Homesick Creek

by Diane Hammond

  He’d been dreaming about Cherise lately. In his dreams she showed up at his front door in Hubbard, wearing hot pants and four-inch heels. Hey, baby doll, she’d say to him. It’s Mommy. And he’d tell her to fuck off, but he didn’t really mean it, just the way he didn’t really want to have an affair.

  What was going to sustain him if it wasn’t sex and rage? What did you have left when that was gone? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. You were as helpless as a newborn kitten in the bulldog-slobbery jaws of hell.

  Hack couldn’t remember anymore how Cherise had wheedled the police into coming to the apartment in Tin Spoon and waking him and the Katydid out of a sound sleep at one o’clock in the morning. Maybe she told them they were too young to be left alone while she was at the station; maybe she just told them the truth, that she was hoping they had enough money to post her bail. Whatever it was, Hack awoke to insistent knocking on the door. By the time he got there, hoisting jeans up over his boxers, the Katydid was padding out of her room in her nightgown, her hair going in a million directions.

  “What the hell?” Hack had said when he saw a state patrolman standing in the doorway.

  “Are you Hack Neary?” the officer said, consulting a notebook.

  “Yeah, that’s me.”

  “Hack—unusual name.”

  “Tell me you didn’t come here at one o’clock in the morning to say that,” Hack said.

  “Let him in, Buddy,” Katy said, shivering. “It’s cold.”

  It was cold, a February night in the desert, icy air leaking in through all the shoddy window frames and cracks in the flooring and doorjambs. Katy held her arms tight across her chest.

  The officer tipped his hat. “Plenty cold. Thank you, miss.”

  Hack backed up and let the man through.

  “Whew,” the officer said, snuffling and stamping his feet.

  “So?” Hack said.

  Preparing for trouble, the patrolman set his feet while Katy shut the door behind him. He consulted his notebook again and said, “We have a Cherise Neary in custody over in Diederstown. She says she’s your mom. That right?”

  “Never heard of her,” Hack said.

  “That’s right,” Katy said at the same time.

  “Well, we picked her up for solicitation and theft over there. She stole a couple wallets off some guys in a bar who weren’t as drunk as she thought they were. Bail’s seven thousand bucks.”

  “Pigs will fly first,” Hack said.

  “Pardon?”

  “Buddy,” Katy warned.

  “She told you we have seven thousand dollars?” Hack said.

  “Look, son, all I know is I’m supposed to bring you down to the station. If nothing else, maybe you’ll be able to settle her down some.” The officer cracked a rueful smile. “She decked the sergeant, landed a good one on him.”

  “I’ll go. Let her stay here,” Hack said, nodding toward the Katydid.

  “I’m not staying, Buddy. If you’re going, I’ll go too.”

  “She doesn’t trust me to keep my temper,” Hack told the officer.

  “That’s because you don’t keep your temper. He doesn’t keep his temper worth a damn,” Katy told the officer.

  “Like we’ve even seen the woman in two years,” Hack said.

  “Doesn’t matter,” said the Katydid. “I’m going.”

  “Okay, look, both of you come then. You want to follow me?”

  “Can’t,” Hack said. “Fucking car’s in the shop again.”

  Two months earlier Hack had finally saved up enough money to buy them a car he hoped would run for a while, but it turned out to be yet another piece of shit, just a more expensive one. He’d bought it off an Indian Minna Tallhorse had warned him about, but the guy had promised Hack it was clean, and it looked clean, even to the boys in the garage. Yeah, right. In the first six weeks he’d owned it, he’d had to replace the carburetor, the timing belt, and now—for the second time in a month—the head gasket. He was fucking sick of piece-of-shit cars and being too broke all the time ever to buy a good one. His life goal, his dream, his obsession, was to have a new car, a white T-bird with porthole windows and red tuck-and-roll upholstery. Like that was ever going to happen. He was making only fifty cents an hour over minimum wage as a checker at Howdy’s Market, and no one ever slipped tips to the checkers like they did to the bag boys. After expenses, they had fifteen dollars a month left over—unless they had to make car repairs, and of course they always had fucking car repairs because they could only afford a goddamn piece-of-shit car.

