by S. P. Shane
As Uncle Paul continues to share memories of Jimmy, I close my eyes picturing what he must have been like as a child. A young boy, six years of age, skipping rocks across the pond on his uncle's farm appears in my mind. Rusty, a golden retriever, fetches a Frisbee as Jimmy throws it. The Frisbee is caught by the wind and blown over into the pond. Jimmy giggles with amazement as Rusty leaps into the pond and continues to paddle toward it.
“He was a happy boy, who enjoyed singing in the Children's choir,” says Uncle Paul. “As you may have noticed, he talked with a stutter, but when he sang all that just went away. He had a rather fine set of young pipes and nothing pleased his mother more than to hear him sing. He's gone now, but I'll always have a little something to hold onto.”
The paper crinkles again and I open my eyes. Uncle Paul is finished with his eulogy and wobbles toward the stairs. There's barely a moment to wonder if there will be another speaker when Grant makes his way toward the stairs. I throw a questioning glance at Josh. He shrugs, smirks.
My voice remains a whisper. “It's wrong, dude. Wrong on so many levels.”
Grant pauses for a moment in front of the microphone like he's capable of deep thought. “I'm a little bit older than Jimmy, but I knew him since we were little kids. At Sunday School, we became close friends. By the time he started school, he was like a little brother to me.”
My stomach churns and sickness spreads through me. I lean forward, my lips part. All I can think about is Grant standing in front of the damn cage. “And now the case of the disappearing shit stain,” is what he told everyone. That's what he really thought of Jimmy. Someone needs to tell him to sit down. Someone needs to stop him.
“I'm gonna be sick.” I bolt from my chair and hurry out the rear door.
Outside, as the doors fall shut behind me, I crouch down, hugging my knees, trying to catch my breath.
It's all I can do to force the image of that smug bastard from my mind. He's just standing in there, in front of everyone, acting like he and Jimmy were such close friends. I draw in a deep breath and squint out into the sunlight. It's a hundred times better now that I'm out here, away from all that nonsense.
The sanctuary doors whine as they open and close behind me. “You alright, man?”
“That's somethin' I never thought I'd see.”
“What? That phony bastard acting like he gives a rat's ass about Jimmy?” Josh reaches into the pocket of his jacket for his Pall Malls. He takes one and hangs it from his lips. He holds the pack out to me.
“No, thanks.”
“No, really. It'll calm you down... Whenever I get good and pissed, nothing calms me down like a smoke.”
It occurs to me that someone can walk out of the church and see me smoking, but right now I just don't care. I pluck a smoke from the pack and stick it between my lips. Josh cups his hand around the end of my cigarette and holds out his lighter. He laughs. “You have to breathe in while I'm lighting it.”
I take a breath and feel smoke tickle down my throat. All at once, my eyes water and I start hacking and spitting. Stars appear in my vision, as I suddenly feel all dizzy, lightheaded. My whole body begins to tingle and I feel good, better than I felt in a long time.
“I don't really need to tell ya what a bastard Grant is.”
“No... Ya don't. But you can say it again if ya like.”
“Alright. Grant's a bastard.”
Chapter 35
The large plate glass windows of Broad Strokes peer out at the street. In pale light, my reflection shows back at me. The little shepherd boy looks scared.
My breath steams the window and for a split second another image washes across the window .
“Jimmy?” reeling backwards.
It's Jimmy's face, Jimmy's hair, and Jimmy's mouth, but he's different somehow—changed. He doesn't hide his eyes and he doesn't hang his head.
“You alright?” Josh jostles a key into the lock, but the door pops open before he turns it. He freezes, wearing the face of a farmer who's discovered critters in his corn field.
“Wuz wrong?” My speech slurs.
He shakes his head. “Mom must've forgotten to lock it." He makes a hold-back-a-second motion with his hand. He pokes his head inside, looking both ways. He steps inside, pauses. Both of his arms are held out at his sides like a scarecrow. He has that swagger, like he's ready for a good fight. He looks both ways again, then eyes the counter as if a bank robber hunkers behind it.
