Don't Turn Around

by Hunter Morgan

  Angel shifted her gaze to the white wall in front of the gurney. “I’ll go because I’ve had enough of his shit, but I ain’t talkin’ to the police. That would look bad for him.” She turned to Casey and looked at her more closely now. “You’re that woman, aren’t you? The one Charlie’s suin’. I knew I knew you from somewhere, and then I remembered it was in the parking lot the day he got out of prison. You guys were talkin’.”

  Casey looked down at her hands, folded in her lap. “Would you like me to find someone else to help you?” She lifted her gaze to look at the woman. “I didn’t mean to deceive you, Angel. I just wanted to help. This is my job. I help women like you.”

  Angel looked at her for a long moment. “Nah, I don’t want nobody else. I can tell you know how it is, what it’s like. I ’preciate your help. You’re wrong about Charlie, though. He ain’t no murderer. But I don’t care about him suin’ you.” She shrugged. “It’s all another one of his brother’s stupid schemes anyway.”

  Casey wanted to ask what she meant, but she reminded herself that right now this had to be about Angel and not Gaitlin. And certainly not about herself.

  “You can’t go back to your house if he’s there. You can’t even go back to your job. Not unless you report Charlie. If you report him, the police will arrest him and you can go home. You can go back to your life before Charlie.”

  “I know.” Moisture gathered in the corners of Angel’s eyes. “But I can’t do that. I love him.”

  Casey felt a pang of pity for the young woman. It was the same story she’d heard dozens of times. Even after they beat their faces in, the women still loved them.

  “Don’t matter anyway.” Angel rubbed her nose with the back of her hand. “I didn’t make rent last month. Already late this month. We was gonna get kicked out anyway. I just hadn’t told Charlie so he wouldn’t get mad.”

  “You sure you don’t want to talk to Officer Mendez?” Casey asked, trying one last time.

  “Nope. But you can tell me about this shelter.” Angel rolled her head to the side so she could look into Casey’s eyes. “There other kids there for Buddy to play with?”

  Chapter 27

  “You can’t stay here no more, chico. I don’t want you here.” Drina threw James’s sweatshirt and jean jacket down on the floor in front of the door.

  She paid the rent on this trailer every month by scrubbing other people’s toilets. The place wasn’t much, but she was proud of it because it was hers. Because she made the rent payments, she had the right to say who stayed here, and James wasn’t staying here anymore. Not him or his woman-beating brother.

  “Get out.” She pointed to the door.

  “Where we supposed to go?” James got up off the plaid couch, opening his arms. “Come on, Drina, baby girl.”

  “I don’t care where you go. Just so you go, chico. And you take your hermano with you.” She eyed Charlie, who sat on the end of the couch, half lit on the twelve-pack of beer the two men had brought home. “Now,” she said loudly. She scooped the keys to James’s truck off the top of the TV and tossed them to him.

  He’d just pulled it off the blocks the day before. New fuel pump. There was a big shed out back that a couple of people in the park used. Drina paid an extra twenty-five dollars a month to keep the kids’ bikes and a lawn mower there. James wasn’t supposed to have a car in there; she’d gotten in trouble with the landlord over him using other tenants’ space. It was a good thing the truck was running, though; otherwise, James and his brother would be walking in the rain tonight.

  “Hey, you hear me, chico?!” Drina hollered to Charlie. He looked like he was about to fall asleep with his head cocked to one side and drool in the corner of his mouth. She turned the TV off. “I washed your coat. It’s in the kitchen. Now go on. Out.”

  “Come on, Charlie.” James jerked his hoodie over his head. “We don’t need this shit.”

  Charlie still looked confused, but he got up, pulling his flannel shirt down over his fleshy, white belly. James went into the kitchen and brought out the coat Drina had washed the milk out of. She didn’t know what had happened between Charlie and his girlfriend the other night and she didn’t want to know. But James said Angel and the boy were gone, and along with the soured milk, there had been blood on Charlie’s coat. Drina didn’t want Charlie or James in the house with her children. Not anymore, she didn’t. Maybe Charlie didn’t kill that woman, maybe he was falsely accused. But the way Drina saw it, as mean as he got when he was drunk, it was only a matter of time before he would kill someone. She didn’t intend that someone to be her or one of her kids.

