by Jane Bradley
He went on down the hall to the guest bathroom, then saw his dad coming up the stairs. “Your mom said you were sick last night.”
Jesse dropped his head and nodded. “I’m doing better.” His dad followed him into his room. “You want to see a doctor?”
Jesse shook his head, sat on his bed. “I’ve got crackers. Soup in the kitchen. Plenty of Coke. I’ll just take it easy today, and I’ll be all right.”
His dad glanced toward his bathroom. “The maid will take care of things.”
“She already here?”
His dad shook his head. “I told her to come after lunch. Figured you’d want to sleep in.”
“Good,” Jesse said. “I’d rather throw those clothes in the trash than have her clean them.” He’d have to burn it all in the fire pit out back.
His dad nodded, stood, and went toward the door.
“You heading out to the marina?”
“I thought I’d stay on the boat for the weekend since your mom’s gone to Dallas. Hang with some old fishing buddies of mine.”
“Cool,” Jesse said. “You go on and have a good time. Mom said she’d leave me some cash and her car.”
His dad reached for his wallet, put a fifty on the bedside table. “Here’s a little more. Call my cell if you need anything.” Jesse watched his dad, head down, guilty, start to head out the door, then stop. “Be sure to set the alarm when you leave. There was a family robbed on the next block.”
Jesse sat up straight. “Really?”
“Yep.” His dad walked out the door.
He waited until he heard the garage door open, then close. He grabbed the backpack from his closet. He pulled out the fluffy stuffed dog.
He reached into the bag to see what might be of interest to Zeke. The lady’s Rolex. Pearls, and what looked like ruby earrings. A diamond tennis bracelet. He wrapped the jewelry in a t-shirt, slipped it into the bottom of the bag. Wrapped the vase in another shirt, put it in, then shoved in a couple of books in case he got searched. He put the dog on top, its dumb little face sticking out. His phone buzzed. “Yeah.”
“It’s Mike.”
“I know it’s Mike.”
“You do it?” Mike asked.
“Do what? Let’s see, I’ve done a lot of things since I last saw you.”
“The rich girl. Did you do that rich girl out there where you live?”
“Want details?”
Mike was silent.
Jesse waited. “You there?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Look, Jesse, I need some cash. There’s an old farmer out here. He died, and they’re all going to his funeral tomorrow. I figured we could hit the house while they’re all at the funeral. This old man, they say he had a gun collection. No telling what we could find. We go in, we get the stuff. Nobody gets hurt.”
Jesse rubbed his neck, already going tense. “Look, man, I’m busy. I’ll give some thought to that dead farmer. I’m getting some shit together to take to Zeke. Nicki Lynn had the kid. So I’m gonna go to the hospital, try to unload some stuff to Zeke.”
“It’s on the news,” Mike said.
Jesse picked up the remote, aimed it at the TV, flicked channels, sports, infomercials, Survivor, and some game show. Nothing about a rape in Land Fall. Just CNN, and they were talking about some earthquake. “What’s on the news?”
“That girl.”
“Which girl?”
“The rich girl. My granny was watching her story on the TV, and I heard it.”
Jesse flicked through the channels again. Nothing: game shows, talk shows, the usual shit. “I guess I just missed it. What’d they say?”
“Something about a girl getting assaulted.”
“What else they say?”
“Just kept going on about something like this happening in Land Fall.”
Jesse looked out his window to the empty street. “They’d have come by now if they thought it was me.”
“They’re just saying the home was robbed and the girl was assaulted in Land Fall. No leads yet, they said.”
“They never say everything on the news.”
“So you want in on the farmer’s house?” Mike asked
“Maybe. Let me call you after I see Zeke.”
“I really need some cash, man.”
“I’ll front you some,” Jesse said. “Just let me do my business.”
“When?” Mike said. “There’s hardly nothing to eat in this house.”
“And this means what to me?” Jesse said.
Mike sighed. “I guess I could get out there, hit the house myself.”
“I guess you could do that.” Jesse remembered his clothes on the bathroom floor. “Look, I got stuff to do. Sit tight.”