With his familiar fluid quickness, he bolts toward the counter. In one swift motion, he throws his hip atop the counter, spins, throws his legs over the counter, bends, and then reaches down for his pistol.
As Josh stands with the pistol in his hand, my heart skips into a rapid beat. Blood rushes to my head and my ears are ring. Sucking in a gasp, I lean against the door jamb, freezing with panic.
My lips move, but no sound escapes. My breath is gone.
He raises the gun and checks the room behind the counter. He stares into the room for a moment, then glances over his shoulder, where he sees me leaning against the door. "Don't wanna take any chances."
“What's... gon--” is all I can get out.
He shakes his head. “Maybe nothing.” But it isn't 'nothing'. Any fool can see that. John Wayne doesn't storm into a saloon with his gun drawn over nothing. There's gotta be outlaws among us. He comes around the counter with the pistol raised to shoulder level and follows his gaze across the shop toward the corner.
“Call da... please... Da pole lease...” I mutter, but Josh pays no attention. He jogs across the gallery, pausing in front of the supply room.
"Shit," he whispers.
“Let's go... outta here!”
Like a rookie cop on a bad TV show, Josh kicks at the door. He raises the gun as the door springs open.
A scream—the kind of scream that could break glass—blasts from the supply room.
"Oh my God!" Josh stares into the supply room in disbelief.
"Josh, s'what's wrong? Is summun there?" I hurry toward him, bumping into tables and chairs as I go.
“Josh, what the hell are ya doing?” I recognize Lindsey's voice at once.
“I thought...someone broke in.” He lowers the gun.
“Shit, Josh! Your mom gave me a key.” She steps out into the shop, giving him this look like he just killed her cat. She reaches behind her pulling the door to the supply room closed. Then, our eyes meet.
“Caleb?” She says my name like it's this great mystery. I could after all be an alien body-snatcher, who simply looks like Caleb.
“Mizzed ya at da foon-re-al.” The words feel and sound all wrong as they come out of my mouth, but there's nothing I can do about it.
“The hell? Did you mean 'funeral'?” She pronounces it like she's trying to teach phonics to a small child. “Are you drunk?”
“Just a little.”
“I was there.”
Josh slips into the supply room, while Lindsey puts an arm around me. As much as I'd like it to be, there's nothing romantic about it. She has that look in her eye like she expects me to topple over and crack my head open. She's just trying to steady me.
“Let's sit down.” She walks with me to a table and pulls out a chair. She watches me as I sit down—her arms held out as if she might need to catch me. She looks me over the way a mother would check a child in a high chair. Smiles. Sits across from me.
Her gaze drifts toward the street. An awkward silence spans between us, but I can't think of anything to say. Finally she says, “It's so sad about Jimmy, though.”
“Well, ya know... We're all Swiss Cheese... when you think about it.” The words are hardly out of my mouth when I find myself wanting to crawl under the table and hide. There's no way in hell that I just told her that we're all Swiss Cheese.
“Swiss Cheese?” Her face his half-question, half-laugh.
“Ya know... big holez...where people used to be.”
“Sure. We all come. We all go. Right?”
“Egg zackly.”
She shakes her head. Sighs. “Could you believe all of those people were there?”
I shrug. “Jimmy must've had a lot of friends and family.”
She sucks in her bottom lip, shakes her head in doubt. “Oh, I don't know. I doubt most of them even knew him.”
She cocks her ear toward the squeaking door.
“Just me,” says Josh.
Either he's put the pistol away in the supply room, or he's hiding it beneath his shirt. At any rate, he's no longer carrying it. His hand clutches a bottle of Southern Comfort and three shot glasses.
She laughs softly. "And just what are you doing?"
He holds up the bottle. "Gonna finish what I started."
He scoots out a chair across from her and plops down and glances over at me, puts a hand on my shoulder. "You alright?"
“Super.” And I actually hold my arms out in Superman pose, kind of like I'm flying.
He chuckles. “You're an idiot.”
“Josh...” Lindsey cuts in. She's grinning ear to ear. “That's some really nice work you did at the bonfire.”
