Maggie Boylan

by Michael Henson

  He shrugged. He was good for errands and for fixing things up, but he had no business sense at all.

  He started back to the office.

  “So how much did you give her?”

  “Twenty bucks.”

  “Twenty bucks!”

  “Twenty bucks.”

  “You know she’s probably smoked your twenty bucks by now. Or she’s put it up her nose. You know it ain’t for no Christmas toys in layaway.”

  He rattled around in the back room looking for his tool. “Do you know where that hacksaw went?”

  “Do I ever use a hacksaw?”

  “I thought I’d ask.”

  “So what were you two talking about for so long back there?”

  “About how her kids wouldn’t have no Christmas if she couldn’t put some money down on layaway. How they got her old man locked up over nothing. How the county’s keeping her from seeing her kids . . .”

  “Because she’s an unfit mother.”

  “So I felt sorry for her.”

  “I reckon you felt a little more than that.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Now you’re talking crazy.”

  “You were thinking with the wrong head. That’s what I was saying.”

  He waved the hacksaw at her and clumped and shuffled out the back door.

  * * *

  TWENTY MINUTES later, a girl stalked in with metal in her lip and a shaky fire in her eye. She looked straight at Sarah and asked, “Has Maggie Boylan been in here?” Her fire died quickly and she lost the track of Sarah’s eye. Then she became just a girl with metal studs in her lips and nose, a nervous young girl who could not look Sarah in the eye. And that was what gave Sarah the clue.

  “She stole my clothes and I want to know has she been in here?”

  Sarah shot Dennis another glance—this time it was an I-told-you-so glance.

  “I know she’s going around trying to sell my stuff, so I want to know has she been in here?” She pulled a bulky, spangled purse off her shoulder and set it on the counter.

  Sarah pulled the shoes and the jeans from behind the counter. “These look familiar?”

  “They’re familiar enough. How much did she get you for?”

  Sarah silenced her husband with another sharp glance. “She didn’t get us too bad,” she said.

  “I don’t have anything to pay you with.”

  “Then don’t pay nothing.”

  “Well, I hate for you to have to take the hit for what she done.” She sucked in her lower lip and chewed on a stud. She reached for the shoes, but Sarah set her hands across them.

  “She’ll get hers in the end,” Sarah said.

  “I reckon.”

  “She’ll do the wrong person and that’ll be the end of Maggie Boylan.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Sarah folded the shoes and the jeans together and put them in the spangled bag. “If she ain’t died of an overdose first,” she said.

  “She sure could,” the girl said. She stretched out her hand for the bag, but Sarah held on a moment more. “It’s a shame,” Sarah said. “I knew her when she was a girl and she was as good a girl growing up as there was.”

  The girl nodded, but she did not seem to hear. She was eager to get out the door. She put the bag under her arm, nodded briefly, and turned toward the street.

  Sarah followed her out the door, then watched from the front step. The girl ran to the corner, got into a car, started it up, and pulled into the street.

  And sure enough, there in the shotgun seat, sat Maggie Boylan, smoking a cigarette, and laughing. Laughing like this was the biggest joke in the world.

  The bitch.

  * * *

  FOR THE rest of the afternoon, her man continued to work on the truck. They would need the truck for pickup and delivery and that was the sort of thing Dennis was good for. It was cold to be working out of doors and it was hard work with all the heavy parts and climbing up under the truck, and his mangled leg hurt him. So every half hour or so he stumped and shuffled in for coffee and to warm his hands. She said nothing more about Maggie Boylan and the girl with metal in her mouth. She had said enough. He said nothing at all.

  She tried to call her mother back and got no answer. She straightened the children’s bin and handled customers and totaled up the day’s receipts. Finally, near closing time, as the short day darkened, she heard the truck fire up. It hummed with a nice new-muffler hum. She heard his step, stomp and shuffle, stomp and shuffle, into the back office and the clink and clank as he put his tools away.

  “Are you done back there?” He did not answer. He stomped and shuffled and clanked as if he had decided to move everything in the room.

  “Say,” she said again, “you about done in there?”

  She heard him stomp and she heard him shuffle and heard him clink and clank.

  He’ll be a minute, she thought. She turned the store lights out and went to the window to flip over the CLOSED sign. A line of Christmas lights ran around the window. She could see other lights up and down the street and she could see the lights of the crèche on the courthouse square and she decided to leave her lights on like the rest.

  She took out another cigarette and lit it. He would stretch out his shuffling and clanging as long as he could just so as not to talk to her. He would get over it soon enough, but he might not talk the whole way home.

  I reckon she could have done it to get her old man some cigarette money, she thought. She would like that to be true. She knew it was unlikely, but she wished something like that could be true.

  But no, she thought. Maggie’s bought herself something to smoke or snort. And when that’s gone she will pass off those shoes and those jeans on some new sucker. And then that girl will come right after with her little lie, and then they’ll go on to the next.

