Chapter Twelve

TALKING WITH CLAY does me some good. His attitude toward Shannon’s return helps me push aside some of my darker feelings and lets in a little light. I should concentrate on the positive. She’s alive and well and that’s better than being dead. She’s back and that’s better than being away. She’s going to have a baby she’s planning on selling, but that was before she showed up here; maybe I can help her get her act together and with Clay’s help we can convince her to keep his cousin.

In order to feel this way I have to basically ignore everything I heard her say to Pamela Jameson, but I’m able to keep my hopes up long enough to stop by the mall and buy a few things for the baby.

On my way back to my car, I notice two Marines in dress uniform getting out of a Honda Civic.

They’re impossible to miss: tall, straight, handsome, impeccably clean, perfectly pressed, their chests covered with medals, their gold buttons gleaming, their hats a shade of white I’ve never seen except on certain brides.

They stand next to their car, exchange a few words, and look around. Their respective heads turn in opposite directions, searching the parking lot.

As I trek across the parking lot watching them, my phone rings. Caller ID shows that it’s Lib’s mom, Sophia Bertolli.

Sophia is still capable of driving herself around despite being in her eighties, but from time to time her arthritis acts up and the pain in her knees becomes so great she can’t even push an accelerator pedal.

“Hi, Sophia.”

“Shae-Lynn? Is that you?”

She always sounds surprised when people answer their own phones.

“Yes, it is. How are you?” I shout.

She has terrible hearing.

“Good. What are you up to today?”

“Not much. Do you need a ride?”

“I need a ride,” she tells me.

“Okay. When do you need it?”

“Mm Hmm,” she says.

“When would you like me to pick you up?” I try again.

“I drove myself to church and back but now my knees hurt and I’m supposed to go to Lib’s house for supper.”

“Would you like me to give you a ride?”

“That would be nice.”

“How about I pick you up in an hour?”

“Mm hmm,” she says. “All right then. Good-bye.”

I have no idea if this means she thinks I’m coming or not, but regardless I know she’ll be there when I arrive.

One of the Marines appears to spot something of interest. He lightly taps his partner’s chest with the back of his hand to get his attention and points out two large, unshaven young men in baggy jeans and ball caps: one wearing work boots and a NASCAR T-shirt, the other in gym shoes with rips down the side and a stretched-out red sweatshirt that’s been washed so many times it’s pink now, but I’m sure he still regards it as red because he doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy who’d wear pink.

The Marines begin striding toward the boys, their legs moving in precise tandem, arms stiff at their sides, backs and necks held straight, yet somehow their heads appear pushed forward slightly like they’ve picked up a scent and their noses are leading them. They suddenly check themselves, slow down, and try to act casual.

They make contact. They’re all chatting now. Smiles are being exchanged. They seem to be pulling off the casual act as well as it can be done by someone wearing flashy red and gold epaulettes and a hat like a 1950s milkman’s while standing not far from the gutted front of a Sears anchor store with a huge, faded, peeling GOING OUT OF BUSINESS sign plastered across the doors.

I wonder what they’re saying. I could make a good guess. I’ve been the object of recruitment myself, many times, in both my professional and personal lives.

The roads to Sophia’s house are weathered, cracked blacktop, their shoulders shattered from decades of heavy coal trucks traveling over them.

Just when I think I have every pothole memorized, a new batch appears each spring. I try to miss as many as possible, jerking my steering wheel this way and that like I’m in the middle of an obstacle course, all the while making sure I stay as close to my side of the road as possible.

The traffic out here is sparse but deadly. When the occasional vehicle does come barreling from the opposite direction, it’s usually driving straight down the middle of the road. I’m used to it and I’ve got good reflexes but the danger’s still there.

A moron in a green GMC Yukon that’s roomier than the kitchen in my old D.C. apartment comes tearing around a curve, causing me to swerve hard to the right, and I almost end up in a ditch.

I’m so busy swearing a blue streak and giving him the finger as I watch him disappear over a hill in my rearview mirror that I don’t see the kids and their wagon until it’s almost too late.

