By the Book

by Mary Kay McComas

  “I know you asked to leave a bit early today, Ellen, and that’s fine, I won’t keep you. I just wanted to make sure you hadn’t changed your mind about taking Mary Westford’s position while she’s on leave. Do you still want the job?”

  That was never the issue. Wanting the job. She was very happy with the job she had. “I deserve that promotion, don’t I?”

  “Yes, of course you do.”

  “Then I want it.”

  It was a good thing she and Jonah had agreed to meet later at the hospital—so he could visit with his father while she took care of some family business—because she left work feeling testy and out of sorts. Jumpy. Nervous. Maybe Felix and the job at Krane’s had affected her whole day at the bank, without her even realizing it. Maybe his paranoia was rubbing off on her.

  There wasn’t an ounce of rational thinking to her hurrying home to change from skirt to slacks before she picked up Felix. Her reaction to some deep-seated and inconsistent concept about a skirt in a junkyard was easier to comply with than to argue with, she supposed. But to save time, she parked out in front of the house, dashing up the sidewalk, across the porch, and in through the front door.

  “Ellen,” Mrs. Phipps said, startled as they met in the hallway. “You’re home early. We were just about to—”

  “Not today, Mrs. Phipps,” she said, rushing up the stairs with hardly a pause. She frowned at the trash bag still sitting outside her apartment door. Had she gotten the day confused? No. It was Thursday, trash day. “Shoot,” she said, jamming the key in the lock and letting herself in.

  Fat Bubba had followed her up the stairs. He loitered in the doorway a fraction of a second too long.

  “Not today, Bubba,” she said, using the same hurried, impersonal tone of voice she’d used on Mrs. Phipps as she swung the door closed on him.

  Fifteen minutes later she was in jeans and a white T-shirt, out the front door, and heading for her car. She had the eerie feeling someone was watching her and turned to wave good-bye to Mrs. Phipps, but the old lady wasn’t standing in her window and Eugene’s shades were drawn. She slowed down for a second, noticing that the house looked older than usual somehow, and sad in a way she couldn’t define. And worse, with the shades drawn and the curtains closed against the summer sun, it was almost as if it were shutting her out, turning its back on her—which was ridiculous, of course.

  She shook off a peculiar sensation of foreboding and got into her car. On the way to her mother’s house she tried to get enthusiastic about what she was doing, but deep inside a dark, misty fog of uneasiness churned and swirled. As right and as bright as the day before had been, this day was filled with dark suspicions and apprehension, and she didn’t know why.

  But for Felix’s sake she was smiling when she honked the horn outside her mother’s house and waved cheerfully to them both when they stepped out onto the front porch. Surprisingly, he jogged down the walk and quickly got into the car.

  “Go. Quick,” he said, slamming the door closed. “Hurry, before she puts more spit in my hair.”

  Laughing, she complied. That their mother had had a field day dressing her son for a job interview was too obvious. His old short-sleeved cotton shirt was patched and pressed, his T-shirt was bright white, and there was a razor-sharp crease down each leg of his ragged jeans. Even his tennis shoes had a fresh coat of powdery white polish on them. He was shaved and his hair was clean and combed—and apparently held in place with Super Hold Spit.

  “Big day for Mom, huh?”

  “The first day of school revisited,” he said, letting loose a huge sigh as he started to relax a bit. “All I need is a backpack and some lunch money.” She chuckled, and he glared at her. “Sure, laugh. But it’s a sad day when a grown man actually runs toward his own death just to get away from his mother, you know.”

  “Oh, stop,” she said, scoffing. “You haven’t looked this good in months, number one. And number two, you’re not running to your death. You’re taking your first step toward a new life. You’re doing what’s right. You’re taking responsibility for yourself, and I happen to be very proud of you.”

  “Great. That makes all the difference to me,” he said in a sarcastic tone of voice. However, she noticed that he squirmed in his seat a bit and sat up a little straighter, smoothed out the creases in his jeans. “I’ll keep that in mind during my recuperation.”

