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The Weight of Winter

Page 17

by Cathie Pelletier


  “You know what I think?” Charlene asked. She was remembering the cute little two-story house, about two miles from Charlene’s own at a lovely spot overlooking the Mattagash River, where the mailbox read Bobby and Eileen Fennelson.

  “What?” Lola asked. Charlene had rarely been so talkative in the past, and quite frankly, it was a habit that had always irked Lola and Dorrie. Maybe now, with Eileen gone off to the winds, Charlene would think twice about who her real friends were. “What do you think?” Lola asked again.

  “I think Paulie Hart ain’t the only lucky son of a bitch in this town,” Charlene said. “And Eileen only had to buy one ticket.”

  ***

  Charlene thought Davey was asleep when she went into their bedroom with an armload of clean socks and underwear, but he was awake, his arms locked beneath his head, eyes on the ceiling.

  “How much does that doll cost?” he asked. Charlene looked at him blankly. “The one Tanya wants.”

  “Oh,” she said. “About twenty dollars at Service Merchandise. I already looked it up.” She opened Davey’s underwear drawer and began neatly stacking his shorts on the left side, T-shirts in the middle, and socks on the right.

  “And that kitchen thing she wants?” he asked.

  “That’s a bit too much,” Charlene said. “Nearly a hundred dollars. I already told her it’s too much.”

  “Is it something I could make?” Davey asked. Charlene saw his fingers working beneath his head, as though they were already in the act of building the little refrigerator, the facsimile stove.

  “You know, maybe you could,” she said brightly. She knew Davey needed to feel that he was still in control. She’d seen enough goddamn Geraldo shows to know that. And he was good with his hands. “I could probably stock it with stuff from the kitchen I don’t need anymore. Old pans and dishes. Worn pot holders.”

  “Come here,” Davey said, and held an arm out to her.

  She lay in the crook of his arm for the longest time, remembering all the work she had left to do in the laundry room before bedtime, mentally tidying up the kitchen. Just when she was certain Davey must have fallen asleep, he spoke, his voice young, a voice of childhood.

  “Char?” he said. “Do you think the day I hit Benny with the firewood, do you think I did something that day, you know, jarred something around, that never got right again?”

  “Oh no, honey,” Charlene said, and put her lips against the warm skin of her husband’s face. “I don’t think that for one minute, not one little second.”

  “He was only eight years old, Char,” Davey said, his voice full of longing, full of a wish, a need, to put the piece of firewood back where it belonged, to never, ever swing it.

  “Shhh,” Charlene whispered.

  “I can still hear the sound of it,” Davey said, and as Charlene held him, he began to weep.

  ***

  It was eleven o’clock when Charlene picked up the telephone. She knew that her parents were always in bed asleep by that time, that the sharp, rude phone would at first frighten them. They would sit straight up in their beds, hands reaching for each other in the darkness, certain a child of theirs was dead. But she didn’t care. She was frightened herself. And once they heard her voice, once she reassured them no one had been in an accident, they would be relieved, happy to settle back on their pillows in the Connecticut darkness and chat with their only daughter. News that a daughter is okay is wonderful news, something Charlene herself was still waiting to receive. And surely her father, when he finally took the phone away from her chatty mother, would tell her that, yes, of course, now that she’d brought herself around to asking about it, there was a nice job opening down at the plant that Davey would just love.

  Outside the warm house where Davey Craft and his children were sleeping quietly, where Charlene was waiting patiently with the phone to her ear, waiting for her parents to answer, the river was writhing with cold. The Crossroads petition might be picking up momentum, but the river was losing an old battle. And during the bitter-chill night, like an open cut that has finally managed to pull its edges together and heal, the thin blue channel of the Mattagash River closed in on itself, and then disappeared.

  EL PID COMES UP WITH A PLAN: IT'S CARPE DIEM FOR PIKE

  I hail from Mattagash, Maine,

  The land of the gun and the rod,

  Where the Crafts speak only to McKinnons

  And McKinnons speak only to God.

