Property of the State

by Bill Cameron

  “They said he—”

  “Yesterday, yes. He looked right at me. This morning he spoke.”

  “What did he say?”

  A crazy trill comes out of her. Laughter, I think. “He said he was thirsty.” She releases my hand. Sensation is slow in returning.

  I’d expected to see his head wrapped in bandages, a mummy turban. His head has been shaved, but aside from a single white gauze rectangle behind his ear, there’s no evidence of injury.

  “Maybe I should go.”

  “No, please. You can talk to him. Familiar voices are important, they say. You can help him find his way back to us.”

  “I wouldn’t know what to say.”

  “Just the sound of your voice is enough.” Her own voice pleads. “I’ll leave you two alone.”

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  “I don’t want you to feel self-conscious. I need a coffee anyway. Would you like me to bring you some chocolate?”

  Duncan must have never explained me to her, the pleb foster kid who knocked him haywire in an accident of physics. Before I can say anything else, she clasps her hands and backs out of the room. “Talk to him.” As she disappears around the corner, I hear her final plea: “Please.”

  I sit on the edge of the chair she vacated.

  I don’t know why I’m here. In a day or two, he’ll tell the cops who hit him. When it isn’t me, they’ll leave me alone. Right?

  Right.

  If not this, it’ll be something else. Most likely Wayne will convince them I assaulted him. Joey’s brutal facial bleeding caused my urinary PTSD. I’m pressing charges! As if simply running away isn’t enough reason for them to fuck my life.

  “Getchie.”

  Duncan’s voice is so weak I’m not sure he spoke at first. His eyes are half-open, milky and unfocused. I lean forward in the chair, try to think of something profound to say. All I come up with is, “Hey.”

  “Your face.”

  I reach up, touch the memory of the scab next to my nose. The bruises are fading, the swelling long gone. “It’s nothing. A disagreement over a game of chess.” I smile, but I can’t tell if he gets the joke. His face still has that muddiness. But when I stand up to move to the side of the bed, his eyes follow.

  “Off—” He closes his eyes for a moment and his tongue runs over his lip. When he opens them again, his gaze is clearer. “You said.”

  “What did I say?”

  “You said…off-Book.”

  “Yeah, go off-Book. I heard it worked.”

  “Yes.” He draws a breath. “No.”

  “No? Courtney said—”

  “Where…Court?”

  “She’s at school. It’s school time now.”

  “Where…Courtney?”

  I don’t know how else to answer his question. Maybe he doesn’t understand me anyway.

  “Tell me about the game. You beat Philip. You’re first board.”

  “First.”

  “That’s right. Four out of seven.” According to club rules, Philip can’t challenge Duncan to recapture the rank until he wins three games each against the two board ranks below him. Courtney and Colin Botha, I guess. Will he bother? I hate chess, he told his mother. Losing first board might be what he really wants.

  “Court…helped.”

  “She’s smart. Sure. Said you got inside his head.”

  “Where is she?”

  “She’s at school.”

  He half nods, but I can’t tell if he understands me. “I won…at school.”

  “I know. Good job.”

  “He didn’t like…the violins.”

  At first I think he says something else. Violence.

  “What’s that?”

  “The violins…the violins.”

  His lips twist into something which might be a smile.

  “He didn’t like…I saw Italy…the violin.”

  He’s not exactly making sense, but it’s clear Duncan found out about Philip’s hidden talent. Such a weird thing to hide, especially at a school like Katz. Chess genius and violin virtuoso? Philip would be a rock star.

  He must have his reasons, but still.

  I wonder if that’s how Courtney helped Duncan. I bet she’s good at unearthing skeletons. If Duncan sprung the big secret at a key moment during the deciding seventh game, it might have been enough to rattle Philip.

  Maybe that’s what Mrs. Huntzel was angry about.

  Angry enough to…?

  Duncan’s gaze drifts. I let out a long, slow breath. It’s come down to it. The question. For a moment I’m afraid to open my mouth, but then I picture Courtney’s face and it spills out of me. “Do you know who ran you over on Forty-ninth?”

