Free Verse

by Sarah Dooley

  Still, there was a little part of me that understood. Sometimes you do something crazy because you can’t stand to not do anything. That was Chris McKenzie, lighting fires because he needed his hands and his mind to be full. Bright sparks, dangerous things. They command attention. They distract. I didn’t know what it was Chris needed to be distracted from, but I recognized the need itself.

  And then sometimes you do something crazy because there’s nothing left to distract you. When Mr. Powell speaks, when he tells you what has happened to Chris—or, rather, what Chris has done to himself—there’s so much fear and so much sadness welling up inside you that you can’t hold it all. Yesterday Chris was a person lighting things on fire at the SaveGreat, and today there is no such person, and you might have been the last person to see him when he was still real. Your brain goes from overload to total shutdown, and then you blink, or at least you think that’s what you did, only you find out you’re not in class anymore. You’re standing behind your school, next to the Dumpsters, where the kitchen staff sneaks out to smoke, and your knuckles are scraped but you don’t know why. And Anthony Tucker is standing three feet behind you, breathing heavily and looking terrified, with his hands up, like you’re some wild thing that might charge him.

  “Sasha?” He’s the school bully. Since you were second graders, he has followed you around, tugging at your braid, stepping on the backs of your shoes, and putting gum in your hair. You’ve never heard his voice sound anything except taunting, but now it’s dead serious and scared and he sounds about six years old. “Hey. What did that Dumpster ever do to you?”

  And you run past him because you can’t face the fact that the worst bully in the whole school just saw you lose your head for a minute.

  I’m not crazy. I’m not. It’s just that there are days when the scared and the mad and the sad inside me get so big that my body can’t hold them. And then they come out, and maybe I’m a little bit scared that it does make me crazy, but I’d never say so.

  • • •

  When Phyllis is done singing about caged birds, I open my eyes. There is a weird sound, like a hard strum of a guitar. I am on my feet and Phyllis is half up from her chair, fingertips stretching out in the air like she’s trying to catch raindrops or the seconds that just went by. The guitar is on the floor with its strings pointing every which way, splinters of wood poking out along the side.

  I work on catching my breath. In-in-in quick. Out long. In-in-in quick. Out long.

  Phyllis, without her guitar, looks small. Her hands seem fragile.

  “Well. I guess I played the wrong song,” she says. There is nothing musical about her voice now. She sinks into her chair and goes still.

  3

  Michael leapt sideways and managed to catch the Frisbee even though I wasn’t very good at throwing it. We’d been playing for half an hour, and he had yet to miss a catch. My third-grade teacher, who just yesterday finished wrangling us through a Memorial Day craft, would have said we were being disrespectful, playing Frisbee in a cemetery with fallen soldiers and stuff, and I told Michael as much, but he said if he were buried here, he wouldn’t mind two kids having fun on his lawn.

  “Any soldier grew up here would know there’s no other place to play that’s sort of flat and doesn’t have trees,” he said.

  Michael had been planning to join the military; had been impossible to live with for weeks because of all the working out and eating healthy and all the hooyah-ing. Then the mine fell down on our dad and everything stopped. Now certain things were starting again—I was going to school, Michael was back at work—but there was no more working out and no more talk of going anywhere and Michael hardly ever smiled. We played a lot of Frisbee. We hiked, too, and ran sprints, and we were building a fence between our building and the house next door, but it was only half finished, because we ran out of wood and energy.

  Michael hated Caboose. Always had. Some of my earliest memories were of Michael telling me stories about Someplace Else. He told me all about how in real places, there were trains that ran under the city and that they could take you anywhere you wanted to go, and nobody had to drive an old pickup truck that broke down every two days. How in some places you could live in a house up on stilts so the ocean could drift in and out underneath. He told me about planes that landed on water, and about night skylines that made the stars look faded. There were a lot of places Michael wanted to go, but they all sounded awfully far away.

