The Poor and the Haunted

by Dustin McKissen

  Jimmy sat face-to-face with a substance so rare it almost exists in the same universe as the precious metals of comic book science: unobligated love. He didn’t know what to say, but he had the good sense to recognize the rarity before him, and just as he did that day in the barn, he opened his eyes wide and took the full view in.

  “What do I need to do? I mean, to get into ASU?” he asked, hoping he masked the wobble in his voice.

  “Apply, just like you did for the schools here. Once you’ve sent in your application, give me a call and let me know.”

  Jimmy did his part, submitting his ACT scores and transcripts to Arizona State. In the essay he wrote about overcoming adversity, he did not mention his father’s death, his mother’s addiction, or the fact that he raised his little sister. He knew kids who made a mountain out of some relatively small tragedy in their application letters: the death of a distant cousin, a Godparent’s leukemia diagnosis. Jimmy wouldn’t do that.

  He would not take someone’s pity, would not be some college admission officer’s charity case. Instead, he wrote an essay about training to become a champion cross-country runner, about willing yourself through the last mile of a long race. If a school wanted Jimmy Lansford enough to pay for him to be there, it was going to be because he was fast and smart—not because he was the child of screw-ups.

  After Jimmy submitted his application, Carlisle did what he said he would do. Tim Deaderick coached the Arizona State baseball team. Carlisle and Deaderick had once been the poorest kids on the OU baseball team. In those days, Carlisle supplemented his scholarship with a job in the school’s cafeteria, and every time Tim Deaderick came through the line Carlisle put extra meat on his friend’s grilled ham and cheese. Deaderick supplemented his own scholarship with a job at a department store in downtown Norman, where he would set aside damaged t-shirts and jeans in Carlisle’s size.

  It was the first time anyone had Tim Deaderick or Mike Carlisle’s back.

  Tim Deaderick put in a word to ASU’s cross-country coach, called in a few additional favors of his own, and five weeks after Jimmy submitted his application he received a packet from Arizona State University. It was, for the most part, the same as the packets he received from the Oklahoma schools, filled with glossy brochures and a letter that began with the words “We are happy to inform you.”

  There was one important difference, however, and that was the number that came after the words “expected family contribution.” The number on that line from each Oklahoma school was small, and for most families more than manageable. For Jimmy, even a small contribution was a deal-breaker.

  The number on the expected family contribution line in the Arizona State packet was zero.

  As Jimmy stood in his room looking at the letter, a now fifteen-year-old Kelly by his side, his eyes welled up. They were going to leave Oklahoma on a maroon and gold magic carpet—Aladdin with a street-urchin sister in place of Jasmine.

  In the living room, their mother screamed at Pat Sajak while ashing her cigarette on the carpet. This was a habit of hers, the floor around the couch pocked with burn marks. Though Diane’s looks hadn’t faded, the unexplained disappearance of Roger Crowder left her more bitter than ever. In her mind, Roger displaced Ronnie as the great lost love of her life. Diane blamed her children for driving away both of her men.

  “We’re leaving,” Kelly whispered, leaning against her brother. Neither one of them had ever seen anything as beautiful as Arizona State maroon. “We’re leaving.”

  “What do you think Phoenix will be like?” Jimmy asked.

  Kelly looked down the hallway toward their mother, then out their bedroom window. Her brown eyes passed over their patchy yard, crossing the rutted street to the first plywood-windowed mobile home—and then soared skyward, past the Garrity city limit sign, over Interstate 40, across the rolling green hills in better parts of Oklahoma, past cowboy-hatted Amarillo, across the sagebrush of New Mexico, over the snow-capped mountains in Northern Arizona, and down Interstate 17 until the air became warmer and warmer, until her gaze pulled into a nondescript apartment complex with nondescript community mailboxes and nondescript people who simply left you alone—or, even better, occasionally said hello.

  “Better,” she said. “It will be better.”

  Diane took notice of the love and light down the hallway. It was hard to miss, the room pulsing with something wholly alien to her: unobligated love.

  That night, after Jimmy looked around their room to consider what he would take with him to Arizona (almost nothing, he decided, just his clothes and his trophies) and had fallen asleep, Diane crept in and sat on the side of his bed.

  “Wake up,” she said.

  He didn’t wake up. There were few times in his life when Jimmy Lansford slept happy and exhausted, and this was one of them.

  “Wake the fuck up, Jimmy,” Diane hissed, punching him in the side.

  “Huh, what?? What are you doing in here? Mom?”

  Diane sat on the edge of the bed, her sleeveless yellow Def Leopard shirt practically glowing in the dark. She took the last drag of a cigarette and stubbed it out on Jimmy’s dresser. She long ago stopped caring if she burned the house down. In her drug-addled brain, she assumed a fire might even bring insurance money. She was wrong. Diane’s only claim on their home was a Section 8 voucher.

  “Follow me outside,” she said.

  Jimmy waited until she left before getting out from under the blankets. He always wore sweatpants and a t-shirt to bed, aware that despite their closeness, he was sharing a room with his teenage sister. He could not sleep in his boxers like his friend Brian did. He looked over at Kelly, still sound asleep. He slipped on his Nikes and walked down the hall, knowing his mother would be on the back porch, smoking and looking out at their backyard and the Firebird.

