The Fall of Polite

by Sam Kench

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Can’t be going around in pajamas.’ Eamon added. ‘And whatever those things on your arms are.’

  ‘Right.’ Maria said, feeling embarrassed.

  ‘So, do you want to?’

  ‘Yes, thank you.’

  They drove to a small house in a semi-contained suburban community. The windows of the house were broken as were most of the other windows on the street. As Maria stepped out of the backseat she noticed a handmade cross planted in the yard. Two small pieces of wood painted white. She guessed there would be freshly tilled earth under the snow. Now that he was standing, Maria took note of just how tall Eamon was. Six-foot-eight and broad like a tree trunk.

  Eamon and Beth led Maria inside. There were piles of glass and bricks in front of each window and dried blood on the stairs and dining room floor. Maria had left her curtain rod in the truck, but now wished she had kept it with her. She reached her hand into the gym bag slung over her shoulder, all of the food gone from the inside. She popped open the tool box and got a grip on the hammer. She kept her weapon inside the bag and tried to appear casual as she followed Beth upstairs.

  ‘I’m gonna see if I can make some coffee.’ Eamon murmured in a bid to avoid going upstairs. He crossed the kitchen and pulled a metal coffee can out of the pantry. He retrieved a stick lighter from a drawer and lit the pilot light on the stove.

  Beth led Maria down a hallway. ‘How old did you say you are?’

  ‘Um, 17.’

  ‘Ally was a year younger than you, but I think her stuff should fit.’ Beth pushed open a door and walked Maria into a brightly colored bedroom. A pink bed with fake flowers stuck to the posts. Foam cut outs of flowers and torn pages out of magazines featuring K-pop boy bands stuck to the walls. Beth went to the bifold doors of a closet covered in concert passes and pulled them open. She spoke slowly, ‘You can take what you want from in here. She has a backpack somewhere that you can use. Um… Excuse me, please.’ Beth bit her lip and left the room with wet eyes, closing the door behind her.

  Maria released the hammer and closed the toolbox. She pulled her hand out of the gym bag, zipped it shut and felt bad for distrusting these devastated parents. She told herself she still shouldn’t be completely trusting of them, but seeing their pain made that difficult.

  She made a quick stop in the hall bathroom to clean herself up, as best she could in the sink, then looked through Ally’s messy closet. As many pieces of clothing lay crumpled on the floor as were hung up. Beth was right, they were the same size. Maria pulled the ridiculous purple jacket sleeves off her arms, ditched the hood and the wet slippers. She went through Ally’s dresser and pulled on a pair of wool socks. She looked over the dozen pairs of shoes in the room and let out a sigh of relief when she found them to be her size, except for a couple of older pairs; child size tap shoes and ballet slippers kept for sentimental reasons.

  She peeled off the dirty pajama bottoms and stuffed them into a wire wastebasket. She had an urge to light them on fire, to see them burn. She took up a crumpled piece of poster-board (an old school project of Ally’s) and used it to cover up her fuzzy, bloody pajamas. It felt strange going through the girl’s underwear drawer and she almost let tears overtake her thinking back to what Buddy did to her. No, she told herself. No more crying. She stuffed it down. Deep down.

  She put on clean clothes, dressing warmly: a long sleeve shirt, a thick brown sweater and a winter coat on top. She wore dark leggings under a pair of fleece lined pants. She wrapped a scarf around her neck, pulled on winter gloves and donned a knit, red hat shaped like a raspberry.

  She moved junk around within the closet in search of a sizable carrying bag. At first all she found was a neon bag shaped like an anime cat’s head. Too small and too eye catching, Maria thought. She kept rummaging until she found a decently-sized backpack of a dark purple hue. That’ll do.

  The backpack was quickly stuffed with other warm clothes, more socks and underwear. She thought about taking other things from the girl’s room but decided to stop and instead be thankful to her parents.

  Maria left the bedroom and went downstairs to rejoin Eamon and Beth. They sat at the kitchen table drinking coffee from plain white mugs. A third mug was filled and offered to Maria who gladly accepted even though she had never liked coffee. It warmed her insides in a way that was desperately needed.

