“I’ve got a lot of enemies,” said Red Mabel. Her face snapped out of the softness, and she snarled. “And you don’t have any right to talk about stealing!”
“How long?” Rachel watched as Red Mabel stepped on her cigarette, ground it into the asphalt. “How long do I have fill in for my mom?” Sometimes the chance to make amends came out of nowhere, with the speed of bird shot.
“Until she tells you to stop,” said Red Mabel. She dug into her pockets and threw a set of keys at Rachel. “You’d better be on your way,” she said. “The bar opens in three hours.”
* * *
The Dirty Shame had not changed one bit, except for the mess from the gunfire. Tabby waited for Rachel, threw an apron and the opening checklist in her direction. Both landed on the floor and began to soak through with spilled liquor. Tabby didn’t say a word, just glared as she stomped out, only stopping to pull the chain on the neon sign. The bar was open for business.
Splintered holes embedded in the soft pine of the bar, bird shot wedged in its unpredictable trajectory. Bottles remained erect, although some were just spiky shards. When Rachel saw the shattered pieces of the mirror, she stopped. She thought of a dark night, nine years earlier.
The countertops and the floors were still slick and sticky with spilled booze. The smells of all the different flavors of Schnapps that had exploded combined into a pungent mix of minty and fruity. Her sneaker stuck where the aftermath had soaked into the floorboards.
She tied on her apron and lost herself in cleaning, until she began to relish it. She was cleaning up one of her mother’s messes for once, and not her own. She righted the barstools, attempted to pry some of the bird shot from the bar with a butter knife. She finished sweeping up the glass and filled up a mop bucket, letting the soapy water sink into the floorboards. She sprayed the bar and the shelves behind it with Lysol, and scrubbed until the surfaces were shining. She wiped down the small tables, cleaned the bathrooms, refilled the ketchups and mustards, topped off the salt and pepper shakers, and cut lemons and limes into small triangles and stocked them in the well.
Ronda, the short-order cook, came through the door at exactly eleven o’clock, silent as always. Ronda was an older Native American woman, a giantess, over six feet tall; her neck was draped with long cords and pouches. Her hair was raven colored, but striated through with bright white pieces. When Rachel was growing up, the rumor in town had been that Ronda was a witch, but Rachel doubted it. There was only one real witch at the Dirty Shame, and she had been taken out by gunfire.
Rachel emptied the mop bucket as the first customers finally arrived, the lunch drunks. They tracked snow all over her freshly cleaned floor. All were schoolteachers, eleven in total, ten beer drinkers and her former English teacher, who ordered a White Russian. Rachel filled their lunch orders, which was easy enough. Everything was served in greasy plastic baskets lined with wax paper.
When she returned home after her first shift, the smell of Black Mabel lingered, even though the woman herself was long gone. Rachel was nervous to call Athena. She turned up the space heaters and reached for the phone. She had a job, but it was in a bar, and Rachel was still relatively new to sobriety.
“I get to make amends,” Rachel said. “Living amends. I just show up and do my job and keep my mouth shut.”
“That doesn’t sound like amends,” said Athena. “That sounds like penance. Living amends means that you decide to change your ways and don’t expect appreciation for it. It’s a quiet thing.”
After she hung up the phone, Rachel was determined to prove Athena wrong. She grabbed her journal and began to work on a gratitude list, and the effort behind finding things to be grateful for and her close proximity to the space heaters made her sweat. It had become bitterly cold again, just like that, predictable for the last days of February.
When the knock came, Rachel pushed her face against the plastic sheeting that covered her living room window. She could barely ascertain the flash of red.
A volunteer fireman occupied her porch—they all wore red mesh baseball caps outside the hall, like a flock of brutish cardinals. They always grouped together in crowds, at basketball games and at spaghetti feeds. The fraternity of the black QVFD jackets and red heads made them look like a pack of matches.
In her sweatpants and giant New Order T-shirt, with her hair still stuck to her cheek from perspiration, she answered the door.