  Jimmy opened the door and stepped outside. Diane kept her back to him.

  “Big man, huh?” She said, her back still to him.

  “What?”

  “Big man thinks he’s hot shit. Just like his father. Ha!”

  More than anything, Jimmy was bone-tired of this woman and her hunchback soul.

  “Mom, what are you talking about?”

  She turned to look at him, the Arizona State letter in her hand.

  “You think you’re going to college? Big man thinks he’s going to college? You aren’t better than me. You aren’t smarter than me.”

  Jimmy lunged at the letter, and Diane jabbed his forearm with the lit end of her cigarette. He refused to grimace or show any pain. He knew it was wrong to be proud of being able to take a cigarette burn, but he learned at an early age that reacting in any way would only result in another burn. He also knew in his bones that any idiot can throw a punch—Ronnie did it all the time—but only a man can take one and get back up.

  “Where did you get that?” He asked.

  “You think I don’t know you two hide shit from me?”

  Looking at her made Jimmy feel the acid start to gather in his throat.

  “I don’t want to do this, mom. Can I go to bed?”

  For once in his life Jimmy wished she would go to the Firebird, open a few beers, and put herself to sleep.

  “Jimmy Lansford. Let me tell you something. I don’t give a FUCK where you go to school. Go to fucking college in Alaska for all I care, you selfish fucking INGRATE. I put food on your table and a roof over your head and don’t even get a fucking thank you. You just leave me. Fine. Fuck you. I don’t love you, either.”

  “If you don’t care, then why are you out here talking to me?”

  “Because I don’t give a fuck where you go, but you’re not taking her with you,” Diane said, motioning her j
aw toward the house.

  So that’s what this is about, Jimmy thought. A custody fight. With his own mother. Over a kid she appeared to be indifferent to, except when she ordered Kelly to “make me some fucking eggs.”

  “Oh, I am. I am taking her,” Jimmy said. “Kelly’s coming with me.”

  “The fuck she is.”

  “Why do you even want her? You don’t care about us. You never have.”

  “Oh,” she said, trying on her flirty voice. The sound of it made Jimmy’s stomach rise even farther in his throat. “Is my baby boy jealous that his sister is mommy’s favorite? Do you want to be mommy’s favorite? Do you?”

  “Stay away from me,” he said. Then, he added something he wanted to say for a long time. “Me and Kelly would be better off if you killed yourself like dad.”

  She flicked what was left of her cigarette at Jimmy, the lit end missing his ear, and laughed. Jimmy could not understand—would never understand—how a person came to be like his mother. Or his father.

  “You don’t think I wish that too? You don’t think I want to put a knife in my own eye, like your piece-of-shit father did?”

  “What do you want, mom? You want Kelly to stay? Here? In this house? With you? She’s coming with me. End of story.”

  She lit a fresh cigarette and took a long drag.

  “You know,” she said. “I don’t think that is the end of the story.”

  “Fuck off, Diane” Jimmy said.

  They played games like this before. He was tired and knew she would forget about Arizona State and Kelly coming with him as soon as she passed out. He walked by her, ready to go back to bed. As he grabbed the doorknob, Diane spoke again.

  “You know, it isn’t natural that the two of you share a room,” she said. “The way you two are always in there. Keeping secrets. It’s not right.”

  Despite everything, Jimmy never thought about killing his mother, of sending her to whatever hell held his father.

  Until that night.

  “Shut your mouth. Diane.”

  “Ha! Big man. Hot shit. You know, I’m pretty sure I heard some weird stuff coming out of that room. Moaning and whatnot. Were you touching your sister? You know, maybe I should call the police.”

  “You’re sick. Why don’t you call the police? I’ll give you his number.”

  “You mean that black cop you’re always with? No, I don’t think I’ll call him. I’m pretty sure he’s in on it too. Him helping my son molest his own sister. Fucking pig. Fucking black pig.”

  “No one will believe you. You’re a whore. And a junkie.”

  Her smile stretched wider.

  “And you know what happens in houses where the mother is a whore junkie? All sorts of bad shit.”

  Jimmy knew how to use a weight plate to protect himself, in theory. He knew how to throw a punch, in theory. He knew how to use violence to make his point, in theory. Until that night, though, he never laid a hand on anyone, ever.

  He grabbed his mother by her scrawny throat and slammed her against their home. A piece of siding broke free and dangled, one end touching the patio.

  Jimmy had eighty pounds of hard teenage muscle on her. The sound of Diane hitting the wall set off the neighborhood Cujo, which set off the usual chorus of various degenerates telling each other to shut the fuck up. The sound of other human beings caused Jimmy to loosen his grip, though he did not free his mother.

  Unfortunately, his hand loosened enough to allow her to speak.

  “You don’t get it. You’re not a man. You’re a little fucking boy. It doesn’t have to be true. You were in the paper, you fucking dummy. If I say you touched her, you’re done. Some fucking college in Arizona doesn’t want to give a scholarship to a child molester. And your faggot cop friend? The one that likes you so much? If I say he helped, he’s done.”