  Photographs of Ally hung on the fridge under magnets. Maria looked a lot like her. Different nose, different eye color, different haircut. Same height, same build, same hair color.

  ‘Thank you.’ Maria said and sipped more of the coffee, still not a fan of the caffeinated beverage.

  ‘Um, could you please not wear that hat.’

  Maria looked up from her mug to Eamon who had tears welling in his eyes. The pink strain was back in his face. ‘Uh, yeah, sorry.’ Maria pulled the raspberry hat off.

  ‘Sorry, I just don’t think I’d be able to look at you without-... if you were wearing that.’ He took the hat from her and held it lightly with his fingertips. He folded it over and held it in front of him like a holy object.

  ‘Come with me, I think we have some other hats around here.’ Said Beth.

  Maria followed Beth to a hall closet where she fished out a plain black hat for her to wear. Then she took her to the bathroom and filled a pouch for her with toiletries. While Eamon was left alone in the kitchen, he sat and cried as quietly as he could manage. He covered his eyes and wrapped Ally’s hat tightly around his hand.

  He remembered seeing her in it for the first time. That hat was the first thing she bought with her own money after getting her first job. Neither parent had pushed her to get a job; she applied to the ice cream shop of her own volition as soon as she got her license so she could drive herself back and forth. Eamon was proud of her for getting her first job, but for some reason, the full extent of his pride hadn’t sunk in until the day she stepped through the door wearing that hat.

  THE TRIO SPENT THE NIGHT IN THE HOUSE and the next morning they were back on the road. Maria kept catching Beth staring at her with somber eyes; if not at Maria’s face, then at her daughter’s clothes on her body. Sometimes she would twist her whole body around in the passenger seat to look at Maria, other times her gaze would linger on her through the rearview mirror.

  The long-lasting looks made Maria uncomfortable, but she didn’t hold it against the distraught mother. Whenever Maria met her eyes, Beth would apologize and hug onto Eamon’s arm for support. Maria wondered if Eamon would have been staring as much too if he weren’t in the driver’s seat.

  Beth remembered taking Alley shopping for those clothes. She remembered her daughter’s sense of fashion changing over the years; from a single digits tomboy, to an awkward, unconformable tween, to a blossoming teenager who never lived to see adulthood.

  Beth cried into Eamon’s chest with his arm around her as he drove.

  Maria averted her eyes. She turned to watch out the window.

  They progressed carefully which entailed a great deal of stopping and listening for other engines. At larger intersections or wider roads, Eamon would get out of the truck and scout up ahead on foot to make sure the coast was clear. It always was.

  A couple hours of cautious travel later, they arrived at the little town of Danbury. The town was just as empty as Bristol was now and always had been. The town had the lowest population in an already low-population region of the state. They maneuvered slowly, Eamon keeping his eyes peeled for danger.

  A fire raged in the town’s general store. A thick plume of black smoke escaped into the freezing air.

  Some old friends of Eamon had used to use that general store as a meetup point. They were friends he would rather not remember. Good friends, but bad people. He had done his best to forget them nearly two decades ago after falling for Beth. He found himself thinking about those old friends more and more since things got bad and people got violent. They would have been good people to have around in these dangerous t
imes, but he had no knowledge of their whereabouts and no way to track them down. He was sure they would be far away from New Hampshire at this point.

  They didn’t like to stay in one place too long. Once folks with badges started to learn their names, it was typically time to relocate. Back when Eamon ran with them, they wouldn’t remain in the same state for more than a year or two at a time. Eamon’s motorcycle days saw him living in most states along the northernmost portion of the country at one time or another. They traveled light and lived light, and their broader affiliations made finding income opportunities a relatively easy task. He had no plans to settle down in New Hampshire… until he met Beth.

  Eamon could remember plenty of good times with those guys, but he didn’t look back on them fondly. He couldn’t help but wonder if their presence may have led to Ally’s survival, but Ally surely wouldn’t have even been born if those old friends were still a part of Eamon’s life. It was a chain of dominos he preferred not to linger on.

  Beth had made him swear he would never so much as straddle another motorcycle as long as he lived. That was a tall order, and Eamon would never have agreed to that for anyone other than Beth.

