The Twelve-Fingered Boy

by John Hornor Jacobs

“But thanks for your concern,” I say, letting it cut through.

  Still nothing.

  She pours for four or five seconds, puts down the booze, and turns and pulls a two-liter NuGrape from the mini-fridge. Our old fridge is dead and sitting behind the trailer in the alley, just waiting for some kid to climb in and pull the door shut. She pours enough in the cup to change the color of the vodka, but that’s about it.

  She chugs her cup. Bam. Knocking it back.

  She mixes another, moves to the kitchenette table, pushes some cans aside, and sits down.

  I’m trying to peep her, to get inside. But I can’t seem to get to the place inside me where I can make the Ghost Dance work. Maybe it’s the knot in my stomach. Maybe it’s the hole in my heart. I’m incarcerado in my own body. I’ve only done it once before. Just once to Marvin. I’ve only got ten fingers. Maybe it was a fluke. Maybe I’m just a run-of-the-mill, everyday, average kid with a drunk mother.

  “Yeah, and thanks for all the stuff too.”

  She pulls a pack of cigarettes from her outfit’s apron pocket, taps out a smoke, and tamps the loose tobacco by hitting it on the tabletop. I’ve seen her do that a thousand times if I’ve seen her do it once.

  “What stuff?” She says it, but I can tell she’s not even interested. It doesn’t take a mind reader to know I’m not high on her list of priorities.

  “All the stuff you brought me when you visited.”

  Her eyes go Grinchy, and she smiles.

  “The mouth on you. No change there.” She takes a big slurp of the NuGrape and V.

  “The mouth on you. That hasn’t changed much either.” That’s about as close as I’ve ever come to calling her a drunk.

  “How’d you get out? They told me you’d be in for eighteen months.”

  I’ve got to be careful here.

  “Sorry to break up the party. It looks like it was a good one.”

  “Shree, the little preacher. Spare me the sermon.”

  “Where’s Vig?”

  “Not here.”

  I’m terrified of what I might see inside Vig when he gets home, of whether he’ll be broken, crusty, and resentful, used up. Whether he’ll be a husk of the kid he could have been.

  “Whose trailer is he staying in? Why didn’t you get him after work?”

  She stands up, goes back to the vodka, and makes another drink. Then she opens a cabinet and pulls out an envelope. She tosses the paper at me.

  I snatch it.

  “He’s not here,” she repeats.

  The letter is from Social Services, dated not long after my arrest. Vig’s been removed from the “unfit living conditions” and placed in a foster home, by order of Judge David Vernor. If Vig’s legal guardian, Margaret Cannon, can prove to the state’s satisfaction that the living conditions at the “residence of origin” have improved, can show proof of employment and a certificate of inspection by health services, then the court will consider “placing” Vigor back in the “residence of origin” after an additional assessment period of six months.

  There’s the address of the foster home. There’s a phone number. I stuff the paper into my pocket.

  He’s gone.

  Moms is looking into her cup as she’s always done. She’s not looking at me.

  I’m so furious that my body feels filled with too much blood. My face feels so swollen it might pop, spraying blood everywhere.

  Vig. My little dude is gone, and all I have is this piece of worn, alcohol-soaked leather.

  “Do you even feel ashamed?”

  “Ashamed? Of course I do. I’m ashamed of you. You brought this on us.”

  My heart’s hammering in my chest, and my hands are shaking more. I want to strangle her.

  “I brought?”

  “You’ve always been a selfish little brat, aintcha, Shree?” She wipes her mouth, then raises the cigarette and takes a long drag from it and expels the blue smoke at my face. “You never thought of anyone but yourself, did ya? Didn’t think about anyone else when you were stealing that truck. Didn’t think about anyone else, you crappy kid.”

  “I’m not the goddamned mother here—”

  She stands bolt upright. “Don’t you take the Lord’s name! Don’t you take it!”

  God, I hate her. She doesn’t care about the Lord or Jesus or anyone else. It’s just theatrics. Just a stick to beat me with. A rule she can cite.

