EUNICE CLUETT DIDN’T get her baby, Queenie, in the usual way, through sexual intercourse with a boy in a bed, in a car, or out on the meadow after dark. Instead, she inherited her baby from the estate of her older sister, Florence, through a tragedy. From the estate? Well, it wasn’t really an estate, because of course there was no will made up, but when the baby became available, through the sudden accident that claimed the life of Florence, it was Eunice who was first in line. And that was a proper thing as it turned out, because Eunice was the best mother a baby could have. Better than the natural mother, some said, because Florence had a wild way about her that Eunice didn’t have. Flo was impulsive and did things on a dare. Flo drove down the Trans-Canada Highway on the blackest night of the year with all the car lights turned off so she could see the stars better. Flo shut her eyes, or pretended to shut her eyes, and she crossed the busiest streets like that, with her arms stretched out.
“Look at me,” she said. “I’m a zombie.”
She also drank way too many beers too early on at dances, then right away she’d dance too close, and stay out way too late, past the wee hours. She skipped classes at school the next day too, including the ones on precautions, and how she got her baby was therefore no mystery to any of her friends. Why, more often than not, Flo came home with her underpants scrunched up in her purse.
That was Flo, but that was not Eunice, and that’s how her little baby, Pasquena, who they all called Queenie, got lucky, sort of, when tragedy struck her mother down.
Now let’s not go on too much about the wild side of Flo. There was lots that was good about her. “She’s got energy to burn,” that’s what her father said, whenever he was asked. “She’s got her thermostat cranked up high.”
Her father talked like that because he had one of the best jobs on the whole Southern Shore, and that involved fuel oil. He had a yellow truck everybody recognized, and he knew everything there was to know about thermostats, and energy, and the foolish waste of heat. Some families burned their oil up twice as fast as others, he’d seen that over and over. And Flo?
“Well, Flo, she’s like a comet,” he said, “there’s no stopping Flo. She’s fire in the sky. She burns oil.”
She was the oldest of all the seven children, the first in line, the experimental one, and Eunice was the baby, the last of the whole family. That meant, praise the Lord, that Eunice got insulated from the wild side of Flo by nine whole years, and all she knew about Flo was the love and the care she got from the only sister she had. Eunice always got a kiss, nothing less, no matter how late Flo got home, no matter how scrunched up Flo’s underpants might have been, pushed into the top of her purse just a half hour before. Eunice got the kisses, but she never dreamed she’d get a baby from Flo. If she’d ever dreamed that, it would have been a nightmare. There’s not too many good ways you can inherit a baby.
Even with Flo being the way she was, everything would have been fine if it hadn’t been for the boy she met. His name was Darryl Bugden, and though he had lots of charms and attributes attractive to a girl, he also had the heart and the spirit of a criminal born. Not just one who picked it up along the way, for a lark with friends, but one born right to it from the word go.
How’d it happen? Flo was at the Minimart, the one she worked at on Long’s Hill, reading a magazine and sitting by the cash, when she was introduced to Darryl. There was no one else in the store. It was 8 p.m., three hours to go before she closed up against the scattered few customers who came in. It was mostly cigarettes and chips and the furtive magazines for total losers, that’s all.
“This here’s a stick-up,” was what Darryl said, his first words to her.
Flo looked up and there he was, six foot four at least, with dark curly hair and a smile despite what he said to her. All those teeth were perfect.
What’s with that, she thought, perfect teeth? That’s rare.
He did not look threatening to Flo, but how could she know, that death would appear to her in this outfit, those teeth, those words she’d only heard on TV? It never occurred to her, and it never would have occurred to anyone, looking at that smile. Anyway, it sure didn’t happen right away, it took three years.
“A stick-up?” she said.
When she got the job, the boss said to her, “If someone comes in and says, this is a stick-up, then you just collapse to the floor in a dead faint. Piss your pants too, that’s the best. Make as big a mess as you can, breathe like you’re a spastic on the verge of a fit. Oftentimes they’ll just say, Jesus Christ!, and run out of the store and go somewhere else.”
Somehow the boss had figured that out on his own, from what happened to him once. He didn’t plan it, it just happened to him and it worked. He sure didn’t get that advice out of the manual that came to all the new employees, from the Downtown Merchants. In that manual, it said, just hand over all the money, wordless, and do not put up any resistance. Most of these robbers are on drugs and they’re twitchy, unpredictable.
