“Nothing,” Donal said.
He wasn’t one of them.
* * *
I pressed my ear to the floor in my room, but all I could hear was laughing and talking. Later someone came up the stairs, slow like Kellen, but not as big. Donal.
“Mama says for me to sleep up here so Uncle Sean can have my bed,” he said.
I fell asleep beside Donal and woke up to something that wasn’t laughing.
“Yeah, well, I’m your brother, so I think that makes the situation special.”
Was it Liam or Uncle Sean? Through the floor it was hard to tell.
“Is that the whole reason you came here? Put on this big brother act?” Liam.
“Baby, why couldn’t we?” Mama.
“Stay the fuck outta this, Val. It’s not your money, so shut your trap.”
“It’s just a loan. I guess I thought it mattered that I took care of Val after you got arrested,” Sean said.
“Don’t throw that in my face,” Liam said.
Then it was all shouting and the sound of things breaking and someone getting hit. I couldn’t tell who was who until Mama screamed. Then it was Liam who said, “You fucking whore,” and Mama who said, “Don’t. Don’t. Please, Liam.”
Deputy Vogel told me to call him if I ever needed something. It’s what they taught in school, too. They said the police were there to help you, but I don’t think they knew what happened when the police came to your house. Cops ruin everything. They kick in the front door, throw people on the floor and handcuff them. They break things and steal things. They lock you in a patrol car, make you spend all night in the police station wearing your nightgown, and then send you home with strangers. That’s why I would never call Deputy Vogel, no matter how much Mama and Liam fought. I’d thrown away the paper with his number as soon as he gave it to me, because I remembered what happened the last time the police came to our house.
Eventually, they stopped fighting and passed out. They always did. After everyone was quiet, I opened the window and looked down at the trellis Kellen climbed up on his birthday. The stair door was locked, and I had the only key, so no one could come upstairs while I was gone. Donal was safe.
The trellis was like climbing down a ladder, and then I was free.
I cut across the fields to the north, to a house I’d never visited. Like Liam’s ranch, it wasn’t a real farm. No chickens in the yard and only a car in the barn. All the windows were open. I went along, tugging at the bottoms of the screens until I found one where the hook had come loose.
Always check the fridge first. The best foods are kept there. Homemade things. Also apples. And pickles. Open the jar, take out two, stuff one then the other in my mouth. Tangy and sweet on my tongue. Fried chicken, salty and firm. Nibble the wing down to bone and slip it into my pocket to throw away later. Something smooth in a bowl, but hard to tell with no light. Dip a finger in and lick it. Vanilla pudding. Chocolate was better, but vanilla was good.
Eating was most important, but once it was done, I looked at the things people think they own. I didn’t take things very often, but I liked to move them. Car keys, purses, glasses, one shoe out of a pair.
The living room smelled like flowers and powder. There was a piano with pictures on top, and a candy dish on the coffee table. I lifted the lid and took a piece. Licorice. I put it back and lowered the lid. It made a tiny ching sound, but nothing worse.
“Lolene? Is that you?”
I jerked my hand away from the candy dish and took two quick steps back.
In the shadows, a woman was sitting in a chair. She had white hair in the moonlight, like Grandma.
“Do you want candy? Ma’s not here to catch us. We can eat all the candy we want.”
I took another step back.
“Why won’t you talk to me, Lolene?”
Another step and my shoulder knocked against the piano. A picture fell over.
“Do you want me to play the piano? Ma says I play almost as well as you. Almost.”
I ran, straight through the kitchen to the back door. Behind me, the woman called, “Lolene! Come back!”
When I got home, I found Cassiopeia and Cepheus and Ursa Major drawn in the gravel at the bottom of the drive, where Kellen had waited for me. He tried to draw Orion, too, but missed two stars.
I crawled back up the trellis to my room, where Donal was asleep. Safe. In the morning, when I went downstairs to get breakfast for him, Mama and Liam were in bed naked. Uncle Sean was on the couch with a needle on the floor next to him. I picked it up and laid it on the coffee table. Safe.
