I Bring Sorrow_And Other Stories of Transgression

by Patricia Abbott

  “A day or two,” the woman at Family Furnace told Jerzy. “Maybe three.”

  “Tell ’im to come out with a used furnace still has some kick in it.”

  “Just stay here and rest yourself,” Jerzy said, handing Marge a cup of bouillon. She hadn’t even known they still made those cubes until Marge sent her out for some. And they’d been sitting in the store a while, she thought, struggling to remove the foil.

  “Only thing tastes good on a cold,” Marge said, watching. “Don’t care much if it’s beef or chicken, but no vegetable ones, please.” She made a face.

  “Feelin’ wack, are you?” Jerzy asked, noticing the tissues piling up and wondering if she needed to buy herself some latex gloves. Picking the pile up with another tissue, she tossed them in the trashcan.

  “Why you gotta use that ghetto talk? So hard to say sick like a civilized person?”

  “Are you feeling sick?” Jerzy said.

  Her aunt nodded. “But I better get over to my house anyway. Can’t stop thinkin’ ’bout those boys ridin’ around like they was. Can’t be a good thing—no neighborhood watch on my street.”

  “I’ll look in on my way into work. You be okay here alone?”

  “Always has been.” Marge smiled. “And I got me a good movie channel now.”

  At first, Jerzy thought a fire had ravaged her aunt’s house as she pulled up to the curb. The decorative iron front door was missing, as were the bars on the windows. In fact, the windowpanes themselves were gone. The rain gutters had been removed along with the blue aluminum siding. The metal fence enclosing the property had been ripped from the ground, leaving nasty flakes of metal sprayed across the lawn like sparks from a fire. Auntie’s little red Bible lay on the grass, its pages fluttering crazily in the stiff wind. Jerzy picked it up and stuck it in her purse. Piles of goods sat everywhere; she picked her way through, trying not to bust into tears.

  Inside, anything useful had vanished, and the rest was destroyed. If she didn’t know her aunt’s sweetness, Jerzy’d swear it was a grudge crime. Every article of clothing lay on the floor. Every can of food had been tossed. The bedroom was impassable, and pieces of paper, bills probably, were blowing out the empty windows. There was not a single item that hadn’t been tossed, taken, or vandalized. Even the electric meter was missing. When she tried to turn an overhead light on, she realized the bulbs were gone.

  Jerzy sank into the one remaining chair, cushionless with springs sprung, caught her breath, grabbed the cell from her pocket, and dialed 911. Two hours passed before a squad car pulled up. Two hours when she’d scarcely moved. She’d started to call James, her brother, then Rufus, a friend, but coming up with the words to describe the house’s state was too much.

  Feebly, she began to protest the long wait to the officer when he arrived.

  “Look, ma’am,” the cop said patiently, “priority goes to crimes in progress. This one’s for the history books.” He looked around. “Scrapped her place but good.” He sounded like he admired the thoroughness of the job.

  “Scrapped?” She’d heard the word before but couldn’t put a meaning on it.

  “Scrappers come in and take anything they can sell. Metal stuff mostly,” he added. “It’s why they didn’t bother much with the food or clothes. Every empty or foreclosed house in the city is scrapped sooner or later ’less you put a guard on it. A guard with a gun.”

  She knew this—but it was something happening to other people. Not Aunt Marge. “This wasn’t no empty house, Officer. Only been gone a day. One day!”

  “Means nothing to the people did this. You think we’re talking about human beings with a soul? Gone a day is opportunity to ‘em.” He walked around, taking an inventory of what was clearly missing. “She got insurance?”

  “Hard to get insurance in this neighborhood.”

  Something else struck her then. “I bet they took all her cards. You know, social security, health, ID, driver’s license, bankcard. Maybe they buried out there.” She waved a hand toward the heap of trash covering the lawn. “How will I get her some money? How will she prove she’s Marge Lennox?”

  “We got people who can tell you ’bout it. Victim’s rights.” He handed her a card. “If they haven’t cut those jobs yet. City’s broke, case you didn’t know it.”

  The cops wanted to talk to her aunt.

