Going Underground

by Susan Vaught

  I crush the frozen blue freezer bag against my throbbing eye and feel pins and needles all up and down my back and neck. “I’ll be in just as much trouble as him. I’m the one with the record.”

  Branson walks around to his desk and puts his hand on the receiver. “You’re allowed to defend yourself. He’s got you by what, a hundred pounds?”

  “It was no big deal.” The heat climbing through me feels bad and good at the same time. It makes me smell the office’s leather and polish too sharply. It makes me see the sweat on Branson’s dark skin at the edges of his short silver hair, and the way he’s watching me like he’s not sure what’s happening, but he’s interested.

  I’m not smiling.

  I don’t know why that occurs to me, but it does. There’s no smile because I’m not holding back inside because I just can’t, not with what I’ve lost and my eye trying to fall off my damned face.

  “It was a crime,” Branson says slowly.

  “It was a fight!” I shove myself out of the chair. The ice bag goes flying and smashes against the wall beside me. I kick the leg of Branson’s desk. “Don’t you get it? Jonas brought it to me over his sister, I handled it, and we’re fine. Why would you wreck his life for no reason?”

  Branson stands on the other side of his desk staring at me. All the lamps in his office make him seem like he’s glowing in the otherwise dark room.

  “And his parents’ lives,” I yell. “You want to ruin his parents’ lives, too? And Cherie’s? What if some prick-minded DA figures out a way to charge Marvin for knowing we might fight and not telling anybody?”

  I’m yelling at my probation officer, but I can’t shut up and I don’t even want to stop. “I don’t want anything to do with cops or attorneys, now or ever again. I’m dealing with you. I’m doing everything I’m supposed to do. I’ve been frigging perfect with all of it, even all the stupid colleges you know won’t take me, so cut me a damned break, would you?”

  Branson gives it a few seconds. He points to my eye. “Your parents are gonna lose it.”

  I stare at him, wanting to scream, but I’m a guy and guys don’t scream. I’m sick of crap going wrong and getting harder instead of easier. I’m sick of working so hard when nothing matters. I hate this shit. All of it. Every bit of it. I’d hate Branson, too, if he’d ever once act enough like a dick to give me a reason.

  “Finally you’re wanting to beat the snot out of something.” The man actually sounds happy. “Like, maybe me?”

  Right about now, I’m wishing I had the freezer pack back, so I go get it off the floor. When I come back to my chair, I sit down and say, “You never act like an asshole. I don’t have an excuse.”

  “If you ever need to go a few rounds, we’ll put on the gloves and let you have at it.” He stays on his feet and gestures to a pair of boxing gloves on one of his shelves. “I’m not bad and I won’t let you win. You’ll have to earn it.”

  “I don’t want to fight anybody.” I push the freezer pack against my eye, shivering from the cold and the relief.

  Branson sits down, still studying me like he’s waiting for the alien to pop out of my brain and start screeching. “I think you would like to fight a lot of people, but you’ve already learned fists won’t solve your problems.” He picks up his pencil and points at me with the tip. “I think you need to keep letting that anger out in safe ways and in safe places, with safe people. There’s no way you’re not pissed off—and don’t tell me that what you feel doesn’t matter.”

  “But it doesn’t, and you know it.” I wish I had two ice packs so I could hide both of my eyes.

  “Things can change, Del. If you keep doing the next right thing, stuff can get better.”

  “Look. I’ve got a black eye, and I lost my bird, and I can’t see my girl, and my best friend’s hostage to a cookie bar all night long, where I can’t even go visit with him, and—and he’s about to walk away from me and never look back. I don’t want to talk about things getting better. I just can’t believe that right now.”

  Branson doesn’t blink once at my pessimism. “If you make a future for yourself, things will get better.”

  “I don’t have a future.” I’m pushing the ice pack into my swollen face so hard it’s what’s hurting me now. “Not the kind you want for me.”

  And it’s there in the glowing, leather-polish silence between us.

  You could testify at the juvenile sex offender hearings next month.

