Joe

by H. D. Gordon

  It was all almost too good to be true. It was so right, she was so happy that she couldn’t help but worry. Just a tiny bit. Just a little twinge of—intuition?—worry that spiraled once around the base of her stomach and then died out.

  Because Mina was not young enough or naïve enough not to know that with every parade, there comes a chance of rain.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Michael

  The girl was strange, and she was all that Michael could think about.

  Yes, he was attracted to her, but this was not the main reason that she had been occupying his mind since yesterday when he had gotten her to agree to a date—if you could call meeting at Landry’s Tobacco shop (and bring gloves) a date—in exchange for his promise to skip his classes on the coming Monday.

  Yes, strange.

  Perhaps it was that he was a writer—a pretty good one, if ah do say so mahself—and that he was inquisitive and curious by nature. He had replayed his few interactions with the raven-haired girl over and over in his head, and found that the questions he kept asking as a result of this examination were, well, strange ones. The girl named Joe was a…mystery. To a young writer, this was a very sexy word.

  Perhaps this was the reason that one couldn’t help but notice her, despite the fact that she tried so obviously not to draw attention to herself. She sat in the back of the class. She never raised her hand to answer questions, didn’t offer any opinions when a class discussion was in session. She spoke very little, in fact. Michael suspected she spoke as little as possible, and that this was because of her stutter. He had always been hyperaware of the inside workings of others though, so he knew that the reason she was short spoken was not because she was embarrassed about her speech impediment. He figured it was more because speaking was too much of a task, and she didn’t care to bother with it. Michael found all of this endearing, and also utterly intriguing. Joe, he suspected, led an extraordinary life. One that may inspire great stories, like glorious sunsets have so long inspired painters.

  Or so he suspected.

  At the moment Michael was rummaging through his closet looking for a pair of gloves. Why had the raven-haired girl wanted him to bring gloves to a tobacco shop? It was the middle of spring and already the weather was too warm out to require them.

  “So she told you to meet her at some tobacco store out in Peculiar and to bring gloves?” Trey asked echoing Michael’s thoughts. He was sitting on Michael’s bed and bouncing a ping-pong ball off the wall, catching it as it came flying back.

  Michael was hunched over, digging through a box in the back of his closet, still looking for his winter gloves. “Yeah,” he said. “Weird right?”

  “Not just weird, fucking weird…What are you looking for?”

  “Gloves.”

  Trey’s brow furrowed, and a light bulb went off in his head. “She probably meant work gloves,” he said.

  In the closet, Michael paused. He turned his head to look at Trey. “Why would she want me to bring work gloves?” he asked.

  Trey shrugged. “Why would she want you to bring winter gloves? Why did she make you say you would skip your classes on Monday? Why are her eyes that odd silver-blue color? Who knows, dude?” He shrugged again. “Chick is just weird.”

  Michael stood and came out of the closet. He shut the door behind him.

  Trey caught the ping-pong ball, held it, and looked over at Michael. “She’s not the type you usually go for,” he said, giving Michael a level stare.

  Michael studied him for moment. “That’s because she’s too…rare to be a ‘type’. To be a type there has to be others like you. I don’t think I’ve met any others like her.”

  “You sound like you’re in love.”

  “And you sound like you don’t approve,” Michael said.

  Trey sighed. “It’s not that, bro. It’s just…”

  “Just, what?”

  Another sigh. “It’s just that she seems like trouble to me, man. I mean, just from what you’ve told me about her makes her seem like a…a weirdo. I’m sorry, but there’s just no other way to say it. What kind of girl will only agree to go out with you on the condition that you miss school the next day? What, does she want you to prove yourself to her by skipping classes right before the mid-term? And more importantly, why would you agree?”

  Michael’s shoulders stiffened a little. “It wasn’t like that, dude. She’s not like that.” He paused, thinking. “It was like she was, I don’t know, warning me or something. Like she was scared of something.”