  “In a day or two,” she promised.

  A day later, Marge sat on a milk crate in her front yard. “Must be some stranger’s house. Don’t know nothin’ about it. I’ll tell you this though, I’m not going in there ever again.”

  James stood next to her, scratching his head. “You need to start making a list, Marge.” He turned to Jerzy. “Maybe we can hire someone to put things right.”

  “It looks different ’cause they took down the sidin’, Auntie,” Jerzy explained, ignoring him. “They took anything they could sell to a scrap yard. That’s what the policeman said.”

  “Not even one window left. Couldn’t they use the door?”

  “They sell glass too.”

  “Damn, these are nasty people.” Tears were falling now.

  “Maybe they needed money to buy food.” This didn’t sound convincing even to Jerzy.

  “Now they got what they need, they won’t be back,” James said. “Nothing to worry yourself about. You’ll be home in a few days.”

  All he could think about, Jerzy thought, with disgust. Getting Marge out of his john. He’d be willing to have her sleep on the floor in a freezing house.

  “Those boys weren’t homeless. I saw their big-ass car cruisin’ this street. Got an eyeful of the fancy jackets they showin’ off. Gang jackets, I think.” Marge looked at Jerzy. “I told you I hadda watch the street.” She wiped her face with her sleeve, and James and Jerzy helped her to the car. “Should never have taken a vacation.”

  Over the next few days, Marge steadfastly refused to enter the house, continuing to deny it was hers. “I’d never paint my house a hinky yellah.”

  “The blue siding covered the yellow paint. Maybe from a time before you bought the house.

  “She needs to file a report,” the cop said when she dialed his cell.

  “A report means you think you can find her missin’ stuff, then, huh?” she asked him. “Gonna pour all your resources into a search for those scrappers.” He didn’t answer her.

  A few days later, Jerzy came home from work to find Marge missing. Also missing was her lilac sweater and Tigers cap. It wasn’t even thirty degrees outside and Jerzy wondered if she still had her pajamas on under the sweater. Dear Lord.

  “Where you think she is?” she asked James over the phone. “She don’t know this neighborhood for beans.”

  “She got a screw missin’,” he said. “Can’t take care of herself and this seals it. She has to go into a home. Like your mama,” he added.

  “That’s what you thinking about now? Can’t you let up on it?”

  Jerzy drove back and forth between her house and Robichaud Street for hours. She called the police and social services. Neither seemed interested in sending out a car until more time had passed. James, for his part, continued wrapping his tape around city sewers. Holding things together underground while people stole what was above.

  At first, she didn’t see her aunt sitting on the porch. Marge had dragged the milk carton up from the front lawn and her head could barely be seen from the street.

  “Them jokers did a job on my house,” she told Jerzy after her niece climbed the steps. “I took a good look. They took a hack saw to the furnace, but it was too tough for ’em.” She nodded with satisfaction, shaking a fist. “Old boiler put up a fight. Least we don’t have to fix it now.”

  “Aren’t you freezin’ out here?” Jerzy asked, looking for something to throw over her. “Where you been all day, Auntie? I almost had the cops after you.”

&n
bsp; “I hadda take a bus over here. And I got scrambled ’bout which one. Routes changed since my day.” She shrugged. “Bus was nice and warm though. Think I went back and forth a few times.” She stood up. “Let’s get me outta here. I’m done with 423 Robichaud. I just sat in on my own—what you call it—wake. Like the boy we read about in school.”

  As they drove down the street, Marge let out a scream. Jerzy slammed on the brakes.

  “Lookity right there, Jerzy. Old brother is usin’ my iron door for a table.”

  Jerzy saw it too. A barbecue grill smoking meat stood right behind it. The door had been fitted with a piece of glass to make a table. “Probably my window glass too. I am decoratin’ homes across the hood. Never thought I’d see such a thing in this world.” Auntie was almost laughing. Then she was crying again.

  “These people are too mean to live. What they call it—scrappin’. I’d like to take them to the junkyard.” She paused. “I never want to see this street again.”

  “We’ll find you a new place, Auntie. You have money in the bank. We just need to get to it.”

