Trailer Trash (37 page)

“Really?” It was funny how hearing those words from an adult seemed to make a world of difference. “What about my dad?”

She leaned across the table and patted his hand. “Don’t you worry. All he needs is a bit of time.”

Nate wished he could believe her.

Nate found a job working evenings and weekends at a Baskin-Robbins within walking distance of Cora’s house. Each weekday, he caught the city bus to school, grateful that it ran on time, and that a student pass was cheap. His new high school was enormous—bigger even than the one he’d attended in Austin—and Nate loved it. With a student body almost as big as the entire town of Warren, nobody cared about one new kid. He kept his head down, did his work, and walked away with a diploma. He didn’t bother to attend the ceremony—his dad couldn’t get the time off work, his mom wasn’t talking to him, and it seemed silly to expect anybody else to travel that far just to hear his name called—but he sent out announcements at Cora’s insistence, and to his surprise, money began flooding in. Relatives he barely remembered sent him five-, twenty-, and fifty-dollar bills.

Cora just smiled and said, “Told you the announcements would pay off.”

He talked to his dad weekly. The conversations started out awkward, but gradually began to feel normal. Graduation weekend, his dad surprised him by telling him he’d try to bring his truck to him before winter. Nate would have preferred his Mustang, but his dad insisted he’d need four-wheel drive in Iowa as much as he had in Wyoming. He also told Nate he’d still help pay for school.

“That’s what the money was always supposed to be for,” he said. “I guess it doesn’t matter if the school’s in Iowa or Chicago, as long as you go.”

Nate increased his hours at the ice-cream shop, saving as much of his pay as he could. The Iowa City newspaper arrived daily, and Nate carefully went through the want ads, circling any job that looked promising.

Eventually, he drove there with Cora. They scoped out the community college and picked up an application package, along with a map of the town, and she introduced him to the man who would eventually be his landlord. He was thin and slightly effeminate, but his smile was warm and friendly.

“I think half the gay men in town live in this apartment complex,” he told Nate. “It’s not quite Boystown, but nobody’ll give you trouble.”

Nate filled out job applications, feeling like each one he handed in was a little ray of hope.

The pieces began to fall into place. The only thing missing was Cody.

Nate mailed letters at least twice a week, pouring his excitement into them, hoping to infuse Cody with the same bright optimism. At first, Cody answered, but it wasn’t long before the letters stopped completely. Nate’s heart grew heavy every time he checked the mail. He called Cody once, with his aunt’s permission, since the call was long-distance. Cora had a bright-orange metal stool next to the phone made from an old tractor seat, and he perched on it, his heart in his throat as he waited for Cody to answer, sure that Cody had changed his mind about everything.

Cody said all the right things, but the words sounded false. Nate knew he was lying. He knew something was wrong. The only part of the conversation that rang true was at the end.

“I love you,” Cody said, his voice so quiet, Nate assumed he was trying to keep his mom from hearing. “I really do.”

Nate closed his eyes, hanging on the words, glad to know that this at least hadn’t changed. “I’ll see you in July, right?”

“I hope so,” was the only answer he got.

Any time he had a day off and Cora didn’t need her car, he drove to Iowa City, and finally, early in June, it all paid off. He found a job at a video store, and put down a deposit on a one-bedroom apartment. He worried he was doing it all for nothing—that Cody would never join him after all—but he tried to hang on to hope.

And that very same day, he received a letter from Cody.

It was the first one in two months, and Nate’s heart burst into gear. His hands shook as he tore open the envelope. He was thrilled to finally hear from Cody, but he dreaded reading what he said. He had a sinking feeling it contained bad news.

Nate,

I suck at this long-distance thing, I know. I’m sorry. I think about you all the time, but every time I try to write, I realize I have nothing good to say. You send me happiness, and I hate the idea of sending you anything less than that, but there isn’t much of it here to go around.

Our phone doesn’t work anymore. I thought you should know that. The number for the pay phone at the gas station is 307-798-6543. I know you can’t call very often, but I’ll be there every night at seven just in case. Seven my time, I mean. I think that’s eight for you.

I know you’re probably mad at me for not writing more often, but keep sending the letters, please. I miss you like crazy. It’s just hard to hang on to hope in a place like this.

Cody

Nate breathed a sigh of relief. Cody still loved him, then, but something was obviously wrong. It was time Nate found out what it was.

For two wonderful weeks after Nate’s departure, Cody thought maybe the world was finally cutting him some slack.

He had a plan. Shortly after Nate’s dad shipped him off to Chicago, Cody fed the gas station pay phone two dollars and called the Greyhound depot in Rawlins to check on prices and schedules.

He almost had enough for the ticket. All he had to do was keep saving money, finish high school, then have his mom drive him to the bus depot.

It seemed so simple.

He quit smoking altogether, even though the cravings at lunch were almost enough to drive him mad. He picked up every shift the Tomahawk could give him, and even started working a few hours in the kitchen, plating up salads and chopping vegetables. The staff dwindled as more people moved away from Warren. Business waned. The entire establishment felt doomed, but Cody only had to make it to June.

