The Tramp (The Bound Chronicles #1) (5 page)

chapter six

“Oh, shit.” Sam dodged behind the corner so fast his cigarette banged into the wood paneling, spraying ashes and sparks onto his forearm and T-shirt.

He brushed himself off, crushed out the fallen cherry in the dirt, then wedged between an overgrown azalea bush and the edge of the building. He peeked around the corner with one eye. He listened for the chatty female voices. One of them was his history teacher. He didn’t hear anything more, but assumed the two women he had seen walking towards the premises were heading for the dining room, up and around the steep hill where he crouched.

Ms. Collins was a nice old lady, but Sam wasn’t in the mood for polite conversation, so he skulked in the other direction along the back wall, towards the cellar entrance. It was almost dusk. The shadow of an enormous weeping willow hung over the Riverwalk and bled into the shadowy passage under the patio deck. Sam hunched down and hooked his finger into the pull chain of the cellar door. He winced at the loud screech as he pulled open the corrugated tin hatch and crept into the storage basement.

Hmph, wonder where he’s going?
Amanda watched him descend the cellar stairs as she and her mom turned onto Main Street from the state road, past the back of Big Joe’s. She knew there was some big meeting there tonight, but never had she hoped to run into Castle. Sam had moved to Shirley the previous year as a junior. Amanda was a freshman and couldn’t remember ever having talked to him—but who could deny he was attractive in such an, out-of-town, mysterious way? Once or twice she saw him glance back at her as she passed him in the hallway at school; his eyes glued to her ass. She had made sure to sashay a little more slowly, letting him drink her in like she was Marilyn Monroe in The Seven Year Itch. The thought made her twist a long strand of her hair around her finger and chew on it with a covetous smile.

Maybe that could be my new project for this year. Keep the boredom at bay…

“Oh good, there’s Vanessa,” her mom said, looking towards the parking lot, oblivious to the clandestine prowling going on right in front of her.

Typical.
Amanda rolled her eyes before putting on a polite smile for the approaching Vanessa.
Mom always misses the interesting details. Case in point.

“Hi, Steph,” called the other middle-aged woman in a high-pitched squeal.

Mom rolled down the window and fluttered her fingers at her friend. “How have you been, girl?” She reached out to squeeze her friend’s hand, “I heard Jasper already started training for this season, how’s it going?”

“Oh, those boys. You know how they love getting sweaty.” Vanessa giggled, as if she was still a schoolgirl herself. “I told Chris, ‘You think I’m pickin’ up stinky jock straps this early in the year, you’re crazy. You and your sons pick up your own damn shit.’ Whoops. Hey there, Mandy.” Vanessa snorted, stifling her indiscretion with a fist when she saw Amanda sitting in the passenger seat.

Clearly already knocked back a few drinks in preparation for the meeting, huh, Mrs. Vanessa?

“I heard your new weight room is really coming along?” Steph said quickly, soothing her friend’s embarrassment and fishing for an invitation.

That’s my mom, Captain Obvious, like always.

“We should have coffee, you and me, and I’ll give you the whole tour.” Vanessa leaned in to whisper, with an I-don’t-want-to-toot-my-own-horn confidentiality, “Remodeled the whole basement, you know, bathroom and everything.”

“Oooh—You just tell me when, honey.”

Both women squealed and pumped their fists. Vanessa cutely stamped her feet and Amanda’s mom bounced in her seat. “See ya inside,” they said in unison, dissolving in team laughter. Vanessa stumbled in her heels and caught herself against a parked car. Amanda smirked while her mom ignored her friend’s early inebriation and steered them around to park.

“This is going to be a great meeting,” she sang, and reached over to pat Amanda on the leg in merriment. “I’m sorry she called you ‘Mandy,’ honey. I told her a hundred times that you changed it to Amanda, but I guess she just forgot.”

How can I ‘change’ a nickname to a real name?
Amanda masked her irritation. “Good, Mom. I’m glad you’re perking up, I thought you had seemed a little blue, lately.”

The comment was a subtle dig; she knew how ashamed her mom was to have a glum mood or an un-pretty disposition detected. Turn that frown upside down. She herself was never allowed to display anything but cheerfulness, ugly moods not being what nice girls did. It was exhausting.

“Blue? Who’s blue, Mandy-boo? Oh—sorry. I guess old habits die hard, sweetie,” Steph laughed and patted Amanda’s thigh again before jumping out of the jeep. “Let’s hurry and get a good seat.”

