The Girl From Blind River

by Gale Massey

  Phoebe spun around. Overhead, sleet fell like tinsel in the alley lights.

  “He got caught using stolen credit cards.”

  “What? For God’s sake.” Phoebe lifted her face to the sky. “What the hell? Where did he get them?”

  “Probably found them in Loyal’s room.”

  A rat scampered out from behind a dumpster and Jamie moved closer to her mother.

  Phoebe stamped her foot. “They don’t come at you unless they’re rabid.” The thing disappeared and she started walking again. “I guess it runs in the family.”

  Jamie followed behind. That and a persistent disregard for the law. But she needed to get to the point. “Loyal won’t post bail for him again.”

  “Let me guess. The first bail money was forfeited with the second arrest, right?”

  Jamie hung back. “Mom,” she said, trying out a word she hadn’t spoken for the last eight years. She was surprised at how easily it rolled out of her mouth—and just how lonely she felt saying it.

  Phoebe stopped walking again and raised her head. “What?”

  “They were TJ Bangor’s cards.”

  Phoebe shook her head. Sleet wet her eyelashes. A bone-thin cat crossed the street where the alley ended. Something small and dark twisted in its mouth. The sleet was thickening and turning to snow.

  “Put your cap on, Jamie,” Phoebe said, and turned down the alley. “God, it’s cold.”

  Iced-over metal steps led to her apartment on the second floor. At the top of the landing, Phoebe unlocked the door and flipped the switch for the overhead bulb. They stepped inside. There wasn’t a kitchen, just a cabinet with a sink and a hot plate, cracked plaster walls, a linoleum floor, a couch with a blanket and a pillow. Remnants of breakfast sat on the coffee table.

  A suitcase, filled with thrift store clothes, lay open on the floor. Phoebe pushed it with her foot and sat on the edge of the couch, squeezing the back of her neck.

  Jamie said, “We could go to the jail and see him in the morning. Get him a lawyer. He’s going to need a lawyer.”

  Phoebe bent her head forward, stretching it from side to side. “Public defender. They’ve probably already assigned him one.”

  “He deserves better than that.”

  “Deserves? What’s that ever had to do with anything? Besides, there’s no money for that. A public defender will have to do.”

  “What about that?” She nodded at the string around her mother’s neck. It seemed an obvious solution.

  Phoebe fingered it. “That would be ironic, wouldn’t it?"

  “No one else is going to help him.”

  Phoebe pulled the ring from beneath her blouse and studied it. “If I get caught fencing this, it all comes down on me.”

  Jamie took a breath and said, “It looks to me like it’s all coming down on Toby.”

  Phoebe took the clip out of her hair and shook her bangs loose. “Is that what it looks like to you? Because to me it looks like an ex-con with stolen property who was present during the commission of all kinds of felonies. That adds up to parole violations and one very convenient scapegoat.” Her voice got tighter with each word. “It looks like the rest of my life behind bars.” She rubbed her eyes, her fingers digging into her temples.

  How many times had Toby made that same gesture? Jamie remembered him sitting at the kitchen table just before he’d given up on algebra, rubbing his forehead that same way. She went to the window, opened it, and stuck her head outside, hoping the cold air would clear her mind. “You could go see him.”

  Phoebe slumped against the couch. “No, I can’t. I can’t go there. You can’t ask that of me. You have to understand that.”

  “If none of you speak up, they’ll pin this on him. You know that, right?”

  “What do you want me to do? He’s just like his father. He used stolen credit cards, Jamie. I mean, it is against the law.”

  Jamie brought her head back inside and sat on the window ledge. “Loyal’s given up on him.”

  “He’s just letting him cool off. They’ll get him for the credit cards but there’s just not enough evidence for anything else.”

  “Do you really believe Keating can’t frame him for this?”

  “I really believe you and I are no match for that man.”

  “So, what are you going to do?”

  Phoebe pulled Mack’s note from her pocket, read it silently, and put it back in her pocket. “You could come with me. There’ll be enough for the two of us. Mack found a buyer. A guy on the Jersey coast.”