I swerve again, this time into the middle of the road to avoid hitting them. If there had been a car coming in the opposite direction, we’d all be dead.

I slow down and drive about a hundred feet before I have to pull off to the side of the road. My heart is beating like crazy.

I crane my neck around and watch them approach me. It’s a little girl pulling a little boy in a beat-up red wagon. She’s giving me the finger.

I recognize the pale, skinny legs and the glint of something sparkly.

I get out of my car and start stalking toward them.

“What are you doing?” I shout.

“What are you doing?” Fanci shouts back at me.

“Do you know how dangerous it is to be out here on these roads?”

“It’s only dangerous when people drive like assholes.”

I look down at Kenny. He’s sitting calmly in the midst of a bunch of rocks, holding a big thick stick about four feet long across his lap. Fanci’s pink kitty purse lies near the front of the wagon.

He’s wearing jeans and a coat. I check out Fanci next. She interprets my roving stare to be an appreciation of her outfit and lets the hand holding the wagon handle drop casually to her side, puts the other hand on her hip, and arches her back in what I’m sure she thinks is a pose of devastating sexiness.

She’s wearing a pair of tiny bright pink shorts that look like they’re made from rain slicker material and a cropped pink tank top with the words “I love Paris” emblazoned across the front in sparkly red stones, half of which no longer sparkle. A few are missing.

The T-shirt’s sentiment raises my spirits temporarily, and I’m about to ask her how much she knows about the French capital and if she’d like to go there someday when I realize with a sinking heart that it’s not the city the shirt is touting but the Hilton heiress, the latest female celeb to lend her name to pre-teen slutwear.

“It’s starting to get cold,” I tell her. “It might even snow later. You need to go home and put some clothes on.”

Her arms and legs are covered in goose bumps.

She gives me one of her unnerving, unsmiling appraisals.

“So do you.”

“What are you doing out here, anyway?” I change the subject. “You’re miles from home.”

“We weren’t at home. We were visiting our cousins but we hate our cousins so we’re doing this instead.”

“Who are your cousins?”

“None of your business.”

“Why are you visiting them if you hate them?”

“Our dad made us go so he could sleep.”

“What about your mom?”

She glances at Kenny, who doesn’t show any sign of opening his mouth and tells him to shut up.

“What’s with the stick?” I try another topic.

“It’s a dog-beating stick. There’s a lot of dogs around here,” she states flatly.

“You got something against dogs?”

“I got something against wild dogs and people’s dogs that come running at you when you walk by their house and want to rip your throat out. Dogs are supposed to be nice. They’re supposed to like kids like Kenny.”

I look down at him.

“Nice rocks, Kenny,” I comment.

I pick up a piece of the coal debris and rub my thumb over its dull black glimmer.

“This one’s a pretty one,” I say.

“You can have it,” he tells me.

“Thanks.”

I slip it in the pocket of my sweater. It’s the first time I’ve heard him speak.

“Why don’t you let me give you a lift back to your cousins’ house?”

“You’re making the offer so that means we don’t have to pay?”

“You don’t have to pay.”

“Then take us to the mall.”

“No way.”

She looks at Kenny. They have a silent conversation conducted with their eyes and pulse rates.

“Then take us home,” she says.

They don’t have to give me directions to their house. I visited it years ago when the Centresburg police searched it after I pulled Choker over for speeding and DWI (Driving While an Idiot) and discovered his van was full of TV sets and stereo systems he’d been stealing for the past month and then had no idea how to hock.

It’s a small shoebox-shaped house set in a small clearing off a mile-long stretch of dirt road that used to lead to a bridge that used to cross a creek that used to continue on to a tipple that used to pour coal into the railroad cars waiting on the tracks next to it. The bridge is gone now. The road and railroad tracks are overgrown with weeds. The tipple has collapsed into a heap of cracked timbers and brown rusted metal that’s been consumed by the forest. When the trees lose their leaves in winter, its remains can be glimpsed lying on the hillside like the decaying carcass of some huge beast.