She caught Bucky as he was about to knock again. He stopped himself before he could knock right on her face. He was distracted, staring at the mess outside the trailer house.
“What?” She was irritated. She had a suspicion that this ugly young man had come to sell more raffle tickets.
“Heard you needed a handyman.”
“You?”
“Yes, ma’am. I’m not licensed or anything, but I know my way around a trailer house.”
“Jesus,” she said. Rachel had forgotten how fast word got out in Quinn, how it swept through without consideration, yet another fire through town.
“I have references,” he continued. “I waited a week before I came over.”
“Oh,” she said. She was so shipwrecked lately that she’d lost track of time. She felt that she should be carving marks in the wall with a kitchen knife to keep track of every day she spent making her amends.
“Can I come in?” He pointed to her living room. She opened the door and stepped back; her living room was a junkyard. With her foot, she pushed the gratitude list under the pillow she had been sitting on—it had been a short list anyway. One: having a job. Two: continuing her sobriety. Three: being a natural blonde.
She felt sorry for both of them. At least Bucky could blame his misfortune on his teeth. Her new home was becoming a halfway house for pathetic creatures.
He entered her living room and let out a low whistle.
“I know,” she said. “You don’t have to make me feel like shit.”
“You got some soft spots,” he pronounced, and knelt down by the giant dimple in the center of her carpet.
“You have no idea,” she said, and yawned.
Crouching down, his knees stuck out, sharp enough to be another tool. He needed a haircut. His hair was jet-black, and it curled around the back of his cap. He stood up, and he was at least six inches taller than she was; he seemed to be composed entirely of gangly limbs and jutting teeth.
“Can I make you some coffee?” She had only two mugs, one of which held her toothbrush.
“No, thanks,” he said. He quietly regarded the kitchen. The coffee could wait.
“There aren’t any problems here,” she said. “This is the one room that works.”
“Black mold,” said Bucky, standing in a dark corner, where the linoleum of the kitchen floor disappeared under the baseboard. Rachel had just assumed those shadows were bad lighting.
“What the fuck is black mold?”
“It’s the worst kind you can get,” he said. He crouched down to inspect it, dug a finger into the darkness, brought his hand over to Rachel, his whole arm extended outward as if the black mold was so dangerous he didn’t want it near his body. “I suspect the whole floor is rotten.”
“Jesus Christ,” said Rachel. “Can I spray it or something?”
“Lady, you aren’t even supposed to be breathing right now. This stuff has spores, and it poisons the air.”
“Fabulous,” she said. “I’m going to take my chances.” Bucky removed a pocketknife from his jeans and cut away at the corner. The linoleum curled neatly in his hand. The flooring underneath was the color of cardboard, but with polka dots of black growth. He examined it carefully.
“Well?”
“It’s not as bad as I thought,” he said. “I can cut this whole corner out, replace the joists. It hasn’t spread that much.”
“Wait until you see the rest of the house,” she muttered as he stomped the flooring back in place with his heavy black boot.
He followed her down the sagging hallway, st
opping to tap his boot around the soft spots as the carpet cratered and the wood creaked. “This ain’t so bad,” he said. “The good news is that I don’t see any more black mold.”
“The bad news?”
“I’m gonna have to replace the entire floor.”
“For fuck’s sake,” she said.
“I ain’t gonna use new lumber,” he said. “I can scavenge from the dump and from behind the mill.”
“So, you’re thrifty?”
“Not especially,” he said. “I just know you can’t afford it.”
“Thanks,” she said. “You’re going to love the bathroom.”
He didn’t. When Rachel turned on the light, he grimaced.
“Fuck,” he said.
“I need a bathtub that works,” she said. “One that’s not underneath the house.”
Bucky examined the tiny room. “I can put in new subflooring and lay new linoleum and make it look pretty. Or pretty enough. But you’re gonna need a plumber to hook up the water line.”
“Do you know a good plumber?”