“I’ll handle it,” Mike said, but his mind wasn’t in it. Jessie could always tell when Mike’s mind was someplace else.
“Something doesn’t feel right,” he said. “I gotta go.” He clicked off the phone. It would take less than an hour to burn his clothes, clean the knives. Then he’d have to burn the towel that covered the knives. He’d dump the knives on the way downtown. He had a new plan, a simple plan. He’d get out of town, get a new ID, disappear before they even figured out he was gone.
Little Room for Lying
It didn’t seem right to eat a dead man’s food, but Mike figured he’d done worse. And the old farmer didn’t have family in town, so most likely the stuff would be thrown away. Canned stuff might go to some shelter. But Mike needed it, and his granny, she deserved a good meal. He ran cold water over the frozen ham in the sink and told himself he was doing the world a kindness in some way, making a meal for his granny, even if he had to steal it from a dead man. His granny loved fried ham with her eggs. Mike smiled, thinking how she’d like the surprise. In a drawer he found white potatoes that had gone soft, but there was one good sweet potato left.
Mike left the ham in the sink to soak and went out on the back porch to have a smoke. He’d found the cigarettes on the old man’s coffee table. Mike stood on his granny’s back porch and looked across the fields to the old man’s house, still empty, waiting for someone to come and carry the rest of the stuff away. Maybe they’d have a yard sale. That was what they did with dead people’s things.
He sat and grinned, feeling the bulk of the silver dollars in his pocket. Mike had known there’d be something of use in the old man’s house. He thought of running to the store and spending them on some brown sugar for the sweet potato and some of that Sara Lee pound cake his granny loved. But they’d surely be suspicious of a guy like him buying groceries with silver dollars. Still, he was tempted. He knew he should save them for the pawnshop, but the one nearby was already closed. Mike had taken stock, figuring how they’d make it with ten more days before his granny’s government check was due. Two cans of soup, half a loaf of bread, grits, some peanut butter and jelly. They had plenty of eggs. They wouldn’t starve with the eggs. But even his granny had said she was aching for a meal, a real meal, with meat and potatoes and some kind of green.
She’d told him if he’d get out there and kill one of the chickens, she’d be happy to dress it and fry it up, make some gravy to pour on the bread that was left. She’d told him how he could just give that chicken’s head the quick, hard twist it took to break its neck. She didn’t have the strength in her hands lately with her arthritis acting up. Sometimes Mike wondered if it was worth getting old. It seemed to him the body just turned on you when you got up in years.
There was a squawking in the chicken coop like the hens were fighting. He wondered what in the hell a bunch of hens would have to fight about. He looked at the coop. He thought he’d give just about anything for some crispy fried chicken, but he couldn’t stand the thought of picking up that little heap of feathers and beak and claws. He’d tried it once, and it was awful the way a chicken could fight.
Mike threw the cigarette on the ground and went back into the kitchen to check the ham. It was soft. He unwrapped it, put it in a pan, and stuck in the ov
en, where the sweet potato was already smelling sweet. He didn’t want to think about the things Jesse had done. Jesse had told him the things he’d meant to do to the girl they were talking about on the news. He heard his granny’s television down the hall, the sudden switch from Jeopardy to the news update on the assault on a young woman in Land Fall. He moved into the hallway and listened. They were offering five hundred dollars to anyone with information. Mike had all the information they’d need. He thought of the things he could do with five hundred dollars. Groceries, gas, get the car the tune-up it needed so he could get out of town. But he’d never leave his granny. They’d put her in one of those state homes, and she deserved a whole lot better than that. Then, as if she could hear his thinking, she called, “Mikey, baby.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He went to her room.
She was sitting on the edge of her bed, hands gripping the walker.
He went toward her. “You planning on going somewhere, Granny? I told you to just holler if you needed something.”
She studied him with the black, beady eyes that seemed to always look at him with a little suspicion, just like those hens of hers. She pulled herself up on the walker, arms trembling as she came to a stand. “That poor, poor girl,” she said. “The detective said it was the most vicious assault he’d ever seen.”
