IT’S TEN MILES TO JACKIE’S. HE’S THROWING A PARTY TO welcome me. When I pull up, all his friends turn and wave. I get out of the truck and Jackie leaps down from the deck. He takes his cap off like we’re in church or something. The black hair plastered to his forehead is still thick and shiny as ever. Ma used to say Jackie stole all the good genes, but I’m not sure there were any. He just looks like he came from some other family. He’s got suede grey eyes framed with thick lashes. When he was born, Daddy took one look at him and accused Ma of fucking around.
“Scabby Tabby.” Jackie punches my arm.
“Black Jack.”
He does up a couple of buttons on his flannel shirt before he picks me up off the ground in a bear hug. “It’s some good to see you, girl. I thought you were history.” He turns and yells up to the deck, “Everybody, this here’s my big sister, Tabby. I don’t want to see her without a beer in her hand for the rest of the night.”
A petite brunette greets me at the top of the stairs with a cold one, but Jackie grabs her arm. “Not that piss,” he says. He fishes in the cooler and tosses me an Oland’s instead.
“I’m Jackie’s girlfriend, Jewell,” she says. “It’s so nice to meet you.” She’s tiny everywhere except for the baby bulge under her tight ivory dress.
“You are not my girlfriend,” he says, pinching her ass.
She glares at him. “You want a wife, keep it up. I’ll make you put a ring on this finger so fast it’ll make your dick spin.”
In the same breath she starts chirping away to me about the weather and Jackie excuses himself to get barbecue sauce. I notice the woman who did Janis’s nails is standing on the other side of the deck. She sees me at the same time and waves.
“You met Tabby the other day, right, Kim?” Jewell says to her.
“That’s right.” The woman finishes chewing a mouthful of potato chips. “How’s your little niece doing?” she asks me. “I didn’t clue in that the two of you are Jackie’s people until you mentioned Poppy.”
“Thanks for that tip on Lyle.” I pull the paper out of my purse. “He gave me this.”
She walks over and takes a look. “Don’t know it. But you should bring Jackie with you if you go. I wouldn’t trust Lyle.”
“Why not?”
“Because he’s Lyle.” She picks up a lock of my hair and rubs the ends between her fingers. “Is the humidity fucking with your hair? When I first moved to Jubilant, I swear, I almost shaved my head.”
Before I can ask anything else about Lyle, she walks down off the deck. I watch her rummage in the trunk of a car and pull out a whole salon. She tucks her Calypso Berry Breezer in her cleavage to free up both hands and comes hauling everything up the stairs.
“I take it all home with me at night because the shop gets broken into at least once a month,” she says breathlessly. She plucks the cooler from her boobs. “Nobody comes to me for hair anymore. They all go to this skank Gina for extensions. I don’t do them because everyone wants them out as soon as they’re in, and you end up working twice and getting paid once. But Gina wears sweatpants with her own name written on the ass, so she’s not about to do the math.”
She pushes me inside to Jackie’s kitchen table, sweeps Jewell’s dog-eared novels and knitting needles to the side, and the next thing I know I’m sitting on a stool with a garbage bag pinned around my neck. While she’s snipping away, Jackie hoists himself up on the counter and starts asking me every question he can think of.
“You got a house?”
“Sort of.”
“Kids?”
“No, but I see you’re about to have one.”
Kim cuts in and says, “Jackie’s fathered just about the whole elementary school.”
He grins. “I got to work seventy hours a week to pay for all their fancy sneakers.”
“You must love being a daddy.”
“I love making love. But not every woman tells you she’s setting a trap. Most of them kids I didn’t know I was making till their mothers’ bellies swelled up and they showed up on my doorstep with their palms out.” He clams up as Jewell comes in and slides coasters under our drinks.
“Jackie,” I say when she goes back outside. “Do you have shit for brains? It’s called a condom.”
“Oh my God!” He falls off the counter, laughing. “I swear to Christ, that’s the last thing you said to me before you left home a million years ago.”
“It’s probably true,” I tell Kim. “And he was only eleven.”
I look around at his walls. He’s got a Jack Daniel’s calendar with Jewell’s prenatal appointments scrawled on it and a pay phone mounted next to the fridge, which he tells me is the kids’ college fund. Someone actually drops a quarter in it and makes a call while we’re sitting there. I don’t know how he rigged that up, but it’s proof enough he’s Daddy’s son.
I glance at a photograph of him and Bird taped to the refrigerator. Their arms are slung around each other’s shoulders, hunting rifles down at their sides. Bird looks big and solid, at least a foot taller than Jackie.
“We used to go up to the hunting cabin,” Jackie says, pointing to the photo with his bottle. “Bird shot four pheasants that day and rubbed it in my face for months. Now I tell him that was me. He don’t remember.” His smile fades and he takes a long swallow of beer. “You seen him?”
“Yesterday,” I say.
He doesn’t say any more. Kim brushes some highlights in my hair, talks to me about her Labrador retrievers while they’re developing. Then she leads me to the sink, rinses it all out and fluffs my hair with her fingers as she blow-dries.
“Tabby!” Jackie whistles. “You look like a supermodel.”
I go look in the bathroom mirror, come back smiling. “Holy shit, Kim, how can I thank you?”
She unclips the plastic bag from my shoulders and gathers up her supplies. “See that sawed-off turd over there in the work-boots?” She points to a snaggle-toothed kid drinking out of a mug that says SEX IS BETTER THAN GRASS IF YOU HAVE THE RIGHT PUSHER. “Don’t let him near me.”
She heads for the deck and, sure enough, he’s hot on her heels. I tap his shoulder, introduce myself, and for the next two hours get the long version of his whole life story. His last name’s Miller and since everybody calls his older brother Miller, he got stuck with Miller Lite. He’s the only game hawker in the Maritimes, training his falcon eight hours a day and getting paid zero dollars and zero cents for all his hard work. I feign interest as he shows me all his claw marks and peck scars. Secretly, I’m staring at the reflection of my new hairstyle in every available surface, including the metal toaster.
“So, anyways,” Miller Lite says, reapplying the Band-Aid he pulled back to show me his infected neck gouge. “You should come over sometime and see my bird.” He plucks a badly rolled joint from behind his ear and lights the wrong end.
Jackie overhears on his way to take a leak. He thumps Miller Lite on the back and says, “Sorry, man, my sister’s only interested in seeing guys’ dicks if they’re over three inches.”
“Aw, fuck’s sakes, Jackie,” Miller Lite says, coughing out billows of smoke. “Why you got to tell everybody everything for?”