His face goes completely blank—unreadable.
“You were there?” A tone in his voice feigns surprise. It's not an outright denial, but a clever deflection.
“No, but I heard all about it... Hilarious!”
“Glad you approve.” Josh turns the shot glasses right-side-up on the table and twists open the Southern Comfort. Pours. “I'm gonna put on some music. Ya wanna hear something?”
“Just put it on the Coyote.” Lindsey says. In case you're wondering, the Coyote is a radio station that broadcasts out of Ferry's Port.
He nods. Throws back the shot. It doesn't even phase him. He's out of his chair two seconds later to put on the Coyote.
“Jimmy...” I start to throw in my two cents worth, but my speech is still slurred. “Dis whole fing is Grant's... doing.”
Lindsey tunes me out and pours a shot of whiskey. She throws it down just as Janis Joplin's “Take Another Piece of My Heart” blares from the speakers. She hums along for a few seconds, then breaks out singing in full voice. She whips her head around and her hair dances in the air.
“I want you to COME ON...COME ON...” Lindsey jumps to her feet and starts shaking it all out.
A wave of excitement overtakes me. I jump up and...the whole world spins. My feet are lost beneath me and I'm sailing back. I land in the chair, but my head's still spinning. My stomach churns. I have a sudden urge to puke.
“You're gonna be alright, dude.” Josh sits down at the table.
Lindsey looks over at me. She's got that look in her eyes, like there's some sort of inside secret that she's dying to tell me. And it's kind of hard not to notice when she absentmindedly undoes a button on her blouse... then another. She's coy about it, with subtle theatrics that seem to say "ya mind? It's a little warm in here".
Josh nearly spills his whiskey as he reaches for his glass.
Lindsey goes back to humming rather than all-out singing and dances her way around the table. Sits down in the chair next to mine. Josh shoves another shot at her. She puts it away.
She pivots to me and joins Janis again with the chorus. Her hand taps against my thigh, in a way that seems to say "well, why don't you join me?" I suck in a breath and hold it, as her hand stays in place.
Her long slender fingers glide across the top of my leg to my inner thigh. She squeezes softly, and it occurs to me that she doesn't care if I sing or not. She whips her head again, making her hair fly about, and, as if by accident, her hand falls there.
Fireworks ignite in my mind—noise, confusion, this big storming mess that makes no sense whatsoever. Though there's this little voice in the back of my head that says "this is inappropriate," there's a much louder voice that says "ya know, I don't really care. Take advantage of me, Lindsey. Please!"
"Lindsey?" My voice is barely a whisper.
"Caleb!" Lindsey gasps and pulls her hand away. Just like that I have to go and mess everything up.
“"Excuse me, Caleb." Her face is the shade of grapefruit. “I didn't mean anything.”
So much spins around in my head that I don't even know where to put everything. “I think I need to...” I push my chair back from the table and climb to my feet.
“Caleb, what are you doing?” Josh vaults from his seat.
"Need to get some fresh air." I turn and bumble toward the door.
“Caleb?” He comes around the table.
“Juzt... I, uh, can't be here, right now.” I tear open the door and step outside into a cold rain. Parked cars from the funeral crowd the street, but there's no one in sight. Everyone must be at the cemetery.
"Caleb, get back here..." Josh follows after me. "You're, drun-" The door falls shut behind me.
Chapter 36
Wednesday , October 6
Everything hurts and my head weighs a hundred pounds, filled with concrete and scrap metal that rings at the slightest noise. My arms and legs are heavy and my back feels like I'm a hundred years old, crippled with arthritis and bone disease.
Somewhere in the distance, thunder rumbles. Rain sloshes against my window and the stench of sour sweat and vomit finds its way to my nose. I blink. My bird goggles are staring right at me—out of their case. I don't remember using them, at least not recently. But there's a lot of things I don't remember: coming home, vomiting, or getting into bed.
A jolt of pain shoots through my neck as I raise my head from the pillow. A groan slips out of me on its own, and—as if to answer that groan—knocking comes from my bedroom door. Too soft to be my dad.
