Sugar Run: A Novel

by Mesha Maren

  In the bright lights of the ER lobby, she gave Dennis’s name and her parents’ phone number to the nurse.

  “He’ll be all right?”

  The nurse stared at Jodi, working a piece of chewing gum fast between her teeth.

  “I mean, it just hit his arm, he won’t die, right?”

  “Well,” the nurse said, moving her gum to the other side of her mouth. “It don’t sound like he’s in danger of dying, honey.”

  Jodi nodded. “I’m just gonna go right outside and smoke, okay?”

  She found Ricky out front, watching the rain. Jodi studied his face, the fuzz of untrimmed whiskers and deep wrinkles around his eyes. Back in the truck, after he’d bandaged and carried Dennis, she’d felt something that was almost gratitude toward him but now as she watched his moody face she felt an anger rise again.

  “So Rosalba told you that you shouldn’t have gone looking for her?”

  Ricky shrugged and looked down at his feet.

  Out on the highway an ambulance siren began to scream.

  Jodi sucked hard on her cigarette. She was sick with a wild vertigo, and though she tried not to think about it, she could suddenly see all her messy loyalties unspooling and coiling down the hillside before her, all the links and chains of mistakes, and she pictured the lines of Ricky’s desire crisscrossing and snarling in with hers, him so bent on rescuing Rosalba and her so bent on saving him.

  “You almost got my fucking brother killed. You know that?”

  Ricky glanced up but his face was blank and he did not say anything.

  “I loved Paula,” Jodi went on. “I really did and I thought I owed it to her to save you.”

  Ricky wrinkled his eyebrows. “Rosalba told me you can’t save somebody,” he said.

  He pulled out his pack of Winstons and lit one, cupping the flame out of the rain. She felt a kick of fury at him for being so fucking calm and taking it all so easy.

  “I found your newspaper story,” she said. “The one about you being a murderer.”

  Ricky paused, cigarette halfway to his mouth, and stared down the hill toward the highway where a pair of taillights blinked and disappeared.

  “But it was Dylan, right?” She’d thrown the words like arrows, expecting that they’d hit his heart and turn him vulnerable, but he showed no emotion.

  “You’ve been digging through my personal things?” He cut his eyes over to Jodi.

  “I . . . It was raining on your papers and . . .” She could not meet his stare. “I don’t understand why Paula never told me.”

  Ricky brought his cigarette to his lips and inhaled. “Well, we need to focus on Miranda’s boys now,” he said. “Need to watch over those boys.”

  It was not until after midnight that Jodi and Ricky could head home, after Irene and Andy and Veeda arrived, frantic and crying, after Jodi mumbled an explanation of the “bar fight” Dennis had gotten into, after they’d smoked two whole packs of cigarettes, and finally the nurses had come out and proclaimed Dennis stable.

  On the drive home Ricky explained to Jodi how Rosalba had told him that he needed to watch out for Miranda’s boys.

  “She said there was a man come out there to the trailers and was asking around about Miranda and her boys.”

  Jodi felt a trap door swing open inside her and she was floating, almost plummeting. “What?”

  “A man with black hair and a mustache, asking did she know Miranda Golden?”

  “Fuck,” Jodi said as the last of the adrenaline energy left her body, her hands barely guiding the steering wheel. “You think it was Lee?”

  “Lee don’t have black hair.”

  Jodi exhaled a long breath. “When was he there?”

  Ricky brought his hands together in front of his face, as if praying. “Rosalba says I’m to take care of those boys, watch over them.” He turned toward the window, staring out at the roadside where the glow of animal eyes reflected in the headlights.

  At the house Miranda came out onto the porch carrying an oil lamp. “Where have you been?” she said. “What the hell’s going on?”

  Ricky walked past her inside and Jodi came slowly up the front steps, petting Butter on the head. She was too tired to even open her mouth.

  “Jo, baby, you look awful.” Miranda grabbed her arm and pulled her close. “Why are you driving Dennis’s truck? Are you hurt? You’re hurt.”

