The Girl From Blind River

by Gale Massey

  What did it matter anyway? Shoestrings, sheets, his ripped-up T-shirt—there were only so many possibilities. “How bad is he?”

  “His windpipe is crushed. It isn’t good, but he’ll recover.”

  Her thoughts spun out as if she had no control over them. Toby in that jail cell, his face red, his eyes distant and vacant. Why hadn’t she just taken his hand? “Can I see him?”

  Jilkins seemed so far away, but when Jamie tried, she was able to focus on the shadows falling on her face, the familiar sound of her voice.

  “No. He’s an injured minor in custody. I’m sorry, but the only people the police will allow in will be a parent or a guardian.” The woman exhaled. She seemed deflated. Her lips trembled slightly, and Jamie wondered how much of this she felt. She’d known them going on eight years.

  “He’s heavily sedated, anyway, and on a breathing machine. And he’s going to need months of rehab.” Jilkins looked at the ceiling. “I always worried something like this might happen. Don’t get me wrong. Toby is a beautiful kid, but he was always in motion, never at peace, and the cards were always stacked against him.”

  Were they? No, not always, but it would seem that way to Ms. Jilkins, someone who had only seen the hard years.

  “I wanted better for you two,” Ms. Jilkins said. “But all I could do was keep an eye on you. I never understood why the judge decided to leave you here when there was that family waiting for a boy and girl.” She glanced darkly down the hallway. “I mean, look at this place. Your uncle was clearly unprepared to raise children. Even with all that government assistance. It seems like that money would have gone further than this.”

  Jamie had never thought of Jilkins as having kept an eye on them. She only seemed to come around to cause problems, but now Jamie wondered if she’d had it wrong. Maybe Jilkins had come around only when problems came up. Jamie had never told Toby about the couple who had wanted them. Foster care might’ve made the difference. Maybe he wouldn’t have been such a bully if they’d gone to live with a real family. Maybe they would’ve gotten adopted, gotten a different name, grown up without the Elders curse.

  “I mean, why didn’t he go all the way and grant Loyal custody?” Ms. Jilkins continued. “Why keep Family Services involved?”

  “Loyal would never have accepted a dime of welfare.”

  “It wasn’t welfare. It was Social Security benefits for your father’s dependents. Once your mother went to, uh … away, your uncle got those payments. I filed the forms for you and Toby myself. That’s why I wanted you to get in college right away. Those benefits run out at twenty-one if you aren’t in school.”

  Jamie stared at her hands as the pieces slid together in her brain. I paid him a great deal of money to keep the two of you out of the system. Their benefits had been funneled straight to Keating’s reelection campaigns while she’d lived most of her life feeling like a burden, like a criminal for needing Pop-Tarts and pencils. Loyal was deluded saying it was family duty and pride. It wasn’t. He protected his gambling operations by bribing the judge and Keating kept Family Services involved to keep Loyal in line. To keep the donations coming in. She thought the word out loud. “Donations.”

  Ms. Jilkins looked at Jamie blankly. “What donations?”

  “Never mind.” Jamie looked around the trailer at the broken windows, the ruined couch. She’d been a fool. He’d been so enraged when he found out she’d flunked that first semester and now she understood why. The benefits. Pride had nothing to do with it.

  “You poor kids.” Ms. Jilkins picked up a framed photo of Toby off the coffee table, his high school portrait, and ran her fingers over his face. “None of this would’ve happened if your mother hadn’t taken that prescription.”

  Jamie was tired of hearing how her mother was a thief. She took the photo from Jilkins and wiped the glass with her sleeve. Another smaller photo sat in front of the portrait. Toby and Jamie about the time of their dad’s funeral, her arm draped over his shoulders, his eyes shut, wearing a goofy smile.

  She’d never meant to leave him on his own but she had. All those nights she’d spent with Jack, ignoring Toby, thinking he was finally big enough to take care of himself. Without knowing when she’d done it, she had taken on the responsibility to see him grow up. But Jack had come along and she’d gotten distracted. She tried to remember her last conversation with Toby. Was she the last person to have talked to him or seen him? Why hadn’t she been kinder?