  You could try to get them to change the laws.

  You could do something to make your life better, even if you’re not really the one who screwed it up.

  You could forget about yourself for a while and testify just to help other people. How novel would that be?

  I’ve got no answer for this, and I can’t even come up with a smart-ass expression or solid refusal. I don’t want him to say anything about all of that, not out loud, because it’s not fair today. Not today. Today I can’t fight back about anything.

  What Branson says is, “Come on. I’ll take you home. We’ll call your folks on the way, and I’ll get in touch with the school about that class.” He fumbles in his pocket for his Jeep keys. “But don’t think I’ll be making excuses for you twice.”

  Now

  After rape and pornography convictions, a job digging graves, losing a parrot, and provoking my girlfriend’s psychotic father into threatening to kill me, my parents take the black eye in stride. Almost. They do call the Blankenships, but when Jonas apologizes on the phone, they accept. Life moves along again, or crawls along. I spend my days going to school, working, writing college letters nobody answers, and staring into Fred’s cage.

  The emptiness inside the big bronze-coated space hurts every time I look at it, but I don’t think I’ll ever be able to take the cage apart and put it away. It’s hers. It’s what I have left of her. It feels like when I didn’t save Fred, I let part of myself fly away into the night. Everything’s tied up with that—Livia and Marvin and everything.

  Livia’s still gone, too, and Fred’s travel cage at Rock Hill is still hanging right where I left it. The food gets eaten down to dust every two or three days. February ticks away, and March comes with so much rain Harper and I have to fight to keep the dirt from washing back into the freshly dug graves.

  Marvin barely comes to Rock Hill anymore. We don’t talk much at school except about Lee Ann and Notre Dame and other things that make me feel like shit.

  Of all the people in the universe, Harper seems to get stuff more than anybody right now. He keeps up the occasional search for my long-lost and definitely probably dead parrot, determined to at least find her little bird skeleton so we can give her a funeral, and a few times, he drives me past Livia’s house.

  It’s a small place, white with black shutters and a small garage. No cars sit in the driveway. Harper goes slow so I can see every detail, then he takes a different way back to Rock Hill so there’s no way anybody could say he was going by just to let me look.

  If I had e-mail or a website or a way to get text messages, maybe Livia could say something to me, but I don’t know if she even wants to. It’s a long time until her eighteenth birthday on September thirtieth, and she might be mad at me, or she might be trying to protect me. Whatever she’s doing, I have to let her because I can’t risk pissing off her father again.

  “You getting ready for graduation yet?” Harper asks as his truck rattles away from Rock Hill, taking me to town for my appointments.

  “It’s just another day.” I watch Livia’s house pass by and wonder why the curtains are always pulled and the place looks like nobody’s ever home. I’ve got the truck window down even though it’s cold, because the breeze keeps my brain awake.

  Harper glances at me fast, then turns his bloodshot eyes back to the road. “Not going to walk with your class?”

  “Nah. I’d just get booed right off the stage and people might throw shit.”

  “Damned small towns.” He shakes his head. “People ou
ght not to judge other people.”

  He smells like alcohol all the time now. It’s like he bathes in it even when I know he’s not drinking, or that he hasn’t since the night before. I wonder if it gets in his skin like some kind of invisible dye, coating him everywhere.

  We’ve passed Livia’s house, but Harper glances into the rearview at the stop sign just before he turns. “I think she’s lying low until her eighteenth birthday so she doesn’t get you in trouble.”

  “Yeah.” Nice thought. Love to believe it. Maybe I’ll find out in what, six months? I can’t think that far ahead. It’s hard to believe I’ll even be alive in six months, much less waiting for a girl who might or might not be thinking about me.

  “I think she likes you a lot,” Harper’s saying as he steers us toward town. “I think she might be a keeper.”

  “But.” I stare straight ahead as Duke’s Ridge streams into focus on either side of the truck.

  “But what?”

  “I can’t tie somebody to my non-future.”

