Part of the problem having to sit here and listen to the justifications for why Gwen had to join them, trust them, lie to Lori, keep everything on the down low - stress. It’d been a few years since she’d lost her job, her career, said goodbye to Idaho for good, but the stress from that whole witch-hunt was stirred up easy enough.
To lose her job, all she’d done was her job. Unlike all the other teachers going soft for the good of the athletics program, Gwen had held a football player to account, given him a failing grade, and next thing she knew, accusations of sexual misconduct were not only being leveled, but were being considered as having actual heft, her word versus their word, the trouble being denying the claims placed a taint on her, placed questions in not only questionable, over-emotional heads, but the rational ones that could make or break her future.
What kind of woman, what kind of teacher was in their midst if she had to deny afterschool sex parties, gang bangs, booze and drugs galore? Her status as a single female with no beau in sight did fat little to help her out.
Probably the only way it could’ve been worse is if the accusers had been members of the girl’s volleyball team. That lynch mob would’ve come for her in broad daylight, shook her right on out of the booze spiral administrative leave had punted her into.
At the twelfth hour a sibling came forward, tattled on her idiot brother and an idiot teammate, verified the allegations all made up, plotted out via text accounts, but the damage was done.
People had apologized to Gwen, parents, the alumni council, the booster club, the school board, the local paper’s unsigned editorial waggled the blame finger at the whole community, but Gwen’s bags were packed, and even though it left her feeling kin to the boy-cock-hungry-deviant she’d been labeled, she took off in the middle of the night. The last time she ever laid actual foot in Couer D’Alene was when she chucked her notice into a post office drop box dead splat deep in the heart of dark-thirty at night.
“Can I just say something here? Please? I just want to point something out.”
She stared at her fist. It’d come down on the dinner table. The candle in the middle of the table vibrated in the aftermath. Hope’s eyes big like that fist might be coming after her next.
“Does Norm know about this? Does your uncle know anything about any of this?”
Tiffany’s shoulders deflated. “No. Not really.”
“What about your parents?”
Hope delayed answering until the little girl scampered behind the skirts of the rough and tumble loner. Part of the delay Hope finally tugging the shirt back up onto her shoulders, sheathing the cleavage.
“Rita? Owen? Fuck ‘em. Fuck ‘em both.”
“You’re a minor.”
“Legally.”
“That’s all that matters.”
“To who?”
“To the people that hold your future in their hands.”
“I hold my future in my hands.”
“I’m not saying you don’t have a say in things, in what happens to you. But this is…”
“Look. I can go right now. Really. Truly. I can go out, stick out my thumb, and I’m gone. I’ve got the means.”
“You’ve got stolen money.”
“I earned some of that money.”
“Oh my God. I should just call Child Protective Services. Right now.”
Hope laughed.
“Go right ahead. I bet you a hundred bucks whatever bureaucratic dickweed they send out, he’s a regular. Do you know how many assholes from Pendleton and La Grande all of a sudden decided to go ‘fishing’ near Little Creek this year? Guys that wouldn’t know a fishing fly from a dust bunny. The majority of them all have that look, like accountants or bank clerks. Teachers. Bald spots. Guts. Send one. Send two. Best bets are if I didn’t fuck them yet it was just because they’d rather have taste some dark meat before some sweet meat.”
Gwen looked at Bug. At Sipe.
“Am I delusional here? Am I the only adult here? You both realize how damaged she is?”
“Wow. Yeah. Thanks,” said Hope. “Because I’ve never had anyone talk about me like I’m not in the fucking room.”
Tiff reached over, placed her hand on top of Hope’s. She leaned in, whispered something. Hope shrugged. Kept sending darts Gwen’s direction.
“There’s three problems.”
Sipe spoke so low everyone got quieter in order to hear. He pointed at Hope.
“What to do with her. What to do about the people that she took the money from.” He rubbed at his brow. “And then the other thing. Connie and Millie, all of that.”
A long pause. Gwen didn’t know, was he done talking? That was it? Pointing out the semi-obvious then retreating to sentry mode.
“Don’t forget the car,” said Gwen.
Sipe looked at her. Nodded.
“That’s four things,” she said. He waved his hand like yeah, he knew, he’d done the mental math.
“You got to clear the books,” said Sipe.
“What do you mean?” asked Tiffany.
“She’s got to give back what she took.”
“It’s mine,” said Hope.
“It’s Portland’s.”
“Fuck Portland.”
Sipe smiled. Gwen thought of a corpse trying to smile, trying it on just the once, thinking it looked all right before lumbering back into the midst of the living.
“They owe Portland. Way it works. Portland helped set them up out there, at Butcher’s Camp. Portland expects regular payments. Portland doesn’t get its money, they come looking for it. Now - what’s their names? Bonnie, Bret, et cetera - they’re gonna give your name up to Portland. Then Portland comes looking for you. And Portland will find you. And will get its money. And Portland, money in hand, goes back to Portland.”