JACKIE NAVIGATES THE WAY TO BLUEBELLES. HE RECOGnized the address. He says his friends call it Blue Balls because married men go there after work to watch the dancers before driving home to their homely wives.
“Course, you can buy some relief in the backroom,” he says, twisting his cap in his hands.
“So, who’s Lyle Kenzie?”
Jackie sticks his hat back on his head. “Just some fat fucking loser who can’t even be an alcoholic right.”
“There’s a right way?”
“You don’t get drunk on every kind of booze there is. You pick one staple. I seen that guy one time with a rum and eggnog sprinkled with fucking nutmeg, sipping it out of a cinnamon stick.”
“Who is he to Poppy?”
“I don’t know. She got herself mixed up in that skid soup down at the autobody shop. Probably buys drugs off him.”
“When’s the last time you saw her?”
He traces his finger in the dust on the dashboard. “Been about three months. She says she’s fine, but she ain’t. I’ve given up on her, tell you the truth. Ma watches them kids and they seem like they’re doing all right. I help out some, and Poppy sends money when she’s been gone a while.”
“Not this time.”
“Well.” Jackie sits up straighter. “Jewell won at bingo last week. I’ll borrow some if I have to.”
“How’d you nab a good girl like Jewell?”
“She’s from Fiddle Bay, came up to Jubilant to see her cousin. I was driving by and seen this tight denim ass walking into the bar, ran in after it.”
“Well, there’s a heartwarming bedtime story for the baby.”
“By the time she found out I was bad news, we’d already soaked the sheets a few times. It was too late then, she was hooked. But I ain’t telling my baby boy none of that.”
“How do you know it’s a boy?”
“Every one of them has a pecker so far. Bad little fuckers, but some good-looking. There’s only three of them, by the way. Kim was just putting you on.”
“Three different mothers, I suppose.”
“Carla, Chrissie, Cora Lee—the three Cs. All batshit crazy.”
A house appears between the trees. The family who lives there is sitting out in lawn chairs facing the road instead of the sunset on the lake behind them. I wish I was one of them, all settled in with a lapdog and a Corona. One of them points at the truck and I imagine they’re playing a game, trying to guess where people are going. I wonder if it would occur to anyone we’re a long-lost brother-sister duo trying to track down a missing hooker.
“It’s time I got a real job,” I say out loud.
“You never had a job?”
“I spent four years in Raspberry. No one hires juvenile delinquents who don’t even have a social insurance number.”
“What?” Jackie turns. “I thought you moved to easy street.”
I shake my head no and he keeps staring. When we were kids, the older sister of one of Jackie’s friends got sent to Raspberry. Cher was a typical small-town bad girl, too cool for school but not so tough you wouldn’t bum a light off her and slip it in your pocket. When she came back months later, she’d shaved the words FUCK OFF into one side of her head and choked out her boyfriend with his belt when she found out he’d cheated.
“I’ve worked before,” I say. “Just not for a paycheque. I cleaned motel rooms, harvested pot, was a tattoo guinea pig, things like that. One summer, the Tilt-A-Whirl operator at the Bill Lynch Show used to let me take over for him when he went to jerk off. He only paid me in ride tickets, but he’d give me a whole whack. I’d go out to the parking lot and sell them half price.”
“Tabby, what in God’s name is a tattoo guinea pig?”
“Some guy was starting up a tattoo business and he used me to test out different inks and designs. I got a few on my ass that I’m trying to hide from West.”
“West? That the bartender?”
“Yeah.”
Jackie looks at me, shakes his head and snorts. “Jesus Christ. You know you can’t put any of that on a resumé, right?”
“Oh, come on. I don’t have to get specific. I’ll say I’ve been a canine handler, a gardener, a carnival relief worker and an artist’s assistant. They want my resumé, I’ll bend over.”
“Carnival relief worker.” He grins. “I think I missed you a whole lot.”
The sun dives behind the trees and the clouds start to roll themselves into in a giant ball. In the half-light, the two-lane highway shimmers.
“Look at that,” I say, pointing. “So pretty.”
Jackie squints ahead. “That’s busted glass. From drunk-driving idiots.”
He taps his knuckles on the windowpane then sighs and takes a bag of chewing tobacco out of his pocket. “Don’t tell Jewell. This shit was supposed to help me quit smoking. Now I can’t stop.” He paws in the bag and scoops a bit under his lip.
We drive on in silence while I debate how to bring up Daddy.
“So, what was it like at home after I left?”
“Same as when you were around. Except Daddy got even meaner and Ma got harder with him. They were fighting all the time and we just scattered. We’d come home to eat sometimes, but we were each of us hatching escape plans. Bird and I started working construction when I was fifteen. Poppy had older boyfriends she’d crash with. Eventually Daddy pissed off the wrong side of the dock. He had a line on some grade A dope, convinced a few businessmen to give him a fuckload of money, bought as much as he could, then sold it to a skipper headed to the States. He skimmed so much money off the top there was no way he was getting away with it. He gave them back even less money than they’d put up, the moron. Next day, a gang showed up at the house with knives, axes, you name it. Daddy took off and they went after him, told Ma they’d be back for the rest of us. She was afraid if she called the police, they might find something of Daddy’s in the house to pin on her and she’d wind up in jail with no way to keep after us. So she phoned that old friend of hers, Bev, and got her to come pack us in her car and bring us to Jubilant. Bev dropped us at the Salvation Army and told Ma to lose her number. After a few months, we got enough money together to buy that trailer. Bird and I used to hitchhike back and forth to sneak Ma’s things out of the house and bring them to her. We did that for years.”
“What happened to all the money?”
“Fucked if I know. You know Daddy can’t hang on to a dollar to save his life. He probably blew it all in a week.”
I ponder it. “You should have saved Ma’s good dress.”
“What?”
“Her yellow dress. It’s still hanging in the closet.”
“You went in there? It ain’t safe, Tabby. The floor’s ready to cave.”
“It was like you all evaporated.”
“Spooked you, did it?”
“It takes a hell of a lot more than that.”
The marquee appears ahead: KLASSY LADYS, $6. Behind it, on the facade of the blue warehouse, is a painted silhouette of a busty woman bending at the waist with her hands on her hips. She’s naked except for a bonnet tied around her neck.
“Why the bonnet?”
Jackie looks up at it and shrugs. He finds an empty coffee cup on the floor and spits into it. “Why not, I guess.”
A soft rain is now falling on the thirty or so cars in the lot. We park, and when we walk in, a few men whip around to make sure I’m not married to any of them. The stools and walls are painted neon blue and there’s a permeating stench of vomit. The woman dancing around the pole isn’t even trying not to look pissed off about it. We seat ourselves in the corner and wait for a server. After five minutes, a woman in fringed leather underpants struts over with a tray. She sprays our vinyl tablecloth and wipes off the red wine ring left by the last customer.
