Ash Falls

by Warren Read

  “Must of got my number offa the phone bill.” She turned and looked over her shoulder. “She sure does love you, Spooky.”

  His throat closed in on him, and he felt his eyes welling up. The crecent moons in his fingernails seemed to come alive, brighten so white that they felt like they might lift from his fingers and drift away.

  “You hear me?”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  Mama T turned to face him, leaning with her back against the sink. “Kids come past this place time and again who’d give anything to feel that kind of love.” She folded her arms over her chest and then she gave Patrick the smile that was one of the things that brought him back in the first place. “She told me about what happened.”

  What happened could have been any number of things, but most likely it was the fight he and his mother had had about going to Walla Walla again. The last time he had gone to visit his father Patrick had told his mother on the ride home that he wouldn’t do it again. He was sick of it, he said. All of it. The pat downs, the stale vending machine food, the loud, buzzing gates and crashing iron doors. That godawful, long drive over the mountain pass and the dry Eastern Washington flatlands, all so he could sit on the other side of a window and stare at his dad, who never had anything to say, everyone pretending that life was just great, ingorning the reason they were all sitting there in the first place.

  “I don’t fault you for it, if you thinkin otherwise,” she said. “A boy and his dad ought not be separated by bars. But it is what it is. I reckon they’re just doing what they can to try and keep you all together in some way.”

  Patrick heard what she was saying, heard the words, and they made sense to him. But even coming from Mama T it was all more an idea than a reality, not something he could really to take to heart. He looked down the hall at the door with a patchwork of drawings and scrawled signs taped onto the wood.

  “Yeah that’s Shadow’s room still,” she said. “Might be, anyway. Might not.”

  “It depends on Shadow?”

  “Yes sir, it depends on Shadow.” Mama T went to the living room. She stood in the alcove with her hand gripping the molding and called to the boys still staring at the television. “How long till that show’s over?” she asked.

  “About ten minutes,” said Freddie.

  “Well, I’m going to bed,” she said. “You put the little ones in when it’s over.”

  “Sure,” Patrick said.

  “I wasn’t talking to you.” She stopped at the entrance to the hall. Without turning around to face Patrick she said, “You welcome to stay tonight, in Shadow’s bed. If you’re still here when I get up I’ll fix you some breakfast, and then I expect you’ll tell me then what your plan is.”

  “Plan?”

  “How long you plan to be here this time. Before you go on back to your own Mama’s arms.” She kept her back to him, talked as if there were someone else down the hall from her. “You know you always welcome here any time. But it sounds to me like you got a nice home, with a loving mama just busting to get her baby on back to her. A mama who’s been through a lot, for sure. Maybe she’s done things she wishes she could change, but it sounds like she’s ready to do what she can to make things right.” She turned and looked back at him. “That’s something these boys here would kill to have.”

  Patrick swallowed back the knot in his throat. “I’ll try.”

  “That’s all I’m askin,” she said. She walked into the deeper curtain of the long hallway, past the door that had always been Shadow’s, but perhaps was not any longer.

  Patrick sat on the sofa and watched the rest of the black and white show over the tops of the boys’ heads, not really paying attention to the woman in the headscarf who ran from room to room crying, calling out somebody’s name. He thought of his own mother, in their living room with too many pillows on the sofa and knickknacks on the shelves and photos of people who had died before he was born. She was waiting for him to come home, and maybe she was crying too. Who could be sure what she was doing really? He put his pack on the floor with the zipper still closed, and while there wasn’t a lot he knew about his “plan” he did know he would be heading home first thing in the morning.

  And when the credits began to roll up the screen, Freddie crawled to the television and pushed the button and blackened the screen then pushed on the two boys and they all collected their blankets, and they said good night, Spooky as they went past, bleary-eyed and silent to the large back bedroom where they fell into their twin beds that were probably still arranged in little rows, like cots in a barracks.