  Jodi brought her head down to rest on Miranda’s shoulder, nuzzling her face in against her neck. She thought suddenly that if she could just feel the warm weight of Miranda’s body in her hands, then everything would be okay. “We might have to go on a little vacation,” she said.

  “Where have you and Ricky been?” Miranda pulled Jodi inside.

  “I mean, we might have to get out of town for a minute. Don’t you think the boys would like to go camping?”

  Miranda’s blonde hair was flashing in the lamplight, her eyes bright as she bent close to Jodi. “Baby, what are you talking about?”

  “There’s a man in town asking around about you, Miranda, looking for you and the boys.”

  Miranda looked away.

  “We just need to lay low, get out of town for a little bit, okay?” Jodi gripped the sweet warmth of Miranda’s fingers and her eyes ached. She really did love this woman, she thought—funny, because for so long she’d been sure it was only lust.

  “Everything’ll be all right. We’ll just go on a little vacation,” she said, “and when we come back Lynn will have her gala and pay for the land and we can start for real here, get some chickens, a couple of yearlings, get the boys signed up for school.” Jodi could hear the frantic cadence of her own voice but she wanted to believe the words too.

  In the morning Jodi walked to Farren’s house and asked him to help get the Chevette out of the ditch on Snake Run. She’d figured they might have to call a tow truck but when they got there only the front right tire was flat and the nose a little buckled in. They eased it up out of the ditch with Farren’s truck and put on the spare tire and then Jodi followed Farren back through Render. A gauzy fog hung over the river, lit here and there by spears of sunlight, and the town was coming awake now, cars backing out of driveways and a waitress at the Bantam Chef turning the sign on the door to open. As she drove, Jodi let herself be lulled into an optimistic attitude. She and Miranda had stayed up the night before, talking until Jodi could not keep herself awake. They’d decided to head for Moncove Lake and now, she thought, with the car functioning, everything really would work out okay. But as she followed Farren around the last bend of the lane she saw that Dennis’s truck was gone from the yard.

  “Miranda?” she hollered, jerking up the emergency brake. “Ricky?”

  The front door hung open and the house was empty. There were half-eaten sandwiches on the table and Miranda’s pink dress drying on the back of a chair and when Farren’s truck motor cut off she heard voices in the woods behind the shed.

  They found Ricky and the boys in the back field, standing in a semicircle around a midsize copperhead snake.

  “Everybody back up,” Farren said, grabbing Ross and carrying him a good ten feet away.

  “Look, it’s swimming in the grass!” Donnie said.

  Farren found a chunk of limestone and followed the snake until he could drop it, square on that reddish head. The body bunched and twisted even after the rock was in place.

  “Why’d you kill him?” Kaleb cried, tugging on Farren’s pant leg.

  “Poison,” Farren said. “You can’t have the poison ones around.”

  “But what about his soul?” Kaleb said. The skin along his arms, where he’d been pinching it, was covered in a trail of bruised-blue half-moons. “Neenee says all God’s creatures have mighty souls.”

  Farren’s lips twitched. “I don’t know about a snake soul.” He sucked hard on his cigarette, then threw it down and ground it out.

  “Hey.” Jodi turned to Ricky. “Where’s Miranda?”

  “We come out here for bla
ckberries,” he said, “but we found that snake.”

  “How long’s Miranda been gone?”

  “Justin come by and she said she had to go to work for a little bit.”

  “She doesn’t work in the morning,” Jodi snapped.

  Ricky shrugged and looked down at Butter who was sniffing the air and staring at the now still snake. Jodi wanted badly to blame Ricky for Miranda’s disappearance—it seemed easiest just to blame him for everything—and a part of her, though she hated to admit it, wanted to forge a new plan with Miranda and the boys and leave Ricky out of it. He seemed now like a heavy, tangled weight.

  When they came out of the woods Dennis’s rusty pickup was parked in the yard and, beside it, a shiny black car that had to be Lynn’s.

  “Somebody’s visiting,” Ricky said, and Jodi felt a lunge of annoyance at the obviousness of his words.