  “How much?”

  “Plenty.”

  Toby was sitting in a jail cell right now enduring what his mother could not face. “And leave Toby?”

  “He’s going to do some time, despite your good intentions. He used a stolen credit card. There’s no way around it.” Phoebe folded a blouse and tossed it in the suitcase.

  What she was really saying was that they shouldn’t both go down for it.

  “Don’t you want a new start, Jamie? We could get a little apartment near the water, have a real kitchen. You could have your own room. We could sew some curtains. Something yellow. Someplace sunny. This is a real chance. Jamie, think about it.”

  “There’s nothing to think about. I can’t just leave him in there.” She stepped over the suitcase on her way to the door.

  “Your father,” Phoebe said, stopping Jamie when she was halfway across the room. “He had good intentions, too.”

  “My father? You mean the guy who died in a barroom fight?” She grabbed the doorknob, her skin whitening over her knuckles. “Why would you bring him up? I barely remember the man.”

  “He died trying to protect his little brother, but it wasn’t exactly a fight. It was stupid. He and Loyal weren’t even that close and the fight hadn’t even started. A couple of them went outside to settle things and your father tripped on the curb, fell and hit his head. Died on the sidewalk before the ambulance even got there. He was a handsome man. You favor him. You’d remember him if you tried.”

  She remembered more than she wanted. Jamie and Toby had walked into the funeral home and seen the coffin but Toby had stayed at the back. Jamie had walked right up to it. The wood was shiny and glossy. Someone had put a small step stool by its side. She realized years later that it had been meant as a place to kneel and pray, but on that day she’d stepped on it and hoisted herself up to see inside the coffin, to see her father’s face. Up until that point she’d never seen death up close, not a dead bird, not even roadkill. Her father’s face appeared to be smiling or maybe grimacing, but he was dead and it was impossible that he could smile at a time like this, at this departure that she realized was completely irreversible, and at that moment, at ten years of age, she had decided that death was a permanent state of pain. She’d lowered herself off the stool, turned to see her mother sobbing in the first row, and Loyal, with his vacant face, sitting on the opposite side and swaying slightly, the smell of whiskey hovering in the air around him. Toby had stayed at the back, his face as white as his button-down shirt, his hands clenching and unclenching, breathing through his slightly parted lips. She’d walked up the aisle, grabbed his wrist, and taken him out of there.

  Her mother’s voice seemed an echo from the future. “He would’ve been proud of you. He would’ve wanted you to leave Blind River.”

  After the funeral, she and Toby had hidden in the back seat of the car until suppertime and only come into the house after everyone had gone home. But there’d been no need to hide. No one had come looking for them. Loyal was drunk and snoring on the couch. Their mother was being tended to by a neighbor who, when she saw them in the kitchen, made them each a plate of food, clumps of unrecognizable brown casseroles. Toby had swallowed mouthfuls, belched, and finished Jamie’s plate.

  But it seemed to Jamie like she’d fallen off the earth. Her father’s voice, his face, his good-night hug. Everything that had meant anything was gone. Grief was like air, everywhere and invisible, unavoidable, f
illing every breath she took.

  Remembering only left her gutted.

  She watched her mother on all fours reaching for something under the couch. Jamie asked her, “Did you even notice that we weren’t at the funeral that day?”

  “What?” Phoebe threw a pair of sneakers into the suitcase. “At the funeral? I hardly remember a thing from that day but I would’ve sworn you were there, both of you.”

  “We were, for a few minutes.” Jamie watched her mother fold another blouse.

  Snow was blowing sideways, sticking in inches, despite gravity, to the metal staircase, the side of the power pole. A few snowflakes blew in through the open window, across the room, settled on the arm of the couch, and started melting. The draft made Jamie shiver.

  Phoebe said, “Close that window.”

  “I like the cold.” But she went to the window and closed it. “When are you leaving?”

