Pluto's Ghost

by Sheree Fitch

  “I do. I know—”

  “SHH!” she looked around. “Did you hear that?” She tugged her hat off her ears.

  “What? Look, this place freaks me out. I’m not afraid of Brett or your father. Let’s go for a coffee, talk this through,” I said.

  Skye looked at me then, wild-eyed.

  “You don’t understand,” she said.

  “No, I sure as hell don’t. But you’ll explain, right?” My voice was so bitter I tasted pomegranate seeds.

  “We’re not safe, Jake. My father—”

  “I know you think he’s on his way to find me. Maybe so and he no doubt wants to hang me upside down by my—but so what, but the Brett thing, you have some explaining to do.” I sounded like an asshole even to myself. Threatening a girl? What kind of monster was I?

  “Jake, oh my gawd—it’s not what you think.” Her voice was rising.

  “I know that you’re pregnant. I know that you’re about to have an abortion tomorrow.”

  In the moonlight her face looked as white as the snow on the ground, a slight dusting still there.

  “Pregnant?” she shrieked. “Jake,” she said, “if only you—”

  “Skye!” It was her mother’s voice from somewhere behind us.

  “Skye!” Her father’s voice boomed from the same direction.

  take four

  a

  I shielded my eyes and Skye’s from the flashlight Derucci aimed directly in our faces. I could make out silhouettes. Derucci held his wife to his chest, face in, his arm around her waist. Mrs. Derucci was crying, sobbing into her husband’s chest. A small, fearful crying sound—I had a flash of a lost puppy.

  “Mum! You followed me!” Skye shrieked. She clutched my forearm.

  The Deruccis drew closer. “Dalton, no!” I heard Skye’s mother say. He slowed down, said something I couldn’t hear and proceeded. Around his head I saw a kind of shadowy arch like a dome made out of ashes. Maybe it was the light but when I blinked it was gone.

  “Jake,” Skye pleaded with me. “Run!” She pushed me away.

  “No, Skye, I’m not a coward. I’ll take responsibility for what I’ve done. Your father will respect that. Look, it’s not the end of the world—maybe we could all go sit down somewhere—”

  “Oh my God. Jake! Jake! It’s not what you think—”

  I realized, slowly, uncomprehending, that Mrs. Derucci was struggling. Out of the fog, the two figures emerged. Dalton Derucci was not comforting his wife, not at all. He had her in a stranglehold and continued walking towards Skye and me. He was still in uniform, a gun in the holster at his hip. A giant-sized knight in armour clanging towards us. Here comes the tintinnabulating man of tin, closer and closer do not let him in. A song from preschool hummed in my brain.

  “What’s go—” I started to say but Skye grabbed me.

  “Jake! Jake! Get out of here now,” screamed Skye. “I told you not to come after me, now look…”

  She was holding her head in her hands.

  I kept looking from Derucci to Mrs. Derucci to Skye.

  “I’m not pregnant,” Skye whispered. “Daddy, Daddy…please.”

  Dalton Derucci turned his wife around and thrust her forward, almost in my face.

  “Take a look, Jake. A real good look.”

  Ruth Derucci’s lips were swollen. Her face was the colour of burst grapes, dried blood was caked in a bandage at the side of her temple. Fresh blood dripped from her nose.

  “What have you done to her now?” sobbed Skye, and I felt her go limp against me. I looked back to where the Deruccis were standing. Mrs. Derucci’s hands were in bandages up to her wrists.

  b

  “He put her hands in hot water and then tried to stop her from leaving. He was called out and so we escaped. I drove her in myself—first to the hospital, then to the women’s shelter,” Skye said.

  New word: Scalded. Headline: Cop’s attempt to murder wife thwarted by daughter. Translate: So who are the good guys?

  “You’re not pregnant?” I was still trying to take it all in. She shook her head violently.

  “No, no! We were running away. From him.” She yanked on my arm.

  “Jake was so kind as to bring us all back together.” Derucci’s voice was so calm it was terrifying.

  “Run, Skye,” I whispered. “Just run, now.”

  “Mum, Mum,” she whimpered. “Dad, please. Dad, please.”