“Evening, madam.” Jackie tilts his hat back. “We’ll take two glasses of your finest vintage.”
She snaps two beers open and parks them in front of us. “Anything else?”
“Poppy Saint working tonight?”
“No.”
“She around lately?”
“No.”
“You know where she’s at?” He’s doing a bad job of looking casual, tapping his foot like crazy.
“He’s her brother,” I interrupt, “not some jealous boyfriend. She’s got a sick kid she needs to know about.”
She hesitates. “We ain’t allowed to tell customers nothing about the dancers.”
“We just want to know what nights she dances.”
“She ain’t danced here in a while.”
“Then she’s not a dancer.”
Jackie looks up at her from under his long lashes. “You got kids?”
She drops her shoulders. “Poppy’s here on weekends. But you ask anyone about it, they’ll say she don’t work here no more.”
She walks off and Jackie examines his bottle to see if anything’s floating in it. “Now what?”
“I guess we come this weekend and you go into the backroom.”
“Fuck that.” He almost drops his beer. “All I need is one person to see me go back there and half of Jubilant will know it. Jewell will go mental.”
I chew a fingernail, thinking. “We’ll bring Ma with us, get her to vouch for you.”
“Fine.” He pushes his bottle away. “Let’s get out of this shithole.”
I drain half my beer and we walk back into the drizzle, inhaling the fresh sea air. I wait till we’re back on the road before I say, “Ma says you’re staying out of trouble for a reason.”
“What does that mean?”
“You tell me.”
The rain starts whipping in sheets and the windshield wipers don’t work right. I have to pull over twice because I can’t see two feet in front of us. Jackie doesn’t say a word to me, just sits there staring straight ahead. When I finally drop him off, he leaps out of the truck then turns around and holds the door open, letting in the rain.
“Tabby, I’m staying out of trouble because I got kids that are starting to copy everything I do.” He drums his palms on the roof. “Okay?”
“Okay.”
He shuts the door without making eye contact, and I watch him walk across the wet grass with his hands in his pockets. Even the back of his neck looks guilty.
JANIS CAN’T GET OVER MY NEW HAIR. SHE STRETCHES out on the carpet with her arms folded under her head and says, “You look just like a beauty pageant runner-up.”
“Gee, thanks. I always wanted to be second-best.”
“Now hold on.” She tilts her sunglasses down on her nose. “Runner-up means the best.”
“Runner-up means second-best.”
“No, it’s the winner, because you run-her-up to get her crown. This girl at my church group is always talking about how her dog was the runner-up at the dog show. Her mother must have gave that judge a hundred bucks, because that dumb dog is always barking his head off and his fur is all mashed up like this.” She whisks her hands through Swimmer’s hair until it stands up in all different directions.
Swimmer points at me. “Lello.”
“Yellow, Swimmer.” Janis grabs his ears and yanks his face up close to hers. Her head looks tiny in comparison. “Y-E-L-O!” She lets go and he falls over backward. “He likes blondies,” she says to me. “He got a big dirty crush on Dolly Pardon and we have to listen to Kenny and Dolly’s Christmas record even when it’s summer out.”
“Dolly Parton,” I correct.
“Yup. Dolly Pardon.”
Swimmer starts singing a version of “With Bells On,” adding in jazz hands and fancy kicks. Janis covers her ears and rolls under the sofa.
AFTER SUPPER, MA AND I PUT THE KIDS IN THE CAR AND drive to Jackie’s place. When we walk in, Jewell’s got a bucket of crayons and large pieces of paper laid out on the table. She’s frying up grilled cheese sandwiches and pressing them into heart shapes with a cookie cutter.
“Where’s everybody going?” Janis asks, keeping her coat on.
“Bingo,” Ma tells her. “Auntie Jewell’s going to look after you.”
“Hey, Janis the Menace,” Jewell says, opening the freezer. “Jackie bought you some of that bubble gum ice cream that rots your teeth. Come have a look.”
Janis is on to us. “You tell that Poppy Saint to get her butt back here,” she says, crossing her arms. “Tell her Janis said Swimmer’s only a dawdler and he needs his mama.”
He stumbles over sucking his fingers and leans against his sister, staring up at us with his big, solemn eyes. Jewell unzips their coats and steers them to the table while we duck out.
“I might strangle Poppy if we find her,” Ma threatens.
“Has she always been such a train wreck?” I toss Jackie West’s keys as Ma and I get in the other side of the truck.
“Not always,” Jackie says. “She had Janis when she was only sixteen and was headed nowhere, but then she had to go to court-ordered night school. Halfway through, she actually started reading her books and finished with straight Bs. We couldn’t believe it. Then she took a course to be one of those people who do makeovers on dead people—”
“Somebody who gets dead bodies spiffed up for the funeral,” Ma cuts in.
“Right,” Jackie says, backing the truck out of the driveway. “She got the certificate, but nobody would hire her.”
“Why not?”
“Because Daddy blackmailed the funeral home in Solace and word gets around.”
“I was just in there the other day. How’d he manage that?”
“He found out they were burying bodies in expensive coffins then bringing them back up and wrapping them in burlap. They’d stick the bodies back in the ground, clean up the caskets and resell them. That’s why all them corpses went bobbing around after the flood.”
“How’d Daddy find that out?”
“Who knows? Crooks can probably smell each other like dogs.”
“What’s any of that got to do with Poppy? She’s not Daddy.”
Jackie sighs. “Shit, Tabby, if life was fair, I’d have grown up playing Little League and going to Grandma’s house for Sunday ham.”
Ma glares at him. “But instead you beat kids up with a baseball bat and called your grandma a fat whore.”
I don’t know why that strikes me funny. I start to giggle, then I’m shaking with laughter. Jackie snorts then Ma joins in and the three of us are howling all the way down the highway.
“She was a fat whore,” Jackie squeaks between breaths, wiping his eyes.
“I know it!” Ma bellows, and off we go again.
BLUEBELLES IS BUSY. IT’S LIKE THE GROCERY STORE ON sample day, greasy men hovering and salivating over the goods. We grab a table and a server finally comes over, doesn’t bother with hello, just informs us beer costs a dollar more on weekends. Ma asks for a cup of tea, but they don’t serve that, so Jackie orders her a virgin pina colada. The waitress brings it in a plastic wineglass with a fake orange wheel glued to the rim. Ma looks at it like it might bite her.
“Ma,” Jackie says. “How did you get through all them years with Daddy without a stiff drink?”
