Maggie Boylan

by Michael Henson

  Finally, at a word from the judge, Maggie’s lawyer nodded to the prosecutor and the prosecutor nodded to the judge and the judge wrote something on the papers and the little circle of men broke up.

  Her lawyer sat back down beside her. He shrugged. “We got as good a deal as we’re gonna get,” he whispered.

  She whispered back, “Did you get me off?”

  “Maggie, I pulled out everything I had, but God himself couldn’t have got you off this one.”

  “I didn’t pay God to be my lawyer.”

  “If it comes to that, you didn’t pay me either. The county pays my tab, for what it’s worth.”

  “Well, what did the county get for its money?”

  “The judge’ll tell us in just a minute.”

  “Cooper, I swear I didn’t do it.”

  “You can swear all you want. They had a witness.”

  “And that witness lied.”

  “But the judge believed her.”

  “I told you we should of gone for a jury trial.”

  “Maggie, there’s not twelve people in this county you haven’t pissed off.”

  “I ain’t gonna go back to prison.”

  “There’s not twelve people in this county that haven’t caught you in a lie.”

  “There’s nothing on earth gonna make me go back to Marysville.”

  “I’ve caught you in a few lies myself.”

  “I’ll hide out in the hills. I’ll live off of squirrel meat and raw grass.”

  “Hush, Maggie.” He tapped her arm and pointed to the bench.

  “I’m telling you, I ain’t gonna go back to prison.”

  “Maggie, hush.”

  She would have given him a hush-my-ass, but the bucket-blue eye of the judge glared her into silence. He glared her so hard, she felt she had been nailed to the back of her seat.

  The bailiff called out, “The defendant will now rise.”

  Cooper stood, but Maggie could not rise until the judge lowered his gaze and looked back down to his papers.

  * * *

  GUILTY AS charged, the judge said. Three years on the shelf. Treatment in lieu of incarceration.

  “If you fail to meet these obligations, if you are found in association with any known drug dealers or users, if you are found to be positive for alcohol or any other drug as evidenced by urinalysis or breathalyzer, if you pick up any new charge, if you get so much as a parking ticket, you will serve your full sentence with no hope of parole.”

  He set down the papers. “Do you understand me?”

  “I got to go to a program?”

  “And you will complete the program.”

  “I ain’t gonna go back to prison?”

  “Not if you follow the rules of your probation.”

  Maggie cut her eye toward her lawyer. Ain’t he the smug one, she thought.

  The judge went on. “But if you fail to comply with these provisions, if you miss so much as a single meeting with your probation officer or with any counselor, therapist, or case manager recommended for you by your probation officer, I will see to it that you serve every minute of this suspended incarceration. Moreover, if you are caught so much as looking in the direction of a known user or seller of drugs, you will serve out the sentence that I have decided, this one time and against my better judgment, to suspend. Do you understand me?”

  Maggie understood; she nodded her head to let him know she understood.

  “For the record, Maggie, do you understand what I just told you?”

  “Yes.” She glanced toward Cooper. He nodded. “Yes, your honor,” she said. “I do.”

  “So if I ever see you in this courtroom again during those three years or after, I will personally and promptly see to it that they put you under the jail.”

  * * *

  “YOU’D OF thought somebody would have been there for me,” she told her husband over the phone. “But there wasn’t a soul in that room there to back me up. There was Cooper, but he was paid to be there, you know what I mean? It’s not the same. And he’s just buddying up with those courthouse cronies and cutting deals instead of getting me off, cause, I know I done a lot of things in my time, but this is one time I didn’t do what they got me accused of. And I still got convicted. And now I’m on probation, they won’t let me visit you in the jail no more. I’m just lucky they let me make this phone call. And they’re talking about sending me to some treatment center in a whole nother county, so I might as well be locked up.”

  “But, Maggie, it’s . . .”

  “And I can’t believe that motherfucking whore boldface lied on the stand like that. On the stand! Perjured her ass bigger than life. I mean, don’t they put people in jail for lying on the stand?”

  “You ever done anything and not got caught?”

  Maggie paused. She knew where this was going to go.

  “I don’t want to sound mean, but if you’d got what you deserved, you’d be wearing the orange jump suit and I’d be the one sitting on the porch.”

  “But the bitch lied.”

  “And you never lied?”

  “I never lied on the stand.”

  “Maggie . . .”

  “I always owned up to my shit.”

  “Maggie!” he said it sharp this time. “You know better and I know better and whoever’s tapping this phone will know better if I have to spell it out.”

  She was quiet for a moment. “No,” she said. “You don’t need to spell it out.”

  A buzzer went off somewhere on her husband’s end of the line. “I got to go now, Maggie. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

  For a moment, Maggie couldn’t speak.

  “Maggie?”

  “They’ll still let you take my call?”

  “They’ll let us talk. Me and Irby go way back.”

  Maggie thought she should say something, but she could not find words.

  “Do you hear me, Maggie? It’s lights out. They’re taking us back to the pod.”

