Route 12
Copyright © 2015, Virginia Miles
All rights reserved. No part of this electronic book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by electronic or mechanical means including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Published by Mike Monson and Chris Rhatigan
Edited by Rob Pierce and Chris Rhatigan
Cover design by Chris Rhatigan
Route 12
Blood and Sin
About the Author
More from All Due Respect Books
ROUTE 12
Virginia, 1970
ONE
THE OVERSIZED DEPUTY stands in the rain, yelling and banging on Percy’s front door with both fists. Crouching inside the dark apartment, the boy holds his hands over his ears, as if not hearing will make everything go away.
“Kid!” It’s rainy and cold, the officer is wearing a clear plastic raincoat and hood over his blue uniform. “Come on! It’s your mom. She’s down at the station. She wants to talk to you.” He bangs loudly a few more times.
“The law don’t do nothing for us, Percy. Remember that. They will always be against us.” Mavis Caito had bred a fevered distrust for the police into her son. They were always trying to shake her down or get a leg up. He saw how they treated her, what they did to her.
“It’ll be okay son, just come on out,” the man yells.
The boy’s knees shake and his thighs throb, feel as though they may snap. He hears the police car pull away and stares out the greasy window.
***
“Baby boy, I told you this would happen.” Mavis is tired and sick, racked with a hacking cough and fever. She whispers to Percy from her slate-walled cell at county lock up. He sits, feeling small, on a bench in the drafty hallway.
“It’s not like they say, though. I was just down seeing what was up. You know how I do,” she says. “One of my friends just gave me some money, that’s all. You know I have a lot of friends.”
“I know.” He stares at her shaking hands.
“Listen.” She tilts her head and looks to the officer standing under the arch leading to registration. Closing her eyes, concentrating, she looks back to Percy. “Someone’ll be out to the apartment tomorrow. I don’t know when.” She sniffs. “They’ll take you someplace and take care of you. Until I get all this worked out.”
“You’re not coming home?”
“Not for a bit, probably.”
“Why?”
“No!” Her face turns red and frustrated. “You just go home now and wait. No arguing. Go, run home, Percy! Go straight home. Lock the doors. Don’t talk to anyone.”
Night had come while he was in the jail. Streetlights throw a sickly glow. Percy runs and runs, blood rushing in his head and his heart pounding in his chest. His young mind paints darkness in every corner. The wind picks up and he runs faster, feeling the rain fall hard on his skin.
He hurls himself through the front door and slams it behind him. Slowly, it falls open, the hinges squeaking. With a grunt, he slams it once more and scrambles to his mattress in the corner. Barely a breath passes, the hinges creak and the front door whispers open again. Sleepy, afraid, Percy slides across the bed, ready to kick the door shut.
Old Mr. Melvin, the only other tenant in the railroad house, stands in the doorway. On the dole, his pension usually goes for shine or pork and beans. He keeps Mavis Caito’s dirty deeds a secret and in return, she shares her favors. Of all the men his mother allows inside, the old man is the loudest and Percy must sleep with a pillow over his head.
The man’s face is in shadow, the streetlight behind him twitches. An angry wind tears at the roof shingles. Mr. Melvin closes the door and locks it behind him, stumbles across the floor. He falls on the mattress, holding the boy underneath him. Percy closes his eyes and pretends to sleep.
***
With the breaking of weak sunlight, Percy finds he is alone. Mr. Melvin had left in the night. He limps to the kitchen and cleans himself up as best he can with a kitchen towel. He packs a wallet with no money and some clothes in a worn rice sack and stands near the window. He pumps his fists open and closed, pushes his dirty fingernails into the center of his palm. He crosses his arms to warm up but he still shivers, looking for headlights in the rain.
***
Deputies take him to the police station. He feels lost. He needs to see his mother; he needs to see something, if not comfortable, at least familiar.
Too late—Mavis is on a bus bouncing down the jail’s circular driveway. Through the iron bars on the windows, she kisses her fingers and presses them to the glass. He waves, not truly believing she is gone. County sends her to state. The state declares her unfit, locking her away in an institution in the cold, gray hills along the border of Tennessee. He never sees his mother again, but he imagines her sleeping in a hospital bed, away from harm.
There’s a squeal of old brakes and another bus pulls in front of the municipal building. Percy picks his way to the back and takes a seat far from anyone else. He breathes in the noxious fumes as the bus travels farther east, into the mountains. He is on his way to Belle Gap Detention Center and Foster Home for Boys, high in the mountains about fifteen miles outside of a small town also named Belle Gap.
The receiving room has low ceilings, and the walls are a slick slate, matching the outside. The one fluorescent ceiling light buzzes like a hive of bees. Four rows of six folding chairs make a square in the center of the room. Eight other boys, hands cuffed behind them, wait nervously with Percy; three sit on the last row and five near the front. They all stare at their feet in silence. One kid chews on his lip, another just sniffs.