  Trey raised his eyebrows, as if this proved his point. Maybe it did. “First of all, you don’t know her well enough to know what she’s like. Second, that’s even weirder.”

  Michael could feel himself becoming defensive, and a few threads of anger weaved through his stomach. “I don’t get what your problem is,” he said, and not very nicely. “And by the way, I saw you looking at her too when I pointed her out at the bar. I saw you stare at her for a few extra seconds.”

  Trey put his hands up in a surrender position. “You’re right. She’s definitely got something about her that holds your attention. I think it was her eyes. They’re so…different it’s hard not to look at her for a moment. Don’t get mad, bro. She just…freaks me out a little bit.”

  Michael blew out a breath and grabbed his keys off of the nightstand next to his bed. Trey was probably right about one thing; Joe could’ve meant work gloves. It certainly made more sense. Maybe she wanted him to help her out with some kind of work at the tobacco store. And really, he couldn’t be mad at Trey. Trey was his best friend, had been since the two of them were just boys. He always told Michael exactly how he felt, didn’t mince words or sugarcoat. Trey was this way with everyone, actually, and many people were not fond of him as a result of it. Michael, on the other hand, appreciated the raw honesty his best friend provided. Always had. He always said things with the best of intentions in mind; the kind of friend who would tell you about the onion on your breath before a date. Most people pretend they want the truth, and then when they get it they mistake it for cruelty or maliciousness. In other words, most people thought Trey was an asshole. Michael knew this not to be true. This didn’t mean that Michael always agreed with what he said.

  “I gotta go get some work gloves. You want to come?” he asked.

  Trey pocketed the ping-pong ball and stood from the bed. He smiled and scratched at the stubble on his cheeks. “Yeah, might as well. Ain’t got shit-else to do.”

  They went to the store, and the raven-haired girl did not come up again in conversation. This was another thing Trey could be counted on for. Once he said his piece, he wouldn’t go on and on about it. Unless you brought it up again, and Michael didn’t. Nonetheless, the girl stayed as glued to his mind as she had been since his infatuation with her had begun. He also had confidence in the fact that his insight into others was much sharper than Trey’s. After all, he had run into the very person that the raven-haired girl was searching for. He had literally run into the Decider, and he had, if only for a few unsettling moments, seen past the guy’s impeccable mask. He had seen something behind that plain, friendly face and just for a moment he had been—what was the word he had used? Uneasy.

  However, he didn’t know just how important this was. After all, he couldn’t see the future.

  The girl was occupying most of his thoughts. His biggest question, the one that would give the greatest insight into all the other, more minor, questions that the girl evoked in him, was what made her the way she was? Where does a girl like Joe even come from?

  Chapter Thirty

  Joe

  Unlike most people, Saturday is not one of my favorite days of the week.

  This is due to one reason: I go to see my mother on Saturdays. I do not dislike my mother. She has never abused me. As a child there was always plenty of food on the table, and I never went to school in old clothes or with untidy hair. She taught me manners. She took me to the doctor and got me medicin
e when I was sick. She even taught me how to read. For these things, I will always love her and be grateful. I am fully aware that there are much worse mothers in the world.

  Admittedly, I still don’t like going to see her.

  I have to, though. As I have mentioned previously, my mother is extremely agoraphobic. Her condition worsened after the incident that landed my father in jail. Before she would simply avoid large crowds and open places, but she’d still function well enough to go to the grocery store or the post office if needed. Now she never leaves the house. Never.

  She makes a grocery list, and every Saturday I go shopping and acquire her requested items. The house she lives in was her father’s, and it is paid off. My mother used to work from home as an accountant, using the office in the back of the house to hold meetings with clients. She still has one or two accounts that she handles, but mostly she just does it to earn extra cash. My father earned more than enough for her to live on before he was arrested and thrown in jail. So her condition is supported by her financial security, and she has very little need to leave her home.

