Wild and Crooked

by Leah Thomas

  “Because he wasn’t that way.” Gus presses his fingertips to mine.

  I want to wipe my eyes, but I don’t want his fingers to move.

  “One day Gary came to class with two black eyes. James wanted to punch the entire universe, but Gary wouldn’t let James near his uncle. The more I saw of Spences, the more I understood their reputation, but also their strange loyalty to one another.”

  How many Spences will I never know about? How many of us hit each other?

  “Claire and I never spoke where anyone might see us. We cracked jokes around bonfires. Soon my ribs were cracking as my heart pressed against them, watching how she tucked her hair behind her ears.

  “Claire wasn’t nice. Not to me, and definitely not to James—she remembered his bullying days. But she treated her mother like a paper rose. Claire was a chronic shoplifter. She painted stolen lipstick on like warrior paint. If I had to pinpoint the first reason I loved her, it may have been that I wanted to be her. If Claire sat at a table with my father, she’d kick the chairs over. She’d bite through the phone cord before he could call counselors.” Beth smiles. “When I met you, Kalyn, I saw Claire. I saw her in red.

  “During one of our bonfires, Claire waited for James and Gary to head out into the salvage yard with baseball bats in tow, looking to bash windows—”

  Windshield wrecking is another Spence tradition.

  “—and then she sat on my lap and asked when I was going to make out with her, already. I couldn’t have kissed James hard enough to redeem the way I kissed Claire. I slept with him for the first time that night.”

  If this talk bothers Gus, you’d never know. Maybe he inherited his dad’s face, or maybe this story feels like it belongs to strangers.

  “That fall, James and Gary took Tech Ed. Claire and I took Drama. James and Gary were whittling picture frames, and Claire and I were tangled up between the curtains. I didn’t know I was pregnant. By the time I did, Claire was begging me to leave Shitsboro with her.”

  Same stupid nickname, same stupid town.

  “James’s smile grew so goofy and young when I told him about you. I don’t know what I hoped for.” For the first time in all this, she looks at her son, lets his eyes envelop her. “Gus, I’m going to answer the question you asked me.”

  “Okay,” he says, but I’d say he’s anything but.

  “I wanted James to ask for an abortion. I couldn’t think that way myself. If there was one thing that scared my father more than me being gay, that was it.”

  Gus’s eyes are closed, his lips stretched shut over his crooked teeth.

  “Had James suggested . . . ​I’m not proud, but I wanted an out. But your dad was thrilled. He already loved you.” Tears speckle the tablecloth. “I’m so sorry, Gus.”

  Gus opens his eyes. “I wasn’t there. Don’t apologize to me.”

  “That’s not something you ever need to apologize for.” Tam’s voice is so firm that it almost takes shape in the air. “Don’t you dare.”

  “On principle, I understand that. I support the right to choose. But it’s hard to think of those principles when your son is sitting right in front of you.”

  Ms. Patrick clears her throat. “I don’t know what to say, as it’s not my place. But you kids really should have listened more in my Sex Ed class.”

  It’s insane, but we laugh like freakin’ donkeys.

  Hearing this stupid, sad story is leaving us all parched. There’s no way this story can ever be satisfying. I get why Gus looked scared about hearing the truth. The truth doesn’t necessarily make things any better. It doesn’t solve things.

  Beth can’t carry on so easily after our outburst. She takes a big breath. “So I agreed to leave. With Claire. It was naive, but that’s the only escape I thought we had. My father never let me go anywhere unless he knew James was with me. We needed to wait for a night when we wouldn’t be missed, and James would be preoccupied.”

  “Homecoming,” Gus whispers.

  “The only person who could have made Gary betray James was Claire. He wasn’t happy, but he wasn’t surprised. I don’t think Gary cared for ‘lesbians’ as a concept, considering the bigotry he was raised on, but he doted on his little sister. When she asked for his help repairing one of the cars, he handed her the keys to his truck instead.

  “The night before the game, my parents went out to dinner. I told them I’d be with James. In reality, Claire drove over to my house and we took this opportunity to load up the truck. But my parents ran into James at Maverick’s. He covered for me, telling them I was waiting in the car. Then James drove straight to my place to see if I was okay. He thought I might have ‘morning sickness or something.’

