Payton Hidden Away Read Free Page A

town, and since every kid fantasized about leaving, we
looked at the two-lane highway stretching into oblivion like the Yellow Brick Road. We said Route 89 led all the way to the edge of the Earth and beyond,
and it must have, because anyone who took Route 89 never came back.
    That means I’m
close.
    Yanking the
wheel, I swerve off the interstate and follow the exit inland, merging onto a
two-lane highway that feels hidden from the rest of the world. The trees get
taller, hovering overhead like cheerleaders waving pompons as they welcome me
onto the playing field. The hairs on my arms stand up. Without even checking my
odometer, I instinctively know I’m only five miles from town. It looks
familiar. I don’t think I would have remembered it had I not seen it, but now
that I’m here, it all looks vaguely familiar. I can’t remember things as
explicit as street names, but still, these markers…these trees…that house…
    I crank my neck
as I pass an old farmhouse on my left. It’s battered and neglected, having been
abandoned for decades, yet it’s still standing. So is the barn. I remember that
place. The old Johnson farm—Payton’s last outpost. I hung out there a hundred
times as a kid. They say it’s haunted, and I smile as I zip past, crest a tall
hill and head into town. As I draw closer, I recognize the landmarks right down
to the trailer park on my right. The trailers are exactly the same, just a bit
worse for wear.
    A sign on my
left reads Payton County Welcomes You , but I don’t feel all that
welcome. People will see me. They’ll either recognize me or they won’t. Either
way, they’ll stare. This isn’t exactly a town designed for tourism. There’s
only one hotel, and the ‘vacancy’ sign is always lit.
    5:48 p.m.
    There’s my
elementary school on the left, and there’s Jimmy Taylor’s house where we lit a
firecracker and accidently burned the garage down. They still haven’t rebuilt,
and the old charred ruins are overgrown with weeds.
    There’s Janet’s
house. Janet something or other. The house is in desperate need of paint or
siding, but it looks like somebody still lives there. I wonder it’s her parents
or someone else—maybe even Janet. We were eleven when she flashed me. She
hadn’t fully developed yet, but boobs are boobs even to an eleven year old kid.
She wouldn’t let Ritchie near her no matter how much he begged, but she asked me
if I’d like to touch them. They didn’t feel like I’d imagined after years of
silently rubbing one out from within the sanctity of my bedroom where I kept
the door closed and my eyes shut while my mom watched TV from the other side of
the wall.
    And there’s John
Fisher’s house. He was only nineteen when he got hit by a drunk driver and
killed. We were only nine, so nineteen seemed like a lifetime away. All that
changed when I saw the skid-marks and the blood on the road. I watched with
gaping wonder while they took photographs, a tennis shoe still connected to a
foot sticking out from under the tarp.
    On the other
side of the street is Old Man Jacob’s house. The sailboat he half-buried as
some kind of weird lawn ornament is still there too. Nobody really understood
why he did it, but then again, no one really understood Old Man Jacob either. There
isn’t a lake within fifty miles of Payton, so why he owned a sailboat to begin
with seemed to baffle everyone. Ritchie had sex with Jill White inside that
boat while Mr. Jacob mowed the lawn around them, utterly oblivious. Ritchie
said it was the best sex he ever had, but I think he was just trying for
attention. Ritchie didn’t love Jill. He only ever loved one girl.
    Today, the boat
looks terrible. The mast fell over years ago, and the windows are broken out.
Mud has ingrained itself into the fiberglass and moss has taken root. The roof
of Old Man Jacob’s house has fallen in too, and the door is hanging wide open.
The place is abandoned, and my guess is the bank was unable to sell the