  “We’re goin’?” Charlie asked. “Yer lettin’ her put you out?” He looked at James, then at Drina, then at James again.

  If he came at her, Drina had already decided she was going to shoot him between the eyes. She might have to spend a night in jail, her kids might have to go to their abuela’s for a few days, but no one would find Drina guilty. Not a poor, young, working Hispanic girl trying to live the American dream. Not when Charlie was a known abuser.

  She inched her way toward the bookcase on the far side of the living room. She kept the gun up there in a shoebox. Nobody knew she had it except her brother, who had given it to her. Not the kids. Not James. Nobody. If Drina pulled the trigger, it would be in self-defense. Dios Mío, she might have to kill both of them in self-defense.

  James pushed the coat into Charlie’s arms and grabbed his sweatshirt and jean jacket off the floor. “Come on. Why you doin’ this, Drina?” He came toward her.

  “You know why. I told you to stay away from the houses I clean. I told you I could lose my job.”

  “And I didn’t go there. I ain’t been to any of them houses in weeks.”

  “You lie.” She reached over her head for the box. “I saw you talkin’ to him.”

  “Drina, you don’t understand. I—”

  She pulled the pistol out of the sneaker box and he shut right up. She didn’t even have to aim it at him. “Get out,” she said quietly. “Get out and never come back, chico.”

  “What about my things?” He sounded all manly, but he was moving for the door. His brother, a bigger coward than he was, was going to beat him there.

  “You can come back for them. Some day when I ain’t here. But I’m warnin’ you.” This time she did point the gun at him.

  James went out the door, following his brother.

  Drina smiled to herself as she locked it behind them. She hadn’t even had to load the pistol….

  Adam lay in the bed with his hands at his sides and listened. He heard voices. Women. He had always loved the sound of women’s voices. Like songbirds, some of them.

  He wondered if it was day or night. It was hard to tell because he couldn’t open his eyes. They were frozen shut. Just like his arms. Frozen at his sides. His legs were also frozen, like the sticks he had used at the farm to tie up his tomato plants. Only those sticks had been useful. These…These sticks attached to his body were useless. He was useless.

  He heard the click and whirl, the whoosh of the respirator. He knew it forced air into his lungs. Life-sustaining oxygen. He knew it kept him alive, along with all the other tubes that had to be going in and out of every orifice of his body.

  Adam felt trapped. Trapped by his useless limbs, by the respirator. By the female voices that spoke so gently, so kindly to him. They thought they were doing the right thing, keeping him alive like this. A vegetable. That’s what they used to call it before the term became “politically incorrect.”

  There was only one person who seemed to understand Adam’s pain, and that was his grandson.

  When Adam thought of the young man, emotion swelled inside him. He was so proud of the boy. Adam III was smart. Better yet, clever. A far better man than his worthless father had been. They say certain traits often skip a generation.

  The boy understood the ways of the world. He understood politics. He knew how to be politic. He would be far more successful in his
political career than Adam himself had been. His grandson was better looking, better educated, and knew how to play the game. The boy knew what was expected of him and he knew how to give it while still keeping his own objectives. Adam had high hopes for his grandson’s political career.

  Adam wished desperately that he was able to talk with him. The boy came regularly. Talked for long periods of time—so long that Adam drifted in and out of awareness listening to him.

  He wished he could speak, could give advice. The boy was doing well in the attorney general’s office, but his job wasn’t easy. It was stressful. What he needed was a woman, a woman to come home to, to share his life with. Lately, he had been talking about someone. Casey. Casey was her name. He mentioned her casually, but Adam could tell that he really liked her. That, at times, he was concerned for her welfare.

  If only Adam could verbalize his thoughts. Support the boy. Do something—anything—other than lie here and rot.