  Jimmy stepped back and released his mother. He looked her up and down. This thing before him was part of who he was.It made him want an entire blood transfusion.

  “Miserable fucking bitch,” he said. He opened the back door as she stood on the patio. Once Jimmy was in his room, she packed a pipe and smoked a little crystal on the couch, guarding against any black helicopters that might think of taking her daughter away. She owned Kelly, just like those fucks down the block owned that constantly yapping dog.

  That night Jimmy lay on his bed, thinking of how to respond to Diane’s threat. He survived and even thrived by being pragmatic, thoughtful, and knowing when to fight—and when to run.

  He could call her bluff, accept his scholarship to ASU, and just take Kelly with him at the end of the summer, when he left. He could also preempt Diane and tell Carlisle her plan.

  He could stay and wait to go to college when Kelly was a little older and could come without his mother stopping her. But he knew if he stayed and went later, he wouldn’t have a scholarship to count on.

  He could also stay and apply for the police academy. Carlisle’s recommendation was sure to get him accepted. Without a degree, he wouldn’t be future chief material, like Carlisle, but he would do okay. He would have health insurance, a retirement plan, a steady paycheck, and a job that mattered.

  Things his parents never had.

  If he just took Kelly with, there was a good chance his mother would turn him in for kidnapping. She was that vindictive. He knew there were limits to what Carlisle could do, and his intervention wouldn’t end with a judge giving an eighteen-year-old custody of a fifteen-year-old. If Jimmy knew how Carlisle dealt with Roger Crowder, he might have had more faith in Carlisle’s ability to come up with a creative solution to problems involving lowlifes.

  He could stay, attend the police academy, and follow in Carlisle’s steps. He wouldn’t move to Phoenix, but maybe he would go to the University of Phoenix one day—he’d seen the commercials—and work his way up through the police department.

  That’s what he would do.

  There were worse footsteps to follow in than Mike Carlisle’s.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  2019

  Maybe heatstroke could explain the way she found him in the downstairs half bathroom during Jessica’s birthday party: crazy-eyed, sweat-soaked, and vomiting in the sink. But heatstroke could not explain the unexplained Skype call with a friend back in Oklahoma. Heatstroke could not explain the way he just disappeared so often lately, his body at the dinner table hunched over his meatloaf and mashed potatoes, his mind and heart far away.

  And heatstroke certainly couldn’t explain what she just walked in on.

  “Jimmy, be real, okay? Don’t bullshit me.”

  “Yeah, I just—”

  “I know. You already said you had heatstroke,” she said taking his chin in her hand and pointing his face up so he could look her in the eye. Though Jimmy was eight inches taller than Jill, he liked to lie with his head on his wife’s chest, the strands of his hair brushing her chin.

  “Can I show you something?” He asked.

  “Sure, Jimmy.”

  “And you promise not to think I’m crazy?”

  Jimmy did not realize making people promise not to think you’re crazy is the fastest way to make people think you are crazy.

  “Um…okay.”

  “Come with me,” he said, taking his head off her chest and standing up.

  The Whole Foods bags still sat on the floor; Kale, grass-fed bison, and artisan mushrooms taking root in deep carpet. Jimmy and Jill stepped into their bedroom, standing side by side just inside the doorframe. The house was quiet, the air conditioner having gone silent.

  “Do you see them?”

 
Jill looked down at a few piles of dirt leading from their closet to the bathroom.

  “The dirt?” She asked.

  Though she didn’t say it, her tone conveyed the second part of her question: So that’s what this is all about?

  “Yeah, but do you see?”

  “See the mess Jonathan made?”

  “It wasn’t Jonathan. He’s the one who showed them to me.”

  “Those are footprints. Someone tracked mud in here.”

  “I know they’re footprints, but it’s not mud. It’s dry. Look,” Jimmy said, gesturing toward the piles. Jill walked over to the dirt and squatted down.

  “Look. Do you see what’s weird about them? Look again.”

  Unfortunately, there was nothing strange or suspicious about someone tracking dirt in the house and leaving the mess for Jill to clean up. Her son, daughter, and husband were thoughtful people, but they weren’t saints. They were prone to tracking dirt in, leaving cupboards open, and taking monstrously huge bowel movements that clogged the toilet and then swearing they had no idea where the poop came from.

  “Jimmy, you’re going to have to tell me. I see dirt. I see no one cleaned it up. I don’t see the mystery.”

  “Look at the way they just appear out of nowhere. Do you see dirt leading to our room? Where did this come from?”

  “Babe, it’s Jonathan. Or Jessica.”

  “I told you Jonathan showed it to me. And Jessica is at volleyball practice. Where did it come from?”

  Jimmy believed the footprints hadn’t come from Jonathan or Jessica. While Jill didn’t think the mud arrived by magic, she didn’t believe her husband was purposefully lying—which presented one alternative: Jimmy had lost his mind.

  “Jimmy, I don’t know where it came from, but you need to do something for me.”