  I try again to get in her head. I’ve got the fuel of fifteen years of neglect like napalm at my back, and I try to get in.

  Slipping behind her eyes is so easy it’s like sticking a branch in a pool and making no ripples.

  A cesspool.

  The things she’s done. The thing’s she’s had done to her. Family can support you. Family can ruin you forever.

  There are things that happen in this world, and we’ll never get out from under the weight of them. Never. It’ll take a bottle or a gun to stop the suffering.

  MeIncarcerado thrums with inaction, my muscles tight and rigid, the bruised side of my face pounding like a war drum. I fly through her internal cellblocks, through her long dark hallways, looking inside each one with door upon barred door. None of them pretty, none of them holding sweet memories. Where I can, I close them— close off the images to my sight, and maybe to hers.

  It’s just a moment. And then it’s over.

  Jack says, “Shreve, you’re bleeding.”

  I wipe my nose. There’s blood on the back of my hand.

  Moms is standing there poleaxed, holding her cup loosely in one hand, her cigarette in the other, staring at me but not staring at the same time. She sets down the cup and snubs out her smoke.

  I take two steps, and I’ve got her in the circle of my arms, squeezing her. I don’t think I’ve ever hugged her before, and I don’t know what’s making me do it now. Maybe it’s because when Booth hugged me, that felt good. And I knew, for a moment at least, that someone gave a damn about me.

  Moms fights it hard, pulling her arms up and pushing me away. She shoves at my shoulders, but the vodka has already taken effect. She’s sloppy and weak, but still mean as a snake.

  “Get off of me, you little bastard.” She bats at my head, and one of her hands clips my cheek. My face explodes with pain, a white light behind my eyes. But I hold on to her. I hold on to her as tight as I can, because I’ll probably never get another chance. This is my mom. This is her, and I still hate her for what she’s done to me and Vig, but I can see what made her how she is and can start to forgive her. Maybe. Just a little.

  After a while she stops struggling and lets her arms drop.

  When I let her go, she slumps back into the kitchenette chair.

  She holds up her chipped coffee cup and says, “Make me a good one, Shree, honey. Okay? You always make them good.”

  She likes them strong.

  I take the cup and go to the mini-fridge. It looks like she’s been living off burritos from the Quik-Mart and whatever they give her at the Waffle House. I pour her three fingers of Heavenly Hill and a shot of NuGrape. I sprinkle a little salt in, just a touch. That’s my secret. She likes them salty.

  I give her the cup. She drinks.

  “Oh, that’s good, Shree.”

  “Moms?”

  “Yeah, Shree? Can you find something on the TV for me?”

  She moves to the couch. I follow. Jack looks at me with a curious and pained expression, one I can’t read.

  We go through the ritual established so long ago: me the dutiful son, her the lounging queen. I clean off the table at her right elbow while she leans into the armrest of the couch and sips her drink, feet tucked underneath her, staring into the flickering light of the television. I take the ashtray, so full it’s hard to pick up without spilling butts, and bring it to the kitchenette trash bin, also full. Somehow I get all the butts into the trash. I wipe out the ashtray with a Taco Bell wrapper and return it to her side table.

  Jack looks at me, raises his eyebrows.

  My face
is throbbing and flushed as I take off her shoes and get her feet up on the small ottoman.

  If there’s a clean place in the whole trailer, it’s around the TV.

  “Moms?”

  “Honey, why do you have to call me that?”

  “What?”

  “Moms. You used to call me momma.”

  “It’s just one of those things, Moms.”

  “I don’t like it. It’s like you’re saying I’m … I don’t know…”

  “More than one.”

  “Yeah, like that. Like I’m more than one person.”

  We’re all more than one person. But I don’t say that.

  “Okay, momma. Okay.”

  She lights another cigarette and sips her drink.

  I go to the TV and flip through the channels.

  “You want Dancing, CSI, or this movie?”

  She thinks for a little while. “Dancing, hon. They dance so good. And they’re not even real dancers.”

  I change the channels for her.

