Mrs. Ming wrapped her arms around her.
“Are ye saying I’ve mental problems?”
“Naw, naw,” Fionnuala said quickly, massaging the old one’s elbow. “I just wondered, like, what that film was.”
Mrs. Ming seemed to be searching the cavern of her mind as she placed fish sticks into her cart. Her face lit up, then just as quickly as snort of scorn passed her lips.
“Ye must mean that video of me grand-nephew Eamonn. The fantasies of a disease-addled student mind, so it was. Ended up flunking out of that media course, so he did. A bloody fixture he was in the Student Union, propping up the bar, arsified with drink.”
“But..the video...?” Fionnuala blinked.
“That was wer Eamonn’s final project. I near shite meself at the first glance of it. Thought he’d conquer the cinema world as Ireland’s answer to Steven bloody Spielberg. Load of shite, so it was, not even a proper story, just some scenes flung together of splattered body parts. Where they got them ‘props’ from, I don’t want to know. Does these turnips look like they’ve gone off to ye?” She sniffed them. “Smells like death, so they do. He came round ours years ago, looking for that flimming thing. Who knows where it got to. Probably tossed up in me attic, never to be seen from again. Thank the Lord for that, as the world’s better rid of it.”
FLEEING THE JURISDICTION
GERALD HANSEN
FLEEING THE JURISDICTION
Gerald Hansen
Copyright © Gerald Hansen 2012
Published by Mint Books
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by
any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without
the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief
quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any Web addresses or
links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may
no longer be valid.
This is a work of fiction. All the characters, names, incidents,
organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either products of the
author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
TO LORNA MATCHAM, AND Mom and Dad
In Loving Memory of Aunt Nancy Beachboard and Great Aunt Phoebe Doherty
“Whoever has will be given more and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he does have will be taken away.” Matthew 13.2
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many, many thanks to all who helped me with this book. I could never have written it without you. HyeJeong Park, the cover is amazing! Thanks so much! Gosia Kurek, what would I have done without your editing, and, of course, the special additions. Special thanks to Haddou Mahjoubi for showing me Morocco, Alfredo DeQuesada and Lydia Aquino for showing me Puerto Rico, and Lawrence Martinetion for getting me to these amazing locales in the first place; to Sandro Carra for police information, Octavia Melian for legal advice, Mark Gondelman for the title, “T” for cruise liner information, and Paula Costa of Dragon's Kitchen, home to her fantastic Titanic Dinner Project. For various other bits and pieces that make the book click, my hearty thanks to Aldercy Flores (you're a treasure trove of Dymphna inspiration!), Steven MacEnrue, Jeferson Medeiros, Erin Lynch, Yvonne Sherwell, Robash Sandhu, Jeana Barenboim, Mike Falotico, Fabrizio Caso and of course my photographer supreme, Marcin Kaliski. Thanks also for continued support to Bonita Vander and all the students at Manhattan Language School, Noam Dworman and everyone at the Olive Tree Cafe and Comedy Cellar, and Archie A. Special thanks, also, to the kind people at Authonomy, Margaret Brown, editor of the fantastic Shelf Unbound ezine for her kindness, the wonderful ladies, 'piggies,' I believe they like to be called, of The Cheap, Andrew Wessel of Digital Book Today for his continued support, Greg Doublet of Ereaeder News Today, and Sharon Rosen of Pixel of Ink. Sharon, my career as a writer started with you! Colin Quinn, the man himself, you are amazing, and I am continually shocked at your support of my work. Thanks so much. And, of course, I am most grateful to all the readers who were willing to give me a chance...and actually liked what they were reading! Thanks so, so much all of you!
HOW TO PRONOUNCE THE NAMES (by popular demand):
Ursula: Uhr-suh-lah
Finnonuala: Fin-noo-lah
Dymphna: Dimf-nah
Siofra: Shee-frah
Eoin: Owen
CHAPTER ONE—WISCONSIN
WHEN SHE HEARD THE sirens, Louella Barnett was in Dunkin Donuts counting out the 87 cents needed to complete her purchase.