  “I’ll run you in,” the officer said.

  “Jesus,” said Hack. “What if we don’t want to go?”

  “We have to go, Buddy,” Katy said.

  “Like hell.”

  “Well, I’m going.”

  “Fuck,” Hack said, and pulled his jacket off the back of the couch. Katy put a poncho Minna Tallhorse had given her over her nightgown and they followed the officer out to his squad car. It was twenty minutes to Diederstown, and Katy nodded on Hack’s shoulder. She was fifteen years old, but when she was asleep, she was still going on eleven. He smoothed out his jacket so she wouldn’t have a big wrinkle mark in her cheek when she woke up. She always had wrinkle marks in her cheeks when she woke up; she had the kind of skin that was sensitive that way. He used to razz her about that all the time, told her she must have been a rag doll in her past life, the way she wrinkled up so easily.

  “Yeah, well, if I was a rag doll, then what were you, one of those roly-poly dolls that you punch and they get right back up?”

  It was true that he got into his share of fights, especially when he hung out at the Black Diamond Tavern, where someone was always spoiling for a fight. Hack was happy to mix it up, see what he could do. He was earning a reputation as a fighter. Lot of guys would back down before things had even gotten out of hand if they knew he was in the place.

  So Cherise had decked a cop. He watched the sage go by in the moonlight and wondered what fucking ill wind had brought her back to them this time. Last time they’d seen her she’d breezed in like she owned the place and tried to leave some suitcase behind in the closet. Hack had jimmied the lock and found five Omega wristwatches, two Rolexes, a bunch of traveler’s checks, a pearl necklace, and thirteen credit cards. He’d made her take the goddamn thing back. That was two years ago, and they hadn’t heard a word from her since. If the cops had picked her up for theft, her timing must be off. Age did that to you, he guessed. Jesus, what was she now, forty-three, forty-four?

  The patrolman pulled into the station lot in Diederstown.

  “Out you go,” he said, opening Katy’s door for her. The kid was barely a kid anymore, and everyone still opened doors for her.

  Diederstown was a dive, and so was the state police station, an old Quonset hut the government must have gotten cheap. There were only two cells, and Cherise was in one of them, carrying on a lively discourse with the duty officer—the sergeant, by the looks of him, all swollen up around the right jaw and making a show of ignoring Cherise and doing paperwork. Looked like it hurt. Hack had been hit there a few times himself, and he’d ended up sucking Cream of Wheat through a straw.

  “You son of a bitch bastard no-good asshole,” Cherise was saying. “You impotent pansy faggot. You’re going to be so sorry—”

  Then she saw Hack and Katy. “Hey, baby dolls,” she said, turning sweet on a dime, like she always could. “Look what they’ve gone and done to your mama this time.”

  “Looks like a good place,” Hack said.

  “Are they treating you okay?” Katy said.

  “Better than she’s treating them,” Hack said. “Look at that guy.” He nodded in the direction of the sergeant, who glanced up at Hack wryly.

  “Got that right,” he said.

  “So?” Hack said to Cherise.

  “You don’t sound glad to see me, baby. Aren’t you glad to see your old mother?”

  “Fuck you,” Hack said.

  �
�Well,” said Katy, “at least we’re starting off on the right foot. C’mon, Buddy. It’s not going to help for you to get ugly.”

  “Listen to your sister,” Cherise said.

  “Fuck off,” said Hack.

  Katy shook her head and retreated to a metal bench against one wall.

  “Let me get a good look at you, honey,” Cherise wheedled, leaning on the cell bars. Even retired, she looked like a hooker: the hip-shot stance, the ridiculous flashy clothes and cotton candy hair. Casino-wear , she used to call her getups. Designed to please. “My God, but you’ve gotten big and handsome,” she said to Hack. “How old are you now, baby? Eighteen?”

  “Twenty.”

  “A man.”

  Hack shrugged, but some of the anger was ebbing away. Close up, Cherise looked so damn old. Her lipstick had bled into lines around her mouth that he’d never noticed before. Her eyes were bloodshot and red-rimmed, like she’d been on a bender. She didn’t seem drunk now, though.