  Jilkins pulled a tissue out of her pocket, blew her nose. “He must have been desperate to rob that man.”

  The words banged inside Jamie’s head. “He didn’t rob anyone.”

  “The police think he did.”

  “And you believe them?”

  “Why else would he try to take his own life, Jamie? People get hurt in robberies. For all we know, that man is dead.”

  “It didn’t happen that way.”

  Goddamn. Had Toby confessed? He’d been so worried about Phoebe’s happiness after Jamie told him about Keating. It had been stupid to implicate Phoebe while Toby was locked up. He might have tried to take the rap for this thing just to close down the investigation. But Jamie couldn’t tell Jilkins any of that.

  “The man’s been missing for days.” Jilkins rubbed the back of her head and sighed. “But, of course, you know your brother best.”

  Ms. Jilkins yawned and Jamie saw the dark circles beneath her eyes. “It’s late. You should go.”

  “Will you be okay? I hate to leave you like this.”

  “I’ll be fine,” she said. “Really. I’ll call if I need anything.”

  “Try and get some sleep.” Ms. Jilkins picked up her keys and purse. At the door, she said, “I’m just a phone call away.”

  The lights of her car flicked over the walls as she backed out of the driveway. Jamie sat for a while staring at the hole in the couch, the dismal walls, her brother’s picture.

  She couldn’t settle. She walked to the front door and then back to the kitchen, where she poured some water over the dried-up potted ivy on the windowsill. Every noise spooked her: the fridge compressor kicking on, a squirrel scuttling across the roof, a pinecone falling on the front porch. This place could never be her home again. She texted Jack hoping he was still at the store, turned on the TV to drown out the silence.

  In the back room she saw that Toby had left in a rage. The window over his cot had been kicked out. Shards of glass were on the floor and his pillowcase. A draft blew in through the opening.

  Diesel engines idled in the street outside. Yellow utility truck lights pulsed against the night. The neighborhood dogs barked in their kennels. A worker climbed into a cherry picker as three men watched, their faces lit by intermittent lights, their hard hats casting long shadows on the road. The generator kicked on as the truck lifted a worker up to repair the streetlight.

  Toby’s muddy sneakers, laces broken, stuck out from under the bed where she made him keep them because they stank. His clothes were where he’d left them—thrown on the floor, slung over the metal footboard, half jammed under his pillow. His science book was sticking out from under his cot, gathering dust. His Game Boy sat on the dresser, grimed with Doritos cheese muck. She ripped the Army poster off the wall and tore it in half. She untied the length of rope he used to practice knots and stuffed it under his bed.

  Inside the dresser, she found the wallet she’d given him for Christmas, the one he didn’t use because he loved the one Phoebe had given him for his eighth birthday. He used the new one to save things in, the one letter his mother had written from prison, pictures he loved. Jamie knew them all by heart: Toby on his first day of school, his skinny arms wrapped around a gigantic book bag, refusing to smile for the camera; the pocket-sized version of his seventh-grade portrait. He looked just like their uncle with his hair slicked and combed back, though Jamie would never mention that to his face. A snapshot of him blowing out birthday candles at the kitchen table, Phoebe sitting next to him smoking a cigarette. Pr
obably the last cake she ever baked.

  A square of plastic fell out of the wallet. A condom, the kind the science teachers handed out on AIDS awareness days. She almost wanted to cry, wondering if he’d ever had the chance to use one, if he would have even bothered, or if he just liked the possibilities that came with keeping one in his wallet.

  The last photo was of her and Toby. He was laughing maniacally while her mouth gaped and she looked wildly at the space above the camera. Phoebe had taken the picture just after he’d poured ice water down the back of Jamie’s shirt. She’d hated him in that moment, hated Phoebe, too, because it had been her idea. It was always like that with the two of them.

  The Elders clan time bomb ticked in his DNA, and Phoebe had done nothing to keep him safe. Always in on it, always encouraging his pranks. Like she didn’t know all that would lead a boy like Toby straight to juvie or the ICU.

