Stay Away

by Ike Hamill

  After a sip, he put the glass back down and took a deep breath.

  “They said it was a heart attack. I would have called, but they said that they did. I figured… I didn’t want to keep… Anyway, after that I kept living in the house until they put a new lock on the door. Then I figured that I had to split. I heard stories about foster homes so I figured it would be better on my own.”

  To shut himself up, Eric ate some of the cold broccoli. It had been soaked in the sweet sauce of one of the dishes. He couldn’t remember the last time he had tasted anything so good.

  “We’re so glad you came back,” his uncle said. “It goes without saying, but I want you to be sure that you’re at home here. Jessie and Wendell are tickled pink, I already know. When you get settled, we’ll get you back in school and make sure that you get your degree.”

  Eric put his fork down. If he could just stay for a little while, he could put some meat back on his bones and maybe find some new clothes. It would be easier to get away once they began to believe that he was going to stay put.

  “Can you tell us more about the heart attack?” his aunt asked. “Anything you can remember about the details. Did they do an autopsy?”

  “Can we talk about it later? I’m so tired.”

  “Of course,” Uncle Reynold said. The man was on his feet in an instant. Picking up the plates, he moved them to the counter. “Your clothes will be on top of the dryer tomorrow. Feel free to raid Jessie’s closet for whatever you need as well.”

  He and Eric did an awkward dance as Reynold went to get the water glasses just as Eric was trying to pass.

  “Sleep well,” Aunt Zinnia said.

  Eric was relieved that she didn’t try to give him a hug or anything. He rushed for the stairs.

  # # #

  “Poor kid,” Reynold said.

  “I knew it was a mistake to let him go back there,” Zinnia said. “I told you that a dozen times and you wouldn’t listen.”

  “It wasn’t up to us, hun,” Reynold said. He ran the water so she would have to pause before she said whatever she was going to say. Zinnia almost always did better on her second draft. After he washed the dishes, he turned to see her watching him.

  “What?”

  “I know what you’re going to say, but you’re wrong,” Zinnia said.

  “What was I going to say?”

  “That we have to grant him latitude to make his own decisions.”

  “Don’t we?” Reynold asked.

  “Not in all situations. Listen, when he wanted to go back to his mother, we should have been more adamant about the danger of that.”

  “Danger?”

  “He was scarred by that and he went out on his own,” she said. “We don’t know what happened to him in the past year. He could have been using. He might have prostituted himself.”

  “Hun…”

  “How do you think he survived for the past year? You think they just give away food and shelter?” she demanded.

  Reynold shook away the pictures that kept trying to form in his head.

  “What’s your point? Are we supposed to try to go back and change things now?” he asked.

  “No. My point is that he is still at risk of making poor decisions. We let him make the wrong choice last time. It’s absolutely imperative that it doesn’t happen again,” she said.

  Reynold took a beat and tried to back away from the situation enough to see why she was so upset. The boy was safely back in their care and, although skinny, seemed to be intact. When the real issue occurred to him, he spoke without thinking. The words were barely out of his mouth before he regretted them.

  “Oh. You’re overreacting because you’re upset about your sister. You wish you had done something to protect her,” he said.

  The heat rose up into her face—she was a human thermometer.

  “Don’t you dare tell me what I should have done to protect Rose.”

  She turned and left before he could try to take it back.

  “I didn’t…”

  Reynold slumped against the counter.

  # # #

  When his cousin was fast asleep in the top bunk, Eric slid his feet to the floor and slipped through the door to the hall. The floor was missing in the back hallway. Someone had mentioned it earlier, but the notion didn’t become fact until he saw it with his own eyes. Eric slid his feet down the joists until he reached his old room. The mess was obvious even before he turned on the lights. Back when the room had been his, it had always been as spotless as he could make it. That habit was born of insecurity, but it had quickly become a point of pride. Coming back to a clean room always brought him joy. Now the place was trashed.

  With a sigh, Eric slid on bare feet over to the window and let himself out. At the bottom of the ladder, he dropped to the soft ground and walked around to the side door. The laundry room was in the center of the house, practically under the stairs. His clothes, clean and warm, were waiting in the dryer. He dressed by the light from the machine and slipped back to the kitchen for his boots and backpack.

  Someone—probably his uncle—had disposed of his stash. Aside from that, all his possessions were still there.

  On the road, the house had seemed like a beacon of sorts, both attracting and repelling him. Deep down, he knew that they would take him in. But coming back meant apologizing, and apologizing meant that he would really have to take ownership of what had happened. He had done a shitty job of all of that. With his aunt still alive, he hadn’t found the courage to tell his uncle about how he had caused his mother’s death. The fable he had told them would probably fall apart before too long.

  That was the thought that had kept him up and eventually convinced him not to stay.

  He had one good meal in him and clean clothes. That would have to be good enough. Maybe he could come back and finish the job someday. With his boots on and the straps of his pack adjusted, Eric paused at the door and turned around to look at the kitchen in the glow of the moonlight. It would be easy to stay, but his uncle always said, “If you sidestep a fastball, and it goes right by, you won’t have any control over what it’s going to hit.”