  “Okay. Momma?”

  “Yeah, hon?”

  “It’s good to see you.”

  “Did you see that twirl? She used to have her own TV show, but now she’s dancing. It’s dadblamed amazing how talented they are.”

  “Jack and I are going back to my room. Is my stuff still there?”

  She doesn’t answer. We leave her to it.

  In my room, I grab an old school backpack and my army duffle bag. The dresser is still stuffed with our clothing, mine and Vig’s. I pick up his dinosaur T-shirt. I lift it up to my nose. It doesn’t smell like him anymore, just stale cigarette smoke.

  Under the mattress I find my stash, still there, in a cigar box. Seventy-three dollars and change. Mostly taken from cars in Holly Pines. It’s wrong, but you do what you have to do.

  We change clothes. My jeans are too big for Jack, and we have to find a belt and roll the legs. I grab a couple extra pair of shoes and shove them in the duffle. In my closet, I rummage around and get my survival kit—another cigar box, this one with matches, a pocketknife, some twine, some nylon rope, and a compass.

  When we’re packed, I sit down on my bed and Jack comes over to me, sits down, and doesn’t say anything as I cry.

  Huge sobs rip out of me, hurling out there for Jack to see. It’s like a cough I can’t control, with bits of my lungs coming up and out. Messy and raw. I feel like a boat rolling over in the sea, hull exposed. I feel like a car-struck dog, too injured to crawl under the porch.

  I cry. Jack watches.

  When I finally stop, he puts his hand on my shoulder and gives a long squeeze.

  That’s all.

  “I’m so sorry, Shreve.” Jack’s said this before, but it’s always been about something he’s done.

  I wipe my nose. It’s not bleeding anymore, but it is running like a faucet. My throat is sore.

  “Don’t be.”

  “I can’t even begin to—”

  “Then don’t.”

  I’m everything she said I am. Selfish. Here I am crying about what a rough deal I’ve got, what a crappy mother I have. And Jack, the orphan, the homeless kid, the parent-killer, he tells me he’s sorry. I’m a fool.

  Moms continues to stare into the TV as we come out. I make her a last drink before we leave. Then we walk out through the park and into the woods.

  Our two souls therefore, which are one,

  Though I must go, endure not yet

  A breach, but an expansion,

  Like gold to airy thinness beat.

  —John Donne, “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning”

  Well, as a spaniel is to water, so is a man to his own self. I will not give in because I oppose it— I do!—not my pride, not my spleen, nor any other of my appetites, but I do—I! Is there no single sinew in the midst of this that serves no appetite of Norfolk’s but is, just, Norfolk? There is! Give that some exercise, my lord!

  —Thomas More, in A Man for All Seasons by Robert Bolt

  Off we go into the wild blue yonder,

  Climbing high into the sun;

  Here they come zooming to meet our thunder,

  At ’em boys, Give ’er the gun! (Give ’er the gun!)

  —“The Air Force Song” by Robert MacArthur Crawford

  THIRTEEN

  In the end, Jack relents. I spend less and less time incarcerado and more time out in the wide blue yonder.

  I’m fifteen. I can’t get a job. I don’t have a driver’s license. And I’ve got a record. Jack is just thirteen. Two kids alone in the wilderness, two kids alone in the city, they can’t make it by themselves. Not without some manipulation. Not without some help.

  I’ve learned what my destiny is, out here.

  I’m a judge.

  You can’t lie to me.

  We spent a week in the piney woods west of the Holly Pines Trailer Park before a train came through. We’d turned near feral, living off pasta, jerky, chips, flat soda, and anything else we could buy at the interstate turnpike Git-N-Go. Seventy-three dollars doesn’t go very far these days, it seems.

  During the day, perched between the rails and the dark green of the piney woods, we watched for trains. It’s not quite the Old West around here. Not a lot of rail traffic. At night we crept back to the safety of the woods. Occasionally we’d hear the buzz of ATVs and motorcycles burning through the forest. But they never came too near. The weather turned colder, and we made wood fires to stay warm and slept in beds of pine needles.

