Moonrise

  black telephones.

  The other side of the booth the same

  and

  separating them

  some pretty tough-looking Plexiglas.

  There’s no air con,

  though it must be close to ninety degrees.

  I think about asking for water,

  but I won’t take anything from these people.

  Ever.

  NOT A HOSPITAL

  Everyone mouths off about

  how much they hate the smell of hospitals,

  but have any of them been to a prison?

  IT’S ED

  I don’t look at the Plexiglas.

  I study the floor,

  my dusty sneakers,

  then my hands, engine grease under the nails

  to prove I haven’t wasted my morning.

  Something slams behind me.

  I don’t turn.

  I’m scared to look anywhere

  except

  down.

  So I sit stiff in the chair.

  I don’t look at the Plexiglas.

  I study the floor,

  and finally a shadow

  falls.

  I look up.

  It’s Ed.

  COCO

  The Ed I knew

  didn’t have the balls to kill a cat,

  let alone a cop.

  When our cat Coco got real sick

  but the vet was out of town for the weekend,

  Mom said, ‘For Christ’s sake, take that thing

  down to the Hudson and do it a favour.’

  Coco was cradled in his arms,

  mewling like a newborn.

  She couldn’t move her own limbs,

  hadn’t eaten anything for days.

  Her black fur was falling out.

  She was as light as a kitten.

  Still, Ed held on.

  ‘You want me to take Coco to the river and drown her?’

  We were in the backyard.

  Mom was smoking a cigarette.

  Ed and I were playing ‘I Spy’.

  He wasn’t letting me win;

  he never did, just cos I was younger,

  and I liked that.

  ‘It would be the kindest thing to do,’ Mom said.

  ‘Since when have you cared about the kindest thing?’

  he murmured,

  not wanting to upset the cat.

  Mom rose, pushed her chair back.

  ‘That thing’s a goner.

  Only difference doing it on Monday will be that

  Dr Death takes a hundred bucks off us

  for the privilege of letting her suffer.

  I’ve got a bag in the closet –

  we could do it for free.’

  Ed glanced at me, kept his voice low.

  ‘I’m not putting Coco into a fucking bag.’

  Mom slung

  her burning cigarette

  into the dry grass.

  ‘I’ll get someone else to do it. Give her here.’

  Ed recoiled,

  eyes blazing,

  the muscles in his neck tightening.

  ‘I’m not paying for the vet,’ Mom insisted.

  Coco mewled again,

  thinner this time,

  begging to be saved from our mother.

  ‘Come on, Joe,’ Ed said.

  He marched into the house,

  knocking Mom out of the way

  as he charged through the

  back door.

  In our room, Ed passed the cat to me and

  spread out a fleece on his bed.

  I flattened my face against her bony head and

  she licked me with a gravelly tongue.

  She hissed.

  ‘Maybe it hurts to be held,’ he suggested.

  I put her down gently and Coco lay still,

  closed her eyes.

  ‘I’ll go to the drug store and buy a baby bottle,

  get her to drink some milk.’

  I nodded.

  ‘Do you think Coco might get better?’ I asked.

  ‘No, Joe. Coco’s gonna die,’ he said

  with certainty.

  ‘You think she knows that?’

  ‘I sure as hell hope not.’

  He grabbed his cell phone from his desk.

  ‘Call me if Mom tries to touch her.’

  I curled up on the bed next to Coco,

  watched as her tiny body

  moved

  up and

  down

  with her shallow breath.

  I wasn’t one for praying but

  I asked Jesus to save Coco,

  stop her being eaten alive

  from the inside by a massive tumour.

  My prayer didn’t work though,

  and by morning,

  when I woke up next to her,

  Ed asleep in the other bed,

  Coco was cold.

  THE PRISONER

  White jumpsuit,

  hair shaved close,

  a bolt and crossbow tattooed on

  one side

  of his neck,

  sloppily done, by another inmate maybe.

  Ed smiles,

  lips stretched thin,

  revealing every bad tooth in his head.

  And I smile back,

  cos I’m not sure what else to do.

  I was right to be nervous:

  I don’t know this person

  shifting in his seat,

  hunched like an old man,

  a person in his own right

  and not

  just carefully constructed memories

  and half-baked stories.

  He’s your brother, I tell myself.

  He’s your blood.

  Be cool for fuck’s sake.

  Ed flexes his fingers.

  Sure, he is my brother

  but he’s also a grown man

  I haven’t seen for more than a decade

  with a whole life

  that hasn’t included me.

