by Gale Massey
She pulled on her jeans, threw her blanket over Toby, and picked up the laptop.
It was colder in the kitchen. A draft seeped through the floorboards, cutting the smell of dirty ashtrays, stale beer, and mildewed carpet. Sunlight slanted hard at the window over the sink. “What’s up?” she asked.
Loyal shook another cigarette from a soft pack and lit it without taking his bleary eyes off her. “A big game. Tonight. Keating’s place. He wants you to deal. Pays a hundred bucks.”
She unplugged the toaster, plugged in the laptop, and cringed at the memory of last night—Keating encroaching on the space where she slept. “Who’s going to be there?”
“No one you know.”
Her dark hair fell over her forehead and she pushed it behind her ears. “You going?”
“Yeah.” He went off toward the bathroom, calling over his shoulder, “Put some coffee on.”
She pushed the power button on her laptop and listened to its whine and rumble. When the screen stayed black, she got the sinking feeling that it wasn’t just the battery, that the laptop was shot.
The remnants of last night’s game were scattered across the table—cigarette butts, empty bottles. She dropped the empties in a paper sack, rinsed the ashtrays, propped the back door open with the garbage can. Snowfall spotted the hill out back and bent the morning light at sharp angles. Wind swept through the trailer and cut the smell of last night’s smoke. A dried-up plant sat in the windowsill begging for water, but when she turned the faucet on, the water was icy and she guessed the pilot light had blown out again. She splashed some on her face anyway, cupped and drank it, grabbed a dish towel and rubbed her cheeks till she felt the blood come up. What she needed was a hot shower and some clean clothes and time to think about whether or not it was smart to go anywhere near a man as powerful as Keating and how profitable it might be if she did. From what she could tell, a friendship with him had worked out pretty good for her uncle.
The toilet flushed and Loyal thudded up the hall. He sat down hard at the table, rubbing the back of his head. “Shut that fucking door and bring me the cash bag.”
She pulled the door closed and got him the bag and the bottle of aspirin they kept on the windowsill. The bottle was nearly empty. He leaned back in his chair and scratched his week-old scruff, but it was Saturday and by supper that beard would be gone. “You get this one right, you hear? Take your cues from Keating and don’t fuck it up.” He started stacking bills in denominations of twenties on down.
Toby came into the kitchen, his hair flat from sleep, stains from last night’s pizza on his T-shirt. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing. I got a gig tonight is all.” Jamie flinched at his breath and hoped he wasn’t still drunk enough to start something.
He looked at Loyal. “Why not me?”
“I need someone with a poker face.”
“I got a poker face.”
“No, you don’t,” Loyal said. “She’s a thousand times better than you and besides, she’s a girl.”
“So what?”
“Boy,” Loyal said, dropping his hands on the table impatiently, “you get caught and bones get broken.”
“She gets caught and they don’t?”
Jamie tore open a box of Pop-Tarts. “I don’t get caught.”
“Shut up,” Toby said. He poked at her computer’s power button. “Piece of crap.”
“Don’t touch it.” She threw him a Pop-Tart and lowered her tone for Loyal. “Can I get the money up front?” What she really wanted was a little cash and a little downtime so she could figure out how to get her computer fixed.
“You get paid after you do the job,” he said, but he pulled a couple of fives from one of the stacks and shoved them toward her. “That’s a loan. You pay me back tonight.”
It was more than she’d expected, but then he said, “Wear some makeup or something. Give them something to stare at besides your hands.”
She pushed the money into her pocket.
“And don’t show up looking like a dyke.”
Loyal lit a cigarette and started adding up the stacks of bills. She turned to walk down the hall and he said, “And do something with your hair.”
Goddamn. It made her want to scream, but she’d learned early on to sidestep his hangovers.
Toby followed her to their room. “Who’s going to be there?” He yanked off last night’s T-shirt and threw it on the floor.
“Probably some rich guys from out of town.” She knotted her hair into a ponytail and sorted through some clothes she kept in the box beneath her cot for another pair of jeans and her favorite black sweater. She jammed all of it into her backpack. “How about you wash some clothes today?”
He rubbed his scalp. “No. My head hurts too bad.”
“Buy a new bottle of aspirin, okay?” She handed him five dollars.
“What I need is a beer.”
“Damn it, Toby.” She got the letter from Jilkins out of her backpack and waved it in his face. “Look at this. Jilkins called a meeting with the principal on Monday. Stop drinking until she’s out of our hair.”
“Jilkins? What’s she going to do?” He found a camo T-shirt beneath his bed and sniffed the armpits. “Send me off? To where?”
“She finds you drunk, she’ll throw your ass in juvie or rehab. And you can kiss that Army camp good-bye. Keating might be able to get you into that camp. Said he knows someone there. Maybe you could keep straight for a while. Prove you’re worth it.”
“Maybe.” He pulled the T-shirt over his head.
“What do you mean, maybe?”
“Maybe you just want to get rid of me for the summer.”
It was frustrating. One day he was all for it; the next all he wanted was to lie around all summer smoking blunts and playing video games. “You told Jilkins you wanted to go.”
“So what? I tell her what she wants to hear.”