  Hank

  If he had to point to the moment when things changed between him and Bobbie, when things really started to go sideways, it would not be the killing. It wouldn’t even be the trial afterward, or Hank’s decision to put his house up for sale and move to the mountain. No, the moment when the whole thing really began to unravel was the day that Eugene busted up her leg.

  It had come to be that on most days, Hank would ford the divide from his classroom to her office, to sit on the papered cot near her desk. They would talk about the upcoming pool tournaments and a town that would soon be packed with motorcycles. They’d laugh over all the on-the-job retired teachers still lingering and debate over who would be the next to fall. And Hank would note how funny it was that beer could taste so much different when you drank it with the right person. They’d talk about the day, about the coming weekend, and all the weekends beyond, and some of the times Hank could see himself in those, with her, ridiculous as it all seemed now. Every once in awhile the conversation would turn to Patrick, and Bobbie’s forehead would wrinkle, and her eyes would well up. Then Hank would make another crack about himself, on getting old, and she’d smile with her lips apart, and sweep the bangs from her eyes. In the end, no matter what aches he’d brought with him, he always left her office feeling cured.

  They had made plans to meet up at The Flume for beers. It was Friday. “There might be other people there,” she’d said. As if it would make a difference in anything they might do. There had been others plenty of times before, when she tipped the mug back to drink the last of her beer and stepped out through the back door to get some air. When he’d followed her out and walked farther back into the parking lot with her, and they stood against one another, the sweat of his shirt soaking into hers, her back against somebody’s pickup trunk, arms locked around his waist.

  He’d kissed her more than once, in places other than The Flume, though the parking lot would forever be associated with Bobbie’s hands tucked into his back pockets. There might have been more, had there been more time, if he’d been more daring. And it shamed Hank that there were moments he found himself thinking, If it hadn’t been for that goddamned Eugene, she could have gone home with me that night.

  He had seen his nephew through the door window, across the hall, slouching against the lockers. Classes were in session again, and Eugene had no business being out there, but he was a senior and it was three weeks to graduation, so there wasn’t a whole hell of a lot Hank could or would do about it now. The best thing for a situation like that was to simply move to the side so he couldn’t see out the door.

  The students had finally settled down and their books were all open on the same page, and Hank had just asked Monica Toomey to read the sidebar on Piaget. She’d only gotten halfway through the first sentence when the scream came.

  Bobbie lay on her back near the top of the stairwell, her left leg out to one side, the knee bent at an unsettling angle. A blue line of liquid dish soap scribbled up and down the hallway, stretching from his door to hers. A single racing track began outside Bobbie’s office and ended with her shaking body.

  Hank yelled for a student to call the main office, then he went to her, moving over the floor as though he were crossing thin ice. Bobbie looked up at him, her face twisted in agony. “Jesus,” he said. “Tell me it wasn’t the fucking kid.”

  “He was going for the fire alarm,” she said. �
��I went after him and he took off down the stairs.”

  Bobbie was on sick leave the rest of the school year, Eugene’s diploma instantly became contingent, and things got especially ugly between Hank and Lyla. One night, she and Jonas showed up at Hank’s house well after ten o’clock. They stood in the entryway and kept their coats on, Lyla rocking on her heels while Jonas danced around the issue, finally zeroing in on the suggestion that Hank should pick sides—Eugene’s side, preferably—and plead a case to go easy on the kid.

  “He didn’t mean it to happen,” Jonas had said. “I know he can be a pain in the ass, Hank. He did a dumb thing, but he shouldn’t have to have his life ruined over it.”

  “He put her in the hospital, Jonas,” Hank said. “She might never use that leg in the same way again. The next dumb thing he does might end up with someone dead.”

  Lyla had laughed then, a single, throaty cough. “I’ll be in the car,” she said, walking out the door and leaving Jonas to finish pleading his dying case.

  After that, Friday nights at The Flume became that thing that used to happen in a past life, to a completely different person. Bobbie still called Hank on the phone every so often, usually late at night when Ernie was asleep and her leg was keeping her awake. They’d talk about the things she wanted to talk about. Some black and white movie she was watching on television, an old girlfriend of hers from the city who’d stopped by the house. A fight she’d had with old man Corley, the old guy next door with the Pekingese that never stopped barking. One night she had phoned especially late, waking him up from a heavy sleep. It was just before midnight.