  This Ed is a stranger.

  MARINER’S MARSHES

  He was loitering outside the school gates,

  hood up,

  coat zipped to his chin,

  looking shifty.

  ‘Ed,’ I said,

  and skipped towards him.

  I followed him up the street

  and we walked and walked,

  finally reaching Mariner’s Marshes

  about a mile away.

  ‘We’re not allowed to go in there,’ I said,

  knowing the park had been

  closed off to the public since

  before I was born.

  Ed grinned and took my hand,

  led me into a place very few

  people in Staten Island dared to go –

  an industrial wasteland,

  a perfect wilderness,

  a place filled with burnt-out cars,

  old ship parts,

  and dotted with ponds, marshes, swamps.

  Every kid in the neighbourhood knew

  that a guy called Dempsey Hawkins

  brought his girlfriend here in the Seventies

  and killed her.

  It’s the perfect place for it –

  deserted, quiet,

  old barrels and tunnels

  where you could easily hide a body.

  Ed led me to one of the yellow-bricked

  passageways,

  icicles clinging to the roof of the tunnel.

  ‘Why are we here?’ I asked.

  Ed opened up his backpack,

  took out a carton of milk

  and handed it to me.

  ‘I don’t wanna go home yet.

  I flunked out of school,’ he said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Cos I’m a loser.’

  I slurped milk through the straw.

  It was so cold it made my brain ache.

  ‘You’re not a loser, Ed.’

  ‘I gotta get
outta Arlington.

  I gotta get out

  and make something of myself.’

  I’d heard it before.

  It was Ed’s refrain –

  I gotta go,

  I’m leaving,

  I can’t stay.

  ‘Will you be OK if I’m not around?’ he asked.

  ‘Sure,’ I said,

  but I didn’t mean it.

  Ed was my brother but also

  sort of like

  my dad

  and my best friend too.

  It grew dark and we stayed right where we were –

  huddled together beneath the cloudless sky

  and a full moon that rose slowly

  and lit up the wilderness

  with yellow light.

  ‘It almost makes you gasp to look at it,’ Ed said,

  pointing to the sky.

  ‘Or makes you want to hide.’

  I put my head on his shoulder.

  ‘I could come with you,’ I said.

  I always said this and Ed always agreed.

  ‘Sure,’ he replied,

  and ruffled my hair.

  ‘Definitely.’

  THE FIRST VISIT

  ‘He can’t hear you, kid,’ the marine-guard says

  as I start to speak.

  ‘Use the phone.’

  I put the handset to my ear.

  Ed does the same

  once the guard has yanked off his handcuffs.

  His breath whistles down the line.

  ‘Jesus, man, you look thirty years old,’ he says.

  His voice is scratchy,

  like he’s spent the years smoking,

  and doesn’t sound like the home videos Angela’s kept

  or even the guy I spoke to on the phone

  a couple years ago

  when Karen was gone away for a few days.

  No trace of an Arlington accent.

  I run a hand through my hair.

  ‘The puberty troll turned up.

  Said she couldn’t wait any longer and

  gave me facial hair.

  Bitch.’

  Ed laughs, bangs the desk

  between us.

  His guard glowers.

  My marine clears his throat.

  ‘So, how you getting on, Joe?’

  He leans forward to listen.

  But what am I supposed to say?

  I’d prefer to crack jokes for an hour

  than talk about stuff that matters.

  Then again, what does matter?

  I sit up straighter.

  ‘I’m doing good. Got an apartment

  and if I can turn over a junker, I’ll get a job too.’

  He smiles. ‘You’re here for how long?’

  I pause.

  ‘For as long as you need me,’ I say.

  He raises an eyebrow.

  ‘And you got an apartment?

  Shit.

  When I first came to Texas,

  I loafed around for months.

  Here half a second and got yourself set up?

  You aren’t like me, Joe, that’s for sure.’

  He rubs one eye with the heel of his hand,

  holds the handset under his chin for a second.

  ‘So …’ he says eventually.

  ‘Yeah. So.’

  I wait for him to say something

  but he’s struggling as much as I am.

  ‘Are you … Is your …’ I begin,

  wondering about his case.

  But before I’ve formed a question,

  I change my mind,

  ask something meaningless.

  ‘How’s the food?’

  Ed sticks one finger into his mouth and

  makes a gagging noise.