  Harper’s laugh sounds like a wet, wheezy cough. “You’re both too young to worry about that. Just enjoy each other. After she’s eighteen and her father can’t yank her chain or yours, I mean.”

  The truck’s bangity-bounce movement and the thick scent of stale alcohol make my stomach a little queasy. “Are you giving me that live-in-today shit? Shame on you. My therapist and PO are working so hard to get me to make plans for the future.”

  “The future’s overrated.” Harper takes a hand off the wheel long enough to wave it once in the air, like he’s brushing off my comment. “When I used to go to AA and other twelve-step meetings, they told me if I put one foot in the past and one foot in the future, all I can do is piss on today.”

  “That’s … graphic.” I hold on as he slows on the main road and makes the last turn. “Ever think about going back to Alcoholics Anonymous, like you mentioned?”

  Harper snorts. “Yeah. About as much as you think about all your rosy options for tomorrow.”

  The truck’s gears grind as he pulls to a stop at the curb in front of Dr. Mote’s office. He gives me a nod before he drives away, and for a while, I’m caught up in feeling like I should have said more to him about AA and drinking and pissing on the future, but what would that be?

  How can I say anything to him when he knows the problem and he knows the solution, and he just won’t do it?

  It’s still on my mind later, long after Dr. Mote and I start our session. Today, we’re on the floor on the green rug, with the chairs and beanbags and sofa and pine paneling rising like a strange forest around us.

  We’ve beaten the Livia and Fred and Marvin issues to death, so Dr. Mote’s back to the cards today, but different cards. I don’t see tense or wary or any of the old ones spread out on the thick piling between us. Today we’ve got a lot of adjectives, like strong and cruel and handsome and kind, and maybe thirty more.

  “What do you think about yourself?” she asks me, gesturing to the array. “Pick some cards that describe you.”

  I go over each word, feeling nothing about any of them except a twinge in my chest when I get to quiet. I pick that and hand it to her.

  She rests it on her jeans for a second, then places it off to her left. “What else?”

  I choose smart. “Not as smart as a lot of people, though.”

  She points out a few, starting with strong. “What about these?”

  “I’d probably go for that one first.” I point to fearful.

  She picks it up and moves it into my group. “Fearful’s reasonable. Bad things have happened to you and you’ve had some tough losses lately. I’d be fearful, too, if I were you.”

  “It’s not that.” I put my chin on my knee, keeping my eyes fixed on the word. “I’m fearful about saying anything to Harper about his drinking.”

  Dr. Mote doesn’t frown or look startled because she hardly ever does, about anything. “What are you scared of, that he’ll fire you?”

  “No, not really. I’m scared—I’m scared of judging him or making him feel less than and like I don’t respect him.”

  Dr. Mote nods. “You’re scared of making him feel like you do almost every day.”

  My fingers twitch, and I reach out and pick up angry. Dr. Mote doesn’t challenge me. She just waits.

  “It doesn’t matter what I did or didn’t do.” I add frustrated. “My convictions are just there. They just are—like you and Branson. A part of my life. I can’t change my record, so what am I supposed to do about it other than work hard, stay out of trouble, and have patience and all that other bullshit you and everybody else tell me?”

  Dr. Mote gazes at me for a time, then picks out strong and brave and puts them in a line at the top of my group. She adds funny and tough. Then she looks at me. “You’re a good person, Del.”

  Who am I? Why am I here? What’s the point? The questions come back like echoes through my heart and soul. Her choice of words—it’s sweet, but I don’t feel it. I got confused about the whole coward-not-coward thing until Jonas smashed my face, but other than that, I don’t have answers to those three questions that fill up the room every time I come to Dr. Mote’s office.

  I pick out cautious and add it to my group. Cautious feels better than cowardly, which is one of the choices. “My dad said sometimes bad stuff just comes knocking, and you have to answer the door.”

  Dr. Mote matches my cautious with a serious. “Good stuff can come knocking, too. I hope you don’t forget that.”