  She saw the softness in him that no one else did. She saw a caring heart where others saw only a brute. She didn’t learn he was a card carrying member of the Hand-Breaker MC until they had already been dating for an entire month. He had lied and told her he worked in a meat packing plant. When she found out the truth, she almost left him right then, but his blue, puppy-dog eyes melted right through her resolve. She felt foolish for believing the lie; it was obvious in retrospect, but it hadn’t even occurred to Beth that Eamon would ever lie to her about anything. He never did again.

  Eamon’s biker pals couldn’t wrap their heads around his interest in Beth. They didn’t consider her attractive, and that was by far the most important characteristic in a woman to them. They called her fat and homely, and spent the entire night after his first date with Beth making fun of him relentlessly. They were shocked when he asked her out a second time.

  She got him, the real him, the parts of him that even he had trouble seeing in himself. Beth helped him deconstruct the macho persona that he felt he had to live. She let him know his feelings were okay and that he didn’t have to slot into the archetype that others wanted of him.

  They needed each other for different kinds of strength.

  PASSING A COLLAPSED railway bridge, it took Maria a moment to remember if it had always been that way. The bridge had been in complete disrepair for as long as Maria had been alive. If you looked in the right places around central New Hampshire several years prior to the fall of polite, you’d be forgiven for mistaking it as apocalyptic even in its best condition. Empty buildings on the verge of collapse, old, broken construction machinery, flooded brick homes left to the ravages of time at the bases of mountains and rivers, abandoned chunks of metal and wood once formed into the shape of something practical; all were now scattered throughout the woods and lesser used roads; All a common sight in the area for years before it would become common throughout the rest of the country.

  They turned onto a back road that would’ve meant they were driving on dirt if there wasn’t so much snow piled on top. The road, unplowed, gave their truck little trouble. Theirs wasn’t the first set of tire marks down the road and they were able to keep a decent pace by following in the deep grooves. The snow was especially powdery that year in any places where it hadn't frozen solid. The road passed under a long tree branch covering, then opened up to a vista: a massive snow covered field to the left, and a picturesque little pond to the right, frozen solid. A single crooked tree stood in front of the pond, its dead branches creaking in the cold wind. The carcasses of several cows lay in the field, snow gathering on their backs.

  ‘That’s my brother’s place right there.’ Eamon pointed to a white, two-story farmhouse past the lake. He took the cows to be a bad omen, but didn’t verbalize his concern to the others.

  ‘I’m sure Paul and the girls’ll be happy to see us.’ Beth said.

  ‘Well, he’ll be surprised at least.’

  ‘Hm? I thought you called him?’

  ‘Tried. Couldn’t get through. His phone was off. Either it’s dead or he’s saving the battery like us.’ Eamon tried not to think of other possibilities.

  The tire tracks they were riding in went into the farmhouse driveway and then got messy before returning to the road and continuing straight off into the distance. Another bad omen.

  They parked in the long driveway beside a rusty pickup truck, light brown colored, and a far rustier green tractor. ‘His truck’s here. That’s good.’

  They climbed from the truck and stood in place looking at the farm house ahead of them. The windows on the first floor had been boarded up from the inside and Eamon guessed that the front door had probably been given the same treatment. ‘Paul?!’ He called out to the house, loud enough for his voice to carry. They stood in silence, the wind blowing the loose areas of their clothes around like miniature flags of surrender. Eamon called out to his brother a second time, and again got no response.

  Eamon walked around to the back of his truck and pulled out a shotgun. He racked it and pointed it down at the ground. Maria hadn’t seen the gun, but wasn’t surprised by its emergence. She knew the area all too well. Each person was more likely to have a gun than not. New Hampshire was a gun heavy state, at least in the rural areas. Any random citizen from teenager to farmer would likely tell you they needed an assault rifle to fight off the terrorists; 100% certain that their tiny, landlocked town in the middle of nowhere would be the target of an invasion. ‘The south of the north’, Mark had often called it. Maria didn't like this and had and some point hoped to move away to a place where that type of thinking wasn't as commonly held. Mark wanted that common mindset to change, but he never wanted to leave New Hampshire.

