The Day He Never Came Home by Andrew DeYoung

Author:Andrew DeYoung [DeYoung, Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sourcebooks

Chapter 18

As a boy Casey stocked shelves in the general store, worked the front register, swept the floors. But as soon as he was old enough he took a job that took him out of the house, down the road a couple miles to a small resort with boxy little cabins tucked into the rocks along the shore. In the summers Casey would walk to work each day, his shoes crunching in the gravel of the highway shoulder, trucks whipping by just five feet away. At the resort he’d cut the grass. He’d chop firewood and tie bundles together with orange twine for guests to buy. He’d cut brush, clean cabins, scrub the bottoms of the rental canoes and kayaks.

The owner paid him in cash; less than minimum wage, but since they paid him under the table they weren’t withholding any taxes either, so he came out ahead. This is what they told him. He didn’t spend any of the money. Instead he stashed it, wrapped it with a rubber band and tucked it in a rust-pocked coffee can he kept under his bed. He’d count it sometimes at night, taking pleasure in the feel of the edges of the bills against his fingertips, the numbers counting up above five hundred. It was his getting-away money; someday he’d use it to leave this place, start a new life somewhere else.

Casey observed the guests, watched them as they drove in with their gleaming, unrusted cars and parked on the asphalt pads next to their cabins. The license plates mostly said Minnesota, but sometimes he saw other states too. Casey wondered at their lives, made up stories for them. The men were gruff and confident, the women tanned, the children—if they had them—loud and scrubbed so clean they were almost pink. They weren’t rich, probably, but they had money, more money than Casey or anyone he’d ever known. They’d have thought his coffee-can stash paltry. After a few days, a week, or a long holiday weekend, they’d leave, drive away to the lives that were waiting for them back home. While Casey stayed. Worked. And kept saving.

Once, a guest noticed him. A girl. It happened while he was washing the dock, scrubbing it slippery with a bowl of soapy water and a hard-bristled push broom. He was just finishing up, preparing to start up the power washer to rinse the suds off the slats, when he sensed a presence behind him. He turned, and saw her.

She was his age—sixteen, maybe seventeen. Dirty blond hair pulled back, blue-gray eyes, thin lips that were just a little bit shiny. Casey had seen this before and always wondered how girls did it, made their lips gleam, made them sparkle. She wore a baggy hooded sweatshirt that hung around her waist, shorts so short Casey thought at first she wasn’t wearing any pants. Long tanned legs that he allowed himself to glance at, then darted his eyes away.

“Hi,” he said. “Can I help you?”

“No,” the girl said, “I’m just bored.

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