8
BUTCH
April 1982
If anybody wanted to know why that kid never talked, I could’ve told them. That’s what happens when your mom grabs you by the hair, clamps her hand over your mouth, and gives you a good shake while screaming in your face, “Don’t you ever talk to people! You don’t talk to anyone!”
That’s what Val did to Wavy when she was about three years old. I don’t know what she thought a three-year-old could tell anyone, but I guess Wavy played in the sandbox with the neighbor’s kids, and the neighbor said something that made Liam nervous. More likely the neighbor noticed people going in and out of the house all hours of the day and night. Not everybody is as stupid as Liam thinks they are.
Liam and I go way back, and I owed him for keeping my name out of it when he got arrested, but watching Val rattle that kid’s brain was the end of the line for me. Never mind how long we’d been in business together, I was ready to knock that crazy bitch on her ass. I didn’t have to, because Liam grabbed Val’s arm and said, “That’s enough, baby.”
I never heard another peep out of that little girl. Years later she warmed up to Jesse Joe Kellen. He was one of the local yokels we hired when we moved the operation to Powell. Not much more than a kid when Liam hired him, he was a big thug with a face like a plank. Always looked half-stoned, even though he wasn’t, and didn’t hardly open his mouth when he talked.
Sometimes, Kellen brought Wavy around the lab barracks when he played poker or dominos with us. She’d hang around watching the game, and bring us beers. Like a little waitress.
Kellen and her, they were cute together. She’d lean on his shoulder, look at his hand, count his chips. Him being so much bigger, it was funny how he acted with her. He talked to her like she was an adult. She always whispered in his ear, so you got the idea they were having a conversation. I don’t know what she ever said to him.
One night, Kellen got up in the middle of a hand and said, “I’m gonna go up to the house for some beer.”
“Let’s just finish this hand,” Vic said.
“She’ll play for me.” Kellen gave his cards to Wavy and started up the hill toward the trailers.
We laughed, but she got up in his chair, took her next card, and folded.
Scott won that hand and when he went to deal, he skipped Wavy.
“What, Scott, you don’t like taking money from kids?” I said.
So he dealt her in. She lost fifty bucks on that hand, but she won the next one. Kellen had been down by almost two hundred dollars, but now he was up again. The next few hands, she won more than she lost. Her dealing left a lot to be desired since she had a hard time shuffling, but at least you knew she wasn’t cheating.
Kellen came back with beer about the time Scott and Vic decided to show her how the big boys played. It pissed them off that she’d managed to win some money, so they upped the ante and put down bigger bets. Even though it was his money, Kellen stood back and watched her play. Didn’t tell her what to do.
A couple hands in, Wavy apparently got some cards she liked, because she kept raising. Next thing you know, there was almost five thousand bucks on the table, and that was too rich for Vic.
Seeing she’d raised almost everything she had in front of her, Kellen reached into his pocket, and handed her a roll of bills. Big enough she could barely close her hand around it. All business, Wavy snapped the
rubber band off and started counting out hundred-dollar bills.
“You do understand that’s real money, little girl? This ain’t Monopoly.” Scott grinned and raised another two hundred.
Wavy slid the last of her chips out to see him and then the pile of cash she’d made: a thousand bucks. Raised him.
Scott looked down at the chips he had left and the roll of bills she had left. Took him a good minute before he folded. The kid had just taken us for more than a grand a piece. She went to pitch her cards in, but Scott slapped his hand on them.
“Hey, you didn’t pay to see,” Kellen said.
“Come on, this isn’t Vegas. Just a friendly poker game, right?” I was curious.
Kellen looked at Wavy and she shrugged. Scott flipped her cards over. Pair of fours.
We busted up laughing, Vic clutching his sides and sobbing, “You do understand that’s real money, little girl?” Kellen laughed so hard he laid down on the floor next to Wavy’s chair and cried.
Scott, he about cried for real. Wavy watched us with this little smile on her face. She had a hell of a poker face.
