Our Daily Bread

by Lauren B. Davis

  “Yeah, I guess.” Bobby chewed at his thumbnail.

  “Don’t fucking do that. You look like a fucktard.”

  “Sorry.”

  “So, what’s your code going to be, young Bobby?”

  “I don’t know, what’s yours?”

  “Well, I could tell you, but you have to come up with your own. You can’t adopt another man’s code.” How could he possibly explain his code? How he’d built it slap by slap, bruise by bruise? You don’t let yourself sleep in your own fucking vomit. You don’t shack up with a woman who tosses her used sanitary napkins in the stove. You keep your secrets to yourself and you keep your weaknesses a secret and your hurts a secret and your dreams you bury double deep. He’d had that list by the time he was ten. “You think about it,” Albert said, and he wanted another drink more than anything all of a sudden.

  The door opened and four men came in, wearing the city-issue overalls of road crew workers. They were laughing. Finn greeted them warmly, shook hands with each.

  “Drink up. I’m getting another beer,” said Albert. “And then I’ll tell you how to grow some killer weed, if you’re interested, that is. You interested?”

  “Yeah,” said Bobby, and he smiled that goofy smile and picked at a pimple on his chin. The kid was full of bad habits.

  When he came back, Albert launched into a long sermon on the way to increase the THC content of marijuana plants using a growth changer called colchicine. “You soak the seeds in this solution, right? Maybe some of the seeds die, maybe most of them, but the ones who survive will be fucking superweed. It’s all about the number of females,” he said, “But then ain’t it always?” And he chuckled, and the kid chuckled with him, as though he knew exactly what Albert meant.

  It was long gone dark when Albert drove back into the compound and he passed a car as he did. A car he recognized. The good Dr. Hawthorne.

  “Fuck,” said Albert to no one in particular.

  When he got to the cabin Toots and Joe were squatting in the shadows by the forsythia bush.

  “What’s going on?” he said.

  “Jill,” said Toots.

  “What about her?”

  “She got knocked up again.”

  “That why Hawthorne was here?”

  “Yeah. She’s bleeding some, though,” said Joe. “I saw it.”

  “Where is she?”

  “At her place. Jack’s with her.”

  “She have to go to the hospital?”

  Toots shrugged. “I don’t think so. But she sure is crying.”

  Albert unlocked the cabin door and got a bottle of whiskey from his trunk. “Take this over to her, Toots, but don’t let the rest of ’em see you, yeah?”

  “Okay,” the little girl reached out for it and Albert noticed there was a burn on her arm.

  “Where’d you get that?”

  She pulled her sleeve down and shrugged, saying nothing.

  “Yeah, all right. Just make sure Hawthorne didn’t give her any painkillers before she drinks that, all right?” He took her upper arm firmly. “Make sure, Toots.”

  “Hawthorne didn’t give her no painkillers,” she said. “He never does.”

  Chapter Eight

  It was one of those brilliant first days of true spring when the world heaved itself out of the long silver somnolence of winter. The temperature soared, and the air carried the fragrance of honeysuckle, crab apple and cherry blossoms. The clouds in the blue sky fairly sparkled and the promise of green was a joyful aura around the trees. Dorothy had closed up the shop for an hour at lunch, and gone for a long walk by the river. Everyone, it seemed, had the same idea and what she had anticipated would be a solitary meander turned out to be a stop-and-chat with half the town. Her mood was so buoyant, nearly giddy, in fact, that she didn’t even feel this as an imposition. Hello. How are you? Isn’t it splendid? Oh, yes, a wonderful day. No, there won’t be many more like this. Take advantage of it.

  She wore a black sweater-jacket over her blouse. The warmth on the back of her neck, below the line of her short-cut grey hair, was delicious. She slowly rolled her head from side to side. Because she’d guessed it would be muddy, she had on her old green Wellington boots, the perfect thing for puddles and muck and tromping about the moors, and between greetings she imagined that was exactly where she was—out on the moors of Yorkshire or Wales, perhaps, somewhere Dylan Thomas-y, full of windy boys and a bit . . .