It was the nice smile he had that kept her sitting there. There was no way she was going to fall to the floor and do the rest of that whole crazy drill. How bad could a girl look, no matter what?
“There’s no money here. Everything bigger than a five goes right down that slot,” she said.
She pointed to the wall behind her.
“Straight down into the safe.”
Actually it was a slot in the wall that went straight into a cardboard liquor box that was on top of the safe. She could see it in her mind’s eye, sitting there full of loose money spilling over the sides. The boss long ago forgot the number to the safe so this was a money bypass. “It’s a trick,” he said, “that fools most of them all the time.”
“The safe, the combination is unknown to me,” she said.
He smiled some more but he just stood there.
“The walls are three feet thick, and solid iron,” she said.
The next thing Darryl did was get over the counter. He suddenly turned and slid his butt over the plexiglass that lay over top of the lottery tickets, and there he was, he twisted around and his feet landed on the floor right beside Flo. They stood there like a couple. She got scared then, and looked out the door. Maybe there’d be a customer to come in and save her, but that was not likely, maybe the old man with the cane or the fat lady for bubble gum, but what chance of that? There was no one in sight. And what chance would they have, her hopeless customers, anyway?
None, she figured.
“Lay down on the floor,” he said.
Those were the next words he had with the love of his life.
Down went Flo onto the linoleum. The tiles were lifted here and there, swept just once a week so they didn’t raise the dust, and she knew her white blouse, the one she bought with her own money, the one she never should have worn that night, would be ruined. Thank God for the old jeans she had on. Maybe she’d be dead soon enough anyway. It wouldn’t matter then what she had on, unless there was a picture in the paper. They didn’t usually show dead bodies. Even then, so what? Flo didn’t care about that, really.
Then she lost her nerve all at once.
“There there, don’t cry,” said Darryl, “just shut up.”
Then Darryl took his left foot and laid it down on Flo’s chest near her throat while she lay there in the dirt. It was a boot like a cowboy might have, with a heel like iron maybe two inches long.
“I’m now the man at the cash tonight,” he said.
He pressed his foot on her throat some, but she could still breathe.
“Don’t you say a word or move, or I’ll stomp on your windpipe with the toe of this boot. They got steel toes.”
There was a tinkle from the doorbell and she heard the shuffle-shuffle of the old man with the cane. Eight fifteen on the button every night, for the newspaper and the dog food. Once the boss saw that the old man always got dog food, he’d marked up the cans to $2.00 for each and every one.
“The old guy will never notice that,” he said, “the old goat, the old geezer, the old fool.”
Later, Flo changed it back to $1.25 with the rotating stamp.
The boss’ll never notice that, she said to herself, the old miser.
That was the general atmosphere at the Minimart, so Darryl there behind the counter, his foot on Flo’s throat, didn’t really change things all that much.
“Where’s Flo?” said the old man when he came up to pay.
“Underfoot somewhere, maybe in the back,” said Darry l bold as brass. “I’m on the cash tonight. For all I know, she’s lying down somewhere.”
That’s how the rest of the night was with Darryl. Flo lay on the floor but she couldn’t cry anymore. Darryl took in all the cash and put none of it down the slot. After an hour went by, Darryl took off his boots with the steel toes and just pressed on her neck with his stocking foot. She was surprised, the sock smelled clean, like wool. Whenever she looked up, he still had on that smile which never changed. He thought he was a smart-ass, she could tell, but that was common enough in all the men she knew. By nine thirty, she no longer trembled but Darryl was none too happy with the lousy take of, so far, $38.50.
“This is one slow store,” Darryl said.
That foot of his seemed to move further down from her throat, down her chest until it was right on the top of her left breast. She shifted down a bit.
“Not a lot of money comes in to this dumb store,” he said.
“Watch that foot please,” said Flo.
“Sorry,” said Darryl.
He released a bit of pressure but he didn’t shift the toes at all.
“Is that better?”
“That’s better.”
In the quiet times, between the customers, Flo thought she could feel his foot getting rhythmic on her chest.
Oh well, just lay there, she figured, let it go.
“I might just close up early,” said Darryl at 10:30.