  The ventilator clicked, whirled, whooshed, each rhythmic sound reminding Adam of his helplessness. The sounds were nails in a coffin that never sealed. This had become Adam’s private hell.

  He wished that he was back on the farm, that his grandson was young again and they were picking tomatoes. Adam’s worthless son had never understood the hard work one had to put into a garden to get decent tomatoes. His son had whined about the heat and about the bugs, but not his grandson. The boy had ground the bugs with the heel of his sneaker without so much as a complaint. He had helped his grandfather grow the tomatoes, pick them in the sweltering heat. He had helped can them. They had lined the jars up on the shelves in the cool cellar. Adam recalled the last time he had been at the farm, only weeks before he had had the stroke. There were still jars in the cellar. Plump, red Roma tomatoes bobbing in Ball mason jars. They were too old to eat, but he hadn’t been able to bring himself to throw them away.

  Adam heard footsteps and listened carefully. This was all he had left. Sounds and the thoughts in his head that didn’t always make as much sense as they once had.

  The person who walked into the room was not female.

  He waited for him to speak. A male nurse maybe? A doctor? His grandson? No, his grandson had come earlier today. Or was that yesterday? Whoever it was, he would speak. They usually spoke, even though they knew Adam couldn’t answer. It was one of the perks of staying in a nursing home that cost the amount of a new sedan each month.

  But he didn’t speak. Adam heard sounds beside the bed.

  Adam heard the click and then the whirl of his respirator…but then it didn’t whoosh.

  Where was the whoosh?

  He suddenly felt as if there was something on his chest. Something big. Heavy. Like the freezer they had kept in the cellar of the old farmhouse. He struggled, not with his body, because he couldn’t, but in his mind. In his mind, he twisted and turned and shouted. He begged. He had thought he was ready to go. He had lain here for hours on end, weeks, months, wishing he could die. But not yet!

  Where is the whoosh? he wondered frantically.

  There was no whoosh because the ventilator had stopped. The someone standing beside him had stopped it. It was no longer forcing oxygen into his lungs. It was no longer sustaining life.

  Why would he stop the ventilator?

  The freezer on Adam’s chest grew heavier until it seemed as if the weight of the world was balanced there. Adam knew that he was suffocating. He was now getting light-headed. Images drifted in his head. His grandson as a baby sitting on his chest. Not so heavy.

  Tomatoes on the vine. In jars on the shelves.

  The weight began to lighten. He did not hear the click, whirl, whoosh again, but he knew it didn’t matter. It was too late.

  Adam wondered with his last, dying cognitive reason if Saint Peter would really be at the Pearly Gates. He wondered how he would explain why he had been such a terrible man….

  Casey stood in the kitchen in her flannel pajamas and sheepskin slippers dunking a chamomile tea bag in a mug of hot water. It had been a long, but productive day. After dropping her father off at the senior center, she’d had breakfast with Angel at the shelter.

  The young woman still refused to report her boyfriend’s abuse, but she had asked her sister, who employed her at the flea market, to give her a few days off to think and heal. Angel seemed to be enjoying the companionship of the other women in the shelter, and she was meeting with a counselor every day as well as attending a daily group session with other abused women. One of the staff members had gone to the house when Gaitlin was out. Using Angel’s keys, she had gotten the young woman and her little boy some clean clothes and personal items. Angel had talked to her friend, the one who baby-sat for her, and had learned that Gaitlin was looking for her. He had asked the friend to pass on the message that he was sorry for what had happened and wanted her to come home. Casey had learned from Angel that Charles was now using his brother’s pickup, red with a blue tailgate, as his new mode of transportation since Angel had taken her car.

  Casey had followed the red Ford pickup with the blue tailgate for a while today. The Gaitlin brothers had gone from Angel’s place to the flea market to another public-housing complex in town to the bar. Charles was still following his same pattern, just in a different vehicle, and now, with his brother. Charles had not contacted Casey in any way since she had begun tailing him. She wondered if it could be that easy. Had he seen her somewhere, realized what she was doing and just stopped his harassment? It seemed far-fetched, but certainly prudent.