Amanda cringed, but accepted her mother’s hand when she ran around to the passenger side to hurry her along. A good seat meant sitting next to Vanessa and, if possible, at least one more of her mom’s old school friends still lingering in Shirley County. There were several who still grazed around there like cows instead of taking off and exploring the big wide world beyond the place where they were born.

They descended the stairs together in the last of the fading daylight. Her mom lost her footing and flailed for an instant. She pinched the bones of her daughter’s fingers and clawed the air with her free hand before steadying herself on the railing. “Oh my! Good thing you had me, honey.”

“You okay, Mom?”

“See, I always knew you were my little miracle.”

Amanda considered the steepness of the stairs and wondered if the fall could actually have been fatal.
Maybe.

“Steph, have you heard about what happened to Big Joe?” Vanessa said as she waved from the bottom of the stairs, frantic.

“No, what?”

“Mom, I’m going inside. It’s hot out here.” Amanda wrinkled her nose at Vanessa’s stinky cigarette, pushed past the swarm of people milling outside, and pulled open the glass doors. The cool air-conditioning smelled faintly chlorinated, and she was surprised to find a new water fountain installed in the entranceway: a bronze toddler in overalls and a railroad engineer cap stood atop a tree stump and pissed into a mini bronze brook, while a mutt pulled a handkerchief from the boy’s back pocket.

Am I supposed to be imagining the smell of urine, or charmed by the perkiness of his—

“Mandy, over here.” Transfixed by the offbeat nostalgia, Amanda jumped when the sharp falsetto rang out to usher her into the dining area.

“Hey, sweetie,” intoned her Aunt Meghan, also a high school buddy of her mom’s. To both friends’ delight, Mom had miraculously fallen in love with Meghan’s older brother Mike, whom Amanda had the honor of calling her father, Sheriff Mike Jameson.

Around and around it goes.

“Hey, ladies.” Her mom bustled in behind her, probably ecstatic to find that Aunt Megan had already begun to arrange a nest of familiar faces, all of them clustered around tables that someone had pulled together. Amanda looked past them to the back doors opening onto the deck, a dull glint reflecting off the river in the approaching twilight. Magic Hour. Strings of white Christmas lights were strung from the wooden rafters, twinkling like stars against the violet sky beyond. She could see a bearded old man setting up to play an acoustic guitar.

Maybe a dulcimer?

Steph was bursting with news, “Oh y’all, lemme tell you what I just heard.”

“We know,” Aunt Meghan and their buddy Kerry said together.

Teehee!

“Mom, let’s sit outside.”

“What? We can’t hear anything out there, sugar booger. Plus, it’s so hot I think I’d melt.”

Her mom was always afraid of melting make-up and wilting, sticky hair-dos, and lately Amanda had become attuned to her own friends’ similar, nauseating anxieties. She made a point to ignore the hopeful summons of one of her contemporaries, her cousin and best friend Lindsay, nestled in the tables with another calf. Instead, she took a moment to appraise her surroundings; Amanda always liked to have something to occupy her hands and eyes during inevitable lulls in conversation with the herd.

The new Mrs. Walsh seemed to be setting up a presentation, against the wall farthest from the tables, where her mom’s crowd had gathered. She looked so young that it was weird to think of her as a missus, but it was hard to tell the age of Asian people. Steph and company weren’t front row seat kind of gals.

Mieke.
Amanda spoke the strange name in her mind, jealous of the novelty.

Mieke had pulled two tables together, arranged some pamphlets in an official kind of way, and had a laptop sitting open and running, but she was flustered. She was searching for something and talking heatedly to the old Mexican woman who worked in the kitchens.

Amanda could just make out Mieke’s hiss, “How could you not have a projector here? You did know we were holding a meeting tonight, didn’t you?”

Mrs. Mendez put up both her hands, shrugged, and turned to walk back through the swinging doors. Mieke looked up at the ceiling, sighed, and seemed to plead for patience, before turning back to squat down and shuffle through a leather briefcase on the floor.

Amanda smirked and wandered in the direction of their saved tables. She idly read the framed newspaper clippings, circa 1960’s and aged family portraits adorning the imitation log cabin walls, mentally gauging how much time she could waste before she started to look suspicious. Turning towards the group, she noticed Lindsay was wearing the same pleated plaid skirt that she was, her friend’s long blonde hair cut in the same layered style to encourage soft curls as her own, and she groaned with resignation.