  Even now that he’d stopped talking about leaving, he couldn’t help but mutter under his breath about how much he hated Caboose: “Only place I know where kids can have a game of Frisbee and a dang séance in the same five minutes.” I wasn’t sure what a séance was or why he sounded so bent out of shape about it. He threw the Frisbee so hard, I heard it whistle past my ear. I ran to catch it. I’d missed it about thirty times already, but Michael hadn’t given up on me yet.

  “Watch out!”

  His warning came a second too late. My shin connected with a gravestone, and the Frisbee and I were suddenly side by side, airborne. I snatched the bit of plastic out of the last six inches of air before it would have smacked into the grass. It never touched a blade, only the grass stains on my fingers. I lay still, catching my breath.

  Michael’s footsteps pounded up behind me. “You all right? Hey . . .” He dropped to his knees next to me. He looked mad, but not at me. He’d been mad a lot lately, ever since our dad. He got sad a lot, too, but I don’t think he knew I could tell. “Hey, sorry,” he said, helping me up to sitting. “I’m sorry, sis, I didn’t mean to throw it so hard.”

  I was pretty sure I could taste mud in my mouth, and I couldn’t get my breath to go back out all the way. I sat for a minute, gasping, before my air all came out in a whoosh. Michael ran a shaky hand down his face, leaving a trail of mud to match my own.

  “You all right?” he asked again.

  “I got it,” I said, holding up the Frisbee, and his eyes moved from my face to the toy and back again. I waited to see what he would do next. Ever since he got to be my only family, I could never tell how he would act about things.

  A grin spread across his muddy face, and I could feel my own grin come out.

  “Well, you play Frisbee like you doggone mean it, Sasha,” he said with pride in his voice.

  • • •

  For some reason, after I smash the guitar, I can’t stop thinking about that Frisbee. Can’t stop thinking about Michael’s pride when I finally caught it. He gave up everything for me: his dreams of the military, of college, of subways and ocean views and living someplace better than here. At eighteen, he took over being my parent and he never once complained. He wanted me to catch the doggone Frisbee, and even back then, I think I’d have flown if it meant doing what he asked me to.

  And Michael asked me to do a lot of things over the years. Ace my spelling test. Read a chapter a night. Brush your doggone teeth before they fall out of your head! But there was one thing he asked for more than any other, and he spent the last few years of his life getting me ready for it.

  So I’m a little glad he doesn’t know that when I finally do leave Caboose, I don’t even manage to wear shoes.

  I can’t stay in the house with Phyllis. She’s sitting in a chair, not moving. Her hands are empty. Her hands are empty and it’s my fault. She’s not going to want me. I don’t even know her, and I’ve gone and wrecked her life. I’m all the way down past Town Center before I realize I’m still in my socks. I’ve wrecked those, too. I’m good at wrecking things.

  Route 10 is the main road through town and the only one with a yellow line. Once I cross the Gillums Bridge, I feel more at home. There isn’t enough of Caboose to have very many parts of town, but there is, at least, a poor side and a rich side. Phyllis lives on the rich side, where the houses are set down single-lane paved streets. The grass is cut even in summer, and it more or less survives the wint
er. In spring, people will plant flowers in the boxes and pots that now stand empty by the walk. Even on the rich side, folks are mostly poor. They’ve just had a splash or two of better luck.

  On my side of town, houses cluster along the highway or curl through the floodplain on dirt roads over and again washed out. Weed-strangled vacant lots lurk in between mushed-down brown yards, which, come summer, will still be more dirt than grass. Instead of flower boxes, yards here are dotted with bikes and rusting lawn mowers, dogs chained to plastic igloo-shaped shelters, and sets of tires marked with FOR SALE signs. It’s February, and the weeds gripping the vacant houses have been beaten down by rain and a couple of good snows. The sagging houses lean low against their neighbors, an occasional filthy patch of ice refusing to melt in the shadow. Here and there, a pretty house pops up—trim repainted, fence in good repair—and dogs patrol those houses with a suspicious eye toward a lone girl walking.