  Somehow Charles Gaitlin didn’t strike her as the prudent sort.

  The downside of her day had been a conversation with Lincoln. He had called to break their date this evening saying he had too much work to do. When they had talked, he had seemed distracted. She had wondered if he had somehow found out that she was helping Angel, or maybe even that she was following Charles, and he was just waiting for her to tell him. Casey did feel guilty about not discussing either matter with him, but she was the prudent sort and she still thought she was making the right choice. She didn’t condone secrecy between a man and woman establishing what could potentially be a long-term relationship, but right now, she felt she had to stay quiet about it.

  Casey lifted her tea bag out of the mug and tossed it into the trash can. She was just taking her first tentative sip of the hot tea when her cell phone rang. She glanced at the kitchen clock. It was 11:10. Was Lincoln feeling guilty about breaking their date? Sometimes he did call late when he was working.

  She picked up her cell from the counter. The ID screen identified the caller as Adam Preston. Surprised, she answered.

  “Casey.” He almost sounded out of breath.

  “Adam?”

  “I’m sorry about it being so late.”

  She could tell by his voice that something was wrong. “It’s not a problem, Adam.”

  “My grandfather…” He sounded close to tears. “He…he passed away tonight. A few minutes ago. They can declare him there, but they asked if I wanted to come and see him. My parents are in Prague, or Barcelona. I’d have to check the itinerary.”

  “You want me to go with you, Adam? I can meet you there,” she said, her heart going out to him. She knew this was probably best for the elderly man, but she also knew that didn’t make it any easier for his loved ones.

  “I hate to ask you to come out so late.” He hesitated. “I’ll be fine. I just…I guess I just wanted to talk to someone. Tell someone.” He half laughed. “This is a little embarrassing. A couple of months ago I admit to you I can’t get a date. My grandfather dies, and now I’m telling you I don’t have anyone to call. It’s not that I don’t have friends, but—”

  “Adam, I don’t mind coming.” And she honestly didn’t. She was already headed up the stairs to change. This was something she was good at—tragedy, death. It was her gift. One she didn’t always relish, but a gift nonetheless. “Tell me what nursing home and wait there in the lobby for me.”

  “You do
n’t have to—your father.”

  “My father will be fine. He’s sound asleep. I always leave him notes on his bathroom mirror when I go out. He checks them when he can’t remember where I am. I’ll just leave a note. If he wakes up, he’ll see it. I’ll be back before he even knows I’m gone.” She walked into her bedroom and flipped on the light switch. “Now tell me where you’ll be.”

  Casey met Adam in the lobby of the nursing home and immediately hugged him. It just seemed like the right thing to do. He wasn’t crying, but his eyes were red. He was obviously relieved to see a friendly face.

  “I’m so sorry,” she whispered.

  He hugged her tightly before letting her go. “I really appreciate you coming. I was hesitant to call, but—” He stopped, then started again. “I’m glad you’re here.” He stepped back, looking down at his running shoes.

  Casey guessed that the nursing home must have called him after he had gone home from work. He was wearing sweatpants and a long-sleeved T-shirt under his black wool dress coat. He’d probably worked out this evening.

  A nurse entered the lobby but stood back at a respectable distance. “We’re ready for you, Mr. Preston, but, please, take your time.”

  Casey looked at Adam, resting her hand on his forearm. “You want me to go in with you?”

  He shook his head. “No…I just…”

  “I know. You just needed a friend here. That’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with that, Adam. Some things we just shouldn’t do alone. How about if I have a seat and wait here for you? If you need me, I’ll be here. You go see him and then we’ll find out what paperwork needs to be done to have his body released.”

  Adam worked his hands together. “They said his heart rate had been dropping on and off all day. I knew he hadn’t long when I left this evening. Then…he just…died. I knew it would happen, sooner rather than later. The doctors warned me,” he said. Then he added quietly, “I just didn’t expect…I didn’t expect it to be tonight.”