“I don’t know.” She glances around at all the customers tipping bottles to their lips. “I figured somebody had to stay dry or we’d all just wash away.”
Jackie looks uncomfortable sitting beside his mother in a place like this. He waves over another waitress. “Excuse me, can I get me some action in the backroom tonight?”
She doesn’t even stop. “You got to talk to Charlie.”
“Okay.” He stands up and taps her arm. “Where’s Charlie at?”
She gestures to the ammunition belt full of shooters slung around her waist. “I’m busy, hon. Give me ten minutes.”
“He’s on a weekend pass,” I interrupt. “He hasn’t got many minutes left.”
She snaps her fingers. “Come on, then.”
Jackie shoots me a dirty look and follows her across the floor.
Ma nervously turns a beer coaster around on the tabletop. “Look at this place,” she says. “Good lord. There’s a woman over there with the ass cut out of her pants. What’s the point of that?”
A new dancer appears onstage slathered in oil. Ma stares, transfixed, then says, “I don’t want Janis and Swimmer to grow up the way you did.” Her words hang between us as the woman starts to writhe around in chains. “I know that must have been hard. I never stopped praying for you, Tabby. I told myself you were okay, that you had been brought up right by that woman. I thought she put you in a nice house with a pretty pink bedroom. I figured you had a new life and you were better than us now and didn’t want to come back. I had no clue how to find you.”
“Not that you tried.”
“Maybe you didn’t go to a fancy school and you’re not wearing a fur coat or nothing like that, but you seem like you got a lot going for you.”
“You think they have pretty pink bedrooms at the Raspberry Home for Damaged Goods? That’s where I grew up.”
Ma makes a sound in her throat like a cat trying to heave up a furball then reaches in her purse and finds a crumpled tissue, wipes the mascara under her eyes before it runs. All her hair is grey under these blue lights. “You ever get into the drugs?” she asks me.
“I tried. They were hard to get in Raspberry.”
“How long were you in there?”
“Four years.” I raise my voice over the music so she’ll hear every word. “Then I was in a group home for a while, but I ran away and crashed in an abandoned building in Saint John with a bunch of crackheads. They used to go around collecting broken electronics in shopping carts. They’d take the wires out and fry the plastic casings off on a little hibachi, sell the copper for a few bucks at a metal salvage place. That was their whole goal in life: find some old tape decks, fry the wires, sell them, buy drugs, fry their brains. You really want to see what drugs can do to people, take a walk through one of those places.”
Ma taps two cigarettes out of her pack, offers me one. “You think Poppy could wind up like that?”
“Sure,” I say, digging in my pocket for my lighter. “One of the junkies I met in there grew up in a mansion in Ontario. If it can happen to her, it can happen to anyone. When I met her, she’d scratched almost all of the skin off her face and neck and thought she was on fire all the time. She’d scream at people to put out the flames.”
“How could you live with those junkies?”
“I didn’t have a choice. But after a few days I hitched a ride with a girl who took me out to a pot farm outside Oromocto. She introduced me to her brother, a tattoo artist, and I wound up moving in with him. He was all right. He had a few problems.”
Ma leans in for a light. “What kind of problems?”
“Nothing serious. He had a thing for women’s shoes. He’d buy new pairs and get me to wear them around for a few weeks. Then I’d have to give them back.”
“Why?”
“He liked the smell.”
“That’s disgusting, Tabby.”
“What did I care? He gave me a place to stay, food to eat, let me drive his car around. And every two weeks or so I got a tattoo and a flashy new pair of heels. I was spoiled rotten if you think about it.”
“I don’t want to think about it.”
I eye her mocktail. “You going to drink that?”
She pushes it over and I take a few sips between drags on the cigarette, all the while glancing toward the back door.
“What about me?”
“When did you and Daddy split?”
“After we came to Jubilant, I couldn’t even smell his farts on the wind. About a year later, he showed up on the doorstep. I told him I was done with him, called the cops on him so he’d leave. He came back maybe two or three times after that, but I wouldn’t let him past the steps. Then, a few months ago, he called me up to tell me he caught the cancer. He was expecting me to rush over and be his bed nurse, gave me some big fish tale about how he never loved any other woman. I told him to go die on the cross. The Mounties had a warrant on him and heard he’d been lurking around Jubilant, came over to the trailer to ask me if I’d seen him. I didn’t tell them nothing, but a few weeks later they called to tell me he was in hospital, said they took one look at him and knew it wasn’t worth the taxpayers’ money dragging him through the courts.” Ma grips the edge of the table. “Here comes Jackie.”
I stamp out my cigarette and watch Jackie weave through the crowd toward us.
“She don’t believe me that you’re with us, Tabby,” he says when he reaches our table. “I told her to meet us at the back door in two minutes and I’d prove it.”
“Is she going to come out?” I grab my purse.
“I don’t know.” He glances over his shoulder. “Let’s talk outside. The bouncer’s all over my ass.”
“What happened?” Ma asks as we hurry out to the truck.
“I asked for Poppy, and they took me to a room. She came in and when she saw it was me, she tried to bolt. I had to put her in a chokehold. I told her what Janis said about Swimmer needing his mother around. She kind of fell apart then, started crying and talking crazy. She’s all messed up.”
“What kind of crazy?”
“Junkie crazy. Who’s out to get her and shit.”
“Who is out to get her?”
Jackie ushers us into the truck and drives it around to the back of the building. We sit staring at the grey door lit by a No Entry sign. The breeze rustling through the trees behind us sounds like a deck of cards being shuffled. Jackie twists the brim of his hat and Ma starts humming one of her old church songs.
“Come on, Jackie,” Ma whispers. “Pray with us.”
“How do you know I’m not?”
“Because you’re my son.”
The door opens and there she is. My heart shoots up to the roof then crashes down to my knees. Her eyes are like two dark tunnels. She’s got long spindly legs and tall clacky heels on. She keeps trying to pull down her skin-tight dress to cover her thighs.
“Jackie?” She squints into the headlights. Her voice is high like a little girl’s.
He keeps the engine running as he opens his door and steps out. Ma gets out the other door.
“Poppy,” Ma says, “it’s time to come home and get yourself better. I can’t take care of those kids by myself.”
Poppy clutches one arm, shivering. “I will. Just not right now.”
“Right now!” Jackie yells at her. “I’ll throw you in the goddamn back if I have to.”
She cranes her neck to try to see beyond him. She’s ready to run back inside, so I get out of the truck and take a few steps. She clicks up on those heels and puts her face right up to mine. Even in the dim light, I can see the holes in her arms.