  “You could call me sometime, you know,” she said. He sat up in bed, in the near dark with the streetlamp coming in through the thin curtains.

  “What about Ernie?” he said.

  “What about him? Ernie doesn’t believe in keeping people hidden away,” she said. “I can have friends.”

  Friends. It was a word she had used often with him, in her office, against the fender of his pickup truck, her fingers circling over his ear. And every time she said it, the word both cut and secured him.

  Reid Hanlon stood over the old codger, slapping the brush over his shoulders and scattering hair clippings to the floor. It was Oscar Schultz, from over at Frontier Bank. Reid looked up at Hank when he came in, but Oscar sat still with his eyes closed. A fellow that Hank recognized as the husband of one of the school lunch ladies sat in the seat closest the window, his nose in a magazine.

  “Hank Kelleher,” Reid called out. “Take a seat. Be with you in two shakes.”

  Hank fanned out the stack of magazines, settling on a Field and Stream. The little black and white television on the shelf showed the snowy image of a golf game, the audio low and crackling. Nobody seemed to be watching it.

  “If you’d told me ten years ago we’d be having a goddamned Hollywood has-been running this country,” Reid said, “I’d have packed my shit up and moved to Saskatchewan.”

  “You still could,” the lunch lady’s husband said from behind a Playboy. “I got a nephew lives up in Vancouver. They got a Prime Minister there, I guess. Different from a president.”

  Old Oscar creaked up from the chair and took his billfold from his back pocket, while Reid took the broom from behind him and swept what little hair there was on the floor into a tiny white cloud. Hank noticed then that all the men had begun to look over at him with quick, intermittent glances. The door opened and Charlie Gumm came in, his bulky mailbag sagged over his shoulder, a clutch of envelopes in his fat hand.

  “Morning.” He laid the stack on the counter then looked over at Hank. He smiled and shifted his weight, and put his hand inside the bag. “Professor Hank.”

  “Charlie.”

  “Or should I say, ‘Medicine Man’.” He flashed a toothy grin at Hank. “That’s what I hear folks calling you these days.”

  “Ain’t nobody calling me that,” Hank snapped.

  “Maybe not to your face.”

  The old man walked to the coat tree, took down a wool blazer and snaked his arms into the sleeves. “How’s that mother of yours, Charlie?” he said.

  “She’s alright. We got her moved into a home last spring, out in Arlington.”

  “Yeah, I heard you went and did something like that.”

  His grin fell, and Charlie moved his bag from his shoulder to the floor. “So Reid,” he said, his voice dropping, as if there was anyone in the barbershop who might not hear. “That thing we were talking about earlier.” He looked over at Hank again. “No news come through on my end, yet.”

  Reid sighed. He looked up at Hank, then over to Charlie. “That mail ain’t gonna deliver itself, Charlie.”

  There was a soft chuckle, and then Charlie said, “Well okay then. Hope you’re good, Hank. It’s been a long time since we’ve seen you down here.”

  “I’m here for the haircut,” he said, pointing to his head. “That’s all.”

  “Well, that’s what they do here,” he said. He wrestled the bag back to his shoulder and stumbled out the door, followed by the stooped figure of Oscar. The door swung shut, the chain of bells knocking against the window as the two men disappeared down the sidewalk.

  Reid tucked the draping around Hank’s neck and sprayed a mist of water over his hair. The comb moved quickly up the back of his head, scissors snapping away, and the clippings whispered against the vinyl sheeting as Reid hummed a song Hank couldn’t pin down.

  “Sorry about that,” he finally said. “About Charlie.”

  The lunch lady’s husband had found a new magazine, folded it so he could hold it with one hand. He sat with one leg crossed over the other, clean posture, and was alternating his gaze from the page to the television.