  “I’m serious,” she said, knowing that he knew she was, but wanting to pump up his ego a bit more. “What you’re doing takes a lot of guts, Felix. Facing Krane like this, attempting to pay back your debt. I’m proud to call you my brother.”

  She waited for his next quip, but when it didn’t come and the silence changed into something palpable, she glanced at him, found him pale and serious and regarding her with great affection.

  “I haven’t been much of a brother to you lately, have I?” he asked, and before she could deny the remark, he said, “You know, if anything happens today, if something goes wrong, I want you to know that you’ve been a good sister to me. You get mad sometimes, but you’ve never turned your back on me and I ... I appreciate that.”

  “Felix.”

  “I know I’m a pain in the ass. I know people have told you to have nothing to do with me. To practice tough love on me.”

  “And I did,” she said defensively. “I do. Because I think they’re right. And look how well it’s worked. You’re standing up for yourself. You’re—”

  “You tried. But you never once left me to sleep out in the cold or go hungry. You never turned your back on me.”

  “Well, no.” If she had, this day of reckoning might have come years earlier, but being a too-nice person sort of precluded letting your brother starve or freeze to death. Another fine demonstration of the fact that being too nice wasn’t the best thing to be. “No, I didn’t. And I’m sorry for that. Maybe if I had—”

  “This day would have come sooner?” he asked, finishing her sentence for her. His laugh was hollow. “This day wouldn’t have come at all, Elly. I’d be dead by now.” She opened her mouth to deny it, to champion his will to live and the common sense he had when he wasn’t drinking, but he stopped her. “I just want you to know that you’ve been a good sister and I love you.”

  Tears pressed hard on the backs of her eyes and stung to make them water. Good sister, bad sister wasn’t really important now. They’d hit the crux of their conversation. “I love you, too, Felix.”

  There was a new kind of kinship between them as they pulled up across the street from the junkyard. There was a silent mutual agreement that if Felix was going to stand up like a man, he was also to be treated like one—and neither one was too sure Krane would feel the same.

  “Okay,” she said, turning her head to face him. “Tonight he’s just going to show you around, discuss wages and the terms of the pay-back agreement, and then you start work tomorrow, so this shouldn’t take too long. I’ll wait right here for you. If you’re not back in thirty minutes, I’m coming in after you. Okay?”

  He nodded, but the look in his eyes told her that he suspected Krane could inflict a great deal of pain in thirty minutes.

  “Twenty minutes,” she said, forcing the fear from her voice. “Twenty minutes and I’m coming in. How long does it take to look around a junkyard anyway, huh?”

  “Stay in the car, Elly,” he said, his tone flat and reconciled. “I can handle this.”

  “Twenty minutes and I’m coming in.”

  His gaze slipped from the door of the run-down building across the street to meet hers. He’d told her to stay in the car, but he couldn’t bring himself to forbid her to follow him. He tried to smile, but the gesture held no reassurance for her that he thought anything other than that he was going to see his Maker.

  “Everything is going to be fine,” she said, falling back on her assumption that all people were basically good.

  Once more he nodded. He took a deep breath and pulled on the door handle to get out. He walked slowly across
the street and through the dusty parking lot. It was 5:40 and there was still plenty of daylight, though an evening dullness had taken most of the blazing glare from it, so she could see him perfectly. His one look back was quick, an afterthought to his turning the knob to go in. He was scared.

  Ellen fidgeted, chewed her lower lip, and watched the clock in her dashboard blink off each second. At 5:43 she pulled on the handle of the car door and got out. She started across the street, then turned around and went back to lean against her car. If things were going well in there, the last thing Felix needed was his big sister barging in to hold his hand as if he were a baby.

  Still, with every minute that passed, she became more and more certain that she’d made a huge mistake; that for the first time in Felix’s life he might be right about something. She should go over there, she thought. So what if she embarrassed Felix? They’d think she was the reason for his drinking. She could pull a dumb-female trick: “Can I join the tour, pretty please? I’ve never seen a real junkyard before,” she could say.