“Yep,” he said. “But it’s gonna be expensive. All of this. Maybe you should just burn it down and start over. Torch this son of a bitch and get a new trailer house.”
“I can’t believe you’re advocating arson,” she said. “You’re the worst fireman ever.”
“I’m honest,” he said. “Repairing this place is going to cost you. Big-time.”
“It already has,” she admitted. She thought that she might start crying.
Rachel followed him through the house and out the front door. He paused on the front porch, and she waited for more bad news. It was hatefully cold outside, but he removed a pack of cigarettes from his coat pocket. “Want one?”
“No,” she said. Then she reconsidered when she smelled the lit cigarette. She had quit years ago, but this was all so overwhelming. “Give me one.”
“Sure,” he said, and handed her the pack.
“I’ve got black mold,” she said. “A cigarette isn’t going to make a difference.”
They sat and smoked, her head rushing and body tingling. She instantly felt sick to her stomach, felt like she was going to shit her pants. Oh, how she missed smoking.
“I can fix the bathroom and replace all the floors for three grand,” he said. “That includes putting the bathtub back into the bathroom. The plumber is gonna be extra, and I ain’t touching the fireplace.”
“I can give you two grand and that Toyota parked outside.”
“Deal,” he said. He exhaled, and shook her hand. “I knew your dad.”
“Well,” said Rachel. “I wish I could say the same thing.” She threw her cigarette out in the yard. It didn’t extinguish, just lay there smoking on top of the hardened snow.
“Does the car run?”
“Probably not,” said Rachel.
“I’ll be back. First thing Thursday morning. Get all those clothes out of the bathtub, all right?”
“Yes,” Rachel said, and reached out to touch his arm. She was buzzed on the cigarette. “Thank you.”
“It’s a job,” he said. “No need.” He tripped his way up the path.
After Bucky left, Rachel lay down on her dirty carpet and watched the gloom through the plastic of her living room window. She would work at the bar, and not expect any thanks. This was how living amends worked. The amends would be easy. It was the living that would be the hard part.
Winter Birds
Jake pushed open the back door, and the snow immediately whipped his face and barreled into the tight hallway of the trailer house. He kept a towel on the floor for this very reason. Bert was always yelling about black mold. At seven thirty, it was growing light out. He crunched down the steps and placed his slippers inside yesterday’s trail of footprints leading to the storage shed. The door slid easily this morning and, shivering, he stepped inside the gloom and felt around for his flashlight. The beam swept back and forth among the carefully arranged stacks, and he began to pick out his clothes. He had a lot of clothes. He was paid to keep the official scorebook for every men’s and women’s softball game that was played in Quinn, and he spent the money on paperbacks, movie tickets, magazines subscriptions, and the thrift store.
He chose a camel-colored cardigan, a baby-blue T-shirt, dark brown polyester slacks, and his favorite oxfords.
He often had dreamy conversations with his mother, in which they imagined where these clothes had originated—neither had seen his purchases worn on any kids in Quinn. Maybe they had come from diminutive old men, or were brought in giant trucks from Spokane, a big city where Krystal claimed people were shorter because of their drug use. Perhaps they were shipped from Hollywood, costumes for child actors. Once, Krystal had suggested grave robbers, but the idea had struck them both as ghoulish and incredibly unhygienic.
He slid shut the shed door, replaced the padlock. The lock became necessary after Jake caught Bert, or rather Bert’s lower half, protruding from the shed doors. Bert had passed out inside. When he had been roused, he had declared that he was going to start storing his tools there, until Krystal had carefully pointed out that it had been a gift from Frank.
Inside the warmth of the bathroom, Jake dressed quickly but took extra time on his hair, which he shellacked with wax until it gleamed like gold.
Satisfied, he made coffee and took it outside. The sun was rising over the mountain, and Jake could hear the rumbles of trucks warming up all around the trailer court.
He had ten minutes before he would have to walk to school. He always left time for these ten minutes.