  “Loyal asked me to deal at that tournament tomorrow and I need to get him off my back. Acts like I owe him my life. I leave after that.” She found a clean sweatshirt and pulled her work blouse off. A tattoo was on her shoulder blade. Prison quality.

  “You got a tattoo?”

  Phoebe glanced at it in the mirror. “Stupid, is what I got. Another six months when they found the needle hidden inside my mattress.”

  Jamie looked closer. The queen of spades. “You should get it touched up.”

  “Supposed to be the card of wisdom. Huh. Whatever.”

  “You always said, ‘Follow your heart—’”

  “‘—but bet your spades.’ You remember that?”

  “Toby says it all the time.”

  Phoebe froze and for a moment Jamie thought she’d finally gotten through to her. Then she picked up the necklace Toby had shown her that day on the sidewalk, still in its box, and handed it to Jamie. “You should find the receipt and return it. I’m pretty sure he paid cash.”

  Jamie took the box, wishing it would bring enough to retain a lawyer but knowing it wouldn’t. “Mom. I was there. I saw you in that upstairs window.”

  Phoebe didn’t react. She picked up and folded a towel. “The less you know about that night, the better.”

  “I saw him.”

  “What did you see? A tarp wrapped around something big. A shadow in a window. That’s all you saw.”

  “I saw his face.”

  Phoebe held the towel to her chest, looked at Jamie. “What are you talking about?”

  “The tarp fell off when we pulled him out of the truck. I saw his face.” She braced herself in the doorway, waited for her mother to say something, childishly hoping she could make it better.

  Phoebe tossed the towel on top of the clothes and turned back to packing. “What can I tell you, Jamie? The best thing is to wipe that out of your mind.” She closed the suitcase lid.

  CHAPTER

  31

  A BLAST OF wind followed Jamie inside the trailer. It rustled the papers spread out on the kitchen table where Loyal was adding up columns in his ledger and working to empty a quart of Jack Daniels. He said, “Goddamn,” and she hurried to shut the door.

  He picked up a postcard that had blown on the floor, folded it in half, and stuck it in his shirt pocket. The map he liked to look at sometimes—creased to show the eastern coast—sat next to the ledger.

  “Get another postcard from Mr. Bobby?”

  “Not your business.” He folded the map and stuck it in the back of the ledger.

  She turned away to hide her smile. Over the years that guy had probably sent a hundred postcards and Jamie had read them all. They had their own language, nicknames, a bunch of code words that hinted at their old days together. Inside the fridge she found bologna and a tub of mac ’n’ cheese, made a roll-up with it, and ate it over the sink. “Why don’t you have friends that live in town?”

  “I got plenty of friends.”

  “No, you don’t. You got the judge, the guy in Key West, and that lady friend.” She rarely mentioned the woman from the Piggly Wiggly, but she and Toby always joked about how Loyal had been screwing her in the back seat of his truck for God knows how many years. She didn’t understand this man and it nagged at her. How had her life come to such shit in just nineteen years? She had gained nothing by keeping quiet.

  He stared at the ledger, wrote down some numbers.

  “I’m just saying. You’ve lived in this town your whole life. I got more friends than you.”

  He looked up from the ledger. “Maybe I been busy. You ever think of that? Huh? Maybe I been raising two kids weren’t my own. Maybe I been working real hard for ten years to keep the two of you out of foster care.”

  Foster care. Whenever Jamie heard those words she remembered the couple that had wanted them, but when she tried to conjure their image all she saw was a green lawn, a white picket fence, and the vague shape of two adults. “What’s so bad about foster care?”

  “What’s so bad about it? Kids get fucked in foster care. Literally. Don’t you know that? They get separated, farmed out for labor, not fed right.”

  “What are you talking about? That shit doesn’t happen anymore.”

  “The hell it doesn’t.”

  “But there were people who wanted to adopt us.”

  He pointed at her. “You, Goddamnit, were raised by family. Not strangers! Do you know how much I gave up to stay here and keep the two of you? No, you don’t. You have no idea.”

  “Staying here? You grew up here. Your life was here way before me and Toby.”