  By the time she turned back up River Road her cheeks were rosy and her eyes bright. She felt all was well with the world. There was no particular reason to dash back to the store. Why not take one last zip around the block? She set off up Main Street, and along Spring Street to Spruce, Spruce to Moore, past the Jefferson High School, where some of the windows were open. The teacher’s voice carried and she could just make out the word “algebra,” and smiled, pitying children struggling to pay attention to that sort of thing on a day like this.

  She thought about Ivy, who would be in her classes at the middle school around the corner. Ivy had taken to dropping in to the store three, sometimes four, afternoons a week. She would look in the window and then tap on the glass door, always waiting for an invitation to come in, as though the store were not a public place. She never stayed too long—no more than an hour—and always helped. Although it surprised Dorothy to admit it, she had begun to look forward to these brief visits. The girl was bright, and helpful, and clearly at odds with something. There seemed to be trouble between her parents, a topic Dorothy did not particularly want to discuss. It smacked of gossip and seemed prurient. But clearly the girl wasn’t getting much attention at home. Dorothy was sure the visits wouldn’t last—Ivy would become bored spending time with an old lady eventually—but it was oddly pleasant for the moment.

  She turned down Spruce, and was passing the Italian Garden Pizzeria when she became aware of something on the edge of her senses. Laughter. Yes, it was familiar laughter that drew her attention, coming from the passageway between the Pizzeria and Pretty-as-a-Picture Dress Shop. A voice. Two voices. One raised in inquiry. That laugh again.

  Dorothy stopped and turned toward the sound. The alley was darker, shielded as it was by buildings on either side—a pocket of shadow, smelling of pizza ovens and refuse. A figure at the end—no two—hunkered down by a dumpster, one smaller than the other. The glint of something, a flame . . .

  “Who is that?” the sound of her voice surprised her. How authoritative she sounded. “Who’s there?”

  The smaller figure skittered. Startled and no doubt guilty. Stood. Dorothy, sun-blind, could make out no features. “I said, who is that? What are you doing?”

  “Nothing.” The larger figure still crouched, bestial, in the corner. The acrid scent of burning wafted. The figure, clearly a man, raised something to his lips. A bottle.

  “Do you want me to call the police? Come out here this instant.” She should go into the dress shop. Have Doris Heaney call Carl. But on what complaint?

  “We’re not bothering you.” She must be only a silhouette to them, with the sun behind her, but perhaps not.

  “Albert . . .” The other one spoke at last. “Maybe we should go.”

  “Albert who? You are very rude, whoever you are. Is that Albert Erskine? Albert?”

  “Shit.” It was said quietly, almost as though he didn’t want her to hear. The figure stood and he was tall, much taller than the other. He drank from the bottle again and wiped his mouth on his sleeve.

  “Albert Erskine, do not be absurd. Come out here.”

  “Mrs. Carlisle?”

  “Yes, it’s Dorothy Carlisle, and who is that with you?”

  Her eyes adjusted to the shadows. Someone smaller, frailer. Whereas Albert was a collection of muscled slabs, thick and layered, the other was all knots of bone and angles. The small one, no more
than a boy, put his head toward Albert and said something. Albert shrugged and the boy walked toward Dorothy. His gait was jerky and uneven. She fought the impulse to back away. As he neared, she saw it was Bobby Evans, Ivy’s brother, his eyes downcast on his big sneakered feet, his shoulders held up tight, hands in pockets.

  “Hi, Mrs. Carlisle,” he said. Another laugh from Albert. And that smell. It might be marijuana. Something else though, in that smoke.

  “Are you lighting fires? You should be in school, young man,” Dorothy said to Bobby. “I’ve a mind to tell your father.” What on earth was going on in that family? Wasn’t anyone paying attention to the children at all? She would have a little chat with Tom Evans when she next saw him.

  Albert walked toward her slowly and as he did, he slipped the bottle inside his battered leather jacket. He stopped directly in front of her, forcing her to look up at him. He had grown a goatee since last she’d seen him. It accentuated the hollow cheeks, the sharp bones. His hair fell over his brows and curled around his ears. Sunlight glittered off the lenses of his silver metal-rimmed sunglasses. He now used his middle finger (she noticed a black line of grime under the nail) to push them up the bridge of his nose.