  “Yeah, no shit,” she said, walking walked faster until she was up beside Kaleb. She grabbed his right hand and he squirmed but she held tight. Over the past week he had grown more quiet and fidgety, picking at his own arms until they bled and scabbed. Jodi looked down at him as he fondled the dimpled indents in his skin, and she thought of his words: Sometimes Mom needs help.

  “Don’t pick at yourself,” she said.

  He stopped walking and stared up at her, a wave of anger crowding his face. Jodi looked away, toward the house, and squeezed his fingers too tightly.

  Lynn and Miranda stood side by side on the porch, Lynn in a floor-length purple dress and Miranda wearing tiny cutoff shorts and a baggy black T-shirt. She was so skinny. How, Jodi wondered, had she not noticed before just how skinny Miranda had gotten?

  “You never told me your girlfriend was a concert pianist.” Lynn caught Jodi’s eye as they walked up.

  “No, no, no, that’s not what I said.” Miranda shook her head.

  “Maybe she should play at our gala.” Lynn smiled, her teeth flashing between her red lips.

  “I don’t perform anymore.” Miranda sat down on the edge of the porch and lit a cigarette. Her hand shook as she raised it to her lips and her pupils were wildly dilated.

  “When is it?” Jodi said, glancing from Miranda to Lynn. “The gala.”

  Lynn moved to the porch steps, her high heel catching in a gap between two boards. She grabbed the side of the house to steady herself and her face flushed and in that moment of lost composure she looked suddenly sweet to Jodi.

  “Tomorrow evening,” she said.

  “Tomorrow?”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. I kept meaning to come here and let you know but I figured you’d be free.”

  She walked down into the yard.

  “I’m thinking of making a documentary.” Her eyes moved over Jodi’s shoulder and out across the pasture. “I’m just not sure what medium would best express . . . You know, it’s not just fracking and mining that threaten this place. There are people who have land here who . . . well, who just don’t even know how to care.” She walked past Jodi, off toward the boundary fence and the Persinger place. “They put up those old asbestos trailers and then they abandon them or they so overburden the land, so many people living on one piece of land. You know I acquired ten acres off this family last month—”

  “And what do you do with the land?” Jodi followed behind, her pulse jumping.

  “Preserve it.”

  “Free of people?”

  “Well, no, not necessarily.” Lynn looked back over her shoulder. Her eyes were bright and lips almost smiling. “Hey, look, we’re on the same team here. I’m not trying to take your land from you. I’m trying to get it back.”

  Jodi dropped her gaze and nodded.

  “Mom?” a voice cried from behind them. “Mawwm-mom!”

  Jodi turned to see Ross tearing across the yard, a snarl of bees swirling around his tiny legs.

  “Oh, shit.” She lunged after him as he ran toward the porch with Butter close behind, yelping and snapping.

  “Owww!” Ross screamed, flapping his hands at his sides.

  Miranda rose from the porch and ran to him, gathering him up into her arms and brushing the bees away as she moved toward the cabin.

  “Miranda, here, let me see,” Jodi called, but by the time she made it to the porch Miranda was already inside, the screen door slapping closed behind her.

  “Yellow jackets,” Ricky said, moving past Jodi. “We’ll put tobacco on it.”

  “Toothpaste,” Farren called from the yard, and Ricky turned to him.

  “Toothpaste?”

  “And garlic.” Farren nodded. “But tobacco won’t hurt none either.”

  Lynn looked from Ricky to Farren. “Folk remedies?”

  Farren headed off toward his truck.

  Lynn looked up at Jodi. “Tomorrow evening,” she said. “Can you come around five? I’d love it if you could say something too, you know, nothing formal, just something heartfelt about growing up on this land.”

  Jodi nodded but she could not wipe away the mental image of an organ grinder’s monkey with his little cup of money.

  Miranda and Ross struggled beside the kitchen sink, Miranda gripping Ross’s legs as he bucked and cried.

  “Is he allergic?” Jodi asked. Miranda shook her head.