There’s an old, wooden desk with an unhappy, skinny man taking notes. He has three cups of ancient, cold coffee gathered on the desk and the blotter is a network of round coffee cup stains. He calls each boy to the desk, one by one, and fills out their paperwork; he scribbles names, birthdays and, when available, addresses and social security numbers. When everyone is registered and accounted for, they walk to the showers in the next room. There are lockers against the near wall with plastic garbage bags hanging over the rusty doors.
“Strip and put your shit in the bag. Put the bag in your locker and do it now!” the older guard barks. His hair is black and slicked high with Royal Crown. All the boys stand perfectly still, eyes big and round.
“Strip. Put your shit in the bag. Bag in locker. Do it now!” He speaks slowly and just under a yell. “Say it with me, assholes! Strip! Bag! Lock!” The boys answer him, repeating his words. Their voices shake. Once naked they jog to the shower, arms hiding, trying to cover themselves.
The room is a giant tiled box with showerheads snaking out from three directions. The water is lukewarm and the boys shiver in the chilly air. They shower quickly. There are two guards at the front of the room and two guards at the back. When the boys are done, they rush past the guards, dry off in front of their lockers.
“Open your towels,” the guard with Elvis hair announces. He walks down the line of teens and sprays them to get rid of lice or crabs. “You’ll be alright, son,” he says to Percy, winking. After the sting settles, they all start to dress.
“Nope!” a younger guard shouts. Wiry with a buzz cut, he exudes ex-Army. “Not yet.” He lines the boys up, still naked, in front of the door heading to the main hall. Each boy, even the oldest, is hunched over, their privates cupped and covered in their hands. The gu
ard’s boney, cold hand claps down on the neck of the boy in front and violently pushes him through the door. He does the same to each young man, making sure to put his icy flesh on each.
The group comes to a stop in the middle of a big, drafty hall. All around the hall are small, dark rooms. The rooms do not have doors—they have bars. This is the public room. There are hundreds of boys standing about, under the less than careful watch of Belle Gap guards. All eyes are on the new arrivals. They shrink further into themselves. Someone, at the back of the line, begins crying.
“You boys are in the birdcages until morning.”
In the center of the room there are ten cages standing six feet in height and the circumference of a small closet. The cages are elevated on bricks and secured to those bricks with giant bolts. The dark-haired guard snaps open each cage and prods until the boys are settled.
Excitement sounds from the boys who roam the hall or watch from their cells. Two guards sit behind a desk, arms crossed. A radio hums low, a long guitar song ringing, frenzied. All the new boys are cowering in their cages when the lights go dark.
In the morning, the boys get their uniforms and start to dress, internees clap and cat call. Let out of their cages, they’re led to the basement, an expansive, cavernous room used as a dormitory. Thirty-six beds line the yellow-tiled walls. This is the floor where the youngest in Belle Gap stay. Percy takes an empty bed in the corner, toward the back.
***
A short, jarring scream and solid, fleshy smacks wake him from a dead sleep. By the light of the exit lamps and the common bathrooms, he sees three guards pull one of the new boys from the basement. He recognizes the little kid who had been crying. Two days later, the boy is sitting alone in the cafeteria, looking tired and afraid. Three of his teeth are missing.
“The Barn,” a fat kid mumbles to Percy.
“What?”
“The Barn, dickhead.”
“What’s that?”
“You’ll see.”
***
Three guards dump him from his bed. They pull off his white t-shirt and force it in his mouth. One man grabs his legs and another takes his arms. Percy smells the thick, greasy smell of Royal Cream.
They haul him out of the basement like a sack. Freezing air shocks his bare skin. They drag him through brittle brush and a tired old field with broken, sheered cornstalks toward a squat, paint-chipped building with a thick wooden door. Through the open door, he sees a small area cordoned off with a doctor’s partition. They haul him inside and throw him in the center of the room.
The light in the little room is bright and painful. Percy hears the guards come in behind him. The door closes and someone slaps on the lock. He’s on his knees. Hands like a tree come down on his shoulders.
“Calm down, son,” the man with the oily hair whispers in his ear. “You shouldn’t fight so much.”
A fist smashes into his chin, spinning his head around like a toy. Turning back, he takes another hit to the side of his face. A hard kick between his legs. When he falls over, they kick him in the face. Light explodes before his eyes, breaking down into a million blinking stars.
***
“Hey. Hey,” someone is whispering to him. He opens his eyes and sees a black kid strapped to the bed next to his. The boy’s ear is bleeding.
“They must have hit you a thousand times. I lost count.”
“Why? I don’t even know why.” Percy’s voice is gravelly and thick. He tries to look around but his head is achy, heavy. With his left eyelid swollen, he can see only one side of the room.
“There ain’t no reason,” the kid says. “They don’t need a reason.”
TWO
THERESA WHITE HAD stayed late, as usual, wanting to finish her homework in the library. Seeing the janitor chain the side door she knew it was time to go. Most kids wouldn’t dream of staying after school of their own free will. Most kids are home buried in homework, filling up on peanut butter crackers and watching Superfriends and Isis or out playing kickball in the vacant lot. Theresa can’t spend time with other kids. There are far too many skeletons in the White family closet and they all look like her mother, Maggie Grace.
