The Twelve-Fingered Boy (14 page)

“Hey, it's cool. We'll play it someday. Soon. You'll love it.”

Jack's smile looks more like a grimace.

“What's gonna happen when we get to your house?” he asks.

“I'm gonna grab my stash—I've got a little money— and get us some clothes. Some real clothes. Food. I've got to find out how Vig's doing…”

Jack nods, leaving me to my thoughts.

Vig's gonna be a problem. Jack and I can't stay with Moms. Maybe long enough for a shower, packing the bags, digging up my stash. But after that we've got to roll. There's no safety here.

We come through the piney woods and into the gully that separates the trailer park from the trees. A single bright halogen bulb is mounted on a pole in the middle of a handful of building blocks. The trailers look crumpled and beaten in its white light. I can hear the sounds of dinner being cleared away, the slamming of screen doors through paper-thin walls. Radios and televisions blare into the autumn night.

Coco's trailer is lit up like a carnival, Halloween decorations glowing in every window. Her room light is on. I was supposed to write her. I meant to write. But it was all so hard. And what was I going to say? Hey, girl, you know how your dad didn't like me? Well he's gonna love me now!

We creep up the gully embankment, up onto the shabby, eroding plateau that holds the Holly Pines Trailer Park.

“Gotta wait here for a bit. There are folks about. It takes a while for the park to settle down.”

Looks like Billy Cather's got himself a new truck, the bastard. I must have totaled the old one. That makes me happy. He did keep a gun in his cab, I remember. Something to think about.

“That trailer there.” I point. “He shot me. Right here, through the arm.”

“For real?”

“For real.”

“What did you do?”

“Whatdya mean, ‘What did I do?'” I put on my best expression of innocence. “I didn't do nothing.”

“Right. You don't get shot for doing nothing.”

“I stole his truck.”

Jack laughs. It's a silent laugh, with his head down and his mouth open, like it's the funniest thing he's ever heard in his life—so funny he can't even make a sound. I believe the little bastard is laughing at me.

“Hey. It wasn't that funny.”

When Jack's done laughing, tears are streaming away from the corners of his eyes.

“Hey, man.” I guess I'm a little hurt he finds my pain so damn funny. “Uncool.”

“Why? Why would you do something like that?”

What can I say? The longer Jack is with me, the clearer it will become to him that I'm an idiot.

“Went stir-crazy and tried to bolt.”

“Stir-crazy?”

“Man, you think Casimir is the only prison?”

“No.” He shifts, uncomfortable on the clay and slate embankment. “I guess not.”

Sighing, I say, “I wish I hadn't. I've done a lot of stupid things but—”

“You think Quincrux will come here?”

That's a change of gears.

“Definitely.”

Jack does something I've never heard him do before. He curses. “Then I can't be seen here.”

“Why not?”

“As far we know, the only person they want is me. They don't know anything about your…” He stops, not knowing what to call it. “Power.”

“Yet. Quincrux will pull it from Marvin if he interviews him.”

“Oh.”

“And don't forget the witch. She's put me on her grocery list.”

We're silent for a while, and then I say, “There's nothing for it except to get in and get out as fast as possible.”

“Let's do it, then. You think it's late enough?”

The sky's fully dark, and the stars shine hard and brilliant above. There's still some movement and noise in the park, but that might be better.

“Yeah. Here we go.”

I leave the Taser on the ground, marking its position. No need to have an armed homecoming.

We scramble up the rest of the embankment and across the alley behind the row of trailers. It's just a gravel path where most families keep their trashcans and assorted junk: used toys, broken bicycles, moldering plywood, broken TV sets, collapsed lawn chairs, rakes and shovels, portable deer blinds, tires. There's a reason why folks call us trailer trash.

Up and across the alley we run. Moms's trailer is right here. The tin awning is slumping to the right of the door now, but other than that, the trailer looks the way it was six months ago when I ended up upside-down, bleeding out in Billy Cather's truck.

Moms's Delta 88 is parked behind us. Busted headlight and crumpled fender. That's new.

I reach for the doorknob, then stop. What's going to happen here? I can feel a hard ball of tension in my gut. My hand shakes, and Jack notices it.

Moms has two speeds: raging bitch and oblivious drunk. Which one will we get?

I'm just about to turn around and run back to the woods—this can wait till later—when Jack puts his hand on my arm and squeezes. It's just a little thing, but it helps.

I turn the handle, push open the door, and step inside.

“Moms! I'm home!”

She's standing in the kitchenette, holding a big knife, her eyes wide.

“Shree. Holy Christ. You nearly scared me to death.” She stops, tosses the knife on the linoleum counter, and cocks her head at Jack. “With company, looks like.”

The house stinks of smoke. Overfull ashtrays and fast-food wrappers are everywhere. Judging by the number of cans lying around, one of Moms's friends is partial to Milwaukee's Best Light.

She's dressed in a waitress outfit, blue with white edges and a nametag that reads Margaret. She must have wheedled her way back in at the Waffle House since the last time she was fired. At least she's not tricking. Her face is drawn, and her blue eyes are rheumy and glazed. When I was a kid she'd pull out old high school yearbooks and show us pictures of herself and Dad, holding hands, in funny outfits and bad haircuts. She looked beautiful in those pictures. Now her drunk's belly and her spider arms give her a gnomish look. She's wrinkled and ugly and a ghost of that person in the yearbooks. That person is gone, like water boiling away in a pan and just leaving the crusty hard minerals baked into the sides.

“I see you've done some decorating, Moms.”

“What happened to your face?”

“Had a little accident on the way home.”

No answer. She opens a cabinet and pulls out a full bottle of Heavenly Hill vodka. She cracks the seal. It takes her a second to find a semi-clean cup in the pile of dishes rising from the sink.

“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.