  Dust collects on the insides of windows in what used to be my family’s favorite breakfast spot. I can still make out the w and y of Railway and the Din of Diner, but it’s been years since the low-slung building’s smelled like eggs and bacon, or anything besides high water. Caboose hasn’t had a bad flood in years, but with the creek lapping at our yards every time it rains, everything on this side of town smells like mold and mud.

  I walk past three empty buildings and a Goodwill. Two more empties and a home décor shop called Dolly’s Primitives, which I predict will last all of two months. Sometimes people open businesses and try to make the downtown thrive, but nothing ever stays long. At the end of the block, I walk past the narrow building that used to be Get Reel Video Rental, before it was Sugar Shaker Nightclub, before it was Honey Ham Cafe. Now it’s Cupcake Emporium, only it isn’t Cupcake Emporium anymore, because the windows that used to say so are busted out. I see glass twinkling on the sidewalk. I see yellow fire tape. I see signs that say DANGER. I look away.

  On the other side of the street, birds are sorting through an overgrown lot for seed. A boy, maybe seven, throws a rock. They all fly, the birds and the boy, back to where they came from.

  • • •

  A human being in good shape, on good roads, can walk about twenty miles in a day. I looked it up online once, back when me and Michael used to stay up late talking about all the ways we could leave. He told me that was crazy—we weren’t going to walk out. We were going to plan and study and take our time and get me a scholarship to some awesome college somewhere. But all his talk about getting trapped made my clothes feel too tight and my breath come short. I needed to know there was a quick way out, should I ever notice that I was getting comfortable with the idea of staying here forever. Michael made it sound like I might someday wake up and realize I was forty and that I’d never been anywhere and could never escape.

  By late evening, I’ve learned that a human girl in okay shape, in thickets, carrying her belongings, can walk about three miles.

  Then she panics and hides in a culvert and loses track of time for a while.

  Then she goes to sleep.

  • • •

  When I wake up, it’s thunderstorming, and I stay in the culvert, which fills more and more with water. I cannot make myself stand. My joints stay folded. My limbs stay useless. The water rises.

  • • •

  The things in the suitcase I’ve brought with me are soaked. I keep the clothes. They’ll dry. I leave the soggy picture of me and my brother. You can’t see our faces anymore.

  All the way down East Avenue, I look back and I see that little white speck of ruined photo paper. When it’s finally out of sight, I run back. I pick it up.

  Michael would tell me what the clouds mean. How long the storm will last. I take shelter in the doorway of the Baptist church at dusk. They can’t kick you out of the doorway of a church.

  • • •

  After they kick me out of the doorway of the church, assuming, I suppose, that I’m a teen of the rock-throwing variety—the church has lost three stained-glass windows this year alone, and is adorned now with less spiritual plywood—I cross the train tracks, slippery socks on rusty ties. I find a railroad spike, pick it up, throw it as hard as I can. Thunder crashes right when I should have heard a clatter. I needed the clatter, the noise. That’s why I threw the spike in the first place.

  I stand still for a while because I don’t know what else to do. Then I hear the ruckus of train wheels approaching, and I hunker down on the thin strip between the train tracks and the creek. I press my hands over my ears. The train roars by, roars away. The creek roars by, keeps roaring by.

  When the rain lets up, I walk some more. I stop to pick up fistfuls of mud. I kick rocks and beer cans into the creek. I fight through thickets. I untangle brambles. After I’ve fallen no less than three times in the dirt, I stop for a minute. I braid my hair.

  • • •

  Night happens. The kind with stars. Then morning does. The kind with birds.

  • • •

  When the wind goes out of my sails and I admit defeat, I loop back the way I came. I pass everything again, going in the other direction, but it’s all so gray and familiar that I have to work to see each building as a separate place. I pass closed stores and empty houses. I pass a fire station with one truck and one less fireman than it used to have. I pass a pawnshop full of wedding rings. I pass skinny men on front porches looking at me with suspicion in their eyes. Michael always warned me away from this part of town, told me the druggies weren’t safe to be around. He wouldn’t like me walking here alone. I want to walk faster, but I only seem to have one speed. I trudge on through the worst part of my little town.