  Dalton Derucci threw his wife at his daughter. Mrs. Derucci fell to her knees and crawled towards Skye. Skye rushed towards her and wrapped her up in her arms. A painting we’d seen at the National Gallery flashed before my eyes. Women in agony, holding each other. It sickened me to look at Ruth Derucci’s face. Eyes swollen and closed. I heard a buzz of people in my head, voices talking like in an echo chamber. Underwater burble burble sounds. Whale music in slow motion. I held my hands to my ears and yelled, “Stop!”

  “He’s got a…crowbar,” Ruth yelled to me. “WATCH—”

  Bile bubbled up in my throat as Derucci came towards me, swinging. The first blow landed on my shoulder, the next across my back.

  “Can’t hit too hard, gotta make it look fair.”

  I was on the ground, my back hitting the edge of a tombstone. The pain had numbed me and I staggered back up. I took a stance, one Shep had taught me. Derucci just laughed.

  “Think you’ve been playing too many video games. Stuff doesn’t work like that in real life.”

  Still, I had some moves. I dodged and shifted, and the crowbar kept hitting the stones with a clanging sound. Inch by inch, I edged away from Skye and her mother, hoping they might have a chance to get up and run.

  “Jake,” Skye kept saying. “Jake, just try to run.”

  “No, you run,” I yelled back. “Get out of here and get help.”

  Derucci raised the crowbar and rushed at me, but this time when he slammed it down it flew out of his hand. I swooped it up like I would a garden rake and waved it from side to side, like some sort of sword.

  “That’s perfect,” said Derucci. “Now hit me right in the knee. Come on.”

  “What?” I backed away.

  “Hit me, just hit me,” he taunted. “Come on!”

  He’d pulled his gun out of his holster just as the women had stumbled out of sight.

  “Skye, keep running!” I yelled. “Keep going!”

  Derucci closed the gap between us.

  “Hit me, Jake. Make it a good one and I’ll call the police for us.”

  He snapped open his cellphone. “Yeah, guess it’s time.” He put the cell to his ear. “Derucci here, backup needed Halifax burial grounds…”

  I figured out what he was doing then. He was going to shoot me, say it was self-defence. “Run!” I screamed to Skye again.

  “Ruthie,” Derucci yelled out into the dark. “You’ll tell the cops the truth, right, that it was the kid here who broke into our house, went crazy on you and beat you up. Crazed kid after our daughter and you came here to be safe. You’ll tell the truth, right, Ruthie, and come back to me, like always. Like you always have.”

  Sirens whooped suddenly, sound piercing the dark. Derucci stopped dead as the sirens grew louder and closer. His eyes widened. “Ruthie!” he screamed. “Tell me you’ll cover. Ruthie!!! Ruthie, you know I love you, don’t you, I don’t know why I get like this, Ruthie. You’ll come back, right? Like always. Ruthie.”

  “Never,” Skye yelled from somewhere behind one of the tombstones. “Never,” Skye screamed louder. And there was Skye running, pulling at her mother. “Mama! Tell him! Tell him!” Ruth’s voice was deep and low. At first. “I’d rather be dead than go back to you this time. I will not lose my daughter to keep you. I won’t. Look at me! Never again. Shoot me, go ahead, shoot me. Leave him alone. Shoot me. I’d rather be dead. You’re ruined, it’s over. All over. Everyone will know what kind of animal you really are. Mr. Good Guy. Mr. Alcoholic Wife-beater twisted Jekyll and Hyde son of a—not this time not this time—one bruise too
many no sorry is ever going to make me go back. Love me? Is this what love looks like?”

  “MAMA!” Skye screamed as Derucci turned and aimed the gun at Ruth. Skye jumped in front of her mother. Derucci’s hands wavered.

  I moved towards him. “No! No! Not her!” He swung back to me.

  Skye and her mother ducked behind another headstone.

  Derucci clenched his fists and yelled. Sirens grew closer.

  “Okay then! Okay okay okay, now what now now what?”

  “Right!” He laughed and threw the gun down and across to me.

  “Pick it up,” he said. He didn’t have to ask twice. Then he started walking towards me again. “Shoot, go ahead shoot me.” He kept walking. My back was against the fence and there was nowhere to go but I couldn’t pull the trigger. The gun was cocked. My hand shook. He kept walking. “Shoot me! Do as I say!” Derucci screamed in my ear.