  “No, I’m leavin’ this whole city, girl. Going back to Montgomery. Can’t be worse there. I got a cousin will take me in when I got my monies straightened out.”

  “Can’t she stay with us, James?” Jerzy begged him when they got back. “She’s no trouble at all.”

  “Your mama stayed here for months before she went to the home—don’t you remember it? Calling me Horace and tryin’ to hold my hand.” He shivered. “Then it was your junkie brother trying to kick the habit. Ha! Bringin’ all kinds of people to my stoop, sittin’ in this very room with those goddamned forties in his lap.” He grimaced. “A man needs some privacy, Jerzy. She don’t wanna stay here anyhow.” This was true, Jerzy had to admit.

  Things fell into place surprisingly quickly once Jerzy gained access to her aunt’s accounts. Within a month, they were standing at the Greyhound bus station on Howard Street, Marge having refused to fly. “Too old to learn new tricks now.”

  “I’ll send the rest of your stuff,” Jerzy promised as the man lifted her aunt’s two new Walmart grippes into the baggage hold.

  “Just you, ma’am?” the driver asked Marge, turning around.

  “All by myself,” Marge told him with a trace of the old pride in her voice.

  “She transfers to the Montgomery bus in Nashville,” Jerzy told him, handing the ticket over.

  “I know how to do it, girl,” Marge said. “Make the trip every couple years, don’t I?

  Minutes earlier, on the ride down to Howard Street, a helicopter had loomed over the freeway, almost causing Jerzy to steer into a Hondo Accord. The helicopter pulled a sign saying “Moby’s Scrapyard in Hamtramck. Best prices in town.”

  “They allowed to do that?” Marge had asked. “Show themselves to the world for what they are?”

  “Never mind, Auntie. Hey, I heard on the radio they got ole Jefferson Davis resting in a junkyard in New Orleans.”

  “Wonder who scrapped him?” Aunt Marge asked.

  A Kid Like Billy

  Everyone knows a kid like Billy. You’ve seen him at the grocery store bagging food or stocking shelves, or in a pet store feeding the animals and cleaning cages. Or maybe at a nursery in December, dragging a Christmas tree to someone’s car. That’s the sort of place you find a boy like mine.

  When Billy was three, a careening car killed his mother. When I surfaced from the bottomless grief, I counted myself lucky Billy had been off in pre-school and not in Ellie’s arms. Lucky too, Ellie had been mine for a while.

  The years passed slowly. Billy repeated fourth grade and then ninth. On the night I watched him walk across the squeaking stage to take his diploma, I knew in my heart he still didn’t understand what a fraction was or where to find Michigan on a map. But in a town like West Lebanon, any kid who puts his butt in his seat most days eventually gets a certificate. I made sure he stuck it out too, putting his butt there more than once myself.

  People advise you to get a boy like Billy into plumbing or carpentry—jobs where you use your hands and muscle more than your head. But Billy’s hands weren’t his strong suit either. But I called in a favor and got a friend in construction to hire him.

  “What’re you doing home?” I said, finding him in front of the TV one day when I came home unexpectedly to retrieve a file. He should’ve been at a work site on State Street, sweeping up nails or toting two-by-fours.

  “I felt like a tuna sandwich today. Came home to make one.”

  His shoes were kicked off, and the half-eaten sandwich was dried up on a plate. His feet smelled bad, and I wondered when he’d last changed his socks. I probably wasn’t on top of that stuff enough.

  “I packed you tuna. Did you even unwrap it to look?”

  “You usually pack ham Wednesdays.”

  “Today’s Tuesday,” I said, grabbing the dirty plate.

  Al Ferguson gave him a job at the IGA next. About the only tasks Billy had was to stock shelves, sweep the sidewalk, and help customers tote bags to their cars. But Billy took it into his head to begin organizing the cans by colors—markers he could relate to more easily than the brand names.

  “Oh no, you don’t,” I said, coming in one day to pick up some Hamburger Helper. He was on his knees, sorting the cans. I began replacing them, getting angrier with each one. “Look, just do what Mr. Ferguson tells you. Bear down, boy.”