  I pulled into the large circular driveway and parked as close to the front door of the house as possible. The house sat on four acres of green grass surrounded on three sides by thin wooded areas. Beyond these trees were other houses, but they were hardly visible from any place on my mother’s property. The yard was landscaped every week in seasons that required it. Red mulch and white flowers filled the beds at the base of the house and surrounded the old oak trees scattered about the land. The grass was trimmed short and well watered. The home was nearly seventy years old and beautiful in its well-maintained state. As a child, I had spent all summer out in this yard, catching ring-neck snakes and blue-tailed skinks. There was an Olympic-sized pool around back, hidden from view by a white privacy fence. Despite the many unpleasant memories I associated with the place, it was still a wonderful place to have grown up.

  I got out of the car and retrieved the four grocery sacks from the long seat of my El Camino, shutting my door with my foot. As I walked up the stone steps that led to the large porch, I sighed, trying to prepare myself for this encounter with my mother. Just get in, leave the groceries, and get out. Sure, that was going to happen.

  I don’t have a key to her house, so I set the groceries in my right hand down and rang the doorbell. After a moment, I heard the cover on the peephole in the door slide back, and then the deadbolt slid back and my mother opened the door. I bent, retrieving the sacks I had set down.

  Her sandy blond hair was curled neatly about her shoulders and her face was made up tastefully. She wore a white sundress with large yellow flowers printed all over it. On her feet she wore yellow wedges that strapped behind her ankles and over her red-painted toes. A red apron was tied behind her neck and about her waist. She looked like a woman with no problems at all. I wondered what she thought I looked like, but really, I knew.

  She swung the door open, glancing around at the outside world uneasily and waving an impatient hand for me to enter. “Come on. Get in,” she said.

  Nice to see you, too, Mom.

  I stepped past her with the groceries, and she shut the door behind me and reengaged the deadbolt. Taking the bags from my left hand, she led me into the kitchen. “Did you remember the red onions?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Good. I thought you weren’t going to come,” she said.

  I set the groceries I was still holding down on the counter. “I a-a-always come.”

  My mother began digging through the sacks and putting things away. I didn’t move to help her. She liked to put things where she wanted, and she was anal about organization. Now would be my cue to leave.

  “How much were these?” she asked.

  “Duh-don’t worry—”

  She pulled two hundred dollar bills from the pocket of her apron and handed them to me.

  “This is t-too much,” I said.

  My mother waved a hand in dismissal, but she was studying my attire with clear distaste. “Why do you go out like that?” she asked.

  I looked down at my old jeans and white t-shirt. I looked just fine. I wanted to say that I least I go out. I didn’t. That would have just been cruel. “It’s cuh-comfortable,” I said instead.

  “The doctors all said that you would grow out of that, you know? Stupid incompetent quacks,” she said.

  “Wuh-what?”

  She gestured to me with a tube of Crystal Light. “That. That stutter. They said, ‘Oh, it’s nothing to worry about Mrs. Knowe.’ Buncha quacks if you ask me. They said that it’s usually males who don’t grow out of that impediment.” She said this last word as though it was a dirty thing that may leave a bad taste on her tongue, and gave me a level stare.

  I returned it. “Well, ya-ya-you’re the one who nuh-named me Joe.”

  Childish, yes, but she was goading, and right now, I had enough on my mind already. I didn’t need her crap.

  The tube of Crystal Light flew from her hand and crashed against one of cabinets with a thwack! My back stiffened. My mother’s pretty face was twisted up in a scowl. “That psychopath you call a father named you that!” she screamed.

  I began to back out of my mother’s kitchen, watching her. This was not the way our encounters usually went. Usually, I dropped off the groceries, she paid me too much for them, made some comment about my hair or my clothes and some comparison about how she always wore dresses and acted like a lady when she was my age, being clear about the fact that she was some great beauty—and wonder how it was that she should have had a strange, impediment-having child like myself. These things don’t bother me much anymore, though obviously I don’t find them pleasant. My mother is very beautiful, my father as well, and it is some kind of wonder how the two of them, with their blond hair and blue eyes, had a child like me. I found it an even bigger wonder that their two poor intellects had reproduced my own. So when you think about it, we are about even in our feelings toward each other. However, this kind of occurrence was not the in the job description. Something must have set her off.