  On the TV in the outer room, Lena Bangor was on the local news. The newscaster said charges were pending against a juvenile suspect, already in custody. Lena held up a photograph of her father, announcing a reward for information leading to his whereabouts.

  How basic was it, this need to bury the dead?

  She picked up Loyal’s empty whiskey bottle and started to throw it in the garbage, then set it back on the table. If she didn’t get out of here now, her future was more of this, more of this place, more cleaning up after him. She sat in his chair at the kitchen table, opened the ledger. On the front pages he’d written the locations of every coin pusher, slot machine, and fake lottery ticket dispenser. Thirty-seven locations.

  There was another set of numbers in the back. A column with her name and one with Toby’s along with monthly deposits into a checking account. Over one hundred entries. Enough money to have hired a team of lawyers for Toby.

  A bank statement sat on top of the stack of mail she’d brought in. She opened it, read the balance. Twenty cents. There were only two transactions. The day after the state’s deposit had come there was a corresponding withdrawal. The bastard had given every cent of it to Keating and, according to what Jilkins had told her, he’d been giving Keating that money every month for eight years. All that money, while she and Toby had nothing.

  She went into Loyal’s room. He was passed out facedown, one arm dangling off the side of the bed, the latest postcard from Bobby showing under his pillow. The streetlight blinked on and lit the room in a yellow haze. His pack of cigarettes and an overflowing ashtray sat near where his hand rested on the floor. He’d tossed his belt on a chair.

  His shotgun stood in the corner next to a box of shells. She kicked over the box and the shells scattered across the floor. He didn’t budge. She picked up one, loaded the shotgun, and felt the weight of it in her hands. A sweat broke out on the back of her neck. His sleeping head fit neatly in the shotgun’s sights. Jamie stood there panting.

  This was exactly what the world expected from her, the Elders girl gone bad. She wavered. A plan began taking shape. A new idea. She decided on it. Lowered the gun. He snored and mumbled something in his sleep.

  She laid the gun down on the bed next to him where he would wake up next to it in the morning. In the outer room, she found Keating’s cell phone in the bottom of her backpack, did what she needed to do, and packed up.

  CHAPTER

  32

  A FIRE TRUCK idled loudly in the emergency drive outside the hospital where Toby and Jamie had been born. From the sidewalk, she looked up at the darkened windows wondering which room he was in and if he would be able to see the sky when he opened his eyes. She hoped he was warm. The memory of their last conversation haunted her; his slumped shoulders and the defeat in his eyes when she’d carried on about Phoebe.

  She crossed to the sidewalk beside the courthouse. Keating’s Cadillac was parked in a reserved space and she fought the urge to key it because security cameras were bolted every fifty feet on the buildings and utility poles. Men like Keating ran this town by keeping an eye on people like her. But if Toby knew what she knew now, he wouldn’t have cared about those cameras. He’d have keyed the entire car and slit the tires. He was fearless that way.

  Jack finally texted back saying he would wait for her at the store.

  She walked down Main under streetlights turned hazy by an evening fog. Her nose started to run again. What she really needed was to curl up under a blanket on the futon. But when she turned the corner, she stopped short. Shit. Billy’s truck was outside Jack’s store. She went inside anyway. The store smelled like cinnamon from the can of room deodorizer he used whenever he smoked pot.

  Jack came out of the back room with bloodshot eyes.

  “What’s Billy doing here?” she asked.

  “He’s got some good shit. Come to the back and try it.”

  She wanted to be alone with him, to slide up next to him and thaw. Now she’d have to wait until Billy left.

  He took her hand and led her into the office. “Want one?” he asked, popping a beer.

  Billy sat on the futon happily sucking on a pipe. He offered it to her.

  She waved off the pipe but took the beer. Billy Wages hadn’t smiled at her since his wedding day and she wondered if he’d scored some of the medicinal “happy weed” he always bragged about. He blew smoke at the ceiling.

  Jack took the pipe from him and slid into the chair behind the desk. “What’s up, Jamie?”