  “What time did you pick her up?” Hack asked.

  The sergeant consulted his log. “Call came in at ten oh six.”

  Enough time to get sober.

  “I told them you’d come,” she said. “Bastards.”

  “What do you want?”

  “They’re asking seven thousand for bail.”

  “And?”

  “I thought you might be able to help me out, baby.”

  “What a joke. If we had that kind of money, we wouldn’t have that kind of money because I’d have rented us a decent place with it and gotten a car that actually runs.”

  “So how much do you think you can come up with—a thousand, maybe, maybe two? They might go for that,” Cherise said, talking fast. “Hey, would you go for that?” she called to the sergeant. “A couple thousand? I’d get the rest in the morning.” Like she could be trusted to turn over that kind of money if she had it. The sergeant didn’t even bother replying, just shook his head.

  “C’mon, baby, think. Don’t you know someone who could help us out? Honey, what about you?” she called to Katy. “Are you dating someone, maybe, someone with money?”

  “No,” Katy said flatly.

  “Jesus,” Hack said. “What’s she supposed to do even if she does know somebody, say, Excuse me but can I borrow seven thousand dollars to bail out my forger–pickpocket–thieving-whore mother?”

  “Watch your mouth.”

  “You watch it,” Hack said. “This whole thing better be your idea of a joke.”

  “I don’t know why you have to be ugly,” Cherise said, fluffing her hair mechanically. She looked around the cell until she spotted a package of cigarettes. She looked inside, but the pack was empty. “Goddamn it,” she said. “Honey, do you have a cigarette, by any chance?”

  “I don’t smoke, and neither does she,” Hack said. “Look, this is bullshit. We don’t have any money, and they’re not going to let you out tonight without it. We’re going home.”

  “Shit.” Cherise balled up the empty cigarette pack and threw it across the cell. “I would’ve thought you’d want to help your mother.”

  “Why in hell would you have thought that?”

  “You’re my kids. I raised you.”

  “You raised us? You raised us? Ask her who was cooking dinner for her when she was five. Go ahead, ask her.” Hack pointed at Katy, who was still sitting on the metal bench. Cherise turned her back. “Yeah, I didn’t think so.”

  “I gave birth to you, I brought you into this world,” she said, but the fight had gone out of her. “I did the best I could. I would have thought that counted for something.”

  “It doesn’t count for shit,” Hack said.

  On the bench Katy raised her knees, folding her arms on top, and laid her head down. “How late is it, Buddy? God, I’m tired.”

  “We’re going,” Hack said, seeing her. “C’mon, this is garbage.”

  “You want me to give you a ride back home?” the patrolman asked. Hack had forgotten all about him, standing back there by the coffeepot.

  “Nah. What’s she driving these days?” He jerked his head toward the cell.

  “Looked like a Camaro. It’s down the block at the C’mon Inn, that’s where we picked her up. You want to take it? She’s not going to need it until she’s arraigned. Least you’d have transportation.”

  “Yeah, we’ll take it.”

  Cherise said nothing. The sergeant got her keys out of the property box and had Hack sign for them. “You mind?” he asked Cherise as an afterthought.

  “Ask me if I even give a fuck,” she said.

  “I’ll drive you down there,” the patrolman said to Hack. “It’s too cold to be walking.”

  Katy stood and went over to the cell. Cherise was still standing there with her back to the room. Katy stood staring at the hunched shoulders, the slack upper arms and sagging bosom, the tiny skirt and thigh-high boots.

  “You have something to say to me?” Cherise said without turning.

  “No,” Katy said. “I guess I don’t.”

  She and Hack followed the patrolman outside. “Jeez,” the man said, rubbing his arms. “It’s a goddamn icebox.” He opened the squad car door for Katy and drove them three blocks south, to the C’mon Inn, a mean little building with blacked-out windows and asbestos siding. Cherise’s Camaro was the only car in the lot. Hack unlocked it with the keys the patrolman handed him and slid inside. It stank of Cherise’s perfume, but it was clean enough.