  To Eric’s way of thinking, staying at the house was a version of sidestepping a fastball. He had to go out there and let it hit him. That’s the only way he would be able to control what was going to happen. As he had found out, he was strong enough to take the hit. Not everybody was.

  Eric left.

  In the secret pocket in his boot, he had just enough money for a bus ticket. All he had to do was walk to town and wait in the gazebo until morning. It would have been faster to go towards the cemetery and take the black bridge over the river. Instead, Eric turned the other way, telling himself that it would be safer to walk under the streetlights.

  The night was cooler than he had expected. There was a breeze blowing up the river and it cut through his clothes when it got the chance. It was time to turn south. If he could get down to Florida or maybe Texas, he wouldn’t have to slog through slush all winter. That had been a nightmare. More than once, he had peeled off his socks in some public bathroom and squeezed his toes until the feeling came back.

  He took a left, cutting down a side street to get off of Elm. He told himself that he didn’t want to be seen by a passing car. The cops had already picked him up once. The next time, they might find a reason to keep him.

  Halfway down Green Street, he realized that he was going to pass right by Nicky’s house.

  “The brain works in mysterious ways,” he whispered to himself.

  Her light was on.

  Eric darted down the driveway and climbed up onto the railing of the deck, like he used to do in the old days. Reaching up, he could knock at the bottom of the window. It was even easier than it had been when he was a kid—he had grown a lot.

  The window rose up a few second later.

  “Meet me around back,” she whispered, not even asking who it was.

  He wondered if she had been expecting
him.

  # # #

  Nicky’s face lit up with her lighter and she took a deep drag before offering the cigarette to him. Eric took a puff just to be polite.

  “Am I that predictable?” he asked.

  “No. I was just hoping that you would come by before you split again.”

  “What makes you think I’m going to split?”

  He saw her eyes from the glow of the cigarette as she took it back.

  “You’re wearing your backpack,” she said. “Of course you’re going to split. Did you find Lily?”

  “No. Actually, I had kinda forgotten about her. I got caught up in my own drama.”

  “You manufacture it.”

  “Manufacture what?”

  “Drama. You’re always putting on your own production of ‘Eric in Distress.’ The last run of it got rave reviews.”

  “Shut up,” he said, tightening his straps again. He thought about getting up and leaving right then, but she would probably just classify that as more self-generated drama. He decided to pretend that her assertion didn’t bother him. He wanted to be the kind of person who could hear criticism about himself and just let it wash over him without making any impact. The first step to that goal was probably to just pretend it was true.

  “I really am worried about her,” Nicky said. “Her eyes looked so haunted. It was spooky. You remember Tony?”

  “That kid that jumped off the bridge?”

  “Supposedly,” Nicky said. “There were several people who said that they saw him walking with an older man. Anyway, I saw him in school the day before he died. He was so distracted that he fully ran into me outside Spanish class. His eyes had that thousand-yard stare they’re always talking about that soldiers get, you know?”

  “You always said that you were invisible,” Eric said. More than once, Nicky had threatened to stop wearing clothes altogether, claiming that there wasn’t one person in the world who would notice if she did.

  “This was different. Tony didn’t see anything at all. Your sister kinda looked like that.”

  “Cousin,” Eric said.

  “Whatever.”

  She tried to hand the cigarette back to him and he waved it off. He thought about asking if she had anything stronger, but Nicky had always been straight.

  “I saw her car,” he said. “She must have gone back to the house after you saw her. She took off too quick though. Is she still going out with what’s-his-name?”

  “How should I know?”

  “I thought you were privy to all the town gossip. Don’t the lines of communication still flow through Dottie’s?”

  They both laughed.

  “She would have closed it last year, but then she got real sad. She came in one day, looking around like she was hunting for her husband’s ghost. He built most of that place with his bare hands, she said. I could picture him out there, pressing nails through wood with his fingertips. So, instead of closing it, she just hung up a creepy picture of her dead husband and now I have to look at that every day.”

  “Why do you still work there?”

  “Stock options.”

  “Huh?” he asked.

  “Nothing. I don’t know. Why does anyone do anything? Why are you running off again after only being in town for ten minutes?”

  “I came to apologize and then everything got all muddled up. Now I have to get out of here before I poison this place too.”

  “Poison?”

  Eric took a deep breath. This time, he did take the cigarette when offered. The smoke was going to his head, just like it always did. The rush of smoking always scared him—it would be way too easy to depend on. From what he had heard, it went from a rush to a necessity really quickly. That was not something he could afford.

  “Shit went bad in Ohio. A lot of it was my fault. I don’t want to do that here.”

  “That’s dumb.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Seriously, you’re being dumb.”

  “You don’t know everything, Nicky.”

  “I never said I did. In a way, you’re making my point for me.”