  “James saw Gary’s truck in the driveway. James was not the type to assume the worst of anyone, but the sight must have confused him. And what must have confused him more was my reaction when he asked me about this at school the following day. I was blindsided; I stammered about ‘Gary helping me with something.’

  “What must have confused James most was talking to Gary during Tech Ed. Gary denied the truck ever having been there. I know he did, because he confronted Claire and me after school. He was so angry. ‘I hate you for making me do this. James is the only friend I’ve got, and you’re making me do this.’ ”

  I don’t know which of us around this table winces hardest.

  “James was lied to by both of his friends. What was he supposed to think?”

  “He could have trusted you,” I say. “He could have gotten over himself.”

  She shakes her head. “James tried to be a good person, but he was far from perfect. He was possessive at times, and he had that temper. He was petrified of becoming his father. For a year, I had lied to him, and maybe he felt that. James was nice, but he wasn’t stupid. When none of us showed up at the game, that was it.

  “I don’t know what James was thinking when he walked out on his team at halftime. Did he scan every inch of the stands before he got in the car, or did he simply know we weren’t there? They said he was kidnapped. James kidnapped himself. And yes, he brought a knife with him. It was Gary’s whittling knife, a gift he couldn’t bear to keep.”

  “A friendship knife after all,” I say. “These days kids give each other necklaces.”

  “It sounds stupid.”

  “It doesn’t sound stupid,” Gus says. “It just sounds, um, childish.”

  He’s right. Every inch of this story is childish as hell. We dreamed of drifters, of conspiracies and plots. But the truth is so much smaller.

  Mrs. Peake keeps talking, faster now, barreling downhill with no bungees to hold her. “James pulled into Spence Salvage. There was Gary’s truck, filled with my stuff, and there was Gary, helping me heft a suitcase into the back, and James just . . . lost it.”

  She closes the locket. “I never saw James bully anyone. That was the first time I could imagine what that looked like. He started pulling things from the truck, throwing them to the ground. Then he started screaming.

  “Gary was furious because James wouldn’t listen, appalled that James would throw his fists whenever Gary got close. But Gary couldn’t betray Claire by saying what was really going on. Claire was in the trailer, gathering the last of her things.”

  Next to me, Grandma’s shoulders tremble.

  “If Claire had been outside, maybe she’d have told him the truth. I couldn’t.

  “I’ve forgotten most of what was said. I only remember that we were all shouting. At one point James asked me to leave with him. I refused. I wasn’t scared so much as humiliated, like I was back on a bunk bed in a cabin where a priest was forcing me to look at pictures of naked men—men doing—”

  This is the exact moment that my mom gets up, walks around the table, and wraps Mrs. Peake in her arms. “It’s all right, hon. You’re almost there.”

  “Thank you.” Mrs. Peake looks at Grandma Spence. “Mrs. Spence. Claire insisted two girls on the road had better be prepared to meet trouble. You
kept that gun under your nightstand, didn’t you?”

  Grandma has been crying softly, breaking my heart. She shakes her head, but it’s not the “no” headshake. It’s a heavier thing, another damn confession.

  “It feels almost clinical now, how things unfolded. The more often people recall a memory, the less accurate it becomes. The more the brain reinvents details.”

  The part Gus and me needed, maybe we’ve needed to hear our whole lives? It’s just one blunt paragraph, shorter than a news article.

  “James held the whittling knife out to Gary, telling him to take it back. Gary shook his head, took me by the shoulders, and turned us around to go. Claire stepped out of the trailer with her grandma’s gun in tow. She saw James, screaming, following us with a knife upraised. Unlike me, Claire had seen James hurt people. She’d sat at Gary’s bedside after James pushed him into that bonfire. I think Claire meant to scare him. I’ll never know. She jumped down from the porch and pulled the trigger twice.”

  Hatred and misunderstanding, passed down over decades.