  ‘It’s lousy, man. Farm can’t spend more than

  a couple dollars on any meal,

  so it’s cheese and chunder most days.’

  He pauses, embarrassed.

  ‘Don’t suppose you could stick a few bucks

  into my account for snacks?

  I hate to ask.

  I guess Karen decided to stop sending cash.

  I did wonder when that would happen.’

  ‘Karen was sending cash?’

  ‘A few dollars a month, yeah.

  Rarely answered letters though.

  As I said, I hate to ask, but …’

  I hold up a hand,

  stop him speaking.

  ‘No problem,’ I say, even though I’ve spent

  my last dime on rent and haven’t the fare for a

  bus ride back into town.

  He sighs. ‘How’s Angela?’

  I shrug.

  ‘She’s OK. Works a lot.’

  He scratches his scalp,

  starts to bite what’s left of a thumbnail.

  ‘She got her head around this?’

  ‘She’s got Karen,’ I lie,

  cos Ed still doesn’t know

  our aunt left last week

  on account of me being here and

  that Angela and I are pretty much

  fending for ourselves.

  In a flash, he brightens.

  ‘So the job? You gonna be a drug dealer’s wheels?’

  I laugh,

  and we talk about my running,

  school,

  the price of gas,

  sports and

  then Star Wars,

  me trying to convince him that

  Rey’s way cooler than Princess Leia

  ever was,

  cos, of course, he hasn’t seen the new ones.

  It’s all

  unimportant things

  and never

  The Thing.

  And then, time’s up.

  ‘Three o’clock,’ the marine shouts

  to no one in particular,

  though I’m the only one in the room.

  ‘I’ll come tomorrow,’ I tell Ed.

  ‘Have you heard from Mom?’

  he asks quickly.

  I haven’t a chance to answer.

  Already they’ve grabbed the phone off him,

  shackled his wrists and ankles,

  and are roughly leading him away.

  UP AGAINST A COOKIE JAR

  Angela thought the note

  propped up

  against an empty cookie jar

  was a joke.

  ‘Why would Mom go to Minnesota on a bus?’

  I didn’t understand either.

  She was gone? Like never coming back?

  Like Dad was dead and Ed was in prison?

  Aunt Karen rushed out to work,

  cursing Mom for making us worry.

  Angela and I ditched school.

  We watched TV, waited for Mom to call

  or come home.

  We thought by the time it got dark

  she would stagger in

  carting a stuffed-crust pizza.

  Maybe she’d smell of beer or be

  dozy from pills,

  but that would be all right.

  Better home

  and

  out of it

  than on a Greyhound to the Midwest.

  Only it didn’t happen.

  Mom never came home

  and Aunt Karen took over completely,

  raging with Ed for what he’d done to us.

  I was nine by then.

  A week after Mom took off

  we got a letter from Ed,

  dropping on to the mat with a considered huff.

  He wanted to know when we were heading

  down to Texas

  to see him.

  ‘I wouldn’t visit that lowlife

  if he was tied to a tree in the yard,’ Karen yelled.

  ‘He destroyed this family.

  He destroyed two families.’

  She wasn’t interested in his innocence.

  Guilty by judge and jury was enough,

  and she made sure we knew it.

&nbs
p; ‘He killed a police officer

  and finished off your mother.’

  Mom didn’t vanish entirely though.

  She sent postcards sometimes.

  I never bothered to keep them.

  EVERYONE WALKED

  I never had a dad

  but I had a big brother

  and then I didn’t

  and then I didn’t have a mother

  and I spent a lot of time wondering

  when I would lose

  my sister

  my aunt,

  until everyone I loved walked out the front door

  leaving me alone.

  THE GAS STATION

  The girl from the diner, Nell,

  studies a display of DVDs

  along the back wall of the gas station.

  I move towards her,

  open a packet of gum without paying for it.

  ‘I met you earlier,’ I say,

  offering her a piece.

  Nell’s face is stony.

  ‘You’re new to town.’

  It’s not a question.

  She takes the gum from my hands,

  pops a piece into her mouth and

  puts the packet into her pocket.

  ‘Your dad at the farm for robbery? Drugs?’

  ‘My brother. His name’s Ed. I’m Joe.’

  She holds up a copy of Die Hard.

  ‘Bruce Willis used to be so hot.’

  She prods his picture on the box,

  tilts her head to one side.

  ‘But he’s not hot now?’ I ask.

  ‘He might be.

  I haven’t seen him since the restraining order.’