  “I-I’ll see you nuh-next Saturday,” I said, and then I left.

  On the way out, I passed the small table by the front door where my mother always kept her mail, and I saw the thing that must have triggered her foul behavior. I was tempted to slip it into my pocket and take its poison out with me, but I didn’t. I had bigger poison to deal with at the moment, and it came in the form of a madman who was planning to gun down innocent people in a mass quantity. My mother would just have to deal with this poison on her own.

  It was a letter from my father.

  I gave it one last look and slipped out the door. In my life, I have learned to let the past stay right where it was. Dealing with the future was difficult enough. Besides, every time I saw my mother’s scarred face I was reminded of the past anyway. I didn’t need my father’s crazy letters to do the same.

  No, I remembered it all too clearly as it was. After all, the incident with my father had been the last time I’d drawn the future, before this most recent one of course, and as with the daycare incident and the fire incident, it was something that just couldn’t be forgotten.

  It was one of those things that changes you, that makes you are what you are today.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Joe, nine years ago

  She was only twelve years old when it happened, and for the four days prior to the event, she had been involuntarily shaking, her muscles seizing up and seeming to vibrate on their own accord. It was an awful, exhausting feeling. Her heart would beat so fast that her breath would go short and seemingly pass through her without providing the oxygen her body needed. She kept reminding herself to take deep breaths, but even these were unfruitful and gave her a surreal feeling of lightheadedness. At night, her head would be pounding, and sleep would come late and end early. She lost nearly five pounds in those four days. She had no appetite and could not eat.

  This time the sketch was in
color, because when the need to compose it came over her she happened to be in her room reading. On the desk in the corner had been a pack of colored pencils. The two colors that she used mostly ended up being red and orange. Awful, annoying colors, they were. Hard on the eyes, she learned. Hard on the eyes.

  She was in the middle of turning the page of the book she was reading when the feeling came over her, and her first thought was oh no. That continued being her thought as she set the book aside, stood up from the bed, and made her way over to the desk in the corner, where those colored pencils were waiting for her. She sat down and up-ended the box. The ten pencils slid out in a neat, colorful row.

  Oh no. Oh no. Oh—

  She selected the black colored pencil first, her itching and throbbing left hand making the choice without a conscious command from her brain. Her free hand was clenched into a hard fist. Both hands were clammy, but they were steady. Especially her left hand.

  Oh no, no, no, no—

  Her right hand retrieved a blank piece of paper from the desk drawer and set it atop the desk. It returned to her lap, once again folding itself into a hard fist. The black pencil in her left hand set to work on the paper, gliding over the page so smoothly that, despite the lines that were appearing on the white paper below it, it never really seemed to touch the sheet. She looked away. This wasn’t going to be good. No, it was never good. Just breathe. Just breathe. Oh no no no. Just—

  Only five minutes had gone by when her left hand halted, the itching and throbbing sensations receding as suddenly as they had come, but it felt to Joe like every second was endless, reluctant to yield to the next. Throughout it, her left hand had swapped the black colored pencil for other colors. Joe noticed that the red and the orange pencils were being selected a lot.

  When her hand stopped she squeezed her eyes closed, crushing out salty tears that she hadn’t realized had been waiting there. They rolled down her pale cheeks and met at the tip of her chin, falling to the no-longer white sheet of paper below her bent head. It had been three years since she had last drawn the future, and she had hoped that it wouldn’t happen again. Dealing with the small flashes of foresight that sent images through her head had become second nature to her at this point, like when her mother left the window in the car down right before a heavy rain. She only drew the future when something big and bad was coming. Something really big and bad, like the stranger at the daycare, and the fire at her best friend’s house down the street three years ago. Both times people had died as a result of her failure. And now…