“This ain’t Tabby,” she says. “How much did you pay this bitch?”
“Forget it,” Jackie says to Ma. “She don’t want her kids. You’ll have to give them to social services. Let’s go.”
Poppy tries to slap him, but he ducks.
“Get in the fucking truck!” he hollers.
A scream erupts from Poppy that echoes across the parking lot and gives me gooseflesh all down my back. I heard the same sound once before when a cat got caught in one of the rabbit snares behind our house. We watch her kick off her shiny shoes one at a time and hurl them at the back wall of Bluebelles. Then she limps over and gets in the fucking truck.
“Stop being so dramatic,” Ma scolds.
We all squeeze in around her and Ma hauls a seat belt out from between the vinyl cushions, reaching over my lap to try to clip it over Poppy’s waist. Jackie peels us out of there before he even has his door shut. With the four of us packed in like sardines, he can barely manoeuvre his arms to steer.
“I remember you.” Poppy’s eyes are so glazed it’s hard to tell if she’s looking at me. She drops her head on my shoulder, smearing makeup on my shirt. “You were sitting on our old roof with a towel tied around you like a cape. I watched you fly away, sailing over the hills.” She lifts her bony arm and tries to make a wave motion.
Ma and Jackie sit like statues.
When we get back to the trailer, Poppy teeters down the hall to the kids’ room and doesn’t come back out. Jackie decides to stay the night in case she tries to take off. We watch Wheel of Fortune reruns in the living room and around 1 a.m., Ma stands up and says she’s going to bed.
“One of you better stay awake,” she advises.
After her door shuts, Jackie says, “So, tell me about this West guy. He don’t mind that you used to be a Saint?”
“I’m still a Saint. I didn’t walk into some presto-chango chamber.” I hand him one of my blankets.
“Buddy must be pretty serious lending you his truck like that. Before I met Jewell, I wouldn’t let a woman leave a box of tampons at my place, never mind take something with her.”
I chew on my thumbnail. “How did you know Jewell was the one?”
He twists around trying to get comfortable on the floor. “She was leaving town, so I told her I was dying. Then I couldn’t think of what I was dying from, so I told her she couldn’t leave because I needed help moving a fridge. She said, ‘Fine, let’s move it,’ so I told her it wasn’t getting delivered till Wednesday. Then she asks me why the delivery person can’t help me move it, so I said he was dying. Finally, she just yelled, ‘Jackie, are you asking me to stay?’ and I was like, Holy shit, I think I am.”
I bust out laughing and Ma shushes us from the bedroom.
“This time is different.” He stretches his arms over his head and stares up at the ceiling. “I’m going to be the best dad in Jubilant.”
“In all of Jubilant?” I mock.
He catches the cushion I toss at him and puts it under his head. Neither of us trusts the other not to fall asleep, so we both lie awake all night. When it’s almost daylight, I drag myself to the kitchen to make coffee. Jackie joins me and we drink the whole pot in silence. I’m brewing another as Jewell arrives with the kids.
“Is she here?” Janis hollers, practically kicking the door down. She takes off down the hall, sliding on her socks and smacking into the wall at the other end.
Jewell comes in behind her, balancing Swimmer on one hip. She sets him down and holds his hands up in the air to show us his purple-stained fingers. “I left my craft supplies out and when I got off the phone, Janis was playing nail parlour, putting fabric dye on his fingernails with a paintbrush.” She eases down on a chair and gives Jackie a once over. “How did it go?”
We all pause, listening to Poppy murmuring something to Janis. Swimmer toddles down the hall toward her voice.
“She’s here at least,” Jackie says.
Janis comes out after a few minutes and tells us, “She looks like a chew toy. Lord knows what she’s been up to.”
Jewell has to leave for a doctor’s appointment and Jackie tells her to go on ahead, he wants to stick around a bit. Ma wakes up and makes toast and eggs for everybody, but it’s past noon when Poppy finally emerges. Her clothes are wearing her, she’s so skeletal. I connect all the pointy bones with my eyes, but I can’t seem to find the sister I remember.
“I thought I dreamed you,” she says to me. She sits down on the sofa with Swimmer glued at her side. She grabs his hand and asks us, “What the hell is this all over him?”
Janis inspects her work. “I think he looks rich.”
“I don’t sleep.” She sticks her bony fingers in her hair and works at the tangles. “I just worry.”
“You let us do the worrying,” Ma says. “You just try to eat something.”
“I have to go out for a while.”
Jackie pulls the truck keys out of his pocket. “I’ll take you.”
“I’m coming too!” Janis yells.
Poppy changes the subject. “Your tooth’s fixed,” she says to me. She touches one of her own front teeth as her eyes drift along my face. “I used to be better-looking than this.”
Jackie cuts in. “Pops, you get off them drugs and get healthy and you’ll be that gorgeous bombshell everybody used to talk about.”
I get up to get her some coffee and Ma whispers to me in the kitchen, “She’s probably going to get itchy soon.”
Every time we ask Poppy when she wants to leave on that errand, she stalls us. Jackie is already hours late for work. He calls to say he’s not coming in, but the boss says two guys phoned in sick already. Jackie hangs up and curses.
“They’re coming to get me.”
“Don’t worry,” I say. “I’ll tackle Poppy if she tries anything.”
Ten minutes later, we hear a honk and when I walk him out, Jackie puts one arm around me and then the other. He hasn’t given me a real hug since he was the same size as Swimmer and it makes us both blush. He jogs down to meet a yellow truck and the second it pulls away, Poppy comes out and stands beside me. She squints in the weak light, rubbing her hands up and down her ribs.
“I’ll just be gone for an hour or two, Tabby. I got to get something in me.”
“How about you get your shit together instead? If you choose a needle over your own kids, then you’re not the Poppy Saint I remember. That girl had guts.”
She picks up a handful of rocks and squeezes them in her fist. “You got no idea what I’m going through.”
“Yeah, I do.”
She searches my face. “Drugs?”
“The other thing. What you have to do to get them. Not the shakes, not vomiting—nothing can be worse than selling yourself. If you can live through that night after night, you can make it through detox easy.”
The screen door bangs open and Janis comes charging at us, slamming into Poppy’s thighs. Poppy opens her hand and the rocks fall to her feet.
“I thought you left,” Janis yells at her. “Please, don’t go again. I promise I’ll stop putting hot dogs in the toilet. I’ll get a job so you can stay home with Swimmer.”
“A job?” Poppy says. “Doing what?”
“Walking pets.”
“You hate pets.”
“I don’t have to be their friend. I just have to put a rope on their neck and pull them up and down the driveway till they’re wore out.” Janis tugs Poppy’s T-shirt. “Let’s go back inside!”