  Jodi pressed in beside them. “We’ll put tobacco on it.”

  “Gotta get the stingers out first.” Miranda jerked his leg up toward the light from the window.

  “No, no, don’t do that.” Jodi lifted Ross into her own arms. “Yellow jackets don’t leave stingers.”

  Miranda looked up, her face full of ugly hate. “Don’t fucking tell me how to take care of my own kid,” she said.

  Jodi stepped back, stunned, and then moved to lay Ross down on the counter. He’d been stung three times on one leg and twice on the other. “Hand me a cigarette, please,” she said.

  “You think you know so much.”

  Jodi glanced at Miranda. She was sweating and breathing heavily.

  “Miranda,” she said. “Where’d you go this morning?”

  Miranda looked away out the window.

  Jodi pulled a cigarette from her own pocket and broke it open, turning back to Ross. His cries had subsided to whimpers and his body relaxed a little as she pressed the tobacco against his shins.

  Behind her Miranda laughed, or maybe cried.

  “Hey,” Jodi said. “I tell you there’s a man in town looking for you and the boys and this is what you do? You just take off and leave them alone here?” She turned to look at Miranda. She was crying.

  “You shot her,” she said slowly. “It wasn’t an accident. Justin told me.”

  Neither of them moved. The pitcher pump dripped into the sink. Out the window the clouds had shifted and a darkness settled over the room.

  Jodi pulled Ross up into her arms again. She brushed past Miranda without looking at her. “You’ll be all right, you just need to lie down and rest now,” she whispered, carrying Ross into the bedroom.

  He looked so small in the big bed in that shadowed room, that same room that Jodi had slept in every night of her childhood, in this house that only seven weeks before she had believed she would never see again.

  “What’s wrong with Mama? Why’s she crying?” Ross whispered.

  Jodi straightened his pillow. “She’s fine. It’ll be fine,” she said.

  Miranda was huddled on the front porch, knees tucked up under her chin.

  “What kind of shit are you on?” Jodi said, lowering herself onto the step beside her.

  Miranda barked out a quick laugh. “It’s not that. I’m coming down now, I’m fine, it’s just . . .” Her pale hands flapped frantically in front of her face. “You know, I’m glad somebody finally told me the truth.”

  Jodi gripped the edge of the wooden stair. Her limbs were leaden and the white fear was creeping in again, blank and too thick to move through.

  “Did you do some crystal? Is that what you were doing with Justin this morning?”
/>   Miranda took a deep drag on her cigarette. “Everybody thought I already knew. Here I am, so stupid I believed your gun accident lies and nobody told me any different ’cause they all thought I knew.”

  Jodi sat silently. She felt powerless to speak or to move.

  “I did know there was something on you, though.” Miranda looked over at Jodi. “Something dark all over you and I think I liked it. It’s like a . . . What do they call it when you know you’ve been somewhere before?” She looked down at her palm and blinked. “Déjà vu!” she said. “First time I saw you, it was like that. I knew it. It’s like that thing you can’t say but it’s in the back of your mind all the time and then somebody says it and it’s like a bell, right out loud.”

  Miranda’s hands seemed unconnected to her, they flapped in an odd rhythm, swirling her cigarette against the sky and grabbing at her own hair.

  “You know how sometimes your mind is such a big, lonely place?” Miranda said. “I mean, it’s really small, actually, I mean, I think sometimes about the space inside my skull and it’s really small but it gets so lonely.”

  Jodi still could not move but she felt herself thawing just a little. She’s going to let it go, she thought. Maybe it was the meth but Miranda couldn’t seem to keep her mind focused and Jodi felt herself relaxing a little now that the conversation seemed to be twisting away from Paula. She exhaled and Miranda turned and looked right through her.

  “Why’d you kill her?”

  “No.” Jodi closed her eyes. Her heart was beating too fast. “No, it wasn’t like that.” Breathe, she told herself, breathe. Maybe it was better that they just get this conversation over with. No more secrets. No more lies. She should have told Miranda already. If she loved her, she should have told her.