  “No,” I said.

  “Go ahead. Pull the goddam trigger. You kill me, I’ll die a hero. Just like I always was, right, Ruthie?” he yelled.

  “Shoot me!” he repeated, only inches away.

  “Shoot him, Jake. Do it!” Skye screamed. She couldn’t see me.

  “No,” I yelled. My arm no longer felt connected to my body. I kept the gun steady. “No.”

  Dalton Derucci was crying then. He’d fallen to the ground and was on his knees weeping.

  “Do it. Would you just pull the goddam trigger? Do it!” he bawled out and covered his head while he kept rocking back and forth.

  “No,” I repeated, my hand losing steadiness. “No.” I circled around him, cautiously. “We’ll wait for the cops.”

  “I am the cops!” he yelled and lurched up, grabbing my wrist. We struggled. But not for long.

  Derucci turned the gun to his own forehead and squeezed my finger which squeezed the trigger.

  c

  Blood runs in rivers bright rivers of blood seeps through snow bleeds into earth drops drop drip drop blood seeps deep into the underground crimson formations of stalagmites stalactites flowstone dripstone totems cones columns draperies blood crystals bones glowing like embers and towering over the red ruby stones spirits of all dead rise up from the ground there’s Pluto arms folded laughing the screaming of sirens I’m screaming for SKYE! Then lights red lights blue lights white light and an army of cops and handcuffs and the smell of burning hair.

  d

  That memory and the minutes that followed are pretty much lost in a dark hell-hole somewhere between my head and my heart. It’s like I can see some of what happened in a charcoal outline and then some things shade in now and then as they come back to me. Shrinkette says it’s important to remember as much as I can. So okay. See me in a cop car pulling away from the graveyard, looking out the back window seeing someone put a blanket over Skye’s shoulders. No sirens sounded. If anything it was more like this slow-motion silent drive through the streets of Halifax. We entered though the back of the station and drove into an underground garage. The door opened automatically and silently but I felt like hell’s gate had slammed behind me and I was doomed and damned to a chamber in Hades. And where was Pluto? Maybe I was Pluto. There was this loud constant ringing in my ears and I guess that was maybe the echo of the memory of the gun going off and maybe just me spazzing out. The copper who’d cuffed me let me out of the car, muttered something like did I know I had it in for me but good because I’d killed one of the boys in blue. And I smelt burning hair. There was a surveillance camera mounted on the wall in the corner and I realized we were being taped. This made me feel safer somehow. They led me to a door, where we stopped for them to enter a code. That’s when I saw something I’ll never forget. At eye level was a small metal box on the wall, a bright red button. Pan ic But ton, I read. Panic button.

  “Can I?” I said to the guy. “What?” he said. “Press the panic button?” I said. “It’s for us, not you,” he said. “Duh,” I said. “Just a little joke,” I said. “You won’t be laughing for long, dickweed,” he said. “The name’s Jake,” I said. “Tell that to the intake officer,” he said. New word: Intake. Translate: Incarceration.

  e

  Besides the coffin-shaped concrete bed and the stainless-steel toilet and the stench, the smell of men’s crap and the vomity day-old Big Mac sauce smell and the alcohol fumes yeah besides the sounds from other cells all the yelling and moaning and sobbing and cursing, the inside of my jail cell was pretty okay. I found messages. The kind even I could read. Scratched on the wall, in the paint on the floor—copsuckers let me die fck if freeferever—and so all night long I scratched out mine with my thumbnail.

  f

  So the way it works is you can be held only for twenty-four hours and if the police don’t have enough evidence at the end of that time then they can’t lay charges and you, the incarcerated person, get to go. Free. Free at last. Freedom’s the colour of the sun and smells like fresh mown grass.

  Unfortunately, I’d left a trail a mile long. I’d done so many stunned arse things and had so many witnesses talking about my so-called erratic loonie psycho-man behaviour that on the surface, it looked like they’d lock me up and throw away the key. The key to my life. Yeah, think of a key sprouting wings and flying away. The key of G. Gone for good.