As Janis pulls her back up to the trailer, Poppy turns and claws at me with her eyes.
“I FOUND MY SISTER,” I WHISPER INTO THE PHONE. “She’d taken off on a drug bender. But we got her back home and she’s going to a methadone clinic.”
“No shit.”
“Jackie knew about one downtown and talked her into giving it a try. It took us forever to get her through the door, but once she got a dose in her, it calmed her down a lot. The nurse wanted her to check into the hospital because of her weight and everything, but Poppy told her she’d sneak out to score if she isn’t with her kids, so they agreed to let her come in for a regular appointment each day. Do you mind if I stay in Jubilant a few more nights just to be sure she keeps at it?”
West sighs. I picture him standing in the hallway with one knee bent, foot against the wall. He’s probably got a beer in one hand, receiver tucked under his chin.
“Why the sigh? Still think I’m going to steal your truck?”
“Nah. I’m just horny.”
Now I see him fiddling with the phone cord, massaging his neck.
“It’s all right,” he says. “I was already bored and horny out of my mind before you ever walked into the Four Horses.”
“You’re good to me, West. It’s too bad you don’t drink coffee.”
“Sure I do. I just have to be in the mood for it.” He pauses. “Speaking of in the mood for it, you alone over there?”
Janis comes around the corner and yells, “Who are you talking to? Is that your man?”
I cover the receiver as fast as I can.
“Can I talk to him?” Janis asks.
I uncover the receiver. “Janis wants to say hello.”
“Put her on.”
Janis drags over a chair and gets comfortable. I stand there listening to her gab to him for over ten minutes about his views on everything from snowstorms to men who have ponytails. She probably learned more about him than I have. I let her keep talking until she brings the conversation around to the fact that I spilled a Pepsi in his truck.
THAT NIGHT, WHILE MA’S PLAYING GAME BOY AND THE rest of us are zoned out in front of the television, Lyle Kenzie’s Ford comes roaring up the driveway. He’s banging on the door before we have time to react. Poppy grabs the kids and runs to the bedroom. I try to lock the door, but it’s too late. He pushes his way in, knocking me aside. I look through the open door and see another man out in the truck.
“Where’s she at?” Lyle hollers.
“There’s kids in here, Lyle,” Ma tells him.
“She needs to pay up.”
Ma tries to block the hallway, but he pushes past her. I’m right on his heels as he goes down and swings the kids’ bedroom door open. Janis and Swimmer are sitting on top of the toy chest.
“Where’s your mother at?”
“I ain’t talking,” Janis says.
“Don’t sauce me,” Lyle says.
“The cops are on their way!” Ma yells from the front room.
Lyle turns and walks right past me back to the living room, peers out the window into the darkness. He slides back the front of his coat to reveal a revolver tucked into the front of his pants.
“Seven eighty-two,” I say loudly, pretending to speak into a wire. “We got a 782. Lyle Kenzie and accomplice.”
Lyle snaps his head in my direction and finally recognizes me. He lunges, eyes flaring, then changes his mind and runs out the door, threatening something I can’t make out. Ma and I go to the window and watch the truck swerve out of the driveway.
“What’s a 782?” Ma asks. She doesn’t seem fazed, which tells me this has happened before. She goes back to check on the kids, and I phone the police for real. About twenty minutes later, a car arrives. The cop who gets out looks about ten years old.
“Your stairs aren’t safe,” he scolds, as if we haven’t got bigger fish to fry. He takes his hat off and Ma brings him a glass of Kool-Aid. He sits on the sofa and sticks it between his knees, taps his cigarette ashes into it while he fills out the paperwork.
Janis tells him, “My mama’s skinny as a piece of paper, so I said to my brother Swimmer, let’s get her into the toy box. Then that Lyle Kenzie comes in to bust some heads. You want to write down what he said to me? He said, ‘You keep sassing me, I’ll show you my gun,’ and I said, ‘Whoop-dee-doo, where’d you get your gun, Walmart?’”
“Janis Jean,” Poppy interrupts. “You’re telling a tale.”
Janis blushes and sticks her hands on her hips. “Well, I might not remember everything exactly as what happened.”
The cop stops writing, tells us they don’t have enough men on duty for him to stick around. He’s gone before Jackie shows up.
“How many times have I told you to keep this door locked?” Jackie yells at Ma. “I’m going to nail the goddamn windows shut, too.”
She presses Pause on the Game Boy. “How are we supposed to get fresh air in here?”
“You’re letting people in here with guns and you’re worried about fresh air?”
“I didn’t let him in.” Ma yanks off her glasses and they drop around her neck. “He barged in.”
Jackie gets some tools from his car. Janis tags along behind him, giving him her version of events. This time Lyle told her he was going to blow the place to smithereens.
“You see headlights, you call me,” Jackie tells us. “Don’t wait.” He glances at the kids. “And no more smoking in here. Go outside.”
“I don’t smoke!” Janis says. “It’s bad for your lunges.”
“Lungs,” Jackie corrects her.
“Lunges.”
“Whatever,” Jackie says. “It’s bad for them too.”
I DRIVE DOWN TO THE STATION FIRST THING THE NEXT morning. When I give my name, the clerk smirks.
“This must be the first time a Saint ever walked in here of their own accord.”
I smile sweetly. “But probably not the first time one of them spits in your coffee as soon as you turn your back.”
He makes me sit in the waiting room for almost an hour before he calls out, “You can talk to Detective Surette now if you want.”
“You mean this man right here who’s been sitting around watching the sports highlights all morning?”
Surette has some grey in his black moustache, but a boyish, round face. He gestures me into his office. There’s an Acadian flag mounted on his desk next to a brass trophy shaped like a man with his service pistol drawn.
“How can I help you?”
I sit down and set my purse on my lap. “I know you read the report. You want one less prostitute turning tricks for drugs, you got it. But now you’ve got to keep her safe.”
“I don’t have to do anything.” He switches off the television and eases into his chair. “She did right. Now you should get her out of Jubilant so she won’t have to look over her shoulder every five minutes.” He catches my expression and says, “Yes, I’ve got my own interests in mind too. You take your brothers with you and we can work something out.” He picks up and peels a spotted banana, takes two bites of it then tosses it in a wastebasket.
“What does that mean?”
“It means if you need help with a moving truck or a new place to live, something like that, you let me know.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Sometimes your brothers are the shit, sometimes they’re the fan. Either way, I’m the one cleaning up the mess. Right now I got no bigger problems to solve than this.” He taps a half-finished crossword puzzle. “And that’s the way I like it.”