  • • •

  I sit on the bench at Town Center, the little park marked with a rusting red train caboose. I gaze at the park’s sign, which is missing a C: TOWN ENTER. I don’t feel cold or tired anymore, but I can’t imagine ever doing anything again besides sitting on this bench. I wait for night to fall. I wait for somebody to find me.

  4

  Phyllis comes to see me at the hospital in the northern part of the county. Her empty hands hang like wilted flowers.

  They make me stay at the hospital for hours because I walked without shoes for so long that I hurt my feet and because I didn’t drink anything for the two days I went walking. They poke me with a needle to give me water. They smile with toothpaste mouths and they undo my braids and wash my hair.

  “I wish you’d told me you was going, Sasha,” Phyllis says. “I would have packed you some sandwiches, at least.”

  I can’t turn over without tugging the needle out of my arm. I lie perfectly still.

  “Egg salad,” Phyllis says. “You like egg salad?”

  • • •

  A couple days later, me and Phyllis sit on her porch in folding chairs, eating egg salad sandwiches. We’re both bundled up against the cold of early March. It’s four a.m. This is when I finally got hungry.

  The neighbor comes out on his porch, cursing, and a child’s shoe skitters out with him. He nearly falls. After he kicks the shoe back in the house, he locks the door.

  The neighbor is dressed in blue coveralls with reflective stripes down the sides. That means he’s on his way to the coal mines. He might have worked with my dad, with Ben. I picture Ben raising one coal-darkened hand to this neighbor as they arrive on the job. I raise my hand, like I did the day Ben left.

  The neighbor waves back with a grimy hand that I know will never come clean, like he has a tattoo of coal dirt. Phyllis and I watch him climb into the blue pickup truck and disappear down Route 10. She says, “That’s Hubert Harless. Any relation?”

  I shrug and sigh. There are a passel of Harlesses in Caboose. I’m probably not related to all of them, but nobody claimed me after Michael. I hope I’m not related to somebody named Hubert. That’s one of those names you see on national TV when someone from West Virginia gets in
terviewed. I don’t want people in other states to think we’re all named things like Hubert and Bucky and Junior. We have Williams. We have Gavins and Garretts and Sams. We have one less Michael than we did before, but still, we have Michaels. I can’t deny, though, that there are people around here with names and nicknames like Hubert and Bucky and Junior. I may or may not be related to one.

  Phyllis has a cat that won’t leave me alone. She bumps her body against my lower legs. She stands up and puts her feet on my knees. She smells my sandwich.

  “You tell Stella to get down,” Phyllis says. “She don’t need your sandwich.”

  I’ve already picked apart the last corner of my sandwich. I drop the rest on the porch. “She can have it.”

  • • •

  A couple days later, Phyllis and I sit on the front porch, eating egg salad sandwiches. It’s four a.m. This is the next time I got hungry.

  • • •

  It’s ten a.m. and I’m still on the porch. The porch is better than the house. More to see and less to think about. Hubert Harless waves his hand to me now without me having to raise mine first. His two little daughters follow him across the porch. It’s a Saturday. It’s unseasonably warm for March. He’s got overalls on today instead of coveralls, so he must not be going to work. The two little girls wear diapers and long T-shirts.

  Hubert Harless has a wife named Shirley who stays in the house. If I look out Phyllis’s kitchen window, I can see Shirley at the sink, washing cake pans.

  Hubert Harless’s son is named Mikey. I’m surprised there’s been another Michael Harless in the town of Caboose this whole time and I never knew it. But it’s not as hard as you’d think to not know people in Caboose. People keep to themselves. You can end up knowing the lady at the Save-Great cash register better than you know your own family, if they don’t live next door.