Laying there like a beached whale, so weak from laughing he couldn’t get up, Kellen said, “Wavy, tomorrow we’re going into town and buy you anything you want. Anything at all.”
Giggling behind her hand, she put her foot on his chest and nudged him.
He took ahold of her leg and said, “First thing, I’m buying you some new boots. You got holes in these from too much walking.”
Right up until that moment it was sweet and funny. Odd couple that they were, they had a real connection. Then he tugged her boot off and kissed the bottom of her bare foot. I could see him doing that kind of thing to his own kid, but she wasn’t. She was somebody else’s little girl.
9
WAVY
July 1982
I waited by the porch to Sandy’s trailer, where the old gray cat lived. At night, the big yellow light over the garage cast shadows into my hiding place. People walked by and didn’t even notice me crouched there.
Dee and Lance left, probably going to the barracks to fuck. Sandy sat on the porch smoking and crying, talking to herself: “I don’t know why I put up with it.” When Butch came, she went inside with him.
Danny left in the Charger and brought back beer. While he carried a case to the lab barracks, I snuck out of my hiding place and stole two cans. When Danny came back, he looked at the torn-open case in the trunk and yelled, “That’s not funny, you assholes! Don’t be poaching brewskies.”
I started to think Kellen wouldn’t come, or that he wouldn’t be alone. The night he brought the snake tattoo girl on his bike, I did something reckless. I went into the trailer to get him. After that, he came to me on his own, so it had been worth the risk.
I sat down on a cinder block and slipped my boots off to bury my toes in the cool silt under the porch. I listened for the Panhead, but it never came. Finally, Old Man Cutcheon’s truck pulled into the yard, groaning as Kellen stepped out.
He jingled his keys as he walked across the yard, clouds of dust kicking up around his boots. Only when he put his foot on the bottom step did I climb over the railing. Step out sooner and someone else might see me.
Kellen walked across the deck, making the floorboards thump. From inside, Butch called, “Fee fi fo fum!” Sandy giggled.
Careful to stay to the side of the front window, I stepped out of the shadows. Sometimes Kellen had business and couldn’t come with me, but tonight he was waiting for me step into the light.
“There you are. I was up to the house looking for you, but the Corvette was there, so I didn’t go in,” he said.
Uncle Sean was there all the time now.
“Fee fi fo no?” Butch called from inside the trailer.
Hearing that, I hurried back to my hiding place. Kellen came down the stairs while I put my boots on. When he walked around the porch, I picked up the quilt and the cans of beer, and followed him across the yard, going away from the sound of Butch and Sandy.
“Is that Kellen?” Sandy said.
“I thought so, but there’s nobody out here.”
In the meadow, I had Kellen all to myself. He smelled good. Sweat and motorcycle and wintergreen. No stinking weed smoke. No perfume. No sadness. He smelled like love. Between the cottonwoods and the bluff, I spread out the quilt and offered him the cans of beer.
“Dang, you even brought me beer. We need a better system. Some way for you to let me know where you are.”
I liked that he wanted to know, but I also liked him not knowing. Sometimes waiting and being disappointed was good, to remind me he didn’t belong to me. Nothing belonged to me. I shrugged and lay down on the quilt, which didn’t smell like Grandma’s house anymore, unless I closed my eyes and concentrated.
“How are these new boots treating you?” he said, as he pulled them off.
He bought me new ones every year to start school. This was the sixth pair, to get me ready for high school in August. Seventh grade was at the old middle school, the last year before they closed it. For eighth grade, I would be going to the new high school in Belton County, which was an hour each way on the bus. “You’re not riding no two goddamn hours on the bus. I’m taking you,” Kellen said. He didn’t care that it was farther.
The boots for eighth grade had to be bought early, because I not only wore out the old ones but outgrew them, too.
I nodded, but didn’t open my eyes, to test an idea. If I kept my eyes closed, would it be easier to send Kellen a message? I waited but nothing happened, except that he went on talking while he took his boots off.
“You know, I still got a whole lotta poker money burning a hole in my pocket.”