  “Oh, Albert, what are you doing back there?”

  “Burning trash. Nothing. Didn’t know it was you.” His breath stank of alcohol.

  “Albert, listen to me. There has been a break-in at Wilton’s. If you don’t want people thinking you had something to do with that, it would be prudent not to hang around back alleys, don’t you think?”

  “I didn’t rob Wilton’s.” He lowered his chin so she could see his eyes more clearly, his thin eyebrows frowning. “You saying I robbed Wilton’s?”

  “No. I am not saying that. What I’m saying is if people see you loitering in alleys they will call Carl. I’m sure you don’t want to spend a beautiful day like this answering questions at the police station.”

  Albert ran his tongue over his lips and smiled in a rather sheepish manner. Dorothy thought, not for the first time, how much she’d like to get him to a dentist. “Naw, you’re right,” he said. “You worried about me, Mrs. Carlisle? That it?”

  “It’s obvious you’ve been drinking and you are not yourself. I’d hate to think you were giving alcohol, or anything else you shouldn’t, to a minor. You and I both know how smart you are. Don’t waste it, Albert. How many times have I said that to you?”

  “Too many times, maybe,” he mumbled, not meeting her gaze now.

  “I should probably say it more. You ought to attend those night classes at the high school. Get your GED. You should never have dropped out of school. It’s a waste of a good mind.”

  “Give me a break.”

  “You’re not like . . . well, you have a chance, Albert. I believe that.”

  “Not like the rest of the Erskines, huh?” His eyes snapped.

  They were so touchy, all the Erskines. Hair-trigger the bunch of them. And maybe Dorothy didn’t blame them. “Do you want to tell me what you’re doing just now?”

  “Nope,” he laughed. “Go see for yourself if you want, but you know what they say about curiosity. Have a nice day, Mrs. Carlisle.” With that he ambled down the street, as though he hadn’t a care in the world. Bobby Evans followed him.

  Dorothy watched them for a moment and then looked back into the alley. She should just go and call Carl. Let him handle it. That was undoubtedly the sensible thing to do. But she hated to call the police on Albert Erskine, and wasn’t completely sure Carl Whitford would care very much. Boys in an alley, one of them truant from school on a beautiful spring day. She knew it was probably misguided, but she had a soft spot for Albert. So much worked against him in this town. She had watched him grow up from a skinny young boy with all those bruises. She’d even called Children’s Services once, when his little face had worn the reddened, puffy evidence of a beating, but nothing had come of it. It was the mountain, everyone said. What do you expect? She didn’t want to be another one of the people against him. She wanted him to be better; she wanted him to rise up against the odds and break free of his past. If you expected the best of people, wouldn’t they struggle to meet those expectations? And if public opinion expected the worst, well, she chose not to be among them.

  The smoke in the back of the alley had disappeared now, although the smell lingered. Either she had stopped them from truly setting a fire, or the fire had gone out. It would only take a moment to check and they were, after all, gone. There was no danger now, surely, and probably there never had been any. It was only Albert Erskine and Bobby Evans, for heaven’s sake.

  It was chilly in the alley, out of the sun. Boxes lay scattered on the ground against the wall of the pizzeria in front of the dumpster. Whatever the boys had burned lay behind the dumpster, past the back entrance of the restaurant. A pile of newspaper, charred around the edges. The fire hadn’t caught, then. Just some old papers and cardboard boxes, foolish mischief for which twenty-two-year-old Albert was far too old. But something else, in the pile. Dorothy caught her breath and she dropped her plastic bag of berries and cake. Fur there. Tortoiseshell fur. A cat? It couldn’t be they had killed a cat. Oh, Lord. Curiosity killed the cat. She couldn’t help herself, she bent forward to look more closely and when she did her stomach turned and she jumped back. Maggots in the sunken eyes, the body shrunken, withered. Long dead.