  She had always been two steps ahead of everyone else, and she loved to point that out. He remembered the first time he had met her. It was right after he had come to town. He had been living with his mother back in Pennsylvania and she had been hauled in on some bullshit charge about being drunk and disorderly. Nobody disputed that she had been drunk, but the disorderly part was apparently completely left to the discretion of the crooked cops.

  With his mother in jail and his father dead, his aunt and uncle had swept in like a tornado and sucked him into their orbit.

  Eric had still been getting used to the idea of living in Maine when he had met Nicky down on the River Walk.

  “Because of him,” was the first thing that Eric had heard her say. He had stopped in his tracks when he saw that she was pointing at him. Eric hadn’t known anyone except his aunt, uncle, and cousins. That day, down on the River Walk, Nicky had pointed at him like she knew him. The boys that were harassing her had stopped their advance and looked over at him skeptically.

  “What about him?” one of the boys asked.

  “You don’t know who that is?” she asked them.

  The three boys shook their heads. Their confidence had been robbed by her certainty and the arrival of Eric. He had become a part of the story, but he hadn’t know anything about it more than he could guess.

  “That’s Joseph Conrad,” Nicky had said. “He’s the son of the new sheriff. His father has appointed him as the new Bully Czar.”

  “What’s a Bully…” The kid was too confused to even try to pronounce the word.

  Nicky laughed at the three boys.

  At that point, Eric thought about telling all of them that they could continue their conflict without him. He wasn’t Joseph Conrad, and he had no intention of finding out why Nicky had identified him as such. But curiosity won and he decided to see where this was all going.

  “You think I would come walking through here if I didn’t know that there was someone watching out? You beat up that kid and see what happens. His father will have you in jail by the end of the day and then he’ll go after your parents. There’s a new law on the books that says that parents are responsible for any criminal actions of children under the age of fifteen. They’ll take your house and cars. They’ll even take your father’s garage, Darren,” Nicky had said.

  Darren looked worried for a second and then a slow, dumb smile spread across his face.

  “Yeah, but we’re not going to beat him up. We’re going to beat you up.” With that, he stabbed a finger into Nicky’s chest.

  Looking back, Eric wanted to think that he would have been the type of person who would always stand up for the underdog. Unfortunately, he was self-aware enough to realize that it wasn’t true. He had been bullied enough himself. When he saw some other kid getting hassled, Eric usually turned around and walked the other way.

  There had been something about Nicky though. Eric saw her strength, even when she was about to be pummeled by three tough kids.

  Her strength had drawn him in that day, and Nicky had somehow known that.

  “You can try to beat me up, but I don’t think he’s the kind of kid that will stand for it,” she said.

  That’s when Eric had bucked his normal trend. Instead of walking away, leaving her to her own fate, he had stepped forward. It would still be three on two, but there was the specter of his supposed sheriff father over his shoulder. It had been too much for the kids. When the one in front began to back away, they all made their retreat.

  The kids disappeared down some side path, leaving Eric and Nicky standing alone.

  “My father isn’t the sheriff,” he said.

  “I know.”

  Nicky had given him a little wave and then left him there.

  Somewhere along the way, they had become best friends. He enjoyed nothing more than sitting around, shooting the shit with her. He realized that
most clearly now that he was leaving again.

  “Are you still here on Earth, Eric?” she asked.

  “Huh?”

  He blinked, forgetting about the time they met and taking in the night air again. It wouldn’t be long before the snow came. He had always loved the snow in Maine. It turned all the buildings into little islands of warmth in a sea of white.

  “Do you need me to tell you why you’re dumb?” she asked.

  “Does it matter if I say yes or no?”

  “You’re dumb because you think you know more than your aunt and uncle. You’ve convinced yourself that you’re going to bring trouble to their house and that maybe they won’t be able to deal with it. Here’s the thing—when parents decide to have kids, they figure out how to roll with every hardship imaginable. There’s nothing that they can’t just accept and learn to live with.”

  “I’m not their kid.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said, shaking her head, spraying smoke every direction. Her cigarette was done. She used the glowing stump to light another. “It doesn’t matter where the trouble comes from, they just roll. And, believe me, those two think of you like one of theirs.”

  “How would you know?” he asked. They had been best friends, but not the kind of best friends where she had come over to the house all the time. As far as he knew, his aunt an uncle probably didn’t even know who Nicky was.

  She shrugged.

  “I see things,” she said. “Anyway, my point is that whatever you’re dealing with from Ohio or whatever, it’s nothing they can’t handle. You don’t want to bring it down on them, but trust me, they wouldn’t bat an eye at your troubles.”

  “You don’t know,” he said. Nicky’s thoughts had a way of infecting his brain. Whenever she said something, it was just a matter of time before he was going to start to see things her way.

  Eric felt himself giving in and stiffened at the thought.

  “I can tell you’re going to go anyway,” she said.

  He nodded.

  “Let me just ask you this before you go. Knowing that your aunt and uncle love you, and would do anything for you, why do you think being out on your own is the better choice?”