  —Graffiti, The Crossroads bathroom wall, 1989

  Billy Plunkett had already played “All My Ex’s Live in Texas” several times before Rita Plunkett, his real-life ex-wife, whose mailing address was Mattagash, Maine, and not Houston, turned up at The Crossroads in search of him. Even if Billy had seen her in time to duck out the back door, his red-lettered Damn Sea Gulls! hat was dangling guiltily from the deer antlers.

  “Don’t hit me, that’s all I ask of you,” Billy said loudly, entertaining a small group of listeners. His brother, Ronny, was with him. They had just made a bet on whether or not Pike would amble in at any minute, looking dapper as always beneath his green felt fishing hat. Lynn had taken him back and he’d been on his best behavior for a few days. Billy bet it wouldn’t last, that Pike would show up at The Crossroads. Ronny bet he wouldn’t. Billy obviously knew Pike better.

  “Billy Plunkett, the only times I hit you was when I was suffering from premenstrual syndrome, and you know it,” Rita said. She had a small child in tow, a little boy no older than five or six, whose round face peered out of a hooded winter coat.

  “Hi, Cooty,” Billy said to the child, and the child smiled a quick smile and then went back to tugging on his mother’s arm.

  “I wanna go play my Nintendo,” he whined, and yanked at the misshapen sleeve of Rita’s sweater. Like the proverbial cold molasses in January, snot was inching its way down from one of his nostrils.

  “You will when I finish here and not before,” Rita said sharply, and shoved the child to one side. “Nintendo can wait but this can’t.”

  “You get that Ghostbuster gun I left for you, Cooty?” Billy asked, and the little boy smiled again.

  “It weren’t nothing but a bribe, that Ghostbuster Zapper, and you know it, Billy.” Rita wiped the child’s nose with a tissue from her sweater pocket. “You just did it to get Cooty to tell you if I was seeing someone else.”

  “You find the G. I. Joe X-Wing Chopper I left for you?” Billy asked the boy. He nodded shyly, his eyes milky blue in a pale, milky face.

  “I been calling you twenty times a day and leaving message after message,” Rita said to Billy.

  “Oh really?” Billy said, and motioned to Maurice for another beer. “My secretary musta forgot to give them to me.”

  “Don’t you move,” Rita said to the boy, and then lit up a cigarette from the pack in her other pocket. “I got a long-distance call to make.”

  “You want an orange pop, Cooty?” Billy asked the child, but the little boy hid his round face behind Rita’s thigh. Rita picked up the phone that was sitting on the end of the bar.

  “Put your eyebrows down, Maurice, I ain’t charging this to you,” Rita said. “This is Rita Plunkett,” she said into the receiver. “Calling for Carl Hileman, and this here is a collect call.” Billy winced. He recognized the name, a lawyer from Caribou, but worse yet, the kind everyone referred to as “a woman’s lawyer.” Many a Mattagash divorce had ended up on the desk of Carl Hileman, a place strewn with the broken, bankrupt bodies of Aroostook County males.

  While Rita waited, tapping her foot and smoking her Winston 100, the door opened slowly and two more children bounded in—a small thin girl, eight or nine years old, pushing in front of her another little boy, this one a toddler.

  “Dammit, Ramada, I thought I told you to stay in the car,” Rita said angrily. The girl blinked, her pupils growing large in the sudden dimness
of the bar. She tugged the little boy along behind her and then propped him up on a bar stool.

  “He woke up,” she told her mother, “and he didn’t want to stay in the car. It’s cold out there.” The toddler grabbed the glass ashtray from the bar and promptly threw it on the floor.

  “I left the engine running,” Rita said.

  “Here,” said Ramada. She handed the baby a plastic toy. “I brung your Mickey Mouse train.”

  “Goddamnit,” said Rita. “I won’t be able to hear my lawyer for that train.” The baby pushed the train about the bar as Ramada balanced him on the stool. The train hooted and clanked loudly. Rita slapped the other little boy’s hand away from his nose, which was running again.

  “Stop that!” she ordered, then, “Mr. Hileman? It’s Rita Plunkett. I finally found the gentleman of the house.” The Mickey Mouse train gave off a sharp volley of hoots and clanks. “Shhh!” Rita warned the toddler. She raised her right hand menacingly, a potential slap. Billy would’ve offered to babysit while Rita conferred with her lawyer, but none of these children were his. They were Rita’s from previous and different marriages, although Billy had legally adopted them.