  I jam my shovel into the wet earth and start the grave. This one’s for an eight-year-old kid, so it’s a small one. I’ve never dug a kid grave before. Harper’s always done those, but I haven’t seen him at all this afternoon. I found the grave list on his kitchen counter along with a note that a funeral director’s stopping by after six tonight to get his signature on some papers.

  Harper’s handwriting looked bad, like he was way drunk when he wrote all of this down. His bedroom door was shut, so I figured that’s where he was, passed out until further notice. Being in his cluttered little house creeped me out. I didn’t linger.

  Outside, it’s not raining, but almost. It’s not dark, but almost. Everything feels … edgy in ways I can’t explain. Mainly, it’s so quiet the place feels spooky, but maybe that’s just because I’m digging a grave for some poor little kid who didn’t wear his bike helmet and hit a speed bump at his apartment building. I’ve got Fred’s cage sitting next to the grave like I used to when she was in it. Fresh food. Fresh water. I’m still at it. I miss her. I miss them all. With no Fred, no Harper, no Marvin, no Livia—even Gertrude the cat gave up on finding Marvin and tuna, and she usually stays at home now. Most of the time, it’s just me and my thoughts and too much thinking, especially since I don’t let myself hide in my music anymore.

  I mess up the grave’s corner and have to start back again. There’s barely enough room to move in this one. It’s so small. If I were God, I’d make sure no kid ever had to die. If I were God, I’d change a lot of things, starting with the huge ones like war and famine and crime and hatred and racism, and I’d get down to the medium things fast—hurricanes, earthquakes, tornados, and tsunamis, stuff like that. Then I’d tackle diseases and stupidity, and we can’t forget hypocrisy.

  My shovel moves faster and faster.

  Good things can come knocking. Who did Dr. Mote think she was fooling with that? I mean, I know good things do happen, but this is me we’re talking about. I focus on the grave for a few seconds, then glance at the gray sky as a bird crosses in front of the setting sun.

  “Just give me something,” I mutter. Then, just in case there is a God, and just in case He/She happens to be listening, I add, “It doesn’t have to be much. I’m just trying to understand. I just want to find my way.”

  Nothing happens.

  After a minute or so, I start digging again, listening to the chop and swish and plop of making a grave for a little kid.

  “Feeling sorry for yo
urself is probably a lot like being a coward,” I say to nobody, because there’s nobody to talk to anymore. “Don’t need to go there.”

  But I do for a while, long enough to get the grave almost finished. It seems to take forever, but as light drains from the sky, I count my last few shovelfuls with, “Three, two, one.”

  And as the dirt drops to the ground beside me, somebody says, “Four.” Then, “Four, four, four!”

  I’m hearing things. I have to be.

  But when I spin around to see where the sound came from, I know right away I’m not crazy. Not that way, anyway.

  Fred is sitting on her travel cage.

  “Four,” she says again, then whistles.

  I stop breathing. I want to smile, but I’m afraid to move. I don’t even twitch because I might make her fly away. I don’t let myself shout like I want to, or jump out of the grave and grab for her—nothing. She looks a little skinny, maybe minus a few more feathers on her belly, but there she is just standing in front of me and giving me her mysterious little parrot smile.

  Then she lowers her beak, grips the bars, and swings her gray and red body inside the cage. Now I’m jumping out of the grave and grabbing and shouting, closing the door, hugging the travel cage while she gives off fire-alarm screeches and whistles and loud cries of, “Four! Four!” and “Cerote!”

  I have never finished a grave so fast in my life. It takes force of will to make myself stay long enough to cover the dirt and get everything neat and perfect for the little boy’s funeral. Then I grab Fred’s cage, make sure it’s secure, and I jog out of Rock Hill, almost getting run over flat by Harper’s late-evening appointment.

  I don’t even look back. I just keep jogging, moving as fast as I can all the way home, carrying Fred as carefully as I can, making sure I don’t rattle her around too much.

  “Mom! Dad!” I bang through the front door, barely remembering to pop off my muddy shoes on the front porch. “Can somebody call the Pet Emergency Clinic? Can somebody take me?”