  His eyes go wide and level on a spot past my shoulder, but I can’t tell if he hears me. Or if he could understand the question if he did.

  Either way, it doesn’t matter. One of the machines beside his bed starts to beep. A second later I’m at the center of chaos.

  2.5: Détente

  A nurse drags me out of the room. “What? What’s happening?” No one answers. Grim-faced figures in scrubs rush past me. I recognize Mrs. Blount as she blows by. Someone guides me past the nurse’s station. “You’ll need to wait out here.”

  “Is Duncan okay?”

  A firm hand pushes me into a small waiting area. Vomit-green carpet, one of those ubiquitous plastic plants. A TV hangs from the wall, tuned to some bottom-feeder reality show. Shouting women in a restaurant, all looking like a cosmetics counter exploded in their faces. One of them throws wine. The sound, mercifully, is off.

  I sit down in a chair that feels like it was made from modeling clay. Duncan’s beeping invades from beyond the nurses station, beeping and voices. So many voices, I can’t make out the words. I can’t see into his room. I’m far from home. I don’t know where else to go. I have no home. I tilt my head back against the wall, close my eyes and see Duncan’s muddy face. But when I open them, it’s worse. The words of Trisha’s poem bounce at the edge of sight, beyond the angry women and shaking fists. A tampon commercial offers the only relief.

  I lean forward and rest my forehead on my hands. Think of Duncan on the bench outside Cooper’s corral.

  “Who are you?”

  I open my eyes. Across the waiting area there’s a flash of copper hair and surprised eyes. Too quick, the figure disappears past the nurses station.

  “I asked you a question.”

  With a start, I realize someone is sitting near me, back in the corner. Long-legged and lean, sandy blond hair and a heavy face, a few years older than me. Leaning back with arms folded and legs crossed at the ankle.

  He looks like Duncan, taller and older. And angrier.

  “You’re Getchie, aren’t you?”

  I swallow and nod. He wasn’t here when the nurse pulled me out of Duncan’s room. He must be Damon, but my mind is on the figure with the copper hair, a woman. Did I imagine her? Was it Mrs. Huntzel?

  “What are you doing here?”

  I shake my head, a bag of nerves. “Uh—” I turn to Damon, flustered. His glare is like an interrogation lamp in an old movie. “Courtney told me he woke up.”

  He regards me for a long moment, longer than I can hold his gaze. I find the television, still silent but now showing a news broadcast.

  “Yeah. He woke up. For all the good it did him.”

  “What do you mean?” I don’t know how long I’ve been here. Too long. I feel disconnected from time. Somewhere, a high-pitched tone squeals. Mrs. Huntzel is nowhere to be seen.

  He unfolds and gets to his feet, looms over me. “What I mean is my brother is dead.” He pauses for a beat, not long enough for me to react. “Does he have you to thank for that?”

  Does he?

  I asked the question af
ter all, and then all hell broke loose. I shake my head, horrified.

  “No.” Damon takes it as a denial. “Of course not.” The fury in his voice makes clear what he thinks.

  “I just wanted to see him.” I peer across the room, still searching for Mrs. Huntzel.

  “You saw him. Satisfied?”

  I’m not sure what I am. Numb. Confused. I stand. A helicopter shot of a wreck on I-5 fills the TV screen, three cars a tangle of twisted metal. A hollow disorientation fills me. I never should have come.

  I duck my head and try to move past him, but he grabs my forearm.

  “What I don’t get is why he liked you.”

  “What?” I speak into his shoulder, try to pull away.

  “Duncan. He liked you.” He doesn’t let go. “You didn’t even know.”

  Détente. According to Merriam-Webster, it’s “the easing of hostility or strained relations.” It never occurred to me Duncan liked me. How could he? He didn’t even know me.

  “He liked that I told him how to beat Philip at chess.”

  “You’re an idiot.”

  Tell me about it. I pull away again. This time he lets me go.