He catches me eyeing his trophy and pushes it closer to my side of the desk. “I got this one for Working My Ass Off.” He shows me how the buttocks slide off the man, grabs a tissue and polishes the brass butt cheeks before clicking them back into place. Then he opens a drawer, pulls out another trophy and sets it in front of me. “The Baby’s Bottom Award. For smoothness in a crisis.”
“What was the crisis?” I ask. “Tim Hortons run out of Boston creams?”
“I’ll wager it had something to do with brother number one or brother number two.” He offers me a piece of gum, but I refuse. He unwraps a piece and I sit there watching him blow an enormous bubble, fighting the urge to reach over and pop it with my finger.
“You got any awards not about your ass?” I ask finally.
He reaches down near his feet and hoists a homemade ceramic penis onto the desk.
I stomp back out to the truck and sit there fuming. He’s right. The only thing we can do is leave. But where are we supposed to go? No one wants us. It’s the story of the Saints, and it goes all the way back to Garnet Saint and his travelling shit show. Grandpa Jack may have been a thieving drunk from birth, but Daddy had a good woman who actually believed he deserved a chance. He could have got a proper job, paid his taxes, put food on our table. What did he do instead? Tried to be the biggest asshole in the world. It’s probably the only thing he ever succeeded at.
I start the engine and start heading back to the trailer, but before I get to the intersection I pull a U-turn and speed back through town. Some awful venom is welling up in my throat. I roll down the window and spit a few times, but I can’t get rid of it.
Jubilant has only one hospital. It’s in an old building that used to be a nuthouse and it still reeks of crazy. The hallways are painted that yellow-green colour that makes anyone feel sick who didn’t come in that way. When I ask for Wendell Saint, every nurse in earshot stops what they’re doing and turns to look. He’s on the top floor in the far left corner, as far away from the nurses’ station as possible, and I’m sure there’s a good reason for that. I go up and stand in the doorway of his room, summoning all my nerve.
“Hi, Daddy.”
THE MORNING BARBARA BEST CAME TO WHISK ME AWAY, Ma insisted she and I wait out in the driveway. Daddy was getting out of jail any day and Ma was afraid if he showed up before Barbara’s Volvo pulled in, he’d raise holy hell and refuse to let me leave. Probably because he had so few of them, Daddy had always counted us amongst his personal possessions. Ma was his. Bird, Jackie, Poppy and I were his. His to ignore, or order around or use as scapegoats. His to demand an audience of when he had a joke to tell, and to smash a fist into if we didn’t laugh hard enough.
“She showed me pictures of where you’re going,” Ma said, glancing up the road every three seconds. “Some nice. It’s like a house you see people living in on a TV show.”
I stood there holding a ratty backpack of Bird’s that had only one strap, half listening as she ran through a list of things I should and shouldn’t do: Keep my head down in the car until the car is over the bridge. When I’m wiping the old people’s asses, sing a song in my head and picture a field of daisies. Eat everything they put in front of me, even if I’ve never seen it before. Don’t ever, ever, tell anyone who my father is.
Part of me was secretly thrilled that I might become a different person for real, not just in my pretend games. Maybe I’d be a girl who wore brand name jeans and had a horse in a barn whose tail I could brush whenever I felt like it. My new friends would have names like Victoria and Cindy and they’d invite me to sleepovers where the worst crime a dare could lead to would be swiping macaroons from the pantry. I’d start over, just like Ma said.
I hadn’t argued with her when she told me I was shipping out. Nobody in our house was eating enough, and wherever I was headed couldn’t be any more miserable. I’d always wondered what it was like to be in a normal family, one that watched movies together and could make it through a whole board game without someone hurling another player into the wall. I’d see kids at school take out Velcro lunch bags with their names on them, talking about how their grandparents brought them to PEI to see Anne of Green Gables’ house. The only place Grandma Jean ever took us was the Legion parking lot. She was watching us for the day and said she was just going to pop in and say hello to Gladys. She came running out three hours later, big braless tits swinging under her light blue World’s Greatest Grandmother T-shirt, yelling, “SHIT, YOU FELLERS, I FORGOT ALL ABOUT YAS!” By then Bird and Jackie were jumping from roof to roof on parked cars and Poppy had eaten a thyroid pill she dug out from between the seats.
So, I was intrigued. But I hadn’t even met this Barbara woman, and the way Ma was talking, it was as if we were never going to see each other again.
“Your father’s heart is going to break when he finds out you ran away.”
“Ran away?”
I glared at her, slung the backpack over my shoulder and stormed down to the foot of the driveway. I didn’t look back and she didn’t follow, but I could hear her up there sobbing like a professional mourner.
Barbara Best arrived right on time. I jumped into the spotless back seat and told her to drive away fast.
“Shouldn’t I speak with your mother?” she asked.
“She’s too emotional. She said we should just go.”
Barbara Best waved up at Ma. As she started to drive off, I looked back and saw Ma running down the driveway flailing her arms. Barbara was already firing a hundred questions at me and didn’t hear my mother yelling for her to stop. For the next eleven years of my life, I’d wonder if my mother was trying to call the whole thing off.
“So, Tabatha, what do you like to eat?”
I opened my mouth then closed it again. I was about to say anything my mother didn’t kill herself.
“Pizza.”
“Well, I’ve got ham and potatoes ready for the oven back home. Hopefully that’ll do for tonight.”
My stomach growled, and Barbara laughed. “Goodness gracious!”
I realized right then we weren’t going to get along. Goodness gracious? What an asshole. Plus, she had a whole rack of Billy Joel cassettes.
On the way out of town, we got stuck behind the Acadian Lines coach that stopped once a day outside the library. Passengers spilled out of its grey belly and started crossing the road right in front of Barbara’s car, so we just had to sit there and wait. I snuck a few glances at the bus shelter I’d smashed up a few weeks before. They still hadn’t replaced the glass, just duct-taped some cardboard in its place.
“What are your hobbies? Do you enjoy gardening?”
Obviously she’d failed to notice our pop bottle tree.
“Sure.”
Somehow I knew before he stepped off the bus that my father was on board. He was wearing a wrinkled old suit, carrying a garbage bag slung over one shoulder. He had a day-old shiner and his knuckles were bandaged up, which might make another man seem tough but only made him look more pathetic. I suddenly realized that he must cause as much trouble in jail as out of it, that Daddy was Daddy no matter where he went. He just couldn’t shut off the tap.