“She gonna live?” Mike said.
She rolled the walker ahead a little, went with it. “Critical condition. In a coma. I guess that’s a mercy. They don’t have any leads yet. They’re just hoping she’ll wake.”
“That must be why they’re paying for information,” Mike said, looking back to the TV screen. But there was just a commercial for some new kind of mop.
His granny was heading down the hallway, said, “They don’t get a lead soon, they’ll double that reward. You watch.”
His granny was always right about these things. Mike weighed the options. He could call and tell them exactly where Jesse Hollow field would be: Mercy Hospital, maternity floor. He thought about it, thought maybe he should wait and see if they raised the reward. But if he waited too long, Jesse might get it in his mind to come after him. As far as Mike knew, he was the only one who knew the things Jesse had done. His granny rested, leaning on her walker.
“You need to stay in bed,” Mike said.
She took his face in one hand, gave a little shake of her head, and let him go. “I need to see what’s going on in my house. I’m not as deaf as you might think. I’ve heard things. That Jesse. I heard you on the phone this morning. I’ve got to find out about some of the comings and going around here.” She put her hand on his shoulder, looked him in the eye, just the way she’d done when she knew he’d skipped school, sneaked a beer, stolen something, or done any of the things that had gotten him locked up in juvy.
She squeezed his shoulder. “Where did you go today? You always tell me when you’re going somewhere, and you slipped out.”
He took her hand, put it back on her walker. “I’m working on a surprise for you, Granny. I wish you’d just get on back to bed and let me make you a surprise.”
She shook her head. “I’m not dying, Mikey. I just have a bad cold, and it got my arthritis stirred up. Soon I’ll be back out there taking care of things. Got my check coming in …” She looked down, then up as if the number she wanted was floating somewhere in the air.
“Ten days,” he said. “But I’m taking care of things.”
She straightened. “I’m just saying I’m not deaf or blind, and I still have all my bodily functions. If you don’t mind, just step out of my way so I can get in the bathroom and do my business and wash myself and make myself presentable for getting in that kitchen and making some kind of supper.”
“Okay, Granny.” He smiled and stepped aside and watched her take those slow, jerky steps down the hall. She wasn’t at the edge of dying, but she wouldn’t be around much longer. He wished he could do one thing to make her proud. He looked back toward her TV. The game show was still on, but across the bottom of the screen was more news scrolling. They’d raised the reward to one thousand, just as his granny had said. Mike headed toward the kitchen. If he turned Jesse in, Jesse would be sure to put a hit on him.
He heard his granny in the bathroom. She’d turned on that gospel station on the radio she kept in there. She was private about what she called her bodily functions. Mike smiled and thought, You are too good for this world, Granny, as he walked toward the kitchen. She’d be proud if he turned Jesse in. He told himself no matter what happened, he’d never do another job with Jesse. He was only getting meaner, and it was only a matter of time before Jesse took Mike down.
His granny had told him, right before he’d gotten sent off to juvy, “You can do a wrong thing once or twice, or maybe even three times, and not get caught. But you keep doing a wrong thing, it’s like the rat that keeps going down the same path. It leaves signs of itself, droppings, tracks, somebody takes notice, sets out a trap or poison. Once you know the way a rat travels, it ain’t nothing to kill him on his path.”
Mike was glad she never called down religion when trying to make him change his ways. The only time she ever did that was to show him how it might help him, not hurt him. Mike figured she’d tried religion on her own kids, but all that had gotten her was her daughter, his momma, shot and killed in a drug deal and her son on death row somewhere in Texas. Sometimes Mike was glad his mother had died fast. And Mike was glad he’d never known his own daddy, who was probably no better than Jesse’s blood daddy. Mike had had it rough, but nothing like Jesse. He’d seen Jesse crying in his sleep. He’d never told him—hell, Jesse would probably kill anyone who said they’d seen him crying. But Mike knew there was a crying inside, and that was why he gave Jesse room to stretch his meanness. Jesse didn’t have a granny, and sometimes Mike figured that was all the difference in the world.