  “Jack, how much do you remember of going all explodey?”

  “Don’t call it that.”

  “Well, what should I call it?”

  “I don’t know. But saying ‘explodey’ makes it sound like a trick or something.”

  “Well, it is kinda a trick, isn’t it?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know how to tell you.”

  “Try.” I raised my hands, heading off the hurt looks. “I just want to understand.”

  “It comes from pain.”

  Silence.

  There’s not much I could say to that. Not much more than we’re born into pain, and we leave in it, too. It’s our constant companion. I hate it, but it’s true and I’ve never seen otherwise.

  “And I put up with it. So, so long. As long as I can. But the anger builds, and I want to shove it away from me.”

  “So, it’s like a super-shove? Like you’re just shoving everything away from you?”

  “When it hurts bad enough.”

  Sometimes I would take out the paper with Vig’s foster home address and stare at it, dreaming of ways to get to him.

  Sometimes, with Jack in tow, I’d creep to the gully and watch Coco’s trailer. Jack stayed silent—maybe from hunger, maybe from sympathy. We didn’t talk much.

  But how could I contact Coco or Vig? Quincrux could show up at any time. He’d be sure to possess them, strip-mine their memories, and know that we were nearby.

  So we waited for trains, and I thought about Coco and Vig, and we lived in the woods. A miserable existence.

  It was maybe six or seven days since the breakout, and Jack was lying on the tracks, his ear to the rail.

  “It’s coming.”

  “What?”

  “The train.”

  And it did. When it neared, I ran as fast as I could and caught myself on the lip of an open cargo car. I pulled myself in, but not without a moment of terror when my legs swung underneath and I thought I’d be pulled under and cut in half by the train wheels.

  Once I was on the platform, I got into a kneeling position, ripped off my backpack, and turned around to see Jack falling behind. His legs and arms pumped furiously, his pack swung wildly on his back.

  “Come on, Jack! Come on.”

  Jack tripped, lost his balance, and then righted himself. A flash of anger passed over his features, and then he threw out his hands. The air rippled, and the shockwave sent him shooting through the air. As I watched, he arced toward me, pinwheeling his arms. He hit me
hard in the chest and bowled me over backward, back onto the train car’s wooden floor.

  When I got back my breath, I didn’t know what to say. He’d just jumped thirty feet.

  “Were you gonna leave me?” His voice was deceptively neutral. It didn’t take a mind reader to know he was pissed.

  “No. If you couldn’t make it, I was gonna hop out.”

  “You were just sitting there.”

  “So? You made it didn’t you? And how. You just jumped a freakin’ mile.”

  The grouchy look remained for a bit longer, and then he smiled. “I did, didn’t I?”

  “Holy smokes … did you? Like a damned rocket. What’s your superhero name gonna be?”

  “Shut up.”

  “Mr. Explodey sounds good.”

  “Shut up.”

  “Maybe Jack the Frogman. No. Hopalong. Hopalong the jumping super-dude.”

  Jack looked like he was going to get all pissy, but then he laughed. “How about we call you Mr. Mysterio the Jerkwad.”

  “Nah.” I buffed my fingernails against my chest. “I’m the Cannonball.”

  He looked puzzled.

  “You know, because of my last name?”

  “Huh. It doesn’t fit, really. That’s not what you do.”

  We fell silent, swaying with the movement of the cargo car.

  When the train finally stopped, we were in Mobile, in the great state of Alabama.

  The scam works like this. Jack takes the item to the cashier. It’s usually something small, like gum or candy or the cheapest thing he can find in the store.

  I tag along behind.

  When the cashier pops the register, I go in. Not all the way. Not possessing. Just enough where I can change things, fiddle with what the cashier sees, play defense. While he’s looking at Jack, he’s not seeing me. It’s a trick. A sleight of mind.

  I can make someone look right through me. It’s hard, but … desperation has shown us how strong we really are.

  The bill Jack offers looks like a C-note instead of the single it really is. I can make that adjustment behind their eyes.