  2.6: Springtime of Death

  For a while, I wander the hospital corridors looking for Mrs. Huntzel. I don’t find her, can’t be sure she was even here. At some point, I’m outside, one foot in front of the other pulling me along. A long time. I don’t remember how I get to Uncommon Cup. I find myself standing at the counter staring at a barista I’ve never met, an old guy with a red birthmark on his neck, visible above his V-neck tee and gray cardigan. One gray eyebrow crawls up his forehead like a caterpillar, a shaggy question mark.

  “What?” If Marcy was working, I wouldn’t have to speak.

  “Anyone home?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “I said, what’ll it be, bud?”

  “Oh.” I can’t remember what I usually get. I look up at the menu board as if it can tell me. The letters might as well be Chinese. After a moment of indecision, I order a coffee with room. He pours me a mug without asking if I want to stick around. It doesn’t matter. I don’t have to be at work for at least an hour. Assuming I still have a job to go to after I bailed on the cops and Mrs. Petty this morning. My next foster home will probably be in Idaho.

  When I turn around, I see Trisha sitting with the fish. Pages are spread out over the table in front of her, along with a half dozen pens—all different colors. She’s not writing. Her nose is aimed at a book in one hand while the other strokes one of her long braids. I can’t tell if she’s even noticed me. My body is a shadow cast through ice.

  The half-and-half pitcher is empty, but I don’t want to face the old guy again, so I continue to the fish table and sit down. I wrap my hands around my cup, trying to wring warmth from it. The coffee has no more flavor than the color brown. Maybe it’s just me.

  Trisha looks up from her book. “‘It was autumn, the springtime of death.’”

  “What?” I search for her eyes, but I can’t quite find them.

  “Tom Robbins?” She waves the book at me. “Still Life With Woodpecker?”

  “Oh.”

  “Don’t you read?”

  The question makes me think of Kristina, but then I wonder if Trisha is referring to her poem. I shake my head, attempt a laugh to cover my confusion. “Sure, I read.” I just read The Crucible, I think. Or was that last week? I can’t remember.

  “Not enough, apparently.”

  “Okay.”

  “Joey.”

  I’m still cold.

  “What’s wrong?” Her voice changes.

  “I’m still cold.”

  Now she’s staring at me, but her eyes are like dark, orbiting stars. A little coffee splashes out of the mug onto my hands. Distantly, I imagine heat.

  “What happened?”

  “Duncan is dead.” I can’t believe I come right out and say it. Duncan is dead. I don’t say things like that. Maybe I do.

  Do you know who ran you over?

  She sets the book down. I close my eyes, but I don’t like what I see on the backs of my eyelids. When I open them again, her face is a sheet of glass.

  “How did you find out?”

  I caused it. I suck in a breath and watch the coffee splash out again.

  “From his brother.”

  A long, heavy silence hangs between us. Then, “Why did it have to happen?”

  The question makes no sense. Trisha understands as well as anyone there is no why. Shit happens isn’t just some hipster tee-shirt philosophy. Fosters know this better than anyone. Our lives are one long string of shit happening. Life’s a bite and then you die. Along the way, you leave bits of flesh on every snag. What’s up? Oh, you know, bleeding out. Same as every other day.

  Trisha knows this. Her hands press against the tabletop as if she’s trying to keep it from flying away. I look at the manuscript pages and their riot of multicolored lines, tiny, carefully scripted words. I’ve never seen how she does it. How the words happen, how they become something from nothing. Is it like a puzzle, pieces moved with colored pens? I’ve only ever seen the poem on her laptop.

  “I never—” got to talk to you about your poem. She cuts me off.

  “When…?”

  She’s still thinking about Duncan. I want to think about anything else.

  “A little while ago.”

  A long time ago, I woke up strapped to a gurney as a sagging house burned. I coughed blood across the white sheet wrapped across my legs and chest. Someone tried to put an oxygen mask over my face, but I shook it off. Through the open doorway beneath the blazing roof, I could see my sister’s crib—a bonfire, the flames so hot they screamed. “Brave kid,” a voice said. “The fire was too much for him,” someone else added. They didn’t know what the fuck they were talking about. I wasn’t brave. I was responsible. Then I was rolling away, rolling away, wheels of the gurney rattling across hard dirt, as Trisha’s face pushes through the smoke. A hand squeezes my shoulder, the grip hot and iron tight. I flinch and twist in my chair. Drop the mug.