“She asked for Loyal to come to the meeting, too.”
Jilkins never fazed him like she did Jamie. They’d been nine and ten years old when their mother was sentenced to prison and Jilkins was assigned to their case as a social worker. When she showed up the first time, Jamie had thought the woman intended to take them to county juvenile housing, a low building with barred windows surrounded by a barbed-wire fence out on the county highway where boys and girls were separated no matter if they were family. But Jilkins had just inspected the trailer—the rooms, the kitchen, and the small bathroom, her nose turned up in an air of loathing—and explained that she knew a married couple with a two-story house who were looking for a boy and girl to adopt; she just needed time to work out the details. But a month later Keating granted their uncle court-supervised guardianship, and the married couple with the big house was never mentioned again. Jilkins came around every few months to inspect the trailer and write her reports, but nothing much had changed over the years—until recently, when Toby had discovered he could get pretty much anything he wanted with his fists. Jilkins had started coming around more often then.
Toby shifted his eyes toward the door. “Did you tell him?”
“No. He didn’t see the letter. I’ll go and say he sent me instead.”
“Then what’s the big deal?” He picked at something crusty on his sleeve.
Jamie grabbed his shirt and pulled his face close to hers. “I’m asking you to keep it together for a few days. Can you just do that? And stay away from Loyal until he feels better.”
He pushed her hand away. “I hate him. He orders me around. Last week he made me wax his new truck, the whole damn thing. It took all afternoon.”
“He takes care of you, though, doesn’t he? Bought you boots last month.”
“Only because my old ones finally fell apart. He just keeps us fed and clothed to keep the state out of his hair. I’m working my own deal.” He pulled a sheet of paper from under his pillow and unfolded it. “Check it out.”
She took it from him. He’d drawn a grid and filled in the to
p and side with numbers. It looked just like the ones Loyal ran for NBA and NFL games. He’d already sold most of the squares.
“When did you start this?”
“Last week. It’s for the Trojans game tomorrow night. Made enough to buy Mom something nice for her birthday.”
Their mom, Phoebe, had been out of prison for almost a year now. When her sentence was finished, the parole board had allowed her to return to Blind River because her children were there. That and because the women’s group at the Methodist church had set her up with a job at the diner on Main and some garage apartment off a rat-infested alley behind the town’s strip of storefronts. Phoebe had never lost visitation rights but was barely able to make ends meet, so it had been decided that the kids would stay with Loyal. Toby often went to the diner for supper, and sometimes Jamie followed him there and watched the two of them through the plate-glass windows. They always laughed and it amazed her. How could they have anything to laugh about? Once, Jamie went inside and sat at the counter and let the woman serve her a bowl of soup and a cup of coffee, but they’d barely been able to look each other in the eye. Prison had left her mother smaller somehow, even though she seemed heavier and her skin had turned gray, as though the colorless concrete walls of the institution had left a permanent stain.
“I sold most of it. Two bucks a pop.”
“Then give me back that five.” She fastened the straps of her backpack. “And keep that out of school, okay? They’ll bust you hard for that shit.”
“Doubt it.” He studied the five-dollar bill. “Coach bought ten boxes. You’re not the only one got it going on, you know.”
“Never said I was.”
He flattened the bill against the windowpane and squinted at it. “Do you think I could copy this on the library’s printer?”
“Don’t be stupid. It would cost more than five dollars in ink alone.” She grabbed the bill from him.
He picked up a length of rope. It seemed as if he learned a new knot every week. She put her jacket on and watched as he slipped a hangman’s knot over his head and pretended to choke. He was such a child sometimes.
“You better put that back in Loyal’s truck.”
“He doesn’t even know it’s missing.”
“He goes to tie something down and he’ll know it’s gone. And clean up around here, will you? Put your stuff under the bed or something.” She swung her backpack over her shoulder, the weight of it knocking her into the wall. She balanced and straightened.
“Where you going?”
“The computer store, then over to Angel’s house for a shower. I’m going to take her some stuff and I haven’t seen the baby for a month.”
“Does Billy have weed?” Toby asked.
“I doubt it. Angel laid down the law about that shit.” She pushed through the narrow hallway to the front room.
He picked up his boots and hopped down the hall behind her, yanking them on. “I’m coming with you.”
Loyal sat on the front porch steps, finishing last night’s bottle of whiskey. She squeezed past him and his dank breath, sucked the clean air into her lungs. He tossed a small brown paper package at her.
She caught it against her chest.
“That’s added up to the dollar. Take it straight to Jack.”
It was sealed with tape and heavy. She tested its weight in her hand and figured it had to be twice as much as the one from last week.
“He calls me if that seal’s broke.”
“I know the routine.” She stuffed the package into her pocket and walked into the yard.
He came off the steps quicker than she thought he was capable of and caught her by the arm. “Cut the attitude, girl. And don’t be late tonight.”
She steadied her eyes on his chest, aware that Toby was standing in the doorway, that he’d fly out the door at Loyal if he raised his hand and then she’d be stuck here the rest of the day keeping them from killing each other. But the moment smoothed out when Loyal loosened his grip and cupped her chin, almost affectionately. “Be there by eight,” he said, and turned her toward the road. He wheeled back to Toby. “You’re not going anywhere until you change the oil on the Ford.”