  “It’s just that—people are talking, Hank.” Reid pinched the top of Hank’s hair between his fingers and sheared the excess in a single cut. “That’s nothing new.”

  “Yeah well, just because that’s the way it is, it doesn’t mean I have to participate.”

  “It’s been a long time since that night, you know. Four years and then some. This news of Ernie getting out, it’s all brand new. You can’t blame folks for getting riled up over it.” He talked through quick combs against the grain of the hair. “Don’t tell me it hasn’t kicked loose a few things in your mind.”

  Hank clenched his teeth.

  He had seen her the night that Ricky was killed. She was on those crutches of hers, and as she hobbled through the gates, Ernie on one side and Patrick on the other, she looked in his direction. And it seemed to Hank that she had seen him, too. The air was gray with smoke and it reeked of sulfur from all the cheap fireworks. He had been standing with bald Dave and his wife Tawny, holding the neck of his Rainier bottle and pretending not to notice as Bobbie made her way over the grass slowly. Dave had been talking about a retaining wall, and Tawny was pulling on his sleeve, saying, Let’s go sit down, the fireworks are gonna start soon.

  Reid filled his palm with foam and rubbed it along the back of Hank’s neck, warm against his skin, menthol clouding the space. From the side mirror, he could see Reid stretch the leather strop from the wall and slap the razor along its length, back and forth.

  “Do you even remember much of anything?” he said to Hank. “About that night?”

  “No.”

  “It was sure a lot of crazy,” he said.

  “You almost done?”

  Hank had finished his beer, and Bald Dave and Tawny had just turned to leave when there was a sudden explosion of shouting back in the direction of the big chestnut tree, followed by a gut-ripping scream. The crowd of people around him shifted at once and began to move en masse toward the commotion, and Hank instinctively turned to join the stream. It hadn’t occurred to him that it could be Bobbie, but maybe some part of him had to have known it, and that was why he threw himself into the crowd without thought. Somewhere along the way, though, he was swept aside and knocked to the ground, where the weight of several piled on top of him and
held him down, giving throaty warnings into his ear to stay put, to not go anywhere near it. He lay beneath their knees for what seemed like forever, breathing in cut grass and dirt, as the screams of others rose and fell, and the flash of sirens ribboned among fireworks that continued to thunder and bloom overhead in spite of it all.

  “That Ernie,” Reid said. “Something sure made him snap. Something that Cordero kid said. I don’t know if it was about him, about the wife, or that kid of theirs.” He shook some tonic into his hands and rubbed it through Hank’s hair. “But it was something.”

  Hank stood and brushed the hair from his pants legs, and the clippings fell like snow. “You know, Reid,” he said, taking a five from his billfold and laying it down on the counter. “You got that striped pole that lets you call this a barbershop. Truth is, you ain’t running anything different than Louella’s next door.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Hank walked to the door and rested his fingers on the knob. He wanted to wrench it from the frame, let the glass shatter as he swung it to the wall, but he held onto that knob like it was keeping him from lifting off the ground and being sucked into the edge of a tornado.

  “Bunch of old farts sitting around all day telling stories they don’t know a thing about,” he said. “You oughta just knock that wall down, so you and Louella can share both the shampoo and the bullshit.”

  He left and crossed over Main and walked down to the end of the block, beyond the vacant lot with its cluster of bare plum trees, then he hooked around up Douglas Avenue to where the high school stood, bound by miles of creeping ivy and choking vines.

  For years he had watched teenagers spill from those doors, packing into cars that cost more than his own, Bic lighters flaring amid the roar of engines. They usually raced south, hightailing it out of town to go raise hell in the city. Sometimes, though, they turned north, cruising up the mountain highway to cut onto graveled service roads, where they raised bonfires and littered the creek beds with mashed beer cans and busted bottles and empty shotgun casings, and the milky, slug-like sheen of discarded condoms. Whenever Hank found himself waxing nostalgic about his days in the classroom, all he had to do was take a short drive off of his property to be reminded of what being free of those kids really meant.