“Yours.” I squinted harder, making stars sparkle inside my eyelids.
“Only what I started with is mine. You won the rest. Shit, Scott isn’t gonna live that down for a long time.”
Smiling made it harder to send my message, but I liked winning and having Kellen kiss my foot. I crept my toes across the quilt to find Kellen’s feet, which were hard as hooves. I went without socks, when I forgot to do laundry, but he didn’t own any socks. Still, I liked to pet his feet with mine. Touch his hands with mine. Rub my cheek against his. I liked how we were different, but the same.
Lying back beside me, he spread his arm out to make me a pillow.
“You didn’t go swimming tonight?” he said.
“Before. With Donal.”
“That’s nice. Is he in bed now?”
I nodded and wiggled closer so I could press my face into his armpit. Sweaty but clean.
“You need to quit squirming and lay still,” he said. He was ticklish.
I swallowed a giggle and stayed where I was to tease him. He always wanted me to say the stars, and if I didn’t do it soon enough, he got impatient.
“Ursa Maj—”
I poked a finger into his side to stop him and he laughed.
“What? Not Ursa Major?”
We waited, trying to trick each other. The kind of trick I liked.
“Orion?” he said.
“Noooo.”
“No? Oh, right, we won’t see him until October. I guess that means I can keep wearing his belt until then.”
I put my hand over his mouth to make him be quiet. The message I was trying to send was, “Kiss me.” He did kiss my hand before I took it away, but that wasn’t what I wanted.
“I promise I’ll be good,” he said.
Wiggling around to get comfortable, I put my head back on his arm. Then I looked up at the sky and found my place. Looking at the stars was like opening a familiar book. I made him wait a little longer, since he didn’t pay attention to my message. He must have gotten it late, because after a minute, he kissed my hair. When I turned my face to him, he kissed my lips, too.
“Cassiopeia,” I said.
10
KELLEN
Waking up in the meadow was Wavy’s favorite thing. She was more likely to talk first t
hing in the morning, too. I might get a whole dozen words out of her before the sun came up. I might even get the three I liked best.
Me, I loved falling asleep in the meadow. The hay rustling around us, the stars overhead, owls in the cottonwoods. Wavy curled up next to me so we were like two animals bedded down in the grass.
That night, I was glad I skipped the beers. I remembered things better when I was sober. Like Wavy’s cheek stuck to my arm with sweat, and the wind ruffling her hair against my neck. I kissed her hand and pressed it over my heart.
“Hmmm,” she said, already half asleep.
A car drove down the road to the south, going too fast. After it passed, crickets filled up the quiet. A while later, another car came down the road, scattering gravel. I was just about asleep when a squealing thud jerked me wide awake. I sat up and Wavy woke up with a whimper, clutching at me.
The car engine clunked and died.
“Somebody just wrecked up on the road. I’m gonna walk over and check it out,” I said.
I wanted Wavy to stay there, but when I pulled on my boots, she did the same. We struck out across the meadow toward the road and, when we came over the rise, I could see headlights off to the southwest. The road curved there, with a fork to the north for a service road to the stock tank and windmill. There was a cattle guard across the ditch between iron gate posts. Car musta took the curve too fast.
When Wavy broke into a run, I knew she’d figured it out, same as me. Two cars driving away from the farmhouse in the middle of the night? One was probably Val.
Cutting through the hay, Wavy left me behind. When I got to the ditch, the passenger side headlight blinded me, skewing up at the wrong angle. I tripped over something and landed hard, gravel digging into my elbow. I hauled myself back up and ran like I hadn’t since I played football in high school.
One of the gate posts had cut through the car’s hood, ruptured the radiator, and rammed the engine right into the front seat. There was antifreeze and gas pouring onto the road, turning it to mud. The driver’s side was down into the ditch, and with the engine in the way, I couldn’t see any way to get to Val. She was pinned behind the wheel and covered in blood. Dead for all I knew. For all I cared really, except I didn’t want Wavy to see that.