  “Mama, let’s go,” Ramada pleaded. “The baby’s got a dirty diaper.”

  “Well, you told me we needed to find him before we could give him a warrant for nonsupport,” Rita was saying. “And I done that. All I expect now is to be maintained in the manner to which I am accustomed.” She exhaled a spiral of smoky rings.

  “You been spending too much time with Phil Donahue,” Billy told Rita, and offered the baby a peanut, which also went on the floor. Billy smiled at the child, and then at Ramada.

  “I’d ask for more than I was accustomed to, if I was her,” Ronny said. Ronny had been around the world.

  “The hell,” said Billy. “You see that trailer I bought her? It was a corker. I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns up on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.”

  “That’s Mama’s favorite show,” the little girl said.

  “How’d you ever get a name like Ramada?” Ronny leaned back and asked her.

  “That’s where Mama and my daddy spent their honeymoon,” the girl said. Her eyes were dark, narrow almonds. “At the Ramada Inn in Bangor,” she added, seeing the puzzlement on Ronny’s face.

  “That’s a real pretty name then,” he said. “Lots of family history behind it.” Ramada ignored this attempt at friendship. She looked past Ronny’s eyes to the colorful array of bottles behind the bar.

  “You want an orange pop?” Billy asked her. “Like Cooty over there’s got?” Billy pointed to a table behind Rita where the boy sat, an orange pop before him, an orange ring around his mouth.

  “That ain’t Cooty,” said Ramada. “That’s Buddy.”

  “You’re kidding,” said Billy. “Where’s Cooty?”

  “He’s sick,” said Ramada.

  “Are they twins?” asked Ronny.

  “No, they ain’t twins,” Ramada said, and pushed stringy hair away from her face.

  “No, they ain’t twins,” Billy agreed. “But they look a hell of a lot alike. Them two musta had the same daddy.”

  “What would you know anyway?” Ramada asked Billy. “You’re just an old drunk.”

  A small volley of hoots rang out from the two tables of spectators, and above that the child’s train whistled plaintively. Billy looked at the thin little girl with the witchlike chin and smiled.

  “I’ll tell you one thing, kiddo,” Billy said. “You ain’t on my Christmas list neither.” Ramada stuck her tongue out as the baby reached for the baggy arm of Rita’s sweater. Ramada caught him before he toppled off the stool. Rita was taking notes on a tiny yellow pad and looking like a paralegal.

  “No wonder Cooty seemed so tongue-tied,” said to Ronny. “That one must be the five-year-old. I get along great with Cooty. Cooty’s six and he talks up a storm.”

  “He’s here right now,” Rita said, and gave Billy a look of wintry indifference. “He’s right here sitting up in broad daylight, with a wad of bills in front of him. You’d swear he was the last of the big spenders.” Billy smiled, remembering what it was he saw in Rita in the first place. Big Spender. Cocksure. Rita had class, damn her.

  “So why can’t you send the sheriff up with a warrant right now?” Rita was saying. “Quit that, goddamnit!” she added, and slapped the hand of the toddler. The Mickey Mouse train came to a halt, but the baby broke into fierce wails. Ramada lifted him off the stool, and he grabbed her skinny neck and buried his plump face there.

  “Be quiet,” Billy said to the baby, a finger to his lips. “Your mama’s right in the middle of an important conference call.”

  “Ain’t that baby really yours?” Ronny asked, and Billy hunched his shoulders.

  “According to Rita, it is,” Billy said. “But me and Cooty’s got our doubts.”

  “Send the sheriff now,” Rita said again, shifting on the tired balls of her feet as though she wore roller skates. “Well, what in hell did I hire you for? This ain’t L.A. Law, you know. It’s Mattagash, Maine.” She slammed the receiver back onto its cradle and then stubbed out her cigarette.

  “Give me his coat,” she said to Ramada, and reached out to take it. Ramada stood the baby up, each one of his fat feet on one of Rita’s winter boots, and held him there as Rita dressed him again in his ski suit.

  “Well?” Billy asked Rita with what seemed to be genuine sympathy. “What did he say?”