“Leave now,” said Flo, “there’s an idea.”
“Then what do I do with you?”
“Me?”
“You’re the eye witness.”
“The eye witness?”
Oh no, she thought, this could come to a nasty turn now. Her heart began to thump so hard, under that foot on her blouse, that she thought, for sure, this guy could feel it there, thumping under his wandering toes. There was no doubt where that foot was now.
“You’re the only eye witness to this crime,” Darryl said, “my crime.”
He smiled down at Flo.
“I wonder, what should I do with you, girl?”
“All those people saw you too, that came and went,” she said.
“None of them that I saw had any kind of brain to remember,” he said.
Then Flo found the way out that saved her in the short run but in the long run, it didn’t make that much difference.
“Ask me what I saw tonight,” she said, She looked up at Darryl from the floor and willed that heart of hers to stop that dreadful pounding noise it made.
“Okay, what?”
“I saw this guy, maybe five foot seven, a thin guy with rotten teeth and a weasel face who came in and robbed the store and held me down on the floor with a gun, the whole time, and took all the money that came in until you came in and chased him off.”
“I did that?”
“You were brave.”
“I was brave like a lion.”
“Yes, you were.”
“Then what happened?”
“He ran away down the hill.”
“Like a rabbit.”
“Mind moving that foot please to the other side?”
“Like that?”
“That’s better. Yes. That’s a lot better.”
“How’s that feel?”
“That feels better, it feels good.”
The bad part was, she wasn’t lying when she said that.
“You saved my life. You paid for smokes, you looked over the counter, you’re tall, you saw me on the floor and you said to the guy, what’s with the girl on the floor? And it was then that he pulled out his gun, forced you up against the rack of chips, and then he slipped out the door and ran and ran. You stayed with me. We made the call.”
As she lay there, Florence could see the little man with the bad teeth running and running down Long’s Hill, the lights from the passing cars flashing off his legs, the sound of his footsteps getting smaller and smaller.
“What’s your name?” Darryl said.
“Florence.”
“Florence, you get up now.”
He reached down and gave her a hand up and dusted her off. He spent a lot of time on the blouse and on the upper parts of the jeans, where they were the dustiest.
Then, together, they put in the call to the Constabulary, and together they told the same story they’d worked on, as if they were old friends. Then they went out to George Street and drank up the money that Darryl had made that night.
One thing led to another. They were both reckless to a fault. One day, it was too late for Florence, she’d missed three periods, maybe four, and little Queenie was on the way, unstoppable.
The doctor said to her, “I’m sorry, Florence, there’s no way, you’re too far along for anything but to carry on with this little baby.”
That was okay with Flo. By then, she loved Darryl in her way, despite that smile he always had.
Her friends all warned her, “Look at that guy, Flo, that smile of his.”
That was the worst thing they said. Darryl could be happy, sad, busy or bored, or mean, nasty as anything, and it was always the same, his smile. Sure it was handsome, winsome even to a foolish girl, but it was a sick smile, forever as empty as his stupid criminal heart was of anything like kindness.
“Look out, Florence,” they said.
But she never listened. She never saw it that way. It must have been how he put the sock on her chest that night, the knowledge he had from being older, like Flo was some kind of hostage all her life one way or another, underfoot, in the way.
The writing was on the wall, the late-night driving they did up and down the Number 10 Highway, the open beers that rolled on the floor, all the shady stuff that Darryl pulled, including the final trip that had something to do with crystal meth, the Winnebago that lumbered over the centre line with Darryl half-dazed, the old guy at the wheel, all that momentum they both built up when they hit. The front grill of the Winnebago went straight head-on through Darryl’s rusted-up Chevrolet and it took the motor of that car, in one big jangled piece, slam-back through that smirk of his, and right through Florence too, until they all ended up in the trunk, fused and welded together by the flames that broke out, probably from the cigarette that Darryl always had to have, hanging there from his lip.
That’s how Eunice inherited her baby, from her sister, Flo, by accident.
Flo had come by earlier that day and left Queenie with her, like she’d had some kind of premonition. She was a good mother, really, when you got down to it.
“Here,” Flo had said, “take Queenie a bit. Darryl and me, we’re off to where there’s no place for a girl.”
You really can’t get much better than that, when it comes to mothering.