  Maggie found her voice and said goodnight. She set the phone back on its cradle but she did not let it go. She sat and held onto the handset for several minutes before she finally reached around for her cigarettes. She tapped one out and lit it. She turned on the radio, just for the noise of it, and sat smoking with full attention. She smoked the cigarette down to the filter, stubbed it out fiercely, and reached for the phone again.

  This time, she called her mother and asked to talk to the kids.

  And yes, she knew it was a school night and yes, she knew it was late but no her mother would not wake them at such an hour and why did she call anyway at such an hour; what was she thinking? And yes, her mother knew she had gone to court but she had other things to do. And Maggie understood that but she swore she didn’t do it and now she had to go to treatment and no, she didn’t see how that could be a good thing when she didn’t even do it. And no, you don’t understand you never did understand. You just left me to fend for myself and now you won’t even let a mother talk to her children. I don’t care what hour it is and no, I’m not high but I might as well be for all the respect I get and all the good it does me to try and do right, now don’t hang up no don’t.

  But the line went dead on her mother’s end.

  This time, Maggie threw the phone down hard; it bounced off the cradle and clattered onto the floor.

  * * *

  IT WOULDN’T be so bad, Maggie thought, it if wasn’t for the boys across the road up on Pillhead Hill.

  From early in the morning and late into the night, cars ran up Maggie’s road from the south and down her road from the north. One by one, the tires of the cars wrestled with the turn, rattled the plank floor of the bridge over the creek, and barked up the gravel lane to the top of the hill.

  All Maggie had to do was walk across the road and climb the hill and the boys at the top of the hill would take care of her. She had been up that hill and she knew that whatever she wanted—speed, Oxys, weed—the boys on the hill would have it. And if she had no money,
they would front her, as any good neighbor would do.

  But she could not relieve herself of the glare of the judge. All day long and late into the night, she felt the galvanized eye of the judge pierce her and fix her in place like a butterfly on a pin.

  * * *

  “SO, MAGGIE,” the probation officer said. “We meet again.”

  Her PO was a black-headed, black-bearded bear of a man whose elbows occupied most of a small wooden desk. He folded his big hands, hunched his shoulders, and loomed across the desk.

  “We’re right back where we started.”

  Maggie had been waiting in the hall outside his office for the better part of an hour; she was ready for a cigarette. “How long will this take?”

  “How much time do you have?”

  “Not much. I got to be somewhere.”

  “Well, Maggie. Right now, I think you’re right where you need to be.”

  Maggie was not convinced of that, but she stayed in her seat. “All right,” she said. “What do we have to do?”

  There were papers to sign. Rules to review. “It’s real simple,” he said. “If you stay away from the alcohol and drugs, pay me a visit once a week, and stay out of trouble, then you get to stay out of jail.”

  “So why do I have to go to treatment?”

  “Maggie, if you didn’t need the treatment, you wouldn’t need to ask.”

  “I’ve been clean for two months or more.”

  He thumbed through her file until he came to a lab report. “More like a month and half.”

  “Whatever. I’ve stayed clean for three and four months before.”

  “And what happened?”

  Maggie looked at her watch, realized she didn’t have a watch, then looked around the room for a clock on the wall.

  “Exactly. You got high again. You see,” he said, “lots of people can stay clean for a good long while if they have something external, like the threat of prison, to keep them on track. But to make it last . . .”

  “Okay, so what about . . .”

  He cut her off with a quick gesture. “To make it last,” he said, “you have to learn to want it.”

  “And going to treatment is gonna make that happen?”

  “If you let it happen.”

  “What about the known users and sellers part?”

  “That too.”

  “So how am I supposed to stay away from users and sellers when half the county is either using or selling or both and everybody knows who’s using and selling and nobody does a thing about it?”

  “Do you know how porcupines make love?”

  Here’s another motherfucker pleased with himself, she thought. She sat as grim as she knew how and glared at him. “You know she lied, don’t you?”

  “Who lied?”

  “That bitch that testified against me.”

  The PO looked around the room. “Is she in here?”

  “Hell no, she ain’t here.”

  “Then I don’t see what she’s got to do with what we’re talking about.”

  “I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for her.”

  “Well, remind me to send her a thank you note.”

  “Thank you note for what?”

  “See, you’re on a track to be another statistic. But I’m convinced you can make it if you get the right help. She’s your ticket to getting the help.”

  “She’s a lying little crack whore is what she is.”

  “You know you never answered my question.”

  “What question?”

  “How do porcupines make love?”

  “What the hell do I know about a porcupine?”

  “You know about those sharp quills. You know that if you get too close, you’re liable to get stung.”

  “And . . .”

  “So how do porcupines make love?”

  “I don’t know. Tell me.”

  “Very carefully.”

  “So what’s your point?”

  “Did you ever know a porcupine to hang around with a lying crack whore?”

  “Of course not.”

  “That’s one reason I’ve never had a porcupine in this office. They don’t hang around with lying crack whores.”

  “Can I go now?”

  “Be careful, Maggie. Be very careful who you hang out with. And don’t go climbing up Pillhead Hill.”

  * * *

  “SO WHY do they have to pick on me,” Maggie wanted to know, “when there’s half a dozen meth labs right under their noses?”