  “The moment James hit the ground, Gary was there to catch him. But we could tell.” Her voice shakes. “We could tell an ambulance wouldn’t help. But I could also tell, even then, the very second Claire started weeping. The way Gary looked at her. He wasn’t going to let her suffer for it.”

  “Why not?” I say, and anger brings me to my feet. “Why the hell not let her take the fall? She made her own stupid choices. Why should Dad pay for it?”

  “To protect everyone, sounds like,” Phil reasons. “To not out Beth. To not out Claire. To not bring the wrath of Ellis down on everyone.”

  “She was his baby sister,” Officer Newton reasons, though he looks furious.

  “That’s fucking condescending. Claire was the criminal. Why the hell did any of you let Dad sink like that?”

  “What would you do,” Gus asks quietly, “if it were me?”

  “I’d tell your ass to tell the truth and go to fucking prison! I’d call you an idiot and tell you to face the damn music, and sayonara, Gus, because no one person is ever worth giving up your whole life for, you idiot!”

  “But you wouldn’t. You’d hurt yourself first every time.” Gus has never sounded this certain. “How many blows have you already taken for me?”

  “That’s not the same.”

  “Maybe it is. Maybe you’re your father’s daughter.” Gus smiles, but it’s a painful thing to see, what with his eyes leaking. “You’re still holding my hand, Kay.”

  And suddenly I’m a sopping mess of salt water and snot, leaning into his shoulder.

  “What I don’t know,” Gus says while his heart beats against my cheek, “what—what I don’t get is how you could all just erase her. It’s awful. Like Claire didn’t exist.”

  I exhale. That’s who Grandma was looking for, in all those family photos.

  “It was for her sake,” says Mrs. Peake.

  “Maybe, when she was still alive,” Gus chokes. “But now . . . ​ it’s only because she’s inconvenient, right? Because she doesn’t fit into the lies you all told.”

  No one can answer that.

  Officer Newton breaks the hiccupping quiet. “We lost that homecoming game.”

  “Mrs. Peake.”

  “Yes, Kalyn.” She seems more alive without that bile inside her.

  “Why didn’t you and Claire skip town? After it all panned out? I mean, I get you sticking around for the trial and everything, but afterward . . . why weren’t you together?”

  She doesn’t answer. Gus slowly raises his hand.

  “Because of me, right? Because you were pregnant. Grandpa Ellis didn’t want a source, I mean, a scandal on top of a murder. And he probably, um, offered to help you escape your parents. Am I right?”

  Officer Newton says, “More solid police work.”

  “He probably just wanted a replacement, um, for James. An heir. Must’ve been a big disappointment when I came out.”

  “Don’t say that about yourself.” That comes from every adult here.

  “Let him speak,” I mutter.

  “It might not be what you think about me. It’s not what I think about myself. But it’s what that jerk thought. If we can’t talk about it, how will we ever resolve it?”

  Mrs. Peake nods. “I don’t know how Mortimer knew I was pregnant. James would never have told him. James never even told Gary. Things might have been so different, if he had.”

  “Old man Ellis has a reputation for bribing cops,” Mrs. Spence reasons. “Wouldn’t be surprised if he’d bribed some doctors, too.”

  Angus whines. No one asks what happens next.

  “Shit.” Everyone stares at me. “I’ve gotta be home by eight.”

  “Getting ready for the dance?” Phil smirks halfway.

  “I’m expecting a call from Dad. Boy, what a call it’ll be. Anyone wanna join?”

  Nobody wants to, but Gus stands up first.

  GUS

  OUR CARAVAN HEADS for Spence Salvage under starlight. Mrs. Spence’s van takes the lead, followed by the station wagon, followed by us. Tamara put us three in her truck without a word, probably so we could have a few minutes of peace.

  “You okay?”

  Tam stares at me. “You kidding me right now? You’re asking me?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Oh, Gus. You should be worried about your own self.”

  “No.” There’s not a lot of room in the truck, so Kalyn’s pressed against me, thighs and of course fingers. “People worrying only about themselves leads to lies and murder.”

  “Fair point.”

  Main Street is still cordoned off—guess a riot leaves more of a wreck than a parade does—so the caravan takes bumpy back roads to the edge of town. Ms. Patrick’s car kisses the lips of potholes.