  She hated the cool tone he used when other people were around. Like Billy didn’t know they were sleeping together. What’s up? It was hard to know where to begin. It would take an hour to catch them up on everything that had happened and another hour to repeat it once the pot wore off. The light from the laptop lit Jack’s face. He glanced at Billy, who smiled at Jamie again. It had to be the weed. Their mood was not right for this kind of news and it made her feel weird when she blurted out, “It’s Toby.”

  Jack closed the laptop and took a deep draw on the pipe. He tried to hold it in and coughed. “Of course it is. It’s always Toby.”

  “Dude’s cray.” Billy’s eyes were bright and watery.

  “Yeah, and you aren’t? The guy who knocked up his girlfriend at the prom, then had to get a job at a fertilizer plant working the graveyard shift and selling pot on the side to pay for the kid?”

  “Fuck off,” Billy said, laughing because it was true.

  Someone came in the front door and rang the service bell.

  “No fighting, you two,” Jack said, and went out front.

  Jamie slid behind the desk, silently willing Billy to leave, hoping Jack would let her spend the night in the office even if he couldn’t stay. Light from the small window lit Billy’s face with an eerie green glow. The bottle of sleeping pills Jack sometimes gave her was next to the laptop. Once she took one, though, she’d be out. Billy was still smiling at her even though she’d just insulted him.

  “The fuck is it with you?” she asked.

  He reached over, his hand passing too close to her breast, and opened the laptop. The screen came to life and he hit the play button. “You’re the fuck it is,” he said. He dropped back onto the futon and stretched, crossing his arms behind his head.

  The image didn’t make sense. Not at first anyway. Something about the scene was familiar but strange. The guy in the video was getting blown. Billy and Jack had been watching porn, like they always did when they hung out. A creepy habit, but that was what dudes did, watch porn and smoke dope.

  The picture was blurry. Then the guy smiled at the camera, and Jamie recognized Jack. He held the girl by the back of the head, then pushed her off him and yanked off her jeans. For a moment Jamie didn’t recognize herself. This had to be some other girl.

  But in the video she saw Jack’s desk, an open bottle of wine, the futon, and a girl flat on her back. Jack was biting her nipples, stopping once more to turn and smile at the camera. Then he slid down her body, his face between her legs.

  “You are the bomb,” Billy laughed, holding his crotch, and that’s when Ja
mie knew for sure. She stared at the screen unable to move, her heart stomping in her chest, white heat exploding in her throat.

  She didn’t remember any of it but she recognized herself, moaning, flailing, orgasmic. He’d given her a pill two nights ago and she’d been sore the whole next day. She grabbed the laptop and threw it at the wall. The lid busted halfway off and the screen went dead. She picked it up again and threw it at Billy. He’d seen her at her most vulnerable and he couldn’t stop laughing. He blocked it with his knee and kept laughing.

  Nothing in her life had prepared her for this much rage. She felt the room sway and the edges of her vision blur. She grabbed the bottle of pills, dumped them into her hand. Billy laughed as he followed her to the front room.

  “What’s the problem?” Jack was counting out bills to an old woman. Her eyes widened behind her glasses. She grabbed her cash and stuffed it in her purse.

  “Hold on,” Jack said.

  “How could you?”

  He held his hand up. “It isn’t what you think.”

  “Fuck you,” she screamed.

  She fought to breathe. Her brain leaped wildly from shame to fury and back to shame.

  Billy leaned against the doorjamb, giggling.

  The woman clutched her purse to her chest. “Ooh, she mad,” she said, and turned to Jack. “Boy, what you gone done?”

  Jamie leaped at Jack.

  “What are you doing?” He grabbed her, but rage made her stronger than she’d ever been.

  She jammed the pills into his mouth, but he clamped his mouth shut, grabbed her wrist, and squeezed. Most of the pills fell on the floor. Then his hand was in her face.

  He spit out the ones that had slipped through, swore at her.

  The woman backed away. “Girl, you make him pay.”

  “You’re a fucking asshole.” She tried to shout, but there was no air in her lungs and it came out as a whisper. “Did you put this online?”

  “What? No!”

  Billy was bent over and laughing, trying to catch his breath. Jamie lunged at him and landed an elbow on his chin. He smacked the counter on his way down and landed at the woman’s feet.