  It didn’t help me much that Ruth Derucci and Skye hadn’t yet told the shelter workers just who had beaten Ruth up and the police suspected she and Skye were protecting me. And the police sure as hell didn’t seem to believe me. A different set of cops from the ones who arrested me took me to this little carpeted room and it was just like you see on those cop shows. Actually, I kept thinking that—that I’d dropped into some really bad movie or show. They took turns asking me questions. I told the truth, every last word of truth. Just like I told it here. It was all on tape. Take one. I kept thinking. Take two. Action. Roll. When was it going to be a wrap? But all I said wasn’t enough to convince them and so there I was, getting myself a lawyer and thinking they were coming to lay charges, but when they came to get me next? A big surprise.

  “Okay! Come on out! You got lucky.” The cop, a young cute pixie-looking woman, opened the cell door and led me out and gave me back my things.

  “You look kind of familiar,” she said to me.

  “We assholes all look the same,” I said, sweating bullets. Was I about to get caught all over again?

  “Coffee shop—Dartmouth. You were maybe driving that van we got in that grow-op bust?”

  “No clue what you’re talking about,” I said, panicked.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Must have been your evil twin brother. Look, I’ve read the report. You’ve been through a lot. Go on and behave, okay?”

  “Okay,” I said.

  Good cop? Bad cop? Good bad cop?

  I had to read some forms and none of them made sense and I was scared to sign in case they were tricking me or something. But no, she gave back my things and told me my father was waiting for me upstairs.

  I guess I don’t need to tell you how good my father looked to me, even looking as tired and grey and rumpled as he did. Man, it felt good when he hugged me and how when he whispered in my ear, o son o son sweet son, well, that’s why right there in the parking lot of the police station with Herc nosing between us and Shep’s arm around me I started you know crying, crying so hard you think your chest’s going to explode and you’re maybe just going to drown in all those tears.

  g

  On the long drive home, my father and Shep filled me in. “Brett Manderson saved the day,” Dad said. “What?” I said. “He and Derucci had been watching the shelter. Skye and her mother left the shelter together that night and then went off in opposite directions.” “Derucci ordered Brett to follow Skye while he followed Ruth.” “Brett reported that Skye was in the cemetery but he didn’t leave as Derucci instructed. He stayed and he recorded. Everything.” “Holy shit,” I said.

  I saw Brett Manderson, dressed as an angel, stuck right in the middle of a cow patty. Holy shi
t.

  h

  So what happens when the good guys are bad guys and the bad guys are good? Or what happens when you get all jumbled thinking about goodness and badness? I had dreams I was lost in a cavern with no way out. So yeah. My nerves weren’t so good for a bit and Skye never called and I dropped out of school and started working full time at Black Bear Brewery. Robbins was a good guy after all and gave me the benefit of the doubt. And a job. I worked on the line that conveyed bottles to the soaker. The soaker was a huge bottle-washer. On the line, I had loads of time to think. Every single day. I could sing to myself if I wanted to. Or yell. Or cry. Nobody could hear me, there was too much noise…packers behind me, clanking bottles everywhere, a lift jack roaring by, and the soaker itself groaned, and the bottle-kicker—kicking, kicking, kicking the bottles into their cups. The smell of stale beer mingled with cigarette butts was gross. I could taste it. It tasted like my life. And the caustic smelled too. Grease smells. A dirty job, for sure, some bottles were dug right out of ditches. Some had sand in them, mud on them…caked. There were maggots, too. Most drowned in the beer that brought them life. But some were still crawling. I preferred earthworms and the garden. I preferred beating it home at the end of the day, crawling into my bedroom at night with Herc. That was where I was comfortable. It was like living life in a huge dry cave.

  Around mid-July I got a call one evening. Dad and me were doing a puzzle of the Grand Canyon.

  “Hi.”

  “Skye?”

  “Meet me at Skinner’s Cove?”

  It was a sun-kissed morning, cloudless sky, and light bounced off the water like thousands of fireflies. Frickin’ beautiful. There wasn’t another soul around. We met on the beach, spread out a blanket and lay down together without a word. She laid her head on my chest and I knew she could feel my heart doing its wild dance.