Her brother-in-law Jed had dropped her off, then gone next door to the pharmacy to stock up on their prescriptions: Celebrex and Oxycontin (Jed's benign colon polyps and his 'pains'), Prinivil and Xanax (Ursula's high blood pressure and anxiety), Lipitor, Orlistat and Zocor (Slim's high cholesterol, obesity and acid reflux), and Fosamax and Claritin (Louella's osteoporosis and allergies). They'd need two weeks' worth for the time they'd be on the run. Inside the donut store, Louella wanted to down a handful of Ursula's Xanax. It was no wonder: there were fifteen registers and two cashiers. At numbers 1 and 15.
“There's two lines! You gotta choose a line and stay in it! ” the harried cashiers kept calling out.
“Like hell we will!” seemed to be the response. They were like surly ping pong players on speed, the hunger gnawing at them, ready to pounce on whichever cashier became available first. Louella had wasted the last fourteen minutes fiercely defending her position. She had sharp elbows and put them to good use at all angles.
Louella eyed in panic the precious seconds trickling away on her watch. Her fingernails dug into the pleather of her purse. She whimpered inwardly as she inched forward to nab the supplies meant to fill their four stomachs on the way to the airport, unable to stop the thoughts that her purchase was more important than any of these beasts'. Her manners and strict Lutheran upbringing wouldn't allow her to tell them so. She suffered in silence instead, the sweat trickling down her armpits, though she had given them a few extra rolls of the Lady Speed Stick that morning; she knew this day would be a trial. Her eyes shot wildly around the bright and happy tiles, seeking some distraction to calm her. The Black Eyed Peas from the speakers wasn't helping. There was a 'Visitor' sticker on the chunky sweater of the girl to her left that her elbows had yet to alienate. Louella leaned in toward her.
“Who was you off visiting, hon?” Louella asked, just to make conversation and compress time. She was shocked her voice could sound conversational.
The girl looked down and fingered in surprise the sticker she had forgotten to peel off.
“My dear old mama.”Louella parted her lips, then whispered fearfully: “...Prison?” It was the only thing on her mind, and from the girl's stringy hair and crystal meth eyes, likely.
“Hospital!”
Louella turned away from the daggers the girl shot her. She saw Jed pacing outside in the parking lot, already clutching the jumbo bag from the pharmacy and sucking an unfiltered Camel; Ursula had forbidden him from smoking in his own car. He was doing a scratch card, and the sleet was spitting down on the cowboy hat that never seemed to leave his head. Ursula and Jed had lived next to her and Slim for two years, and Louella still didn't know what the color of Jed's hair was. Maybe he had none. More troubling now, though, was if the sleet would turn to snow and ground the plane. If that happened, she and Ursula were sure to find themselves banged up in the women's wing of the Waupun State Penitentiary.
Register #15 was free. Louella scuttled forward, took a deep breath and rattled her order into the old-school braces and acne scars of the girl at the till: “Four bacon and egg croissants, two French crullers, an apple fritter, a double cocoa fritter, two chocolate chip muffins, four hash browns, a Boston crème, 16 Munchkins in assorted flavors, a Box O' Joe, an iced hot chocolate and a tea. Plea
se.”
Panicked as she was, Louella still noticed the special seasonal pomegranate jelly stick on the promotional poster above the cashier's bobbing cap. She added four to the order, her taste buds tingling in anticipation.
“Large family?” The braces smiled.
“None of your beeswax!” Louella longed to snap. But she just grinned, her jaw muscles aching with the exertion of it, and gave a slight nod of the head. Her mouth didn't tell the lie, so it wasn't actually sinning. But if the cashier saw the size of Louella's husband Slim, she'd understand why Louella was always buying in bulk. Louella's fingernails clacked on the counter as the girl rang up the order. The girl couldn't meet her eyes as she said the total. Louella unshackled her wallet and reluctantly handed over the bills. But she couldn't hand over an extra dollar for the 87 cents. She pulled out her change purse.
“52...53...58...” Louella murmured through her grimace, fingers scrabbling. The cashier ground her molars, and those still to order roared their protest, but to Louella, even as rushed as she was, a penny saved was a dollar—
The sirens ripped through the sleet-slick air outside, her keen Doppler effect telling Louella they were heading towards the Dunkin Donuts, not away. She screeched and, as pennies spewed in the air, her heart sank. Watching the change rain down upon the cashier's cap, Louella reflected she had brought it on herself: worrying so much about the police arresting them just before they escaped, she had willed it to happen. The fluorescent strips on the ceiling suddenly spotlighted her, every line on her face a crack. She had to get out.
