The Way Back

Tina reached across my lap and turned off the headlights.

“You can’t see anything with those on.”

“I can see you.”

“Don’t be bad, Bill.”

She kissed me anyway.

We were parked beside a cornfield outside Hutchinson, Kansas, on a farm that charged people twelve dollars to get lost in a maze. During the day there were hayrides and pumpkins and a woman selling cider from a trailer. Now the trailer was padlocked, and the only light came from the dashboard of my Tacoma.

That and the moon. It hung, full and pregnant. Clouds passing over it, casting shadows that hung like ghouls passing over the yellowed corn stalks whose tops reached upward and glinted like small hands giving praise to the God they worshiped.

Tina switched off the dashboard lights too.

Above the windshield, stars filled the sky. Especially when the moon passed into shadow. I had forgotten how many there were. In town you saw a few and figured that was all of them.

We climbed into the truck bed with the blanket I kept behind the seat. The metal was cold through it. Tina lay with her head on my arm and pointed out something she said was a planet.

“How do you know?”

“It doesn’t twinkle.”

“That one’s twinkling.”

“Then that’s a star.”

We had been seeing each other for four months. I was still at the stage where having her beside me seemed like something I had managed to get away with.

After a while, she sat up.

“I have to pee.”

“There’s a bathroom by the trailer.”

“It’s locked. I checked when we drove in.”

“I’ll take you somewhere.”

“By the time you find someplace, I’ll have wet myself.”

“And you aren’t wet already?”

She punched my arm. She climbed over the tailgate. I watched her straighten her jeans and pull my flannel shirt around her. Beyond her, the corn stood higher than the cab.

“Don’t watch.”

“I’m not.”

“You are literally watching.”

She walked past the sign with its cheerful painted arrow and stepped into the maze.

I lay back and looked for the planet.

***

I gave her a few minutes. Then a few more, because I didn’t want to be the guy shouting after his girlfriend while she tried to use the bathroom.

Something rustled in the corn.

“You fall in?”

No answer.

“Tina?”

I heard what might have been a laugh.

I climbed down, leaving the blanket in the bed. The farmhouse stood across the road, black except for a small light over the porch. There were no other cars.

At the entrance, my phone lit up two walls of dry stalks and a path wide enough for a riding mower. The leaves made little scraping sounds against one another.

“Tina. Come on.”

The path bent to the left.

I walked to the bend, expecting to find her crouched there, furious with me.

Instead, it opened into three paths.

I called her phone. From somewhere ahead came the opening notes of the song she used for a ringtone.

Then it stopped.

“Tina?”

Nothing.

I called again.

This time it rang until voicemail.

***

I took the middle path because the sound seemed to have come from there.

There were other turns, more than I expected. I kept the phone pointed down so I wouldn’t trip over the broken stalks. Every few yards I stopped and listened.

At first, I was irritated. She liked to scare me by standing behind doors, but this was different. We were on somebody’s property in the middle of the night.

Then I heard her say my name.

It came from the other side of the corn on my right.

“I’m here.”

“Bill?”

“Stay there.”

I pushed between the stalks.

The leaves caught my face. I turned sideways and held an arm over my eyes, expecting to reach another path after a few steps. Instead, the corn kept going. Dry husks rattled near my ears. Something snagged the back of my shirt hard enough to stop me.

“Tina?”

I pulled free and came out onto a narrow path.

No one was there.

I turned the light in both directions.

“Where are you?”

Farther away now, she said, “Bill.”

That was when I stopped being angry.

***

After an hour passed, I called the sheriff’s office.

I knew roughly where we were. West of town, past a grain elevator, then south at a church. I could picture every turn and couldn’t remember a single road name.

The dispatcher asked me to check my location.

A blue dot sat in the middle of a blank square on my screen.

“There’s a corn maze,” I said. “Pumpkins. A cider trailer.”

“Do you know the name of the farm?”

I had driven past the sign twice that night.

“No.”

“Can you get back to your vehicle?”

“I think so.”

“Go back to your vehicle. Keep your phone with you.”