“Hi Lindsay,” she said, sinking into the chair next to her. “Nice skirt. Hey, Molly.”

Lindsay exploded into feigned trepidation about what big news was looming. Expressing sympathy for Joe Robinson’s misfortune, Amanda nodded and murmured agreement. There was no menu to peruse, since there was only one family-style option for everyone, and either the normal fountain drink varieties or sweetened sun tea. All she needed to say was “yes, please,” or “no, please,” for both meal and dessert, so she busied her hands and eyes with grooming her fingernails, which was always acceptable in such a fastidious group. Lindsay chattered on and on about Big Joe’s condition, and the trip to the hospital in a helicopter, and Amanda quickly deduced that the old man had had a stroke but was still alive.

Big surprise. Why do I care about this?
Amanda finally had to shut her friend up or else risk choking on her own bile. She poked Lindsay’s bare knee, “Know a lot about the medical world Lindsay?”

“Oh, you know, just what everyone has been saying.”

“Hey, isn’t Chad pre-med?” Amanda asked, knowing the first thing that would pop into Lindsay’s mind about Chad Matthews: the blow-job incident, at a party earlier that summer, when he had come home from college. Right on cue, Lindsay’s face turned beet-red. She snapped her mouth shut and glanced around for Chad’s mom, Vanessa, mortified.

Bingo.

Suddenly, Mieke Walsh stood and called attention to her self-constructed front of the room by clinking her fork on her water glass.

“Excuse me, everyone. Let’s bring this Rotary Club meeting to order,” she called out over the milling crowd, clearing her throat and clapping her hands a few times for emphasis, “Excuse me, please. Whoo-hoo, up here. I have an announcement that I know you’ve all been waiting for…”

That was Amanda’s best chance to be excused to the restroom without Lindsay and Molly following her, and she took it, “Mom, I have to pee.”

“Okay, hurry back,” her mom hushed her, with predictable embarrassment at the mention of a bodily function in public.

Amanda noted that the assembled townsfolk showed no sign of quieting for any announcement. She gave Mieke a pitied glance as she slipped past tables and chairs towards the bathrooms, and disappeared through the door to the basement instead.

§

“And, the town goes wild,” Sam said in a normal voice, feeling no need to speak in hushed tones under the steady hum of the crowd upstairs. “What’s going on up there?”

Ricky was bent over, replacing cardboard tubs of oats against the wall, under the steel shelving. He shoved the last barrel into place and straightened up, looking at the ceiling, in the general direction of the dining room. He shrugged, shook his head and tossed Sam a plastic baggie. Sam heard the clamor erupt through an open door as Mrs. Mendez popped her head in to holler from the top of the stairs. “Enrique, you got twenty!” And quiet, just as abruptly, as she slammed it closed.

“God, Mamá. I got it…”

“Isn’t ‘Enrique’ actually ‘Henry’ in English?” asked Sam, pulling buds out of the bag to squeeze and smell for inspection. “Why does everyone call you Ricky?”

“Because no one speaks Spanish here, man. Bossman started calling me that when I was little, and it just stuck.”

Sam raised his eyebrows and snorted.
Such power.

“Sometimes he calls me Tito.”

“Are you serious?” Sam chortled and accidentally sent some of the weed flying. “Shit,” he bent to gather it. “What an asshole.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Doesn’t that bother you, not being called by your own name?”

“Nah, who cares?” Ricky flicked his hand, but couldn’t help laughing himself. “But, I’m so glad to know you care, bro.” He opened his arms and walked toward Sam, who punched him in the chest to fend off the hug. Ricky slapped his face affectionately instead.

“Mind if I try a sample, before purchase?” Sam was already digging in his pockets for rolling paper. “Make sure your product isn’t trash this time?”
Never can quite count on Ricky. Not quite.

“Are you kidding, man? Didn’t you hear Bossman keeled over this afternoon? Where you been? My Dad’s on high alert, playing Big Joe himself tonight—no way.”

Sam shrugged; not pretending to care about Big Joe’s staffing problems.

“My dad probably saved his life today—you know that fat bastard fell onto his cell phone and ass-dialed my dad, because he calls him all day long. Do this, do that. That’s the only reason that man is still alive. My dad practically runs the whole show every day. He should own this place, not that old crook.”