  Her man stomped and shuffled in the back office and Sarah Hunter stood in the window and smoked her cigarette. Christmas lights dressed every window up and down the square and around the courthouse and even over the door of the jail where Maggie’s husband sat out his sentence. The bud of a cough had set up in the back of her throat, the bud of a tear in her eye. I should quit these things, she thought. She wished she had quit them long ago. She wished things were different in so many ways. She wished she were able to take care of her mother. She wished Maggie had not become such a wreck of a woman. She heard her man clanging and shuffling in the back and she wished she had not learned to sharpen her tongue.

  She wished she could take back this whole damn story.

  The Way the World Is

  “THAT’S THE way the world is,” the girl said. And she did not seem to like it.

  “Honey, you ain’t seen nothing,” Maggie Boylan wanted to say. But the girl did not skip a beat.

  “All I did was take her in because she was homeless and I get throwed in jail for what she done.”

  A late November wind rattled the windows of the lobby where they sat, side-by-side on a bench. The girl was a heavy girl—a young woman, really, but to Maggie Boylan, just a girl. She was thick in the body, weighted in the shoulders, heavy in the cheeks and around her eyes. She was pierced in several places, pierced in one nostril, pierced with a ring in her brow, pierced by an arc of studs in her ear.

  “There I was,” she said, “coming out the door at Walmart. I had a cart full of groceries and diapers and what not. I was fixing to feed her and her kids right along with mine, and all of a sudden, you’d of thought I was Osama Bin Laden. There goes the alarm ringing and here come the security cop and a few minutes later here come the police and there’s my little kids crying and these cops want to know did I think I was smart trying to get away without paying for that purse and I’m, like, what purse?

  “And what it was, that penniless bitch I took in off the street had snuck this purse she wanted into my cart after I done checked out so she skips on ahead. She borrowed my car keys, you see, and she says,
I’ll go ahead and unlock the door. And she skips out like there ain’t nothing going on.”

  “She set you up.”

  “She didn’t have the guts to steal it herself and she figured if anybody was gonna get caught it’d be me. And she would of got away with it, except I pointed her out and they ended up taking both of us to jail. And I’m thinking, there’s my little kids off to foster care, and they’re crying their little hearts out. And my parents had to come up from Wilsonville to fetch my kids and bail me out.”

  Maggie Boylan had been nodding as the girl spoke, but she perked up her ears at the mention of the children almost gone to foster care. She was small as the girl was large, small-boned and spare of flesh with the quick, fierce eyes and sharp features of a fox. She watched the girl more closely now.

  “But that’s the way the world is,” the girl said again. “You try to help somebody and you get stiffed.”

  A deputy passed through the lobby. He was a heavy man with a heavy tread and he called out, “What d’you know, Maggie?”

  “I know I want to visit my old man,” she called. But the deputy slung himself through the door without another word.

  The girl had lit a cigarette; she blew out smoke and nodded. “That’s just how they treat you,” she said.

  “They won’t let you smoke in the building.” Maggie pointed to a sign above the counter.

  The girl raised a skeptical brow. “They can’t do no more to me than what they done already.” But she drew on her cigarette one more time, stubbed it out carefully on the rim of a trashcan, then slid it back into the pack.

  “They can slap you with a fine,” Maggie said. “They can write you a ticket in a heartbeat.”

  “Right now, I don’t hardly care. They could throw me right back in that cell and I wouldn’t care.”

  “Honey, you don’t know what you’re saying.”

  “They couldn’t do me no worse than what they done already. What could they do worse than what they already done?”

  Maggie held her peace.

  “This is the worst that’s ever happened to me,” the girl said. She folded her arms, unfolded them, then placed her hands on her knees “I ain’t never been inside a jail before. Never did expect to be. But there I was. And all because I wanted to help some girl that wouldn’t help herself.”

  She looked toward the door where the deputy had gone and folded her arms again.

  “Like I say,” she continued. “If it hadn’t been for my parents coming up to make my bail, I probably would of lost my kids to foster care. And God only knows what would of happened to them.”

  “How many you got?”

  “I got a boy and I got a girl. Three and two.”

  “Little tiny ones.”

  The girl’s shoulders sagged as if she carried a world of care. “That’s why I couldn’t stand to see her homeless and all. Cause she got three, and all of them under six. Ain’t even in school yet. So I understand what it is to have kids and you want them safe and fed and all. She comes to me complaining how she’s homeless and their daddy beat on her and she had to take them kids of hers and leave home. Well, big-hearted me, I had to take them in off the street.

  “So I asked her, why in the world would you do something like this to somebody trying to help you out? She says, well I reckoned you’re smart and you know how to talk to people and if you got caught you’d talk your way out of it because you didn’t know it was there. And I told her, ‘Well, it didn’t work out like that, did it?’”

  Maggie had been staring at the door, but now she turned to the girl. “You want to smoke that cigarette?”

  “Ma’am?”

  “You still want to smoke? Let’s go outside.”

  “I can’t. I’m waiting for that bitch that put me in here.”

  “Come on, you can whup her ass later.”

  “I ain’t planning to whip her ass.” She stood, with a glance toward the counter. “But I do plan to give her a piece of my mind.”

  “You better.” Maggie led the girl out onto the front steps of the courthouse. Out in the yard, a trusty pushed a pile of leaves against the wind. “You sure don’t want to whup some girl’s ass in the courthouse; they’ll slap you in a cell inside a cell. They’ll stroke you good. If you want to whip her ass, you got to go somewhere else.”