People at school had mostly gone back to ignoring him, with the exception of Jimmy, Amy, and Christine, but he didn’t mind that one bit. Christine asked about the ring on his finger once, but if anybody else noticed, they kept their opinions to themselves.

Cody was counting the days to May thirtieth, keeping his eye on the prize. Several times a week, he dreamed that he showed up at graduation in his cap and gown, only to be told there’d been a mistake and he had to do his senior year all over again. The anxiety made him more dedicated to his schoolwork than he’d ever been in the past.

He wasn’t about to let a bad grade in English come between him and Nate.

But for better or worse, he was still in Warren, Wyoming, where nothing good could last.

Early in April, as a warm wind from the south brought promise of summer, the Tomahawk closed its doors for good. Logan’s uncle explained in a quiet monotone what they’d all known: business had been waning for too long. Cody knew it was true, but he was also pretty sure the real issue was that Logan’s parents couldn’t bear to stay in Warren now that both of their children were gone. Five days later, they’d already packed up and left. A For Sale sign in the front yard of their Orange Grove home was the only thing left to prove Logan and Shelley Robertson had ever lived there.

And just like that, Cody was out of a job.

Four days later, as his mom drove home from the truck stop in the wee hours of the morning, her car sputtered to a stop on the shoulder of I-80. She walked half of the fifteen miles back to Warren before somebody from town recognized her and gave her a ride the rest of the way, at which point she plopped down on the couch, looking tired and wrinkled and far older than she had when she’d left.

“What the hell are we going to do?” she asked. “I can’t afford to have it towed, let alone fixed, and I sure as hell can’t afford to buy a new one.”

She didn’t say the rest, but Cody didn’t need her to. Without a car, she had no job. The pile of bills on the counter grew a bit each day, her fine for solicitation still needed to be paid, and they now had zero income between them.

They scoured the town in search of work, but there were simply no jobs to be had. The oil and coal booms were long gone, leaving vacant houses and empty businesses. Sometimes it felt like half the town was unemployed, and while Cody knew the numbers couldn’t be quite that high, he also knew there were several people sleeping on benches in the park. No work and no money meant plenty of discontent. The bar on the edge of town seemed to be the only place still making money, and the police were the only people who stayed busy.

Warren was dying, and Cody had no desire to go down with the ship, but he needed to leave in order to make money, and he needed money in order to leave.

“If the world didn’t suck, we’d fall off,” his mom said to him one night.

Cody was beginning to think falling off wouldn’t be so bad.

Nate sent letters full of light and sunshine and love, promising that once they made it to Iowa City, everything would be okay, but Cody felt his hope drying up like the grass on the wind-blown plains. He’d promised himself when he said good-bye to Nate that he’d walk to Iowa if he had to, but that was easier said than done. Rawlins was a hundred miles away. It’d take him more than twenty-four hours to walk to the bus station. He’d need food and water, and a place to stay along the way. There were probably rest stops, but did he really want to sleep on a picnic table, with the last of his cash in his pocket and using all his worldly possessions as a pillow?

And what about his mom? That was the other question that haunted him as he lay awake in the night. Without him, she’d have nobody to help her pay the bills. Then again, without him, she’d have one less mouth to feed. Was he helping her by staying, or only making things worse?

He didn’t want to tell Nate how bad things had become. Maybe it was foolish. Maybe it was wrong. But Nate’s letters were so bright and full of promise, and all Cody had to send back was confirmation that he and his mother were both trash, unable even to pay their bills.

He quit writing to Nate altogether.

Graduation arrived, although Cody didn’t participate. Renting the cap and gown cost money, and there was nobody to cheer for him but his mom. He told himself it didn’t matter. He’d graduated. He had a diploma. Walking down the aisle didn’t actually mean anything.

Except, of course, it did. Somehow, even with his diploma in his hand, he still felt like a failure.

On June first, the phone company discontinued their service due to lack of payment. Although Nate had only called him once since leaving, Cody felt the loss like a hole in his chest. The phone line had been a tenuous connection to his future, and now it was gone. He wrote down the number for the pay phone at the gas station and sent it to Nate in a letter, promising that he’d be there every night at seven o’clock, just in case Nate was able to call.

It felt stupid, but what else could he do?

He and his mom pooled their money to pay the more urgent of the bills. He still had enough for the bus fare, but only barely. On June tenth, he worked up the nerve to knock on Christine Lucero’s door and ask her for a ride to Rawlins.

“I would if I could,” she said, sounding sincere, “but my car broke down last week.” And a few more minutes talking to her was all it took to find out that Jimmy Riordan and Amy Prescott had already left town, headed for new jobs and a new life in Montana.

Cody wasn’t the only one desperate to leave Warren. He wished he’d thought to ask them for a ride earlier. Now, there was nobody left for him to ask.

On June twelfth, he stood by the pay phone at the gas station, wanting a cigarette so badly he could hardly stand it. He hated to spend the money, but at this point, what was the point in saving it? He had no hope of getting to Rawlins, let alone Iowa City.

And then, the phone rang.