“Gimme my food, please! Now!” Louella begged. The cashier hastened to comply. Louella heaved up the many bags and pushed through the angry masses to the exit.
Her creaky heart hammered into her breastplate. She shouldn't be putting it through this pressure, not at her age, 59. She was clawing the depths of her purse for sunglasses, and cursing sleet for being translucent because it was difficult to hide behind, when she saw the teen addict wracked in spasms next to a garbage can that overflowed with losing scratch cards. Jed and a few onlookers in parkas were inspecting him. The sirens that pierced the air probably belonged to an ambulance, but Louella still had the urge of flight. At once. Jed smiled as she approached.
“Look at that poor guy, he just collapsed on the—”
“A real tragedy, yeah,” Louella agreed. Her fingernails clawed into the flesh of Jed's sagging bicep as a fixed grin insinuated itself on her face. “C'mon Jed, the Lord'll help him, and now we've got to help ourselves.”
She tugged him toward the station wagon.
“What's the big rush?” Jed wondered, neck turned and eyes ogling the twitching body beyond his Buddy Holly glasses.
“The snow, the snow!” Louella dithered. “Let's get out of here before we get stuck. We're gonna miss our flight at this rate. And you don't wanna spoil Ursula's entire anniversary surprise, do you? Let's get outta town.”
They were indeed 'in town,' the one block of it, but 'in town' was miles from where they lived. They still had to travel through twenty minutes of nothingness to Jed's and Ursula's house, pick up their spouses, who had hopefully finished unloading Louella and Slim's luggage from the pickup truck Slim had left in Jed's garage, safe from the impending blizzard. They would throw the luggage into the station wagon, head off to the airport, and when the flight attendant was showing them how to attach the oxygen masks to their faces, only then would Louella's heart still. As the station wagon lurched out of the parking lot, sideswiping the oncoming ambulance, Louella shrieked.
“Relax,” Jed told her. “I've got air bags.”
It wasn't Jed's driving, more the cop cruiser lights flashing into her eyes as they sped inches past it. As Louella heaved nervous gasps and slipped the pomegranate jelly sticks from the bag to her purse, in her mind's eye, she was back in Detective Scarrey's interrogation room like three weeks ago. With its chipped table and the metal chair that dug into her spine and the lone light bulb without a shade, his eyes boring into hers, like he was trying to pierce her brain and read the thoughts within, his promise as he dismissed her that he would want to speak to her again and his order that she and Ursula not to leave the jurisdiction. She fondled the airline ticket in her pocket, and praised the Lord that Scarrey hadn't taken their passports. That showed how weak the police's case was against them, but this was faint comfort to Louella.
Jed slipped a Tammy Wynette CD into the player, and Louella cringed as she heard Tammy croon 'Our D.I.V.O.R.C.E...becomes final...today.' It wasn't because she hated Tammy Wynette. In fact, she had a set of swanky Tammy Wynette cloth dinner napkins with matching wooden George Jones holders she put on the place mats every Thanksgiving and Flag Day. Rather, she wondered what her husband and Ursula might have gotten up to while she and Jed were collecting the travel supplies. She wondered if she might be singing the very same words in the future.
As Jed hummed and tapped along on the steering wheel, Louella shot him little glances every time his eyes went to the rear view mirror. She wondered if he suspected as well. Not only why they were fleeing the country, but what his wife might be doing behind his back with his brother. She didn't think so. She didn't know what the pleasantries were that always seemed to be going on under the brim of his cowboy hat, but Jed seemed content. Louella envied him.
Arriving at the nothingness in which the Barnetts lived, Jed and Louella exited the car. Louella took one of the Dunkin Donuts bags inside in case immediate sustenance was needed. They made their way down the hallway, past the hanging collection of ceramic heads of people of different ethnicities from all around the world that Ursula was so proud of, and headed towards the kitchen. Louella stuck her hand out as she stopped in her tracks.
“Wait!” she warned Jed. “Hush a minute and listen!”
Jed cocked his head and did as he was told. From the kitchen, they heard excited squawks and groans and the flapping of what sounded like flesh against flesh, even the clanking of a buckle.
“Merciful Lord in Heaven! It's massive, so it is!” Louella and Jed, to their horror, heard Ursula moan through the door. “Och! Ach! I'm having terrible trouble fitting it all in. Push, would ye, Slim? Push!”