“What about Tina?”

“We’re going to help you find her.”

The call dropped while she was asking for my number.

I tried again. The screen said the call had failed.

I stood there looking at it for a while, waiting for it to ring.

Then I turned around.

***

I had always thought you could get out of a corn maze by walking straight through the corn.

I tried it. The stalks were thicker and harder to breach then I thought.

I picked a bright star and kept it in front of me, pushing through the rows with my phone against my chest. The stalks were planted close together. Some bent. Others snapped and left hard points near the ground.

After a while, I stopped to catch my breath.

Ahead of me was a path.

On the opposite side lay a paper cup I had stepped over earlier. Its red straw was still pointing toward the corn.

I picked it up and crushed it.

There was nothing useful about doing that. I just needed it to be different when I saw it again.

Somewhere nearby, Tina coughed.

I knew that cough. She’d had it for a week and kept saying it was allergies.

“Are you hurt?”

I waited.

“If you’re hurt, just tell me where.”

The corn moved to my left. A little farther along, it moved again.

I followed it slowly.

“Tina, stop walking.”

The movement stopped.

I stopped too.

For several seconds, neither of us moved.

Then, from directly behind me, she whispered, “Bill.”

I turned so quickly that my phone slipped out of my hand.

Its light landed facedown in the dirt.

I couldn’t make myself bend to pick it up.

***

Later, I would have trouble accounting for the next two hours.

I remembered kneeling with one hand over the phone, trying to listen before I moved. I remembered finding a wider path and running until it ended against a wall of corn.

Mostly, I remembered calling her name and trying to make it sound as though everything was going to be all right.

At three forty-six, my battery was down to nine percent.

I sent her a message.

Go back to the truck. I’ll meet you there.

It stayed on sending.

I switched off the flashlight.

Without it, I could see the sky and the ragged tops of the stalks. The darkness underneath them seemed solid.

I thought about Tina being somewhere inside it without a light. I thought about her deciding I had left.

“I’m still here,” I shouted.

My voice sounded thin. I had been shouting for so long that it hurt.

A few rows away, someone began walking.

I could hear each step, the brief pause while a foot lifted, then the next one.

I started toward it.

The footsteps stopped.

I stopped.

They started again.

This time they were closer.

***

I didn’t call out again.

That is the part I have the hardest time with.

I stood there with my mouth open, knowing it might be her, and I didn’t say anything.

I backed away until my shoulders touched the corn. Then I turned and forced myself between the stalks.

Behind me, the footsteps reached the place where I had been standing.

I kept going.

A leaf sliced the corner of my mouth. I tasted blood. My phone was dead now, but I held it anyway.

I no longer tried to follow a star. I kept one arm in front of my face and walked until I fell, got up, and walked some more.

Once, I heard Tina say, “Wait.”

I almost did.

***

The first thing I recognized was the cider trailer.

It stood beyond the last rows, its white roof faintly visible against the sky. I pushed toward it and stumbled out beside a stack of wooden pallets.

The eastern horizon had begun to pale.

For a moment, I couldn’t remember where I had parked.

Then I saw the Tacoma.

Tina was in the passenger seat.

I could see her hair against the headrest.

I started running.

By the time I reached the truck, I was crying and trying to talk at the same time.

“Jesus Christ, Tina. I thought—”

The passenger door was locked.

She didn’t turn.

I fumbled the keys out of my pocket and pressed the button twice.

When I opened the door, her arm fell toward me.

I caught her wrist.

My flannel shirt was torn at the shoulder. There was dirt on the seat and corn tangled in her hair.

“Tina.”

I touched her cheek. It was ice cold.

Then I put my hand against her throat, because that was what you were supposed to do.

It felt like a fish you pull out of a lake, but nothing moved inside.

I kept my fingers there. I moved them and tried again.

The sun was coming up behind me. In the new light, I could see the scratches around the inside door handle, the broken nail caught beneath it, the marks her fingers had left against the glass.

She had made it back to the truck.

Then she had tried to get out.