  She turned to look at the clock and at the same time heard the door across the street squeak open.

  The burly man from the rusty stool came out first, then Felix, followed by Tom Krane. Her heart was thumping out a funeral cadence, slow, loud, and resounding. In a bizarre, almost dreamlike moment their steps matched the slow, solemn thumping as they walked to the side of the building and the open gate of a tall wire fence. She noticed she was holding her breath when Felix looked over at her, and she didn’t release it when he smiled and waved.

  “You better go on home, Ellen,” he shouted to her, his companions slowing and turning their heads to watch. “This is going to take longer than we thought. It may be a while. You go on home, and I’ll bum a ride home from one of them.”

  She frowned, tried to see his face more clearly, tried to pick up a signal in his voice that something was wrong. He smiled and waved again, then turned back and fell into step with the other two men, saying, “Thanks for the ride over here. I’ll see you later.” Fifteen more slow plodding steps, and he disappeared through the fence and behind a pile of junk. Her heart was about to burst. She let go of the stale air in her lungs and took a deep breath. She must have needed the extra oxygen, because it seemed to snap and fizz inside her brain, shake things loose, help her see things more clearly.

  Or not ...

  She wasn’t really sure what set her off or why. She just knew, with every fiber of her being, that something was wrong. Horribly wrong. And she was running. They’re not going to give him a lift home. Why would they give him a lift home? These are not nice men; they wouldn’t give their grandmother a ride home. Over and over in her mind the alarms went off on a sour note. She thought she heard her name being called, thought it was Felix calling her. The fear was disorienting her though, the call seemed to come from behind and it didn’t sound like Felix’s voice. But she knew it was him and kept running, through the gate in the wire fence.

  But once inside, she had to stop. The junkyard was much bigger than it looked from across the street. There were three primary avenues, one straight ahead and one off to each side from where she stood. Cars and car parts were piled two and three deep along each side of the avenues—buses, bikes, and baby carriages dispersed among them. Refrigerators and metal rowboats; tractors and trailers. There were acres of them. She moved forward a bit to where the three roads intersected, looking down each, catching a movement off to the right—about a hundred feet down.

  Coming up on the spot, she heard a muffled cry, then in a small alcove of debris she saw Burlyman grab hold of Felix, and Krane deliver a crushing blow to his face.

  “No! No!” she screamed, watching blood splatter and ooze from her brother’s nose and mouth. The burly man did something to Felix’s arm, and he cried out in pain. “No!”

  With the instant recognition that her words weren’t going to stop them, she took a running start, grimaced at the next blow to Felix’s midsection, took a flying jump, and landed on Krane’s back. His arm came up to throw her off and she wrapped her leg around it. With both arms firmly around his neck—and not daring to let go—she could smell the grease and sweat and pure evil on him. Instinctively curling her lips back to avoid contact with him, she sank her teeth into the fleshy part of his shoulder at the base of his neck.

  He howled and bucked like a crazed bronc. She felt his skin give way under the pressure of her teeth, tasted blood in her mouth. Then she was flying. ...

  Everything after that happened in a blur. First she was whizzing through the air, then it felt as if she were shattering into a thousand little pieces as she came crashing down to the ground, hitting the side of an old panel truck, her head knocking it twice before the world tunneled in and out of focus. In and out, and while she fought the hazy darkness she was aware of the noise. Lots of voices, lots of shouting—more than the three men she knew to be in the junkyard with her. Panic gripped her as she remembered Felix, his face bloody and broken. Were lots of men attacking him now? She was desperate to see.

  “Felix?” she cried out, the fog turning gray and beginning to thin out. Fuzzy shapes and forms crossed her field of vision. Khaki uniforms. Lots of them. “Felix?”

  “He’ll be okay,” someone beside her said. She turned her head and blinked her eyes until she had a clear picture of Bobby Ingles. Thank God she’d been too nice to be cruel to him in school. He was watching the six or seven other police officers crowded around Felix and the two loan sharks, when he said, “Looks like he’s beat up a bit, but he’ll be okay. He knew he might have to take a couple hits before we could get in here.”