“Caleb.” It's Lindsey's voice, but what's she doing here? At my house? So early in the morning?
“Eh...” A sharp pain pierces my throat, as if I had been stabbed. Only a squeaking, breathless sound escapes my lips.
The door cracks open and a ray of yellow light shines across the floor.
“Caleb, are you alright?” She pokes her head through the doorway.
My head nearly explodes. “Uhnnn.”
She comes to my bed and sits on the edge.
“What. Are You. Doing. Here?” My voice croaks.
“Just seeing if you're okay. You were pretty out of it last night.”
I tap on my wrist, where my watch would be if I was wearing it.
“A little after nine.” She shrugs. “I'm cutting class today.”
It occurs to me that Lindsey either used her ninja skills to sneak into the house—or my mom let her in. If Mom let her in, it means the 'rents already know that I'm not exactly school-ready this morning. It means they're probably asking themselves why Lindsey isn't at school, if they didn't ask her directly. Maybe she gave them a story they could swallow, or maybe Mom's on the phone with Lindsey's dad right now. And unless I was practicing some Drunken Master kung fu skills, M&D had to notice when I came home in some god-awful stupid state of drunk. There's gonna be hell to pay. Not any way around it.
“Marilyn drove you home last night. She told your parents you had some bad ham salad. Apologized all over the place.”
“Ham salad?” It's the most half-baked story I've heard for a while.
“It explains the vomiting. Not so much the staggering.” An image of Lindsey helping me to a chair plays in my memory.
“My parents are weird. Not stupid.”
She shrugs. “Your mom seemed to buy it.”
I sit up and pull myself back against the headboard. “And my dad?”
Squints. Shakes her head. “No, not so much.”
“It's not like there's a rare form of food poisoning that makes your sweat smell like whiskey.”
She laughs.
“Don't...” I stop short of shouting, because that will make my head pound. “Don't laugh. If you do...I'll laugh. If I laugh, my head explodes.” She draws a breath, holds it, and presses her lips tight. “Well, don't pass out.”
She breathes. “Your voice is coming back.”
A
spoon chimes against a coffee mug in the kitchen below, papers rattle, and a chair scoots on the floor. I perk up and listen, cocking an ear to the floor.
“Beecher's downstairs with your mom and dad,” she says.
“Sheriff Beecher?”
Nods.
“Shit!” Pain cranks through my sinuses. My hands raise reflexively. “What... did I do?”
She turns her head slowly from side to side. Her face blank. “Nothing. As far as I know.”
“I don't remember a thing.” The worst part about having a gap in your memory is that you can't say for certain what you did. I could have gone crazy and shot up the town for all I know. Highly unlikely, but it still freaks me out. Not knowing.
I swing my feet over the edge of the bed and kick off my blanket. A quick kiss of cool air reminds me that I'm just wearing briefs. I quickly reverse course, rolling and clawing my way under my blanket. “Uh, could you hand me a pair of jeans?”
“Hey...You're not getting up.” She takes on the persona of Nurse Ratched.
“Well, I'm a little old to be peeing in my bed.” It's a fib on my part, designed to get her out of the way.
“Oh!” She launches from the edge of my bed and scoots to my dresser.
“Middle drawer. Any pair.”
The drawer scrapes open, she grabs the first pair, and tosses it to me.
I slip the jeans on and then the stairway beckons. Actually, it's the conversation taking place below that beckons. As Josh says, information is currency.
There are a dozen and one infractions that could have shown up on Beecher's radar: breaking into a motel room in Ferry's Port, the infamous Big Foot Incident, cracking Grant in the head with his helmet, public intoxication, or being a first-rate pain-in-the-ass. And that's just the short list.
I lean out into the hallway, tilting an ear down the steps.
“Pastor, if the church... has a lawyer, you can submit... all records to the court... directly through him. And if I can offer... my professional opinion... I suggest you do get a lawyer.” Beecher's slow, paused-out baritone carries up the stairs.
“Caleb?” Mom calls. Her hurried footsteps move from the kitchen.