  “He said the sheriff’s got a stack of warrants the length of his arm.” Rita sighed. “And some of them’s for people even worse than you, Billy. Believe that or not.” She pulled the baby up stiffly to zip the ski suit.

  “Whatever made you think I’d stay sitting on this bar stool,” Billy asked his ex-wife, “waiting for a sheriff to drive all the way up here from Caribou to arrest me?”

  “I know you, Billy Plunkett, better than you know yourself,” Rita said. She had pulled mittens from the baby’s pockets and was stuffing them onto the chubby hands. “You’d rather go to jail than let your pals see you run when you heard the sheriff was coming with a warrant.” Billy smiled warmly. Correct-o. It was all a matter of honor. Cocksure, that was him all right. Rita did, indeed, know him well. Better than any of his other wives.

  “Looks like she nailed you,” Ronny said. He cracked another peanut from its shell and tossed the husk onto the wooden floor. Peanut husks would carpet the floor by midnight, an inch deep around some tables.

  “Well, I gotta be going,” Rita said absently, as though she’d been attending a Tupperware party. She picked the baby up in her arms and bounded across the room, husks crunching like brown snow beneath her feet, the other two children in tow.

  As the little boy walked past, Billy reached out a hand and stopped him. “If you got Cooty’s new Ghostbuster Zapper, you give it back to him, okay?” The boy nodded his head. “You tell Cooty I said hello,” Billy added. “And tell him to keep his eyes open.”

  “Come on, Buddy,” Rita said, her voice tired of kids, of old cars that break down, of marriages that break up.

  “Hey, Rita,” Billy turned on his stool and shouted after her. “You get a sheriff lined up, call me. I’ll try to work him into my schedule.”

  “He’ll get to the bottom of that stack of warrants one day, Billy,” Rita said. She pushed Ramada along in front of her. “And when he does, it’ll be your turn. Your license plate might say The Kid, but you ain’t no Old West cowboy.” As the door banged behind Rita and her gaggle of children, wind rustled the dead peanut husks. They twirled in little eddies, then lay still, like the toasted bodies of June bugs in summer.

  “You know,” Billy said to Ronny. “I like that woman. Maybe I ought to try it again. She’s got her good points.”

  “It wasn’t her good points used to bother you,” Ronny noted, hoping to jar his brother’
s memory. “Remember them other points?”

  “Ah,” said Billy. “You’re too hard on her, Ron. It ain’t easy being a single parent these days.”

  ***

  A freezing wind was loping down from McKinnon Hill and rattling the heavy Crossroads sign by the time Pike Gifford arrived in his floppy fishing hat to announce that a petition was circling the town, like some misguided dove.

  “They aim to close The Crossroads,” Pike announced, as though he had just stepped from a Gunsmoke script.

  “Over my dead body,” Maurice Fennelson promised. He thumped his fist onto the horseshoe bar.

  “I think they’ve already taken that into consideration,” Pike said. “Prissy Monihan is at the head of it.”

  “Oh well,” Maurice said sadly, as if to retract the offer of his life. “In that case.” He knew all too well that there’d been a heap of dead bodies over which Prissy Monihan had daintily stepped in the pursuit of some ideal. The spindly frame of Maurice Fennelson would be no obstacle.

  “In that case,” Maurice said again, and raised both hands into the air, “I give to hell up.”

  “That woman needs a hysterectomy,” Booster Mullins said. He sucked up the foam from around the rim of his newest glass of beer. “That’s where the word hysterical comes from. It’s short for hysterectomy. Her hormones has gone crazy.”

  “Then she must’ve needed a hysterectomy when she was seven years old,” Maurice said. “She was in my class, and I remember how hard she cried when Mrs. Fennelson read us Charlotte’s Web. We listened to a chapter a day, and by the time that spider died, Prissy was stretched out on the floor in the back of the classroom, her coat made into a pillow, and a hot-water bottle on her head. I tell you, she’s an emotional ticket.”

  “I couldn’t live with her, that’s for sure,” said Booster Mullins, Maurice’s cousin, as he cracked another peanut. “I feel sorry for Theodore.” The rest of the men stared at him silently, respectfully. Here was a man who lived with the bulbous, bullying Dorrie, and yet he felt sorry for another man’s wedded predicament.

 

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