  “He what? He knew what?” Supporting herself on one elbow, she rolled forward onto her hands and knees to get up. Every muscle in her body felt as if it had been pinched, viciously. “He knew what?”

  “That he might have to take a couple punches before we could get in here to arrest those two.”

  Using the panel truck to guide her, and Bobby’s hand for support, she stood up and scowled at him through the dizziness in her head. “What the hell are you talking about?” She took a tentative step toward the huddle around her brother and winced with pain. The next step was just as bad, but the one after that was a little better. Talking helped. “Felix didn’t know this was going to happen. I made him come here. I almost got him killed.”

  “He suspected. We all did,” Bobby said, following her at a discreet distance when it became apparent that she didn’t want or need his help to walk. “Especially after the other night at the hospital.”

  She was vaguely aware of the ambulance pulling into the back of the junkyard, advancing toward them. She needed to get to Felix. She hobbled a little faster.

  “I don’t understand, Bobby. I don’t understand any of this. I understand that I was a fool, but the rest ... I just don’t understand.”

  “Tuesday night at the hospital—” he began, but she’d caught a glimpse of her brother and started pushing people away to get to him.

  “Aw, Felix, Felix,” she cried, kneeling down beside his battered body, his face swelling and discoloring under the blood. So much blood. “I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.” Tears rolled freely down her cheeks. “Can you see me? Can you hear me? Felix?” Only his left eye was swollen closed; he opened the right one and glanced around trying to find her. “I’m here, Felix. I’m sorry. Please be all right.” He tried to speak, tried to wet his lips with a bloodied tongue, and the pain twisted his face. “Don’t talk. Don’t talk. He needs help. Someone help him. Don’t die, Felix. Please don’t die.”

  She wasn’t sure what drew her attention to it—through the tears and anguish and hubbub going on around them—but she suddenly felt his fingers grasping hers, squeezing them tight, shaking them a bit, like a victorious combatant.

  “That’s right. That’s right, Felix,” she said, brushing away her tears with the back of her hand and trying to smile at him. “You won. You were right all along. I don’t know how you did all
this, but you won.”

  “Any time Krane’s name comes up, we know something’s going down. Tuesday night when Felix was trying so hard to get himself arrested, taken into custody so Krane couldn’t get at him, I figured he was in some sort of trouble,” Bobby Ingles said. He sat across from her in the surgical waiting room, speaking softly, calmly—explaining what had transpired that evening. His hands were clasped between his knees and he was leaning forward on his elbows. Felix had been wheeled into surgery twenty minutes earlier. “Between the time Felix sobered up and the time your mother came to pick him up, we asked him about the situation. He denied over and over again that he was in trouble with Krane. He said he knew who Krane was but had no personal relationship with the man. I told him then what Krane was like.” He spread his fingers wide, helpless. “I told him he wasn’t the first guy to get in a bind with him and he wouldn’t be the last guy we found beaten half to death in a gutter somewhere.”

  “If you knew Krane was loan-sharking and beating up people, why didn’t you arrest him?”

  “No proof. And his victims were too afraid to testify against him.”

  “I don’t understand that,” she said, bewildered. “They can’t pay him if they’re too beaten up to work. It still doesn’t make sense.”

  “Power,” he said simply. “They beat up one person and everyone else moves heaven and earth to pay him. It generates fear.”

  “And they were going to use Felix to teach—”

  A movement in the doorway caught her attention; she looked up. There stood Jonah, a safe haven, a light in the darkness, a warm bed on a cold night. There stood Jonah, vital, sexy, and all male.

  It was as if someone pulled her plug and let all the air out of her, or as if she’d been holding herself together with paper clips and chewing gum while she waited for him—and now that he was there, she could fall apart and he’d pick up all the pieces.

  Without a word from either of them, she stood and walked straight into his embrace.