  “I was moving down to Key West. Had it all planned out. Instead your mother goes to jail and leaves the two of you to me. Drug-stealing bitch. And whatever you think you know you can be sure you’re wrong. You know nothing about the whole thing.”

  “I know you got a lot of stupid pride. Probably why you run so low on friends.”

  This seemed to hurt him and she felt a little good about that. He rubbed his eyes like his vision was blurring, like he did when he’d had too much whiskey. It could go either way now; she’d get another backhand or he’d stumble to his bedroom and sleep it off. Not for the first time she imagined ducking the slap, catching him off balance, and her coming around with a blow to the back of his head. He started to stand and she flinched, but then he leaned back in his chair and shook his head.

  “Keating is not my friend. I paid him a great deal of money to keep the two of you out of the system. A great deal. And I never took a dime of that welfare.”

  “What? We sleep on camping cots in a storage room!” He was deluded, telling himself he’d done a good job, being so damn proud. “We could’ve used some welfare.”

  “You had enough and you were raised by family.” He pointed at her. “And you know where you came from.”

  She should’ve run when she’d had the chance. What was the good of knowing where you came from if you came from shit? Not knowing had to be better. “Yeah. I know where I come from. My father’s dead and my mother’s a thief.” And my uncle’s a con man.

  “Welcome to the real world. It’s about time you grew up.”

  He offered her the bottle of whiskey and she drank from it.

  “Did you see Toby?” he asked.

  “Yeah. I saw him.”

  “How’d he take it?”

  “What the hell do you care?”

  He stared at the bottle for a moment. “Huh. Maybe I don’t. What I do care about is tomorrow. Make sure you get some sleep, be sharp for the game.”

  He started to stand but a car turned into the driveway out front, its lights shining briefly on the wall behind him. The lights went off and a woman stepped out of the car and into the porch light.

  “Goddamn.” Jamie said, “What’s Jilkins want?”

  The only reason the woman would show up unannounced at this hour was if Toby was in trouble. Opening the front door, Jamie had the urge to flee down the street. Instead she met Jilkins’s eyes and asked, “What happened?”

  “Toby’s been moved to medical de
tention.” Jilkins climbed the last step and stomped the sludge off her shoes.

  “Why, was there a fight?” The bologna turned inside Jamie’s stomach.

  Jilkins came inside. “No. It wasn’t like that. No one thought he was a danger to himself, so the guards left him alone. I’m sorry to have to put it so bluntly, but he tried to hang himself.”

  Jamie’s mind flashed with a vision of her brother dangling from metal bars, loose-limbed and dead. She braced herself against the wall. “Is he dead?”

  “No. He’s not dead, but he’s hurt.”

  Loyal sat at the kitchen table, mute and seemingly unfazed. Jamie knew by the look in his eye that he wasn’t just done with Toby—he was done with both of them. He pushed himself to his feet and thudded down the hallway to his room.

  Ms. Jilkins led Jamie to the couch and got her a glass of water. It was a small act but the woman’s kindness was almost too much to handle. She swallowed some water, felt the sting of tears. The burnt hole on the couch, the one Toby had picked at until it had grown to the size of a fist, was right there at her fingertips. She picked up a loose thread, felt the room begin to fall away, heard a warm buzz in her ear and realized Jilkins was talking.

  “I see it all the time. Kids like Toby are like a tidal wave that just rolls over you. Parents think they’re creating something better than themselves, something beautiful and wondrous, but it isn’t like that. Kids are their own form of grief—if they don’t pull you under, they show you what you’re made of.”

  In his bedroom, Loyal dropped his boots, one after the other, on the floor. She heard the clunk of the lid of his lockbox drop to the floor. He’d be snoring soon and Jamie hated him even more for that.

  “How? What did he use?” Jamie asked.

  Jilkins sank into the couch. The movement rippled Jamie’s brain and the room spun. She looked at the woman’s face, needing the steady sound of her voice, but lamplight fell across her face, making it look like a skull.

  “I don’t—” Jilkins halted. “I don’t have all the details.”