  “No,” the girl said. She pulled out her pack and tapped out the cigarette she had stubbed out before. “I ain’t a violent person. I just want her to know what I got to say.”

  The steps of the courthouse were cold. They cupped hands for a windbreak, lit their cigarettes, and smoked and shivered together.

  “I mean,” the girl said, “it just don’t make sense. You pick somebody up out of the gutter and you feed their children like they was your own. You do everything it says in the Bible to do. And here I get arrested for the very first time in my life. And I don’t do drugs. I don’t drink. I don’t do nothing. I just go to work and clean house and take care of my kids and now I probably got this on my record.”

  “You done?” Maggie nodded toward the cigarette.

  The girl was not. Maggie had hit hers hard; she had barely stopped to breathe. She flicked the butt of it ten feet out into the yard. “Let’s get out of this wind,” she said.

  For a second time, the girl stubbed out her cigarette. This time, she dropped it into the shrubs.

  The heavy deputy was at the counter when they came back in. He glanced up from some paperwork and nodded. “You staying clean, Maggie?”

  “When can I see him, Burke?”

  “Tuesday. Visiting day.”

  “But I can’t come on Tuesday.”

  “Can’t help you, Maggie.” He turned and took his papers into an inner office.

  “He’s the nice one,” the girl said. “That other one—I ain’t seen him yet today—he was mean.”

  “What was his name?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know any cops’ names. Never did need to know any cops’ names.”

  “Ain’t none of them nice far as I’m concerned. Especially that one.”

  “At least he didn’t say nothing smart, like that other one.”

  There was a stir in the inner office and both looked up.

  “That’s her,” the girl said. “That’s the bitch that got me arrested.”

  “That scrawny thing? Hell, you could whup her ass with one hand.” The scrawny thing wore an oversize coat and kept losing her arms in the sleeves. She had long hair strung back behind her ears that fell down every few seconds into her eyes, so that she was in constant motion to pull back her sleeve, tuck back her hair, shift her feet, pick up a pen, sign where the deputy pointed, set down the pen, adjust her hair, and lose her arms again in her sleeves.

  “Nervous little bitch, ain’t she?”

  “What’re they doing?”

  “Looks like they’re fixing to let her go.”

  “About time. I posted her bond an hour ago.”

  “You done what?”

  The girl shrugged.

  “After everything that shifty little bitch done you?”

  “Who else is gonna do it? She don’t have nobody else.”

  “Well I’ll be damned.” Maggie stood, went to the counter, and called, “Burke, Tom Burke, when can I visit my old man?”

  “Tuesday, Maggie. Visiting day is Tuesday.”

  “But I ain’t got no ride for Tuesday. I got a ride today.”

  “There’s nothing I can do about it, Maggie.”

  “At least let me leave him some money while I got it.”

  “Tuesday.”

  “I got twenty dollars to give him for cigarettes.”

  “He’ll live.”

  “At least let me get him a can of Bugler and some papers.”

  The deputy shut the door.

  “Fucking prick!” Maggie shouted. “Fat fuck probably shut the door so he could collect his blow job. Possum-headed punk ain’t never worked the starch out of that uniform, but he can tell me T
uesday when I know damn well what day visiting day is. All he can say to me is, ‘What d’you know, Maggie?’ I’ll tell you what I know. I know he was my old man’s buddy growing up but he’s too good to do me a turn even for his buddy’s sake. And then he wants to know am I staying clean, as if that’s any business of his.”

  She turned to the girl on the bench. “You want to talk about the way the world is. Well, that right there’s the way the world is. Your old man is doing six months in this little rat hole jail over some bullshit and you can’t even get to see him because some shit in a uniform can’t do you a little favor.”

  “I know what you mean,” the girl said.

  “No, you don’t know what I mean. Not till you done what I done. Not till you seen what I seen. Not till you heard them bars slam shut behind you and you know it’ll be two long years before you get to hold your babies again. Then you come and tell me what the world is like.”

  “You’re pushing your luck, Maggie,” the deputy called from behind the door.

  “I ain’t had no luck since the day I was born.”

  * * *

  MAGGIE’S RIDE back home was still at the pool hall and might be there another hour yet, or even two.

  “Yes,” the neighbor boy told her. “I’m going to town, but just long enough to cash my check.” Then, “Half an hour,” he told her when she found him at the pool hall.

  Then, “Just let me finish this rack” when she came back around.

  So now she stood out on the courthouse steps, shivering in her jeans jacket, cursing softly.

  She had a cigarette in one hand and her twenty-dollar bill balled up in the other and she smoked and shivered until she had smoked the cigarette down to a nub. The jailhouse door swung open and out came the scrawny thing and the heavy girl right behind her.

  “What do you want me to do?” the scrawny thing said. “I already told you I’m sorry.”

  “You can tell my mom and dad why they had to drive all the way up here and bail me out.”

  A gust of wind snatched away the rest of their words and Maggie watched them take their argument up the street and around the corner.

  That’s the way the world is, Maggie thought. One damn fuss after another.