I watched him bum a smoke off the bus driver and lean against a tree trunk to light it with a pack of soggy matches. Barbara Best followed my gaze and said, “Lock your door, Tabatha. You never know with these characters.” She tapped her fingers impatiently on the wheel and a half second before her open-toed sandal met the gas pedal, Daddy finally looked over. His face broke into a gap-toothed smile when he saw me. His eyes flicked to Barbara in the driver’s seat and then his mouth hardened. He gave me a questioning look and I gave him the finger.
While Barbara Best rambled about how a seed needs to be nurtured in the right soil, I twisted around and watched through the back window as my father walked out into the road and grew smaller and smaller and smaller.
“WRONG ROOM.”
“I’m your daughter—Tabby.”
He turns his head to look, blinks a few times and tries to sit up. “Holy whoredust. Where the fuck did you come from? Am I dead? Where’s your mother at?”
I walk in and stand at the side of his bed, behold the patron Saint of Shitville.
“How are you, Daddy?”
“I thought I was fine, but now I think I’m cracking up.” His voice is ragged from years of smoking outside in a T-shirt. It sounds like sandpaper running over his vocal chords. He closes his eyes and presses his palms against his lids. Then his eyes fly open again and he reaches over and tries to touch my face.
I flinch.
“You look like me, around the eyes. In the jaw, too.” He stares. “Are you really here? I’m dying, you know.”
“I heard.”
“The doctors say there’s nothing they can do. They’re crooks, every one of them.” He struggles again to sit up. “Fucking flapjacks! My girl Tabby is here to visit me. I must be almost dead. Where have you been?”
“A lot of places.”
“Bad places, I bet. Me too, girl. This place is the worst of them. Your mother left me here at the mercy of these goons.”
“I can’t say I blame her, Daddy. You never took care of her. You beat her and left her whenever you felt like it.”
“As soon as I got too weak to hold my own dick, she made a break for it. After all them good years.”
“What good years? Am I supposed to feel sorry for you? After you put us all through hell and made us all ashamed to be who we are?”
“Nobody can make you ashamed of who you are except yourself. You’re not too stupid to know that, girl.” He gives up trying to sit up and falls back on the pillow.
“Don’t tell me what I know.”
I grip his bed rail, remembering the time he slammed my face into the sink because I didn’t want to brush my teeth and my front tooth broke in half. I didn’t smile again until I was fifteen years old and some welfare-sponsored dentist came to Raspberry. I’m blinded with rage for a few seconds, and then I can almost see it seeping out of me, black and pooling on Daddy’s white sheets. I watch my right hand fly out and grab his throat. It pushes down hard on his Adam’s apple and he starts laughing. His face goes from blue to crimson and he’s laughing. He’s not struggling, and I have to ease up or kill him. I release my grip and he coughs and coughs. A nurse sticks her head in, but Daddy waves her off.
“Tabby Cat, listen to me,” he manages. “I’m not right. In my head and my heart, I’ve never been right. My father beat the human out of me. If I knew what sorry was, I’d be sorry for the things I done.” He sighs. “I just fuck and fight and eat. That’s it. I don’t feel nothing. Can’t even fuck anymore. You can kill me right now. I’d rather it was you than Doctor Donkey Dick.”
“I’m not going to kill you, you asshole. I’m going to let you lie there thinking about how you shovelled so much shit on top of us we’ll never climb out from under it.”
“You hate me, do you?” He blinks. “Do you love me a little bit, too?”
Before I open my mouth to answer that, something Ma once told me jumps into my head. She said when Daddy found out she was pregnant with Bird, he wouldn’t leave her side. He sang songs to her belly and built a crib out of an old chicken coop. That’s how Bird got his name.
Daddy’s small eyes case my face, studying his own blue eyes, his own mouth. Then he reaches down and shoves his hand between the mattress and the bed frame. “I got something for your mother. Come help me.”
I push his arm out of the way and slide my hand in until my fingertips touch something. I nudge it into my grasp, work it forward and pull out a soft wad of bills.
“Stick that in your purse and don’t talk to any of those crooks on the way out.” He pats my hand and closes his lids. “You look just like me. Not like your sister. She looks like a beggar. Nothing worse than one of those.”
When I get to the door, he opens his eyes again. “Hey, girl.”
I pause.
“There’s a lot more where that came from.”
I GET IN THE TRUCK AND COUNT IT QUICKLY. THERE’S over two thousand dollars. My hands shake as I roll up the bills and stick them down my boot. I press the gas and peel out of there, speeding toward the highway turnoff. My heart’s pounding in my ears as I try to form a plan. If I drive to Yarmouth, I can catch the ferry to Bar Harbor. I heard it’s easy to find work in the States, and no one will know me.
I’m almost to the end of the ramp when I glimpse Janis’s little purple jacket scrunched up on the passenger-side floor. I hesitate then slam on the brakes. The tires lift up a cloud of dust that slowly settles on the windshield.
I think of a story Daddy once told me about Grandpa Jack. He was walking home from school one day and saw a four-year-old girl crying on her porch. She ran up to him and pleaded for help, said she’d gone out in the yard to feed the chickens and her grandmother forgot she was outside and locked the door by mistake. She’d yelled through the window, but the old woman couldn’t remember how to undo the latch. Jack went and got a slim jim. He came back and pried the latch, told the little girl to take her granny to lie down in one of the bedrooms while he strolled around the house taking whatever valuables he could find. When the little girl emerged from the room, he told her never to tell anyone he’d been inside their house. “If you even tell a kitty cat that you saw me,” he said, “I’ll come back and kill your granny in the night.”
Grandpa Jack told Daddy it was as if Garnet had taken over his body. Garnet wouldn’t think twice about doing something like that to people so helpless. He’d call it Lady Luck. Daddy told me it was the only time he saw his father regret anything he’d done. But did that story make Daddy pause for thought any time he caught himself pulling a Grandpa Jack? Fuck no. He was probably worse than Jack and Garnet put together. And he didn’t even have the decency to call it opportunity. He’d come home with someone else’s engine in his truck and act like he’d had no choice.
I was about to pull a Daddy, and I hate us both for it. I whip the truck around in a U-turn and head back down the ramp. It’s one-way, but I’m not worried about oncoming cars. Anyone smart enough to leave this town left long ago. I check the rear-view mirror all the way to the trailer, and when I pull in the driveway, I wait a few minutes to be sure no one’s on my tail. It’s so quiet a deer pokes its head out of the trees at the end of the lot. I open the truck door and it sprints off. I stare at the empty space where it was standing. Then I walk up to the trailer and mount the rickety stairs.
“Which one of you has been praying for a miracle?” I ask, bursting inside.
Swimmer is perched on the sofa, sucking on his fingers. He pops them out of his mouth and raises his pale little hand in the air.