A wet wind gusts in her face and she moves faster. A tickle worms through her nose, itching and irritating. She sneezes. Her nose starts to run and she dabs it on the inside of her woolly pullover. With each step, her purple plaid book bag seems heavier and a stiff achiness spreads across her lower back. By the time she rounds the corner to her own street she is positive she is coming down with something.
Her momentum slows the closer she draws to home. She finds a reason to stop and kick the gravel in front of the empty house next door. Lethargically, she reads yard sale signs posted to the electric pole. Still, despite her best efforts, she is standing in her own front yard. Past the dying sugar maple, sadly leaning on their porch, she sees the front door wide open.
Mother would never leave the door open. She’s more likely to lock a door, check it, and lock it several times over. Maggie Grace wakes in the night, sneaking downstairs and turning the latch. It is her desperate ritual, her affliction.
“Again, do it again. Is it locked real tight?” she would whisper, childlike. Manic, she could never skip a turn. She would grab her daughter’s arm, begging her to check as well.
“You try. Lock it,” she would say.
Theresa crosses the porch and tiptoes through the house. Just beyond the dusty foyer, she finds and follows a trail of clothes. She bends to pick up light blue slippers, a rose-colored robe, a white nightgown, and finally her mother’s pale, threadbare underthings.
The trail stops in the hallway at the foot of the foldout steps, which extend from the trap door to the attic. A chilly blast blows past and she sees the backdoor is also open.
“Mother?” she quietly calls up the ladder. There is no answer. Shaking off a shiver, she climbs the stairs, afraid of the dark and afraid of what she might see.
Her eyes adjust and she stares hard. She sees an old trunk with an inch of dust, the playpen she used as a child, and her mother’s smart, grey wedding suit. There’s a clothes closet toward the back. Coats and jackets hang from a bar. In between her father’s wool church coat and a camel-colored trench bagged in plastic hangs her mother. She is nude; her body looks heavy and loose, her figure drooping like a frown.
One end of Mr. White’s old black leather belt is tight and deep in her neck. The other end of the belt is wedged between the closet door and frame. Her left wrist is bleeding from a ragged wound. Small droplets of blood rhythmically drip on a white footstool, now toppled on its side. The red stains on the table are turning dark.
“I would rather die than spend another night with you,” her mother had cried last night, while Dad tried putting her to bed. It was just before dinner. He was on his way to the post office, taking extra shifts. Theresa had stood in the bedroom doorway, tired of her mother’s crying and screaming.
“I would rather die,” Maggie had yelled repeatedly.
She should have gone to her mother. She should have tried to calm her down. Maggie could be so mean sometimes and she always told lies. How was Theresa to know, sometimes mother meant what she said?
“Momma, I’m so sorry.” She falls forward, holding onto the lifeless legs. Her eyes feel like lead and she passes out for a moment. When she wakes, hot tears are streaming down her face. How do I get you down?
Her father is midway through his double shift when the call comes through. He is sure the girl has lost her mind. He hurries home and storms through the still open front door. She sits, motionless and pale, on the couch. Everything is as it had been when she found her mother.
Dan White stares at his girl for a few minutes. They both take deep, loud breaths. She imagines what he must be thinking, “What have you done? Why didn’t you stop her?”
Unnerved by her quiet, he darts up to the attic. She hears him scramble up the rickety pull down stairs and rush across the attic floor.
&nbs
p; “No, no, no sweetheart. Please,” he cries loudly. A long, shivery moan rolls through the house. For the first time she can hear how much her father loves her mother.
Two county coroner’s assistants arrive in a long, black hearse to take her mother away. Officers from the police department stand in the living room looking down on young Theresa. Her father sits at the kitchen table, alone.
“You okay, sweetheart?” an officer asks her. She stares at his shiny badge.
“You said her clothes were in the hallway?” a much shorter officer asks her.
“Yes.”
“What was your mom’s full name?”
“Maggie Grace White.”
“Did your mom ever go out?”
“No.”
“You were at school?”
“Yes.”
“Did your mom have friends?”
“No.”
“Your dad was at work?”
“Yes.”
At last, the strangers leave. The house is still. She treads softly across the creaky floorboards and into the kitchen. Like an odd game of hide and seek her father moves quickly up the back steps heading for his room. After a moment, she hears his door close. The soft glow of his bedside lamp frames the closed door. With a soft click, the light goes out.
Dejected, Theresa walks into her bedroom and closes the door behind her. She turns on her nightlight and shuts off the ceiling light. After changing into her nightgown, she slides into bed. Theresa stares at the nightlight, making her eyes water and blurry. Her belly knots and she gasps for air. She sobs until she sleeps from exhaustion.
***
She fights through hours of nightmare-filled sleep. In her dreams, the scratching sound of the maple tree on the window becomes her mother digging out of the ground. Theresa wakes and lies still, listening to the tree glancing against the window. She falls asleep and again the dream rolls. Finally she slides out of bed and slips downstairs. The coffee is already percolating and the kitchen light is glaring.
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