  “I wasn’t expecting the whole Scooby Gang to volunteer,” Kalyn grumbles. The clock under the dashboard reads 7:41 p.m.

  It took too long to get us out of the house. Three people offered to do the dishes before Ms. Patrick elbowed her way to the sink. No one stayed behind.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” Mrs. Spence told Mom while we gathered in the driveway. “You’d better testify and help get my husband out, now we’re kind of family.”

  Can families really be broken and made so easily? I don’t know. But Kalyn is on one side of me, and Tam is on the other, and Phil is just behind me, and I love them all.

  “Are you really moving out?” I ask Tam.

  “I don’t know, Gus. It’s been a wild night, and not in a good way.” She eases the truck onto a road cutting through fields; we’ve already reached Harrison Farm. A blob of Angus’s spit smacks our windshield as we pick up speed. “All these years I’ve been with your mom, she never mentioned being with anyone else. I figured she must’ve been, because we’ve all got the sadness of something in us. I never cared. It’s not like I didn’t have my own drama. But this . . .”

  “Did you really spend last night with your family?”

  We slam into a puddle.

  “I’ve only got one family these days. I stayed in a Super 8 last night.”

  It’s not nice of me to feel relieved. But if you can make and break a family, I like to think you wouldn’t keep trying to remake a seriously broken one. I’d rather think you’d keep the ones made on purpose.

  “I’m proud of you, sticking up for that dead girl,” Tam says suddenly. “I remember reading about it. When she died. I didn’t know anything about her. It was just such an awful thing.”

  “What happened?” Kalyn asks.

  “I think it was a freak accident. She pulled an aerosol can from a firepit, and it blew up in her face. Not the kind of obituary you forget.”

  “She can’t have been old.”

  “Older than either of your dads were before their lives were taken away from them.” There’s something silencing about the way Tam refers to both dads as casualties.

  Harrison Farm is more than decrepit. The back of the b
arn has collapsed in on itself, a splintered shipwreck in tall grass. This penultimate road is more like a trail, pocked with puddles, but our caravan barely slows. We hit the M-12, cars coated in mud. It’s 7:49.

  As the caravan starts up the last hill, my phone buzzes. The number seems familiar, but I can’t place it until I pick up.

  “Gus? It’s Mr. Wheeler. Is Phil with you? He hasn’t been answering his phone.”

  I glance at Phil in the rearview. “Yeah, he’s here. John, too.”

  “Where are you? Not trapped downtown?”

  “No, we’re okay.” I put him on speakerphone.

  “Hello, Dad,” Phil drones. “Let me reassure you that I have killed no one.”

  His sigh of relief becomes a burst of static. “And no one is hurt?”

  Phil seems off, in some indefinable way, and we’re all a little hurt, but Tam speaks up, “They’re fine, Colin.”

  “Thank you, Tamara. Have you seen the news? The parade, no, the protest, is being replayed on national television. Partly because of the controversial nature of the case, partly the mock hanging, and partly the dramatic costuming, I’d say. Please promise me you’ll all stay in tonight.”

  “Darn,” Kalyn scoffs, “guess we’ll have to miss the game.” It’s 7:52.

  “Haven’t you heard? They canceled the game.”

  Tam whistles. “The people of Samsboro won’t like that one bit.”

  “They don’t, and that’s why you have to stay safe. Downtown’s a wreck, and based on the coverage, Spence Salvage looks like a war zone.”

  “Um,” Kalyn says as we crest the hill.

  It isn’t quite pitchforks. It isn’t quite the whole town. But I feel, actually and really, that we might finally be stuck in one of Phil’s dystopian movies.

  Stretched along the road, vehicle after vehicle spans the length of Spence Salvage. Some are news vans, but most aren’t. A huge pickup blocks the driveway. People sit on the hoods of cars or congregate with posters in the ditches. I don’t need to hear what they’re hollering.

  The first vehicles in our caravan have rolled into it.

  “You know,” Tam says, hitting the brakes and switching into reverse, “something tells me we shouldn’t be running into that mess.”