  That job fell by the wayside too. Don’t get me wrong. There was no meanness in my boy, no cunning or ill will. He wasn’t lazy or dishonest. But neither was there an ounce of common sense in his tousled-hair head. I lay awake nights wondering what would happen to him, wondering if a town like West Lebanon was the best place for a boy like mine.

  West Lebanon’s in the northern part of the Lower Peninsula in Michigan. In summer, the population swells to five thousand, but for nine months a police force of six keeps order for the twelve hundred permanent residents. In my years as chief, we’ve never had a murder or even a suspicious death. Drug problems, sure, more than enough DWIs, a few marital disputes, one or two suspicious fires, some B&Es, especially in the summer, a bully or two raising hell over at the high school, lots of traffic accidents. But spread over three hundred sixty-five days, it’s a peaceful spot.

  In the tenth year of my tenure as police chief, I hired Billy. I took some heat for it—both with my men and with two members of the city council.

  Patty Harmon, the council president, put it bluntly. “I guess you’re the one who’ll take the blame if he screws up. Right?”

  Gradually, my men came around. Billy turned out to be a pretty good crossing guard at the elementary school. He also saw that the squad cars were washed and serviced, answered the phone, ran errands. These were the chores my men disliked most, and after a few months nobody was complaining. I never sent Billy out on a dangerous or complicated job. He didn’t carry a gun or even a nightstick. He didn’t do patrols. If he answered a phone call asking for serious help, he passed it on.

  “A good kid,” Sam Hunter, my second in command, told me. “A high IQ isn’t everything, Chief.” He laughed a little. “As I can testify.”

  The winters up north are filled with slow days when a crossword puzzle or crime novel often occupied us. Rummy and solitaire were popular. So was The Price is Right.

  It was a lousy February, like most of ’em up here, one of those months where it never seemed to be fully light. Cold, snowy. In the second week, four of us came down with a stomach virus. The headache that came with it was crippling. Billy didn’t catch it though. He’d never been sick a day in his life.

  So it was just Billy and Ed Stuyvesant at the station. Around noon, the bug hit Ed like a missile to the gut. He hightailed it into the bathroom.

  “All right out there, son?” he called to Billy between bouts. Ed wasn’t worried. Half the town was
down with the bug too so things were even more quiet than usual.

  The relevant call was clocked at 12:45 p.m., coming from a house out on Badger Creek Road. Helen Clayton’s. She told me later she’d expected Billy to pass the phone on to someone senior. But after hearing her first sentence or two, Billy told her he’d see to it and hung up.

  Ed said later he’d heard Billy talking through the john door, but since he hadn’t heard the phone ring, he thought it was Billy babbling to him about something. Maybe asking if he was all right. Ed mumbled something back and returned to the business at hand, never dreaming Billy took off to answer a call.

  Billy drove out to Badger Creek Road on his motor scooter at 12:55. The roads were recently plowed from a storm the day before. Mrs. Clayton had reported the disturbance as coming from the Ryans’ summer home. We’d checked the house for a disturbance as recently as the week before and came up empty. But Helen was no hysteric, and breaking into summer homes is an ongoing problem where houses are deserted for months. Mostly it’s teenagers looking for a place to have sex and drink. But not always.

  Helen didn’t want a long driveway to plow so her place was smack-dab alongside the road. She couldn’t see much at the Ryans because their house was set further back. She described the noise as a radio playing at full volume, laughter, swearing, shouting, and a car pulling in and out too noisily. She thought it was teenagers—out of school for President’s Day. Skiers maybe. It was odd to have a party at noon though.

  The racket finally died down, and she assumed one of us had come out to quiet things, and went back to whatever she was doing. Didn’t give it another thought, she said.

  An hour or two later, someone stumbled into the police station saying he’d seen something—probably a body—holding the door open at the Ryans’ place.

  “I didn’t go closer than my car,” the fellow told Ed. “Didn’t know what I might be walking in on.” Embarrassed, he muttered, “Looked like he was past any help from what I could see. Sprawled out and face down.”