  Maria figured if there was anyone inside the farmhouse, there were 20-1 odds they had at least one cabinet chock-full of firearms.

  ‘You two wait in the truck, but don’t run the engine.’ Eamon ordered with his eyes glued to the farmhouse.

  Beth stayed quiet. She looked down at her hands and pulled a loose thread from one of her mittens.

  ‘If I’m not out in ten minutes, you drive away. If you hear shooting, wait five minutes, then if you don’t see me coming, you drive away. If you see anyone other than me, Paul, or the girls, you drive away.’

  Beth bit her lip and looked past her mittens to the snow.

  ‘Okay, Beth?’

  Beth nodded slightly in silence.

  ‘You got it?’

  Beth nodded more and let out a barely audible ‘Yes.’

  ‘Promise me. Leave after 10 minutes.’

  ‘Okay. I promise.’ Beth said softly.

  'Swear to me, baby.'

  'I swear, Eamon. I promise.'

  Eamon turned to Maria and looked down at her. ‘See that she does, please, Maria.’

  Maria nodded too. ‘Okay, Eamon.’

  Eamon gave Beth a kiss and a hug and then he gave Maria a hug too. To her own surprise, she hugged the lumberjack back without any hesitation. He had a warmth and comfort to him in spite of his intimidating appearance. Eamon walked forward. ‘Be careful.’ Beth called to him.

  Eamon trudged up to the front door. He took his shotgun in both hands and put his ear to the door. Silence. The doorknob refused to turn. He pulled out his key ring and tried the key his sister-in-law had given him. He had never had cause to use it before. The door unlocked but didn’t open; blocked like he had suspected. Eamon laid his shoulder against the door and gave it a hard shove. There was no give to it. He took a step back and gave it a full force kick.

  The nails holding the wooden boards in place where ripped from the doorframe and Eamon stepped inside. The entire first floor was dim. With the windows boarded, there was hardly any light getting inside. He could see just enough to know the living and dining rooms were empty. He
walked slowly toward the kitchen with the shotgun raised, stepping as quietly as he could. Snow clung to the underside of his boots and crunched with his first few steps.

  He slinked over to the kitchen doorway and peered through. The room was empty. It was too dark to tell if there was blood anywhere. He didn’t smell anything out of the ordinary. They wouldn’t board the place up from the inside and leave out the back, Eamon thought. He hoped to God they weren’t dead. Someone could’ve broken in and killed them, and that person could have been the one to board up the house. Or Paul could’ve decided to take the lives of himself and his family. Eamon had thought about suicide for himself and Beth when Ally died. He knew Beth would’ve gone along with it. He knew she had thought about it too.

  Eamon was sick with worry. He felt dizzy and before he could steady himself he had dropped to a knee and needed to lean against the shotgun for support. How long had it been since he had eaten? He couldn’t remember.

  He forced himself back to his feet, unsure of how long he was down there. He felt dizzy; lightheaded. He went to the staircase and pointed the shotgun up toward the brighter second floor. The upstairs windows hadn’t been boarded, so the visibility was much better. He kept his aim steady as he headed up the stairs, each step creaking loudly under his feet despite his best attempts to remain quiet.

  He quickly scanned the hallways when he reached the second floor and searched each of the bedrooms. The first two were empty; some food lined out across one of the beds, but otherwise nothing out of the ordinary. The place looked clean. The door to the third bedroom was closed unlike the others. His pulse quickened. He stood with his back to the wall beside the door. One hand clutched his shotgun while the other knocked on the door.

  Suspense filled moments passed with no response. Eamon felt like he was holding his breath, even though he wasn't. His pores let out sweat. He didn’t feel cold for the first time since exiting the truck. Eventually he steadied the tremor in his hand and pushed open the door. He kept his back against the wall, staying out of the doorway. He waited half a minute, then peeked into the room. He scanned it slowly; it was the twins’ bedroom. Pink bunk-beds with messy dressing. Nobody in sight. He started to pull out of the room when something caught his eye. The closet door, some light spilling under it across the floor. Eamon aimed his shotgun at the center of the door and inched closer.