  “You kids be careful now,” the officer said, holding up a hand in farewell. “I’m real sorry about your mama.” He got back in the squad car and headed up the street.

  “Yeah,” Hack said to no one in particular.

  The engine turned over smoothly, and there was half a tank of gas, more than enough to get them back to Tin Spoon. Hack ran through the gears a couple of times, checked the brakes, and peeled out of the empty parking lot.

  “Nice car, Buddy,” said Katy.

  “Yeah. Maybe we should keep it.”

  The Katydid looked at him.

  “C’mon, I’m only kidding,” Hack said.

  They drove for a while in silence. Fog had clamped down over the desert, and it was hard to see.

  “Buddy? What do you think she wanted to be when she grew up?” Katy finally said.

  “Cherise?”

  “Yeah.”

  “A whore.”

  “I mean it. Do you think she had dreams once of being something? I mean, nobody wants to grow up to be a prostitute.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Come on, Buddy. It’s a shit job. It’s demeaning, and it’s dangerous, even if it is legal. It doesn’t even pay that well.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I asked Minna once. She said Cherise probably made about as much money as an experienced waitress.”

  “Yeah, just hold the sauce,” Hack said.

  The Katydid shook her head. “I can’t talk to you. When did you get so mean?”

  “C’mon, I’m not mean.”

  “Bitter then.”

  “Not me,” Hack protested. “Me?”

  “Just drive,” said the Katydid. “Let me know when we’re there.”

  She pulled her poncho over her eyes, laid her head back against the seat, and put her life in Hack’s hands, the way she had thousands of times before.

  Last Christmas Vinny had given Hack a desktop toy, six steel ball bearings suspended on monofilament from a wooden frame. You picked up a few balls and let them drop against the rest, and they set up a complicated ricochet rhythm—tak TAK tak TAK TAK tak tak tak—until eventually the damned thing got fainter and slower, like someone losing his conviction. Hack was sitting at his desk watching the balls go back and forth when Rae walked by—tock tock tock—in her high heels and pure silk stockings that had been spun by pedigreed silkworms in the Shanghai province or some damned thing. She stopped in his office doorway, one hand climbing the doorjamb, the other on her hip in a classic come-on.
r />   “Hey,” she said softly.

  “Hey,” he said, stopping the balls from swinging before they left a maddening rhythm in his head.

  “You busy?”

  “Very busy.”

  “Oh—” she said uncertainly.

  The woman was pretty insecure for someone who could afford to cover her legs with pedigreed silkworm spit. “I was being sarcastic.”

  “Oh.”

  “Jesus, doesn’t anyone kid anyone else where you come from?”

  Rae sighed. “Not the way you do, no.”

  “What way then?”

  “Never mind. I don’t know. I’m probably wrong.”

  “Ah,” Hack said.

  “So are you okay? You don’t look okay.”

  She was always asking him if he was okay now, ever since the Bobcat.

  “I’m fine, princess, just a little low on motivation today,” he said. “I’ve been thinking about taking a little road trip.” Actually, the thought hadn’t crossed his mind until that very moment. Why would he want to go anywhere?

  “Really?” Rae perked up. “Like to Eugene, maybe? Isn’t that funny because I was thinking about going to Eugene this Saturday. Sam’s got a lot of work right now, and I don’t expect him to be home this weekend much, so I was thinking of getting out of town, maybe going shopping or something.”

  Hack hadn’t heard her talk that much in days. She hadn’t had a lot to say lately.

  “That right?” he said.

  “Maybe you have something you need to do there too, and we can drive together.” She was turning scarlet, but he had to give it to her, she kept on going. “Maybe you’d like to come with me— you know, save on gas by taking one vehicle. Or something.” She finished lamely. “I was just thinking that. I don’t know.”

  “Shopping? Like at Mervyn’s or something?”

  He saw her flinch. “Well, maybe Nordstrom or Frederick & Nelson. Kaufmann’s.”

  “That where rich women shop?”

  He could see her struggling for composure.

  “Sorry, princess. I’m not trying to pick on you,” he said. “So you’d do that when, Saturday?” Today was Thursday.