  It shatters at Mrs. Petty’s feet. With it, the real world crashes down around me.

  2.7: Back in the Boobie Hatch

  Where are we going?

  I’m afraid to ask out loud. My new home, I assume. We’re in the Impala, awash in the stink of rust and burning oil, like we’re riding inside the muffler. The stench of exhaust and the terror of being in her passenger seat cuts through the fog in my head. A little.

  “It’s not your fault, Joey.”

  “Says who?”

  She shuts up. Fine with me. I don’t want to fight with her. She wouldn’t call it fighting. She’d call it trying to have a conversation. Conversing with Mrs. Petty can be a contact sport, especially when I don’t know what’s on her mind. As we tear along, bouncing over curbs and dodging oncoming cars on one-way streets, I think about Reid. Next appointment, he’ll want to talk about Duncan again. Some days, twenty-eight minutes is a lifetime.

  How do you feel about Duncan’s death?

  I don’t know.

  Do you miss him?

  Why would I miss him?

  You weren’t friends?

  You know we weren’t.

  Do you wish you could have been friends?

  He was an asshole.

  But do you wish you could have been friends?

  I get it—I’m an asshole too.

  Do you feel responsible for his death?

  Fuck you, Reid—

  Well, do you?

  “Yes.”

  We’ve stopped. Mrs. Petty shuts the engine down and looks at me, her eyes sharp. “What was that, Joey?”

  “What was what?”

  She shakes her head and gets out of the car. I sit there for a minute, relishing
the stillness. Already Trisha and Uncommon Cup feel like ages ago. Somehow that thought fills me with an unaccountable sadness, but I tell myself I’ve survived a trip in the Pettymobile. One problem down, another staring me in the face.

  We’re at the Boobie Hatch.

  I don’t talk. Can’t. Mrs. Petty doesn’t seem to notice. Wayne is talking enough for all of us.

  “So good to see you again, Hedda. Anita was just asking about you the other day. She’s doing fine, by the way.”

  There’s pink in Wayne’s cheeks, sweat in his crew cut. The day is anything but hot. When he meets my gaze, his eyes narrow and I detect the slightest shake of his head.

  Is he covering for me?

  We follow him inside. The old TV has been replaced. Forty inches of flat-screen gazes at me, the high def so crisp I can make out cracks in the news anchor’s foundation makeup. Is this what a week’s worth of foster stipend buys? The sound is off, a development I find even more unnerving than Wayne’s speed-jabber. The place is tidy, too, despite the fact I haven’t been around to act as Cinderella. Even the mildew base note has been Febreezed into submission.

  But the next surprise is my cell.

  It’s not empty. And by not empty, I mean there are shirts hanging in the closet, socks and boxers neatly rolled in the dresser. It’s not great stuff. Goodwill pickups, but it’s clean and not so different from the stuff I’ve been wearing all my life.

  I catch myself staring at Wayne. He’s still running at the mouth, but I can barely hear him, or Mrs. Petty’s clipped attempts to get a word in. She’s mostly focused on her search, ignoring the hides she already knows about but tapping the bottoms of drawers and looking on the underside of the bed springs.

  “How’s he been?” I hear her say.

  “Oh, you know Joey!”

  I feel myself backing into the doorway. The temptation to run is almost irresistible. A voice in the back of my head tells me I have to sit tight. It makes a kind of lunatic sense. Wayne Bobbitt—ex-Marine—may be a coward, but he’s a clever coward. For nine days he’s been sitting in this house, distracting himself with his new TV, waiting for the hammer to drop. With a single phone call from Mrs. Petty to set up this visit, he realized I haven’t ratted him out. I’ve been somewhere else, hiding just like him. And now, if the truth comes out, we’re both busted.