He heard his granny singing along with the music in the bathroom. He checked the sweet potato in the oven. It was soft, and the ham was coming along. When he straightened, the silver dollars jingled in his pocket. Most likely she wouldn’t hear the sound, but sometimes she had a way of seeing, knowing, just about everything. He went to his room to hide the coins and stopped to check under the bed for the shotgun—as if there were any way it could disappear. But somehow he could imagine Jesse floating like a ghost through the walls and taking the gun, the shells, even somehow getting the coins from his pocket.
He saw himself in the mirror. He didn’t look like a thief. He wished he could be like Jesse sometimes. Maybe the only thing that kept him from being like Jesse was that little bit of heart his granny gave him. In the past two days they’d both robbed a neighbor’s house. They’d broken the Zeke rule—never rob a neighbor. His granny would say they were heading down the same path, and she didn’t even know they’d driven down that old farm road with that girl. Mike was glad he’d never laid a hand on her. Then he remembered she had laid a hand on him. He rubbed his arm as if he could rub the feeling of her away.
He looked out his window toward the west, where the sun would soon sink past the line of trees and field. The old farmer hadn’t planted for years. When Mike had gone through that house, he’d felt kind of dumb and guilty for thinking he could take anything of value off a farmer. There was no safe, no money stashed in a coffee can in the freezer. And upstairs there was no money under that mattress. Mike flinched when he shifted the pillow and saw the shotgun. What was a sawed-off shotgun doing under a dead wife’s pillow? He could tell that was her side of the bed because of the Bible and the little vase of fake flowers on the bedside table. Under the farmer’s pillow he found the shells. He knew that was the farmer’s side of the bed because on that bedside table was the clock and a set of teeth floating in a glass of water. It didn’t seem fair for a man to be buried without his teeth. Seemed the funeral home would ask for the teeth when they asked for clothes and shoes. If they put shoes on a dead man, it stood to reason they’d want his teeth. A dead man deserved more dignity than
to be stuffed in a coffin while his teeth sat floating in a glass.
Mike had shoved the gun and shells into his backpack. He went to the sock drawer. People were so predictable. Women put their jewelry with their panties, and men hid their money with the socks. Mike figured there was a reason, but it was beyond his knowing. All he knew was that he liked the smooth weight of the coins. He stood there rubbing the weight of one between his fingers just for the feel it. He slipped the coins into his pocket and headed downstairs. Then, standing in the dead man’s kitchen, he had a thought about all the space left in his backpack. The refrigerator’s motor clanked on, and that was when he got the idea that would’ve made Jesse proud: groceries. He had seen a little ham in the freezer when he’d looked for the coffee can that could be holding cash. He grabbed the ham, left the open box of fish sticks. He took the bottle of beer and a jar of apple jelly. Then in the cabinets he found the bag of coffee, the can of green beans, and the sweet potato. He looked for something sweet because he knew his granny would want that. But there was nothing sweet.
He heard his granny call him. She was back in her bedroom with the TV on. He hurried to her, saw her standing there, staring at the news. She’d seen that she was right about the reward going up to a thousand bucks. She shook her head, turned to him. “Just like I told you.” She was trying to read something in his face.
He turned away, said, “I got to get to making your surprise.”
Back in the kitchen, his hands shook as he took the potato out of the oven, set out the butter. He had options. Jesse was meeting Zeke at the hospital, and that meant Mike could call that number on the news and tell them exactly where to pick up the man they were after. Mike’s mind kept turning on what he could do with a thousand bucks. He couldn’t remember if he’d ever seen that much money at once.
With a thousand bucks Mike could get the car a good tune-up and drive his granny to Raleigh, where she could stay with that cousin of hers, and he could keep going. He’d never rest easy with Jesse on his trail. Even locked up, Jesse would have somebody beat him to death. Somehow he’d get it done. It was better to work with the devil than against him because in the devil’s territory, he always wins.