  “Which they offered you a chance to name some names and break down the charges,” her husband said from his end of the phone, “and you wouldn’t take it.”

  “Which is why I’m still alive to tell you about it. And how did you hear that anyway?”

  “Walls talk, babe.”

  “Damn walls never talked to me when I was in the can.”

  “It’s because you never learned to listen.”

  “I listen to you, don’t I?”

  Her old man was silent for a moment.

  Oh shit, she thought. He’s gonna tell me something I don’t want to hear.

  “Maggie,” he said. He may have been set to tell her something she didn’t want to hear, but the buzzer sounded from his end of the line.

  “It’s lights out, Maggie,” he said. “I got to go.”

  * * *

  A FEW days later, an old friend got Maggie a job waiting tables at the Square Deal Grill just opposite the courthouse. Out the front window, if she stood right, she could see the jailhouse and the window where she thought her man might sometimes look out. Edie O’Leary worked the same shift and picked her up in the morning and brought her home in the afternoon. They were nice to let her work, knowing her record and all and knowing she would have to go for treatment as soon as a bed was open.

  “You do right, Maggie,” the owner said, “we’ll stand by you. You do right, you’ll always have a job here.”

  He did not say what would happen if she did not do right. But she intended to do as right as she knew how. She had no intention of sitting under the steel-eyed glare of that judge again. She had no intention of taking that van back to Marysville.

  Once or twice a week, the judge came in for lunch or for coffee and pie. Sometimes, he nodded to her. Sometimes, he spoke. Most times, he ignored Maggie altogether. Which was a blessing to Maggie, for she could not look at the metal in his eye lest he pin her in place with a coffee pot in her hand.

  Three weeks into the job, with everything going well, that girl who lied put her head in the door. Things were slow after the breakfast run and Maggie had paused to stretch a newspaper over the counter. The only customer was a logger with wood chips in his hair sitting over coffee at the counter three stools down.

  The girl paused to speak to someone in the street, started to walk toward the counter, then saw Maggie and stopped as if she had hit a wall.

  “You lying bitch,” Maggie whispered. I’ll kill her, she thought. I’ll kill her right here.

  The girl backed up. Her face went pale as bone; her eyes went dark. Her right hand searched the pocket of her coat; her left hand reached to find the door handle.

  Maggie slapped the paper down. She would have pounced on the girl like a cat on a mole but for the counter in her way. By the time the girl found the door handle, Maggie was out from behind the counter, but Edie had her by the reins of her apron strings.

  “I’ll kill her,” Maggie said. “I’ll kill her right there in the street.”

  “No, you won’t,” Edie said. “I’ll kill you first.” She grabbed Maggie by the shoulder, pulled her back two steps, and moved in front to block Maggie from the door.

  Maggie side-stepped. Edie stepped with her, then back when Maggie tried again. Satisfied that she had Maggie stopped for now, she stuck a bony finger like a pistol right between Maggie’s eyes. “Back up,” she said. “Go straight back behind that counter,” she said.

  “Stay there and read your damn newspaper.”

&
nbsp; * * *

  AND THEN one day there was Randy the Man.

  “Here’s your neighbor,” Edie said. She touched Maggie at the elbow and pointed to the front booth.

  Randy the Man was the chief of the boys on Pillhead Hill. He was tall and built like a bullet. He had eyes gray as lead and long gray hair cinched at the back of his neck. Blue tattoos too dense and obscure to read or interpret ran all up and down his arms and around his neck like the collar of a priest. He walked the square broad step of a wrestler, which they said he had been, though not one of the famous ones, so when he strode into the Square Deal Grill, it was as if he were working his way through the crowd and up to the ring. It was as if he could hear the announcer call out, Here we have Randy the Man.

  “I can’t wait on him,” Maggie said.

  “It’s your table,” Edie said.

  “You don’t understand.”

  “It’s your table.”

  “You don’t fucking understand.”

  “You told me you didn’t ever score from him.”

  “I don’t. I mean, I don’t score from anybody now. But I never did. Or I did, but I couldn’t deal with the drama. It was Dodge City up there, all them guns and hookers and young girls and I’m like . . .”

  “He needs his coffee.”

  No one knew Randy the Man last summer when he first bought the old Stephens place across the creek and up the hill from Maggie’s house. But they all knew him soon enough.

  He paid cash up front, they said. And never blinked at the price. He just reached in his pocket and peeled off bills like cabbage leaves.

  That got people’s attention. But when he started selling OxyContin off the front porch, his name was on every tongue.

  Maggie got on the phone to her husband. “It can’t last,” she said. “There’s too many people that know too much.”

  “Well, then stay away,” he said.

  “I don’t want to be nowhere near that hill when it all goes to hell in a handbasket.”

  But the months turned around and the raid never came. Who was Randy paying off? Whose pocket was he lining? Or was he just that slick?

  Night after night, cars ran down the road from the north or up the road from the south, cars in all states of operation, rumbling, rattling, or humming, to scrawl around the turn onto Randy’s lane, rattle the bridge floor, and mount the gravel lane to where Randy waited on the porch, ready to take the driver for that little walk back into the woods.