“Can’t you talk to them?” Tiffany asked him.
“Who?”
“The Portland people. The people the Ruchert’s owe money to.”
“They don’t know me.”
“What about your boss? What about Connie? Can’t Connie talk to them?”
“They wouldn’t know him. And Connie’s dad doesn’t do complicated. His kingdom is his kingdom. Portland means nothing to him. Portland has problems. Whatever. It’s the same set-up everywhere. Basically. The only thing they want is money. It’s simple. You do business with them, you give them what you agreed to give them, they leave you alone. There’s an interruption in that, they show up.”
“Are they coming?”
“Right now? Today? I don’t know.”
“What did the lady say?”
“What lady?”
“Faye.” At that, Hope snorted. Under her breath she said ‘Faye the Lay’, like she was pristine in comparison.
“She didn’t say,” said Sipe. “She might not know. She came off like she had her finger on their pulse, but who knows.”
“And it’d be like this guy that you think is still coming,” said Tiffany. “The closer. The Wub. Would it be one, or would it be more?”
“Ask Portland. Every operation runs a little differently. But if they had a guy like the Wub, really, you only need to send the one guy.”
Gwen swore she saw Tiffany age in the space of a half-second.
“Hope,” said Tiffany, “you need to give the money back.”
“No.”
“You need to give the money back. Or they’ll kill you.”
“No.”
“Hope. Goddamnit, look at me. Look at me.” Tiff up out of her seat, leaning into her friend’s personal bubble, grasping the shoulders, maybe even grabbing right into that group of muscles the bag strap had agitated. “They kill people. He knows. Him, look at him. You know how he knows? Because he kills people. He kills people that don’t pay his boss. That’s how he knows. And if his boss was expecting money from Butcher’s Camp Massage, and he didn’t get it, he�
�d send Sipe down here to find that money. And Sipe wouldn’t care about you. About your whole sob story. About Rita and Owen and Beepers or Quinn Dobbs or what you and Derek did at the school dance or what you and Henry and Byron did out at the railcars, any of it. So what? So what? Big deal. All he’d want is the money. And he’d find you. And shoot you. And he’d take it. And he wouldn’t think of you ever again.”
Even after Tiffany let go of Hope and sat down, the little kid look remained on Hope’s face. Tiffany’s face scrunched up, she restrained any kind of noise, and she turned and said, “I’m sorry,” and smooched Hope’s cheek, and hugged her, and took up Hope’s hand, holding it, stroking it on top of the table.
“So, how would I give it back?” asked Hope, sounding all of five years old.
“Call,” said Sipe.
“I don’t want to see them. Fuck them.”
“We’d go with you,” said Tiffany. “Right? Sipe? We’d go with her?”
“Sure.”
“See? Hope? We’d be with you.”
“But you want to do the handoff on neutral ground. Somewhere no one has the upper hand. And no one has, you know, no one’s brought anything to the party the other group doesn’t have as well.”
“You mean…” Tiff slid a hand free of Hope’s, stuck out her index finger, the thumb going up and down while Tiff said, “Bang-bang.”
“Yeah,” said Sipe. “I mean.”
The chair squeaked, shoved backwards across the tile floor. The table trembled, instant pain in Gwen’s hip, she grabbed the throb as she pivoted, headed for the living room, the front door.
“Where’s she going?” asked Hope. A moment later, she watched Sipe follow Gwen, and the front door and the screen door shut one right after the other again, and the rapid tap-tap-tap of feet on the front porch went away.
Tiff pale. Bug looking into the space directly in front of him. Henry looked at Tiff. At Hope. She shrugged. He shrugged. Hope smiled at him.
“So, Henry,” she said. “You still mowing lawns like a motherfucker or what?”
I have a tire iron. I can pop the trunk and lift the tire wheel well cover out of the way and when he grabs for me just bring it down right on top of his head. Twice. Three times if I have to.
Thinking that, moving towards her Prius. She did calculations. Physics. Too close. He’d be able to hug her from behind, the trunk hood still rising, Gwen not even close to getting a hand on a weapon. Plan A, rejected. Plan B, enacted.
She wheeled on him. Dead stop, gravel crunching under heel and she pointed at him. Surprisingly, Sipe stopped, kind of leapt back even. It could be the light. Day wading into dusk everything attained a purpled outline, a veneer of the unreal.
“Stay the fuck away from me! You touch me and I’ll tear your eyes out of your head. Or are you just going to pull a gun out and shoot me? Is that the way you usually do it? Just point and shoot? Never have to touch the body?”
He held his hands up. Palms up.
“Who are you?” she asked. “How much of what Tiffany was saying is true? Is it? You kill people? You’re a killer? What are you doing here? What are you doing with someone like her?”
