurching everyone forward. The tires’ chains held like teeth biting the road.
“My cell signal’s gone!” Sharise wailed.
“Oh my God, mine too!” Imani joined her. “It just says ‘SOS.’ ” Emergency calls only.
Johnny closed his eyes, a silent prayer, hoping his family had reached its breaking point: The idea of no cell phone service was very different than the reality.
“Remember…” he said. “There’s no Wi-Fi up there yet either.”
Silence sat in the car so long that Johnny held his breath. Snowflakes twirled across the windshield like dazed moths. When Johnny turned on the windshield wipers, the blades shrieked across the glass.
“It’s snowing!” Imani said.
In his rearview mirror, Johnny saw Sharise raise her phone to start shooting video through her window. “We’re on our way to Bear Creek Lodge!” Sharise said, excited.
Of course—Johnny remembered the same reaction when he first arrived on the mountain with his uncle Ricky after being picked up at the airport in Redding.
Their snow trips were usually full of packed snow, but rarely falling snow.
Johnny could barely remember the part of him that had been excited to see snowfall, but he had to admit it was beautiful. Ethereal.
His family’s adventure had begun.
Johnny eased his foot off the brake and hit the gas gently, and the RAV lumbered ahead on its chains.
He was so preoccupied with listening to make sure the chains weren’t scraping the wheel well that he didn’t check his side mirror—where he would have noticed two bright red one-gallon gas cans lodged in the shadow of the mini-mart’s firewood stand.
Left behind.