Quinn had flocks of winter birds, strange and colorful. Jake had found a book at the thrift store and could identify them all: snow buntings, waxwings, black-capped chickadees, red-breasted nuthatches, brown creepers. They were fast and beautiful, and like Jake, they were constantly aware of threats. As far as he knew, Frank’s feral cats had never caught a winter bird. The cats caught the occasional robin or sparrow in the spring, but never these creatures.
He scattered seed and stepped back as the birds came swooping down.
Jake stood in the front yard and waited for the fashion show, the colors of the birds bright against the dirty gray sky and banks of snow.
* * *
When he got home from school, Bert was gone, but a weight remained in the trailer house, a heaviness in the air, as they waited for his return. Krystal cleaned silently and furiously, checked the kitchen window every fifteen minutes.
Now that Frank and Misty were gone, Krystal was Jake’s only friend. Before Bert, she had attempted all sorts of things to get him involved with other kids, but he had refused Little League, Cub Scouts, church camp. His mother was his peer group. Krystal was allergic to any kind of pet, so for Jake’s ninth birthday, she bought him sea monkeys, and they waited for the tiny kingdoms to materialize just like in the advertisements, all that activity in a cheap green aquarium. The sea monkeys had died together in a clump; his new friends turned out to be nothing more than suicidal brine shrimp.
Krystal was a flighty, chatty sort of woman; years of being a nurse in a small hospital had made this worse. She talked to fill up space, narrated every activity, even though Jake was right there and had no need for her bedside manner. She remained silent on the story of Jake’s biological father, a man she never spoke to, even to demand child support. He probably didn’t know that Jake existed. There was only one story, and he had heard it since he was three years old, so he just accepted it. His mother was not smart enough to be a liar. Jake’s father had been a physician visiting from the East Coast, flown to the hospital in Ellis to consult on a special case. Somehow, in the three days he had been in town, he managed to both seduce and abandon her. At least Jake knew from where his excellent time-management skills had been inherited.
Like his mother, Jake devoured books, and when they read, the chattering stopped. For a time, they shared novels. Jake was a precocious reader. Eventually, he discovered Jackie Collins, while his mother
switched to terrible Southern romances. Krystal was drawn toward stories of debutantes overwhelmed with lust, and she talked incessantly about sweet tea, fans, tiny purses, and grand cotillion balls. Her own son was the closest thing to a prissy debutante in the entire town.
Krystal found her own terrible romance, and she waited for him now. It was too early for Bert to be at the Dirty Shame, so there was no telling where he had gone. Jake lay on the couch and worked his way through Valley of the Dolls. In the kitchen, Krystal smashed potato chips to adorn a tuna fish casserole.
When the knock came, Jake looked up at his mother. Bert did not like visitors, did not like his wife to answer the door. Krystal’s hands were covered in shards of Ruffles, and she stared at Jake helplessly. She was usually the one who told people to go away. Jake dropped his book, just as the baby started crying in her high chair, and Krystal pivoted on her feet, back and forth, unsure of what to do. Jake rolled his eyes.
Standing on the front porch was the woman from next door. He knew she was Frank’s daughter, because gossip in the trailer park moved fast, and because he had spied on her from the roof.
A towel hung over her shoulder. She held a shower caddy in one hand. He hadn’t been able to ascertain if she was pretty when he had spied on her, but up close, she was dazzling. Under the towel, she wore a tight black T-shirt. Her legs were shackled in the tightest acid-washed jeans he had ever seen. She smelled like fried food. He approved of all of this.
“Hello there,” she said, and leaned down to shake his hand.
“Hi,” said Jake.
“I saw you on the roof,” she said. “You seemed like a good omen, so I came here.”
Jake had never been called an omen before, but he liked it.
“Welcome,” he said. Krystal emerged from the kitchen, the baby in her arms, still crying. Jake watched as his mother stared at the blonde in shock, and shoved Jake back from the door with her free arm. She had never pushed him before, but the look on her face kept him from protesting. Maybe this was his mother’s true bedside manner.
The Flood Girls Page 6