Across the street in a vacant lot, the high branches of a winter-bare sycamore scratched at the pale sky. In the distance a semi worked its way up the highway, the whine of its engine snaking its way through the pines, reminding her of the time when she was twelve and she’d convinced Toby to get on a Greyhound bus with her and run off to Florida, a place she’d heard was always warm and where you could eat oranges right off the trees. She’d never known such freedom as she felt when riding in those high-backed seats with Toby curled up next to her sleeping with his head on her shoulder. But at midnight they hit a roadblock of red and blue flashing lights, bouncing against the bus window. They hadn’t even made it to the state line. A state trooper locked them in the back of the cruiser and she’d stared at the metal security mesh bolted across the back of the front seat, unable to breathe and enduring knifelike spasms in her lungs. Toby peed his pants. They’d crawled to the floorboard and huddled there, spines back to back, the entire ride home.
She could walk to the highway right now, stick out her thumb, and catch a ride. She had enough of Loyal’s money in her pocket right now to head out on her own. Toby was almost old enough to take care of himself. Almost, but not quite, so she aimed her boots down the narrow blacktop that led to town and bent her body into the wind.
CHAPTER
2
THE ROAD TO town was lined with jagged pines. Jamie tucked her hair inside her skullcap, buttoned her jacket against the cold gray dawn, and walked with her head forward, hands deep in her pockets. Her phone buzzed from inside her backpack and she ignored it in exchange for a few minutes to think. The town of Blind River was a twenty-minute walk down a narrow two-lane. Weeds bent to the ground by morning frost sloped along the embankment to black ditches, thick with mud and smelling of the runoff from the fertilizer plant upstream. Ice-slicked grass crunched under her boots, and she was careful to keep at least one foot on the blacktop. The down jacket and backpack gave some bulk to her figure so that anyone coming around the curve could see her and swerve. Still, she kept close to the shoulder until the road flattened on a bend where the town’s only 7-Eleven had been built.
The low building, its windows plastered with neon beer signs and lottery posters, sat square in the middle of a gravel parking lot just off the road in a notched-out patch of woods. Between the ads, Jamie could see the vacant checkout counter, and she walked toward the smell of burning weed at the back of the store.
Myers had the door propped open with the mop bucket. He leaned against the jamb, staring at a folded newspaper—the crossword puzzle, she guessed, by the pencil behind his ear and the confusion on his face.
She had worked for him three months in the kind of dead-end job designed to keep people from ever improving their lives. After taxes she got a hundred and eighty-seven dollars and sixty cents a week for opening the store and keeping the coffee pots full and the breakfast burritos hot, unless she got docked for forgetting to mop the floors after the early rush. Myers had always found a reason to dock her paycheck, and when she’d shown up late three shifts in a row, he’d fired her. The hardworking people of this town needed their daily packs of smokes and giant Styrofoam cups of coffee at six in the morning, not seven. Her uncle kept a more fluid schedule. On days like today, when he was too hungover to get out of the house, he paid her fifty bucks to collect money from a few of his gambling machines scattered around town.
At the sound of a car coming off the highway, Myers pinched the ember off the blunt, crushed it under his shoe, and went inside. Jamie slipped into the storage room through the back door and grabbed what she thought Angel might need—a box of tampons, some cheese, and a package of salami—and crammed it all into her backpack. In the front of the store the cash register slammed shut and the chimes over the door clanged. She had about five seconds before
Myers would shuffle back to the storage room. She grabbed a quart of milk, headed out the back door, and kicked the mop bucket over. He threw the door open and yelled, “Goddamnit!” but she’d already made it up the path that cut through the woods. She crested the hill knowing he’d never leave the store long enough to chase her down, and chances were he hadn’t seen enough of her backside to make an official accusation. She stopped behind a tree to catch her breath. She heard the bucket bang against the wall and the back door slam shut. By the time she got to the other side of the woods, the sun was high and ghostly behind frigid white clouds.
The path ended at the alley between the computer store and the old strip mall turned satellite community college. She walked around to the front of the store and went to the help desk. A few students were ahead of her. She took a number and bought a Coke from the vending machine. A long-haired petite girl sat reading against the wall in a corner by the window.
College. She’d bombed her classes worse than anything in her life. Now just seeing a textbook made her stomach turn. Never able to keep up, she’d studied late every night, read the assigned chapters twice, gone to sleep at three in the morning feeling like a loser because the words didn’t make sense. Woken up feeling that same way. Her adviser hinted at a transfer to the tech program; maybe she’d be better at food service or welding. Then her grades came in. She’d flunked out in one semester. When Loyal had found out, he’d screamed at her until she agreed to sign up and try again in the winter. Like he gave a damn about college. It didn’t make sense. He’d never cared about her grades or what subjects she took. The college put her on probation and reinstated the grant that covered tuition and books for kids living below the poverty level, but it didn’t matter. After three weeks she was so far behind she stopped going to class. The only thing that made her feel better about that was not having to face midterms.