“I'm trying, chipmunk,” Slim panted in return, “But at this angle grunt! there's only so much I can pant! do. If you move your leg a bit to the left—”
“God bless us and save us, quit yer yammering and shove it in, just!”
Jed was frozen in confusion, Louella incandescent with rage. She flashed Jed a look which said, “I knew it!” and her hand shot to the doorknob.
Jed stopped her.
“Should we at least knock?” he wondered.
Louella's hand hung like a noodle in the air before the knob, and her second look at Jed said, “Man up!”
Then she remembered the sirens she had just heard, the cop car inches from her face, and she was hit by a vision of a slab of concrete for a bed and a toilet with no seat. She pursed her schoolmarm lips and, praying ice cubes weren't involved, pried open the door. Jed ground his eyes shut.
Mid-thrust, Slim and Ursula greeted them in alarm, sweat lashing down the Twister-poses of their bodies on the tiles. Ursula raked fingers through her disheveled eggplant-colored bob and giggled sheepishly. Muffins the poodle yipped at their contorted heels.
“Oh!”
Jed must have felt Louella deflating with relief, because he pried apart his lids to view whatever monstrosity might befall his eye.
“Oh!”
“You're packing,” Louella said. “Thank God! But...in the kitchen? Who packs in the kitchen, for crying out loud?”
Her eyes glinted with suspicion still.
“Yer flimmin bag exploded,” Ursula explained. “Talk about overpacking! We was taking them from the garage into the hallway, and the lock on this one gave way, so it did, and these clothes of yers flew all over the place. Go on and give us a hand shoving this tuxedo of Slim's into the bag, would ye? The size of it!”
The
four of them pushed away at the straining suitcase like human compactors. As Louella pushed, she suspected that Ursula and Slim had somehow known they were outside the door and orchestrated the scene for her and Jed to see.
“That's it finally all in,” Ursula announced as the locks were clicked shut and the masking tape was wound around.
“Would somebody please tell me where the hell we're going?” Slim implored. One hand wiped the sweat from his bald head, the other polished his bifocals with his lumberjack shirt.
Louella and Ursula froze for a second, eyes agog, then yipped in chorus:
“Hurry, would ye!” “Time's a-wasting!” “We've to get Muffins in her cage still!”
“Would you tell us what we are running from?”Jed put in, finally.
“Get them bags out to the car, just,” Ursula snipped. “I don't want to tell ye now and spoil the anniversary surprise.” She said it as if quoting from a script, badly. “Louella, let's make wer way from the scullery and ensure all the plugs of the appliances and such is pulled outta the walls.”
“Surely.” Louella's smile was strained. Ursula's alien Irish vocabulary—who on the planet called a kitchen a 'scullery,' for Pete's sake?—rankled her just as much as the thought of Ursula making whoopie with Slim. But, partners in crime as they were now, racing to avoid arrest, she would have to put up with her strangeness. They left Jed and Slim to the manly haulage and hurried towards the living room sockets.
“Ach, ye've got some breakfast for us, have ye?”
Louella handed the bag over the top of the sofa to Ursula, and Muffins leaped towards it.
“And I've to lock this one up in her cage to drop her off at the doggy hotel.” Ursula groaned as she scooped Muffins into her arms. “Who's a good boy? Whooo's a good boy?” she said in a deep silly pet-owner voice to the dog. It squirmed against the lifesized palm leaves of her pantsuit with the flared legs as if trying to escape from the fashion faux pas. Ursula stuck her hand in the bag. Louella tugged plug after plug out of socket after socket. Ursula followed her, talking and chewing. “What if the plane be's grounded, Louella, and we be's stuck here in the States? That's us banged up as sure as the Pope be's a Catholic. The guilt, Louella, the guilt of what we did all them years ago, it be's gnawing a hole in me stomach. And them coppers, the hands of them be's like tentacles of a deep sea creature, reaching out to get us as the time passes, the suction cups coming closer and closer to us and...Ye know what I'm on about, aye? I wouldn't mind, but yer woman went and died anyroad. And what was the meaning of that look ye gave me as ye was coming into the scullery just now? Ye fairly took the gloss offa me eyeballs with the daggers ye was shooting me way!”
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