  Dorothy turned back to the warm brightness of the sidewalk, abandoning her shopping. There was no sign of Albert. All she wanted to do was go back to her own little shop. Her mind snapped and cracked with questions as she hurried along. They hadn’t killed the cat, then. But why try and burn it? It was disgusting. Had they found the carcass there? But then what had they been doing in the alley to begin with? Albert and the Evans boy. It didn’t ring true. Albert was at least six years older than Bobby Evans. What would he want with a boy that age?

  Dorothy did not believe half the stories she heard about the Erskine clan. The Erskine women, whenever she did see them in town, always looked so haggard and worn, frightened and ashamed of their meagre purchases. For the past twenty years, every few months or so, Dorothy (and William when he was alive) had driven up to North Mountain and the Erskines’ compound in the wee hours of the night, waiting until they were sure everyone would be asleep. She left a box of used clothes, powdered milk, children’s toys, canned goods, peanut butter, bars of soap and toothpaste, thick socks and mittens and scarves and oatmeal and anything else she thought they might be able to use. Years back, when she overheard one of the teachers mentioning how smart Albert was, and what a shame it was to waste brains on someone like that, she began including books—Robinson Crusoe, Treasure Island, Tom Sawyer, The Catcher in the Rye. Dorothy had hoped she was helping, in some way. Not enough. Never enough.

  When she arrived at the shop she looked around at the Queen Anne and Windsor chairs, the elegant little Federal and Empire tables, the silver tea-sets and cobalt salt holders and sets of spoons—all the lovely items of beauty and comfort.

  First Ivy and now Bobby. Oh, how she wanted to lay in a bath full of lavender bubbles. She wrote a note in case Ivy came by, saying she had closed up early for a doctor’s appointment, and taped it to the door. Then she switched off the lights, locked the door and went home.

  As far as she was concerned, this day was over.

  Chapter Nine

  Tom had the truck loaded by four in the morning and headed out for his first delivery over in Argyle, at the Mr. Greenjeans Grocery chain. It was half an hour’s drive along the highway in the dark before dawn. He had to be careful of three things: drunks, dozers and deer. Because the traffic was sparse, he could usually spot a drunk weaving from a long way off. Dozers were more problematic. A guy could be driving along with the window open to keep himself awake one minute and be dead asleep the next, swerving into Tom’s lane for a head-on with no reaction time. Deer made him
drive slower than his boss would like. Tom had hit a deer once. A doe. It had taken her forty-seven minutes to die and Tom had sat with her the whole time, listening to the hollow bone-whistle of her bleat, nasal and low. He’d never forgotten the sound and didn’t want to hear it again. Bucks were a different story. If you hit a hulker you were just as likely to be the one dead. Antlers through the windshield and you’re slashed to pieces. Impaled if you were unlucky. Even with a doe, in a smaller car, the hooves could be deadly. They tended to come right in through the windshield at face level. Sure, in the delivery truck he had the advantages of weight and height, but still. People asked him if he had a problem staying awake. “Ah, no. Not really,” he said.

  Patty’s face appeared in his mind’s eye and he wanted to be home, to be snuggled up against his wife’s delicate spine, his arm around her, cradling a soft breast, adjusting his breathing to hers.

  He remembered that night he found her singing in a bar in New York. He’d come to the city planning to ship out on a merchant ship or maybe even join the Navy. He’d worked at the cement factory before it closed, and then at the paint factory after that and in both places for a hell of a lot longer than he’d intended. After his father succumbed to the ragged agony of his sinus cancer—his eyes pushed out of his head by the tumours, blind and moaning, high as a kite on morphine—Tom couldn’t leave his mother alone. Maureen Evans was so lost, so overwhelmed by every form to be filled out, every bill to be paid, and frightened by every scratchy tree branch on the side of the house. One day had rolled into the next and Tom found himself on the far side of thirty. Then one day his mother didn’t come down for breakfast and when he went up to check on her she was in bed, the pink and yellow chenille comforter tidy, lying on her side with her hands tucked under her cheek like a little girl who’d fallen asleep during her bedtime prayers. The room smelled of feces. She wore a flannel nightdress with roses on it, and she was stone cold. He knelt beside the bed and tried to pray and found he couldn’t. He took her hand and cried a little, kissed her cheek and went to phone Carl at the sheriff’s office. And that was that.