“I know what this sounds like. To someone like you.”
“You mean an adult? You mean someone that’s never held a gun on another person? I don’t think you have any idea what any of this sounds like to someone like me. This is insane. This is…” She pointed over his shoulder towards Lori’s car. The dented driver’s side. The cobwebbed rear window.
“How do I explain that to Henry’s mom? Huh? How does she explain that to her insurance company?”
“You fix it. You don’t have to tell anyone.” He watched her. Confused. “What are you doing?”
“I’m patting myself down. Because, you know, I don’t know, maybe I packed my magic wand today, maybe I didn’t. Let’s see. Let’s see. No. I guess I didn’t. Oops. Did you? Did you pack your magic wand that makes real problems go away? Or do you just have room inside your little black mobster suit for a gun? Maybe it’s a magic gun though. It shoots magic bullets that just do what you want them to. You shoot and just squint, like that, like you do, you just squint, and everything’s fine.”
This time he looked a little more human, mostly because the smile was a closed mouth smile. Still, it was an alien’s amusement, tickled by the hijinks of something in a cage that had no idea it was caged.
“Money,” he said.
“Money. The magic wand? Of course it is.”
“I was gonna give Henry money. Or you. That’s-“ he looked back, assessing the Honda’s battle scars, and turned back, “-a couple thousand ought to cover that.”
“And no one has to know. Not Lori. Not Geico.”
“No.”
“And you have that?” asked Gwen. “Just on you?”
“Yeah. Look.” He slid a hand in his pocket. His forehead wrinkled. Confusion. “I keep forgetting she’s got it.”
“Who?”
“Tiffany. She took my wallet. My gun.”
“She has a gun?”
He swallowed. Even blushed.
“Not on her. I don’t think.”
“She…She’s a little girl. She’s this cute, chubby little girl, and she has your gun. Do you…Do you not hear these things as you’re saying them?”
“I was unconscious,” said Sipe. “And she’s not a little girl. You think that, you don’t know her very well.”
“I don’t think I would take your personal opinion on anyone as a very sane judge of character.” She’d stepped forward to make the point. He’d retreated. She noticed. Wondered if he knew how obvious his cowardice showed.
“I know her,” he said.
“Really?”
“She’s got honor.”
“Ok. So?”
“She’s loyal.”
“Again. So?”
“’So’? So, she doesn’t want people to be in trouble. Henry. Hope. Me. Connie. You. She doesn’t want anyone to be in trouble. All that, in there, the little pow-wow, to keep Hope from getting hurt? If you didn’t already know how that car had gotten to be a mess, she’d take the blame. It was Tiffany. She did it. And if Tiffany had her way, you know what she’d do? She’d take that money back herself. She’d force Hope into a closet or a basement or wherever, she’d lock her up, and she’d take that money back all by herself. And if Portland was already here, and all these people, these Ruchert’s, were dead, and Portland just wanted to clean it all up, kill everyone? Tiff would tell them she was Hope. She would. She’d take the blame. So don’t tell me she’s a little girl. Don’t delude yourself that she’s a little girl. Maybe she is soft and chubby and cute, but she’s got a spine on her. I know she does. I found out, ok? I found out.”
He looked like he might cry. And he’d invaded her personal bubble arguing his point. So maybe she wasn’t the intimidating factor she’d suspected. Something chirped. Inside his jacket. Sipe stepped back, and pulling the phone out she saw the holster, the gun, poking out just under his left armpit.
Sipe answered the phone. No voice met his. He looked at the phone, at the caller id. 206 area code. Whatever it meant, good or bad, he couldn’t tell. He’d ask Tiffany, she’d know Connie’s number, probably off the top of her head. How Connie knew the burner number, that was a question though. He slid the phone back inside his jacket.
“Who was it?”
He shrugged, looked around. All of a sudden, even suspicious of the tops of the trees on Bug’s property, like the Wub invested in logger gear, mounted tree trunks to get a clean shot.
“I thought you said you didn’t have a gun,” said Gwen. “Just now. I saw.” Patting her armpit.
“Oh. Yeah. Naw. That’s not my gun. I mean, it is, but…That’s just the backup.”
“Right. Of course it is. Of
course it is.”
For what felt like the longest time Sipe stood and looked at Gwen, standing, her head bowed, hands up, thumbs pressed against either brow, massaging like all this deep concentration would pay off and a butterfly, a cup, a golden halo, something might appear from the birth canal of mooshed palms.
“I’m ok,” said Gwen. “I swear. Just give me a second or two.”
Nodding, Sipe scratched the side of his neck and looked back towards the Collar house. Hope looked out at them from behind the screen door. She pointed at Sipe, at Gwen. Smiled. Pouted her lips and made kissy motions.
The Lipless Gods Page 27