The house is surrounded by a sea of junk: old mowers and appliances; two empty rabbit pens; a dented gray metal filing cabinet; bald tires; rusted sheet metal; black Hefty bags filled with beer cans; rolls of pink insulation; a picnic table without benches; a swing set without swings; and a disturbing number of gnome lawn ornaments without heads.

Fanci and Kenny get out of the car and follow me around to the back of my car.

“I lost my mom when I was six,” I tell Fanci as I unload their wagon and dog-beating stick.

“So?” she says.

“Did you ever find her?” Kenny asks me.

“She died.”

“Oh,” he replies, his face falling for an instant, but he brightens up quickly. “We know where our mom is.”

“Shut up, Kenny,” Fanci snaps at him.

“Where is she?”

“She’s taking a break. When dad got out of jail she said it was his turn to take care of us for awhile.”

“And how’s that going?”

“It ain’t none of your business,” Fanci says.

“Right. I forgot.”

I hold out one of my yellow business cards to Fanci.

“Here. You never know when you’ll finally be able to pay for a ride.”

She eyes it, then takes it without looking at me and slips it into her pink kitten purse.

Choker opens the front door wearing tube socks and an old green terry cloth robe with two dark patches on the front where the pockets used to be. The matching belt is missing, too. The robe’s cinched around his waist with the brown leather belt and American flag belt buckle that he usually uses to hold up his jeans.

He squints against the daylight. I can hear a TV droning inside the house.

“What the hell?” he greets me.

I put a foot on the bottom step and he moves back behind his door.

“I don’t want you around here.”

I did a real number on his face. I wonder how he explained it to his kids or if they even bothered to ask.

“Get in the house,” he tells them and they hurry inside.

“I’d like to call you a retard, Choker, but I realize that’s not politically correct so I’m just going to say you’re patriotically challenged.”

“What are you talking about?”

I gesture at his truck parked in the yard right up against the house. It’s covered in bumper stickers: Proud to be American. Born in the U.S.A. God Bless America. Red, White, and Blue: These colors don’t run.

“Who are you trying to impress with your Americanness? Other Americans? Why don’t you go drive this thing around Baghdad?”

“Fuck you,” he says.

“This is a nice little setup you’ve got here, Choker. You’ve really been able to spread out.”

“I need my space.”

“Right. You’re one of those free-range rednecks I’ve been hearing about.”

He scratches at his missing ear.

“Hank Penrose’s kid calling me a redneck? If that ain’t the kettle calling the kettle…a kettle.”

I smile at his attempt to remember the old adage.

“Don’t hurt yourself.”

“What do you want?”

“Nothing. I was just dropping off your kids.”

“You better stop messing with my kids,” he says.

“Where’s your wife, Choker? Did she spurn you, too?”

“I mean it. Stay away from my kids. I ain’t doing nothing wrong with them. I love them. I’d never beat on them the way your old man did you.”

He slams the door on me.

I pound on it with my fists and kick at it a few times and jiggle the handle, but my enthusiasm quickly passes.

My rage is immense, but my rage against him is half-hearted.

I close my eyes and find my safe place. I settle into the soft, plump cushions of the couch. I feel the heat from the fire warm my cold bare feet searching for the comfort of my mom’s rag rug next to my bed on a winter’s morning. I hear the puppy’s faint whines as he twitches in his sleep chasing rabbits in his dreams. I smell the fresh-baked cookies and taste the sweetness of cocoa on my tongue. I look out the window and see raindrops as big as silver dollars splatter against the glass that’s lit from behind by flashes of lightning.

I look again and see a face.

The shock is so great I jump up from the couch and spill hot chocolate all over myself.

No one has ever tried to look in or get in.

I want out. I need out. But I don’t know how to do it. There’s no door. I’ve never tried to leave before. I’ve always stayed as long as I could. I’ve always wished I could stay longer.

I open my eyes. My heart is thudding sickly in my throat. I’m sitting in my car, although I don’t remember walking here.

The face is still there behind the glass, and I stifle a scream. It’s only Kenny at his father’s window waving good-bye.